{"id":85,"date":"2010-04-10T15:06:36","date_gmt":"2010-04-10T19:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/?p=85"},"modified":"2010-04-10T15:06:36","modified_gmt":"2010-04-10T19:06:36","slug":"buddha-the-myth-and-the-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/?p=85","title":{"rendered":"Buddha: the Myth and the Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, PBS aired a documentary<\/a> (which you can view–free and legal–on their website) of the life of Buddha. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone with any interest in Buddhism. It doesn’t exactly cover brand-new territory; the Buddha’s life has been the subject of many excellent books. But the perspective on it was interesting in a number of ways.<\/p>\n

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The story of Buddha’s life came to us through centuries of the oral tradition, somewhere between myth and history. Any modern retelling of Buddha’s life has to make a strategic decision about how to present the parts of the legend that seem more legendary than others. Some of these are part of the birth and childhood legend–his mother had a dream foretelling his birth, he spoke moments out of the womb, a tree stopped moving its shadow to keep him protected. Others come from his life and teaching, performing miracles.<\/p>\n

And I think this is a particularly tricky balance. For many contemporary followers of Buddhism, the core teachings are an antidote to magical thinking. You change things by changing your own habits and efforts, not relying on an angel or ghost to help you out. Buddhism’s compatibility with scientific findings is a definite plus. But sometimes this tempts us to say that we know the story of Buddha’s life obviously didn’t happen the way the myths tell us. It’s as if we know Buddha better than his contemporaries did, and it’s a little condescending to the ways of thinking that most humans have had through history.<\/p>\n

I like the way PBS’s The Buddha dealt with this. Many parts of the Buddha’s life were shown through stylized animations, giving a sense of story-telling through cave paintings, and it spent little time refuting or confirming the myths, just letting them speak for themselves. Whether we doubt them or believe them isn’t addressed. As poet Jane Hirshfield says in the documentary, “Sitting here in a room having had a cup of coffee, having taken it out of a beautiful blue and white porcelain mug\u2026what could be more miraculous than that? Everyday life around us is already so implausible and so glorious but what need for further miracles. And that\u2019s the teaching of the Buddha. That\u2019s the miraculous teaching of the Buddha.”<\/p>\n

There’s a famous story of the Buddha in which he responds to a question about the creation of the universe. Buddha uses an analogy; imagine someone shot by a poisoned arrow. A doctor tries to remove the arrow, but the victim won’t let him. “Before you pull out the arrow,” he says, “I want to know who shot me. Was it a man or a woman? Were they old or young? Why were they shooting at me?” Buddha explained that this is our predicament when we focus too much on metaphysical questions.<\/p>\n

I imagined a sequel to this story. After the doctor pulls the arrow out, the victim still has poison in his bloodstream. Fortunately, the doctor knows the antidote to the poison and gives it to him to drink. “Who made this antidote? Where did he live? Is it true that he worked miracles? Is it true that he could stop a rampaging elephant with his mind?”<\/p>\n

I don’t know which parts of the Buddha’s story are true and which were added after the fact. But that makes it no different than any other story. Surely we all have stories that we tell one way, but other people who were present for the same event tell differently. Why would a story from 2600 years ago be different? And yet I also believe that these stories are part of the antidote, part of what’s been passed over the centuries to alleviate the suffering in the world. If I want the antidote, I can at least play along with the myth. I know it’s more rewarding to watch Buffy if I can play along and believe that vampires are real, and more fun to watch The Simpsons if I play along and believe that Krusty the Klown’s face is on every product ever sold to kids. So if the Buddhist path will be more rewarding–and will be a better antidote to the poisons–if I believe that business with the elephant, then I’ll go for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, PBS aired a documentary (which you can view–free and legal–on their website) of the life of Buddha. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone with any interest in Buddhism. It doesn’t exactly cover brand-new territory; the Buddha’s life has been the subject of many excellent books. But the perspective on it was interesting in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenbija.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}