Respect To Sacred Objects And Buddhism

By Kapila Abhayawansa -February 3, 2015 

Prof Kapila Abhayawansa

Many readers of my previous article entitled ‘Does one deviate from Buddha’s teaching by worshiping Objects?’ have presented their comments ether in the way of praise or insult what I have mentioned there. In this regard, I follow the advice of the Buddha: neither gives way to jubilation nor to resentment. Some requested me to openly answer to the questions raised by them in their comments. So I decided to be fair to all by clarifying my stand.

There is an important characteristic of Buddhism to be understood by those who talk about Buddhism. Buddhism is consisted of the teachings of the Buddha presented in different ways (Aneka pariyāyena) to be compatible with the different intellectual levels of the people so as to people understand it according to their capacities. Buddhist canon which includes the teachings of the Buddha does not provide a unitary set of doctrine. The Buddha was not a physician who prescribed one and only medicine for all kinds of sufferings. Buddha wanted to take all people into his path of Dhamma, but not all in the same way. In this respect he followed different methods. The method prescribed to one level of people may be rejected by another level of people. But the validity of each method remains the same.

It seems that many people try to take Buddhism from the angles that they like and think that they have taken whole Buddhism. But they do not know that many parts of Buddhism are left out by them. Taking Buddhism from one angle leads one to grasp viewpoints. It is nicely pointed out by the Buddha in the Bahuvedaniya-sutta where the Buddha said to monks that if each monk takes one aspect of teachings differently preached by me and holds it is the only truth and all others are untruth, then they quarrel each other. That is what is going on here among us on the matter of respect to sacred objects.Read More