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Dharma talk Dr.Ziporyn, Hanamatsuri

Dharma talk at 2008 International Hana-matsuri

In Buddhism, all beings are born with a past.

The Buddha too was born, on this day, with a past.

In early Buddhism, the Buddha's past was thought to be many lifetimes of being a Bodhisattva.

Even as a Bodhisattva, he had been born with a past.

His past then, prior to being a Bodhisattva, was many lives as a deluded and suffering sentient being.

In the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha reveals that this was not the whole story. He tells us he has been a Buddha already for a long time - an incalculably, immeasurably long time.

All those past lives in which he was apparently a deluded and suffering sentient being, or a Bodhisattva working towards Buddhahood, were actually already the lives of the Buddha. That was what life after attaining Buddhahood was like.

He also says of his stories about his own and other people's past lives: "In all my teachings hitherto I have, in order to liberate sentient beings, sometimes spoken of my own person, and sometimes of other persons; I have sometimes presented myself in my own person, and sometimes in other persons (bodies); I have sometimes presented stories about myself and sometimes stories about others. And all were true and not false. And why? Because the Tathagata's knowledge of the characteristics of the Threefold World as it really is sees that it is without life or death, without withdrawal or emergence but also without presence in the world or cessation from the world." (Ch.16)

Such is what we sometimes call, loosely, the Buddha's "eternal life."
All his past lives, as beings other than a Buddha, were "true and not false." But on the other hand, all of them were told in just this way as aspects of his endeavor to liberate sentient beings now, in his already achieved Buddhahood.

Buddhahood means seeing that, although all of us are born with a past, and that we always have a past, that past changes depending on what we are now. Although each of us is finite in space too―I am myself, not another―what others are to me is changed by what I am now.

The Buddha, upon attaining Buddhahood, saw that all those other beings he had formerly been were also Buddhas, aspects and expressions of his present Buddhahood. He saw that he had been alive as a Buddha even when he was alive as a Bodhisattva, or as a deluded sentient being. The Buddha's life is "eternal" because the lives of sentient beings are innumerable, immeasurable.

The Buddha's life is present as and in our lives, not outside them. To see the Buddha's eternal life is to see the Buddhahood of our own lives. The Buddha is not eternal as God is sometimes thought to be eternal in monotheistic traditions.

He is not independent of sentient beings, and he does not exist with a certain fixed identity within a linear type of time that moves from the past to the present to the future through a series of isolated and determinate moments. Nor is he outside time, atemporal.

To see in what sense this is "eternal," even though Buddhism holds firmly to its founding principle that "all conditioned states are impermanent," we must learn to see time differently, which is to say, to see our lives differently.

To aspire to future Buddhahood changes the past that you presently embody. It is to see the Buddha's life present in all your own pasts, presents and futures. That is the Buddha's eternal life.

2008 International Hana-matsuri

The IBC observed "International Hanamatsuri" or the Buddha's birthday celebration at RKK's former headquarters in Tokyo on Sunday April 13.
This festival is known as "Flower Festival" suggesting the flower-filled Lumbini Garden, where Shakyamuni was born in the foothills of the Himalayas more than 2.500 years ago.

Worshippers poured amacha (sweet herb tea) over a small image of the infant Buddha standing in a miniature temple decorated with flowers.
According to an ancient legend, sweet dew rained down from the sky to bathe the new-born prince.

About 300 people of 19 different nationalities attended this event.
The ceremony started at 11:00 a.m. with the ritual offering to the Buddha, followed by the children's praising words to the Buddha, Dr. Brook Ziporyn's Dharma talk titled "Buddha's Eternal Life", the performance of the woodwind quintet from Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra (TKWO), introduction of 15 distinguished guests, and the closing address by Rev. Yasutaka Watanabe, chairman of RKK board.

After the ceremony, they enjoyed socializing with refreshments, koto performance, tea ceremony, sutra calligraphy, and flower arrangement demonstration in the Shichokaku (Audio-Visual) Hall of Kosei Library.


You can also see the video for 2007 Hana-matusuri here