atypical sunday

a practicing Tibetan Buddhism monk of 16 years chatted me up on facebook this morning, providing further affirmation that my little note has been making its rounds around the internet. here i must take pains to clarify that i never meant for my letter to be an internet sensation. my intention was to share a story of heartbreak/grief/sadness, and i went through great efforts (editing and re-editing it) to maintain a civil tone. if anyone thinks that the version 10-something they are currently reading is harsh, they should have seen version 1, which was written in throes of agony.

anyways, he congratulated me for my 'highly impressive piece of rebuttal'. he shared with me how he thinks some bible literalists are actually insecure and deeply irrational, hence resort to emotionally-charged responses to counter perfectly reasonable writings. "it's like a child believing in santa claus, he'll just throw tantrums when told that santa's not real", he says.

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from religious indoctrination received in youth. (Albert Einstein)

They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible. There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works. (Stephen Hawking)

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. (Carl Sagan)

the last quote there by carl sagan is one of my personal favourites. i think nobody puts across this point, of how minuscule we are and how unlikely it is that a personal god will hear a person's prayers from the dot of a dot in the cosmic universe, better than him. i shared with my friend these quotes.

i took this chance to ask him some nagging questions i have of the Buddhism faith.

why is it that although Buddha has taught in his teachings that he is no god, but simply an enlightened being, yet Buddhists still pray to his hair, tooth, nail, etc?
he told me that these are acts of veneration. it is one of the devotional aspects of the tradition, not a must do.

i countered with another question. i dont understand why certain Singaporeans call themselves Buddhist, yet pray to Buddha for lucky 4D numbers or to protect them from bad luck.
his reply: those Buddhists you have come across are not real Buddhists. Buddhism is a very tolerant and open religion, readily assimilating itself into local cultures. which is why images depicting Buddha all look different when you compare images that are from China/Japan/Tibet/Sri Lanka. where Buddhism spread, many cultures and local people embrace it without dumping their previous beliefs. however embracing it does not equate becoming a true Buddhist. just like majority of the Chinese folk in Singapore may call themselves Taoists, but are in fact animists, in that they worship whatever comes their way without understanding the true principles of Taoism. likewise, many half-past six Buddhists in Singapore believe in charms, amulets etc. in fact I wouldn't even call them Buddhists by virtue of them worshipping Buddha's image.

how similar it is to the Christian faith then, for the top echelons of both the two faiths believe in something radically different from their flocks! top Christian scholars have seen the evidence for evolution and embrace it, but the typical Christian layman activist tries to force creationism into American textbooks. enlightened Buddhist monks do not believe in any form of ancestor worship, but their average temple-goers still practice it fervently. amusing.