In Our Lives What Truth Do We Reveal?
The following was written based upon Mark 6:2-5. I was given the opportunity to prepare a ‘sermon’ based upon those passages from the Bible. I continue to engage in this because I think there are many truths similarly to be found in both Christianity and Buddhism. This is my submission.
Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. Mark 6:4, 5
Those who know us best are sometimes the least impressed by our rhetoric. It is easy to profess faith and convince some who do not know us, it is much more difficult to do so among our closest friends and intimate family.
When we begin anything a new, such as a job or courting a partner it is easy to appear good. Well, it may not be easy, but it is our usual objective. We don’t want the other, whether co-workers or potential mate, to see our faults, and so we exert special care to be on our best behaviors.
When we are out and about in our daily lives and interact either casually or in a limited way it is easy to profess faith or to act piously. Sustaining that effort though is frequently difficult, especially if there is a disconnect between our words and our deeply held, subconsciously held beliefs. It is in the long term that chinks in our armor become apparent.
Over time our partners or our co-workers get to know us better, we begin to act more naturally; we begin to let your real inner self be displayed. If there is not too much contrast between what we initially revealed and what is at the core of our lives things will go well. If however, there is a significant difference then things can get a tad bit difficult.
We can be honored or even revered in many ways by those who do not know us intimately but it is much more difficult to be praised in such ways by our closest friends and family. Our family and friends, those who know our true inner self in ways we may not, are not so easily influenced by well meaning words and brief actions if they do not match what we reveal on a daily, moment by moment basis.
It is said in Buddhism that the hardest people to convince of the changes in our lives due to Buddhist practice are our family. It is our family who knows all our weaknesses and the truth of any change, if in fact there really is any.
The Buddha abandoned his life as a prince in order to pursue the path to eliminating suffering in the world. He is often criticized by moderns for leaving his family, however in the context of his society what he did was normal, and in some ways he left his family much better off than others who followed the tradition who were not wealthy as he was.
For a number of years the Buddha practiced various austerities in order to purify his body and his mind. During this time he practiced with a number of others likewise engaged in seeking the truth of suffering. Finally one day the Buddha, in taking nourishment came to realize that the path to the elimination of suffering lay not in the practice of harsh austerities but in the middle way between deprivation and excess.
As he took nourishment those who had been with him a number of years looked on with derision thinking the Buddha had given up, and so they abandoned him saying they would have nothing more to do with Siddhartha. Meanwhile the Buddha sat in meditation and attained the great awakening, which is called enlightenment.
After attaining this awakening the Buddha realized that he could not possess only to himself his enlightenment, that he must teach others so they too could eliminate the darkness from their lives. He set out to find his old friends who had said they would have nothing more to do with him.
It is said that even from far off without uttering a word the first of those he encountered could see there was a change that had occurred in this person they had previously been with, and so became his disciples. The first to encounter the Buddha were not swayed by his words but by the changes in his inner self. Shortly thereafter the Buddha’s son, his wife, and his aunt who raised him after his mother’s death, all became disciples of the Buddha, including his father.
