The Buddha lamp

Buddha LampThis lamp was once the valued possession of my now departed mother-in-law. She’s gone, but the lamp remains.

It’s been on a journey, as various relatives tried to find a place for it. None seem content with it. Now it’s at my house.

I don’t believe I’ve seen other religious icons made into light fixtures. The Buddha seems to have taken the transformation in stride. Still, it’s certainly not very dignified.

Nobody seems to want the lamp, yet we hang on to it for purely sentimental reasons.

Ironically, Buddhists have something important to say about that kind of attachment. From Wikipedia: “The Three Marks of Existence are impermanence, suffering, and not-self. The doctrine asserts that because things are impermanent, attachment to them is futile and leads to suffering.”

Admittedly, the human suffering here is insignificant. But there it is. We either suffer with the Buddha lamp, or suffer with idea of discarding grandma’s parlor light from the house in Summit City. And along with it, a part of her in our memory. Our attachment to the impermanent is the source of the anxiety.

And so the Buddha lamp offers illumination, with both warm light and insight.

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