Category: buddhism

Full Moon, Uposatha, May 5, 2012

Authority in American Folk Buddhism

To summarize, in any Buddhist society two kinds of Buddhism can be observed side-by-side (or more commonly overlapping): Essential Buddhism is the Dharma, or more properly the Dharma-Vinaya or the Sasana. It is sophisticated, best understood and preserved by adepts, who are people who have intensely devoted themselves to its practice and understanding. Folk Buddhism is the popular understanding and practice of Buddhism. It is less refined but more accessible to average people who have not had the opportunity or inclination to devote themselves intensely to Essential Buddhism. This bifurcation is inevitable and desirable in Buddhism.

This bifurcation is inevitable because of the sophistication of Essential Buddhism, which generally does not have a counterpart in other religious faiths. Buddhism can never be a cookie-cutter religion in which everyone practices in the same way without either losing Essential Buddhism or making an adept out of everyone. This bifurcation is desirable because it allows many people to enjoy the benefits of Buddhist practice, as long as the Folk Buddhism is wholesome, that is, informed by the values and practices of Essential Buddhism. Without Essential Buddhism and the Triple Gem, Folk Buddhism loses its mooring. I have illustrated this in the case of Burmese Buddhism.

Encountering American Buddhism

This is the social perspective; how about the individual perspective? If you grow up in a Buddhist society in Asia you will likely be steeped in Folk Buddhism from an early age, and you will be infused with values of kindness, generosity, virtue, and a reverence for the wise and virtuous and for those that live simple contemplative lives. But you will also have a choice, whether to enjoy a life in this context or to set out wholeheartedly on the Noble Eightfold Path that leads in the direction of Awakening. If you make the latter choice the society will support you in your aspirations, particularly if you ordain as a monk or nun. In practice, however, people vary wildly in how seriously they embrace Essential Buddhism or at what stage in life they embrace Essential Buddhism.

The non-Asian American who walks into an Asian temple will most immediately encounter its Folk Buddhism and may be startled how ethnic it is and how infused with rites and magic. The American who picks up a book by one of the great Buddhist teachers of Asia, on the other hand, will encounter Essential Buddhism and may be startled how directly it speaks to him, while at the same time how intriguingly obscure much of it is. This is the opposite of what the typical Asian at that temple experiences. Why is this? For one thing, our American friend is likely to be extremely well educated already possessing an intellectual sophistication (demographic studies confirm this) far greater than either the average American (who would not pick up such a book in the first place), or by the typical Asian, and will therefore have a leg up in approaching Essential Buddhism. For the other, she is unlikely to make sense of a folk culture so foreign to her own, nor recognize how that particular cultural expression has in fact been shaped by Essential Buddhism and the remaining differences smoothed over.

The non-Asian American who walks into an American Buddhist center, maybe to attend a lecture or meditate, will encounter Folk Buddhism and Essential Buddhism side by side, but this time it will be an American Folk Buddhism and something close to Asian Essential Buddhism. As Buddhism enters another culture it is important to preserve Essential Buddhism, but not Folk Buddhism because a new and ultimately more appropriate Folk Buddhism will arise from the encounter of Essential Buddhism with the indigenous folk culture. Most American Buddhist centers have Asian founders or can be traced back as an offshoot of an offshoot of a center with an Asian founders. It seems that the genius of the most successful Asian founders of such centers, such as Shunryu Suzuki Roshi or Chogyam Trungpa, is in their ability to separate Essential Buddhism from Folk Buddhism clearly in order to teach Essential Buddhism in a new cultural context. (American students of Suzuki who traveled with him to his old temple in Japan were startled to see him dealing competently with his native Folk Buddhist environment.) In this way Asian Folk Buddhism has for the most part been left behind very quickly.

What of the Asian trappings still found in many American Buddhist centers, the clothing, the incense, the bowing, the ritual practices, the rules of etiquette? In fact, these are generally parts of Essential Buddhism! Essential Buddhism has acquired many culturally means of expression on its route from the Buddha to us. For instance, the anjali or gassho (the prayer mudra) originated in Indian culture and has spread everywhere Buddhism has spread (and was apparently even through Buddhism injected into the Christian world). Gestures of respect are important in Essential Buddhism. If the anjali were to be lost it would have to be replaced with something else (maybe the military salute?). Mindfulness practices are important in Essential Buddhism. When Buddhism came to China it encountered a highly ritualized culture which provided rich resources for the practice of mindfulness, that were then carried along as a part of Essential Buddhism into America by Shunryu Suzuki and others. If Zen were to lose these particular culturally conditioned expressions they would have to be replaced by something else (Zen oryoki, for instance, replaced with an array of silverware and crystal drinking glasses?).

American Folk Buddhism is radically different from any Asian Folk Buddhism except those that are similarly influenced by modernity. For Americans our own Folk Buddhism seems much more rational, in that what in the West would be considered supernatural is largely absent, as are spirits or devas, and means of sharing merit with the dead. But it is also a largely a product of a particular American subculture, a very educated, white, middle-to-upper class culture that tends to reject things more than most other subcultures.

Folk Buddhism includes any a popular understanding or practice that in a particular culture is attributed (rightly or wrongly) to Buddhism. I will catalog some of these here, starting with authority in American Folk Buddhism, and indicate what its real origin is and try to assess how well it fits into Essential Buddhism, as near, intermediate or far. Many but not all of these features are described in David McMahan’s Making of Buddhist Modernism especially with respect to their ofttimes origin in movements like Protestant Christianity, Romanticism or Neoromanticism or the European Enlightenment. McMahan’s book is the inspiration for the reflections that led me to start this series on Folk Buddhism.

Authority in American Folk Buddhism

It is very common for American Buddhists to reject almost all traces of authority or compulsion, specifically targeting a list of things almost in the same breath that curiously are both found in Buddhism throughout Asia and also quite characteristically in much Western religion:

“Organized religion, hierarchy, bah!”
“Religious authority, priests, monks, rules, humbug!”
“Religious imagery, sacred objects, twaddle!”
“Religious doctrine, poppycock!”
“Rituals, bows, balderdash!”

In fact, one often hears the vehement assertion that the Buddha never taught these things or, perhaps trying to make the same point, that “The Buddha didn’t try to create an organized religion.” The rejection of such elements is a feature of much but not all of American Folk Buddhism.

How well does this feature relate to Essential Buddhism? There is a hint of truth in the claims of American Folk Buddhism in that most of these things are minimalized in Essential Buddhism, However none of them is absent. Maybe this is most succinctly captured when Ajahn Brahm calls Buddhism, “the most disorganized religion.”

In fact, the Buddha did organize his community of disciples and the basic structure of that organization, as he intended, persists today in almost every Buddhist culture in Asia. However, this organization, as he gave it to us, is remarkably flat, decentralized and non-coercive. Often in Asian Folk Buddhism this becomes much more hierarchical, far from the Buddha’s intentions.

The Buddha organized the Buddhist community through the Vinaya, the monastic code. But even within the monastic order there is little hierarchy. Junior monks are asked to pay respect to senior monks, with seniority determined strictly in terms of ordination date and a monk is required to have a teacher for the first five years, but can change teachers, and the student has the authority to admonish the teacher under appropriate circumstances. All major decisions of a local community, that is, the group of monks that is able to meet together in one place, are made through consensus, with a junior monk having the same veto power as a senior monk. No authority comes from beyond the local community, except for the ancient authority of the Vinaya itself. Coercion is minimal within the monastic community and does not extend to the lay community. For the monks it is largely an honor system with provisions for acknowledging transgressions, sometimes the imposition of mild sanctions but never physical punishments. Through any of a handful of transgressions a monk expels himself automatically from the community. On the other hand Buddha clearly did create orders of monks and nuns separate from the laity in terms of obligations and privileges, defined a highly regulated life for the monastics, and made the monastic orders identifiable with the admonition, “Don’t dress like lay people.”

He could have set up a hierarchy something like Pope and bishops and a range of severe punishments for transgressing authority, but he did not. What is truly remarkable about the Buddha’s organization of the Buddhist community is how mild and fragile it seems, yet how durable it has proven itself. The Buddha clearly understood what he was doing for he makes it clear that a primary function of the monastic order is to protect the integrity of the Dharma for future generations. As far as I can see, the Buddhist monastic order is the world’s oldest continuous democracy, and because it is so decentralized it allows almost no opportunity for the accumulation of corrupting power.

The Buddha does not seem to have endorsed extensive use of imagery or sacred objects, but he did endorse the idea of pilgrimage to sacred sites connected with his own life. So again his approach was minimal. Of course imagery and sacred objects have manifested in abundance throughout Buddhist Asia, and probably will in America as well. This may well express a universal human need; myself, I don’t view it as inimical to Essential Buddhism.

The Buddha clearly rejected the efficacy of ritual, but not the expressive power; expressions of respect are found throughout the Suttas, including bowing. Although he had little interest in metaphysics or philosophical speculation, the Buddha did present a sophisticated doctrine, but one grounded in experience under the general principle that one should “come and see” (ehipassiko), that is, that it is available for inspection. (There are rare aspects that defy direct inspection, but given his minimalism it is certain that he had a good reason for teaching these.)

In general rejecting all authority seems to contradict much of Essential Buddhism. I don’t think anyone can even bake a cake without accepting some authority. It is puzzling that many American Buddhists are so adamant in their rejection of all hints of authority, especially since in modern secular realms their counterparts are widely tolerated, such as in the military, which a little reflection will reveal to have something like each of the features, from organization to gestures of respect, listed above.

We don’t have to look far to see the origin the rejection of these things. Although this rejection is commonly attributed in American Folk Buddhism to Buddhism itself, it has “Reformation” written all over it; these are the very things that Protestant Christians objected to in the Catholic Church and sought if not to eliminate altogether at least to challenge and minimize. This Protestant confrontation with the structure and practices of the Catholic Church has a bitter and painful history in Europe, including thirty years of bloody warfare, and has certainly left deep religious scars on Northern European and thereby American culture. Buddhist authority is many orders of magnitude milder than Catholic authority and its history bears this out, even if the outward appearance might sometimes coincide (berobed clergy, for instance), and yet the Protestant experience seems to have influenced the shape of American Folk Buddhism.

Heck, there is more hierarchy at your dentist’s office than in the entire Buddhist community that the Buddha left behind. The Buddha was a minimalist in many ways (consider the “handful of leaves” simile). He taught what was essential. A great deal of his genius is found in the way he organized the Buddhist community. He did this for a good reason, and was able to anticipate the results. Although the strongest rejection of authority is inimical to (far from) Essential Buddhism, the well intentioned distrust of authority that underlies it has already been anticipated by the Buddha. I would hope that a healthy Protestant distrust of religious authority will at least help to protect future American Buddhism from the centralization of authority found, for instance, in modern Thailand. That would be near the spirit of Essential Buddhism.

I will continue to take up a number of features of American Folk Buddhism in turn in the coming weeks. Right now I have the following headings in mind:

The Triple Gem

Individualism

Meditation

Commidification

Gender Equality

Social Engagement

What’s Missing?

First Quarter Moon, Uposatha, April 29, 2012

4. Burmese Folk Buddhism (2)

I began last week by taking Burmese Folk Buddhism to illustrate the relationship of Folk Buddhism, the popular understand of Buddhism predominant in an Buddhist culture, from Essential Buddhism, the adept’s understanding of Buddhism that is functionally the closest  to the Buddhadharma. By the way, a good source of information for the topic is Burmese Folk Buddhism is Melford Spiro’s Buddhism and Society: a great tradition and its Burmese vicissitudes, thought it was written about forty years ago. I will finish doing this here. This discussion is by no means a complete overview of Burmese Folk Buddhism but is meant to be illustrative, in order to achieve an outsider’s perspective of American Folk Buddhism next week.

Non-self, Merit and Generosity

Nirvana, rebirth and non-self are among the most important yet difficult concepts to understand in Essential Buddhism. It is therefore hardly surprising that they assume a naïve understanding in any culture’s Folk Buddhism. In Burmese Folk Buddhism non-self receives lip service but makes little sense: Not only is there is someone who gets reborn for the Folk Buddhist but that person is often identified with the pre-Buddhist “butterfly spirit” that flutters away from a previous body and can behave maliciously until it finds another host.

Many people work out who they were in their previous life, often a neighbor or a relative who died about a year or so before their rebirth. Most people would like a felicitous rebirth in the next life, either in the deva realm, in which suffering is almost unknown, or if in the human realm, as a wealthy or beautiful and in any case healthy and long-lived being. Most people fear rebirth in the lower realms, for instance, in the hell or animal realm. But the idea of escape from the cycle of death and rebirth, as advocated in the common language of Essential Buddhism, makes little sense, nor is it desirable except maybe as a means to avoid the lower realms altogether.

Accordingly Nirvana is often understood instead as a kind of super and permanent deva realm, a blissful world of eternal life, the bliss here  commonly taken to include a great of sensual pleasure. Those who do understand Nirvana as escape or extinction generally do not actually consider it desirable even while they commonly recite things like, “May I attain Nirvana.” Often they hope that after a good rebirth they will understand Nirvana a bit better and finally set their sights on that goal.

In such understandings the foundation of Buddhist practice becomes simple: the accumulation of personal merit, which will tend to make this life happier, but which will also help assure happy future lives. Merit (Pali, punnya) is a common concept in Essential Buddhism, but its understanding is itself a bit subtle. It is used basically as a summary means of quantifying progress in practice or in adjusting a karmic profile or intentionality in a positive direction. The tendency in Folk Buddhism is to conceptualize merit in even more simplified and occasionally misguided terms.

In Burmese Folk Buddhism merit tends to be measured in purely external terms. In most cases a demerit arises with the violation of a precept and merit as a demonstration of generosity (dana). There is a tendency to think of merits and demerits as yielding something like a bank account balance, and in fact Spiro reports that many Burmese actually keep an accurate ledger on paper of their merits and demerits throughout the day. If the balance sheet is positive the Folk Buddhist is doing pretty well.

There seem to be alternative systems of calculating merits. Spiro reports that in one account offering one person a meal counts as offering one hundred dogs a meal, offering one novice a meal counts as offering one hundred people a meal and offering one fully ordained monk a meal counts as offering one hundred novices a meal. In any case, there is in almost any such system a bias toward religious generosity and such merit is commonly held to correspond not so much to the need of the recipient as to the spiritual attainment of the recipient. There are cases in which a meditating forest monk who gains a reputation as an arahant, partly on the evidence of his secluded lifestyle and of the modesty of his personal needs, becomes the recipient of multiple cottages built by various donors on his behalf, all of which stand unused. Contributing the building of a pagoda is considered very meritorious, while for some reason contributing to the repair of an old pagoda is much less so. As a result it is common to see in Burma a shiny new pagoda under construction right next to a dilapidated one.  A wealthy person is generally regarded a having much more opportunity to gain merit than a poor person and this is one of the reasons rebirth as a wealthy person is considered to be desirable, though the sense of sacrifice, of creating personal hardship through generous deeds is also considered particularly meritorious.

What is missing in many of the Folk Buddhist methods of calculating merits is  reference to one’s intentions, which from the perspective of Essential Buddhism is all that counts. For instance, in Essential Buddhism if an outward act of generosity is motivated purely by desire for personal benefit then it carries no merit. If a poor person acts out of the same kindness as a rich person but can only afford 1% of the expenditure, the merit is the same. Personal benefit accrues along with the exercise and development of kindness and compassion. The Folk Buddhist model of calculating merits on the basis of outward actions alone can be rough at best.

I suspect that we will find in almost any Buddhist culture that a primary reason for the tension between Essential and Folk Buddhism is that the former looks primarily within while the latter looks primarily without. People with little cultivation of mind most naturally look at what they can observe in others and at what others can observe in them and that will shape the Folk Buddhist understanding. The Essential Buddhist is concerned almost continually with the internal life of perceptions, feelings and intentions.

Nonetheless, even the most recalcitrant Folk Buddhist cannot get away from the internal world. The fact is generosity is fun. In theory you might have a completely self-centered motivation for generosity if you think there is really something in it for you, such as future wealth, and you might have started out thinking that way. But it would be very hard for you not to get caught up in the warm and fuzzy spirit of generosity once you start practicing generosity outwardly, which is the spirit of kindness and compassion. In fact in Essential terms, this spirit is the beginning of karmic reward.

The upshot is that typical Burmese Folk Buddhist is a fountain of generosity and takes great delight in generosity; you can see it in his face, hear it in her voice, you can see it in how thoroughly she generalizes generosity far beyond the religious realm. Generosity is one of the most striking qualities of Burmese culture. The casual tourist becomes aware of it quite readily: He will easily become a recipient  even while falling outside the category of religious generosity. He will find that Burmese tend to take care of one another; they do not have a disposable population of homeless, in their very poor land. They also have little crime or beggars. Although the Folk Buddhist understanding of generosity is imperfect, there is something that seems to work, and even the most recalcitrant Essential Buddhist must see that much merit is being gained.
Merit, in Burmese Folk Buddhism, carries over beyond the encouragement of generosity and the discouragement of violating precepts. It is often viewed as the reason for other aspects of Buddhist practice, such as meditation, chanting or expressions of respect. These have more sophisticated justifications that simply “merit,” in Essential Buddhism, but nonetheless provide a simple way of conceptualizing Buddhist practice.

Relationship of Burmese Folk and Essential Buddhism.

When we look at elements of Folk Buddhism we can evaluate them in a number of ways. The most significant is its relationship to Essential Buddhism. A second derives from the bias of one’s own Folk Buddhism: Probably everyone falls in the trap when looking at one Folk Buddhism of evaluating itself in terms of one’s own Folk Buddhism. A third is what features are universal, that is, occur in every Folk Buddhism, yet not in Essential Buddhism. Here is roughly how Burmese Folk Buddhism seems to compare with Essential Buddhism (others may view some of these features differently).

(1) Near Essential Buddhism. These are features that are included in or tend to support or enhance elements of Essential Buddhism. These include attention given to the Triple Gem such as food offerings to the Buddha and offerings to monks. These tend to inspire people in Buddhist faith and open the mind to the corrective influence of Essential Buddhism.  The basic model of merit as an expression of the benefit accrued in actions and practice works to encourage Buddhist practice, particularly the practice of generosity.

(2) Intermediate to Essential Buddhism. These are innocuous supplements to Essential Buddhism. These include associating certain powers with relics, pagodas and images of the Buddha, rituals and chants for protection, and many of the influences attributed to nats or devas. I classify these as intermediate rather than far, because Essential Buddhism does not seem as far as I can see to care about all the extraneous things people might believe that we in the West might consider superstition or simply objectively wrong; they are neither right view nor wrong view.

(3) Far from Essential Buddhism. These are features inimical to Essential Buddhist principles. There is some perhaps some danger in attributing current conditions, such as power or poverty, as inevitable consequences of karma because it can lead to harmful actions or more likely passivity when action is more appropriate. Efficacy of ritual was clearly discounted by the Buddha as wrong view. The butterfly spirit contradicts no-self in Essential Buddhism.

Keep in mind that Burmese Folk Buddhism has developed over centuries in a culture with certain pronounced features, such as animism, but also under the corrective influence of Essential Buddhism. Without this corrective influence Burmese Folk Buddhism might well have floated off as part of an cultic bubble unachored in Essential Buddhism. Understanding flows as a corrective tendency from Essential to Folk Buddhism rather than in the other way, as we saw last week, because of refuge in the Triple Gem, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. In this way Folk Buddhism will tend not to corrupt or displace Essential Buddhism.

Monks frequently correct common attitudes toward the efficacy of ritual or attribute the real efficacy not to some kind of magic but taking the internal view to the power of ritual to develop confidence in the beneficiary. Although the Folk Buddhist understanding of merit differs from the Essential Buddhist understanding, people are at least reminded occasionally of the proper understanding even while the proper understanding is not entirely assimilated.

In summary, Burmese Folk Buddhism is largely anchored in Essential Buddhism, but trails off into less accurate understanding and eventually into misunderstanding. However deep faith in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha tends to keep Burmese Folk Buddhists from drifting too far afield. The monks, representing the Sangha, often act as sheep herders to correct the most egregious deviations.

Next week we will begin to look at American Folk Buddhism in terms similar to the quite different Burmese Folk Buddhism.

New Moon, Uposatha, April 21, 2012

4. Burmese Folk Buddhism (1)

I want today to use Burma as an example of the difference between, and interrelatedness of, Essential and Folk Buddhism. I choose Burma primarily because I’ve gained quite a bit of familiarity with it, but also Burma provide a particularly good example of a very traditional strong Folk Buddhism happily coexisting with a markedly well maintained Essential Buddhism.

Essential Buddhism is evident in Burma in meditation practice, in the large proportion of monastics in the population, in the high standards in much monastic education, in the widespread familiarity with the Pali texts (there are monks who can recite thousands of pages from memory), in the ubiquitous practice of generosity throughout the culture, as well as the practices of precepts, of listening to Dhamma talks and discusing the Dhamma and of expression of faith in the Triple Gem. A number of Burmese in recent years have been widely regarded as arahants (they won’t actually tell you). Burma is particularly well known abroad for its many teachers of Vipassana meditation since meditation has undergone a massive revival since the middle of the Twentieth Century such that farmers and otherwise employed lay people now crowd 10-day meditation retreats. Burmese Vipassana schools are in fact well-represented in America today. Aung San Su Kyi through her many years of house arrest sustained a strong daily meditation practice; she is a follower of Pandita Sayadaw, a now elderly disciple of Mahasi Sayadaw, with whom people like Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzburg studied many years ago. Essential Buddhism is clearly not the exclusive domain of monastics in Burma.

Nevertheless, the average Buddhist, though perhaps devout, knows little of meditation, nor of the basic teachings of Buddhism, but is informed instead by a vibrant Folk Buddhism. Burma is a land of pagodas, solid structures that evolved architecturally from the burial mounds that originally held parcels of the Buddha’s relics after his parinirvana. Statues of the Buddha abound before which people bow fully touching their foreheads to the ground in reverence and to which they offer flowers and food. This average Burmese Buddhist inhabits a world of tree spirits, miracles and magic, largely of pre-Buddhist origin but blending seamlessly with Buddhist practices and doctrine, for instance, calling on the presence or actions of monks to work invisible forces in a more favorable direction. This trails into Folk Buddhism, which is clearly not the exclusive domain of the laity in Burma.

A couple of months ago we held a rite at the Burmese monastery where I live in Texas to appease three angry tree spirits (nats or devas) dwelling here. It seems that in our extended community, which apparently extends to relatives in Burma and in Houston of people living here, there had been three mishaps in one week, Someone was even grazed in the head and critically injured by an out of control, in fact airborne, race car. We had in the months before this fateful week been constructing many new buildings, particularly meditation cottages, which we had always tried to locate in the spaces between standing trees. Occasionally we had had to cut a tree down of one of the two kinds of common trees on our property, favoring an oak to a cedar when one or the other was to be spared. Nonetheless we had had to cut down exactly three oak trees.

One morning the abbot announced to me the necessity of performing this rite. The monks would visit each of the three crime scenes, we would chant the Metta Sutta (Loving Kindness Discourse) then the abbot would speak to the offended spirit to ask forgiveness. This was up until then outside of the realm of my familiarity, so something like the following exchange ensued.

“We have cut down several cedar trees as well. How do we know that devas weren’t living in those trees as well?”

“They only live in oak trees.”

“There aren’t any oak or cedar trees in Burma, how do you know which trees they live in in America?”

“They like oak trees.”

“OK. Are you going to speak to them in Burmese? These are Texan devas. They are more likely to understand English … or Spanish.” (They are also likely to have names like “Clem” or “Dusty.”)

“I think devas can understand any language, but just in case I will speak to them in Burmese and then you speak to them in English!”

And so it was, three little ceremonies in turn with my full participation. It was kinda fun I have to admit.

The Buddha once sneezed. I’ve been looking for the source of this story; I believe it is in the Vinaya.

A nearby monk said, “Bless you!” Apparently this was also the custom in the Buddha’s time and place.

The Buddha asked, “Wait a minute. Do you think that saying that will have an effect on my future health?” He had after all in his teachings replaced the idea of appropriate rites and rituals as a determinant of future well-being with the idea of purity of intention in one’s own actions, the Buddhist meaning of “karma.”

The monk replied, “Well, no, actually.”

“Then don’t say it!”

And thereby a new rule was put into circulation that monks were expected to follow. The problem was that lay people began to complain about how rude all the monks had suddenly become.”

“I sneezed and there was a monk standing right there and he didn’t even bless me!”

“How rude! The impudent cad”

When this was reported back to the Buddha the Buddha rescinded the rule that he had established.

“People need monks to say ‘Bless you’ to them.”

This little story is indicative of the Buddha’s tolerance and willingness to adapt to common cultural preferences. Except where a particular practice flies in the face of Essential Buddhism as I understand it, I personally try to follow his example.

Much of Burmese Folk Buddhist practice and understanding is only about one step removed from Essential Buddhism. We mentioned in an earlier episode the importance of the Triple Gem, refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, as a bridge between Essential and Folk Buddhism and common to both. I described the function of the Triple Gem in terms of deference to the experts, but in every Buddhist culture I am aware of it takes on layers of meaning. The Burmese express their relationship to these with particular exuberance.

The Buddha authorized in the Parinibbana Sutta the practice of honoring him after his death through pilgrimage to the places of his birth, awakening, first teaching and death. He probably did not anticipate the devotion and reverence his disciples would slather on every reminder of him. Chief among these, and prior to Buddha statues, were his relics, the bits of bone, teeth, sometimes hair, that survived his cremation. The Burmese also honor the relics of arahants, which generally take on the form of crystals, and which reproduce like bunnies, that is, left overnight the next morning they will have increased in number and mass. A museum has been built in a temple in Burma where a local arahant had lived and died. Pictures in the museum reveal he had very intensive eyes, which died and was cremated, did not burn but were found among the relics! Moreover, the concrete ground floor one story below the bed in which he died has continually cracked and burst open since its last occupancy.

Relics are often said to have special powers. Kyaik Tiyo, the golden rock (actually gold-leaf enhanced with a little pagoda on top), is a huge boulder, maybe 40 or 50 feet in diameter, perched on top of a sheer cliff, at the very top of a tall mountain, in such a way that it has been just about to roll off for maybe the last several hundred thousand years or so. Inspection of this amazing site from below invites one to try to pass a string, an accomplice holding the other end, under the rock all the way across; it looks like it would work, maybe by rocking the rock a bit. From higher up, one can see that its center of gravity does keep it from rolling off the cliff, but golly it seems that by now an earthquake or a clumsy dinosaur sometime in the last innumerable millennia would have toppled it. It is certainly a wonder of nature.

In Myanmar all such phenomena are miracles that have to do with Buddhism. The story is that some of the Buddha’s hairs are contained inside of the rock and that the rock remains in place by the power of the Buddha. Once upon a time, some non-Buddhists tried to push the rock off the cliff in order to undermine people’s faith in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, but they were turned into monkeys. That’ll show them! In an inspiring, hopefully not foolhardy, display of faith, there is now a nunnery directly below the rock, exactly at the point of first bounce.

The reverence for relics and the attribution to them of special powers seems to be universal throughout Buddhist Asia. A particular expression of this is the pagoda, originally representing a burial mound for the Buddha’s relics but now takes on wildly varying forms. The Burmese are particularly fond of pagodas, which there follow a squat earth design common also in India and suggestive of their original function. Burma is known as the Land of Pagodas; they must consume a large part of the small national income. A 70′ pagoda is currently under construction here in Texas substantially supported through donations from Burma.

A common observance in Burma and perhaps in all Buddhist countries of Asia is the ritual offering to a Buddha statue, of food, water, flowers, incense and light. In Burma it is generally understood that the Buddha is no longer able to receive those offerings. Rather the offering is made as a kind of enactment in which the offerer’s wholesome qualities are developed. The view however seems to be widespread that some kind of unseen power adheres to Buddha statues and other representations of the Buddha once these have been properly consecrated ceremonially by monks.

The Dhamma is most commonly represented by recitation and by listening to Dhamma talks. Great value is placed in the ability to memorize the scriptures and enormous veneration of what are known as Tipitaka Monks, those who pass a state examination that exhibits rote knowledge of the scriptures, including memorization of at least two of the three baskets and a substantial part of the third, roughly twenty volumes. Only eight monks have passed this examination since it was instituted sixty-four years ago. Monasteries in Burma often have enhanced loudspeaker systems to broadcast recitations to the world. Many undertake once a year to recite the Pathana, a long chapter of the Abhidhamma Pitaka, which takes several days and nights and is done in shifts. Where I once lived in central Burma a neighboring nuns’ monastery undertook to broadcast such a recitation day and night. I strongly suspect the nun in charge of setting the volume control had once belonged to a heavy metal band. Burmese often report the occurrence of miraculous phenomena during such recitations, for instance, water offerings to the Buddha will begin to boil. Burmese recite (chant) together typically with great energy.

The Sangha is represented by the monastic community, upon whom great reverence is bestowed and who are doted upon much as house pets. Traditionally in Burmese culture one is expected to show special respect for four categories of people: (1) monastics, (2) parents, (3) teachers and (4) the elderly. This respect finds its most visible expression in full prostrations, generally in groups of three, representing the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. A rite of passage for boys is to ordain as novice monks for short period, sometimes for a week, sometimes at the age of seven or eight, but generally as teenagers, having their heads shaved, wearing the traditional robes and taking the precepts. One of the moving aspects of the ceremony is that once immediately following the ordination the parents will perform full bows to their sons, reversing the order that had obtained until that time. Burmese will generally try to sit at a lower level than monks, for instance offering the monks chairs then sitting on the floor themselves.

Often magical powers are attributed to senior monks of great attainment. The presence of monks is commonly regarded as good luck and making offerings to monks, particularly offering a meal to monks, is karmically meritorious. This is often done on auspicious occasions such as weddings and birthdays, as well as periods of misfortune when people feel they need a karmic boost. A Burmese doctor in Austin, a specialist in sleeping disorders, was pleased to be able to offer her services for free to a visiting Burmese monk who suffered from sleep apnea, which required that he stay overnight in a specially outfitted room hooked up to various machines. She was particularly pleased with the auspiciousness that he was the inaugural patient of a new room they had just added to their lab. A frequent visitor to our monastery, who like to come on weekends to prepare food for the monks, was up late one night and spotted a monk standing in the air above one of the new buildings near where the new pagoda was beginning construction. She called to other people who indeed verified the presence of this monk in the sky, only now he was meditating. It was generally assumed that this monk had teletransported from Burma. A couple of weeks later I heard the story retold such that the monk in question had become our own founder, Sitagu Sayadaw.

Next week I will continue to discuss Burmese Folk Buddhism with a focus on how generosity, merit and the object of Buddhist practice are understood in the popular culture. Then I will look at the influence of Essential Buddhism on the popular practice and understanding.