Self Reflection in Buddhism
Introduction
Man is quite different form all other living things because he posses self knowledge. All the living things sleep, eat and reproduce. The living things experience perceptions, emotions and they can all collect information of the world. Amongst all these living things, only man can understand himself. Socrates is one of the great philosophers who were able to recognize this fact. Buddhist also concurs with Socrates on the idea of self-knowledge. However, Buddhists are not concerned with God’s knowledge. Buddhism is also not concern with the knowledge of the external universe like the modern science (Jorgensen 281). The most significant place in searching for knowledge is an individual’s self. People are present, but they are not close with one another, they know each other, but they do not understand each other.
Summary and reflection
For people to know themselves, they must first of all that they have the Buddha nature in them. The sun shines on a daily basis, but it is always interrupted by the clouds; this does not always means that the sun is sometimes absent. This is the same nature of Buddha. It is always present, but bit may not be felt because it is obscured by the clouds of delusion, hatred and lust (Sorensen 142). When Buddhist meditates, they eliminate all the cloud layers that cover the actual meaning of Buddha. When the Buddha got absolute illumination beneath the Bodhi tree, he laughed since he believed that the truth that he was looking for was far from him. However, when he was enlightened, he recognized that the truth he was searching was just his true nature. He understood that his nature was always with him since the beginning (Jorgensen 289). The entire process of wandering in the pain of birth and death had started because he lost his original nature. However, his nature had never disappeared from him, and when he was enlightened; he discovered that his nature had always been with him. He only had to recognize it.
To demonstrate this reality; Buddha associated the following story in Lotus Sutra. In India, there was a family of a man his wife and children. Their parents had wealth because they owned vast pieces of land and they had a lot of money in the ban. Their parents also had a lot of jewelry and gold. However, they did not have an intelligent son. The parents were often concern about what would happen to their child once they had died. Their son had such a simple mind that their parents were not confident in him making any progress. Then one day the father thought of giving his jewelry to his son, and he told him to tie it on his clothes. He told his son not to take the jewelry out until they would die. After their death, their son would sell the jewelry and use the money to take care of himself.
When his parents died, the son did as his father had instructed him to do. However, because of his stupidity, the son decided to squander all the money that he had got from selling the jewelry. After that, the boy sold his parent’s rice fields, houses, granaries and furniture and spent all the money without making any proper investment. He became a poor man who did not even own a house or any penny. He became a beggar who would walk from one house to another in search of food. He would occasionally get something to eat, but most of the time he slept hungry.
There was a certain day when he sat in the middle of the streets after he had gotten exhausted because of walking. A Buddhist was walking across the streets and so him lying on the street. The Buddhist monk walked towards the boy and started to help him out. Meanwhile, he discovered that the boy had jewelry that was tied around him. The monk asked the boy why he was begging for food, yet he had wealth with him. He advised the poor boy to sell the jewelry and use the money to buy food. The boy could hardly believe that he had wealth with him, yet he was asking for food. He stood up immediately and went to sell the jewelry in the market. He used the money to get back all his properties, and he never slept hungry again.
I this story, the poor boy always walked with the jewel, but he never knew it. He had forgotten that he was carrying a lot of wealth with him, and this made him suffer of diseases and hunger. When he found out that he had jewelry tied up on him, he was able to take care of his problems. This story illustrates how people always walk around with the precious Buddha jewel. However, people’s ignorance always makes them suffer because they fail to identify the wealth that Buddha offers to them (Sorensen 167).
While the nature of Buddha is always present within people, they are never with Buddha. This is because people are always inclined to ego delusion. People’s minds are controlled by their egocentric thoughts of pride, passion, envy, anger, attachment and greed. Self-reflection is a virtue that awakens people to mind essence that abides in the depths of the mind. This also brings to the minds of humans, deluded thoughts. It is only if people identify their weakness that they learn to eliminate the roots where they come from. If people carefully analyze their mind’s functioning, they can get to know and understand themselves and the factors that prevent them from being enlightened. This self-knowledge can make people perform self-cultivation that eliminate the negatives and bring the positives. Self-reflection opens people’s minds on the inner life contents and brings the tools that form a Buddhists heart.
The narrative indicates the significance of self-reflections on a day-to-day life. In primeval China, several Buddhist families would share the religious life of a Buddhist. The parents may be staunch Buddhists, but their children may consider them as superstitious and old fashioned. In such families, the parents recited Buddha, and they would often go to the temple to explain to the sutras and speak to Dharma. However, the son would not have any of these priorities. The son considered the parents as people who were ignorant and superstitious (Buswell 189). The son pleaded with his parents to avoid Buddhism. He criticized the ideas of Buddhist philosophy and his parent’s participation in the practices. One day after the boy came from the temple, the father called his son and told him that if he was not satisfied with them being Buddhists, they would stop going to the temple. The son got excited about this. However, the parents asked the boy if he could do them a favor. He asked the son if he could note down what he would desire to do and the things that came to his mind. Then he would show his father everything that he had written down. The son did as his father had told him to do. He wrote all the things that his heart had desired to do. Once he sat down to read what he had written, he realized how shameful they were. He began to think how his parents loved him and got ashamed of ashamed of his writings. When he went to his father, he told him that he had worn the game. He said that when he looked at what he had written down, he got ashamed of his writings.
Conclusion
The stories prove that it is essential to cultivate the way and practice meditation. People would rarely reveal their thoughts even to their family members or their friends. People’s minds are always filled with evil. It is not advisable to hide these thoughts from people because the thoughts may end up haunting these people. The only solution is to pursue the evil thoughts and extricate them. However, when people get enlightened, they always come to recognize that Buddha had always been with them all along. The nature of Buddha is not far; it is always within the precious material of people’s original mind.
Works Cited
Jorgensen, J. A. Buddhist Critique of the Status Quo-its history, philosophy and critique. Pp 276-
307.
Sorensen, H.H. Mirror of emptiness: The life and times of the son master kyongho songu.pp 132
-155.
Buswell, R.E. reform movement in Korea during the Japanese colonial period: Precepts and the
challenge of modernity. pp . 142-152.
