COMMENT Gautama Buddha walked the earth in the sixth century as Prince Siddhartha in northern India, passed away at the age of 80 and left a legendary path for the 21st century with 500 million faithful followers calling themselves Buddhists.
Buddhism, ranking sixth among the world religions in terms of number of adherents, is a timeless path, a spiritual way of life in human evolution.
On this day, May 28, millions celebrate the birth, enlightenment and passing away of the historical Buddha (meaning “awakened” or “enlightened”), whom many also revere as Sakyamuni or Bhagava (Blessed One).
On this day, Buddhists all over the world rejoice and celebrate in remembrance of a human being extraordinaire who searched for truth and found the answers to the riddle of life.
Gautama Buddha was a role model during his time, a living example of the noble eight-fold path (middle path) encompassing a foundation of morality, cultivation of the mental faculties and transcendence from material existence with right understanding and wisdom.
It continues to be a non-dogmatic teaching and a guide that gives advisory precepts so that the follower may become compassionate, peace-loving and in harmony with himself or herself as well as with others.
Buddhism is a spiritual guide to the divine process of human evolution from the material realm to the spiritual planes of existence.
Every Buddhist must walk the spiritual path alone, just as each and everyone evolves at his or her own pace and according to his or her intellectual and spiritual capacity. For none can piggyback on another or walk the path on somebody’s behalf.
Universal laws
No Buddhist can attain enlightenment by merely worshipping the Teacher day in and day out without avoiding evil, performing meritorious deeds and cultivating wisdom in the process of practising the teaching.
If indeed the universal truth of man is all about an evolutionary path, the constitution of man, with his physical, mental and spiritual faculties, must operate within the confines of the universal laws.
The universal laws on love, logic, space, time and spirit pervade the cosmic plan of the Creator that many speak of as “universal consciousness and One-ness of Being”.
Buddhism speaks of the cycle of birth and death and karma, or the cause and effect of impersonal natural laws governing all forms of human behaviour.
We are then accountable only to ourselves, each one of us individually, for each is embarking upon this evolutionary journey not by choice, but by the natural progression of the spirit-form.
Buddhism, like other esoteric teachings compatible with it, teaches that the purpose of life is to gain knowledge and evolutionary progress (rather than process), absorbing life experiences after each reincarnation.
In 1975, it was exposed to the world that a spiritually extraterrestrial human-like race, called the “Plejarans” from the planet Erra (within an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Taurus, almost 420 light years, on average, from our planet Earth), had been contacting a Swiss farmer named Billy Miere in what has been called the Pleiadian Mission.
Material lives
The Plejarans gave Miere hundreds of discourses and left him with a thousand pages of notes on earth’s living science, tracing the origins of earth and the fascinating history of the human race.
One of the notes says the teaching of Buddhism is closest to the truth of the human evolution. It speaks of the laws of karma, the natural phenomenon of reincarnation, and countless spiritual planes or dimensions with different space-time configurations.
According to the Plejarans, well versed in the history of Buddhism and knowledge of the universe, there are seven levels for the human spirit beyond the earthly dimension. Two of these levels are called the “pure conscious” spirit forms and five levels are for human spirits undergoing the process of reincarnation through material lives.
On average, a human being requires 60 billion to 80 billion years to master the lessons of material life (that is, on earth or another similar planet) for the evolution of the spirit.
This is also mentioned by Gautama Buddha in some of his discourses on the existence of many worlds with forms and others without forms, that is, the spiritual worlds.
Hence, on Wesak Day, Buddhists should remember that the human spirit’s evolutionary progress is to gain “truth, knowledge and wisdom”. This is the true commemoration of Buddha’s Day.
Furthermore, as human beings, we create our own heaven or hell, and it is the duty of Buddhists to create an environment of wellbeing not only for themselves but for others as well.
On behalf of Free Malaysia Today and its staff, I wish all Malaysian Buddhists a happy and joyous Wesak Day. May all beings be well and happy.
Stankey Koh, a former head of research at MCA, is a Free Malaysia Today contributor.
No comments:
Post a Comment