Happy Bodhi Day
Celebrated annually on December 8, Bodhi Day (pronounced Bow-dee) commemorates the day Buddhists say Siddhartha Gautama experienced enlightenment, also known as bodhi in Sanskrit and Pali.
When I taught courses in comparative religion at The University of Texas at Austin 20 years ago and invited in Buddhist monks so future journalists could hear directly about Buddhist beliefs, the monks explained the doctrine of nonattachment: recognize impermanence and do not become attached to things or even people, because they will disappear or die and cause you grief. This renunciation of normality is part of enlightenment.
Students were sometimes alarmed at a practical application: what, do not be attached to a boyfriend, girlfriend, or dog? Maybe that was a detriment to temple growth 2,000 years ago. Many people did not want nonattachment if it meant a farewell to love. In practice, even Buddhist monks often found they made little progress toward eliminating desire. Ordinary people could make even less. This faith had limited appeal, and in daily living practitioners often modulated the idea.
Religions compete for adherents, so it’s not surprising that innovative Buddhists developed the concept of bodhisattvas, enlightened beings who could have attained nirvana but purposefully chose to put it off to help others reach it more quickly than they otherwise would. The origin of this belief in a self-sacrificing bodhisattva is lost in the mists of time, but speculation abounds.
For example, British scholar Alan Bouquet, describing “Christian Influences on Early Buddhism,” wrote that from AD 50 to 200 some Buddhists learned about Christianity and introduced into Buddhism a new ideal of serving others, not just concentrating on their own spiritual progress: “The bodhisattva must sacrifice his or her possible attainment of release into identity with the Absolute, for the sake of others.”
The new Buddhism, called Mahayana (“great way”), developed many variants over the years and is now the most popular worldwide. One popular Mahayana branch, called Pure Land (jodo in Japanese) tells the story of a monk who promised to create a Pure Land paradise in the West if he became a Buddha. Adherents of Jodo Shinshu say he succeeded, so in this Pure Land, evil does not exist.
Those with faith in this Buddha get to go after death to the Pure Land, and some Christians have said that is also an echo of Eden — interesting speculation, but the origins of the idea are hard to pin down.