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Two wise and gentle favourities
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Ganesha has an elephant's head, four to ten hands, a pot belly, and is usually red or yellow in colour. He rides a rat. In his hands he holds a rope, an axe, a goad, a dish of sweet-balls etc. The fourth hand is in the boon-giving position. It is said that with the axe He cuts off the attachment (to worldly things) of his devotees and with the rope pulls them nearer to the Truth.
Ganesha is the son of Shiva, and one of the most popular gods |
He is regarded as 'the remover of obstacles', and worshipped at the start of a ritual or the beginning of a journey.
Endowed with a gentle and affectionate nature he is also known as a god of wisdom. His images are found in practically every household and also on the outskirts of villages, as a guardian deity.
If you are fortunate enough to stay in the huge edwardian Imperial Hotel in New Delhi you’ll meet him there too, beautifully sculpted marble as an elegant and regal figure.
He is the Lord of the Brahmacharis (celibates)
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Buddha, has short curly hair and his feet and palms have marks of the lotus. Calm and graceful in appearance, he is seated on a lotus flower. The lobes of his ears are shaped like a pendant and he is shown wearing a yellow robe. The hands are in a boon-giving and protection mode.
I intrude my ego here, to confess that I have a great liking for the different Budda image I have seen in Thailand and elsewhere. |
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A little green Buddha, with a large round tummy that looks as if it is about to shake with laughter, guards my computer. It sits here, depriving me of some of my rage when I am about to attack the infernal machine. This close personal association does not qualify me to interpret the different allegiances Big Buddha has among Hindus and Buddhists. It is obvious to everyone, however, that the teachings of both religions are tolerant enough to give and take . . . a rare holy quality among believers and religious sects.
Nirvana is an enlightened concept they share, though I suspect they have different interpretations.
Buddhists believe that by destroying greed, hatred and delusion, which are seen as the causes of all suffering, man and woman can attain perfect enlightenment. . . but that is a necessarily simple definition.
The Hindu Bhagavad-Gita calls Nirvana “Brahma-nirvana – union within Brahma or extinction in Him ie.extinction of the ego. The Gita’s method is to practise yoga, with “joy, peace, vision, all turned inward”. The Jains have similar concepts expressed in their own terms.
Buddhists believe that their leader was born in Buddha Gaya, or Bodh Gaya about 1,500 years ago at the foot of the sacred bo tree under which Gautama Siddhartha attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. He is regarded by his followers as the most recent re-discoverer of the path to enlightenment.
Dharam Nir Singh tells us that Hindus believe Buddha is the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, and “appears at the start of the present age”. This incarnation is symbolic of the uneasiness that the Hindu priests felt for the Buddhists and their teachings which were becoming very popular with the masses, he writes.
The Bhagwat-Purana states that Vishnu, in the form of Buddha, ‘deludes the heretics'. As Buddha, Vishnu advised the demons to abandon the Vedas, whereupon they lost all their powers and enabled the gods to establish their supremacy.
The author of an Introduction to Hinduism adds: “The doctrines supposedly put forward by Buddha are far removed from Buddha's teachings as understood by his followers. Ironically, the Buddhists did in some sense turn to Hindu belief. The mythology and cosmology that became attached to Buddhism as it became a popular mass religion were rooted in Hindu belief and the Hindu gods inhabited some of the lower heavens of the Buddhist cosmos.”
No need to become sectarian about all this. Every human being should be seeking a path to Enlightnment. To my mind, the image of the laughing Buddha is a good one to carry with you on the journey. |
