Buddha at the Basketball Game

Often people have asked, “If you could have dinner with any historical figure/ artist/ musician/ writer/ etc., who would it be and what would you discuss?” An intriguing question to be sure. But why just dinner? What would it be like to play “Capture the flag” with Jesus and his disciples? Make some playdough sculptures with Plato? Play Parcheesi with Emily Dickinson up in her room?

 

Today, I would have liked to have seen Buddha cheering on his son at a basketball game. This thought triggered by going to my granddaughter Zadie’s basketball game and feeling the full spectrum of feelings—anger at the ref for unjustly calling a foul on her, body contortions every time she shot wishing the ball to fall through the hoop, fists in the air when it did, sympathetic sadness when her team lost and she felt she played badly. You get the idea. Would Buddha just have sat calmly through it all with that slight smile on his face?

 

Of course, I hate to disparage his extraordinary achievement of spiritual enlightenment and the legacy that followed. But from one point of view, Buddha was a deadbeat Dad. Left his wife and son to follow his own quest and never looked back. Named his son Rahula, translated as “impediment” to his spiritual progress. How many years of therapy would one need to be thought of as an impediment by one’s father? And needless to say, Buddha never went to a single one of Rahula’s basketball games. 

 

But if he had, I would have liked to have been sitting next to him in the stands. Seen if he cheered him on or got emotionally involved in the game or could feel the pain of his son’s disappointment when his team lost. Just curious.