Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: A Very Pagan and Buddhist EASTER (video)

Sunday, March 31, 2013

A Very Pagan and Buddhist EASTER (video)

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (Easter, 2013)

Monumental Kwan Yin, Buddhist temple, Adelanto, California (J*Phillips/flickr.com)

Fertility: Ēastre, the Stork, bunny, angel-babies...

Easter is said to be the most important religious feast in the Christian liturgical year. Forget the birth (when Santa Claus and the Stork conspired to bring the star child into the world so we could all have Christmas); the real miracle was not-dying.

It is believed by Christians to be the rebirth of Jesus (St. Issa), which would mean he died-died, but he didn't even die. Surviving the relatively common torture ("passion") and returning to the Jewish trading outpost in Kashmir, India, the great sage grew old (some say 120, even 150), passed away, and was buried/entombed where (Rozabal) his remains are worshiped to this day by the local Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

Queen of Heaven (PearlsInTheEternity)

Rozabal (रोज़ाबल) is the name of a Muslim shrine located in the Khanyaar quarter of the city of Srinagar in Kashmir two graves, one on top of the other. The word rauza means tomb, the word bal means place, often a landing place by a lake, hence "place of the tomb." Locals have traditionally referred to the main sage buried there as Yuzasaf (Yuz Asaf, Youza Asouph, "Son of Joseph"). The other is Mir Sayyid Naseeruddin. The shrine was relatively unknown until the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, claimed in 1899 that it is actually the tomb of Jesus /Isa/Issa the "anointed one" (christ, Greek, kristos) a belief shared by many Ahmadis and an increasing number of Christians today thanks to the discovery of Nicolas Notovitch and the scholarship of Holger Kersten.

Earth gives birth to bodies (Maui Almanac).

Now the Stork and St. Nick may not be part of the official Christian story -- certainly they are part of the popular fiction we feed our kids along with sugar-and-offal candies in Americaland -- but the tomb and trip to India are true.

Bhumi, the Earth Goddess (MS-M)

To "resurrect" one would have to do, and if there was no death, was there a miracle? Surviving crucifixion was as easy as bribing the guards, who would then pierce one with a sword to prevent one from drowning as fluid fills the lungs and drowns one in three days. St. Issa/Jesus was pulled down quickly and released at night. The cover story was he was dead, entombed, and lo and behold, it's a miracle: He's not there! He's dressed in Indian white -- appropriate to an Indian sage, a muni, a yogi, a dhyana-meditator. Jain monastics, Hindu priests, Buddhist probationer (anagarikas) and even intensive lay practitioners.

We know it seems sad that Jesus/Issa could have been a Buddhist, or practiced Buddhism, or even learned Buddhism. But it is a wonderful thing! He learned other Eastern philosophies as well -- Jainism (the other wandering-ascetic movement contemporary with the Buddha which survives down to this day) and Vedic Brahmanism, which became Hinduism, largely as expressed in it monotheism (interpreted not as there being only one god, because there are many, but interpreted as there being only one ultimate godhead as the source of all reality and all expressions through other gods and sages, Brahman personified as Great Brahma by the Brahmins).

Mahayana ("Great Vehicle") is essentially a form of universalism/"catholicism": the story of a second coming (Messiah/Maitreya) outshone by a feminine expression of spirituality, a mother goddess of mercy and compassion "who hears the cries of the world" (Buddhist Kwan Yin/Avalokiteshvara or Ashtoreth, the chief goddess or female divinity)... emerging out of the modern Near East. It did not begin with Buddhism. It is shared by Zoroastrianism, Mithraism (the pre-Christian Roman Empire's "Pagan" religion worshipping a resurrection figure, Mithras, who is essentially the template for the popular or PR "Jesus" figure the world knows about, the world recognizes as their own because Catholicism got where it got as the largest religion by appropriating everyone else's story, savior figure (Mithra, Maitreya, Messiah...), and even the miraculous life details (the Buddha-to-be, or Bodhisattva, in Tusita heaven prior to taking re-birth on Earth)...

The good St. Issa and modern Peeps (GPS)

Many Christians believe their miraculous "savior," a god incarnate, but not just a god rather an expression of the ultimate GOD, the Godhead/Godhood) occurred on the third day of a garden variety Roman torture ritual, crucifixion, around 33 BCE (before the common era). There was not enough time to die of the crucifixion itself. But Christian theology, using the PR Jesus, built an entire creed around odd astrotheological consistencies (best explained by Jordan Maxwell) in many popular religions, even contorted to fit the story of the Buddha.

Easter is a movable feast with origins in Jewish Passover (a time of animal sacrifice when an innocent and unblemished or "pure" lamb was killed) and ancient European-Pagan rites of spring.

Vile but very cute junkfood (phoodie.info)

Of course, nowadays many non-religious cultural elements have become part of the spring break holiday -- such as Peeps, which are made of toxic white sugar, gelatin (gelatinous boiled entrails of ruminant animals like goats, cows, and pigs). And those aspects are often celebrated by Christians, Neo-Pagans, Jews, and others.