This past weekend the Buddhist communities of Durban came together to celebrate Vesak.
It is tempting to call this the Buddhist Christmas , but in fact it commemorates not the birth of Siddhartha Gautama but rather his re-birth: the moment he became enlightened - “Buddha” - at the age of 35.
Since enlightenment is the ultimate goal of all Buddhist practice, Vesak is a chance for Buddhists (around the date of the first full moon in May) to celebrate the values that they hold most dear: love, charity, friendliness towards all, peace, harmony and happiness.
These, of course, sound like things that we should all want to aspire to and perhaps that is why Buddhism has a universal and enduring appeal 2600 years after it was founded, interestingly dating from around the same time as Confucius and Isaiah.
With around 500 million followers (or 8% of the global population), Buddhism is rightly regarded as one of the great world religions.
It started in India not far from the borders of modern-day Nepal. It then spread - more by persuasion than by conquest - across Asia and became the majority religion in a number of countries including Japan, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
Despite the years of communism and the annexation of Tibet, hundreds of millions of Chinese have also remained loyal. In addition, Buddhists, albeit in much smaller numbers, are found in almost every country of the world. But their influence on modern-day culture and thought often goes beyond the number of actual followers.
Durban probably has only a few hundred “proper” Buddhists. The average Congolese Pentecostal church in the CBD probably has more members. Moreover, these cover all three of the main strains of Buddhism - separated more by culture than by doctrine - whose roots lie in Indian, Chinese or Tibetan traditions.
But many hundreds more will have attended the Vesak festival; and over the years, many thousands have taken advantage of the courses in Buddhist meditation offered at centres in Morningside and Westville.
In an era of self-gratification, materialism and rage, Buddhism provides a timely reminder that there are other ways of achieving human fulfilment. That is probably also why key Buddhist terms have entered our common vocabulary - think of nirvana, dharma, yoga and karma. And certainly there is much wisdom for our age and for our city that we can draw from Buddhism.
But we do have to be careful that we do not reduce this noble and profound philosophy to a pithy phrase that can be contained in a tweet, or a cheery Facebook meme, or the tabloid ramblings of a recovering pop star.
I fear that some people who profess to be followers are really chasing not enlightenment but “Buddhism lite”; in seeking deeper fulfilment they succumb to the very instant fix that they claim to be rejecting.
An advertising colleague of mine years ago told me sincerely how Buddhist teachings had helped her to come to feel closer to the planet. Without irony, she then stepped into her four-wheel-drive and sped off to her oversized mansion.
A religion that does not make serious demands on its followers is not being taken seriously. A religion that does not evoke some form of self-sacrifice can just become an excuse for self-indulgence. To be a genuine Buddhist could not be more different.
That is probably why the Dalai Lama - head of the Tibetan strain of Buddhism but honoured by all Buddhists - is praised and revered so widely. (Everywhere, that is, apart from Pretoria’s Department of International Relations.) He is regularly listed, even by people who know very little about religion, as an example of someone truly authentic, usually in the same breath as Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King.
Unfortunately, his association with Himalayan monasteries might tempt us to think that the only response Buddhism can offer to a city dweller is to up sticks and flee to a lonely mountainside.
Previn Vedan, a spokesperson for the community in Durban, suggests the very opposite is true. He points out that the Buddha achieved enlightenment not by fleeing the tempestuous elements around him, but by attaining calmness of attitude in the face of them. Previn’s own work as a busy human rights lawyer with the Legal Resources Centre would not be possible, he says, without the acquired ability to respond with dignity when confronted by conflict.
Given the climate of unrest seen in our city, let alone in our country, such an ability to deal with our emotions without lashing out would serve us all well. So the harmony that the Buddhist works hard to attain - and that many of the rest of us hope will appear without effort - is not about outer calm but inner peace. It can be achieved while sitting in a traffic jam and not just when levitating on a mountainside.
The celebration of Vesak is itself a curiosity, because Buddhism, unlike most religions, does not have a calendar full of special festivals and holy days. Nor even - unlike the three Abrahamic religions - does it mark out a day each week as being particularly sacred. I think that there is a profound insight here.
The temptation of the lukewarm Christian might be to feel that their religious practice on Sunday lets them behave as they want to from Monday to Saturday. An inconsistent Muslim might be especially righteous during Ramadaan, then feel afterwards that they need not worry much for another 11 months.
Buddhism does not let its followers “off the hook” so easily. Every day is special; every month is holy. Living in the present means that you cannot trade off the virtues of the past or bet against your good deeds in the future. Or another way of seeing it is that each day (indeed, each moment) you get the chance to begin again. The concept of circular regeneration means that the challenge (or the opportunity!) to do good does not go away.
Cities provide the same endless cycle of challenges and opportunities. We might despair one day of the noise and grime and chaos - but the next day we have the chance to approach the same situation with a more enlightened response.
We might seek to control and grow our own space to protect what calm we can salvage; or we might realise that we achieve greater harmony for ourselves (and those around us) by sharing the space in a way that helps everyone.
That would certainly be enlightening for Durban!
Perrier is the director of the Denis Hurley Centre in central Durban.