Summer Solstice at Stonehenge

The “Appearing” Buddha

  Those of us who seek to “walk the Buddha-way” may forget at times that the original source of our practice derives from the teachings of Shayamuni Buddha, enlightened one of the Shakya clan, born in ancient India around 660 B.C., who became “extinct” around 480 B.C. at the age of 80, and that his teachings were originally transmitted by the sutras, most notably the “One Vehicle” – The Threefold Lotus Sutra. Thus the Buddha Shakyamuni and his teachings become the principal object of worship. Increasing awareness of the Buddha’s “presence” in our   lives, in our daily meditation, reading, reciting, copying or memorizing the Lotus Sutra, strengthens and affirms the inner conviction—the spontaneous “mindfulness” that revering this Original Buddha, not as some “god” floating around in the cosmos but as an existing presence within us, is the vibrant, all-pervading universal force that causes everything to live, immanent in all phenomena of the material world.

  Those of you who do not seek to walk the Buddha-way, or “follow” the Buddha’s teachings (giving other “names” to your spiritual journey), are not excluded from these “truths.” In many chapters of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha declares “I look upon everyone with equal eyes . . . to those who are not in this assembly do you proclaim my words . . . To those whose hearts are longing, I appear to preach the Law, the one and only Law of emancipation and nirvana.”

  Those who aspire to find personal satisfaction in their lives, are ones who create that which brings wellness to others—contribute to joy and happiness of others, those who aspire to “non-existence” of past and future; those who freely celebrate life with unquestioning reverence for life and celebrate it with compassion, “releasing the personal ego,” knowing that all the living are intrinsically connected – “These too walk the Buddha-way.”

  These too have seen “The Appearing Buddha” within life itself, here and now.