HANAMATSURI: The Photo Exhibit

We have been fortunate to be able to offer a solo photography exhibit at several of our festivals.  This is not the kind of photography where you walk past beautiful photos of landscapes, sunsets, exotic travel sights, or even botanicals (which would make sense at a Flower Festival).  This is Buddhist photography—the Dharma, or teachings, in visual form.

Confucius, born less than a hundred years after Shayamuni Buddha, said: “By three methods we may learn wisdom:  first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.”

Educators tell us there are three styles of learning:  auditory, visual, and kinetic.  Visual learners need to see material to learn; auditory learners hear information to absorb it; and kinetic learners move when they learn—think cooking, sports, arts, mechanics.   Although students may have a mixture of styles of learning, traditional teaching most frequently takes place with the teacher who speaks and the students who listen.  It is how we receive the Dharma in our Sunday services.  But the Buddha tells us to test and try for ourselves the truth of his teachings, and not to rely on them solely  because he taught them.  “O monks and wise men, just as a goldsmith would test his gold by burning, cutting and rubbing it, so must you examine my words and accept them, not merely out of reverence for me.”

Our lives become Dharma; the world becomes Dharma when we test the teachings in our lives—very much like kinetic learning.

Toward the end of his long life, the Buddha took his disciples to a quiet pond for instruction.  As was the practice, the disciples sat in a circle around him, awaiting his instruction.

Without speaking, the Buddha held a flower in his hand.  The disciples waited for him to expound on the meaning of his gesture, but still the Buddha did not speak.  Suddenly one disciple, Mahakashyapa, smiled.

The Flower Sermon was a wordless teaching that Mahakashyapa grasped, also without a word. 

The Hanamatsuri photo exhibit is a teaching on Buddha nature—an important reminder that our Buddha nature is within all of us, even if we can barely discern it (especially in ourselves).  As the festival attendees make their way into the temple hondo and move along the row of images of Buddha statues photographed in Asia and the US, one man reaches the last image—an ordinary Tibetan child, a nomad with a dirty face and untroubled eyes—and bows.  He has just seen and recognized Buddha nature in an unexpected image.

The Buddha’s teaching has been transmitted without a word spoken.