Earth Song

...Buddhism is about opening our eyes?

Other religions have shown a remarkable inability to impart personal and moral responsibility on people. The only hope (as I see it) for human beings is for them to realize that harming another harms themseleves. And the only way for people to make this realization is to begin appreciating the law of cause and effect. The only effective way I know of to show that this law holds true is to try out this Buddhism.

The reality is, people are so disillusioned, they seek spirituality wherever they can find it. They are inherently trained in our society to distrust any other human being, so they drift aimlessly through seminal works in every religion. In doing so, they seek out small gems to quench their thirst for fulfillment. I say gems because they are rare, small, because in their restricted exposure and narrowed focus, they miss the wider view, the big picture.

In my own, similarly broad explorations, I discovered striking similarities between other religions and Buddhism. Like respect for all life. Do unto others... What I discovered lead me to believe firmly that Buddhism is the purest form of these ideals - the one with the least amount of fluff added later by power-hungry people. That is not to say that I did an exhaustive search, only that the fundamental themes were so similar as to be suspiciously like universal truths. So I leapt down that rabbit hole a long while ago, and my real Buddhist journey began. In fact, it still begins anew each and every day.

I have been thinking recently along the lines of 'opening the eyes' and what that means to us as human beings. Sight, of course, is a primary sensory perception in our world. Without sight, you can live, but without sight, you can't drive (though, perhaps you could still drive better than the people around here), severely limiting your independence, and there are many other issues there as well. I mention this, because I don't think the Buddha meant that we are/were "sightless" from birth per se. Newborn puppies don't open their eyes for a while after they are born, they are virtually helpless until they reach a certain age. They are also fundamentally governed by animal instincts - they instinctively seek out their food source and cuddle for warmth, for example. However, we, as humans, make conscious choices on so many scales that I think the immaturity analogy breaks down - we simply sometimes do KNOW that what we are about to do is very wrong, and yet we set our course in that direction anyway. We can see the path ahead, we see the precipitous cliff, and yet we dogmatically march right over the ledge. (And then we express dismay, as though laws of gravity were supposed to apply differently to us).

What I think the Buddha meant about 'opening our eyes' was slightly different - I think he meant seeing the big picture rather than the small one - opening our eyes WIDER than the narrowed perspective with which we normally view the world. With our eyes focused on a narrow path, we don't see the alternate routes through the maze, we can only see the path we focus on and choose to see. Like in a dark labyrinth, the puzzle becomes infintely easier when we widen the cirle of light around us and are able to observe alternate routes. Once we get to a certain point, the entire puzzle is illuminated, and we can steer ourselves out... Escape from samsara!

The legend of the blind men describing an elephant (http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html) is also applicable here. When we restrict our view too narrowly, we miss the big picture. What I like most about Buddhism is that it encourages us to widen our view - seeking out that which is universal in truth and applying that to our lives.

So, bottom line, I think its all about opening our eyes. Just what exactly that means, is the topic of so much debate.

Did you ever stop to notice... ...Buddhism is about opening our eyes?

Posted by earthsong at April 30, 2004 09:36 PM