the birth of Buddha in the Jataka-nidana<\/a>, and I was captured by the story of the Four Omens. This would make a good metrical hymn: it’s a concise story about two paths open to a baby, one path leading to worldly success and another path leading to a life on contemplation. The baby’s father of course hopes for worldly success, but learns that if the boy ever sees a dead person, an ill person, a mendicant monk, or an old person, then the boy will grow up to be, not a king, but the Buddha. What a thought-provoking story!<\/p>\nAnyway, an early draft of such a hymn appears after the jump. <\/p>\n
1. Queen Maya bore a baby boy
\n\tIn the Lumbini grove
\nThe King rejoiced; the baby lived
\n\tWith both his parents’ love.<\/p>\n
2. They chose Siddhartha Gotama
\n\tTo be the baby’s name.
\nEight Brahmins came to tell the king
\n\tThe baby’s future fame.<\/p>\n
3. “A Universal King he’ll be,
\n\tAs long as he remains
\nA householder,” the Brahmins said,
\n\t“By household life constrained.”<\/p>\n
4. But Kondanya, the youngest, said,
\n\t“A Buddha he’ll become,
\nHe will renounce the household life
\n\tAnd be th’Enlightened One.”<\/p>\n
5. “And why should he renounce his home?”
\n\t“If he should ever see
\nOld age, ill health, a monk, or death,
\n\tA Buddha he must be.”<\/p>\n
This is still a work in progress. It needs a last verse to wrap things up — which means I’ll have to drop one or two other verses, given that we never sing more than four verses of any hymn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Metrical hymns are out of fashion these days in favor of praise songs and pop-influenced worship music. But rhymed metrical hymns are easy to memorize, and they’re actually a really efficient way to give people of all ages a basic introduction to discrete religious subjects. And every metrical hymn provides a theological interpretation of to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[275,131,273],"class_list":["post-7939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religious-education","tag-buddha","tag-hymns","tag-post-christian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8152,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939\/revisions\/8152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}