The following is a commercial for the Mercedes Benz C-Class:
This commercial was interesting to me. In the beginning, the asks to drive the Mercedes Benz C-Class. During the drive, the monk is seen laughing as he impatiently fights to get around a biker traveling slowly in front of their vehicle. In the meantime, the other car traveling behind them is driving in a moderate manner. At the end, the monk examines both cars only to laugh and point out that the car he just rode in has a bumper covered in dead bugs.
A few things jumped out at me after watching this commercial. One, I’m pretty sure a monk would not have been driving that car like that. And secondly, I recognized the stereotype that all Buddhist believe in not harming any living creature with the understanding of the precept of, Ahimsa. Ahimsa means non-violence. This is often confused with the practices of Jainism, in which one of the modified rules for laity is that you should never take the life of a sentient being. So as part of Jainism religion, individuals practice some extremes to guarantee they don’t accidentally kill anything living. One example of an extreme is the practice of sweeping the ground before they walked to make sure they don’t kill any insects. Buddhist on the other hand, do believe in the principle of non-violence, but not to the extent of trying to protect all life you come into contact with.
This relates to Brad Warner’s book, Zen: Wrapped in Karma dipped in Chocolate, in a couple ways. His book helps to justify some differences between real Buddhism and Buddhism that has been influenced by the secular world. One, it brought out the reality of being a monk in the western world. In places like India, Japan, china, etc. there is a support system in place for monks, priests, etc. Warner talked about how a monk must have a “real job” in the secular world to provide for himself because there is no support system here for them to be a full-time monk (pp. 12). I dont know about the monk in the commercial, but either he has a really good job or one hell of a support system to even risk driving a benz like that. Warner also talked about traditional Buddhist and their idea of having as little possessions as possible, because more possessions meant more responsibilities (pp. 22). Times have changed and it is ok to live a little, but there is a thin line between living a little and being greedy. In my opinion, the behavior the monk displayed while driving the car, laughing and all, was his idea of living buddhist living a little.
