The Buddha’s return is a pivotal moment, one of those rare events when the divine penetrates history and transfigures it. Like Moses returning from Mt. Sinai, like Jesus appearing in the crowd at the river Jordan to be baptized by John, a man who has left the world returns to serve it, no longer merely human but charged with transcendent power. As the scriptures record of Moses and Jesus, we can imagine how the Buddha must have shone that bright spring morning in the Himalayan foothills. Dazzled by the radiance of his personality, it is said, people gathered about him and asked, “Are you a
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