Good evening, thank you all for attending tonight’s interfaith prayer service commemorating World AIDS day, the 20th such World AIDS day. Also, thank you for letting me stand before you tonight to offer some of the wisdom of Buddhism.
Tonight the theme is “A Season of Hope.” When asked if I would be willing to participate tonight, one of my first thoughts was why “A Season of Hope”? Why not, “A Season of Joy”? This is after all the time of year when many faiths find reason to celebrate joyfully. By the way at this time of year in our tradition we commemorate the enlightenment of the Buddha. Before I tell you about what I came up with in answer to my question about the theme let me share a little bit about the Buddha and his teachings.
The Buddha, born as Prince Siddhartha Guatama led a very sheltered life, his father’s intent was to prevent the fulfillment of one of the prophecies about his son, that he would grow up to become a wise man who would lead people to happiness.. His father instead wanted the other prediction to come true, that his son grow up to be a great king. So the Buddha’s young life was one centered on military training and comfort and pleasure, knowing no suffering. It is said that no old people or sick people could enter the palace grounds.
In spite of these efforts of the Buddha’s father, the Buddha it is said had four meetings. The four meetings occurred on separate trips outside the palace, where the Buddha encountered a mother giving birth, an old man sick, a funereal for a dead man and finally, on his last encounter he saw a wise man. It is said that these four meetings are the seed for the Buddha wishing to find a way to eliminate suffering from human life.
Several years after the Buddha left his palace he attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree after conquering the evil forces of Mara the King of Devils. For several days after this the Buddha sat with his enlightenment wondering if the people would receive the great gift of enlightenment that he wished to share. Finally, he ventured out and sought those arahats he had practiced austerities with and approached them and taught his first sermon.
The Four Nobel Truths was that teaching.
Let me share with you briefly these truths. The First Nobel Truth is that life consists of suffering, or variously translated as life means suffering. The Second Nobel Truth reveals that the origin of suffering is attachments. The Third Nobel Truth is that cessation of suffering is attainable. Finally, the Fourth Nobel Truth is the path to the cessation of suffering, the way to attain complete indestructible happiness or enlightenment. The eight fold path which is probably most famously known as right speech, right thought, right word, right deed and so forth, though certainly much more than that, is the way to begin the process of eliminating suffering or attachment.
Finally! Finally, there is hope, a sure path to the complete elimination of suffering!
In the Lotus Sutra the Buddha says: “Star-King Flower! This sutra saves all living beings. This sutra saves them from all sufferings, and gives them great benefits. All living beings will be able to fulfill their wishes by this sutra just as a man who reaches a pond of fresh water when he is thirsty…This Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma saves all living beings from all sufferings, from all diseases, and from all the bonds of birth and death.” Chapter XXIII Medicine-King Bodhisattva
I should point out here that for a Buddhist to break the bonds of birth and death to end the cycle of birth and death, to cease our craving for self, and attachment to who we are, this is the ultimate objective, to attain anutara-sambyaku-sambodai.
Often times in the teachings of the Buddha, illness is used as an example of a cause for enlightenment. There was a famous practitioner of the teachings of the Buddha by the name of Vimalakirti. It is said that he had mastered the Buddhas teaching, even though he was a wealthy lay person, to such a degree that he outshone many of the Buddhas closest disciples.
Vimalakirti became ill and so the Buddha sent various of his disciples to comfort him. It was said however that Vimalakirti only manifest illness in order to show others that even sick one can attain enlightenment.
Manjushri said to Vimalakirti “To sum it up, the sixty-two erroneous views and all the different kinds of earthly desires are all the seeds of the Buddha” Vimalakirti Sutra
In other words, our lives just as they are provide us with excellent opportunities to attain enlightenment, just as we are. There are two teachings in Buddhism that discuss this, one is Bono Soko Bodai, or earthly desires can lead to form the causes for enlightenment, and the other is the principle of reverse opportunity, or that sometimes enlightenment is found in doing the wrong thing because it in the end leads us to seek out Buddhism sooner.
The point here being that each of us, and it is our belief and my belief that each of us is a Buddha, each of us possesses the same equal potential to manifest our Buddha nature, that each of us is exactly who and what we need to be, that we are complete as we are.
I was listening to Krista Tippett’s radio show “Speaking of Faith” this past weekend. On her show she interviewed Rachel Naomi Remen who among other things is medical director of Commonwealth Cancer Help Program. I would like to use something I heard on that show to help illustrate my point perhaps. She posed the question, how would people and the world be different if everyone realized they were complete as they are, that they had everything they needed and exactly what they needed to be able to be happy. Imagine that…..
Nichiren the founder of our order of Buddhism says “One finds that ordinary beings are the entities of enlightenment, and that the sufferings of birth and death are nirvana. It also states that, if the minds of living beings are impure, their land is also impure, but if their minds are pure, so is their land. There are not two lands, pure or impure in themselves. The difference lies solely in the good or evil of our minds.” from On Attaining Buddhahood.
So the just to sum up, the teaching of the Buddha is that each of us suffers, we suffer because of incorrect views, we can change those views and attain enlightenment. We do not need to become someone else to do so, and that the opportunities we have before us are the perfect fertile ground for our enlightenment.
So here is my thinking on why this is interfaith activity was themed, and I must say very appropriately, a Season of Hope. The way I see it is that in order to have great joy, the kind of joy that is the indestructible and the ultimate goal of each of our faiths, in order to have that joy, there first needs to be hope. So today we come together to celebrate the hope that each of our faiths gives us and the hope of each other, and the hope of the world.
