Earlier this month, Fox News pundit Brit Hume made a plea for Tiger Woods to be a “great example to the world” by changing his religion of choice from Buddhism to Christianity.
Hume presumed that by making the switch, Woods will find forgiveness for his amoral personal life, a forgiveness that Buddhism doesn’t offer.
The statement made only the slightest of waves around the media, leaving me to assume that most of America could care less about someone espousing a seriously ignorant view of a major world religion.
I’m guessing that this is because, while everyone knows about Christianity and is familiar with its concepts of forgiveness and punishment, most of America probably thinks Buddhists are a bunch of confused peaceniks worshiping a fat guy in a diaper when they should be reading the Bible.
In the interest of counteracting these ideas, allow me to explain what Buddhism is and why a Buddhist doesn’t need Christianity in order to be forgiven. First of all, Buddhism isn’t the worshiping of a fat guy.
The fat guy with the “Buddha belly” you always see is (me, or...) a Chinese luck deity that at some point along the line just got mixed in with the depiction of Buddha.
Buddhism is also not the worshiping of a skinny guy, or a tall guy, or a short guy, or a short girl, or any other kind of person. In Buddhism you do not worship any kind of supreme spiritual being. Buddhists also aren’t all that worried about the afterlife, or the existence of a soul, or a list of rules passed down by God, or the historical validity of their ancient myths.
What matters to a Buddhist is kindness, compassion and personal morality. Buddhist practice is a discipline, like karate or foosball, that teaches people to act from compassion (meaning to share in the suffering of others) instead of from their own selfish desire.
Your ability to do this is called your “Buddha nature,” and everyone’s got it, even if he or she chooses to act from it. So, with this in mind, is Tiger Woods the best example of a Buddhist?
I could argue both ways. He isn’t in the sense that his actions during his extra-marital affairs were caused by his own selfishness and only served to hurt the people around him very deeply.
But at the same time, there is no perfect Buddhist. I’m sure even the Dalai Lama himself makes mistakes.
A Buddhist just tries to be more aware of their own capacity to make mistakes than he or she had previously been. They don’t look to someone other than themselves to save them from the situation.
They take responsibility for the mistakes they made, and they try to ease the suffering of the people they hurt. To my knowledge, this point of view has more in common with the idea of “karma” than the mystical definition that everyone typically uses, and more in common with the traditional Jewish meaning of the word “sin” as well.
So does Tiger need Jesus for forgiveness? No, he needs to look at the mess he made, accept that he acted like a huge turd, and try to help his family get its life back in order.
And we, as the adoring public that made him famous in the first place, need to give him the space to do that, instead of sticking our noses into his business and getting all holier-than-thou on him.
1 comments