think that their parents are Buddhists by their acts of offering
incense to their family altars which, in fact, is ancestral worship
and has nothing to do with Buddhism. erefore it is important
that such people be taught not only of who or what the Buddha
is but what the Buddha is not.e Buddha is not God or a deity whom one should pray to for
some fulfillment in life. e Buddha is not an incarnation of God
like Jesus Christ is to the Christians. He is not a prophet nor a
messenger of God. e Buddha does not answer your wishes or
bring you to heaven just because you have accepted him as your
Saviour. He is not the creator who decides the destinies of your life
nor can he save you if you have not lived a wholesome life. How-
ever, the Buddha can show the way by means of which you have to
save yourself. is means that only you can save yourself and that
you will have to work very hard at it in order to save yourself.
So if the Buddha is not God, who or what is He? He is a human
being but a very special human being, one who has gained what
we call “Enlightenment”. He is the fully Awakened One and He
is one who has become free from all kinds of worldly passions;
whose mind is pure; whose mind is full of wisdom; whose mind
is full of love and compassion towards all sentient beings; a super
human, the purest, the noblest and most virtuous of beings. All
these qualities He possesses in the highest possible degree. is
is but a brief description that one can make of a Buddha. Going
for Refuge to the Buddha therefore means taking and accepting
the Buddha as our ideal. e Buddha was a man such as we, so
what He achieved, we too can achieve. If we accept this, if we