Bodhi Day!

Awakening, yay!

Today is the day that much of the Mahayana Buddhist world remembers the historical Buddha’s awakening under the Sacred Fig tree. A descendent of that tree is still alive and well at Mahabodhi Mahavihara, or Bodhgaya Temple, in Bihar, India.

Getting there is definitely on my bucket list.

Many of my friends, coworkers, and dharma family are celebrating in Zen fashion by going on a silent meditation retreat known as Rohatsu. It didn’t work out for me to go this time, and that’s fine. Lin and I have negotiated a time for me to do a few hours of my own little Rohatsu today.

I will head out to the Zendo, put on my formal robes, and offer incense and prostrations to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Next, I’ll read aloud the First Sermon of the Buddha, “Setting the Wheel in Motion,” and the “Greater Discourse on Emptiness.” Then, I will surrender to the jhana states that the Buddha used for his liberation and bring increased depth and breadth to my own.

This is the real legacy of the Buddha - that it is by our own effort that we must seek the divine. In his time, ritual asceticism and scriptural authority dominated the spiritual landscape as the true authority. He flipped this on the head, saying that one must bring the teachings of the Vedas to life within oneself through disciplined practice, which became known as the Eightfold Path. One’s scientific examination of the experience, teachings, life, and dharma is the only way to liberation.

Similar to the reform Jesus brought to Judaism — obedience to the law is a means, not equivalent, to embodying the Love of the Divine. Just as in all reform movements, some groups embraced the reform, and others rejected it, creating different flavors of the base religion and distinct offshoots (Christianity and Buddhism, respectively).

I invite you all to take a few minutes (or hours) today to contemplate your life quietly. What do you give your attention to? Where is it serving you, and where is it not? Are you living according to your chosen principles? Do you even know what principles you choose to live by?

None of these answers can be found in books. None of them can be found in the teachings of others. Today is a day to find the answers within yourself. Admit that you don’t know what you don’t know and do whatever it takes to find out. It does not matter if you are religious, non-religious, anti-religious, spiritual, material, or any other frame of reference.

All that matters is that you take this precious opportunity of life, grab it by the horns, and ride it till the sun sets.

The matter of life and death is great.
Impermanence is swift.
Time waits for no one.
Wake, Wake!
Waste not this precious life.

- The Evening Gatha (a version)