Every now and then, whilst surfing the internet, I come across a little novelty toy called Laptop Buddha. You've probably seen him too:
Laptop Buddha is a cute little guy, but seeing him always makes me wax fondly about my own personal favorite Buddha: Exploding Head Buddha.
Ol' Exploding Head is not actually a Buddha. He's a Bodhisattva. But he's almost a Buddha, and he may as well be one. He's so cool, he's a Buddha to me. But maybe we had better start with some background for the Westerners here who may be familiar with Christianity but not with the spirituality and mythology of the East.
Buddhism is full of characters called Bodhisattvas. To put this in Christian terms, a Bodhisattva is kind of a miniature Christ. Let's compare:
Christ had it all. He lived in Heaven with God, of Whom He was a Part. But humans weren't doing too well on Earth; in fact, humans were (are?) headed straight for Hell. So one day Jesus chucked it all.
"I'm chucking it all." He told God. "I'm giving up Heaven." (Or maybe God told Him. Or maybe Both? These things are a Mystery, after all.) "I'm heading down to Earth to save people from themselves."
"Sounds like a Plan," God told Jesus. (Or They told Each Other. Whatever.) "Go to it, Kid."
And so Jesus chucked it all, He gave up Heaven, and He came down to Earth to save people. Now, the Bible is a little inscrutable on the logic of this equation: Evidently people had sinned. A lot. And sin demands punishment, I guess. I never really got the whole Loving-God/Punish-Sins-thing. Anyway, as far as Christianity goes, someone had to die, and it was going to be the Son of God. And by dying Jesus would save humanity from its sins.
(Personally, it always made a little more sense to me if maybe Jesus came to Earth to save humanity from its problems. Lord knows we have so many. And the Bible has been passed down by human hands, translated again and again, and handled by rulers and kings [a questionable bunch], for two thousand years. So maybe sins is a bad translation? But who am I to question The Good Book? So back to the subject at hand.)
Now let's look at Bodhisattvas. If Christ were a metaphor, then all Bodhisattvas would be Christs. The Bodhisattva is a person who attains enlightenment and nirvana; That's inner peace, serenity, spiritual bliss, an intuitive understanding of himself and the world... It's a form of Heaven. But the Bodhisattva sees the suffering of other people and animals. So he chucks it. He chucks enlightenment, he chucks Heaven, and he goes back to what he was, so that he can take on the problems of other people and animals and relieve their suffering and help them achieve enlightenment, too.
The Bodhisattva leaves Heaven to lend a hand on Earth. Like Christ. Only anyone can be a Bodhisattva; Anyone can give up their life to help others.
Christian, meet Buddhist. Buddhist, meet Christian. How are y'all doin'?
Onward now, to the tale of my good friend Exploding Head.
Like the Buddha, a Bodhisattva is always compassionate, and Exploding Head is THE Bodhisattva of Compassion. It's his thing. Exploding Head's real name is Avalokiteshvara, at least in India. In Tibet he is called Chenrezig. In Japan he is called Kannon or Kwannon, and in China he is Guan Yin or Kuanyin. He has many names, and he is older than Christianity is on Earth.
Let me simplify Avalokiteshvara's tale a little and tell it the way it has meaning for me.
He was a man who found peace, who came to enlightenment. And when he did, he saw the Suffering of the World. He saw the suffering of humans and the suffering of animals, and it was too much for him. And his head burst open. After he saw the suffering and his head burst open, he could never be the same again. So the pieces of him reformed into eleven heads and a thousand arms, so that he could try to deliver everything that suffers from its pain.
But when I try to picture Avalokiteshvara's head bursting, I can't see it quite that way. For me, his head just explodes. He sees the Pain of the World and his head explodes as if he's just put a shotgun to his temple and popped off both barrels. His mind is blown. Literally. And he's never quite the same again.
So Avalokiteshvara is Exploding Head Buddha to me. I'm no saviour or saint, not even close, but I know how he feels just a little, and I empathise with his Empathy. Every time I see tragedy in the news, or unspeakable cruelty to a child or an animal or an old person or ANYTHING alive, my head explodes a little too, and I wish I were magic and had a thousand magic arms and eleven magic heads just like him.
Exploding Head Buddha.
He's a Christ of a guy.
