A good read on "Agape" or selfless love , from the Buddha's perspective :
Message 15562133
Did you really think that only Christianity has this unique feature of love and compassion?
This is for grown-ups , and not story of a wrathful god Jehova prone to destroy and banish and condemn , and those that are the "chosen" not seeing the deeper universal meaning of the symbolism, for being to enamoured with too much zealousness and rigid teaching .
Agape is good , and was a chief center of Siddartha's teaching.
Look at the idea
of the where the images of the Tree of Life comes from , and the Serpent as well JK. It is not singular to the Jewish old Testament at all. It goes back to Buddhism , and even much much farther back than that . Long before the mythical Moses , please try to understand the age of these mythical symbols that go back farther than you can imagine. Just as Moses was not the first to utter the commandement "Thou shall not Kill".
But just to take the symbol of the sacred Tree of Life in Buddhism as an example , it is that tree under which Siddhartha was sitting when he was "awakened" to that immortality and light of his own truth . Yes , JK , that same truth perhaps you have found in Jesus , and found by Jesus ....and by the grace of God also revealed to and within Siddhartha before.
Where was the Garden of Eden if it was not an actual physical geographical place , one might ask ? And the two angels/cherubim with flaming swords , that God stationed at it's walls when he expelled Adam and Eve from that domain ? (there are the same two
"Guardians "also before many of the Temples in Buddhism , BTW)
Please think a little longer about the significance of the story before you answer . Taken from the view that this mythical place was in fact the landscape of our soul, that "garden" would have to be within . Yet our conscious minds are unable to enter it and enjoy there the taste of eternal life , since we have already tasted good and evil .
That , in fact , then might be the knowledge that has thrown us out of the garden , and flung us away from our center , and now judge things in those terms of good & evil instead of eternal life --> which that garden must be enclosed within us and must be already ours , but unknown to our conscious personalities .
This "Garden " of the fallen man and woman , this Eden that is refered to in Hebrew as that "place of delight", and our own word "Paradise" which is from the --->Persian word pairi "around" , "daeza" "a wall" , so that we have a " walled enclosure" . So apparently you have an Eden that is a walled enclosure of delight , in the middle stands the Tree of Life , or rather two trees , one of good and evil , and the other of eternal life ...and where the four rivers flow as from an inexhaustable source , refreshing this mythical magic world in four directions.
You have to remember that all this was taken very seriously and believed in , only up to a century or so ago. And in the legend of the Buddha there is also a serpent too as well as that Sacred tree of enlightenment , but instead of being known as "evil" , the serpent is thought of as being that immortal inhabiting energy of all life on earth.
This is very ancient stuff , and not all is viewed as evil
as Christian/Judaic dogma has wanted us all to believe. For it goes back in the Orient as being seen to the reincarnating spirit , the serpent shedding it's skin , that assumes and throws off bodies as a man puts on and throws off clothes. And Jesus was one of many incarnations even perhaps of the Buddha .;-)
In the Buddha legend , when the Blessed One, having attained omnicience continued to sit for days absorbed in absolute meditation (like Christ in the desert, 40 days remember ?) ther came up a tremendous storm that arose in the world around him , and this prodigious serpent wrapped itself protectively around Buddha , covering his head with it's Cobra hood.
In the Biblical story the serpent is rejected & animal itself is cursed , but in the other it is accepted . In some way in both teachings the serpent is associated with the tree and apparently enjoyed it's fruits , since it can slough off it's skin and live again ; but in the Bible legend our first parents our expelled from the garden , but in the Buddhist tradition we are invited in.
The fear of death and desire for life and attachments to the outward senses of the material of the world , in space and time ,for we are attached to our mortal bodies within it . We are resistant to give up what we take to be the "goods' and pleasures of this physical life , and this attachment is the great fact , and great circumstance that is keeping us out of the garden. This is then , and this alone is preventing us from recognizing within ourselves that which is immortal and universal consciousness , for which our senses , outword-turned are the agents of .
This exact same idea has become ever more prominent in developed modern philosophy even now in recent times , and even the hints of are found in science and modern physics.
In Buddhism , life is seen as a passage across the great river , to cross to the other shore , and pass back in thru the gates of Eden once again returning to our immortality .But in that teaching it is no flame~wielding Cherub or Angels that keeps us out of our inward garden , since it is we who are keeping ourselves out , from an incessant avid interest in ourselves and our perception of the world .
What is symbolized in our passage of the guarded gate , is our abandonment of both the world so known and ourselves so known within it , as we become more refined , stabilized and attuned in ourselves and senses to the "phenomenal" and appearance of things seen as born and dying , and experienced as good or evil , and regarded consequently that endless cycle and chain reaction of fear and desire in
the world of the temporal.
And yes , there is great love and agape in Buddhism , but there is something even more than this ...it is well that you try to understand some of these things , from a more Universal standpoint without prejudice.
The Biblical story is pretty much a a nursery tale of disobedience and it's punishment of an attitude of dependency , fear and respectful devotion ( a great thing, agape & humility )
which is not unlike the relationship of a child to a parent , and the Buddhist teaching in contrast is for self-responsible adults. You can find the imagery of the two though going farther back than either of the two , farther back than the Old Testament , or even India ... you can find the symbolism of the serpent , the tree and the garden of immortality in the earliest cuneiform texts , or depicted on Old Summerian cylinder seals , and even in the arts and rites of most all the primitive village folk around the world.
Love and agape was ever in the world , long before Christianity was born , and if that works for you , that's fine ...but every Christian should also be glad and aware , that in this world , there was a Buddha born
into it , and always present potentially within us sitting under that tree of life teaching and informing us compassionately , down thru the ages.
;-) |
