Looking Back-Again

Looking Back-Again

This past week has been our annual celebration of the Buddhist holiday known as Bodhi Day, December 8. This is the date reserved for the remembrance of the final awakening of Shakyamuni Buddha, some 2500 years ago. This marks the culmination of his many years of practice and exploration into the nature of human experience and lead us to his presentation of the first turning of the wheel of the Dharma. As religious festivals go, and in spite of the significance of this event, this day hardly seems to generate the same kind of excitement that you would expect for the turning point in the history of a religion. Compared with Easter, Passover or Eid, this day, while acknowledged as important is not especially celebrated.

This is not to suggest that the date or events are unimportant, only to indicate the peculiar form of its celebration. I have already written elsewhere that, in spite of the efforts of the politically-correct, to associate Bodhi Day with the other religious days that fall around the end of December, to suggest that we can roll this in with a hearty Happy Holidays is rather absurd.

On another note, as we in this Sangha engage in our annual year-and reflection, we are all encouraged to look back again, so that we can appreciate the momentum of our intentions and actions. In doing so we can reference our future orientation to the clear trajectory established in months past. I will be posting our year-and review in the tab above, and in late January, will revise that to include our intentions for 2015. We welcome all comments and suggestions for this process of review and intention.

Yours in the Dharma,                          
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu