I know I haven’t posted in a long time. Long story short, I’ve been crazy busy. And maybe just crazy. But I’m back now and I'm going to try to pick up the slack and at least give you a taste of the Buddhism I’ve been practicing before the entire month is over.
One thing I've noticed in some of my research is that most Buddhists believe that all living creatures reincarnate. We humans are supposedly at the best level you can reach, at least if you have to have a living, breathing body. (It’s also possible to reincarnate into various ghost or spirit states.) But animals are part of the whole life/death/rebirth cycle.
Apparently, some Buddhists, in an effort to get their pets closer to reincarnating at the human level next time around, will bring their dogs to temples or chant in front of their pets, hoping the animals will pick up enough spiritual knowledge to speed up their journey toward nirvana.
Although I haven’t yet stooped to chanting with my dogs, I did get to thinking. If Buddhism is all about letting go of attachments and living only in the present moment, aren’t dogs actually kind of better at it than most of us?
I mean, my dogs don’t cling to material things. If you throw them a toy, they’ll play with it, but they don’t notice if you take it away. They love everybody. And they live every moment to the fullest, never worrying about achieving something “better”—to them, each moment is perfect in and of itself, just like the Buddha says it should be.
If you ask me, my dogs are better Buddhists than any human being I’ve ever met.
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| They even LOOK Buddhist, don't they? |
So maybe those temple dog-walkers have it reversed. They ought to be trying to imitate their dogs, instead of trying to get their dogs to be more like them.
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