From The Editor Archives: 5/15/03

The link below offers a brief description of the Wesak Festival, by Lucis Trust, with picture of the Himalayas, where, according to tradition, the Festival is held.

http://www.lucistrust.org/epamphlets/wskp.shtml

THE WESAK FESTIVAL:
ITS BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN COMPONENTS, AND ITS RELEVANCE TODAY

Celebration of the Buddha's birthday occurs in April or May, the time of the full moon in Taurus. The esoteric mantra or seed thought for Taurus is "When the eye is opened, all is light." The wisdom expressed by this Seed Thought is very profound, and its converse is also true, that when the Wisdom eye is closed, all that is perceived, is seen as suffering. The latter statement represents the starting point in the quest of Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha, and the Buddha's quest for Truth or Awakening , as expressed in the famous Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.

The First of the Four Noble Truths is that people suffer. The Buddha as a young prince, sees suffering for the first time, so the story goes, when he steps outside his father's palace and sees a nearly blind beggar, a corpse and a monk. The Buddha later describes the universality of Suffering, among living being, as the First Noble Truth. The cause of Suffering is Craving and Attachment to what one craves. This power or impulse of Desire, becomes the Second of the Noble Truths. To crave or to cling to particular pleasures, is to cling to what must necessarily fade, since all phenomena in the world and in one's consciousness are impermanent. Attachment then, causes suffering. Attachment is itself caused by Ignorance. This is one's ignorance of that basic metaphysical and epistemological truth that the nature of existence is change, that nothing remains unchanged. Ignorance is the Third Noble Truth. Pleasure, by its nature, is fleeting, as are all experiences and objects in the natural world. If a human being craves particular pleasures, or pleasure in general, without mindfulness, this will lead to the suffering of attachment. Ignorance is alleviated through the practice of the Dharma, which is the Fourth Noble Truth, which is expressed in the Eightfold Path, described below.

When one lives according to the Four Noble Truths, one basically lives "in the moment," without clinging to desires outcomes. One experiences things in a balanced and non-attached way, and does what is morally right and also, what causes pleasure, for oneself and others, but without clinging to anticipated outcomes, if they do not come to pass. One would ideally live in the mean between the extremes of excess and deficiency. Aristotle calls this the Golden Mean (see his Nicomachean Ethics). But unlike Aristotle, this is not the mean that constantly veers back and forth between the extremes, like the two sides of a see-saw. For a person to follow the Dharma, or the basic Buddhist teaching, is to automatically seek the mean. The Buddha would, I think, agree with Aristotle, that one should become habituated to acting virtuously, in a balanced, even and mindful way, and not to approach every act or moral decision with a kind of existentialist "fear and trembling" or anxiety. The Four Noble Truths, or the Fourfold Path is to be incorporated in the very fabric of one's life, and that one lives with Awareness, Detachment, Equanimity and Compassion. In the Buddhist teachings, the famous Eight Precepts , or the eight spokes on the Wheel of the Dharma, are an application of the Four Noble Truths in one's daily life, namely that one live according to right Views, Aspiration, Speech, Conduct, Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness and Contemplation.

Compassion, along with mindfulness, as described in the above account of the Four Noble Truths, is also an integral part of Buddhism. In the Wesak Festival, as described in the myth, The Christ and the Buddha both return to earth, at a remote spot in the Himalayas, to bestow blessing on the whole planet, and its living beings, including humankind. They are themselves beings on their own evolutionary path, as are all living beings. They are seen as brothers, the Buddha as the elder brother, living about 500 years before Jesus the Christ, and as having complementary teachings.

At the Wesak Ceremony, the potencies of these profound teachers are concentrated and combined -- the mindfulness and compassion of the Buddha with the personal redemptive power offered by the Christ, as an expression of the inflow and outflow of divine love, Agape, on this planet and plane of existence. The Wesak is a time when the loving kindness of God toward humankind, and humans toward Higher Aspiration, also merge. It is a time in which one reflects on neither victory nor defeat, but the power of desires to mislead people toward one extreme or the other -- desires that lead people toward intolerance and insensitivity to the suffering of other living beings, and of Gaia, the earth itself as a living being. The Wesak is also a time when one does not make hard judgment on others, but experiences compassion toward the ignorance of people in their pursuit of desires, which cause suffering to others. This is not unlike Jesus on the Cross asking that his tormentors be forgiven for their ignorance in causing his suffering --that they knew not what they did. One can reflect too, on the theme of sacrifice, as expressed by Christianity: the power of sacrifice of self for higher spiritual aspiration;, and the sacrifice of the historic Jesus as part of divine love, and the emergence of the Christ. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the lives of all beings are viewed as part of the expression of love between God and human beings and the universe, in general.

Happy Wesak, and may we all hope to expand the energy in this famous Buddhist salutation:

May all beings be happy, peaceful, and free from suffering.

— Paul Dolinsky