Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today -Buddha Quotes

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

So guys Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes is the main things, There are some people some even some objects some places that are better than others that are wiser than others that that are more powerful in some sense than others and that we should have a certain kind of internal attitude towards.

This idea of devotion or reverence is difficult for some of us difficult for those of us of a more secular bent and I include myself in that category perhaps because it may seem somewhat servile or obsequious like we're sort of pushing ourselves down or attending to suck up to somebody treat them as a king when they're really just a person these kinds of issues.

 I think are issues that we all have to deal with and it can help I think historically to get a perspective on early Buddhism on how these ideas came across in early Buddhism what the Buddha had to say about them we see devotional practices in traditional forms of Buddhism around the world indeed.

We might even say that devotional practices are in some sense the majority of Buddhist practices for lay people and perhaps even monastics around the world they're really central so I think it does behoove us to take a look at them now what was the Buddha's attitude towards devotion.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

I would say it's a nuanced attitude as is true for so many things the Buddha had a very nuanced opinion of devotional ism or devotion in general and what I'd like to do to get that across is to look first at devotion in the broader sense in early Buddhism devotion about various things and then, later on, to look at devotion devotional ism towards the Buddha himself in early Buddhism.

so to begin with let's start with looking at devotional ism yet respect devotional ism veneration in the broader sense in early Buddhism in the broader sense it's considered the wrong view to hold that there aren't people who have higher attainments than others, in particular, we might say if we're lay people who were just starting out on the path it would be the wrong view to hold it there aren't people who are farther along than we are people who have higher attainments people who are wiser than we are should we say people who have insight into the way the world is in some sense of insight and that has gotten across in many ways in particular.

We're expected in certainly in early Buddhism it's expected that laypeople are going to have respect devotion for monastics and it's also expected that monastics are going to have respect or devotion or veneration towards particularly accomplished monastics or particularly elder monastics within their communities and we might say that these this attitude of right view that there are certain people who are more accomplished than others.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

There are certain people who are wiser than others this would be sort of one of the prerequisites or perhaps the prerequisite for a devotional attitude or an attitude of respect here.

I should say that there are a number of terms here that I've used respect devotion veneration that are we in English at least along kind of a spectrum respect is a little bit closer to an everyday kind of sense whereas devotion veneration are a little bit more towards the religious end of things but these are I would say common kinds of ideas common kinds of emotions that we can have and these are emotions again based on the idea that there are certain people who know more than others or who or wiser than others certain people worthy of respect and having such an attitude is a good antidote towards egoism on our own part because.

I think a lot of us naturally tend to be of the opinion that we know everything or that there's nobody really better than us and that can lead towards a kind of egoism a kind of a sense that we shouldn't be corrected because the other person isn't ever going to know any more than we do and that can be a very problematic kind of emotion to get into but as.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

I said earlier that respect has to be earned devotion has to be earned in early Buddhism, in particular, that is it's not the case that every monastic is worthy of respect for the Buddha am in a monastic has to earn their respect there's an early soup dome where the Buddha discusses this in an I think a very funny kind of way he talks about the monastic who is not worthy of respect or veneration he compares such a person to a donkey who was following the cows along the road and the donkey believes that it can move like a cow and the upshot here is that the donkey is kind of an absurd figure donkey can't move a donkey is a totally different kind of creature and.

So he says just like the donkey who is following the cows and thinks it can move so too is the monastic who is not pursuing a proper practice and yet expects to be somebody worthy of respect and devotion in a different suit to the monastic maja Kijana is sharing some time with some brahmins brahmin elders that do say they're not followers of the Buddha there they're Brahmins and he is rebuked by one of the Brahmanas a Brahmin elder because he maka China is not venerating the elder Brahmins around him he's not standing up when they come in the room.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

He's not bowing down to them even though they're his elders he's not doing the typical kinds of he's not showing the typical kinds of respect that one is expected to show to elder Brahmins and Mahayana says that to him being an elder is something different to him being an elder doesn't mean being old to him being an elder means not being infatuated with sense pleasures and he says and Haku chana says that on that in that respect these elders are in fact youths because they themselves are still infatuated with sense pleasures and as a result he's he doesn't feel the need to venerate them.

He would venerate them if they were if they were gonna give up their sense pleasures if they were going to stop being attached to them but since they aren't he isn't going to venerate them and this is an exact way that the Buddha would tend to turn around concepts of his day he would turn them around so that there were no longer about outward forms that is to say being literally older than somebody else into something more about ethics so being an elder isn't about the outward form of actually having more years than somebody else but being an elder means behaving in a fashion that is most skillful so we see from these instances that in the broader context the idea of reverence or veneration respect in the Buddha's day was to be given to people for their practice for being ethical for practicing ethically for their meditative accomplishments for their wisdom and not simply because of outward forms one was not simply to be respected because they had monastic robes on because some people with monastic robes are not worthy of veneration or respect they're not simply to be respected.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

Because they're a certain age because not everybody who's old is worthy of veneration and respect so that's the general case now the case of the Buddha, in particular, we may know that in the buddha's day when people would decide to join the buddha decide that they agreed with the Buddha's Dharma the Buddha's teaching they would typically say that they were going to take refuge that they were taking refuge in what we call the three jewels the three jewels of the Buddha the Dharma.

The Sangha and the first of those is a refuge in the Buddha and that's, in particular, to say that you are venerating him as your teacher you're taking him as your teacher he was, of course, alive at the time and so he was you know he was a literal person and so you were gonna say that you respected his teachings so much and him as a teacher that you were going to venerate him as a teacher and of course in ancient India to do that was really was a matter of high respect and veneration in a way that in the West.

Nowadays we've gotten away from this notion that teachers are to be venerated in olden days shall we say there was more of that sense the Buddha also recommended practice of recollections of various recollections but three of those recollections were the recollections of the Buddha the Dharma and the Sangha and if we're focusing on the Buddha himself there would have been recollections of the Buddha in a kind of.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

I mean it's not entirely clear but I think the Econo the connotation here is that one is going to be recollecting him in a kind of a devotional sense one is going to be thinking about the Buddha's good character using that as a model for ourselves.

So if we're getting lost in doubts and concerns about our practice then perhaps recollecting the Buddha who perhaps we would have seen in person and seen as a teacher in person and have an idea of in our minds from direct experience then we can try to recollect that now most of I should say a large portion of what we consider nowadays to be devotional practices around the Buddha, in particular, come from one particular sutra which is called the mahaparinirvana sutra the suta which outlines the end of the buddha's life it's quite a detailed and lengthy suta and goes into a lot of detail about what happened in the time in the months prior to his death his final death and then what happened in the days and weeks after he died and so this is a very very important suit a very important piece of information about the buddha's life.

In particular, about aspects that we retain today of veneration and in particular in that suta the buddha discusses now four places that he feels we should make the pilgrimage to and he discusses four kinds of people that we should that one should make monuments for and what are called stupas in ancient India the one should build these monuments for four sorts of people that were worthy of having monuments built for them.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

We also learn at the end of the sutra about the the the existence of relics the Buddha's relics the remains so the buddha after he died was burned as was typical in ancient india for the people of high standing and then the earthly remains were gathered up and distributed to people at the time people of importance and we learn about the beginnings of this kind of relic worship.

If you like and the four holy places that the Buddha said it would be fine for us to do a pilgrimage to were the place that he was born at the place that he attained awakening at the place that he gave his first sermon which is to say this or the beginning of the turning of the wheel of the Dharma and the place that he passed away now of course he hadn't passed away at the time.

But he sort of believed that he was going to pass away in the near future so that's why presumably he would have said that now it's also and I think it particularly important to know why he said this he was not saying that it was required of us to make this kind of pilgrimages or these kinds of pilgrimages not not like we find in let's say Islam it's not required in any sense and it's not like it's kind of a magical thing if we do it it's rather that the Buddha says that these places are places of inspiration for us or could become or be places of inspiration they could give us perhaps energy to practice better because being in these places is gives us a kind of emotional energy.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

He recommends them because of their inspirational qualities and not because of anything necessary or essential we can do the practice just as well without going to these places now pilgrimages like these went hand in hand or go hand in hand with the building of stupas and monuments that is to say you would build a monument or a stupa at a place of pilgrimage among other places perhaps and go and venerate at that monument a place where you could go and the scholar Piya Tan has talked about stupas and notes that not always were stupas associated with relics often times they were, in other words, was built as a kind of a container around what was believed to be a relic of the Buddha.

Let's say but Pia tan suggests that that's not always the case this is something of an item of dispute it seems in the scholarship but in any event, the Buddha said that there were four types of people who were worthy of having a monument like this built to them the first was Buddha's like himself that as somebody who discovered the path and taught it to a broad audience.

The second would have been what he called lone Buddhas that is people who became completely awakened completely by themselves without having learned the Dharma from anybody else but who did not teach obviously they we'd have to say they didn't teach widely because obviously, they didn't teach anybody then there wouldn't be a stupa built but presumably they might have taught a small group of people the third would have been disciples of the Buddha.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

So the Buddha is saying here that the disciples presumably disciples of some high-standing were themselves worthy of monuments and the fourth was what he called wheel-turning monarchs a wheel-turning monarch in early Buddhism is a person who rules a wide area they have taken over a wide area and rule justly rule according to the Dharma in some sense we can think of something like King Ashoka who was an early really the earliest Buddhist monarch as an example of such a person.

So he says that a wheel-turning monarch is also somebody worthy of a monument like this but again I think as with the case of pilgrimages we have to ask why are these monuments to be built what was the point of them and the point says the Buddha is that they he says glad in the hearts of people who look on them they give us again a kind of inspiration they make us happier they lead the Buddha says to better rebirths that is to say that contemplating these kinds of monuments good people to just rulers and wise teachers wise individuals that gladdens our hearts that turns us in a positive direction and leads to better rebirths.

We may know that in traditional Buddhism doing things ethically being an ethical person leads to a better next life but that was not the aim of the Dharma in general was to escape the rounds of birth and death so what the Buddha is saying here essentially is that the aim of a stupa the aim of a monument like this is worldly it's directed basically at lay practice at laypeople who are not expected to attain awakening for themselves.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

But we want to give them something that gladdens their hearts that turns their minds in the right 

direction but it's not really an element of the you know world-embracing or world transcending path we might say now as for the Buddha's relics to my knowledge that would have never actually discussed his relics himself they it's something that took off after he died and the people around him wanted pieces of his physical remains to enter and stupas and to give themselves a kind of power and legitimacy and Piatt and discusses some ideas of SJ Tamiya who's another scholar of early.

Buddhism who discusses some of the issues with relics over the years and how they became commodified essentially we find the idea of relics as in the West growing over time indeed the number of relics seems to grow over time it's claimed often that these new relics are miraculous in some sense or another but I think many of us may believe that this happens because of greed on the part of certain people who want to expand their the potential reach of their power and.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

So essentially construct relics or make something into a quote-unquote relic this is a forum I think of or can certainly become a form of spiritual materialism I did an earlier video on that I'll put a link to it down below this idea that what we're after along the spiritual path is a form of acquisition of things acquisition of abilities acquisition of either mental or physical advances and when we think of a path in those terms it tends to degrade that path.

I think that's particularly the case when we come to physical things such as relics this idea that the more relics one owns or has the more spiritual power in some sense one possesses and so the idea then becomes not so much one of ethical behavior as we saw earlier on but rather one of simply acquiring more physical things of a certain kind.

I think when we get into that kind of mindset we've really gone quite far away from the original message of the Buddha now Pia Tan notes he's a scholar of early Buddhism he notes that the Buddha seems to have tolerated a stupid warship he didn't think it was a bad idea but he didn't really specifically endorse it either now I'll put a link to I've mentioned him a couple of times.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

Here I'll put a link to his paper down below it's quite good on this mahaparinirvana sutra that we've been discussing here now which really does outline a lot of these devotional practices and in any event these practices do as I've mentioned before seem to be laid erected they're directed towards laypeople in particular we don't find that monastics involved in the burial.

I should say the burning and the distribution of relics after the Buddha's death that seems to been done by the lay audience so the implication here is that the monastics are really not involved at those kinds of things that's more people who are interested in better rebirth shall we say in a certain kind of access to this life/benefits rather than to awakening itself now we may also wonder about the historicity that is to say whether the this is actually accurate about these statements of the Buddha about the pilgrimage sites and about the people worthy of monuments built to them the scholar the French scholar Andre Baro has argued that neither of these things can be dated back to the Buddha himself that both of them probably arose in the centuries after the Buddha.

We might think in the age of Ashoka who himself as we've mentioned had stupas great monuments built to himself and to the buddha around india it certainly is possible that andre borrows reasoning is that we don't find these passages in every recension of this material that is to say this the suta that we've been discussing exists in various different languages and these don't occur in all of those languages so it may be that this was derived later however it's important also to say that other scholars such as a Kay warder I do seem to think that they go back at least as far back as we can tell more important 

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

I think would be to look at other passages within the early Ceuta's for an idea of the Buddha's general opinion about devotion about devotional practices and I think there are a couple of different passages that shed a great deal of light on the Buddha's opinion one of those involves a Brahmin who has gone to one of the holy rivers in India to do what are called ritual ablutions that is to say a kind of a devotional washing of oneself in the waters of this sacred River and this is a Brahmin named Sundar Rika and Sundar Rika asks the Buddha basically they have a conversation why the Buddha doesn't do this himself and the Buddha says that this kind of ritual devotion this kind of ritual ablution or washing is not effective that 

The truly effective washing is the internal washing that is involved in true ethical practice so the external washing does nothing the internal washing is what does the work and then the Buddha says basically that once you've done this internal washing you can externally wash in any well or river you want they'll all clean you just as well and this is I think a perfect example of the Buddha's attitude towards ritual devotional ism that ritual devotional ism isn't really effective it may as he says in other places gladden the heart it is not completely ineffective it has an effect on and effect on our emotional perhaps happiness that perhaps puts us in the right frame of mind but it doesn't draw the true work has to be done after we do that in our practice with ethics with meditation with correct seeing of the world that leads to wisdom

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

The second of these cases occur in that this mahaparinirvana suit again the suta at the end of his life and this is a short little vignette passage where the buddha is getting close to death and he lies down between two sol trees with his close attendant Ananda by his side and he seems to have had a kind of a vision he has seems to have had a vision of these Sal trees blooming in the wrong season that was out of season for therefore they're blooming and when they bloom the petals fall upon him and also there's sandalwood powder falls from the sky upon him.

Which is very a beautiful fragrance and he seems to hear choirs and music singing and playing off in the distance and this to me is an example of somebody or it seems to at least picture somebody in that sort of liminal state between life and death who is perhaps having certain kinds of visions or illusions going on in their minds but the Buddha sees these interestingly as devotional practices perhaps of the gods that that

The gods or people somebody is responsible for these kinds of things that they are showing the Buddha a kind of devotion a kind of reverence by sprinkling these leaves and sprinkling this powder and seeing this music for him that is these are forms of what we might call worldly veneration and the what's really interesting in this passage is the Buddha's response to this veneration what he sees as a veneration.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

He doesn't respond quite the way you might expect what the Buddha says to Ananda is that's not how the realized one that is the Buddha is honored respected revered venerated and esteemed any monk or nun or male or female lay follower who practices in line with the teachings practicing properly living in line with the teachings they honor respect revere venerate and esteem the realized one with the highest honor so Ananda you should train like this we shall practice in line with the teachings practicing properly living in line with the teaching that is what the Buddha at the end of his life says I think most clearly is that the proper form of devotion for the Buddha.

If we want to do such the proper form of devotion is to practice well is not to do ritual kinds of ablutions or ritual kinds of practices such as sprinkling something or singing music or whatever but instead to practice and align the teaching that is to say to behave ethically to do meditation and to pursue wisdom as best we can other forms of devotion are not bad they may indeed gladden our hearts they may inspire us in various ways but they aren't the heart of real devotional practice in early Buddhism.

Buddhism Daily Devotional Word For Today - Buddha Quotes

I think we do see something of a coming together of a more you might say secular ideal of devotion with an early Buddhist ideal where the early Buddhist ideal really is less about the outward shall we say physical practices of ablutions for somebody and more about correct practice and on this on all of these notes I think it's important to keep in mind and I think these highlight the way in which the Buddha was can and comes across as a real human and I have an earlier video on whether the human or whether the Buddha was indeed a sort of a god or a human because he's portrayed in various ways at various times.