December 1 is World Aids Day

World AIDS Day Celebration

One central truth of Buddhism is that all life is suffering. The Buddha understood this truth when, after a very sheltered and privileged childhood and young adulthood, he suddenly encountered, for the very first time, old age, and sickness, and death. He was bewildered. As we are. The Buddha spent the next six years asking why there was all this suffering? How can it be helped? And, if this is the nature of our lives, what does it mean to be human? His enlightenment grew out of asking these questions, the same questions that we ask, some 2,500 years later.

Paradoxically, there is another central truth, and that is the pure joy of our everyday existence. To be alive, even for too brief a time, is such an incredible gift. We are struck with wonder and amazement. And there, tucked among the undeniable sorrows of life, we find friendship, love, and community. We help others, we act with compassion, we care, we forgive. We have a thousand opportunities to make some small difference, and we learn to appreciate every hour and every day that is given us. Life is made precious by our understanding of our very human vulnerability, by our awareness of our mortality, and by those mysteries which we try, together and alone, to fathom.

I want to share with you tonight a contemporary Buddhist poem called “The Human Route.” It, too, is full of questions.

Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed – that is human.

When you are born, where do you come from?

When you die, where do you go?

Life is like a floating cloud which appears.

Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.

The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.

Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.

But there is one thing which always remains clear.

It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.

Then what is the one pure and clear thing?

When you are alive, you have form and substance. After you die, there is no trace. The four elements disperse as in a dream. To understand the Buddha and eminent teachers, retire to the place of light. The sun is setting over the Western mountains. The moon is rising in the East.

I’ll close now, by repeating the four Great Vows of Buddhism:

Sentient beings are numberless; we vow to save them all.

Delusions are endless; we vow to cut through them all.

The teachings are infinite; we vow to learn them all.

The Buddha way is inconceivable; we vow to attain it.

Written on December 1, 1999, by Dr. Barbara Taylor of the Morning Star Zen Center in Fayetteville , Arkansas.