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Main Index
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it, about the date when he was born. We don't bother, because we know that thousands of Buddhas have been born before and thousands will be born again, so the date is not important. Then Buddha becomes just a symbol of all Buddhas -- the essential Buddhahood.
So we write the story of Buddha as a myth, as an archetype, we don't write the history. History is to be concerned with details: when he was born, what his father's name was, which town he was born in, when he died, what he did. These are not meaningful to us. What happened is meaningful to us; not what he did -- what happened. Any date will do for when he was born. Even if he was never born, it will do, that is not the point at all. To us he is a symbol of all the Buddhas ever born before or ever to be born in the future. He is a symbol, he is a wheel.
The essential we catch. The essential becomes the PURAN, the myth, the non-essential becomes the history. History is useless. Henry Ford has said that history is bunk. It is. But puran -- puran is truth. Now you will be puzzled. History is factual, puran is not factual -- puran is not a fact, but puran is truth. History is unnecessary detail, talking about the periphery, but in the West history is important because things are moving in a line. Nothing will happen the same way again, so you have to catch the details. Jesus will not happen again, he happens only once, that's why the bigotry, the dogmatism of Christians.
Mohammed will not happen again because Mohammed and Islam come from the same root, the Jewish tradition. The Jewish tradition, Christianity and Islam, they come from the same root, from the same idea -- but for us that is not the point. Buddha has happened, will happen, will go on happening, there is no need to bother about details. You can see those details again and again because he will be coming back.
Life is a circle. When life is a circle you know death is repose: it is coming back to the same point, falling back to the mother earth, falling back to the universal consciousness, falling back to the same source from where you have come. Then there is no struggle against it, no conflict, you simply accept. Acceptance
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