Click-a-Sermon 14:   "Human Buddha"  

In Spring (traditional date is the 8^th of April) Buddhists celebrated Hanamatsuri, the flower festival, commemorating the birth of the historical Buddha, Gotama. The flower festival is celebrated at the Buddhist temples on the April 8th or during the spring months (April and May) depending upon the locality. At the Reno Buddhist Church we select one of the Sundays in May to host the Hanamatsuri Festival. We are planning to celebrate the 10^th Hanamatsuri on the 18^th (Sunday) and the Bazarr on the 17^th (Saturday) of May this year.

Gotama Buddha, who was born over 2,500 years ago, and became the founder of the Buddhist tradition is of course, a person whose life we should study. Out of religious devotion to such a founder, myths and legends have abounded regarding his life, shrouding the true facts of his life as a human being. To understand his life, we have to peel away the legends and myths and approach the true human being.

The story of the 80 years of Gotama's life on earth in not a story of supra-human feats or endeavors. His life was that of a single human being, with whom each of us can identify. For Buddhism does teach that our life on earth is a life of suffering, for the simple reason that human life is filled with constantly disappointing events.

Gotama Buddha experienced pains similar to our own sufferings. For soon after he was born as the prince of a small kingdom in the foothills of the Himalayas, his mother died. He was raised by his aunt, who became a second wife to his father. Being a sensitive child was not a blessing, since he soon realized that the small and weak kingdom that he had power to succeed to was constantly being threatened by powerful neighbors. Fight and destroy would have been the simplest method. But he chose another path of conquest to believe, embrace and love, was his means of conquest.

Moving from the seductive comforts of palace life, he went out to conquer the world by the power of the word rather than the sword. From his Enlightenment at the age of 35 until his death at the age of 80 he worked to spread the Dharma. He needed no miracles, only his simple faith and devotion.

When he died at the age of 80, he died as a human, not as a supra-human being. At that advanced age, he died of food poisoning from accepting the food of a laymen, as he always did. He did not deem it proper to do otherwise. Buddha=s death was no exception and there was no miracle. He lived and died as a human.

Buddhism has reduced the major human sufferings of life to illness, old age and suffering, harsh realities that none of us can escape. We may dream of miracles and chase stars to promise us miracles, yet in the end, the fact that we are mortal, human, and so terribly vulnerable, is something we cannot escape. To discover what we really are is the fundamental attitude of the Buddhist way of life.

© Reno Buddhist Church, 2003