What values are being valorized in the story of the Buddha's birth? Barry Magid April 7th 2018

In Japan in April, Vesak commemorates the Buddha's birth. While not particularly important for training the way Rohatsu is, it's an important folk holiday in which babies are brought into the temples to be washed with water and sweet tea. It's one of the rare situations we get Zen talking about babies. In some ways you can the core maxim of Buddhism is "remember you are going to die." A core maxim of psychoanalysis might be "remember that you were a child once." How does the centrality of impermanence and futility of attachment relate to the myth of the Buddha's early life? While we can't really psychoanalyze the old myths, we can look and ask what values are being valorized and allegorized.

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