By: Bob Zeglovitch
At our Rohatsu sesshin last Saturday, we recited the Shakyamuni section from the Transmission of Light by Keizan Jokin, the “second founder” of Soto Zen in Japan. I made some short comments about some different ways we might consider the story of the Buddha and his awakening—as myth or archetype; as the journey of an actual historical figure (where what little details can be conjured up vary from the myths); as a stand-in for the collective energy and striving of many dedicated practitioners; and as a pointer to our own potential and/or actual true nature. Any of these may serve to inspire us, depending on our orientation.
The above list just scratches the surface of how we can consider Buddha, and what Buddha has meant over time. In my comments I mentioned an interesting article by the Buddhist scholar Bernard Faure titled “The Myth of the Historical Buddha.” You can read the article here (hopefully!). Faure was interviewed on Tricycle’s podcast, and I highly recommend giving the conversation a listen here (he has a distinct French accent so you have to listen carefully; the article covers much of the same information but the conversation is worth the effort, in my view). Among other things, he argues that the power of the Buddha is found in the various myths and stories about him, rather than in the stripped down historicized versions that seek to make him a “scientific” philosopher Buddha. Faure draws attention to the fact that the myth of the Buddha has been constructed in different ways over time and in different cultural contexts, and that this process continues. He has recently published a new book titled The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha, which covers this terrain in detail.