Monday, July 4, 2016

Buddhism is not the renunciation of beauty and joy.


Please do not mistake renunciation of samsara as renunciation of the world. Lord Buddha said we all walk in delusion, projecting our own desires and cravings upon the phenomena of the world. Your suffering is caused by how you see things, how you react to them.  Your job is not to reject the world but to see it as it is.

Whatever there is in the world, pleasant and beautiful, we are attached to them, and we develop a dislike towards their opposites.
But a Buddhist knows that beauty carries pain and suffering just as its opposite’s do. In samsara the so called good and bad things of life are all bound up together. But this suffering is not truly caused by them but rather in our own projections and cravings concerning them.
You may have a loving caring relationship, but you must know it will change and end, No one loved the Buddha more than Ananda, and as he lay dying Ananda wept, and Buddha scolding him saying did I not tell you everything must pass.   

 Knowing this the Buddhist recognizes beauty where the senses can perceive it.  But  in  beauty  he  also  sees its  own  change  and  destruction.  He remembers   what  the  Buddha said with regard  to  all  component things,  that  they  come  into  being,  undergo  change  and  are destroyed.  Therefore the wise man acquires a greater depth of vision.

Believe me, Buddhism is not meant to suck all the beauty and joy from your life. It is the philosophy of change and continuity. And in it, don’t fail to see beauty which can ever be to man an unending source of inspiring joy.

 

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