Take it to the Buddha

Years ago, back when I was a young Buddhist and before I had found devotional Buddhism I heard a story about a nun, an abbess and the Buddha.

The nun was training in a traditional Buddhist monastery and feeling home-sick. She went to the Abbess for support. The Abbess’s advice? “Take it to the Buddha.”

This was not a story set two and a half thousand years ago, in the Buddha’s lifetime, but a story of training in the modern world.

I was shocked when I heard that advice. What could the Buddha do? Back in those days I understood the Buddha in one of two ways. Either we were talking about Siddhartha Gautama, or we were using the Buddha as a symbol to talk about life itself.

‘Take it to the Buddha’ reminded me of my Christian youth. I understood what prayer was in that context. But what did ‘take it to the Buddha’ mean?

Siddhartha Gautama provided excellent teachings, and his life was the model of a life well lived, but now he was just a collection of relics. How could I take anything to him? And if we were talking symbolically, how did one take their personal suffering and dilemmas to life itself?

It didn’t make much rational sense, and yet intuitively I knew there was something important that was being spoken of.

Despite my skeptism, I wondered how I might take things to the Buddha. I tried an experiment.

I approached my small shrine at home, made prostrations, offered a stick of incense and I brought my struggles to mind. “Here” I said to the Buddha “This is what I’ve got. How can you help?”

Since then I have taken things to the Buddha many, many times.

Buddhist nuns at Tsogyal Shedrup Dargyeling, Byalakuppe. Image by Cristoper J Fynn shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Sometimes an answer appears straight away. Sometimes there is no answer, apart from the loving presence of the Buddha which is answer enough. Sometimes I don’t make the offering wholeheartedly, or I don’t want to listen to the answer and I have to come back to the shrine again (and again, and again).

Sometimes there is no answer in the moment, but as I go about my daily life a new way forward appears.

I don’t know exactly what the Buddha is. But taking things to them is a powerful practice.

Does the ritual open me up to some wisdom that’s been hidden deep within my own heart? Is there a loving presence that is not me that replies? Is that loving presence life itself?

It can feel like all of these things.

However you explain it, there is some magic that happens when I open my heart where the light of compassion shines. That’s why I keep returning to the Abbesses advice, “Take it to the Buddha.”

Namo Amida Bu