Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906 – 1993) is one of the founders of modern socially engaged Buddhism, and was a key person in the reformation of 20th century Thai Buddhism.
Born in Thailand (then called Siam), Buddhadasa became a monk in 1926. However, he soon became very concerned by the corruption of the monastic sangha and its preoccupation with money, politics, and comfort. He returned to the rural area of his birth and founded the forest monastery Suan Mokkh, which means “Garden of Liberation.”
Through Suan Mokkh, his talks, and his books, Buddhadasa strove to practice a Buddhism that was closer to the spirit of its original source. He once wrote, “People…have become attached to and view Buddha as a god instead of seeing him as a human being who attained enlightenment and had great compassion for others. They are not aware that Buddha teaches that anyone can follow his path and find the way out of suffering by and for themselves.”
He was very ecumenical in his understanding of Buddhism, and also reached out to members of other religions including Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs.
Buddhadasa’s teachings, and especially his emphasis on interdependence, inspired a generation of Thai social activists and artists, including Sulak Sivaraksa and many of the monks who have protected Thai forests.
This week’s quote from Buddhadasa comes from Donald K. Swearer’s essay “The Three Legacies of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu”(in The quest for a just society: the legacy and challenge of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, ed. by Sulak Sivaraksa).
The entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, the moon, and the stars live together as a cooperative. The same is true for humans and animals, trees and soil. Our bodily parts function as a cooperative. When we realize that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise, that human beings are all mutual friends in the process of birth, old age, suffering and death, then we can build a noble, even heavenly environment. If our lives are not based in this truth, then we shall all perish.
Having an interest in Buddhisms cropping up in sometimes surprising places, I was interested to see what John had to say over at Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt about Buddhism in Africa. The first half of the post considers the challenges of setting up sanghas in South Africa. Interesting stuff which might sound familiar to many of you. The second half of the post, however, brings up the presumed racial composition of Buddhism in South African sanghas, using some really unfortunate stereotypes. John is not the author of these comments; he's just reporting them because he found them compelling, and probably provocative, which they certainly are.
On a different note, Buddhism and Africa by Michel Clasquin and Kobus Kruger has mentioned that majority of Buddhist practitioners in South Africa are largely middle-class and white with one commentor in the book stating that
Buddhism does not fit all that naturally into the present black social or religious mentality
As well as it being…
too foreign to their accustomed ways of thinking: too intellectual, philosophical and introspective.
This is classic coded racism in action if you ask me. Instead of saying black South Africans are intellectually inferior, the author of these comments framed the argument using what appears to be neutral languaging, but actually accomplishes the same thing.
Clearly, sanghas like the Nichiren one pictured above were never considered, or maybe simply didn't exist at the time these comments were made. However, I cannot help but think of a talk given at our zen center a few years ago by Professor john a. powell (he uses lower case letters for his name; i'm not sure why). Professor powell spoke a lot about "white space," and how many convert sanghas in the U.S., were developed primarily by middle class whites in a way that catered to their assumptions about what constitutes Buddhist practice. Now, clearly the same might be said of black dominant U.S. Christian churches, but the difference is that there is often little awareness within white convert Buddhist communities about how race impacts the make up of their communities. Specifically, there's often no correlation made between the racial composition of the leadership of these groups, and the composition of the community as a whole. Lots of hand wringing might occur about the "lack of diversity," but because white Americans struggle as a whole to first see themselves as a racial group, and then second see the ways in which power and race are intertwined, the steps necessary to create a truly racially diverse community rarely, if ever, occur.
South Africa has a markedly different history from the U.S. in terms of race, but there are some parallels, especially when it comes to whites in both groups using their own characteristics as defaults. The author of the comments reported by John made assumptions about both whites and blacks in South Africa as a whole that probably don't hold up very well. What does is mean to be "introspective" for example? Does it always look the same, or is the author missing the diversity of forms introspection can take? The same questions might be asked of the term "intellectual," although I would also add that the associations I have with the word - college educated, for example - suggest that privilege (racial and class) is often tied to this term in unexamined ways.
Using the racial composition of certain Buddhist communities as a template for speaking about Buddhism's appeal, or lack of appeal, to anyone else is totally problematic. If the above fails to show that, I don't know what will.
In a study, published December 1, 2008 in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, MBCT proved as effective as maintenance anti-depressants in preventing a relapse and more effective in enhancing peoples' quality of life. The study also showed MBCT to be as cost-effective as prescription drugs in helping people with a history of depression stay well in the longer-term.
The randomised control trial involved 123 people from urban and rural locations who had suffered repeat depressions and were referred to the trial by their GPs. The participants were split randomly into two groups. Half continued their on-going anti-depressant drug treatment and the rest participated in an MBCT course and were given the option of coming off anti-depressants.
Over the 15 months after the trial, 47% of the group following the MBCT course experienced a relapse compared with 60% of those continuing their normal treatment, including anti-depressant drugs. In addition, the group on the MBCT programme reported a higher quality of life, in terms of their overall enjoyment of daily living and physical well-being.
As should be well known, I'm not a fan of "science proves religion" posts, but this is certainly worth noting.
Cold. Our idea of cold here in Ohio, that is, 6 degrees. The matte green ivy is curled tightly upon itself on one tree. On the next tree, where the sun hits, the ivy has relaxed. I am seeing this through a window from a house so warm my bare feet enjoy the wood floor. Snow still lies gracefully on branches, but less of it. A strange snow here. I woke up yesterday to see white comforters thrown on the lawns while the driveways and street were clear, shiny black. No drifts, due to the particular heavy nature of this snow, and to no wind, and that made it look like snow as envisioned by a child doing an exercise for art class, creating a model village.
I was eager to read some dharma this morning, having dreamed again about my brother, as he was, and feeling cluttered. I have Zen Miracles in the bathroom right now, so I picked that out. I find myself stuck where I left off, on the chapter about getting unstuck.
"Find your own pilgrimage," Shoshanna writes. "Where is it you need to go?" I can't do much physical going in the state of health and finance I'm in. I've been thinking about the fall retreat at Grailville, thinking I've been well for long enough that I start to have confidence in my wellness. I am afraid to do things that might tire me or stress me. Hmm. That retreat. I could just go for the weekend. Wonder if the food's gotten any better. If I could sleep in another bed. At my level of health, that's important.
I know there is some going alone I need to do. I have become a dependent person, as is my tendency, with all this illness. This weekend Tom got sick, a fever and deep fatigue. We talked about whether it might be pneumonia, and his particular vulnerability with restrictive lung disease, when to call the doctor. I was alone while he slept all weekend. I stayed home from church, taking his temperature, which was lower, thank God, getting him to drink some water, covering him up now and then. It is blessed to be together at these times, whether you are the sick one or the caregiver.
What is the pilgrimage I need to take? I am already taking a personal pilgrimage in the direction of confronting the extreme poverty in the world and my responsibility toward it. Realizing the truth - in my journal I often call it "real-eyes." It seems like denying that truth was taking a lot of energy.
Last night the news said that China invested $1 million for every gold medal it won in the last Olympics. I thought of what I read in Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save. The surgery to correct a common form of blindness in Africa costs $50. Twenty thousand people could have been given sight for that investment. That surgery makes a permanent improvement in their lives that enables them to work, to live, to have families. What are these gold medals about? Nationalism, for one thing. Comparison. We are better than you. For every winner there are ten losers, no, hundreds.
Singer's claim is that the world's wealthy can easily give the money to lift the whole world out of the extreme poverty that kills 27,000 children a day, and never even miss it. Me, on my pensions, I shouldn't expect too much of myself. I was relieved to read his impeccably reasoned conclusion. And as I contemplate how much to give, what organization to give it to, I feel more like a tree trunk, less like the fragile, beautiful African violet that is blooming in our den against the backdrop of snow.
. Somehow I seem to have gotten swept up in an emailing circuit awash in very bright people who love science and rational thought and are deeply skeptical -- "horrified" or "outraged" might be better words -- by the depredations of religion. It's such a delicious disdain.
And of course I haven't gotten "swept up" -- I swept myself up: I love people who hate religion in intelligent ways. I feel as if I were on a playground with a lot of very energetic kids ... and I love kids and their energies.
One of the people in this circle of emailers seems to be a former rabbi, so I guess the circle of intelligent criticisms has a quotient of leavening: Keenly intelligent AND with religious underpinnings. The playground is more interesting than just lock-step critiques.
But I do enjoy the playground. So smart. So skeptical. So unwilling to cave in to anything as mindless as any system that finds its home in unprovable beliefs and, sometimes as a result, causes great harm.
But one of the things I find most interesting is the sometimes-implied willingness to notice the filthy bathwater but ignore the baby sitting in it. Why would anyone avail themselves of the perceived idiocies of religion in the first place? An awful lot of people do, in fact, seek something that might be called spiritual solace. And I agree that numbers of adherents (to anything) do not prove that what is adhered to is worth a fart in a windstorm, but still ... for those with a keen mind, wouldn't it be incumbent to investigate this matter not as it pertains to their degrees in philosophy or psychology or other elevated intellectual attainments, but rather as it pertains to the poor schlub sitting in the bathwater?
It seems to me that those with greater capacities -- to the extent they aren't locked into their own zealotries -- have a responsibility to lend a hand and point out ways that might work better ... not as a dictum from on high or an ego trip (if you don't see things my way, you're an idiot), but as a way of improving the world the skeptic and scientist often claim they would like to improve.
Sure, throw out the bathwater. But smug arrogance is no way to care for a baby. .
Regarding Samye Ling’s satellite centres in Harare, Joburg and Cape Town, which benefit from the guidance of the movement’s local representative, Rob Nairn, he says: “The development has been very good. The SA centres have been going for 38 years.
“Sometimes I lose patience, feeling we could do better, but then we realise that Tibetan Buddhism always has to start with zero – no capital, no foundations. Some of our achievements have exceeded my expectations. The Dharma is growing faster in Africa than it originally did in Tibet.”
Read the whole article for a better feel of the challenges. I respect the work done and attempts made but I am always concerned with the feeling of “doing better”. How is that measured? By converts? Size of monastic presence? Money? Charity and compassionate works? My humble opinion is that “starting with zero” or ending with that much is of small concern in comparison to extent of practice and effort made.
On a different note, Buddhism and Africaby Michel Clasquin and Kobus Kruger has mentioned that majority of Buddhist practitioners in South Africa are largely middle-class and white with one commentor in the book stating that
Buddhism does not fit all that naturally into the present black social or religious mentality
As well as it being…
too foreign to their accustomed ways of thinking: too intellectual, philosophical and introspective.
I quick word on the book “Buddhism in Africa” – It seems to me and to others that the statistics utilized can be vastly skewed when certain sects are discounted. It may be more accurate to state that most Tibetan and Zen groups are largely white-middle class while Nichiren sanghas have a greater number of black participants. Or something of that sort. I really have no knowledge of the statistics except to say that knowingly skewing the results to a prefered outcome is poor and immoral statistics work.
I would love some comments from those that may be practitioners (of any race) in Africa
Sadly, there is no common Buddhist calendar in the West. And here we have an example of the confusion that follows this lack of conformity.
Today together with the 15th of this month is observed in parts of East Asia as Nirvana Day, a time to recall Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha of history's death.
The records of his life together with his teachings were all written down in languages he did not speak hundreds of years after he died.
So there are no certain details, even these dates are up for grabs, although or perhaps nonetheless a lively and engaging and at least for me an utterly fascinating personality emerges out of the texts, making some attempt at marking his life important...
Unlike the death of Jesus which at some point becomes the reason for his life, the Buddha's death is natural enough, and mostly stays that way even in the hands of hagiographers. At around eighty years of age he eats something called "pig's delight" (the wars between vegetarians and others around that term never end...) he becomes ill and dies.
The traditions say he gave a good long sermon before his death. (As a preacher I do appreciate this...)
But the text this day evokes for me is, perhaps naturally enough, in fact a Zen one.
In the Biyanlu, the Blue Cliff Record, case fifty-five, "Daowu's Condolences" we hear how "Daowu and Jianyuan went to a house to express condolences. Jianyuan rapped on the coffin and asked, 'Living or dead?'
"Daowu said, 'I can't say either living or dead.'
"Jianyuan asked, 'Why can't you say?'
"Daowu said, 'I can't say! I can't say!'
"On the way home, Jianyuan said, 'Your Reverence, please tell me right away. If you don't, I shall hit you.'
"Daowu said, 'If you like, I'll allow you to hit me, but I'll never say.' Jianyuan hit him.
"Later, after Daowu passed away, Jianyuan went to Shishuang and told him this story. Shishuang said, 'Alive, I can't say! Dead, I can't say!'
"Jianyuan asked, 'Why can't you say?'
"Shishuang said, 'I can't say! I can't say!'
"With these words, Jianyuan was enlightened"*
For those not familiar with koan literature this is perhaps a bit confusing. Something about death. But obviously also about something else, something that perhaps transcends life and death.
Maybe.
Daowu is one of the greats. He features in another of my favorite koans, collected in the Hongzhi Zhengjue, the Book of Serenity, "Who is Sick?" with the lovely question "Why is it that Quanyin (the bodhisattva of compassion) has so many eyes and hands," and the response "It's like reaching behind in your sleep and adjusting your pillow." He pops up a few other places, as well...
In the Dharma Daowu is a great uncle to our Soto way, his Dharma sibling Dongshan helped to form the school. And I feel in the sweetness of the encounter one can detect a family resemblance here.
But within that sweetness there is a relentlessness. He puts the real question to us. What about death? What about life? Why does the Buddha die? I suspect more importantly, why do I die?
I was talking with some people the other day about why they entered the Zen way. I noticed pretty much all those who had been around a while, more than a couple of years, they had some question about sickness and death, some burning sense of dissatisfaction, of anxiety, of anxiousness in the face of the rush of life and death.
It drove them to the pit of practice, to not turning away, to really, really looking into their hearts. They had become real people of Zen.
So, I suggest, the question in this koan is the question of Zen.
Now there is something to notice in this little conversation and its follow up. Here the Zen dharma takes a rather different tack than saying the death itself is the point or giving a long sermon on the way out the door.
It negate neither, but doesn't spend any time there, either.
Instead we get, "I can't say."
I like to make much of the word agnostic. As old Thomas Huxley meant when he coined it, I don't know, and, and I care deeply.
This is no passive I can't say. This is a can't say that involves every atom in one's being.
There are all sorts of corollaries to this can't say on the Zen way. Only don't know. Beginner's Mind.
Not knowing is most intimate.
I hope you notice. There is a presentation here. And there is an invitation.
It is in fact a moment that Jianyuan missed. An easy enough miss. In life as we live it so much is happening, so much hurt, so much joy, so much dashing about here and there.
What? Did you say something?
But, also in the case as we receive it, there's a second chance.
Thank goodness for second chances. And third. And fourth...
And in that second encounter an elaboration of the point to help.
Alive, I can't say. Dead, I can't say.
What would it look like if we just set down our idea of death? What would it look like if we let go of our idea of life?
What then?
* Joan Sutherland & John Tarrant's revision of Koun Yamada & Robert Aitken's translation.
Sitting the body-mind, there is neither inside nor outside. Both, and none of them.
Not caught by distractions, forms, not sucked into inner dreaming, we are the open gate, open threshold of both eyes settled in a serene gaze, not trapped by the world, nor away from it. Looking at nothing in particular, we are looking at everything.
Below is today’s Sit-A-Long video. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.
To view all of Jundo and Taigu’s SunSpace posts, including earlier installments of “Zazen for Beginners,” click here.
To subscribe to the RSS for the “sit-a-longs” and be notified of new postings, click here.
Those who are enlightened about delusion are buddhas.
In the Shobogenzo, being “enlightened about delusion” means awakening to the reality of delusion. That is, realizing what delusion truly is. It is like when, for example, a person is shown the cause of a magician’s illusions: mirrors, wires, hidden compartments, and so on. The person can then grasp the reality of the illusion. The reality of the illusion, the mirrors, wires, hidden compartments, is existent, and the illusion is a real characteristic of its existence. Similarly, when you realize the cause of delusion: misperception or partial perception, of true nature, you realize the reality of delusion. The reality of delusion, misperception or partial perception of our own true nature is existent, and delusion is a real characteristic of its existence. Those who are “enlightened about” this are called “buddhas.”
Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906 – 1993) is one of the founders of modern socially engaged Buddhism, and was a key person in the reformation of 20th century Thai Buddhism.
