Protection
Oct 06 2014 The Endless
Further
Discussing Buddhist
conversion from a historical perspective in his book
Unmasking
Buddhism,
renowned Buddhist scholar Bernard Faure writes,
“It was not the expectation
of Awakening that convinced Chinese, Tibetan, and Japanese leaders
to convert to Buddhism but rather the protection that Buddhism
appeared to offer them against evils of all kinds, both individual
and collective (epidemics, invasions, etc.).”
This was also true of the
common folk who took refuge in the Buddha’s dharma. Protection of
both the state and the individual was a major appeal for Buddhism
in earlier times, perhaps still today. Dhammo have rakkhati
dhammacarim – “the dharma protects those
who follow the dharma” is supposed to be a saying of the Buddha.
The idea is that those who follow dharma cultivate goodness and
this goodness will provide inner and outer protection, or from
their practice of dharma they may receive protection from mystic
forces.
The fears we must grapple
with today are not different from the fears people have faced
throughout history. A quick review of the news reveals what? Jihad,
the Ebola epidemic, and something new but which has been long in
the making: deadly climate change. It would be nice to think that
if everyone just became good, it would all turn around and we’d be
safe. Or that merely by practicing meditation or chanting a mantra
we could invoke the protection from those mystic forces. You don’t
need me to tell you that it doesn’t work like that.
Goodness manifests through
thoughts, words, and deeds, but stems from feeling. I don’t mean
emotion so much as I mean a sort of pervading awareness, a
deep-seated state of consciousness that permeates our entire being.
A good person feels goodness. Meditation and
mantra are tools for developing a total feeling of
goodness.
Meditation, ethics, and
wisdom are three components of the Eightfold Path, which in turn is
one of the four Noble Truths taught by the Buddha. Wisdom is known
through meditation, calming and observing the mind, and is then
displayed through ethical living rooted in compassion. My feeling
is that the Buddha believed that whenever a crisis arose or a
threat appeared, a person who had cultivated tranquility and ethics
was equipped with a presence of mind that would deliver him or her
to emotional, mental, and perhaps even physical safety.
Ultimately, the practical
view of dharmic protection is that those who follow
and
most importantly
practice the dharma are able to protect themselves from unwholesome
thoughts, harmful speech, unwise actions, key factors in the spread
of epidemics and war. Put another way, we protect ourselves from
ourselves, and then because we have wisdom and compassion we know
that we have to protect the human beings around us and our
planet.