Remembering the Buddha
May 2005
About this time every year all over the world, people make it a point to remember the Buddha. Of course, Buddhist ought to remember the Buddha everyday all the time, but our memories are weak and we tend to forget! We don’t forget a lot of other useless things that just get us into trouble, but when it comes to remembering the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, we find it hard.
It also seems that the more time goes by since the life of the Buddha, the harder it gets to remember! When the Buddha was still alive, it wasn’t hard to remember Him. In fact, the Buddha Himself didn’t seem to think that remembering him was all that important. He was more concerned that we remember the Dharma. He seemed to think that was enough! He told us that we should remember the Dharma and rely on ourselves.
When people persisted in asking the Buddha how He should be remembered after His passing away, He finally said that they might visit the four places of pilgrimage - places where the great events of the Buddha’s life had occurred: His birth, His enlightenment, His first teaching of the Dharma and His passing away. He also agreed that they might build a Stupa, a monument to enshrine His mortal remains, but that was all.
Even after the passing away of the Buddha, people seem to have had no particular problem remembering Him. For five hundred years, no body bothered to make an image of the Buddha. Think about that for a minute! Isn’t that strange? Why do you suppose no body made a statue or a painting of the Buddha? It wasn’t that they didn’t have the means to do it; they just didn’t. Was it because they still remembered the Buddha so well that it just seemed a waste of time to represent Him in an image? Or, was it because they thought the Buddha was too great to capture in a material form made of wood or stone or even precious metal?
Whatever the answer, there is no doubt that once Buddhist got started making images of the Buddha and building monuments to Buddhism, they didn’t waste any time or spare any effort or expense. The Buddha and the early community of Buddhist monks lived out in the open or in caves or abandoned buildings, but now vast and imposing monasteries were constructed. Large and lavishly adorned images of the Buddha were made and appeared everywhere. And what did all this constructing and making mean? Did it mean that people suddenly remembered the Buddha and Buddhism better, or did it mean that they had really begun to forget and so now they needed more and more things to remind them?
Throughout the centuries, kings and wealthy laymen, and even common people have tried to out do each other in making more and more exquisite and precious images of the Buddha and building bigger and more impressive monuments to Buddhism. The list is endless: from the many and magnificent images and monuments of India, to those of South-East Asia, Tibet, China and Japan and now the West! And what has happened to many or most of these monuments? They fell into disrepair, were neglected and forgotten and exist now simply as archaeological remains. The kings and wealthy laymen who had them built have been all but forgotten, but what about the Buddha? Has He been forgotten too? I don’t think so, at least not quite, but is it because of all the images and monuments that were constructed to remember him? Might I ask an even more indelicate question? Were the Kings and laymen who built the monuments and who made the images really concerned that the Buddha be remembered, or were they secretly more concerned that they be remembered themselves?
It is no surprise that so many Buddhist monuments lay in ruins, or that so many wonderful images of the Buddha are broken and lost. After all, the Buddha taught us that everything is impermanent. When the Taliban destroyed the Buddha images at Bamiyan, it was undoubtedly a “monumental” act of vandalism, but was it not also just another lesson in impermanence. And, after all, it was the Dharma that the Buddha really wanted us to remember.
Maybe this year I have just seen too many beautiful and priceless images of the Buddha and too many massive and magnificent monuments to Buddhism. I ask myself whether if just a little of the effort and expense that people put into building, say, the tallest Buddha image in the world or the biggest monument, might not be better used for educating the ignorant, or feeding the hungry, or providing shelter for the homeless, or caring for the sick? Is not the best way of remembering the Buddha the image of Him that we keep in our hearts, and is not the best monument to Buddhism, the simple practice of the Dharma that we do in a little hut in the forest, or even in an HDB flat?