Bodhi Day bodes well for us all



Bodhi Day Depiction

Although Bodhi Day is not Buddha’s biographical birthday - in other respects, it is his real one.



After many futile attempts at understanding life’s true essence, Buddha sat himself under a pipal tree and resolved not to get up again until he had solved life’s ultimate mysteries.  In particular, he was determined to answer this age-old question (see Job):  Why so much suffering?

Answers to questions like that don’t usually come overnight.  But Siddhartha Guatama had done his homework.  According to traditional tales, he had given up life’s princely peaks at age 29 in order to also experience its shadowy valleys.  Before then, his father is said to have shielded him from those who were aged, infirm, dying, or dead.

Imagine, then, the shock of entering the “real world” for the first time.  Siddhartha (like many of us) found this type of a world to be extremely depressing.  He (unlike many of us) decided to get at the root of this suffering, rather than just sit around and complain.  He tried asceticism.  He tried decadence.  Neither worked.  That’s about when he sat down under the tree (Bodhi Day).

During the time he was there, Siddhartha discovered all of his own past lives, the overall Law of Karma, the Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths – not to mention the grande finale experience of Nirvana.  All in a night’s work (if you’re the Buddha)…

In Buddha’s own words:  My heart, thus knowing, thus seeing, was released from the fermentation of sensuality, released from the fermentation of becoming, released from the fermentation of ignorance…  I discerned that ‘Birth is ended…’



Birth (and rebirth) in this world, that is…  In other respects, Nirvana is the birthday of liberation from

suffering.  We can all close our eyes and make a wish for that.

Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhi_Day#cite_note-sutta-5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha

Copyright December 8, 2010 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved