Insulting
Buddhism
The Endless Further Mar 23
2015
Several months ago I gave brief mention of a situation in Burma
(Myanmar) where a bar manager from New Zealand and two Burmese
nationals were facing four years in prison for “insulting Buddhism”
with a promotional ad they posted on the bar’s Facebook page
showing the Buddha wearing headphones. (See the offending
image
here.)
Last week, a Burmese court sentenced bar manager Phil Blackwood,
the bar’s Burmese owner Tun Thurein, and another manager Htut Ko Ko
Lwina to 2½ years in prison with hard labor. When you consider all
the stuff that gets posted on Facebook, an image of the Buddha
wearing headphones seems pretty tame, and the sentence extreme.
Indeed, putting those guys on trial in the first place strikes me
as a travesty.
The case is part of a larger controversy over religious images that
came to a dreadful head when Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper
in France, was attacked by terrorists because of caricatures of the
Prophet Muhammad it published. I will not rehash the issues
surrounding the controversy in this post, except to remind readers
that teachings based upon the Quran forbid the creation of visual
images of Muhammad and even moderate Muslims find depictions of the
Prophet offensive.
That is relevant because at one time, there was a ban on images of
Buddha. The Buddha supposedly asked his followers not to collect or
venerate his relics and not depict his image. His followers almost
completely ignored his instructions regarding his relics, but for
nearly 600 years, the only images used to represent the Buddha were
a footprint, an empty seat, the Wheel of Dharma, or a Bodhi
leaf.
In the first century, the first images of the Buddha started to
appear, and they typically showed Gautama standing or seated in a
lotus position, and holding a begging bowl or making the gesture
(mudra)
of fearlessness. One of the areas where these representations began
to emerge was Gandhara, and sculpture from that period displays a
definite Greek influence.
Since then folks have been going crazy making Buddha images, and
today it is a very big business.
If Buddha were around now, I think he would be inclined to take
stuff like a Buddha with headphones in stride, perhaps even find it
amusing. I feel sure he would be outraged at the idea of
imprisoning anyone for making such an image. I also think he
would have concerns about the commercialization of his image, and
he would certainly be uncomfortable with the idea of worshiping his
image. Of course, this is just conjecture on my part. What the
historical Gautama thought, felt, actually taught, and what his
life truly was, we shall never know, because his time is so
remote and his life story buried in myth, and as far as how he
would think and act as a modern person, that is impossible to
know.
Nonetheless, I doubt he ever held himself out as anything other
than a common, mortal human being. We say he was an
extraordinary human being; he would simply say that he was “awake.”
And while many Buddhist will deny that Buddha is worshiped, all
objective observers know that worship of Buddha is a reality in
some forms of Buddhism, especially among rank and file
devotees. Rather early on, the myth-making process that has
shrouded his true story, elevated the Buddha from a mortal man to a
being who was supermundane, “perfect,” and the line between human
and god became extremely thin.
The
Kathavathu,
one of the seven books of the Pali Canon’s
Abdidhamma,
compiled during the reign of King Ashoka, and evidently produced in
order to correct “various errors which had developed with regard to
the Buddha,” discusses various views of the Buddhist schools
existing at the time that promoted supernatural notions about the
Buddha. Prof. Trevor Ling, in his book
The Buddha,
writes,
Among the points dealt with in the Kathavathu was the idea that the
Buddha had not really lived in the world of men, but in the ‘heaven
of bliss’, appearing to men on earth in a specially created,
temporary form to preach the Dhamma. Together with this virtual
deification of the Buddha there went also a tendency to deny him
normal human characteristics, and on the other hand to attribute to
him unlimited magical power.”*
This elevation and immortalization of Buddha was carried over into
the Mahayana canon, but today, I think many people tend to have an
earthly, prosaic view that is much more realistic and proper.
Ultimately, as Thich Nhat Hanh says,
Concepts like ‘nirvana,’ ‘Buddha,’ ‘Pure Land,’ ‘Kingdom of God,’
and ‘Jesus,’ are just concepts; we have to be very careful. We
should not start a war and destroy people for our concepts.”
**
Now, if the government of Burma is so concerned about people
insulting Buddhism then they would do something about those
Buddhist extremists in their country who go around preaching hate
and inciting violence against the Muslim minority there. Wouldn’t
they?