The Buddha Effect

Over the last 25 years or so Buddhism has certainly grown in western countries.  Growing from the humble beginnings of the few pre existing Buddhist Western Societies most of which had been operating only since the end of The Second World War, by the end of the 1980's newer Buddhist Societies began emerging with  much greater frequency.  This was probably driven largely by south east asian immigration to the west, but not completely.  Immigrants from Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia Sri Lanka have helped raise the Buddhist population  of  Australia, for example from a mere handful prior to the 80's to the 300,000 plus of the latest(2006)census.  This means a1.5% fraction of our 20,000,000 population is comprised of people  officially declaring themselves to be Buddhist.  I would confidently expect that this trend would have been replicated with similar percentages in The UK, Germany Holland, The USA, Canada and so on. The point I am hoping to establish is that, although 1or 2% is statistically significant, it is nonetheless a fairly small number in comparison with
the 40 to 60% of declared Christians for the same period in Australia. However, the pervasive presence of Buddhist or neo Buddhist Iconography has been almost ubiquitous in all media far above and beyond  what this small statistical presence could be expected to proportionately generate. This is what I will refer to
as "The Buddha Effect".  To put it another way,despite a deliberate search for it twenty five years ago I had difficulty in finding any visual evidence of the presence of Buddhism in Australia beyond the confines of the few Buddhist Societies of the time. Now it is hard to miss it !

The Buddha image

When I became a Buddhist in 1984 it was a fairly easy decision to make, but rather than joining in a public show or ceremony of confirmation of this decision, I decided to "precept" myself one evening before meditating in my bedroom.  I had memorized the chants of the Homage to The Buddha, the 3 refuges and the 5 precepts. I felt confident that a heartfelt commitment to the priciples embodied in these  chants would be enough to set this moment  in my heart and mind as my real departure point for becoming a committed and sincere Buddhist.  I noted that what was also required (for the public ceremony of becoming a Buddhist)was the  traditional offering of flowers, incense and candles at the foot of a Buddha Image.  A kind of sacrement.  I decided to do the same, however I lacked  a traditional Buddha statue to complete this ceremony.  Now here is where it becomes interesting, at least to me.  At that point in time in the early 1980's, Buddhism's  real popularity in the western world was only really in its beginning stages.
As a result Buddha Statues, or Buddha Rupas as they are more corectly called by Buddhists, were quite hard to come by.  The only examples that I knew of were either in Museums, perhaps in antique stores
or perhaps Asian artifact importers etc.  Outside of the Buddhist society that I was attending I had never really come across any that were for sale or were at least not accompanied by a "museum piece price tag" well beyond my means.  So for the sake of practicality I made my traditional offerings to a grainy black and white photocopy of a Buddha  Rupa that was embedded into the script of a Sri lankan newspaper article
entitled "The uniqueness of Buddhism". Someone recently returning from Sri Lanka at that time and who was a member of  my local Buddhist Society had thoughtfully photocopied that article and had left  at our Temple numerous copies for free distribution.  I didn't know it at the time but The Buddha Rupa featured in this
photocopied A4 was non other than the serene golden Buddha located inside The Maha Bodhi Temple In Bodhgaya, India. This is the place where it is believed that  that Prince Siddhartha Gotama 2500 years ago, became The Buddha by understanding the true nature of all things, commonly referred  to as the 4 Noble Truths.  For me, using a photocopy of this halloewed Buddha Rupa to complete my Buddhist initiation  ceremony  may be seen as an auspicious start  that I was actually unaware of at the time.  Nonetheless, for me that grainy image had a particular mesmeric beauty that seemed to shine with a lustre of Nirvanic peace and remains to this day as my favorite Buddha Rupa and I still have the photocopied A4 on the wall of our meditation room.  Of course coloured photos of this Buddha Rupa are even better and I also have some of those too, one of which I employ as a desktop theme of my Windows Notebook computer and one is part of this Blog's  visual theme.  Fast forward to 2010 and these days you can purchase a worthy Buddha Rupa for as little as $2 Australian. So what has changed over the intervening years?  I will explore this in detail starting with my next posting.