Editor's Note - This is an excerpt from the April 2009 issue of the Buddhist Wheel

As I become older, I realize how inconceivable it is, that I am here in Lihue to celebrate Buddha Day or Hanamatsuri with the Kauai Buddhist Sangha. The first Hanamatsuri celebration that remains with me is a photo of the Gila Rivers Relocation Center’s celebration. Hundreds of youth and adults with the priests in front of a barrack stand on all sides of a cardboard elephant with a Flower Garden/Hanamido with an infant Buddha in the center. What a joyous memorable event it was!

Won’t you recall with me our Mahayana tradition of celebrating the birth of Siddhartha who would become the World Honored One? Endless causes and conditions have made it possible for each of us to gather as Buddhists to celebrate the birth of the infant Buddha born more than 2,500 years ago in Nepal. He was given the name Siddhartha, meaning “Every Wish Fulfilled,” expressing the great joy of his parents, King Suddhodhana and Queen Maya of the Sakya clan, on the birth of their long awaited son.

A seer predicted that if this Prince remained in the palace, he would become a great king, but if he forsook the court life to embrace a religious life, he would become a Buddha. Fatefully, as a youth he began a deep spiritual struggle until the age of 29, when he left his infant son and wife to begin a life of a mendicant. Not finding his answers through six years of difficult asceticism, he left the mendicant life to undergo the greatest of his struggles. Determined, he sat under a Bodhi tree to find the path of Awakening, and at the age of 35 years, he attained Enlightenment. In this awakening he found the Truth of Life, which began as a personal search but opened the path to enlightenment for all people.

For forty-five years he shared and lived the Teachings. Through his years of sharing the Dharma that the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path, the view of life as impermanent and the view of the world and universe as interdependent became known throughout the world. These Teachings have been a guide to all people through the centuries.

Last year I was asked, “What would Shakamuni Buddha, the founder of Buddhism say about creation?” I could only say that when this question was actually posed to him, he refused to answer the question on the nature of the universe since it would only end up in argument and more suffering.

Shakamuni Buddha taught with parables. He used stories to help people discover answers to their problems. The most widely known is the Parable of the Mustard Seed and Kisa Gotami. He used two parables to reply to the question about creation. One such parable is the story of Malunkyaputta’s arrow. “It is the story of a warrior who was hit by a poisoned arrow. Buddha pointed out, if Malunkya wanted to know who made the arrow, how it was made; where the materials came from etc. he would die before they found all the answers to such questions. The thing to do is to pull the arrow out.” Questions on creation are secondary to dealing with basic human problems. The Buddha said that the man would die before he learned the answers to all these things. Instead, Buddha urged all to walk the path to end suffering.

LET US JOIN IN CELEBRATION OF BUDDHA’S BIRTH, BRINGING JOY BY OFFERING FRIENDLINESS, LOVING KINDNESS, EQUANIMITY, AND COMPASSION TO ALL BEINGS.

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