Have Yourself a Buddhist Little Christmas
By now all of us Buddhists have weathered well over a month of what is commonly
referred to as “the holiday season.” It starts with the dominant culture storming out of the gate the moment the Halloween decorations
come down and gathers momentum as Thanksgiving approaches. By Black Friday the sprint has begun. Whatever pace each individual can muster is then maintained by whatever means necessary until everyone collectively collapses into a physically and emotionally exhausted and overindulged pile of debt-burdened human wreckage on New Year’s Day!
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| Jizo statue |
How are you holding up so far? Have you gone stir-crazy yet from hearing Christmas carols nearly everywhere you go? Is the
ubiquity of wasteful and distasteful lawn art finally wearing you down? Has workplace pressure to pony up for an offering of useless
crap for the “white elephant” gift exchange put your principles of
simplicity to the test? And how many times have you lamented to friends
and family the rampant commercialism and materialism of these times, or deftly deflected the queries of acquaintances as to whether you’ve yet set up your tree? Perhaps you've even contemplated going rogue and writing your local municipality to enquire about the appropriateness of public monies being spent on all of the “holiday” bunting, “seasonal” banners, and “festive” lighting adorning the public buildings, lampposts, and trees? No, I've not actually followed through on that last one, but I have to admit that such scrooge-like sentiments have crossed my mind!
No, you don’t have to be a
Christian convert to Buddhism (as I am) to have such sentiments. I’ve heard
plenty of Christians lament the materialism and lack of attention to the true
meaning of Christmas. And who knows what it must be like to be Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, or what have you, without ever having had a personal religious connection
to the holiday. I feel your pain! Well, perhaps it would be a little more
accurate to say that I have felt your
pain.
You see, as my Buddhist practice has deepened, I’ve become much more adept at the practice of equanimity – although not
perfect by any stretch of the imagination! You might recall from an earlier post that equanimity is one of the four
Buddhist virtues known as the Brahma-viharas,
or “Sublime Abodes” – compassion, sympathetic joy, and loving-kindness being the others (Sangharakshita; Schuhmacher & Woerner). Practicing equanimity allows us to more easily remain
unperturbed by all that might otherwise be “karmically charged” for us. Clearly, equanimity is beneficial with respect to letting go of such scrooge-like
sentiments as those that I’ve admitted to above, but it is indispensable if we
aspire to nirvana – unconditioned peace
– peace beyond all causes and conditions.
Opportunities for the practice of compassion and loving-kindness are so abundant during the holiday season as to likely require no further mention, but there are many opportunities as well to practice sympathetic joy, the fourth of the Brahma-viharas. Perhaps we can reflect upon how others are experiencing joy from those very sights and sounds
that might be driving us bonkers. Without the holiday season the lives
of many would ring flat, or be devoid of hope for the future of humankind.
I
distinctly remember having occasion in the midst of one long-ago holiday season to notice at least a
modicum of progress in my cultivation of equanimity and sympathetic joy. I was driving home from the very first weeklong meditation
retreat that I ever did. Over the course of that week my mind had gotten pretty still, and as I wended my way through the countryside looking at the
various decorations on the houses and in the yards here and there, I felt none
of my more typical disdain. I felt only a warm sense of well-being knowing that
people were hopeful, and joyful, and desiring to make the world a more
beautiful place for others. So I’m actually pretty cool these days when it
comes to all of the aforementioned holiday trappings. At least this aspect of
our collective karma carries no appreciable charge for me. Ah, but familial
karma is always another story.
I’m sure you all know what I’m talking
about: You think your practice has gotten fairly solid. You’ve come to see with at least
some clarity the nature of your karmic conditioning. You consider yourself a
brand new person, willing to let bygones be bygones so that your troubled
relationships might proceed on an entirely different footing. And then you go
home. I’m sure that everyone will agree that when it comes to testing the
strength of your practice, there really is no place like home!
Are you still into that
Buddhism thing? Do you really have to do all of that kowtowing stuff? Now,
tell me, are you expected to give them any money? Indeed, the questioning of our adopted spiritual practice
is just one of an endless variety of buttons that our families will find,
and push, again and again and again. Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes
precisely related to this Buddhist experience of going home. A student of Jon
Kabat-Zinn’s once told him: “When I was a Buddhist, it drove my parents and
friends crazy, but when I am a Buddha, nobody is upset at all.” By the way, I suppose a Christian could very easily
replace Buddhist and Buddha with Christian and Christ-like in the
preceding quote and get quite a bit of mileage out of it when circulating in
non-Christian circles, don’t you think?
Might we then take some comfort in
the fact that Christians all over the world are about to celebrate the birth of
a figure very much like one esteemed by many in our own Buddhist tradition? No,
the stories don’t enjoy complete correspondence, but I’m certain that it
would be fairly impossible to discern one who is striving to
be Christ-like from one who is emulating the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva – and isn’t
that what really matters?
In Japan, the Ksitigarbha
Bodhisattva is known as Jizo. Ksitigarbha’s
affinity for children is very much accentuated in the forms of the Jizo statues
common there. As can be seen in the images accompanying this post, Jizo statues
are commonly crafted with very child-like features due to the fact that they are
often erected with a particular child in mind – one who has either been deemed
to be in need of Jizo’s assistance in the afterlife or is presumed to have been
the subject of his protection in this life. Thus, some Jizo
statues are adorned with the clothing of children. I ask you, then, would it
really be so strange for us Buddhists to begin associating the day of birth of
the baby Jesus with, ahem, the birth of the baby Jizo? {winking respectfully}
I wish everyone of all faiths, and those who profess no faith at all, a
peaceful and joy-filled holiday season. But even as I say that, I'm well aware that
it will be one of the most trying times of the year for a great many
people. Whether this is your first Christmas without one of your loved ones, or
whether it always brings with it the pain of a long-ago loss, I wish you peace.
Whether it is not so much anticipated for its potential for joy as it is
dreaded for the expectation of difficulty and contentiousness, I wish you
peace. Whether you fully anticipate it being everything that you dream of or
whether you already know that it will fall far short of the magazine spread Christmases
that the marketers dearly want you to buy, I wish you peace. Let us aspire this holiday
season to simply be as fully human as we can be – neither god nor
demon, neither animal nor hungry ghost, and certainly not one of the
hell-beings. And if it helps to keep Jizo in mind, then by all means do so!
References
Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994) Wherever you
go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. A Hyperion publication.
Sangharakshita, Bikshu (1980). A
survey of Buddhism, 5th edition. Shambhala Publications, Inc. in association
with Windhorse Publications.
Schuhmacher, S., Woerner, G. (1994).
The encyclopedia of Eastern philosophy and religion. Shambhala Publications,
Inc.
Image Credits
Jizo with “red
scarf” by Chris Gladis via:
Jizo collection at
Zozo-ji by Selefant via:
Kamakura Hasedera sculptures
by Chris 73 via:
Copyright 2012 and 2018 by Mark Robert Frank
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