At Wesak a channel of energy flow that is set up in order to release the energy of enlightenment into human consciousness.
Robert: Welcome. Inner Sight is simply seeing that which is always present, but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way, with new eyes, so stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Today’s topic is the Wesak Festival and before we explore that particular topic let’s give some credit to Alice Bailey, the founder of the Lucis Trust organization and who wrote twenty-four volumes of literature. All of the dialogue that you hear on this show emanates from the works of Alice Bailey, as does the following thought: “Year after year, ever since the Buddha achieved his goal of illumination, an effort has been made to increase the flow of enlightenment into the world and to throw the light of wisdom, experience, and understanding into human minds. At each full moon of May, this has been the effort.” Well, that certainly is a noble effort that all of humanity needs. Can you describe the Wesak Festival?
Sarah: I’ll try. It’s the major Buddhist festival each year. It’s celebrated in all parts of Asia where there are Buddhists of whatever aspect of Buddhism they may follow: the Hinayana or Mahayana traditions. Every Buddhist knows about Wesak, and it’s the festival that is coordinated in Buddhist lands with the full moon of May. In the Ageless Wisdom teaching that’s given in the books of Alice Bailey, it’s coordinated with the festival of the full moon of Taurus, which sometimes falls in April. So, there’s a little bit of disparity in that between the Ageless Wisdom and the traditional, I guess you could say, Orthodox Buddhist celebration of Wesak. It’s the festival on which the Buddha, according to Buddhist belief, achieved his enlightenment, sitting under the Bodhi tree. Maybe to give a kind of a background to this festival or to put it in context—I know I’ve mentioned this before—years ago there was a television program called Kung Fu with David Carrigan, I think. Do you remember that?
Robert: Yes, I do.
Sarah: He was a Buddhist man in the American West in the nineteenth century, as I recall, and he had a spiritual master who guided his spiritual development. I can remember one program; this must have been in the very early seventies. He was called Grasshopper by his teacher, and he was determined to attend the Wesak Festival. That was the first time I’d ever heard of it, and then I came upon the term in the writings of Alice Bailey. But it’s universally accepted by Buddhists that on this day, the day of Wesak, the festival of the full moon, the Buddha’s enlightenment is commemorated. And it’s a kind of a day of convergence, wouldn’t you say, when Buddhists come together? That film that we’ve seen of the Tibetan pilgrims journeying to Mount Kailash is another example of convergence.
Dale: Right. We have a videotape that was made some years ago by a friend of ours that actually went to Tibet.
Sarah: An Australian filmmaker.
Dale: Right. He went to this valley in western Tibet around this very sacred mountain called Mount Kailash. It’s a sacred place for the Tibetan, and each year at this time, during this festival, pilgrims from all over Tibet and in that region of the world assemble in this valley and they have a celebration.
Sarah: They make an arduous journey, some of them.
Dale: They walk and they come by car or truck or by horseback or whatever but they all manage to show up at this very isolated valley, way up in the mountains in western Tibet. And it’s a very sacred time for the Tibetan. But it’s not just for Tibetans, it’s for any Buddhists in the world or for anyone, actually, because our film crew that came there were not Buddhists by any means, but they were allowed to come in and film it, and many lamas were there, and it’s around this big sacred mountain called Mount Kailash.
Sarah: And there’s a great deal of ritual associated with the Tibetan’s observance of Wesak at Mount Kailash and that is also depicted in the writings of Alice Bailey. The film that you’re mentioning showed them in movements around the foot of the mountain and converging in various formations and prostrating themselves in, I guess you could say, in prayer, in obeisance to divinity. It was very inspiring to see it. And that also is described in the writings of Alice Bailey, that this festival of Wesak is a time when human beings can participate along with great spiritual Beings who form, I guess you could say, a channel of energy flow that is set up in order to release the energy of enlightenment into human consciousness. And the writings of Alice Bailey say that at this moment each year, the Buddha returns to humanity in his spiritual body, not physically, but in his spiritual or etheric body, he returns briefly to this sacred valley in the Himalayas. It may very well be Mount Kailash, as the Tibetans believe, we don’t know, but he returns for a moment bringing the blessing of Shambhala.
Dale: And it’s a great festival for spiritual beings all over the world because Alice Bailey in her writings described an experience that she had attending this festival, but it was in a dream state, as she describes it. She describes this whole scene, and it’s quite remarkable because the Christ is there, many of the great Masters of the Wisdom are also present, and many disciples and initiates are there in whatever state, whether it’s in a physical state or in a non-physical state. They all know their place in this great festival, and before the Buddha arrives, there is chanting and mantras and formations that evoke powerful energies. All of this is a buildup to the Buddha’s arrival, which he comes in from off in the distance. And this is as it’s described by Alice Bailey, by the way. I haven’t seen it myself personally, but this is her description. It’s a very powerful scene that happens because the Buddha arrives and he hovers over this assembled group and bestows his blessing on the assembled people there and then he departs and the whole thing happens very quickly but his blessing has been given to the world and the energies pour through the assembled group into humanity.
Sarah: Dale and I were discussing before this program how much to say about this festival, and to be honest I’m always uncomfortable describing it because I feel that it’s futile to try to put into words concepts and spiritual recognitions and experiences that one hasn’t undergone personally. It brings a kind of a skepticism to the concrete mind, a tendency to analyze and perhaps second guess, but the best we can do is suggest that people read more about it, and if they find that it evokes their intuitive recognition and response, that’s the best way to understand it. But in summary, I guess the most significant thing about this return of the Buddha each year is that he brings what’s called the touch of Shambhala, which is the energy of the will, the spiritual will. And I think all of us would agree that humanity is in bad need of the spiritual will if we are ever to get ourselves out of the present impasse and state of wrong relationships that exist among so much of humanity. It takes the will, the will to good, to overcome a lot of the difficulties that seem so entrenched. And that’s the hope to me of Wesak each year.
Dale: And that’s the thing about the Wesak Festival. It’s an ongoing and recurring event each year. It’s not a commemoration of some historic event that happened centuries ago. It happens every year and it’s a live presentation and a recurring experience and that’s the really unique thing about it that brings life to this festival each year.
Sarah: The other aspect of it is the convergence which I mentioned, the convergence of the Tibetans who go to Mount Kailash, the convergence of people like the fellow on Kung Fu who wanted to attend, and we’ve seen films, by the way, in Burma and Thailand and Taiwan, I believe, where Buddhists also come together at this time for this observance. Well, there’s another kind of convergence that is possible to all of us, and it’s in consciousness, in meditation. That’s a point of convergence, group meditation, when we come together and work together in group meditation. And that’s the opportunity that’s available at the festival meeting that we hold each year.
Robert: We’ve said so much about the Wesak Festival. Could you more or less summarize what the significance, once again, of the Wesak Festival is, especially for those people who might have just tuned in?
Sarah: Well, at this time, when there’s so much struggle and misunderstanding between the different nations of the world and between what we call the East and the West, one of the most remarkable things about Wesak is that it seems to unite East and West in one great expression of spiritual aspiration. And one of the most beautiful aspects of the Wesak Festival as given in the books of Alice Bailey is the partnership of what she calls the “two brothers,” the Buddha and the Christ. We think of them as representing entirely different and separate religions, but that separation is only in the concrete minds of us human beings. On their level of existence, they work together on behalf of humanity, and to me that’s deeply reassuring to know that there is no separation, no cleavage on their level. They understand each other perfectly and work together. The Christ cooperates with the Buddha at Wesak in creating this channel of energy flow so that the energy—or the forces of enlightenment as they’re called— which the Buddha brings can be released into human consciousness. That’s one of the most significant aspects of it. It brings, you could say, a stimulation, an inspiration to human beings if they’re mentally awake.
Dale: Yes, I think that’s the unique part about it, that Westerners have to realize that even though it’s traditionally been an Eastern festival, the Festival of Wesak, it’s really a festival that is meant for all humanity, because the energies that are available, that are channeled in through the Buddha and the Christ, those energies are distributed to all humanity, regardless of what one’s religion is. It isn’t a question of religion to these individuals. It’s stimulating energy that’s poured into human consciousness at this time of the year. And so, we in the West have to begin to look at the value of this great festival and see it for what it is: as a great coming together, as you just said, a convergence of East and West; people all over the world coming together.
Sarah: One of the interesting things about these forces of enlightenment that are released each year at this festival is that they affect the minds of human beings. They prompt or stimulate intelligent planning. And that you can see is so needed in the world today when we think about, for example, the rebuilding of Iraq, a nation that has been really devastated by war, or Afghanistan or the situation in the Middle East or the problems in West Africa. You can see that this stimulation of enlightenment that would bring about a more wise and correct planning on the part of the people who have responsibility for these decisions is so needed, and we can think if we work in meditation at this time of visualizing the direction of these forces of enlightenment into the minds of all who work on a humanitarian level, all who work in the media and report on the state of the world. They convey knowledge and information to vast numbers of humanity. They are in need of enlightenment. We can work in meditation to direct these energies into consciousness so that those receptive minds can be impressed and stimulated by them. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that they know these energies are coming to them. It’s simply a matter of their minds being open and responsive and the channel for the energy flow being created by the worldwide group of meditators.
Dale: That’s why we have our meditation meetings at this time, too, to cooperate with this vast worldwide group of people who are working in meditation around the world.
Sarah: And there are meetings all over the world at this time, truly.
Dale: Right, so we come together to cooperate with this, and we have a very special meditation outline to follow that is very much in line with these very energies, the energies of enlightenment and of love and of the will to good flowing into human consciousness.
Robert: I’ve certainly enjoyed those meetings. I’ve gone the last couple of years and there’s a lot of discussion of spiritual philosophy and meditation and also you might meet a lot of very interesting people there too who are of like mind in the way of spirituality. What makes the Buddha’s teaching so relevant to life today?
Sarah: Well, as we know, Buddhism is really growing in the West. The interest in Buddhism has expanded incredibly over the last few decades. Just this past week, I read a new book on Buddhism that was written by Huston Smith and one of his premier students; I think his name is Philip Novak. It was just published this week actually and it was so impressive the description of the growth of Buddhism around the world, but nowhere more so than in America. There’s a great interest in the Buddha’s message, and I think it has to do with the enlightenment that the Buddha achieved on that full moon of May twenty-five hundred years ago. By enlightenment, he discovered the reality of life on earth and that it depends upon the development of three characteristics: detachment, dispassion, and discrimination. He found that through detachment, he was able to achieve release from the grip of the material things of life, from the material realm. And through dispassion, he was freed from the desire that characterizes the emotional life of so many people. And through discernment, his mind was able to choose freely and wisely how to live, and this was his message that he spent the rest of his life teaching. It is given in the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path of Buddhism. People respond to this because it’s a message for how to live free of suffering, free of desire.
Dale: That’s the real thrust of his message because he saw so much suffering in his time, and so he wanted to find the way to get right at the root cause of suffering, and that’s why he put such a focus on that. I think Buddhism is more of a way of life, isn’t it, than really a religion as such?
Sarah: Well, there is a debate whether it’s a religion or not, because he didn’t teach belief in a particular or personal God. And so, people who are oriented to that kind of religious persuasion doubt that Buddhism is a religion, but I believe that it is a religion. It’s a path that leads to divinity. It’s also a path that leads to earthly living, skill in living in the world. He refused, interestingly, to teach the inner esoteric doctrines that some of the people begged him to teach and which he understood as a result of his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree when he demanded the secrets of the universe be revealed to him and he finally made his breakthrough. But he felt that teaching these to other people was not the answer to the release of their suffering. He said he had to teach how to live freely on earth, free of desire, free of craving and longing for material things. So, it’s a technique for living.
Dale: Quite often, all those doctrines, including religious doctrines and esoteric doctrines, can actually get in the way, I think. They become a blockage or they become a distraction because people are more concerned about all the intricacies of doctrines and so forth, and they forget about the basic teachings of the Buddha as to how to overcome suffering.
Sarah: Well, certainly he taught the power of desire and the corrupting influence of desire on the human spirit. And one of the major doctrines of Buddhism is to learn to recognize desire, how it plays out in your life, and how to free yourself of it through the mind, through the use of the mind. His very name, Buddha, means “the enlightened one.” When he was asked what he was he said, “I am awake.” And that is what he wanted all of us to be: awake to the reality of life which is that everything is transitory, everything comes to an end, and we have to be prepared to let it all slip through our fingers knowing that on another level the ocean of being endures, and we are all a part of it and return to it; to me that’s the essence of Buddha’s message.
Dale: And I think it’s worth saying again that the Buddha and the Christ work hand in hand. They are two great brothers in this great effort of bringing enlightenment and love into the world. The Buddha represents the wisdom aspect and the Christ represented and embodied the love aspect. And the two of them together represent one great energy of love and wisdom.
Sarah: If we can participate in the Wesak Festival, these words from Alice Bailey, I think, give us some guidance. She said, “Remember, no matter who we are and where we may be placed or whatever the nature of our environment is, no matter how isolated we may feel from others, each of us on Wesak can work and think and act in group formation and function as a silent distributor of force.
Robert: Well said. You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called The Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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