Light as an Orientating Feature

So starting to move towards the Buddha, trying to become more like the Buddha, seeing the Dharma as the truth and deciding to act skillfully in light of that, and then recognizing the Sangha as the possibility of a real truly human society and community.

So it's not easy, but we're fortunate that we do have something that we can orientate ourselves towards as Buddhists.

Without some sense of orientation, our life is just full of sort of instincts, quite self-centered and leading towards suffering for ourself and others.

So we do need something to help us orient our lives, and that gap between ourself and the Buddha can be closed by following the path and practicing the Dharma.

So as well as that image of sort of setting things upright or turning things around, I think another image that is used quite often is that of light, light as an orienting feature in the darkness.

So the Samyutta Nikaya, Light of the World, we're gonna hear the full reading of this later in the puja, but I'll just read a little bit.

"Bhikkhus, as long as moon and sun do not arise in the world, so long is there no manifestation of a great light, of great brightness.

There is then blinding darkness, a total darkness.

Similarly, bhikkhus, as long as a Tathagata, a Perfect One, a Fully Enlightened One, does not arise in the world, so long is there no manifestation of a great light, of great brightness.

There is then a blinding darkness, a total darkness.

There is no declaring, teaching, making known, establishing, disclosing, analyzing, making clear of the four noble truths.

But when a Tathagata, a Perfect One, a Fully Enlightened One, arises in the world, then there is a manifestation of a great light, of great brightness." Of course, enlightenment itself, the word, is connected also with light, isn't it? So that sense of light coming about in the darkness.

So another little verse again from one of the Theris, from Soma.

"The darkness is destroyed.

There is no more coming to be.

The mass of ignorance is shattered." And then just one more image of light, which is slightly different.

This is from Shantideva, who's an eighth-century Buddhist monk who wrote the Bodhicharyavatara, so a really influential, uh, text in Mahayana Buddhism.

"At night, in darkness thick with clouds, a lightning flash gives a moment's brightness.

So sometime by the power of the Buddha, the mind of the world might for a moment turn to acts of merit.

That being so, the power of good is always weak, while the power of evil is immense and terrible.

What other good could ever conquer it but for the awakening mind?" Yeah, so we have this sense of a world of- that's disorienting, perhaps frightening, perhaps confusing.

And my experience, and I hope the experience of many others, is that Buddhist centers can act as a gateway, a portal, or even a bridge to the Dharma life, to the Three Jewels, to going for refuge, and hopefully to the transcendental.