A Belief without Superpowers

From The Golden Child movie to the wonderfully Buddhism-influenced anime series Avatar:  The Last Airbender, being enlightened or connecting to this state appears to give you superpowers.  Some Buddhist stories alledge Gautama Siddhartha had superpowers such as the ability to remove grass from a polluted well or to calm a drunk elephant.  Yet, a number of animal trainers have been known to calm crazed animals by approaching them with calm.  Many of these miracles appear to me to be legends attached to the story of the Buddha or 'superpowers' known to exist in other people with the proper training or attitude.  After all, Hindu holy men in India walk on hot coals, sleep on beds of nails, etc.

When the Buddha was asked about miracles and performing them, he pointedly said:

I dislike, reject and despise them.

The Long Discourses of the Buddha, A Translation of the Dīgha Níkāya by Maurice Walshe, Wisdom Publication, Boston 1995, p. 176

I think there is ample room for other Buddhists to contradict what I'm about to say, but I do not think Gautama Siddhartha had superpowers.  He grew old and died.  The core of his lifelong message was that anyone could wake up with proper training and living in the Now.  He pointedly viewed theism, astrology, miracles, and expectations that something outside of ourselves would save us as ultimately unknowable, frustrating, and counter-productive.  The more I study Buddhism the more I find the core message to be wonderfully mundane.  Superpowers seem extraneous to this message.

Years ago I found this image comparing Gautama Siddhartha and Jesus.  I forget where I found this image, but the Christian author meant this as a way to show Jesus was divine and the Buddha was not.  Yet, this image helped push me to consider Buddhism.  Frankly, if I met these two men today, I would think Jesus was crazy unless he performed some miracle right then and there which I could see and experience.  What this image claims for him is supernatural in much the same way a belief in Zeus or Frigga would require me to believe stories outside of my lived experience -and untestable by me- were real.  Did such beings really ever exist?  Are there practical applications and messages to my life that do not require me to suspend belief and have blind faith?  How can I tell if a prophet and the stories later written down by his/her followers are true other than by faith alone?

I came to Buddhism because in this image and in teachings, Gautama Siddhartha's practices seem applicable to my daily life.  I can be an atheist, Muslim, Christian, etc. in my thinking on my ultimate fate, I believe, but Buddhism teaches me how to live today.  The Buddha doesn't seem crazy and/or supernatural.  There is a minimum of superpower stories and mumbo-jumbo to cut through.  

At least, my own construction of my personal Buddhism increasingly emphasizes a very pragmatic view to Buddhism.  Many other people seek spiritual guidance in their daily lives and find it in Christianity, Islam, Wicca, etc.  So, as Anais Nin reminds me:

We see things as they are, we see them as we are.

So, I do not mean to offend or demean other spiritual paths.  For me though, I seek a pragmatic spirituality that pairs with science and reason.

Buddhism: Folk Beliefs and Actual Teachings

Like many American converts to Buddhism, I was raised loosely as a Christian.  I say loosely because my family attended church irregularly at best and often only on key holidays such as Easter.  As a kid we moved a lot too, and I never attended a Christian church for more than a few years.  As a result, I did not receive much in the form of training from Bible school or such.  My partner studies Christian theology, however, and in discussions with him I increasingly find my Christianity -and the Christianity of many of my family members and friends- is more a collection of folk religion rather than a hardcore understanding of Christian theology.

In my journey into Buddhist practice, I also find that many fellow, spiritually minded people who view themselves as Buddhist also exhibit this same phenomenon:  their religion is a mixture of folk beliefs and theology.  I suspect this pattern is true with the majority of people following any faith or philosophy.

As with Bible college students who first encounter core Christian theology that runs counter to their viewpoints of what Christianity means, I find that as I study Buddhism more I am butting heads sometimes with concepts I don't always initially understand.  And that is a polite way of saying I'm meeting ideas on my path that I really don't like.  I wrestle with them.  I struggle.  And then like a new pair of shoes, they finally slip on and I find an understanding agreement.  Well.  With most of these concepts.  Others I still struggle with.

One of the themes of this blog will be the tensions and mixture of folk beliefs and actual Buddhist teachings.  Also, because I come from -and live- in a deeply Christian culture, I will continue to compare and contrast these two belief systems.