Rituals, Legends, Philosophy...

A lot of people don't know (or care) that I'm a Buddhist. I don't talk about it (or write about it) very much, because it's a personal choice, a personal journey - and Buddhism doesn't require me to disrespect other people's choices of religion. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

So why am I writing about it today? A good question, but it seemed like a good start into what I'll be writing about. First, it must be understood that I grew up with influences of Jehovah's Witness, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, and so forth. None of them suited the way I see the world. But in Japan, I got into Buddhism. And that is sort of funny because Buddhism is originally Indian, and has deep ties to Hinduism - some of which are still debated.

Why is that funny? Well, it's funny because my full name is Taran Amar Panday Rampersad (no relation to Basdeo Panday). And the Panday demonstrates the origins of my father's side of the family in the Brahmin class - a member of the Hindu priestly caste. Of course, the caste system is gone, and it means little outside of Hinduism. But, other brahmin are quick to point out to me that I am a brahmin. Maybe they don't want to be alone. They claim I could be a good pandit, but that is not an aspiration of mine. So, it's apparent that I have deep Indian roots. It's also apparent that I only began to understand my own roots in Japan. Has it made a difference? Only in my curiosity, perhaps.

Most people come to religion with questions. But, strangely, I came to Buddhism looking for questions. Fortunately, Buddhism is based more on self realization than external questions and answers - otherwise it would be very challenging to practice Buddhism in Trinidad and Tobago (there are fellow Buddhists here whom I have not met).

Of late, this journey has lead me to showing up when one of my Uncles is learning Sanskrit so he can read his Hindu texts. The fellow teaching him is someone I can understand, since he's not a pundit, but rather a teacher. So I sit around and get free lessons in the evenings, and enjoy some philosophical discussion.

The other aspect of this journey has been my reading of the Bardo Thodol, commonly known in the West as 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead'. I happened upon a copy of it, and have been reading bits and pieces of it - and though translated from Sanskrit, it still has some Sanskrit references in it. And these references are common to Hinduism. At this point I must point out that Hinduism was not a religion as much as a way of life, and thus Siddhartha (later to become the Buddha) was permeated with this way of life. And so, his followers were permeated.

But the reason I have come this far (as have you) is not to talk about these things, but rather something that came up in the philosophical discussions this evening. It was something that made perfect sense; that there are three levels to everything in religion. There are Rituals, there are Legends, and there is the Philosophy.

In any religion, the rituals are the base of practice of the religion; but it is possible to get lost in the ritual. Legends are the next level; they are the bridge between the ritual and the philosophy. And the philosophy is the level which originally defined the Legends, which subsequently with the help of Philosophy, created the rituals. Pay attention to this, because I'm going to flip some things around as I have been considering them.

Consider the way people are used to doing anything. And yet, if they cannot explain why they are doing it - are they not lost in a process? Suddenly, that aspect doesn't apply just to religion.

Consider legends, which helped inspire rituals. Legends are instances, exaggerated real or real or even imagined, that support a philosophy. But the legend does not define the philosophy. This too is an aspect which doesn't apply just to religion.

It's the philosophy of doing things that is the core. And it's the philosophy that extends between different aspects of different legends and rituals. And that's very important, because when you wake up in the morning and brush your teeth out of habit, maybe it's just a ritual - and maybe the ritual brushing you practice doesn't actually prevent cavities, because you don't understand the philosophy. You heard legends of tooth decay, which may inspire you to maintain the religion. But get a rotten tooth, and you find the philosophy all of a sudden. It's too late to save the tooth then, normally.

And so it is. So maybe people need to understand better why they do the things that they do. And this leads into an email conversation I was having where someone said that we had to do certain things in certain ways to get certain things done... and yet, these certain ways had not given the results we wanted in the past. So I was trying - and it seems failing - to make the point that there are other ways of doing things. But this other person, I think, was busy doing a ritual.

And when I look at things through those three shades, a lot more makes sense. But it's not simple, because there are grey areas in between everything, and the truths are evolving as well. Consider that there are two things I know of so far that can consume without accepting or rejecting - fire and time.

People consume through acceptance, and through rejection. And that has a significant impact on how the world is run. Is it possible to accept and reject the same thing at the same time and still consume it? There's something to think about.

Copyrighting Of Chants?

I was preparing to write some things about Buddhism, when I got sidetracked into downloading some chants at here, and I was happily downloading things when suddenly... suddenly I was in shock.

One of the chants had been removed from the site. It seems I.M.M. Musicworks, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, has claimed copyright of The Chant of Metta (Suffusing Loving-kindness). There's some irony there. Now, if they copyrighted someone chanting it, I can understand (sort of). But if they claim copyright on the words themselves... I must wonder... how that could happen. So I did some research, and came up with this page, which points to one Imee Ooi. Did she write the chant? I do not know, but she released an album by that name.

I wrote an email. I'll find out, perhaps. More likely I'll become involved in a religio-legal war. *sigh*.

At least I still have the BuddhaNet eBook Library.

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