Renting the Buddha's Tooth...
Thursday November 10, 2005
According to Tricycle’s website, this December in Kalmykia will see the opening of the world’s largest Buddhist. Kalmykia is Europe’s only Buddhist territory, by the shores of the Caspian sea.
The “European Buddhism Center” in the capital Elista will house a thirty foot Buddha statue and the Dalai Lama has been invited to the opening. Not only this, but President of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is hoping to rent the tooth of the Buddha owned by the Indian government.
I didn’t know that you could rent the teeth of the Buddha (or at least one of them) from the Indian government, but if you are tempted to make use of this handy public service, then you might be able to save a bit of cash. There is a Tibetan story of the young man who promised his mother that he would return from India with a relic of the Buddha. On the way home, he realised that he had forgotten; but finding the corpse of a dog by the side of the road, he yanked out a tooth, wrapped it in silk, and returned home, giving this to his mother instead, and telling her that it was indeed a relic of the Buddha. The old woman was delighted. Every day she did prostrations before the dog’s tooth. Such was her devotion that she attained awakening thereby, and on her death showers of blossoms fell from the heavens.
The point, it seems, is this: that it is not the presence or absence of the tooth that bears fruit, but rather the states of heart and mind that are cultivated. When it comes down to it, Buddhism is really about the human heart and mind, and not the cunning deployment of magic tricks.
