Humans tend to think in symbols. We consolidate meaning around objects and make them a locus for our perceptions of the world. Some symbols have thus attained very powerful positive or negative meanings. Even 3000 year old solar symbols.
Flash back to the late 1930’s to the mid 1940’s. At the time two of the greatest evils of the twentieth century, the holocaust and the terrors of one of the most destructive wars of all times, swept across Europe and in their wake followed a very distinctive flag.
The symbol on that flag has become even more anathema than the ideals which the flag is seen as representing, after all we haven’t managed to abolish racists or fachists, in some parts of the world both racism and fachism remain as powerful sources of suffering as they ever were.
Flash foreward to the present again. On page 21 of Kung Fu Magazine is an artist’s rendition of the proposed Green Dragon Mountain Buddha statue.
Buddhism, the oh so hard to pidgeonhole not-religion/religion/philosophy/lifestyle, is not known for intolerance and cruelty. Yet right there on the heart of the reclining Buddha is the Swastika. To some that might seem surprising, if they don’t know the history of this particular symbol.
It emerged in India (amoung a group of people who despite their dark hair and dark eyes have infinately more claim to the term “aryan” than any blond haired, blue eyed thug) as a symbol representing the Sun. This symbol was filled with all the beneficial ideas of what the sun was: life giver, warmth giver, bringer of day. The ultra-ascetic, insanely pacifistic Jainist faith adopted this symbol as one of their key religious symbols.
About 2500 years ago a certain young noble became a renounciate, recent study suggests that the masters at whose feet he made the first, misdirected attempt at enlightenment were likely jainists. This man eventually became the Lord Buddha and as Buddhism formed from Jainists, Hindus and others over the course of his life that symbol, along with others drawn from Jain and Hindu sources (such as the third eye and the lotus) became the basis for a symbolic representation of this new teaching.
Hitler later appropriated this symbol for his army of fanatics. Why did he steal so much from India? I don’t know, I’ll be honest about that. However when you observe modern European and North American Buddhist establishments that symbol has (in my reasonable but not comprehensive experience) been absent, tainted by the filth of the Nazis.
Yet in China it has remained. I have video footage of men, dressed as warrior monks (though whether they are or not I don’t know) marching in a circle in this pattern and now the largest Buddha on earth may bear it on his heart.
It raises a question: we value symbols. This particular symbol has a legacy of almost 3000 years as a sign of life, warmth and prosperity and a legacy of sixty years of cruelty, death and anathema.
The question I pose: which past in the end holds more importence, should the Swastika be reclaimed by the Jainists and Buddhists of the world or should it remain forever the grim mark of two of the twentieth centuries greatest evils?
Also a second question, one to mull over: What would have happened had Hitler chosen to defile the Crucifix instead?
I’m also left handed. Left handed people tend to be right-brain dominant and the right half of the brain is the section that is more likely to process symbolic datum. So I am a bit biassed in this regard but I do maintain that symbolic cognition is at the foundation of linguistic thought. Words are themselves symbols for things.
