Yes, some Western Buddhists think this way: It is really important for me to know whether or not the Buddha actually existed. If the Buddha didn’t exist in the past, why should I believe and value his teachings?
I will address this. But my real intention from this is to show just how ridiculous such a question is.
Imagine that you’re in the library looking through books when you happen to find this wonderful old book of poems. Next, you decide to do some checking to see what you can find out about the book’s author. It happens to be a Russian name. Well, to make a long story short. You come up empty. These poems were published a year before the Communist revolution. Curiosity then prompts you to seek out the help of a friend who happens to be a Russian student. He does a major computer search in Russian, trying to find out who the author is. He comes up empty, also.
Despite coming up empty, this Russian author’s poems are still extraordinary—the most beautiful you’ve ever read. Stopping here, wouldn’t you be stupid to reject these poems just because you can’t pin down who actually composed them? Maybe the name was just a nom de plume—who knows? At any rate, wisely, you copy down every poem and share them with others.
In the same way, we might question the value of the Dao De Jing. For one thing, it is very difficult to say if Laozi/Lao Tzu, which means “Old Master,” is the actual name of Dao De Jing’s author. But if we follow the crazy mindset of some Western Buddhists, we should reject anything the Dao De Jing says because we don’t know who the real author is!
When you think about it, rejecting something profound like Buddhism or the Dao De Jing on the grounds that there is no way to know if the Buddha or Laozi existed, is totally ridiculous.
From the producers who brought you "300" and "Immortals"
- I STAND ALONE -
Directed by Miguel Cervantes
Starting the Zennist as don Quixote de la Mancha
Western Buddhists as Windmills
Azanshi as Sancho Panza
A BATTLE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS
Posted by: Deep Trailer (pre-)Voice | March 11, 2012 at 10:11 AM