Thoughts on Buddhism

[Abracadabra]

Throughout all my research, Buddha has to be the most prominent and expressive human being ever to mindfully tap into this great Oneness and Emptiness called space.

Well, that's certainly a personal perception there.

I personally find the life story of Siddhartha Gautama to be almost a story of desperation for a "lost" soul who simply convinced himself that he had found some sort of answer to his "problem".

I mean, I find Buddhism in general to contain a lot of wisdom. Especially if taken as a historical whole, there's a lot to be gleaned from the entire history of Buddhism, from it's earliest history of Siddhartha, through the trials and tribulations that gave birth to Mahayana Buddhism and so on, all the way up to the more modern forms of Zen Buddhism.

But I personally don't find the story of Siddhartha alone to be the most prominent or the most expressive. Siddhartha saw life and Samsara as a problem that needed to be solved. The idea was to get out of the cycle of reincarnation. This fundamental idea was not even his idea. He was working from a cultural belief in reincarnation to begin with. In India, people took reincarnation for granted. This is what their culture believed. They didn't even question it at all. At least those who believed in it didn't question it. They felt that it was "obvious". Mainly because they were brought up to view life in this way from the get go.

I also find it difficult to believe that Siddhartha wasn't aware of aging and death. How could they have hidden aging from him? Surely he would have seen that some people are "older" and others even in his protected palace life. The story of Siddhartha reeks of make-believe to me, to be quite honest about it. It may have been a parable, or at best an exaggeration of someone's life.

If you truly stop and think about it, Buddhism (especially the early Buddhism of Siddhartha), views life as a "problem" that needs to be solved. We need to figure out how to get out of life and the cycle of endless rebirth.

I'm not sure if that specific view of life is all that great. Thankfully all of Buddhism didn't take that view. Buddhism evolved quite a bit in many of the other forms. Even Mahayana Buddhism was more like "Christianity" in that it wasn't so much a need to get out of the cycle of Samsara but rather it was more focused on rising to something better (i.e. a place of eternal bliss), possible called "nirvana" which originally simply meant to be extinguished.

As much as I find the various forms of Buddhism to be attractive and wise in many ways, I personally abandoned Buddhism in the strictest sense simply because it seems to ultimately be treating life as something we need to strive to get out of.

Of course modern forms of, say Zen Buddhism from Japan, don't focus on that aspect. In fact, they may have abandoned that idea altogether actually. I think they accept a more "mystical" view. (i.e. life is just a mystery and let's leave it at that).

The idea of Zen Buddhism is more along the lines of Taoism where the main focus is to come into harmony with life as much as possible (i.e. learn to flow with the Tao). After all, Zen Buddhism evolved after Buddhism from India had migrated through China and became intimately entangled with Taoism. So Zen Buddhism is really a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism.

I do like Taoism very much. Even more so than Buddhism. In fact, if I had to choose the most prominent and elegant spiritualist my choice would be Lao Tzu far more than Siddhartha Gautama.

Siddhartha saw life as a problem to be solved. Lao Tzu saw life as something to become part of as much as possible.

It was actually my attraction to Taoism that finally brought me to Wicca, believe it or not. Although, I should clarify that by revealing that my personal form of "Wicca" is unique, and far more "Taoistic" than might be expressed in many books on "Wicca". In fact, I've had huge debates with other "Wiccans" as to whether or not I actually qualify as a "Wiccan". That all depends on who you ask and how liberal they are in what they accept as "Wicca".

I would certainly never claim to be a "spokesperson" for "Wicca". For me it's entirely a personal spirituality that I confess to having freely designed within what I consider to be acceptable limits.

In any case, I'm truly glad to hear that you view Siddhartha's Buddhism as a very beautiful thing. I certainly wouldn't want to take that away from you in any way. But as high as your are on it, it does contain concepts that other people may not find quite as attractive as you apparently do.