This collage is called Nirvana because if you look carefully, you can see a little Buddha head there.
After a visit to Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Thailand three years ago, my interest in Buddhism was peaked. Although I had visited Hong Kong and Thailand before, I hadn’t witnessed so many images and statues of the Buddha, as on this visit. In these cultures, there are many followers of Buddha. In addition, Buddhism is very popular now in all parts of the world.
Among all peoples, throughout the world, preoccupation with death and dying is part of our experience as we live this life. Some people believe in heaven and some in reincarnation, among other alternatives. “Buddha accepted the basic Hindu doctrines of reincarnation and karma, as well as the notion that the ultimate goal of the religious life is to escape the cycle of death and rebirth. Buddha asserted that what keeps us bound to the death/rebirth process is desire, desire in the sense of wanting or craving anything in the world.”
We all want to be liberated or free – not just in the afterlife, but right here and now. Yet right here and now, we have so many cravings. Nirvana is actually a Pali word meaning to extinguish a flame. When I think of flames and fire, I often think of the early teachings I heard about hell-fire. The good news is that this is metaphorical and the flame we are really trying to put out is our preoccupation with the ego (false self).
My interest in Buddhism has brought me to the understanding that Nirvana is not a place to go after death but is a way of being right here through the cultivation of compassion. Four tenets of this way are: love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
What impresses me most about Buddhism is that the Buddha did not want people to worship him. He said, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
From my own life experience, I can say that I believed in the teaching about heaven and hell, good vs. bad, and other dualities that confused me and still cause me to suffer now. The Buddha talks about suffering as a reality of life. I realize that the craving for things that I neither need nor want takes me far away from any state of Nirvana. People-pleasing also is something that brings us away from who we really are deep inside. Too often “we create a self-image to adapt to the circumstances around us trying to be included and accepted by the people we have to deal with.”
My little Buddha head is a constant reminder to me that “Nirvana” is within my reach right here and now if I can only extinguish the flame of “I.” If there are going to be any blooms here, they are certainly going to be ” late blooms.”
It’s nice learning something about the beliefs and ways of being of others in the world around us. It can be an important catalyst for change in our own lives.