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| Sunday, 26 May 2002 |
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Time to reflect on the Awakening by FACTOTUM The Dhamma survives in the minds of the people irrespective of the juridicial and institutional promulgations that are issued from time to time. The five day closure of liquor bars and the directive that all abattoirs and meat stalls be closed for three days sets the tone for the people to reflect on the significance of the Awakening that is heralded today. There will ofcourse be the asides of pandal viewing and varied 'dansalas' where food and drink are generously given. The fairly recent commercialised giant lantern exhibitions in enclosed high domed structures have their own attraction. But above all, what the occasion provides is the opportunity to reflect on the breakthrough to knowledge, freedom and bliss achieved by the Great Teacher. In the words of Nolan Pliny Jacobson (1966): "Gotama Buddha belongs among the great liberators of mankind. Like Prometheus, he braved the wrath of the gods in order to free man from useless drudgery. Like Socrates, he traced the unsatisfactoriness of life to the fact that men have little knowledge and much misinformation about themselves. Like Jesus Christ he carried out a passionate probing beneath the surface of events in search of the mainsprings of human experience. While both Buddha and Jesus claim to have discovered what they were looking for, the Buddha is absolutely certain about his enlightenment, while there is some doubt upon the lips of Jesus as to whether, in the last resort, in the terrifying crucifixion, God may have abandoned him... The Buddha is like Hume in wanting to set man free from his own irrational attempts to build metaphysical scaffolding as a vantage point for perceiving the nature and destiny of almost everything about which man has ever had a persisting question. He is like Nietzsche in seeing the sad plight of human power shackled by the guilt-ridden resentment of the weak. He is like Marx and Engels in wanting to liberate man from the chimeras and myths under whose mystification he is pining away. The Buddha is like John Stuart Mill in seeing that the most powerful bonds that enslave man are not tyrants sitting astride great thrones, but those subtle persuasions that rule the inner man and strip him of his integrity and independence. The Buddha is like Freud too, in wanting to free the creative forces deep in human personality from the compulsive, authoritarian controls of an ego or superego in which every urge to happiness is distorted, suppressed and denied. He is like Wittgenstein in wishing to alert man to the 'mystification' of the human intellect by language." At a time when guns are muffled and bombs are defused a sober reflection on early Buddhist values that provide liberation from social suffering will complement efforts at peace making. |
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