Bhikkhu Cintita

Category: Religiosity

Fundamentals of Buddhist Religiosity: Community
Uposatha Day, New Moon, February 10, 2013
Index to this series
This is the next chapter of my eBook on Buddhist Religiosity. I am doing well so far in producing a chapter a week, and I am about half-way through. These are probably long for popular blog tastes (parse: popular tastes in blogs, not tastes in popular blogs). Sorry. The chapter numbering has been reworked; you were probably expecting Chapter 3. I have decided to insert a chapter before this one, on Salvation in Buddhism, but it is not yet written.
Chapter 5. The Buddhist Community.
The sun that shines on the Buddhist community is the Buddha. The water that nourishes it is the Dhamma. The soil in which it is planted is the Sangha. The lifeblood of the community is generosity, its most eminent members are Noble Ones, it greatest quality is harmony, its foremost entitlement is the opportunity for Buddhist practice and study, and its primary support is monastic discipline. The Buddha designed the Buddhist community, the Parisa. But he did this by organizing not the prevailing laity, but rather the monks and nuns, confident that the behavior of the laity would fall into place with no formal obligation, with no command structure and with no threat of excommunication held over the laity. The responsibilities of the parisa are taken on willingly conditioned by the embedding the Sangha within.
To understand how this works, let’s start with the better defined monastic Sangha. The logic of all this is rarely clarified.
The Bhikkhu-Sangha
Whereas we find the sublime in the Dhamma, we find in the Buddha’s institutional teachings nuts and bolts pragmatism. The Sangha (here meaning the Bhikkhu-Sangha, the monastics, the roots of the Parisa) is an institution, as well as a collection of monks and nuns. The fundamental purpose of this institution is to produce Noble Ones, saints, the finest in admirable friends, now and in the years to come. Its founding charter provides the optimal training conditions for the practice that produces Noble Ones, it also sustains a wholesome and inspiring influence on the broader Buddhist community, and it ensures the future integrity of the practice and understanding of the Dhammavinaya.
The Sangha has striking parallels with science as an institution, the disciplined community of scientists organized largely within or as universities and research institutions. Each, the Buddhist community and the scientific community, is a complex system responsible for many things: for training its members, for authorizing its teachers, for maintaining the integrity of its tradition against many many misguided and popular notions, for upholding pure standards whereby its results can be assessed, for encouraging the growth, prosperity and longevity of its functions, for rewarding patience where results are not immediately forthcoming, for maintaining harmony among its members, for nurturing a positive perception in the public eye, and for many other similar functions. Just as scientific discipline is intrinsic to to the practice and perpetuation of Science, and Science as we know it would collapse without it, Vinaya is intrinsic to the practice and perpetuation of Buddhism and Buddhism in all its depth cannot exist without it or something quite like it. Both institutions are conservative and remarkably unchanged over the centuries. From these parallels I will draw helpful analogies to better understand the function of the Sangha in terms of that of the perhaps more familiar scientific institution.
It is not often enough told that the founding of the Sangha was a truly monumental achievement. Consider this: The Buddhist Sangha is likely the world’s oldest human organization in continual existence! And it is still entirely recognizable in terms of attire, life-style, practice and function after 100 generations! It was there as great empires, the Roman, Mongolian, Muslim and British, arose and grew, it was there as each of those empires collapsed. From India it extended its civilizing reach to Ceylon and Southeast Asia and into Indonesia, into Central Asia where it followed the Silk Road eastward into China and East Asia and westward as far as the Mediterranean. In modern times it has begun to board airplanes and to sprinkle down on North America, Europe, Australia, South America and even Africa. Buddhism has never penetrated new lands without it, nor established itself without establishing a Sangha.
Yet in spite of its robustness the Sangha is delicate. Without any centralized authority or substantial hierarchy, its governance is based on the consensus of local communities (sanghas) of monks and nuns, its regulations are enforced through an honor system and its support is completely entrusted to the good-will of others. The Buddha could have set up a hierarchy something like Pope and bishops and a range of severe punishments for transgressing authority, but he did not. Who would have thought it would last?
This amazing institution is the product of one genius, who cobbled it together from diverse elements present in ascetic practices, gave it a mission and a charter and released it into the world. And this genius is the very same person who composed the Dhamma, among the most sophisticated and skillfully expounded philosophical, psychological and religious products of the human mind, and the very same person who attained complete Awakening without a teacher to light the way, the threefold genius we call the Buddha.
The Functions of the Discipline
The Buddha consistently called the body of his teachings not “Dhamma,” not “Sasana,” and certainly not “Buddhism,” but rather “Dhammavinaya,” the Teachings and Discipline. On his deathbed the Buddha refused to appoint a successor, saying,
“Whatever Dharma and Vinaya I have pointed out and formulated for you, that will be your Teacher when I am gone,” (“Mahaparanibbana Sutta,” DN16)
The Vinaya is fundamentally about community. Although it defines the monastic life, the fastest vehicle to Nirvana, it actually contains virtually no discussion of morality (blamelessness or benefit), or of the attainment of higher mental states through renunciation; instead these are topics of the Suttas, of Dhamma. The Vinaya is addressed indeed to monks and nuns, but throughout its focus is on their responsibility to the Buddhist community including the lay community. The Buddha’s teachings on community provide the mechanism through which the light of the Buddha’s teachings burn brightly, through which it spreads to attract new adherents and through which it retains its integrity as it is passed on to new generations.
Here is how the Buddha itemizes the aims of the Vinaya in ten points:
- The excellence of the Sangha,
- The comfort of the Sangha,
- The curbing of the impudent,
- The comfort of well-behaved monastics,
- The restraint of effluents related to the present life,
- The prevention of effluents related to the next life,
- The arousing of faith in the faithless,
- The increase of the faithful,
- The establishment of the true Dharma,and
- The fostering of Discipline.
The following is a very brief overview of the main features of the Discipline organized according to the aims they respectively support.
“The excellence of the Sangha.” The Sangha must be excellent because it sustains something quite sophisticated and precious, the living Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha as they manifest in the lives of people, both monastic and lay. The nuns and monks are the designated full-time caretakers of the Dhamma. The Vinaya ensures the conditions for deep practice and study and for harmony within the Sangha.
Excellence of the Sangha entails that its membership is exclusive. Its members become exclusive through their vows, through the willingness to take on very simple lives of renunciation, a lifestyle fully in accord with Dhamma but beyond the consideration of most people. Initially to become a member is quite easy, but sustained membership requires enormous trust in the Dhamma, recognition of the disadvantages of samsaric life and oodles of personal discipline. In this life among the renunciates the Dhamma burns most brightly.
By way of analogy the scientific community must be excellent because it sustains something sophisticated and productive of rapid progress in understanding the nature of our universe. Science concentrates people of exceptional training into a persistent stimulating and highly cooperative if not always harmonious community. Excellence also entails that its membership be exclusive, in this case ensured through years of intense education, evaluation and training, culminating in apprenticeship under a senior research scientist to qualify as competent to conduct independent research.
“The comfort of the Sangha.” The Sangha seems to be planned as the ideal society writ small. The excellence of the Sangha makes that feasible. Internally the Sangha as envisioned by the Buddha observes no class distinctions, provides an exemplary level of gender equality, is regulated in a way to avoid conflicts and maintain harmony, observes procedures to negotiate disagreements should these arise, is democratic and only minimally hierarchical.
At the same time the Sangha is embedded in and dependent on a greater society whose values may be often contrary but with which it must harmonize. Accordingly it takes care to conform, or at least provide the perception of conforming to the expectations of the wider society and certainly its standards of etiquette. It is worth noting that a preponderance of rules observed by Buddhist monks and nuns were originally recommended or inspired by lay people discontented with monastic behavior. Some regulations seem to be symbolic and I suspect purely for public perception and not reflective of the values of the ideal society (for instance, nuns pay respects to monks but not vice versa). The uniform appearance of the Buddhist Sangha is specifically not to be confused with ascetics of other traditions who may observe other standards, and under no circumstances with the laity who have a distinct role.
As an ascetic renunciate community, monks and nuns receive complete material support from the lay community. This affords them the leisure of practice, study and good works. Remarkably the Buddha not only makes receipt of this support mandatory (they cannot for instance grow their own food or live off their own resources) but then sharpens this dependence by limiting the monastic’s right to retain offerings, especially food for which the ownership expires at noon on the day it is offered! Monastics are not allowed to engage in exchange, such as Dhamma talks for food. This provides a high degree of insularity from the concerns and influences of the outside world. It means, for instance, that the Dhamma will never become a commercial product, manipulated for popular appeal. It also means that monastics can engage patiently in long-term practice toward profound but long-term attainment without the pressure to produce identifiable results.
The scientific community similarly receives material support, through professorships, research grants, etc, from the broader society, both to sustain its much higher living standards and to offset the costs of research equipment, publication, travel and so forth that its functions entail. This permits its members engage in nearly full-time research, training and teaching, fulfilling the functions of the community. The assumption of academic freedom and the institution of tenure gives the scientific community a high degree of insularity from the prevailing concerns of the outside world, unbiased by politics, religion, superstition, other popular notions, practical applications or benefits or profitability. It also means scientists can engage patiently in long-term research with no pressure to produce identifiable results.
“The curbing of the impudent” and “The comfort of well-behaved monastics.” The Sangha maintains high standards of behavior to ensure ethical conduct, conduct befitting the role of renunciate (celibacy, a nominal personal footprint, etc.), harmony of the Sangha, harmony beween Sangha and laity, preservation of the reputation of the Sangha, reaching group decisions and restraint of self-gratifying behavior.
Regulations are enforced primarily through simple personal acknowledgment of infractions with the intention to do better next time. The Sangha has no forms of corporal punishment and implements justice largely on an honor system. More serious matters are enforced through peer pressure, through expulsion or moving impudent members to the uneasy fringes of the community for periods of time, but only upon admission of guilt. For a very small set of very serious offenses the wayward monk or nun is from that very instant no longer of the Sangha. If one manages to hide such an offense one is simply a berobed lay person successfully impersonating a monk or nun.
Those whose behavior is unblemished garner a great deal of respect.
Scientific communities also maintain high ethical standards, albeit in quite different realms having to do with potential falsification of data and plagiarism, disharmonious and unproductive discourse and debate and with ensuring productive evaluation of results and theoretical proposals, scientific standards and methods and peer evaluation. Such communities are largely self-regulating, generally at the institutional level with relatively little centralization of authority. Governance is often in a local university administration, but similar standards of professional conduct are generally recognized and enforced throughout the world scientific community. Institutions share common practices for expelling members or to move them to the fringes of communal activities through hiring, funding and tenure decisions. Pursuit of professional reputation is typically a strong determinant of the behavior of scientists.
“The restraint of effluents related to the present life” and “The prevention of effluents related to the next life.” These two aims alone among the ten refer to the results of actual practice toward Awakening. Effluents are unwholesome tendencies and views, the taints from which the human character is purified on the Path. The Sangha functions in this regard by securing for itself the life most conducive to upholding Buddhist principles, a life so barren of any opportunity for personal advantage that a self can scarcely find root. Into its stead flow wisdom and compassion. Liberated from the tyranny of personal neediness these burst here and there into various stages of Awakening. In this way the Sangha so effectively produces Noble Ones from among its ranks.
Monastics are allowed by their vows to do almost nothing for themselves. They are permitted no livelihood, nor trade. They are isolated from the conventional exchange economy. Their material needs are offered entirely by the laity. Monastics are proscribed except in exceptional circumstances from asking for anything, they do not beg, contrary to folk opinion, but only offer the opportunity to give. On alms rounds they are not to prefer one house (the wealthy one or the home of the French chef) over another. They are not even allowed to endear themselves through charm and wit to families with the intent of garnering better or greater offerings, nor are they allowed to show off any special powers or talk about attainments to gain in reputation. They can build themselves a dwelling or sew for themselves robes, but these must be limited in size and quality. They also curtail frivolous speech, shows and entertainments and self-beautification, observe limits on what they can own or store, and do not eat after noon. Of course curtailing sexual activity is foundational to monasticism, obviating the most direct route to entanglement in samsara.
On the other hand there are almost no restrictions on what a monastic can do for others: on teaching, pastoral care, good works, advice, even physical labor, as long as it is not compensated. Interestingly the restrictions on the monastics’ aid to others bear on traditionally priestly functions, such as predicting the future, healing or interceding with deities and other otherworldly powers.
Virtually all of the progress one is likely to make on the Buddhist Path will be directly correlated with what is given up, physically or mentally: the physical trappings of life, relations and obligation like debt and car ownership, behaviors like partying flirtatiously or imbibing, needy emotions of lust, greed, envy, pride, avarice, aversive emotions of anger, hatred, fear, jealousy, and distortions of self-view, having to be somebody and confusion. The Buddhist Path entails a long process of disentanglement strand by strand from soap-operatic existence, of renunciation. The power of the monastic life is in setting high standards of physical renunciation and offering virtually no channel for the practical expression of the afflictive mental factors that refuse to let go and generally assault for a time even the most dedicated monastic heart. Within the monastic container meditation and study quickly develop and plump fruit.
The analogous discipline of science develops a different kind of quality in its practitioners: talent for research. It implements policies that provide very high standards for assessing its quality, for publicizing results and for allocating research funding and employment where future results prove most promising. Through continuous discourse at conferences, in published journals and in informal contexts, research results are continually refined and reevaluated cooperatively within the community to improve their quality. Peer review, and standards for hiring professors, granting tenure, awarding research grants, etc. also provide another forms of constraint and encouragement.
“The arousing of faith in the faithless” and “The increase of the faithful.” Where there are Noble Ones trust will be inspired, for they display first-hand the peace and happiness, wisdom and compassion that result from complete immersion in the Buddhist life. The Noble Ones are close at hand, they teach, they inspire with their deportment, their good works and their knowledge. They inspire self-reflection concerning one’s own life and tend to curtail samsaric tendencies. They are the adepts, consulted as authorities to which folk Buddhists will defer when Dhammic questions arise. They thereby constrain popular speculative views of Dhamma with a firm anchor in the practice and understanding of the Noble Ones.
Although most people do not enjoy first-hand access to scientists, the volume and continuous production of results gives Science much of its reputation and influence in the world, most particularly in the production of technology, including the wonderful gadgets that now fill our homes, cars and pockets, along with broad published outreach in popular media. Scientists are popularly regarded as the experts to whom others defer, thereby providing popular speculative views of science with an anchor in scientific research.
“The establishment of the true Dharma.” Buddhism has been noted as the first world religion. It has proved remarkable in its robustness, especially considering that hardly any other religions has been able to penetrate foreign cultures without military conquest. This has been possible because the integrity of the Core Dhamma is preserved in an excellent community that enjoys insularity, is strong in its practice, is sustained by the laity and is is actively involved in its own education. It is not hard to imagine that something as refined as Buddhism might degrade into superstition, pop psychology or religious intolerance even in its native culture, but the anchor of the Sangha is difficult to budge.
The integrity of scientific results is similarly preserved in an excellent community that enjoys insularity, does strong collaborative work, is well supported and that is actively involved in its own education. It is not hard to imagine how something as refined as Science might degrade into superstition, magic or wild speculation from which it arose in the first place, but it doesn’t, even though the oddest notions about the domain of science are rampant outside of the firmly planted scientific community.
“The fostering of Discipline.” Monastic discipline is probably the most archaic element of Buddhism. While scriptures vary throughout the Buddhist world, particularly with the proliferation of the later Mahayana Sutras, the Vinaya in slightly varying versions is a constant throughout Buddhist Asia, except for Japan due to a long history of government interference. The discipline is preserved by those who maintain the discipline and ordain nuns and monks who will maintain the discipline. As long as the discipline is maintained there will be arahants in the world, as well as the lesser Noble Ones. As long as there are Noble Ones in the world the Dhamma also will not go too far astray.
Imagine by way of illustration that the Buddhist Sangha as a whole decided that from now on the support of a monk will depend on his popularity among the laity, perhaps in terms of how many students he attracts, how many people read his Dharma talks, how well he avoids the unnerving word “renunciation.” This change would compromise the comfort of the Sangha, because it would put essential functions under outside influence. It would also compromise the restraint of effluents, because it would force the monk into the self-centered and perhaps competitive behavior of actively seeking approval of others as a matter of livelihood.
Imagine additionally that members of the Sangha are self-qualified simply by hanging up their shingle, “Venerable Schmoe,” with no commitment to the renunciate life. This would compromise the excellence of the community. It is easy to imagine how Buddhism would dissolve in a short flash of unprecedented popularity. Influence over casual seekers would grow for a time, but fewer and fewer people will be inspired or guided into deep practice and study of the Dhamma. Fostering of discipline is critical.
The discipline of the scientific community is perhaps its most archaic element. Interestingly it is not preserved as a uniform text and not so deliberately studied as the Buddhist Vinaya is. Yet working scientists and university administrators seem to have an implicit sense of what discipline entails and are very sensitive to any assault on its integrity as a community. These various elements of scientific discipline are for the most part very old, implicitly understood by working scientists, and show every sign of enduring into the future.
Imagine, for instance, that the scientific community as a whole decided that from now on the merit, publication or funding of research will depend on the popularity of the researcher or his research, perhaps in terms of how many students he attracts or how many people read his research results, or if he can write a best-selling book. This would compromise the comfort of the scientific community, because it would put its critical functions under outside influence, popular opinion. It would also compromise the restraint of mistaken notions, because it would eliminate the guidance of peer review in favor of a much less expert process of review.
Imagine additionally that researchers are self-qualified, simply by hanging up their shingles, “Professor Schmoe, PhD. This would compromise the excellence of the community. It is easy to see how serious Science would dissolve in a short flash of unprecedented popularity. Scientific understanding would also be compromised when unqualified researchers publish results with little feedback from perhaps better qualified members of the scientific community, and when they ignore the important but mundane or complex work of research in favor of what sells. In the end Science would be largely discredited. Luckily this scenario is unlikely to play itself out fully, because scientists have a sense of the discipline their community requires.
I have written of the Sangha in ideal terms and limited discussion to the original Sangha, but I realize that it like all human institutions to date, including the scientific, it is faulty and inevitably subject to falling short of its own standards, and yet the Sangha always recovers. It is easy to be cynical about institutions and governance in general, and about the Sangha in particular because the latter is expected to uphold pristine standards indeed. Yet institutions at the same time are necessary to coordinate and preserve. Dismissing institutions or governance out of hand is like the tsunami survivor proclaiming, “That’s it, I’ve had it with water!” or the tornado survivor gasping, “No more air for me.” Like institutions water or air can get unruly, but without them what would you drink or breathe? In fact the Vinaya is a massive attempt to correct as a matter of training even the smallest unruliness or tiniest impropriety as far at the Buddha could discern it. The Buddha was raised a prince and likely trained in politics and even warfare; he would have had some insight into such matters. In fact he produced the institution with the best track record ever to date.
The Shape of the Lay Community.
The Third Gem has a distinct advantages over Gem One and Gem Two: immediate living presence. It ennobles the Parisa to have monks, nuns and particularly Noble Ones in its midst. These are the Sangha, under both inclusive and exclusive definitions, those disciples of the Buddha who root their lives entirely in the Dhamma.
The Noble Ones in particular are the teachers, the adepts, the most admirable friends who impart the Dhamma both verbally and bodily, through explanation and through example. What they explain is very deep, very sophisticated and very difficult to grasp without equally deep practice. Sangha members individually gain reputations for their teaching or humanitarian work, for their inspiring meditation practice or for their scrupulous observance of monastic discipline.
As the laity opens its heart to the Third Gem and to the individual adepts, the teachings flow in more freely. However relatively few in the general population will have the time, energy or inclination to go deeply, the understanding of the folk Buddhist remains very limited, it is often subject to misunderstandings, they think that Nibbana is a place and that all monks have magical powers. All the while, however, they know there are adepts who can clarify and correct when needed. This is much the same with science: Relatively few people develop deep scientific knowledge, the armchair scientists are subject to misunderstandings, they wonder how rocket ships avoid bumping into all the orbits out there and why it is cold at the North Pole, the highest point on earth close to the sun according to the map. Yet they know there are adepts who can clarify and correct such things if needed. Adepts are great to have around.
If the lay devotee should find the time, energy and aspiration to go deeply, to begin to ascend the stem that reaches toward Nibbana, there is a kind and friendly helping hand available to explain the meaning of the Buddha’s life and Awakening and clarify step by step the highly sophisticated teachings to lead the instructling toward and up the Path toward Awakening. If the devotee wishes, he might take advantage of the highly recommended opportunity to ordain and pursue the Path as a member of the Sangha, with the full and enthusiastic support of his neighbors.
Most immediately the Sangha provides a constant breathing example of what it is to live a Buddhist life. They are walking science experiments, demonstrating with every word and gesture what happens when one lets go, when one renounces everything that common sense says is necessary for felicity, for fun, for fulfillment: they end up being the most joyfully contented people in town! The Noble Ones serve as a reality check for folk people as they make life’s decisions, and a subversively civilizing influence on the whole community.
The wholesome practice of veneration extends particularly easily to the Living Gem and dovetails with the project of satisfying their material needs, which becomes an expression of both veneration and affection. In a very real sense monastics are like house pets. Their needs are modest but constant, and recall that the Buddha’s regulations actually make them unnaturally constant. People find great joy in feeding and clothing monks and nuns, so adorable in their fluffy robes and shaved skulls. This puts the devout layperson right at the center of the wholesome practice of generosity (dana), which becomes the lifeblood of the Buddhist community. It has been written that the Buddhist community has an Economy of Gifts. The monastics are not allowed to participate in the exchange economy in any case, are sustained entirely from gifts and are at liberty to give immaterial gifts freely. The communal life around the monastics, later around the monasteries, which would commonly become at the same time community centers for the Parisa, this is the principle that prevails.
Through their support of the Sangha as well as the rest of the Buddhist community folk Buddhists develop the joyful feeling of doing their share, of participating fully in bringing the civilizing influence of the Noble Ones into the community and in upholding the sasana to preserve Buddhism in its pristine purity for future generations. The relationship between the Sangha and lay Parisa is one of complementary roles in partnership. The Sangha upholds the teachings, produces the adapts and thereby serve the Parisa. The Noble Ones are the soil that provides not only the nourishment of water and mineral but ensures that the entire practice, roots, leaves, stem and blossom, will not be carried away by the wind in the years to come. The Parisa supports the Sangha’s material needs. Generosity on both sides binds the two together. What authority the Sangha holds is only conveyed as wisdom or knowledge and conduct; it has no coercive power beyond the layperson’s willingness to accept advice or admonition or to view the monastic as a role model. The laity’s authorityactually can become coercive: Dissatisfaction with the monastic Sangha can turn into withdrawal of support, a constant external check on the integrity of the institutional Sangha.
Because generosity is such a joyful condition monasteries like the one I happen to live in are very happy places in which to practice this fundamental Buddhist value, along with selfless veneration. It encourages community involvement, requires no sophisticated knowledge and provides a wholesome environment into which to bring the kids. It also opens into an opportunity to rub shoulders with Noble Ones, benefit from their wisdom and advice and begin to learn and practice the Path to Awakening. The Buddhist community provides an oasis of sanity in a world otherwise perpetually spinning crazily out of kilter out of control.
February 9, 2013
Fundamentals of Buddhist Religiosity: Refuge
Uposatha Day, February 3, 2012
Index to this series
Chapter 3. Refuge.
In summary of the last chapter, reverential trust (or faith) in the Triple Gem, that is, of the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, is what nourishes our Buddhist aspirations and practice just as sun, water and soil nourish a flower. This is what first turns our heads toward virtue, wisdom, peace and the rest of our highest values. Furthermore, this is in Core Buddhism, it is present in the original teachings of the Buddha and it is upheld in any Authentic Buddhism ever since. I would like to explore this Refuge thing more fully here.
Trust in the Triple Gem is essential. Until we understand what what it is the Buddha realized, what it is the Buddha taught and what it is the Sangha has upheld for one hundred generations, we cannot be certain where this way of life and Path of practice will lead us. Until we have experienced deeply this way of life and traveled far on this Path of Practice we will not understand what the Buddha understood, taught and entrusted to the Sangha. Therefore, until we have experienced this way of life and traveled far on this path we require trust, ardent trust in the Triple Gem. Those born into Buddhist cultures and families learn that trust from infancy, others acquire it through sometimes accidental means. Sariputta, who would one-day become the Buddha’s leading disciple in wisdom, gained it first simply by observing the deportment of one of the early Noble One on alms rounds.
There is nothing unusual or uniquely religious about any of this: Any decision, whether secular or religious, requires Trust because we live in a hopelessly uncertain world. Trust is the only thing that can bridge the gap between the little we actually know and the heap we would need to know to make a decision with certitude. It is either the nuts or the bolts of human cognition. We may try to bring as much discernment as possible into the decision but in the end we necessarily make a jump, big or little, into the unknown, “[Gulp] Well, here goes!” In this way we have entrusted ourselves for good or bad to our baby sitters, to our teachers, to our accountant, to TV pundits and to our dentist. Those born into a modern nation state at one time learned to trust its leaders and its military from childhood often through ritual pledge and incantation and to trust science as the most reliable information source. Discernment may or may not back up our trust, but some degree of trust in one thing or the other is an unavoidable part of any decision.
Life-altering decisions require big acts of trust and therefore great courage; they are way beyond the reach of the timid who cling fearfully to certitude and baby steps. This is the courage of the hippies of yore on quest in India with nothing but a backpack, and more commonly of the betrothed or of the career bound, stirred by deep longing or desperation. The Buddhist Path fully embraced by the one who will ascend the stem toward Nibbana will shake one’s life to the core and this will demand a particularly courageous trust in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, stirred by samvega, a kind of horror at the full realization of the nature and depth of the human condition. It is said that the Buddha-to-be experienced samvega when as a somewhat frivolous Nepalese playboy he learned to his dismay of sickness, of old age and of death, and thus began his quest to India.
Trust driven by desperation is appropriate even where little certainty can be discerned. Suppose the flood waters are rising and huts at the river’s edge are already being swept away. The villagers panic as they recognize the foolishness of building their village against a sheer cliff. Most of them begin running frantically back and then forth along the river bank. The chief, on the other hand, grabbing up his youngest daughter in one hand and his exquisitely embellished staff of authority in the other, shouts, “Follow me, villagers!” and plunges into the water. Many others follow immediately. Still others, the more timid, wait until they ascertain the chief’s ascent up the opposite river bank, but many of the timid are tragically swept away in the still rising waters for having hesitated. There is no discernment in timidity, to trust is to take control of our fate.
The safety we seek, should samvega arise, is already at hand in the bridge of Refuge in the Triple Gem. Underlying both metaphors of Refuge・and Gem・is the property of Protection.・A refuge at the Buddha’s time was the protection provided by a mentor, patron or benefactor in return for a vow of allegiance. Gems were generally believed to have special protective properties. Generally there is a sense of calm relief and confident safety associated with taking Refuge in the Triple Gem known as pasada, the antidote to the distress of samvega. It is said that the Buddha-to-be experienced pasada at the sight of a wandering ascetic before he left the frivolity of the palace life. The Triple Gem along with the life of the Buddhist community is a precondition, a kind of launch pad, for the Magga, the Path of practice toward Awakening.
Refuge in the Buddha
Such indeed is the fortunate one, the worthy one, the supremely awakened one,
Endowed with knowledge and virtue, well-gone, knower of Worlds,
Peerless tamer and driver of the hearts of men, master of gods and men,
The awakened one, the exalted one. – AN 10.92
Most religions worship some personality. Buddhism is striking in that that role of deep veneration is occupied by a (now deceased) human being rather than a deity or supernatural being, albeit a person who attained some remarkable attributes. We already tend to venerate people with remarkable qualities, for instance, our favorite geniuses like Einstein or Mozart. The Buddha was a three-fold genius!
First, the Buddha became a supremely awakened one, a Buddha, worthy, exalted, with no one to light the Path for him. He thereby attained perfect mastery of the mind, achieving perfect wisdom, virtue and equanimity. This was his first genius.
Second, he was able to teach what he had attained, to lay out the Dhamma, the proper knowledge of the world and the means to tame, drive and master humans and whoever else wanted to travel the Path. This was his second genius.
Third, he organized the Buddhist community, in particular the institution of the Sangha, to support, propagate and perpetuate the understanding and practice of his teachings. His third genius is rarely mentioned as such, but the reader should appreciate the immensity of this accomplishment by the end of the next chapter. In short, the Buddha’s three-fold genius is directly tied to the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha.
When we take Refuge in the Buddha we see in the enormity of this personality the highest qualities we might choose to emulate. Refuge in the Buddha is nonetheless an act of trust, trust that such a personality is even possible. It is only with deep practice and study, with our own progress on the Path that we begin to see how his qualities of mind actually start to begin to commence emerging gradually. Trust is necessary in the beginning until we see for ourselves, veneration encourages trust, it opens up the heart and mind to the influence of the Buddha.
Veneration is a Core Buddhist practice that is rather simple in Original Buddhism but assumes sometimes wildly embellished forms in some of the later traditions. Veneration gives Buddhism much of its religiosity. Veneration, or its stronger version, worship, may be the primary practice of many religions. So let’s look at its forms and functions in Original Buddhism. Two chapters from now we will see how it evolved in some of the later traditions of Buddhism.
The living Buddha was venerated and expected to be venerated in a number of ways according to the customs of the culture in which he lived. These included a number of physical expressions, most significantly anjali, produced by bringing the palms together before the chest or face. Anjali is a quite ubiquitous expression of respect or greeting in its land of origin. What is significant is that Buddhism has carried it from India to every land in which Buddhism has taken root regardless of how dissimilar the culture. This is evidence of the importance of the function of veneration in Buddhism. It is at the same time evidence of how a particular cultural artifact is quite readily carried along to a new land when that artifact is the established expression of some Core Buddhist function in the old land. Sometimes this process even leaving traces of one-time Buddhist influence where Buddhism is no longer evident, as is almost certainly the case in the Christian use of anjali for prayer. We will see further examples of this in chapters to come when we consider the evolution of religiosity in the later traditions.
Veneration to the Buddha was also originally expressed through full prostrations sometimes touching the Buddha’s feet, by circumambulation keeping the Buddha on one’s right, by covering one’s otherwise bare shoulder with one’s robe and by sitting on a lower seat than the Buddha, by standing when the Buddha entered the room, by walking behind the Buddha or not turning one’s back to the Buddha and by proper forms of address. In the early scriptures the Buddha occasionally actively chastised a visitor for not showing proper respect, beginning with the Buddha’s re-encounter after his Awakening with the five ascetics to whom he delivered his first Dhamma talk. His Vinaya also required of monks that they not offer Dhamma talks to those who do not offer proper respect to them.
The original practice of veneration to the Buddha applied of course to a living being. Nearing his parinibbana he anticipated that his relics, the remains after his cremation, would become objects of veneration and accordingly specified, as described in the Parinibbana Sutta (DN 16) that they be divvied up and distributed to specified clans of lay devotees, so that they might build stupas over them. This became the primary physical symbol of the Buddha for purposes of veneration; Buddha statues were a much later development. I also mentioned in the last chapter that the Buddha specified four sites associated with his life as places of pilgimage. The Buddha also recommended contemplations about himself for recitation such as the one that began this subchapter, alongside contemplations of the Dhamma and Sangha.
The way the Buddha set himself up, albeit in a modest way for the times, as an object of veneration had nothing to do with an “ego trip”; that would contradict all we know about the personality of the Buddha, about the doctrine and practices he espoused which were directed unambiguously toward selflessness, and with the trajectory of development dedicated disciples of the Buddha have experienced throughout history. It was as if Gandhi, realizing the veneration that would continue after him and realizing that this veneration would serve to keep his project alive, had left us with an ample supply of portraits of himself to hang on our walls. The Buddha undoubtedly was well aware of the importance of his Awakening for mankind and understood the value of refuge in a human personality and would have defined practices around this accordingly.
There is also subsidiary value in veneration itself in developing wholesome states in its practitioners. Bowing and other expressions of veneration powerfully generate personal humility, they deflate the ego, knock it out of its privileged position in the universe by deferring to another. This seems to be a function of veneration or worship in all religions I am aware of, and I presume an essential function of the God idea in most. Prostration in particular seems to be a natural embodiment or enactment with deep genetic roots; consider how lesser dogs instinctively make a similar gesture to express submission to greater dogs. This practice is an easy and profound antecedent to the gradual weakening along the Path of self-view. Expressions of veneration result in calm and the stilling of inflictive emotions as self-centeredness relaxes. The Buddha states,
When a noble disciple contemplates upon the Enlightened One, at that time his mind is not enwrapped in lust, nor in hatred, nor in delusion. … By cultivating this contemplation, many beings become purified. (AN 6.25)
Refuge in the Dhamma
Well expounding is the teaching of the Buddha,
To be seen together, with immediate fruit, inviting investigation, leading onwards,
To be realized by the wise each for himself. – AN 10.92
Most religions have some form of doctrine or belief system, generally providing a metaphysics, an account of the origin of the world, of mankind or of a particular tribe. The Dhamma stands out in its sophistication and its emphasis on the mind rather than on external forces. It deals with the human dilemma, existential crisis, anguish, suffering and dissatisfaction, delusion, harmfulness, meaninglessness and the rest, as human problems with human causes that arise in human minds, and require human solutions. It provides a program whereby the mind is tuned, honed, sharpened, tempered, straightened, turned and distilled into an instrument of Virtue, Serenity and Wisdom. The Dhamma itself is among the greatest products of the human mind, skillfully articulated by the Buddha. On the basis of trust in the Triple Gem we begin to study, practice, develop and gain insight through the teachings of the Buddha. As the Buddha states,
He who has gone for refuge to the Buddha, the Teaching and his Order, penetrates with transcendental wisdom the Four Noble Truths — suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the Noble Eightfold Path leading to the cessation of suffering. – Dhammapada 190-191
The Dhamma also stands out in its empirical quality, “inviting investigation.” This phrase translates Pali ehipassiko, which is an adjective formed from “come and see.” The Dhamma points almost entirely to what can be verified in our direct experience, or instructs us in ways to move the mind into certain experiences. Many in the West are first inspired to trust in the Dhamma in the first place upon learning of this refreshing quality of the Dhamma.
Some caution is however in order lest one think this means that we should trust our own experience. In fact for the Buddha the typical “uninstructed worldling” is actually astonishingly deluded and the Dhamma quite “against the stream” from his perspective. We get hopelessly confused in trying to see or interpret our own experience. For this reason the Buddha in the famous but often misquoted Kalama Sutta warns us not to base one’s understanding on one’s own thinking:
… don’t go … by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability … (AN 3.65)
In fact, when the Buddha says “come” he is shouting down to us flatlanders from the mountaintop. To arrive at his vantage point we need to scramble up hills, struggle through brambles and ford rivers. When the Buddha says “see” we need to focus our eyes intently in the right direction to barely make out what the Buddha sees with great clarity of vision. In order to be willing to do any of this we have to establish from the beginning great faith and trust that the Buddha knows what he is talking about. This is Refuge. What else would induce us to make the difficult climb up the mountain? Investigation and personal verification are necessary parts of following the Dhammic Path but they take time and effort before we can say, “I’ve come and now I see.” Until then trust or faith is essential.
For instance, the Buddha taught that craving is the origin of suffering (the Second Noble Truth). At first this will seem an abstract proposition which we ponder and try our darnedest to match up with observation. The most likely early outcome is to dismiss this proposition as faulty. It seems pretty clear to us, for instance, that buying that snazzy shirt would make us exceedingly dashing and that that would lead to improved prospects for romance and other forms of social success. Therefore craving clearly leads not to suffering but to happiness. Refuge entail instead the we decide to trust the Buddha before what we think we are experiencing.
Eventually through years of examination on and off the cushion we might discover that the Second Noble Truth is not an abstraction at all; it is something that bites us on the nose over and over all day every day. As soon as the craving comes up the suffering is right there with it. As soon as we “have” to have that shirt there is stress and anxiety, unmistakenly. We would discover we had been living in a world of incessant suffering, a world aflame, all along and not noticing it! Without Refuge we would never have scrambled to the mountaintop. As the contemplation at the beginning of this subchapter states, it is the wise who realize for ourselves.
The Japanese-American Zen master Shohaku Okumura in a similar vein once said of Zen meditation, “It takes a lot of faith to do zazen. Otherwise nobody would do something so stupid.”
Although the Buddha’s quite empirical methods seem generally to turn away from what we tend to think of as religiosity — the Buddha quite clearly had no sympathy for blind faith — I should in all fairness point out that his teachings are not entirely empirical. The ultimate criterion for Dhammic truth is not verification, but benefit. This again is made clear in the Kalama Sutta:
“Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,’ abandon them. ” (AN 3.65 )
He then goes on to argue how belief in rebirth, apparently as controversial in Buddha’s day as it is today, fits this criterion, as a working assumption if need be for the unconvinced. He does not argue for rebirth on the basis of criteria of objective verification but of ethics. This brings myth, or what many will interpret as myth, within the Buddha’s purview, even while it is rare that it is found a Core role.
Certainly the primary original way to venerate the Dhamma would have been to listen to discourses attentively and to recite and memorize them.
Refuge in the Sangha
Of good conduct is the Sangha of disciples,
Of upright conduct is the Sangha of disciples,
Of wise conduct is the Sangha of disciples,
Of dutiful conduct is the Sangha of disciples,
Namely the four pairs of persons and the eight kinds of individuals,
Worthy of offerings, worthy of hospitality,
Worthy of gifts, worthy of reverential salutation,
An incomparable field of merits in the world. – AN 10.92
Living, breathing role models are found in every religious tradition, but in Buddhism these become primary objects of veneration and faith. This makes perfect sense since living breathing persons have the most immediate influence on our lives and are most likely to have brought us to Refuge in the Triple Gem in the first place. Unfortunately sometimes we accord this privilege unknowingly to ruffians and scoundrels rather than to admirable friends. For the Buddha the Ariyasangha is most worthy.
The line in the verse above, “Namely the four pairs of persons and the eight kinds of individuals,” refers to the four stages of Awakening, beginning with Stream Entry, and subdividing each of these by “path” and “fruit,” that define the Ariyasangha in terms of spiritual attainment. The subsequent lines refer to the practice of giving alms to monks and nuns, the Bhikkhusangha, along with veneration. The idea is that the Sangha brings great benefit to the world but that their attainment and presence are enabled by those who sustain them and thereby share in bringing benefit to the world, as it were watering a fertile field. The generosity of alms is thereby the primary means of expressing veneration to the Third Gem. Both practices, veneration itself and generosity as a specific expression, are important elements of Buddhist religiosity in cultivating wholesome mental factors for the actor, which is what merit really is.
I’ve written a bit about the relationship of the Ariya- and Bhikkhu-sanghas, the soil and the roots, in the last chapter, and will examine this in detail in the next chapter. Suffice it to say here that there is an ambiguity between the two. Recall that the former are individuals of great attainment, the Noble Ones, and the latter the members of the monastic order, who individually may or may not be so Noble. Generally when we extol the virtues of the “Sangha,” as in the contemplation above we speak of the Noble Ones, yet the most common formula for first taking Refuge in the early discourses usually in the Buddha’s presence, explicitly uses the word Bhikkhusangha. It gets confusing but the confusion seems to be deliberate. If we think of the Bhikkhusangha as a school that trains people to become Ariyans but actually includes some monks and nuns of little attainment, for instance, the newly ordained, we realize that offering alms to the Bhikkhusangha is a necessary function for ensuring that there are Noble Ones in the world. Moreover it is the monks and nuns who are readily recognized as a Sangha thought their distinctive attire. As such the Bhikkhusangha not only sustantially includes the Ariyasangha, but nuns and monks collectively or individually symbolize it, even if sometimes much as a piece of plaster sitting on a modern altar might symbolize the Buddha. It helps if the practice of giving alms is thought of not as the practice of giving to a particular Noble One or a particular nun or monk, but to the Sangha as a whole, undifferentiated, on behalf of which a particular nun or monk receives the alms. Accordingly the Buddha said,
“An offering made to the monastic Sangha is incalculable, immeasurable. And, I say, that in no way does a gift to a person individually ever have a greater fruit than an offering made to the Sangha.” – MN 141
Although the Buddha included himself in the Sangha it is remarkable that the “person individually” referred to was specifically himself in the context of the discourse, the Noble One of the Noble Ones. For the Buddha the Refuge in the Sangha was huge.
Continuity.
The Buddhist Path fully embraced by the one who will ascend the stem toward Nibbana will shake his life to the core and this will demand a particularly courageous trust in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. I want to return briefly to the theme of urgency that impels this level of faith.
The Great Cathedral in Cologne, Germany began construction in 1248 A.D. and was to be magnificent. It was completed in 1880, over six centuries later! This makes me think of the original founders of the Cathedral, and marvel at what their motives were and what inspired them to start a project of this size that would not live to see past the very earliest stages. This undertaking certainly required a great trust that others will be there to continue the work through the generations and centuries to come. It certainly required patience when progress must have seemed so gradual in their lifetime. Along with patience it must have fostered a sense of urgency as the significance of this project dwarfed all other considerations in the lives of these founders; after all every decision they made was for an eager posterity, for untold generations to come, long after the ephemeral gains, losses and fatigue of their small lives had long been forgotten. Their small lives must have acquired huge meaning in the context of this project. I imagine that sicknesses, deaths, births, droughts barely deterred the founders in their determination to see the work continue without interruption.
This particular sample of selfless urgency and determination, of meaningfulness and zeal, comes out of a religious context, but similar examples are found in secular realms as well, for instance, in science or in art or among explorers, in which practitioners characteristically give themselves over completely to a project perceived as somehow greater than themselves, sometimes even to their personal neglect and peril. That greater context or perspective is often ill-defined, the glory of God, the march of human knowledge, Lasting Beauty. It is this kind of “religious” zeal that produces genius. It is also akin to the zeal evoked by samvega, horror at the human predicament, and pasada, trust, that turns to Refuge and goes on to produce Awakening. The aim of our practice is about the perfection of the human character, it is about making something no less magnificent than the Cologne Cathedral: a Buddha.
If we fail to find that greater perspective our practice can easily slip entirely into making our present lives temporarily more comfortable until we die, at which point any horror we may have at the human predicament will disappear anyway. Our practice will be like beginning construction on a village church, rather than a Cathedral, which we expect to occupy and preach in this very life. The result might indeed be competent, but hardly magnificent. We will have failed to transcend a petty fathom-long body and few decades of life and thereby failed to secure the condition for an Awakening that might otherwise have been possible even in this very life and body.
What would be missing in this picture is a sense of continuity with what goes on before this life, after this life and all around this life. Our practice is about our “ancient twisted karma,” about developing from what we understand as the content of our character, our deeply rutted habit patterns of body, speech and mind, our views, our identities, our pleasures and our anguish, our strengths and weaknesses. When I use the phrase “ancient twisted” I acknowledge that this karma has for the most part obscure antediluvian origins. We repeat in our lives what our ancestors have repeated before us, what our culture is accustomed to repeating, what our evolutionary history has passed on to us. Just as ancient twisted karma has all been transmitted to us as the stuff of our practice, so do we transmit it further as a hopefully less twisted result. We are like pipes; if karma goes in one end karma has to come out the other. In short, we are embedded in a matrix of beginningless and endless cause and effect, that passes through countless lives.
This is what makes the horror of the human predicament as well as our practice toward its resolution huge. The realization that the fruits of our practice are forever, fosters a sense of urgency as what’s at stake in this project dwarfs all other considerations in this life; after all every decision you make will be for a world eager to end suffering, long after the ephemeral gains, losses and fatigue of your small present life are long forgotten. This means you will continue to practice virtue, even under the pressure of bad times or of good short-term gains, because it is your virtuous kamma that will carry over into future. The fruits of the practice of this small life will acquire huge meaning in the context of this project. Sicknesses, deaths, births, falling stock prices will barely deter you in your determination to see the work continue without interruption.
This deeper perspective is the function of Rebirth in Original Buddhism, and explains why the Buddha, otherwise scrupulously wary of metaphysics or philosophical speculation, took a clear stand in this case. What is really at stake, as with Refuge, is the attitude behind our practice. In terms of rebirth Bhikkhu Bodhi states more succinctly the point I present here:
To take full cognizance of the principle of rebirth will give us that panoramic perspective from which we can survey our lives in their broader context and total network of relationships. This will spur us on in our own pursuit of the path and will reveal the profound significance of the goal toward which our practice points,…
I bring up rebirth in the context of religiosity because it like Refuge expresses a Core part of the mindset, the infrastructure, the launch pad, the preconditions necessary to fully embrace the Path toward Nibbana. It also incidentally gives us an opportunity to explore the boundary of Original and Core Buddhism, that is to start with an understanding of the Core functionality that needs to be preserved then to test the range of expressions of that functionality. For instance, admirable friendship itself can be viewed as channel for conveying karmic results. Modern science has revealed many new channels, genetic, behavioral, social, environmental, that would have been dimly understood at the time of the Buddha. Or we might find the more traditional linear model of pipe linearly aligned to pipe entirely satisfactory. In any case we are each engaged in an epic struggle with karmic forces from the ancient past and outcomes that will reach endlessly into the future.
Buddhism without Refuge?
The tyke born of a devout Buddhist family is likely to live out his life centered in religiosity; he will live in the roots and leaves, not in the stem. His is a world something like the grass of the next illustration. The little seedling will have been brought into the presence of Buddha altars, and of monks, nuns and Noble Ones, and will have been taught the forms of veneration. He will learn to recite the Refuges. He will begin to absorb a few Dhammic aphorisms and learn to recite five Precepts. With growing conviction he becomes increasingly involved in the community life, developing merit in taking care of the temple and the needs of the monastics, in chanting vigorously, and such things. He will someday become aware of the stem and may consider broadening his world to include the Path upward, perhaps ordaining. A full encounter with samvega will likely bring him to that decision. In any case he will be inclined support generously the aspirations of those who do make that choice, for he will understand the civilizing force of the Noble Ones.
Living in this world seems in itself capable of achieving remarkable results. I see this in most Asian Buddhists I’ve known. I also see it in other religious traditions with similar forms of religiosity, which one way or another seem to produce some people of great attainment, even without a Noble Eightfold Path or anything resembling it! It has a remarkable capacity for generating confidence, zip and many wholesome mental factors in its adherents, and can produce centered, selfless, composed, kind and insightful people. One can thrive in the grass.
A totally different profile would be someone who does not grow up with a foundation in Buddhist religiosity. He might be reluctant to commit to the Refuges or Precepts, has not lived in a Buddhist community, knows nothing about Noble Ones, does not know what function nuns and monks could possibly serve or why they don’t go out to get jobs. He might have begun by reading about Buddhism, inspired perhaps by a vague sense that Buddhism is a good thing, maybe having seen the Dalai Lama on TV or inspired by Buddhism’s reputation as “peaceful,” or by reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. In any case he has been moved to take up Buddhist practice, particularly meditation, much as he had when taking up working out in a Gym the year before. Just as the gym membership had made his body stronger, he hopes that joining a 都angha・will make his mind stronger. He likes the idea of Awakening and might even expect to if he meditates ardently for a couple of years, but has no perspective beyond improving this one life.
This chap lives in the world of the stem, as shown in the next illustration. Without deep veneration nor involvement in a Buddhist community he is nourished only by the experience of practice itself. He lives more accurately in something like mistletoe hanging off the stem which has grown from a seed (his initial intention) that had been deposited in a bird dropping. Mistletoe is a parasite that develops enough of a root to absorb water and minerals from the host plant. It has no sense of where this nourishment comes from nor responsibility for preserving it for future generations. It gazes down upon the grass with disdain, little comprehending the roots and soil and the spiritual growth that is happening down there. I know this profile well; it used to be mine. His practice is likely to be precarious for a time, but he might eventually gain some strength if he manages grow deep religious roots. Notice that each of these illustrations omits the blossom of Nibbana.
People who grow up steeped in (perhaps Jewish or Catholic) religiosity have an easier time. They are like a graft rather than mistletoe. Much of the growth of the roots and leaves has already been experienced and is, probably with mixed degrees of success, translated into Buddhist religiosity.
February 2, 2013
Fundamentals of Buddhist Religiosity: Core Buddhism
Uposatha Day, Full Moon, January 26, 2013
Index to this series
Chapter 2. Core Buddhism
There is a Buddhism that shines through constantly through the various Buddhist traditions, a Buddhism visible first in the earliest scriptures and a common edifice behind the many often wild and perplexing guises appearing under the name “Buddhism.” In order to make sense of this, I am going to distinguish three related terms “Original Buddhism,” “Core Buddhism” and “Authentic Buddhism.” Imagine someone made up and told a story that was then retold many times, with different words and much retooling and embellishment of details, but keeping the basic story intact right down to the response to the punch line, we might say the “core” of the “original” story is preserved in any “authentic” retelling.
Original Buddhism is Buddhism as taught by the Buddha, and as formulated by the Buddha. It consists of two parts, the Dhamma and the Vinaya, the doctrine and the discipline. Generally the Pali Suttas, particularly the Digha, Majjhima, Samyutta and Anguttara Nikayas as well as the Suttanipata of the Khuddhaka Nikaya along with the equivalent Chinese Agamas are generally agreed by scholars to constitute the most reliable evidence of the original Dhamma. The Vinaya, the monastic code, is available in several traditions, the Pali Vinaya being the most easily available in English. Many will quibble endlessly about what is actually original, particularly since there are many contradictions and alternative interpretations in the texts transmitted to us, and clearly alterations. I have argued elsewhere that the resolution of these quibbles requires a recognition of the system that shines through when enough of the pieces are assembled, a recognition beyond the competence of pure scholars of Buddhism, but available to those who have entered deep into the path of practice to begin to see the Dhamma experientially.
Core Buddhism is a significant abstraction from Original Buddhism, a kind of eau de Buddhime. It is the system that shines through in Original Buddhism, but stripped of its particular formulation and stripped of extraneous elements of the ancient texts that are irrelevant to that system. This term serves as way to eschew the literalism lurking in original texts.
For instance it is safe to say that some form of mindfulness practice is a key functional element of Core Buddhism. This is formulated as the Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Original Buddhism, but the the quite distinctly formulated Zen method of meditation called Shikantaza in Japanese along with a set of off-the-cushion practices retain (I would argue, based on personal experience) its functionality. I therefore say both formulations maintain the same functional element of Core Buddhism and Zen is at least in this regard authentic Buddhism.
Also Original Buddhism was taught in a certain cultural context so it is inevitable that it will mention many elements that are not actually integral to Buddhism as a functional system. My own sense, for instance, is that the many devas, godly beings, who drop in on the Buddha in the early scriptures are such elements. Of course what it or is not Core Buddhism is subject to quibble at least as much as what is or is not Original Buddhism. For the most part I will describe Core Buddhism in terms of its intersection with Original Buddhism, but implicitly intend the qualification, “… or equivalent” at each step.
Finally, I refer to an Authentic Buddhism as any formulation of Buddhism that retains or even extends Core Buddhism, and thereby preserves the functionality or intention of Original Buddhism. A new authentic form of Buddhism might arise as Buddhism enters a new cultural space in which new ways of teaching are necessary to reach new ways of thinking. Naturally Original Buddhism is also the Original Authentic Buddhism. Other Authentic Buddhisms retool or extend Core elements of Original Buddhism or simply accrue extra elements, most particularly elements of religiosity. I hope this makes sense; these distinctions will be useful in coming chapters.
A Metaphor for Core Buddhism.
Buddhism is a flower. It is a system of interrelated inter-functioning parts that is much greater than the sum of the individual parts. Each part has a function and, regardless of whether or not you recognize at first what that function is, the whole flower would die if it were missing any major part. Here is in a nutshell how Core Buddhism would map onto the major parts of the flower:
- The blossom of the flower is Nibbana (I will prefer Pali here, this is Nirvana in Sanskrit).
- The stem that supports the blossom is Magga, the path, the instructions for practice and understanding, originally expressed as the Noble Eightfold Path, and leading to Nibbana.
- The leaves androots are the Parisa, the Buddhist community, the roots are the Bhikkhu-Sangha, the monastic order of monks and nuns, actually a special role within the Parisa. They collect nourishment of sun, water and soil in order that the flower thrive.
- The sun, water and soil that nourish the flower are the Triple Gem, respectively the Buddha, the Dhamma (Dharma), and the Sangha. They inspire and bend the mind in the proper direction.
Now, here is the same thing in more detail:
Blossom. This is Nibbana, the highest attainment of human character, liberation from suffering, liberation from the taints, perfect wisdom, virtue, enlightenment, awakening, all those good things. Notice that most religions seem to have the goal of liberation or salvation, often pertaining to a life beyond this one. Nibbana itself therefore has an aspect of religiosity, though other religions would understand salvation differently.
Stem. This is the Path of individual practice and understanding that leads to Nibbana. This is the most uniquely Buddhist part, and therefore the most distinct from religiosity. The stem is made of three strands, which are called Wisdom, Virtue and Mental Cultivation, each of which bundles two or three smaller strands. The underlying principle behind practice is loosening the entangling bonds of personal neediness, aversion and views. All the strands work together and, when taken up with conviction, energy and a sense of urgency, guarantee selfless progress. There is hardly anything like this in its practicality and sophistication in non-Buddhist religious traditions. Since this is the part of the flower that has the least to do with religiosity it will be the one I write about the least, even though it is the part the Buddha spoke of the most.
Leaves and roots. This is the community context, the community itself and community activities and also the locus of religiosity. The community is divided into to parts, lay and monastic, with clearly defined social roles, but a member of either can begin to ascend the stem.
Leaves. This is the Parisa,the Buddhist community, and its main component is the lay community. The main characteristic of the Buddhist lay community is that it is not explicitly organized nor commanded in any special way, but is rather inspired by the Triple Gem toward practice and understanding and toward a particular relationship with nuns and monks.
Roots. This is the Bhikkhusangha, the community of monks and nuns. Its main characteristic is that it is organized in very specific way, inspires the support of the lay community and in this way is able to sustain a rare lifestyle that is most conducive to Buddhist study and practice. It serves to produce Nobel Ones. The particular organization of the Bhikkhusangha is a primary teaching of the Buddha, the topic of the massive Vinaya. Although the lay community is not explicitly organized its behavior plays off of that of the Bhikkhusangha.
Nourishment for the Flower. Refuge is the part of Buddhist religiosity that allow the roots and leaves to absorb the nourishment of the sun, water and soil. Conviction focuses on the Triple Gem of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. These nourish the entire practice, and in fact the beginning of Buddhist practice is generally considered to be Refuge in the Triple Gem.
The Buddha reached an advanced understanding, a level of insight and knowledge that he knew would be very difficult for others to achieve. As a teacher he had to consider the process whereby others can reach that understanding, and recognized that it requires a combination of confidence in the teacher and teachings, and direct experience of what these are pointing out. Faith or trust (Pali saddha) is necessary put aside accumulated faulty notions and to open oneself completely to the light of the Buddha’s insight and its current embodiment. Veneration of the Triple Gem is an important psychological element in the development of the necessary trust.
The sun. This is the Buddha himself. Conviction in the Enlightenment inspires the community’s commitment to deeper practice. The Buddha stands an an example to emulate, an admiral friend, present at least in the accounts of his life and in the Dharma-Vinaya, his teachings and in those most shaped by his influence.
Water. This is the Dhamma, the teachings of the truth that the Buddha directly experienced and the instructions for perfecting the human character constitute the clean water that flows into every aspect of our Buddhist life and practice, carried by the soil through the roots into leaves and up into the stem, to inform our practice at every level on our way to Nirvana.
Soil. This is the Sangha. This represents the adepts, past present and future, who have gone far in the practice, perhaps not reaching Nibbana, but progressing at least far enough to discern it and to attain unshakable trust in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. The Sangha nourishes the community through its visible example, its direct experience and its teaching. Notice that the Sangha here is properly called the “Ariyasangha,” the Noble Ones, to distinguish it from the Bhikkhusangha, the institution that spins off Nobel Ones. The roots are buried deep in the soil, the monks and nuns have Sangha between their toes, and the soil is made rich by the many generations of roots, of leaves, of stems and of blossoms.
The Religiosity the Buddha Did Not Teach
The Buddha lived in a very religious culture, made use of much of what he saw around him and dismissed what he felt was useless or harmful. He made use of a range of such religious elements in crafting his own system of thought, not only to produce practice and understanding, but also to providing the proper context to inspire correct practice and understanding now and for generations to come. I hope the reader will gain a new appreciation by the end of this essay of what a carefully conceived and well-articulated system he crafted. Let us look for now at what he pared down.
In expressing reverence the Triple Gem Core Buddhism acquires something at least like worship. However it is not veneration toward an otherworldly being or force, but of things this-wordly: a remarkable person long deceased, of a set of teachings for and by humans and of real people who happen to embody those teachings completely in their own lives. Actually there may be irony intended in the frequent appearance of such otherworldly beings in the ancient discourses. Even higher deities, rather than demanding reverence for themselves, instead venerate those same things the good Buddhist does as higher than themselves, bowing before the Buddha and even the monks. The Buddha did on many occasions expect of others that they show proper respect for him, and actually required that monks and nuns not offer teachings if their audience shows disrespect for them. However there is little indication that the Buddha intended to become the center of a personality cult. He discouraged some of the more extreme forms of reverence he received, once telling an awe-struck follower (in the most literal sense of follower),
“Why do you want to see this foul body? If you see the Dhamma you see me.”
Nonetheless the Buddha did specify four significant places from his life as destinations for pilgrimage after he is gone.
The Buddha also advocated veneration for parents, teachers, the elderly and even monastics of other traditions, yet eschewed the prevailing caste system. Reverence was clearly part of his thinking.
Likewise limited ritual practices are current in Original Buddhism. Bowing is frequent as a gesture of veneration, as is circumambulation, for instance, “keeping the Tathagatha to his right.” Notice however these are no more than expressions. In contrast the Buddha spoke in no uncertain terms of the dangers of rites and rituals (silabbata), even classifying these as the third of the ten fetters to be abandoned on the Path. He did not have in mind ritual or conventionalized expressions, which like words are means of communication, and which would encompass many things very familiar to us in the modern world, like shaking hands or waving goodbye and saying “Ta-ta.”
Indeed what is absent from Core Buddhism is the attribution of some special hidden efficacy to rites and rituals, for instance making a sacrifice to to gain the good favor of a deity or asking a priest to make an incantation to produce some kind of future good luck or a favorable rebirth. This way of using of rites and rituals was rife in the Brahmanism of the Buddha’s day and did not gain the Buddha’s endorsement. Specifically he did not want the monks and nuns to become priests and forbade such intermediary roles along with astrology, numerology or other means of predicting the future, as well, by the way, of exhibiting paranormal powers such as levitation in the presence of the laity.
Trust or faith has a prominent role in Core Buddhism. Refuge in the Triple Gem is the immediate example, a trust in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. However this is far from blind faith and in fact much like the trust a student of science puts into her teachers, a science graduate student puts into the paradigm her teacher represents. This is, in other words, a trust that is subject to personal verification as the attainment and understanding of the Buddhist develops and as such it is a faith that is replaced gradually with knowing. It is helpful in this regard that the Buddha was very parsimonious in his teachings, giving nothing as an object of convictionor investigation that did not have a function in the Path.
Another feature of Original Buddhism that bears mentioning is that there are virtually no special practices or teachings of consolation as found in other religions, beyond perhaps the peace of mind that comes with Refuge. There is no appeal to an outside power or metaphysical view that makes everything OK, old age, sickness and death and the rest. There is a notion of salvation, Nibbana, but its attainment is a matter of mental development.
How Buddhist Religiosity Works
The operating principle of the leaves, the roots and the nourishment of the Triple Gem is … friendship! In particular it is admirable friendship (kalyanamittata in Pali), that which is possible from having Noble Ones among us to provide wise role models and instructors. The principle is to have the opportunity to hang with persons consummate in virtue, in generosity and in wisdom. The following dialog expresses in a rather striking way the critical importance the Buddha attached to this simple principle:
As he was sitting there, Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, “This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.”
Don’t say that, Ananda. Don’t say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & colleagues, he can be expected to develop & pursue the Noble Eightfold Path. (SN 45.2)
Just as it benefits us to have artists and good plumbers among us it ennobles us to have saints and sages, adepts and arahants in our midst, the more the better. These Noble Ones are the Sangha mentioned in the Triple Gem, disciples of the Buddha who root their lives entirely in the Dhamma, have already been carried far aloft by the stem of the Path and are an inspiration and a resource for us all. It is through admirable friends that the meaning of the Buddha’s life and Awakening is revealed and through such admirable friends that the highly sophisticated teachings are clarified step by step to lead the instructling toward and up the Path toward Awakening. It is the Sangha, by recognizing what shines through the words, that the core of Buddhism is preserved in its full integrity. The Sangha is therefore the soil that provides not only the nourishment of water and mineral but ensures that the entire practice, roots, leaves, stem and blossom, will not be carried away by the wind in the years to come.
The Ariya-Sangha arises from conditions and these conditions are secured by means of the Bhikkhu-Sangha. This is expressed approximately as follows,
“And if these monks, Subaddha, live rightly, the world will not be empty of arahants.” – DN 16.
The world will be even less be empty of the Noble Ones, many of whom are not yet arahants, of sages and of admirable friendship. The Bhikkhu-Sangha is both a training ground and a dwelling place for the Ariya-Sangha, much like a university is both a training ground and a dwelling place for scholars. Without Noble Ones Buddhism cannot retain its integrity, and Noble Ones will be very few indeed without nuns and monks in the Buddhist community … or equivalent.
Let’s see how this works out for a young man, Aung Myint, born into a Buddhist family in a Buddhist community. First he will be taught even as a toddler to revere the Triple Gem, the sun, water and soil that sustains the Buddhist flower. The Buddha for him will exemplify certain values such as selflessness, virtue and serenity. The Dhamma is likely not to be readily accessible until he is moved to personal investigation outside of a few aphorisms like “Happiness comes only from within.” The Sangha, with which Aung Myint could well be in daily contact, will provide living examples of what it is to live deeply according to Buddhist principles, and of the joy and wisdom that emerges in such a life. Aung Myint lives among the leaves, as a part of the Buddhist community and supportive of the monks and nuns. He grows up with a mind bent toward Buddhist values and Buddhist aspirations. The Buddha once said,
Those who have joyous confidence in the highest, the highest fruit will be theirs. (AN 4.34)
He has noticed that people adopt a wide varieties of ways of life. He himself for a time thinks of marrying his cute neighbor Su Su and raising a family. But he learns what a problem life can be with no easy answers. He notices that the Noble Ones are more content and full of active goodwill than anyone else in spite of their utterly simple lives. This inspires him to follow the wise into the holy life, to forsake a personal footprint in favor of the selfless Path that blossoms in Nibbana. Aung Myint joins the monastic order and begins to study as a student of one of the sages, and from the root begins his ascent upward. Eventually he becomes one of the Noble Ones, in fact an arahant (to ensure this tale a happy ending).
Foretaste
This has been a brief sketch of the religious infrastructure implemented by the Buddha and its functions. In the next two chapters I will go into more detail concerning the two main components of this system, Refuge, including trust and admirable friendship, and Community, including its organized and unorganized components. After that I will discuss the ways in which this religious system has been modified in the many later Buddhist traditions, including through the incursion of features that the Buddha originally wanted to keep in check. However I will finally consider the ways in which the Buddha foresaw that the presence of Noble Ones, the adapts, the Sangha, would serve to preserve the integrity of Core Buddhism yet tolerate the many pressures toward variation within those traditions.
January 25, 2013
Fundamentals of Buddhist Religiosity: Introduction
Uposatha Day, First Quarter Moon, January 19, 2013
Index to this series
I have been reworking some of my previous writings into an eBook of maybe about 80 pages. This will include some things I posted under “Buddhist Religiosity,” “American Folk Buddhism,” etc. also with new content, assembled into an integrated whole. I intend to serialize it here as I finish each of the eight chapters. I hope my readership finds this helpful. This week: The Introduction.
Fundamentals of Buddhist Religiosity
Original Buddhism and its Cultural Adaptations
Bhikkhu Cintita Dinsmore
DRAFT, January, 2013
Chapter 1. Introduction
Is Buddhism a religion? Of course it depends on one’s definition. I see three options:
1. A religion involves worship of God. This works for the Abrahamic faiths familiar in the West. Clearly Buddhism fails this criterion.
2. A religion is a way of life. That is, it informs our life choices at the most fundamental level, our ethical standards, our values, our attitudes, our aspirations? Clearly Buddhism satisfies this criterion.
Many suggest Buddhism is not a religion because it is a way of life. It seems to me this is exactly what is expected of a religion when embraced fully.
1. A religion is a matter of “family resemblance,” that is, if it looks like a religion it is.
This last seems at first like a sloppy criterion, but as a linguist I can report that family resemblance underlies the better part of language; firm definitions are the exception, even for scientific terminology. Maybe to determine if Buddhism is a religion we should try for two out of three. This would make the last, the family resemblance, criterion the deciding factor. Its applicability frames this essay.
The degree of family resemblance, or the elements that indicate family resemblance are what I will call “religiosity.” Surely Buddhism in all of its traditional forms seems to have something of religion about it, for instance, devotional, ritual, liturgical and institutional features, to supplement somewhat unique doctrinal aspects and a program of personal practice. Yet some have argued recently that Buddhist religiosity is entirely a product of cultural accretion that began after the Buddha and has little to do with the core message of the Buddha. This yields two kinds of questions:
(1) What is the degree of religiosity in the Buddha’s core message?
(2) What is the degree of religiosity for any particular Buddhist tradition?
My responses will be something of a middle way, that indeed elements of religiosity were an intrinsic part of the Buddha’s core message and that these same core elements are found in virtually every historic Buddhist tradition, but that through cultural adaptation in virtually every tradition the degree of religiosity has become more prominent, sometimes exceedingly more prominent. However this fortified religiosity may or may not be a diversion from the Buddha’s core message. A third question we will add to the mix is,
(3) In what ways is religiosity for any particular Buddhist tradition a hindrance or an asset to preserving the Buddha’s core message?
In this essay I will outline the important aspects of religiosity in core Buddhism and will illustrate its enhancement in a sample of later traditions. I will then turn to this process of cultural adaptation and its implications. Buddhism stands out in the following two ways: First, if it is a religion it is the earliest world religion, succeed only substantially by Christianity and Islam, which means that it has historically successfully adapted to often radically new cultures. Second, the integrity of the highly sophisticated core teachings of Buddhism have been remarkably well preserved through these cultural adaptations. I will locate the mechanism of this adaptation in core Buddhism, in fact in core Buddhist religiosity, and will illustrate this mechanism particularly with regard to current Western Buddhist adaptations and assess their implications.
Which Buddhism?
I count as one of those who see in Buddhism — in spite of all its doctrinal variants, sects, innovations, cultural manifestations and so on — a common core, that is, a set of unifying features that allow us to talk of “Buddhism” in the singular. In fact, it seems to me that a remarkable aspect of Buddhism — in spite of exhibiting much more scriptural variation than most of the other major religions — is that it seems to have much more consistency of purpose and understanding than, say, Christianity. Somehow, transmitted through many centuries, through many traditions and cultures, and in spite of its accrued variety, Buddhism has managed to preserve the integrity of its essential core throughout the Buddhist world. The essential core preserved in the traditions includes, for instance, a more-or-less common understanding of liberation and of the path of training toward liberation which focuses on virtue, wisdom and development of mind, and a recognition of greed, hatred and delusion as the primary qualities of mind to be appeased. It also includes placing confidence of the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, the near ubiquity of the monastic order and a communal emphasis on the practice of generosity.
I realize that many people see in Buddhism exactly the opposite: They find it extremely fragmented, dispersed over an impossible range of doctrinal positions, beliefs, practices and rituals. For instance, any given Buddhist tradition considers itself almost invariably the almost unique heir of Buddhist authenticity. Yet in exploring other lands and other sects it is faced with peculiarity and anomaly in the practices and beliefs of the laity, the garb of the monastics, the style of liturgy, the presence of unfamiliar figures in temple statuary, unfamiliar rites at temple altars, unknown scriptures on temple bookshelves, and hocus pocus all around. For many in the West who first come to Buddhism and survey the entire array of traditions, unbiased by any particular tradition, the variance is even more striking and it is easy to see how they might throw their hands up in despair and perhaps entertain the hope that Baha’i or Sufism is easier to sort out.
Much of the observed diversity reveals more about the observer than about the observed. Different people and different cultures come with different perspectives and different expectations, and cultural Westerners are no different. Alongside differences in doctrinal understanding, for instance, fixed culturally induced interpretations arise for what is simply be poorly understood about someone else’s tradition. Different options for individual practice within a unified core Buddhism or progressive stages of individual practice are interpreted as distinct Buddhisms, as are differences in understanding, ranging from sophisticated to naïve, among the adherents within a particular tradition. In response I will isolate a common core Buddhism that can be recognized in the various traditions underneath their supplementary cultural accretions, and then attempt to sort out the rest.
Religiosity in Buddhism
The reasons I focus on religiosity are twofold: First, these elements tend to be more implicit in Buddhist teachings rather than systematically developed and therefore their significance bears exploring. Second, they tend to be conditioned culturally far more than doctrinal and programmatic aspects, for instance, sometimes assuming highly embellished forms in many of the Buddhist traditions, and they are therefore disproportionally responsible for the sometimes wild variety observed among and within the various Buddhist traditions.
Religiosity seems to be a universal, found throughout the world. Scholars of comparative religion have probably looked at this in detail, but here are the recurring features I observe in almost all religions, many of which contribute to the family resemblance of Buddhism and “religion” :
- Ritual and Ceremony. These are conventionalized actions and activities.
- Ritual spaces. Certain places and spatial relations are made significant through ritual or placement at an elevation or naturally central location.
- Ritual artifacts. A central or prominent altar is common. Sometimes clothing is an indicator of social role in religious activities. Incense, candles, flowers and images are common.
- Respect, Devotion and Worship. Certain rituals and gestures are used to express degrees of reverence or respect, either to designated people, to ritual artifacts, to abstractions or to otherworldly beings.
- Scripture. Texts convey the basic doctrine or mythology of the religion and often go back to the founding of the religion. Scriptures are often regarded as ritual artifacts.
- Tradition. Many of the rituals, artifacts, scripture and so on are archaic, that is, bespeak of an ancient time to give a sense of embeddedness in a long tradition.
- Chanting. Typically this is a group activity and involves reciting scripture.
- Community, and Group Identity. There is a sense of belonging to a community, often assuming a certain role in a community dynamics and interrelatedness, much like belonging to a family.
- Common world view or conviction. This is faith in a certain set of doctrines, creeds or values or confidence in an authority.
- Clergy. There are often a class of professionals who dedicate themselves to understanding and practice of the religion, generally conduct or lead the rituals and care of the community and sometimes have the status of ritual artifacts themselves.
- Institutions. The community is generally organized according certain principles and this organization sustains the clergy, owns ritual spaces and objects and provides some degree of governance and authority.
Two things bear pointing out. First, “religiosity” is completely a Western notion. I doubt the Buddha would have read through this list and seen in it any more than a set of arbitrary features. Nor would he have thought to constrain the scope of religiosity in his teachings. I make no further attempt to define “religiosity” than to provide this list. Why this issue assumes prominence in the Western mind is discussed in a few chapters.
Second, although these features characterize “religiosity,” all of these features, or their close counterparts, are found outside of religion, that is, in “secular” contexts. For instance, table manners and proper arrangements of cutlery and plates and glasses in a proper table setting exhibit a large number of these features. Sports events also involve ritual, ritual spaces, worship, chanting, group identity, and often a sense of tradition. Government functions and places of government exhibit every one of these features, by my count, with appropriate substitution of terms, elected officials for clergy, etc. Armies likewise exhibit most, maybe because they need to be equipped to deal with fundamental issues of life and death. Even Academia exhibits a lot of these features. No traditional school of Buddhism I am aware of fails to exhibit any one of them. I do not know of any movements to “secularize” any of the other realms.
Overview
I will begin with a statement of the common core system that shines through virtually all of the Buddhist traditions. This includes doctrinal and programmatic fundamentals as well as some aspects of religiosity as discussed above, the latter in a much more skeletal form in core Buddhism than found in almost any particular later tradition. This statement will show how these religious elements are integral and necessary to the proper function of the whole system; their justification is in their functional efficacy.
All aspects of this core system as I will lay it out belong to original Buddhism as attested in the earliest scriptures, and also are consistently retained in virtually all traditions of Buddhism independently of the variety of cultures in which these variants have arisen. Two particularly important aspects of core religiosity are Refuge and the structure of the Buddhist community, without which a full understanding of Buddhism as taught by the Buddha is impossible. Therefore I will discuss these two aspects in some detail.
Having established a common core for Buddhist traditions, I will then survey the ways in which particular traditions have embellished or retooled this common core. We will see that religiosity is often greatly enhanced with elements of local cultures, often mixing freely with elements of indigenous religions and commonly taking on consolatory elements, and also that doctrinal and programmatic aspects are often expressed in new and typically culturally-conditioned ways that for the most part retain their authenticity and sometimes enhance it. This will be an incomplete survey, pulling out a few hopefully representative examples of the range of variations found among the traditions.
Finally I consider how the forms of religiosity promote or demote core Buddhism. One of the most important sources of variation in Buddhism is often overlooked. Within any particular tradition an individual understanding of that tradition will vary greatly. At the one pole are the adepts, those that have devoted much of their lives to study and training in Buddhism and may have reached some level of attainment, occasionally even Awakening. At the other pole are the normal folk — almost always historically the vast majority of adherents — who have often only a vague understanding of the tradition or of core Buddhism garnered from family and friends. This produces the inevitable dichotomy between Adept Buddhism and Folk Buddhism (actually two poles of a continuum). While an Adept Buddhism will general preserve the common core, a Folk Buddhism will tend to be a mass of culturally-conditioned understandings and misunderstandings. While an Adept Buddhism will be centered generally in the shape of doctrine and the program of practice, a Folk Buddhism will be centered primarily in the elements of religiosity. This is important, for generally we identify our own tradition, if we have one, with its Adept Buddhism while we see in any other tradition only its Folk Buddhism. No wonder the forms of Buddhism seem to vary as wildly as they do.
After exemplifying Folk Buddhism with regard to a few Buddhist traditions, giving particular attention to how much Western Folk Buddhism is also culturally conditioned, I consider how it is that Buddhism has maintained its essence through many centuries and through transmission into vastly divergent cultures and in spite of its great accrued variance. This answer involves the ability of Adept Buddhism to to give shape to Folk Buddhism rather than the other way around, to keep it in line well enough that contradictions are relatively rare and one grades easily from one into the other. This in turn depends on Refuge and the structure of Buddhist communities. This property therefore lies within the scope of the particularities of core Buddhist Religiosity, as envisioned from the beginning by the Buddha!
Contents
Chapter 1. Core Buddhism
Chapter 2. Refuge
Chapter 3. A Buddhist Community
Chapter 4. Modifications and Retoolings of Buddhism.
Chapter 5. Folk Buddhism
Chapter 6. Modern Trends in Folk Buddhism
Chapter 7. Finding our Way in the West
January 18, 2013
The Calgary Talk on Dana
Uposatha Day 1/11/2013

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPPFKkcdUDs]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxzCSmIRDvU]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5sKHsbzxCE]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJFrZlqR0AQ]
January 11, 2013
Uposatha Day Post 1/5/2013

Buddhist Rules and Culture
The Vinaya, the First Basket of early Buddhist teachings is the Code for Monks and Nuns, the rules, regulations, policies and procedures by which the monastic Sangha lives. Although this is intended to be studied and followed only by those who have taken monastic vows I have gotten interested in the ways that they shape the broader Buddhist culture, Purisa and Sangha alike. There is no doubt that they were intended to do exactly this.
One example of this is the regulation prohibiting a monk from touching a woman, that is, “engage in bodily contact with a woman, in holding her hand, in holding a lock of her hair or in caressing any of her limbs” when “overcome by lust, with an altered mind.” (Sanghadisesa 2). Although this was enacted after a particularly ill-behaved monk did exactly this but totally unsolicited and unwelcome, the letter of the rule is violated through the mere coincidence of lustful intent and touch, which can arise together in an instant, and carries the harsh implication of a Sanghadisesa. Naturally great care is taken around this rule.
Although only a monk can violate this rule (there is a symmetrical rule for bhikkhunis), in Burma laywomen comply with this rule in a way that makes it easy for the monk not to violate. A Burmese Buddhist woman would never even think of touching a monk. If a monk needs to pass through a restricted space Burmese women are very quick to provide ample space and will alert others who might have their back turned. Burmese take great care that a monk is not seated next to a woman, for instance when a group is traveling in a car. Last week a couple of women undertook to make my bed here in Calgary after having washed the sheets, and I happened to notice them looking perplexed after having pulled the bottom sheet tight at three corners but unable to reach the far corner bordering on two walls. One of them ran into the other room and returned with her husband who climbed on the bed to perform the fourth stretch. I realized that in the minds of the women it would have been a violation of the monk’s space to climb on the bed, even his absence. This is how a monk’s rule not only invokes lay compliance, but evolves into a set of cultural norms about lay behavior.
A Burmese woman has no problem handing something to a monk as an offering as long as fingers do not touch, and sometimes they might inadvertently. In Thailand however a woman will place what is to be offered on a cloth lying on a table or other surface so that the monk can then receive it by pulling the cloth toward him. This goes far beyond the letter of the relevant rule but seems to have evolved as an embellishment to a cultural norm around a monastic rule. Someone recently reported that Thich Nhat Hanh seemed to have no inhibition about holding hands during a mindfulness walk and sure enough when I checked there he was on Youtube holding hands with a little girl. Technically this does not violate the letter of the precept unless lust arises in Thay’s 85-year-old heart, and is more typical of the looser way in which Buddhists in Mahayana cultures tend to observe precepts or are willing to adjust them to circumstances.
Just as in some cultures many rules are interpreted in a manner stricter than the letter of the rule, often rules are interpreted more lax manner. Burmese routinely make small cash contributions to monks for the purchase of unanticipated requirements, taking care to place such a donation in an envelope. The Vinaya makes clear that a monk cannot receive money in any manner even if “wrapped in a wad of blankets,” but cash may be given to a lay steward on the monk’s behalf who they can use it to purchase material goods to offer to the monk. Furthermore regulations regarding transportation and clothing have been adjusted throughout the Buddhist world according to modern circumstances. Eating of meat is permitted in the original Vinaya, except that if a monk “sees, hears or suspects that it has been killed for him, he may not eat it.” Since the purpose of this qualification seems to be not to implicate a monk in the killing of animals, but to allow him to accept what is offered graciously when lay people wish to share what they have already prepared for themselves, it seems that the an appropriate understanding of this in the modern era of refrigeration and mass distribution of meat would seem to be, “that if he “sees, hears or suspects that it has been killed or purchased for him, he may not eat it..” After all, when a chicken is taken from a supermarket shelf another must be killed to replace it. However this is a rare understanding in Theravada countries. In East Asian Mahayana countries a stricter understanding has prevailed for many centuries: Monks don’t eat meat and they are not offered meat.
In the non-Buddhist West such rules have of course no cultural recognition whatever. The monk is on his own. The most immediate challenge to an Asian monk up arriving in, oh, say, Austin, Texas or in Calgary, Alberta, is as one Burmese monk once put it to me with great distress in his voice, “American women like to … hug!” The challenge for the monk is to avoid the coincidence of lust and touch. If he is not quick enough to avoid the latter he might need quick and very complete control of the senses. Actually technically this will not result in a violation if the monk stands there like a wet fish because in that case he is not complicit as an agent in the action. But that will make of him a disappointing hugging partner indeed. (Western men should take similar care not to hug Buddhist nuns.)
The greatest impact of the monastic rules for a Buddhist culture at large undoubtedly comes in connection with offerings of requisites, particularly food, to monks and nuns. Monastic rules remove every right to a livelihood, to any participation in the exchange economy, to growing or cooking one’s own food or even to storing offered food for the next day. For a monk to follow these rules requires very attentive compliance on the part of the laity; the monk is totally dependent on the laity and totally helpless without its kind offerings. Very rich cultural traditions have grown around this relationship and indeed it places the practice of generosity (dana) right at the center of the Buddhist community, a practice monks enjoy as well and that spills into all areas of the life of a Buddhist community.

January 5, 2013
Giving and Receiving the Dhamma
Uposatha First Quarter Moon, September 23, 2012
How far must the teacher and the student each reach? At what place do they meet?
Reverse Proselytizing.
(Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery, January 2002.) Tassajara has an initiation tradition for incoming monks, a kind of five-day Zen hazing, called tangaryo. Tangaryo has an ancient history. As the reader may be aware Buddhists are not renowned proselytizers, quite the opposite: Buddhist monks and nuns generally teach only if asked, and only if the would-be student shows due respect for the Three Jewels. In the forests and mountains of China this assumed a new dimension:
Imagine a pair of Bodhidharma’s Witnesses, going from house to house through a quaint and picturesque farming village in their short-sleaved white shirts and khaki pants carrying copies of Watchpagoda magazine. One of them knocks on a door [knock knock], a young man named Wu Wei opens the door [fwoop]:
“Yes, can I help you?” Wu Wei asks.
“We are just passing through your quaint and picturesque farming village introducing ourselves. Have you thought much about … the Buddha?”
“Can’t say that I have. What’s he got for me?”
“Vast emptiness. Nothing holy!”
“Uh, …, O…. K. Who are you guys anyway?”
“We don’t know!”
“Get outta here!” [Slam]
Traditionally if a young man wanted to become a monk he would knock on the monastery door. A couple of years later Wu Wei, in spite of his unpromising first encounter with the Dharma, has decided to leave home, shave his head and lead the holy life.
[Knock knock. Fwoop.] “Whadya want?”
“I would like to leave home, shave my head and lead the holy life.”
“No holiness here!” [Slam]
[Knock knock. Fwoop.] “Can I become a monk, just like you?”
“No room! Only vast emptiness!” [Slam]
Determined, not taking “Mu” for an answer, Wu Wei sits in front of the monastery gate in meditation posture … for hours. In the evening monks appear in the window to taunt him, pelt him with tomatoes and otherwise make him feel unwelcome. He ignores them and continues to sit.
The next day is no different, although a kindly old man appears with a bowl of rice gruel at dawn, and again just before noon with a bowl of rice and pickled radish. The following day is just the same, but a determined Wu Wei continues to sit, relentlessly. After five days and nights of this the door opens unexpectedly and Wu Wei feels an unanticipated hand on his shoulder. He is invited inside, the monks congratulate him, shave his head and give him robes.
“We had to make sure you were worthy!”
This is roughly the origin of tangaryo as I understand it. With time, perhaps with the ordination of large numbers of of monks, this process began to be regulated. At Tassajara tangaryo consistently lasts five days and nights, the monk actually sits in the zendo, receives meals in the zendo, and is given a real bed to sleep in, from nine at night to three fifty the next morning. Otherwise the would-be monk has to be on his allocated cushion, facing the wall, except to use the restroom, never bathing or shaving, while other, established, monks come and go into and out of the zendo, to sit zazen, practice chanting and ringing bells and to clean the zendo, a little too cheerfully for my taste. Also, because monks arrive just prior to the practice period there is generally a small group of them on the same schedule. There were about fifteen of us, the women sitting on one side of the zendo, the men on the other.
Tangaryo is perhaps the most difficult thing I have ever done on purpose. It was impossible to actually sit zazen the whole time; apparently nobody ever does. I would start off OK for a few of hours, then would have to relax and think about something, remember favorite songs, daydream.
If you find that your mind has drifted away from the daydream just bring it gently back, letting go naturally of whatever distraction has arisen and returning to the daydream.
Later I would return to actual zazen for a couple of more hours, then try to recall my most interesting distraction thus far. With my meal I would drink as much liquid as I could so that I would have to go to the restroom more often, and then drink as much water as I could on the way back to the zendo. I would furtively glance at the women tangaryians facing the wall in their baggy robes on my way back to my seat, the greatest external thrill I could squeeze out of the day, except maybe for lunch; the women seemed much stiller to me than the men I was sitting next to, certainly than myself.
Finally just short of one hundred and twenty hours of this a voice congratulated us, asked us to walk up the hill to the hot springs, bathe, to put on clean robes and to join the practice period as full-fledged participants. All fifteen of us had sat it out, though I would learn of would-be monks of the past who had given up and gone home in a huff and with a sigh.
The Buddha did not make it so hard in the early days to begin Buddhist practice, even for nuns and monks, but he did expect anyone who came to a nun or monk for teachings to show proper respect and deference. Monastics were and are in fact prohibited from teaching someone who was unwilling to show these.
Why Not Aggressively Convert People?
(Austin, September 2012) I can say have found great happiness and meaning in my life and attribute much of the to the ardency with which I have followed the Buddhist Path, even starting relatively late in life. As I have walked along this path I have felt increasingly compelled to share it with others because I see in the shadows of the world much suffering, harm and ignorance that I know the light of Buddhism would illuminate. In fact trying to shine this light in the dark corners of my own land is the most ardent task I have set for myself for the remainder of this life. But this task is accomplished only gradually.
So why not proselytize if the results might be as beneficial for others as they have been for me? Why not proselytize like Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Evangelists, tent revivalists do? If I had taken every opportunity to turn my brother Arthur (see last week’s post) toward Buddhism would he be alive today? I might have used some of the following pick-up lines:
“That reminds me of a story about the Buddha…”
“We Buddhists don’t have that problem! Do you want to know why?”
“It’s all karma, man! You know about karma, right?”
“Oh, quit not being empty of independent existence!”
“Have you thought much about … the Buddha?”
I think the reason Buddhists generally don’t reach out in this way is because the teaching runs so deep. To encounter the teachings requires that the student meet the teacher half way. To succeed in her endeavors the student must already possess bold faith, that is a willingness to leap headlong into something without knowing ahead of time exactly what it is or where it will lead. Without this bold faith there will be no reserve of energy or willingness to try to understand what is difficult to understand nor practice what is difficult to practice. Beginning a meditation practice, renouncing what need to be renounced, trying to make out what the heck emptiness or dependent co-arising is, or how there can not be a self, these things are entered into only with the bold faith that they will be fruitful.
If instead the student does not go half-way then the teacher willing to go all the way ends up with students of timid faith, students swayed by personality or drawn to a welcoming community, but unwilling to leap into something incomprehensible or hard. These are students who expect easy answers or fix blindly onto whatever answers are offered with no reflection. Such a student is not willing to be challenged; her faith is not strong enough. The form the teachings must take in order to retain the student’s attention will have to be very thin and might as a consequence gradually lose their integrity altogether. There is a third category in addition to those moved by bold faith or by timid faith, which is that of those who are unmoved. The unmoved are of even more timid faith that clings to what has become most familiar at an early age, those who will not be converted at any level. There are, by the way, no people of no faith; there is no such thing because we live in a world of such uncertainty that our every movement requires a degree of faith. There is no such thing as the rational or objective as opposed to the faithful; this is a silly myth. The Buddhist principle of ehipassiko (“come and see”) is the closest we get: “come” is bold faith, “see” is the opportunity to verify that our faith is well placed. Science works on the same principle.
In Buddhism we talk of fields of merit. Our generosity is better expended one place rather than another just as seeds are best planted in fertile ground rather than in barren. The student who approaches the teacher with bold faith (along with a proper sense of discernment) is a very fertile field of merit indeed. A student of the second or third kind, of timid faith, is a barren field. My brother Arthur was of the third kind, a very hard nut to crack. Not that he could not have developed beyond that with proper inspiration.
So, how does bold faith arise? I think it arises from awe. And awe arises in three ways. First, awe might be a natural (karmic) disposition. Second, awe might be taught, particularly at a very young age. Third, awe might be inspired through the experience of something or somebody awe-inspiring. It might also arise from two or all three sources. Good scientists or artists arise in a similar way. In Buddhism awe arises in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha and is natural, taught or inspired, or ideally all three. I feel personally fortunate to have a strong natural disposition for awe. I also feel personally fortunate to have found great inspiration in Buddhist teachings and in the many people, particularly teachers, I have encountered who have provided shining examples of the Buddhist lives, sometimes merely in their bearing, sometimes in their virtue and good works, sometimes in their great wisdom, always in their strong practice.
Oh, but if only I were taught awe for the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha at a young age! This is the primary difference between the Western and the Asian Buddhist. For instance, Burmese generally learn to embody respect and deference for the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, as well as for parents and teachers at the earliest age. They also have a ubiquitous Sangha and enjoy the presence of many people of great attainment, even arahants among them. Their pumps are primed for Buddhist practice and study. Although I have learned to embrace much of this training in awe, I recognize in my daily encounter with devout Burmese Buddhists that they have internalized a solid support at a young age that I will never completely realize.
This essay began as a response to my dear supporter’s U Aung Koe’s comment to last week’s post:
“I think you better share your insight knowledge of Buddha teaching to your siblings and relatives before they pass away …”
I share U Aung Koe’s heartfelt wish. However, we live here in the Wild West of Buddhism, where much is barren wasteland but punctuated by very fertile valleys and fields of merit. I have no doubt about the American capacity for awe (it is why we have produced so many scientists and artists). But relatively few are primed from a young age for Buddhist practice, primed to meet the teacher half-way, and will not be until something deeply inspires them. I have deep gratitude for those exceptional people who are able reach out to me as a teacher as I reach out to them. I only wish my brother had been one of them.

September 23, 2012
Awe and Faith
Uposatha Day, First Quarter Moon, August 25, 2012
This week I have been rewriting a thematic thread that runs through my life story. I thought I would represent three excerpts here. The first concerns my childhood, the second my graduate studies in linguistics and the third my early Zen career.
Childhood
A bloke enters unexplored bush, bold and resolute, not knowing to what dangers to expect, but nevertheless resolved not to high-tail it home the first time he sees a crocodile. A bespectacled wissenschaftler meets each distractable moment of the day deep in thought, walking looking at his feet or drafting and reckoning with his pencil, wrestling with some obscure enigma sometimes late into the night, determined to get this small part of the world to submit to reason. A young bohemian, Henri, paints little cards postales to sell to tourists, earning just enough to purchase paint and canvas which he carries to his garret to produce real ouvres d’art, ones that will as likely as not never see the light of day. Alyosha becomes a novice at the Orthodox monastery moved by immense conviction in a loving God and a personal love for mankind and capacity to do good.
These are four people of awe, the most fortunate of people. A bit less than rational, they delight in new possibilities, exhibit a degree of carefree foolhardiness as they plunge with full faith into the unknown, enjoy mystery and wonder, and experience a heartfelt devotion to something disconnected from the concerns of personal advantage, something bigger and easily tainted by such concerns. Awe underlies the best part of religion. It also underlies academic or artistic pursuits such as science or history, sculpture or music composition; it even underlies hobbies such as birdwatching or model railroading. It sculpts the lives of those who possess it. People of wonder are easily recognized by their irrationally selfless passion and by their foolishness in the eyes of almost everyone else. They are a bit crazy.
I feel I’ve been fortunate throughout my life to have always been almost continuously in awe of something to which I’ve been willing to give myself over with delight and devotion. This has been an intrinsic part of my glob of karmic heritage.
Science was my first love, and very early on it directed my gaze skyward. My first experience in scientific research followed upon a chance observation. Already for some time I had been finger-painting the sky as a blue line across the top of my sheet of newsprint art paper, leaving what was directly below that, but above the roof tops and trees, as an enigmatic blank space that began to puzzle me. What I observed, unprecedented for all I knew in the annals of science, was that the sky is not just up there, it is also over there. In fact it seemed to come all the way down to the ground, and indeed somewhere behind Nasan Avenue Hill (El Cerrito)! Not only did this discovery improve my artistic composition, but I became curious to see exactly where the blue sky came down, to touch it and knock on it to see what it was like. I set off on foot to find the intersection of earth and sky, only to return home discouraged, exhausted and thirsty half an hour later. Science is a lot of work. Sometimes the ocean fog would roll in and darken the sky. At this age whenever grownups talked about the fog I thought they were saying “frog,” and pictured a giant frog hopping over our house, and when I looked up I thought indeed I could see its gray belly. But its legs seemed to come down too far away for me to see them, probably they were near where the sky touches the ground.
My father occasionally took us kids outside where he would set up his surveyor’s telescope on the sidewalk and point it skyward, usually toward the moon, where we could see craters and mountains. Our babysitter, Pam, would take us out to lay on the front lawn where on our backs we would gaze skyward. She once remarked how the starry sky was like a blanket enveloping us all. Indeed the stars also seemed to come down behind Nasan Hill. In 1957 my father took us outside one evening to see something special: The Soviets had just launched an artificial satellite into outer space and it was in “orbit” around the earth! This was a mind-dazzling concept and the whole country was buzzing with bewilderment. “What keeps it up?” “Why would they want to do such a thing?” “Why didn’t we think of that first?” “Where were our scientists when this was happening?” “Spies! They want to spy on us, mark my words!” My dad had read in the newspaper that if you look skyward in a particular direction at a particular time, you could see Sputnik! So at that time and in that direction four little faces gazed upward, and we did see it! It was like a faint little star, but moving slowly and steadily across the sky. We watched it for a long time then all at once … it disappeared! vanished completely! We speculated that it had blown up, or that the U.S. Army had shot it down, but I later learned it had gone into the Earth’s shadow.
This was the beginning of the Space Race, history’s most spectacular sports event, between the World’s two great superpowers and ideological adversaries, in one corner the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and in the other the United States of America. This game never ended officially, but practically it ended eleven years later. The first few years were catchup for the good guys: We would put up a satellite, the Ruskies would put a dog into space. We would put a monkey into space, the Reds would put up a cosmonaut. We would put up an astronaut, the Commies would put up a cosmonaut and keep him up there for days on end.
The American space launches were always publicly scheduled, for like four in the morning PST at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and covered on all three networks, and I was always up at that crisp hour to watch, while the rest of the family and the rest of Larkspur slept, alternately switching between ABC, NBC and CBS, to see on each occasion a capsule-tipped rocket produce the thrust necessary to escape worldly existence. One day President Kennedy gave a quite dramatic speech in which he declared that America would “Put a Man on the Moon by the End of the Decade” (the 1960’s). The Russians were actually clocking far more time in space, and probably doing a lot more science there, but the USA was going right for the big prize. This culminated in an flustered Niel Armstrong mis-uttering his historic line from the surface of the moon about the Big Step that would puzzle posterity forevermore.
This was a matter of American pride. After Sputnik funding for education increased throughout the United States, new curricula were developed such as “New Math” for high schools. The nation was determined to have the world’s best science, mathematics and engineering, and America had the material means and the German scientists to make it happen. My dad, always wanting to instill an interest in science and engineering in his children, to which my older brother Arthur and I responded most favorably, would occasionally take the family, kids filling the back of his pickup, up Mt. Hamilton near San Jose to Lick Observatory, at that time home of the second biggest telescope in the world.
I had by that time become quite a book worm buying many books from the Tides Bookstore in Sausalito. I read not only science, but literature and philosophy as well. The world was so rich with knowledge! I read things like Darwin’s Origin of Species and Goethe’s Faust. We were largely a family of readers, especially Arthur, who could not put a book down until he finished it, often at three in the morning … on a school night. But pacing myself, I was the systematic student. For instance, I got interested in “Existentialism” and so read a good selection of what people seemed to consider representative of that way of thinking: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, Camus, Sartre’s Age of Reason, and so on. I got interested in playing Chess and read many books on the subject, tracing through Bobby Fischer’s or Alexander Alekhine’s games. I also considered it my duty to learn Esperanto, since it was to be the international language that would make world peace possible, and for a time I belonged to an International Esperanto Postal Chess Club.
Having read Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov I turned my copy over to James, who curiously remarked that the brother Alyosha Karamazov was just like me. At the beginning of the book Alyosha is a novice at the Orthodox monastery. He is described as having immense faith in a loving God, love for mankind and a capacity to do good. I don’t know which part of that James thought applied to me, but I suppose it is a complement especially coming from a little brother, who would normally have expected to be an object of abuse in the hands of a big brother (I left that up to Arthur).
I got interested in electronics, and built a radio from parts and modified a war surplus WWII Command Receiver from an airplane to run on 120 VAC, and accidentally gave myself a 400 V. zap from the transformer I had put into it, when I forgot to unplug it in the middle of testing. In these days most radios ran on vacuum tubes. My brother Arthur became infected with my interest in electronics and would make that his life’s work. More than anything I read many books on Astronomy and Physics, and had quite a personal library on these topics. I was in awe.
Awe turns to accomplishment and accomplishment turns sadly to pride. I began to pride myself on my knowledge of Astronomy in particular and used these visits to Lick Observatory to show off my knowledge during the public tours and nightly viewing opportunities. Once a large group of us was taking turns looking at the moon through one of the old but respectable refractor telescopes, and someone asked the guide, certainly a graduate student,
“How far away is the Moon?”
The guide answered, “About a quarter of a million miles away!”
As various people gasped, I chimed in, “239,000 miles, to be exact.”
The current term for annoying people like me at that time was “smart alec,” now it would be “nerd” or “dweeb.”
On one trip my father was explaining to another guide that I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up, and the guide turned to me and said, emphatically articulating each word, “Then You’ve Got to Study Math.” I would remember that in high school, taking math every semester and making sure to get an “A” every time, preparing myself to enter UC Berkeley, where my father had studied. I also studied German for two years in high school, because I thought German was the language of science. My boldness got me in over my head and I earned a D- the first term, but then my resolve set in and I earned a B+ the second and A’s after that.
I had from the earliest age the selfless awe of a good monk, even if differently manifested. At some point it even occurred to me that academics are the modern monastic order, that they live with a certain distance from worldly life, with a pure and detached mind, capable of reflection from outside the box, and observant of a precise code of ethics. That appealed to me and attracted me to a prospective academic career. I would one day discover that the ideal was far from the true when I would get to know enough real academics, but the monk does share with the scientist or academic a wonder for something of value that transcends the concerns of a petty self. A reserve of such self-disinterested energy, such awe, would be a near-constant throughout my life, often directing itself in unexpected channels, but consistently sustaining an explorer’s mind, bold and resolute. I’ve always been glad of that. Decades in the future it would even provide the energy behind my rediscovery and embrace of Buddhism.
Graduate Student Days
During this period I participated in two casual conversations concerning my chosen field of study but which also anticipated what I would years later recognize was the nature of my Buddhist faith. The first conversation was with someone I just happened to meet in a non-academic setting. It went something like this;
“So, what do you do?”
“I am a linguistics graduate student.”
“Oh? What is linguistics?”
“Well, …,” I very briefly explained what linguistics was and how it fascinated me.
“Is it, um, something you can make a lot of money doing?” he asked.
“Hmmm, I’ve never thought about it. I suppose not.”
“Why would you do something that takes so much work if you can’t make a lot of money? And why would you not think about it?”
Why indeed? Nothing I said from that point on made the least sense to him. What he said made sense to me, but had a twisted logic to it, and the conversation quickly devolved into mutual bewilderment.
How could he go through life without awe, without finding meaning and wonder in something just because it’s there? This was Language we were talking about here: the very center of human culture, the primary locus of ethnic and national identity, the chief channel for insight into the human mind and for its outward expression, the medium that Shakespeare and Goethe brought to mastery, living history in which almost every word or turn of phrase is the product an elaborate and ancient tale that began long before the pyramids were built, a system of mapping between sounds and meanings in such an intricately refined and contextually sophisticated way that humans were now just barely beginning to comprehend this product of their own minds. What do I and my petty personal interests have to do with it? Looking back I see that my astonishment spoke of the degree of my linguistic awe and devotion.
The second conversation was with one of my classmates right after we had taken our oral examinations. Upon completing two years of graduate studies a student had to demonstrate his or her proficiency and general knowledge orally before two panels of about four professors each. One quizzed the student on syntax and the other on phonology. They could ask anything, and generally probed deeply. Their aim was to determine if the student had the wherewithal to complete the doctoral program and become an independent researcher, or if he or she should instead be granted a conciliatory MA degree and dismissed from the program.
Every one of these professors was razor sharp and wanted not only to know if the student was thoroughly familiar with the research literature, but also if they could examine it critically and be able to defend a particular theoretical position, against which the professors would often play devil’s advocate to the surprise and dismay of the student. I went in to the orals feeling confident and prepared and was more or less satisfied with the results.
Naturally the students in my class compared their experiences of the orals after they were all completed. A number of students felt dejected and soon were no longer with us in the program. Phil, a personal friend of mine, apparently barely squeaked through, but would nonetheless go on to have a very successful career in linguistics. At this point, however, when I asked him how his orals had gone, he replied:
“Well, I don’t know. The syntax one was really hard. They asked me something that didn’t seem fair. They asked me to argue for or against the validity of transformational grammar! What was I supposed to say? We have to assume Chomsky and the other people know what they are talking about!”
Do we indeed? This made less sense to me than the other guy. This was carrying faith too far, to passively give allegiance to the prevailing paradigm and its originators. I had thought that as future independent researchers questioning the paradigm was the main thing we should be doing above all else, the one thing that we should bear constantly in mind. Not to reject it out of hand, but to check out how it was working for us. My own inclination by this time would have been to poke a few holes the paradigm where I was beginning to detect problems, even though that would have elicited a hornets’ nest of detailed counterarguments, rather than a mere swarm of follow-up questions, as four of the most brilliant syntacticians in the world would have taken me to task point by point. But they would have, I presume, respected my willingness and ability to take a stand on this issue. I doubt that unquestioned faith in the teachings was not what they were looking for.
Again, I was astonished. Looking back I see that my astonishment speaks of the discernment that accompanied my awe for linguistic science. It was the explorer’s awe and had nothing to do with blind faith. Blind faith is in fact very common in science, but reverence, devotion and faith do not require checking one’s wisdom or discernment in at the door.
Faith often gets a bad rap, but it is actually an unavoidable part of human cognition: It is how we humans deal with the fundamental uncertainty of our existence. Faith fills the gap between what we know — which is really very little, like a narrow strip of beach —, and what we need to know — which is really a lot, like a vast jungle. Lest we are stranded in a narrow and timid strip of certainty we need faith, in fact bold and resolute faith, the willingness to give ourselves trustingly over to something that we do not fully understand and that therefore is not fully within the scope of our rational certainty, and that we will not understand until we’ve explored it. Awe inevitably sets one up for bold faith. Faith sometimes gets a bad rap because it has become publicly identified with a particular and extremely limiting strategy for facing the unknown. This is the faith of the timid, it is blind faith and fundamentalism. It is the insistence on an impossible certainty, it is recourse to a false sense of knowing. It is faith without admission that we don’t know what we are doing, without the mystery and wonder and delight in possibilities that otherwise drive us to explore the unknown boldly and resolutely. Bold faith opens up rather than closes possibilities. I would one day discover in Buddhism that same bold faith.
Upon Returning Home from a Zen Retreat in Culture Shock
In contemplating the challenge to my cultural sensibilities and natural inclination toward the casual, during the subsequent weeks I came up not so much with a resolution as with a way of arriving at one. The easiest response to my discomfort would have been,
Balderdash! Ritual forms are nonsense, they are a perversion of real Buddhism, of real Zen, or … or else a cultural artifact of the East Asian cultures in which these ritual forms arose that are of little relevance in the critical-thinking West. Ha!
With this response in hand I would have been free to seek out retreat centers that loosened up on this nonsense. I did not know at the time of the ubiquitousness of such Buddhist meditation centers, largely to satisfy the demands of the thriving “balderdash” community. But the “balderdash” response was not good enough: How would I know that the response is correct?
In what for me was an almost unprecedented display of good judgment, of smarts and wisdom, I chose the opposite response: I accepted as a working assumption that there is a purpose for all of these ritual forms and related nonsense that I simply had yet to fathom. How could something persist generation after generation with no purpose? For this reason I make the decision to begin sitting every week with … Flint Spark’s group at the Clear Spring Zendo, the group infamous for its bows and ritual forms that until then had inhibited my participation.
I did not yet know it, but this is the moment when I fully aligned myself with Buddhism, the moment when I acquired Buddhist “faith” and in return relinquished the arrogant assumption that I already knew what I was doing. I had already learned in my career as a scientist that there was little danger in such a leap of faith as long as one did not thereby relinquish wisdom and discernment as well. I had given myself over to Generative Grammar on a similar basis as a linguistics student, and in fact came eventually around to rejecting it rather soundly, yet in the meantime developed quickly into a scholar. If the ritual and bowing thing did not work out, I would simply give it up and be all the wiser for it. What I did now was to establish a general policy to accept with a degree of wholeheartedness whatever I was taught by respected Buddhist teachers or texts, at least until I got to the bottom of it in my own experience. This policy would serve me well in the years to come and sustain an explorer’s sense of curiosity throughout my career of training.
In Buddhism we talk about the Three Refuges, which are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Saṅgha, as the beginnings of Buddhist faith. We are like the explorer, entrusting ourselves to the unknown terrain of the mind, but we have the advantage of a map to get us started, even if it is smudged and sometimes difficult to interpret: It is the teachings, a deep trust in the originator of those teachings and the advice of living interpreters and more seasoned explorers. We have hopes of liberation from worldly woe, but mixed in are less rational aspects that fuel the boldness and resolve Buddhist practice demands, including delight in new possibilities, a capacity for awe, deep reverence, and a bit of foolhardiness. Buddhist practice is not for the timid.
Faith is an often misunderstood thing. You might, as I did, think of yourself as a person of reason as opposed to a person of faith, but faith is not like that. We are all persons of faith all the time, not just in matters religious but in everything, in our consumer habits, in our relationships, in our hobbies. Whether we are rational or not we have no choice! The reason is that we live in an inherently and exceedingly uncertain world and yet need to make decisions in that world. The persistent gap between what we know and what we need to know is huge; faith in all its guises is that which leaps over that gap. But although we have no choice about whether or not to have faith, we do have a choice about how deliberate and discerning we are in our faith, or what or whom we allow to inform out faith.
For instance, in the choice I made to embrace ritual and bowing I did not become more a person of faith, I only traded one faith for another in choosing to let experienced Buddhist practitioners rather than uninformed prejudice inform my faith. The balderdash alternative would have rested on faith as well, which would have been the set of tacit unexamined assumptions that had inclined me so readily toward the “balderdash” response in the first place. What were those assumptions? Where did they come from? What is it that would have informed my faith in that case and why would that have been better than where I now decided to place my faith? Let’s look at that a moment. …
August 25, 2012
American Folk Buddhism (17)
First Quarter Moon, Uposatha, July 26, 2012            Series Index
Conclusion to Series
This will be the last and concluding episode in this, uh, longish series on American Folk Buddhism.
In summary, I made a distinction between two kinds, or actually polarities, of Buddhism: Essential Buddhism and Folk Buddhism. The Refuges assure the authority of the former.
Essential Buddhism is what is understood and sustained by Buddhist adepts who are thoroughly engaged in the study and practice Buddhism to the extent of significant attainment. It is generally beyond the grasp of most Buddhists who are simply more casual in their engagement or busy doing other things. Essential Buddhism is also functionally equivalent to what the Buddha taught but manifests in various forms, often culturally determined; for instance in East Asia it picked up many highly ritualized practices as effective instruments of mindfulness. In a sense there are multiple Essential Buddhisms, but in another sense there are very nearly simply different manifestations of a single functionally integrated system.
Folk Buddhism is the popular understanding of Buddhism in a particular folk culture for which it provides accessibility to a much broader community, albeit with occasional loss of accuracy or sophistication. Folk Buddhisms are highly culturally determined and one Folk Buddhism is likely to appear incomprehensive to the adherents of another Folk Buddhism just as one culture will tend appear mysterious to the members of another. In the course of this series I have considered the Western cultural, and therefore non-Buddhist, sources of many prominent features of the emerging Western Folk Buddhism.
The Refuges, or Triple Gem, establish the authority of Essential Buddhism over Folk Buddhism as it expresses trust in the originator, the teachings and the living adepts of Essential Buddhism. The Triple Gem gives Buddhism as understood and practiced in the entire community the comet-like shape in which the tail of Folk Buddhism is oriented toward the head of Essential Buddhism, without which Folk Buddhism would eventually float off into space as an amorphous cultic cloud, Buddhist only in name.
Distinguishing between Essential and Folk Buddhism provides a framework for understanding and monitoring the process by which Buddhism is being assimilated into the Western cultural context. Ideally this process will:
(1)   maintain the functional integrity of Essential Buddhism at all costs,
(2)   establish the authority of Essential Buddhism over Folk Buddhism and
(3)   result in a wholesome Western Folk Buddhism.
The integrity of Essential Buddhism is threatened by the assumption common in Western circles that adapting Buddhism to the West is a matter of stripping Buddhism willy-nilly of Asian cultural accretions in order to make it look more Western. This aesthetic would include, for instance, getting rid of rituals, robes, bowing, chanting (at least in foreign tongues), non-productive lifestyles and so on, not to mention renunciation. However, distinguishing between Essential and Folk Buddhisms highlights the danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, of hacking away at the corn when trying to remove the underbrush. Essential Buddhism is the baby, Folk Buddhism the bathwater. The functional role of any culturally arisen features of a transmitted Essential Buddhism is preserved only by leaving it intact or replaced by Western-looking counterparts. History seems to favor leaving such things intact, tending to lend Essential Buddhism an archaic flavor, for instance as retained in gestures of respect and in monastic garb.
Establishing the authority of the Triple Gem ensures that any particular person immersed in Folk Buddhism knows where to look to deepen his practice and understanding of Buddhism, and that that Folk Buddhism remains recognizably Buddhist. That Folk Buddhisms vary so widely should not be a source of alarm as long as each Folk Buddhism is so anchored in the authority of Essential Buddhism. Without that alarm each Folk Buddhism can be appreciated and respected in its own right as an effective intermediary between a relatively uniform Essential Buddhism and the respective cultural context.
A Western Folk Buddhism is wholesome or beneficial to the extent that it is friendly and not inimical toward Essential Buddhism. It is not necessary or desirable to preserve any particular Asian Folk Buddhism, which would be largely incomprehensible in a Western context in any case. It should be recognized that a pure Essential Buddhism goes “against the stream” in any cultural context and that the function of a Folk Buddhism is to carry the challenge of Buddhism into its cultural context, that is that it should make a real difference is people’s lives and attitudes in spite of the cultural context.
In the course of this series I have examined some prominent features of the emerging Western Folk Buddhism in terms of their consistency with Essential Buddhism. These features are resistance to authority, particular forms of understanding and revering the Triple Gem, individualism, gender equality, consumerism, social engagement and the intermediating influence of psychoanalysis on the Western understanding Buddhism. The picture that emerges ranges between total accord and significant discord. Western Folk Buddhism is still quite raw but the master chef of Essential Buddhism should cook it up nicely with time.
I have tacitly assumed throughout this series that the integrity of Essential Buddhism itself has been successfully preserved through history and transmitted to us in the West. I would like to conclude by considering the role of Western Buddhism in making this assumption even more true than it actually is. Essential Buddhism is probably not currently preserved anywhere in its pristine purity. Tradition has a way of tugging out its own roots: understandings become calcified, shortcuts establish themselves, assumptions are not often enough revisited and questioned, the history of each tradition has often been rewritten. For instance I feel that the Theravada would do well to look more critically at the way eating meat and gender roles are understood even among most of the adepts. In the West Buddhism in all of its aspects will be seen with fresh eyes. Scholars are challenging the accounts traditions generally have of their own histories, practitioners question the why’s and wherefore’s of everything and are open to debating these things. Eventually I predict a renewed and stronger purer Essential Buddhism will emerge in the West, one that will go on to reinvigorate all of Buddhism East

July 25, 2012
American Folk Buddhism (16)
New Moon, Uposatha, July 18, 2012 Series Index
Psychoanalysis and American Folk Buddhism
The Four Noble Truths are often described in medical terms, in brief: Suffering is the symptom and the Noble Eightfold Path is the cure. Furthermore the causes of suffering that must be addressed are factors of mind. This suggests immediate parallels with Western psychoanalysis and these parallels also inform the popular understanding of Buddhism in the West. It even leads to the popular viewpoint that Buddhism is a kind of psychotherapy.
It should be noted that whereas the European Enlightenment, Protestant Christianity and Romanticism were influences already present in Western culture before there was much awareness of Buddhism, psychoanalysis is hardly a century old and there has been a dialog between it and Buddhism along with other Eastern traditions almost from the start. To a large degree Buddhism has had the opportunity to shape psychoanalysis and that influence has picked up speed with time. William James apparently predicted around the turn of the Twentieth Century that in twenty-five years psychologists would all be studying Buddhism. However in twenty-five years they were all studying Freud, who considered Buddhism, along with all mystical or contemplative religion, a humbug, narcissistic and infantile and beneath the scientific approach he advocated for understanding the human mind. Some of his disciples even considered meditative states a kind of catatonia or dementia. Nonetheless Jung and many of Freud’s other students took an early interest in religious experience and in Buddhism in particular, perhaps initially on the sly, so that the influence of Buddhism seems never really to have gone away. Jung, Fromm and others, most of whom seem to have been conferring with D.T. Suzuki, certainly did much to influence a popular understanding that brought Buddhism and psychoanalysis into close alignment.
I am far from knowledgeable in psychoanalysis nor in its relationship of Buddhism. Just as there are Buddhist adepts whose understanding is generally much more refined than that of Folk Buddhists, there are certainly adepts in psychology whose understanding is much more refined than that of Folk Psychologists and there are also people who are both Buddhist adepts and adepts in psychology who are daily developing a more detailed, and presumably valuable, understanding of the relationship of Buddhism and psychoanalysis than the typical Folk Buddhist or I would be aware of. Of course there is now a extensive literature on this topic. I will confine discussion to those elements of Western psychology that seem to impinge directly on Western Folk Buddhism and whether these are inimical or friendly toward Essential Buddhism.
Emphasis on the Mind. A Buddhism colored by Western psychoanalysis is a Buddhism turned inward, concerned with the mind. This probably differentiates Western Folk Buddhism from most Asian Folk Buddhisms, which tend to be more outwardly directed, toward ritual and community observances, toward lore and toward ethics. This also goes far in according with Essential Buddhism, which is very psychological, very concerned with working with and training the mind even at very subtle levels. I would guess that the inward orientation of psychoanalysis also contributes to the huge interest in meditation in Western Folk Buddhism, in contrast to most of Asian Folk Buddhism. And in fact mindfulness practices in particular seem to have in turn insinuated themselves into modern psychoanalysis shorn of their Buddhist container.
Functions. Traditionally psychoanalysis is about addressing pathologies, and Buddhism in contrast about addressing the things that ail people almost universally. Freud even described the former’s task as removing neurotic misery in order to return people to the common unhappiness that befalls normal people. Buddhism’s primary task in contrast is to produce saints, or at least people with exceptional qualities, qualities of equanimity, kindness, compassion, virtue, penetrating wisdom and absolute humility. Now the function of psychoanalysis has undoubtedly broadened over time, as psychoanalysis has become more broadly dispensed and perhaps as it has come more under the influence of Buddhism, broadened in some instances to what has been described as a science of happiness. However the popular view of psychoanalysis is still oriented around pathology. And the function of Buddhism, especially when regarded as a form of psychoanalysis, has probably narrowed in the popular view accordingly to become something like a cure for unhappiness.
In practical terms people in the West generally come to Buddhism because life has been difficult. When Buddhism is popularly thought of in terms of psychotherapy this makes Buddhism that much more attractive. However then people relate to Buddhism as patients and Buddhist centers become something like hospitals, or at least outpatient clinics. One of the teachers at a meditation center where I once lived once remarked he thought of that center as a hospital; people were there as patients, and impatient for cure. This contrasts markedly with Asian Buddhism communities which are characterized more by a sense of common values, values exhibited by saints, qualities of equanimity, kindness, compassion, virtue, penetrating wisdom and absolute humility. People are not commonly patients in such communities but expect to find role models, kalyanamitta, remarkable people who inspire them to develop such qualities in themselves, perhaps only gradually but occasionally by fully entering a path of intensive practice.
In short, Western Buddhist communities are generally places of cure, Asian are places of refuge. To a great extent this difference is attributable to the way its members enter the respective community, on the one hand because they find life so difficult outside, on the other because they are already born inside. Accordingly Western communities tend to focus on intense practice, while Asian on inspiration and wholesome intercourse with like-minded people. Viewing Buddhism as psychotherapy helps shape the Westerner’s popular relationship to Buddhism and the Buddhist community. Each of these kinds of communities has advantages and disadvantages. Western communities tend to be oriented toward serious practice, but can also be places of frustration and burnout. Asian communities tend to be happy harmonious inspiring supportive family-friendly environments in which more people think about stepping onto the Noble Eightfold Path than actually undertake it.
Contents. Psychoanalysis and Buddhism are both concerned with the development of mind, but psychoanalysis has traditionally had a distinct idea of what that entails. In Freud’s approach this typically involves discovering the roots of psychosis in early childhood trauma or in complex configurations of factors buried in the past. I think this is still part of the popular understanding of psychoanalysis. Buddhism on the other hand is much less concerned with diachronic origins of problematic factors as with simply letting go of defilements as they arise in the present. The Buddhist project is briefly to purify the mind of factors rooted in greed, hatred and delusion, and particularly in an inappropriate sense of self, and to encourage their opposites, generosity and renunciation, kindness and compassion, and wisdom and humility, much like a gardener pulls out weeds and waters beneficial crops without worrying too much exactly where the weeds came from or how their seeds were transported there. In fact from the Essential Buddhist perspective too much attention to past root causes results in an distracted proliferation of self-directed thinking.
Also common in early psychoanalysis and in its modern understanding is the consistent implication of social and cultural norms and constraints in the development of psychosis, as if without these one’s true self would emerge healthy and unfettered. It is easy to recognize the origins of this particular understanding in European Romanticism. There is no counterpart to this role for cultural and social pressures in Essential Buddhism other than to encourage some social norms as healthy and discourage others as unhealthy as determinants along with other innate and acquire tendencies of individuals’ karmic actions.
Secularization. Finally, psychoanalysis and other forms of psychotherapy are often considered the secular counterparts of religion, insofar as they are concerned with psychological and spiritual well-being, yet generally lack the “religiosity,” with its aspects of the sacred, of ritual, of community functions and hierarchy and of ethics and of transcendent aspirations. Essential Buddhism has such religious functions, even if many are less prominent there before they are further enhanced and embellished in much of Asian Folk Buddhism. Therefore regarding Buddhism as a form of psychotherapy reduces the scope of Buddhism’s functions to produce a kind of secularized Buddhism. Certainly psychoanalysis has had an influence in the open advocacy within Folk Buddhism of a “Secular Buddhism” and even in the claim that that is what the Buddha expounded. I doubt that the Buddha gave much thought to he secular-sacred divide that obsesses monderists let alone attention to staying on one side of it.
I’ve written elsewhere on the issue of secularity and religiosity in Buddhism and have had occasion to touch on many aspects of this here. Suffice it to say that psychotherapy generally has no Triple Gem, nor is the capacity of faith and reverence for opening up the full power of practice present, nor is much attention given to community, except for maybe encounter group, as something that embodies and imparts values, and also which provides special support for those who want to get real serious about practice. Perhaps most problematic is that the ethical dimension is largely neglected in favor of personal well-being, whereas everything in Essential Buddhism is imbued with ethics and virtue. Psychotherapy also generally does not reach beyond making this one life more comfortable and toward dedicating this one life to a much greater project as Essential Buddhism encourages.
Conclusion. Almost two millennia ago as Buddhism was beginning to enter China Taoism seems to have provided a conceptual structure and vocabulary that aided in grasping this foreign import. I think however it is an exaggeration to say that that role has fallen to such a great extent to psychoanalysis in the West. Nonetheless psychoanalysis along with the Romanticism that preceded it did, in making the mind important, provide a huge prerequisite for grasping Buddhism’s full foreign import. And yet Essential Buddhism is not psychotherapy, at least in the popular form of the latter, and care should be taken to avoid Folk Buddhist tendency toward conflating the two.
Next week I would like to end this series on American Folk Buddhism with an overview and general conclusions.
July 17, 2012