This week’s reading was incredibly short since we just read the “Buddhism: The Path of Enlightenment” booklet and the “Buddhist Symbols” pamphlet. I very much enjoyed the booklet. It put things in such simple terms and I loved them. I especially liked the part where it says
Buddhism emphasizes:
TRUTH rather than GOD
MEDITATION rather than PRAYER
ENLIGHTENMENT rather than SALVATION
UNIVERSAL LIFE rather than INDIVIDUAL SOUL
I also love the Lotus analogy, and it has a more personal meaning for my family. My wife was hospitalized 2 times last year for mental health. The hospital’s job isn’t to help teach you coping skills, its simply to get you stabilized so you can get those coping skills in therapy and medication. After the first time, she thought medication would take care of it all. When the euphoric stage of getting on medication was over, she still didn’t have those skills, which resulted in her needing to go back into the hospital. The 2nd time I had her read Noah Rasheta’s “Secular Buddhism: Eastern Thought for Western Minds”. She still maintains that it was the most useful thing to her, because it gave her the foundations of mindfulness. Its been a long road, but she’s feeling much better now. She wanted to symbolize this life transition from being mentally unhealthy to being mentally healthy. She still struggles with depression and anxiety, but she has chosen to rise above it. Much like how a lotus rises above the mud it came from. She has a lotus tattoo that I designed on her left wrist to remind her of this.
The pamphlet was essentially a more thorough version of what the booklet said. There was one thing that stuck out to me that I think I might disagree on. They said that statues as used in Buddhism is not idolatry. The pamphlet said it is to symbolize something or someone to pay respect for them such as Buddhas Gautama, Amida, Vairocana, and others. Dictionary.com defines idolatry as “excessive … adoration, reverence, devotion, etc.”. The Wikipedia article on Idolatry says “In many Indian religions, such as theistic and non-theistic forms of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, idols (murti) are considered as symbolism for the absolute but not the absolute, or icons of spiritual ideas, or the embodiment of the divine. They are a means to focus one’s religious pursuits and worship (bhakti).” The article goes on to say that Muslims who raided the north-western part of South Asia associated Buddhism so close with idolatry that they referred to all idols as “Budd”. Because of this information, I feel like its not quite telling the whole story when you say Buddhists don’t use idols, as many do.