Work and Play
• Buddha came from the warrior caste, a prince of luxury. After seeing the four sights of suffering, he realized that play was not permanent.
• Buddha left home and worked at being an aesthetic, extremely focused in working at finding the answer to suffering.
• Buddha realized that both work and play were extremes and constructed the ‘Middle Way’, based on his having lived the extremes of both worlds. The middle ground in his system is one of spontaneity, which has both work and play meeting in every moment of one’s life.
• Unfortunately, most do not see Buddhism this way, and see Buddhists as working very hard, with very little play. This may be true when first starting to follow the Buddhist way, but is based on achieving discipline of the practice first, and then having the spontaneous moments of play within the ordinariness of life. To more advanced Buddhists, their life is a play at work. For some, they may never reach this point of practicing enlightenment in the everyday world.
Sacrifice
• Buddhism condemns the spiritual practices of sacrifice as practiced by other systems around them, especially those of the caste system.
• Buddhism condemns the ornate ceremonies and rituals that require a mediator between the gods and humans, believing that nirvana can only be achieved by direct experience within one’s own self (even though that self is no self, another argument entirely).
• Buddha teaches that even the gods cannot escape samsara, so asking for their help is futile when they themselves need enlightenment to escape the rounds of rebirth.
• Buddhism supports ‘middle aestheticism’ as found in the Vinaya Pitaka, a collection of texts that inform Buddhists in the proper rules of conduct of the Sangha, the community of ordained followers. Thirteen practices are posited, with none being reinforced through discipline since these are voluntary choices that are not to be done for recognition. These are: wear patched robes; wear three robes; beg for alms – food; be undiscriminating between the houses that you beg alms at; have only one meal per day; eat only from the alms bowl; decline extra offers of food; live in the forest; live at the base of a tree; live under the open sky; live in a graveyard; be satisfied with your dwelling; and sleep while sitting upright. These are to be done for their internal value and not for external praise and self promotion.
