In the month of April we hold our Hanamatsuri Service celebrating the birth of Siddhartha Gautama 2,645 years ago in Lumbini, Nepal. One who diligently progresses on the path to Buddhahood over the course of many lifetimes is called a bodhisattva. The Sutra on the Buddha of Immeasurable Life (The Larger Sutra) provides the following description of a bodhisattva’s birth in the lifetime in which they will attain awakening:
Immediately after [the bodhisattva’s] birth from [his mother’s] right side, he walked seven steps. A brilliant light shone from his body, illuminating all the ten quarters, and countless Buddha-lands shook with six kinds of tremors. He then said, “I shall become the supremely honored one in the world.”
(The Three Pure Land Sutras: Volume II, pg. 5)
This description seems improbable from a modern scientific worldview, but these words are an expression of religious truth rather than scientific fact. Scientific facts are based on empirical observations, such as what we can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, or measure with our hands. From that perspective this life begins the moment we are born with this body and ends at the moment of death. This way of viewing the world is limited by what can be measured.
Continue reading “The Honored One”