Vesak 2468: The Mystery of the Buddha
This Sunday is Vesak (Vesākha Pūjā) 2568, the holiday celebrating the Buddha's life. Feeling into teaching coming up around Vesak—Monday at Spirit Rock and next Sunday at Sangha Live—I'm back in a place I've circled through over and over. Though basically my entire work in the world is spreading the Buddha's practice and teachings, I still regularly feel myself in relationship with this ancient tradition and teacher in a way that I don't quite understand.
The part where the teachings makes sense to my heart and mind, and the core practices feel nourishing in so many ways to my life, and the people who have gathered around this tradition are some of the people I most want to spend time with... these all make sense to me. Faith traditions are made of people, and in a way they're simple: these are the people who help you navigate this life, through their preservation of the body of teachings, through their living example of the depths of practice, through their friendship. This is the Refuge of Saṅgha, the congregation through which the music of the other two Refuges—Buddha and Dhamma—flows.
The part that is more mysterious to me, at least in ordinary states of mind, is the Buddha himself. He's a historical figure from quite long ago who was clearly extraordinary. His life was used as the centerpiece of a vast body of culture work that developed in layers of mythic elaboration, philosophical inquiry, and community building. This long resonance of his song in the world means that we can still hear it today, and come into personal relationship with him, whatever that means for each of us. The Buddha is not technically a divine figure, like a God, eternally available to us. But in the strange way that devotion and Saṅgha works, he also is.
I found connection with this ancient teacher through the mysterious kamma of the postmodern—and postcolonial, with both its traumas and blessings—world, where I was able to choose a faith that resonated for me and find my own relationship with its prayers, forms, and founder. Kamma speaks to the long and complex conditions that give rise to the specific relationships we find ourselves in and the workings of kamma are said to be among the things we can never understand fully—they're too complex. When I sing the chants in Pāli, bow my forehead to the floor, offer incense, and sit on the teaching seat unsure of what exactly to say and then just begin, there is a strange ease in my heart that I rarely find in other activities. Kamma is mysterious, and the postmodern feels like a cold, infinitely fractured logos sometimes, but I trust this ease.
As we come into another Vesak full moon, I am practicing with the feeling of being connected to something mysterious and way larger than my own life story or the crisis unfolding in my nation and world. I'm feeling the momentum of this ancient, moral, ascetic community still moving through the world. And I'm hearing through my whole being the song of this person, Siddhattha Gotama of the Sakyan clan of Kapilavvathu, as it moves in counterpoint with my own. What does it really mean to be an arahant, fully perfected and self-awakened? I don't know. But I carry his song in me now, and it weaves through the songs of my European, African, and Caribbean ancestors, growing new musics as these kinds of encounters always do.
Thank you for singing with me these many years.
