The Buddha's parable of the arrow smeared with poison highlights the practical nature of Buddhism:
"It is as if a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and kinsmen were to get a surgeon to heal him, and he were to say, "I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know by what man I was wounded, whether he is of the warrior caste, or a Brahmin, or of the agricultural or the lowest caste."
Or if he were to say, "I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know of what name of family the man is; --or whether he is tall, or short, or of middle height; or whether he is black, or dark, or yellowish; or whether he comes from such and such a village, or town, or city; or until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a chapa or a kodanda, or until I know whether the bow-string was of swallow-wort, or bamboo fiber, or sinew, or hemp, or of milk-sap tree, or until I know whether the shaft was from a wild or cultivated plant; or whether it was feathered from a vulture's wing or a heron's or a hawk's, or a peacock's; or whether it was wrapped round the the sinew of an ox, or of a buffalo, or of a ruru-deer, or of a monkey; or until I know whether it was an ordinary arrow, or a razor-arrow, or an iron arrow, or of a calf-tooth arrow. Before knowing all this, that man would die."
Similarly, it is not on the view that the world is eternal, that it is finite, that body and soul are distinct, or that the Buddha exists after death, that a religious life depends. Whether these views or their opposites are held, there is still rebirth, there is old age, there is death, and grief, lamentation, suffering, sorrow, and despair . . . I have not spoken to these views because they do not conduce to absence of passion, or to tranquility and Nirvana." "And what I have explained? Suffering have I explained, the cause of suffering, the destruction of suffering, and the path that leads to the destruction of suffering have I explained. For this is useful."
--Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta 63, as translated by E. J. Thomas in "Early Buddhist Scriptures (New York: AMS Press, 1935), 64-67; as presented by Huston Smith, in "The World's Religions" (New York:Harper Collins, 1991)
Useful Links
- Five-Minute Introduction to Buddhism
- The ABCs of Buddhism
- The Organization of Buddhism
- Buddhism Depot (a great place to search around)
- Sacred texts Meditation
- The Tea Ceremony
- Buddhist Prison Ministry
- BuddhaNet (this highlights the large number of Buddhist sources on the internet)
- The Most Popular American Buddhist Journal