before he found the first of these, who did indeed understand. Buddha was somewhat notorious for his subtler teaching methods, on occasion not resorting to words at all. The classic instance of this is the Flower Sermon. Standing on a mountain with his disciples around him, the Buddha simply held up a golden lotus flower. I imagine his disciples gazed at oneanother in quiet discontent, searching for someone who grasped the meaning of this gesture, trying to understand. One man smiled. His name was Mahakasyapa, and his quiet smile, indicating he understood, prompted Buddha to appoint him his successor. The secret of life cannot be expressed in words, it must be experienced. To become a Buddha that would mean you would have to become fully enlightened. Many people question whether this is level of enlightenment is even possible to attain. One thing that may be close are the Sangha. The Sangha (Buddhist monastic order) are people who follow the Dharma and its teachings. Their monastaries and nunneries are spiritual dynamos, and their monks and nuns are regarded with a great deal of respect. They have rejected a great deal of negative thinking and afflictive emotions. The Sangha provides the outer framework and the favorable conditions for all those who earnestly desire to devote their life to the realization of the highest goal of deliverance, free of worldly distractions. Buddhism can be better understood when contrasted with Hinduism from which it sprang and split. To understand Buddha's teachings, we need to understand the Hinduism that provoked it. Buddha sought to create a religion devoid of the elements that clog it's works; authority, ritual, explanations, tradition, grace, and mystery. Each of these elements would seem at first glance an important piece of religion as a whole, but Buddhism appears to have developed without these 'important' aspects in tact, without which we might have said it were impossible for religion t...
