Growing the Dharma: Navigating the Sasana

You are reading a serialization of the ebook Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. We now begin the last chapter.

Chapter 8. Navigating the Sasana (1/2)

The Springdale Buddhist Center held a lavish banquet for its members, and offered the whole fare, from hors d’oeuvre to dessert. To their great dismay, few seemed to eat lavishly. The festival committee (Bob, Carol and Skipper) asked around and discovered that most guests who were failing to eat well were doing so for what they felt were unreasonable reasons, and as a result failed to benefit fully from what was offered.

“Is this the future shape of Buddhism in the Land of the Fork?” they thought collectively.

They identified the following feeding patterns, which they put up on a white-board, each with its own bullet:

Some guests were “●simply uninformed” about food. Some people, Bob observed, would ignore items simply because they did not recognize them or they misperceived them or they were unsure about the proper manner of eating them. They could have asked, but most of the people around them didn’t seem to know either.

Some guests were simply “●stuck in the familiar.” Fish eggs or lychees, or octopus would make them cringe. These mostly ate rolls, cold cuts, and cole slaw.

Some guests exclusively “●seek out the exotic.” One or two people, as Skipper identified, will not intend to stay long, but will maybe take some reindeer paté on a rice cracker or something likewise exotic or appealing. They could be heard sharing the recollection of their experiences with friends the following day.

Some guests seem “●more analytical than daring” in their approach to eating. These people, Carol explained, are always quite informed of recent incidents of salmonella poisoning, tainted shellfish, misidentified mushrooms, typhoid. They know all about trichinosis, cancer, and how all of these relate to the food we eat. They also carefully calculate calories; fat, protein and carbohydrate levels; and the amounts they are getting of each vitamin and mineral. They eye unidentified foods with great suspicion. All of these people are terribly skinny.

Some guests can only stay long enough to “●grab something to eat,” as Bob observed, generally a sandwich or couple of egg rolls because they have to rush to put in some overtime at work, or they are on their way to the opera or a lecture and have just come from a workout at the gym. Even in the buffet line they talk on their cell phones. These are busy people, people with lifestyles.

Some guests whether they eat a lot or not, nonetheless “●eat but do not help with cleanup.” Some could be seen slinking past the wash area, others seemed to think they were at a restaurant with paid bus staff, in one case even imperiously asking another guest, who happened to be clearing some tables, to refill her coffee cup.

But then there were some guests who “●try everything,” and even take great pleasure in the cleanup. Skipper pointed out, there are still rare individuals who come with big appetites, know their foods, have let go of all destructive preconceptions and are curious and daring about the what they’ve been invited to enjoy, capable of savoring the sublime and valuing the simple. Furthermore, these people generally give themselves ample time to enjoy food and company.

“They have a fork and they know how to use it,” Carol added with regard to the last group.

The following year the committee met to consider again holding a Second Annual Buddhist Banquet. There were different opinions about what to offer.

At one extreme was Bob’s suggestion. Bob’s proposal was to offer the Whole Buddhist Fare, from Embodiment to Realization, exactly as they had done last year. However, before the banquet they would send out abundant information on the various foods, along with detailed descriptions of how to eat lobster and some of the more difficult dishes, with photographs and diagrams. Guests would be asked to arrive by 5:00 pm, after which the doors would be locked from the outside and not reopened until all the food was eaten. Also pocket calculators, cell phones and other electronic gear would be collected at the door.

At the other extreme was Carol’s suggestion. The other two members of the committee could not determine if Carol was more forgiving than Bob or not. Her proposal was to offer spaghetti, marshmallow salad and dinner rolls. And beer.

“The greatest common denominator,” Carol called it.

Picky Eaters in the Land of the Fork

Let’s get personal: What does this all mean to me, as a navigator of the Buddha-Sasana? What choices do I make at the buffet?

For consistency with the running metaphor – which has served well in this book I’ve almost finished for explaining doctrinal, historical and sociological aspects of the Sasana – I would expect to personally encounter what has evolved, been cultivated, grown and harvested, in a flower shop, but the buffet counter is an even more familiar realm of personal attention, the gastronomic realm. However, for many in the West who first step up to Buddhism and survey the daunting range of options on the buffet table, it is easy to see how they might throw their hands up in despair and perhaps entertain the hope that the menu at a cafeteria or pizza restaurant might be easier to sort out.

An appropriate strategy for navigating any buffet table depends on my aspirations: taste, health, unique experiences, sharing with others, putting on or taking off weight. As I graze along the various counters I might look for the adept or the folksy, the Path dishes or the Sasana, for challenging or simple, foreign or native cuisine.

For a while, at least, I can anticipate that my understanding will be a rather folksy, blended with partial and mis-understandings, along with notions of no Buddhist pedigree whatever, but I might nonetheless align myself toward an adept understanding by taking Noble Ones, along with the Buddha and the Dharma, as my primary influences and the most reliable source of knowledge. I might also find hope in some defined folk tradition, trusting that it will develop in me wholesome qualities capable of taking me at least half-way toward becoming a Noble One myself. Almost any folk tradition is at least consistent with the understanding and practice of the Noble Ones. I might choose to seek anything from complete Awakening to pleasant abiding in relative psycho-therapeutic comfort.

The Path practices will be more challenging, like putting a lobster or an artichoke on my plate. Devotional practices like chanting nembutsu or mindfulness of the Buddha as a way of strengthening Refuge are more like pudding or chips. After reading this book, which has infused in me both gratitude and a sense of responsibility, I realize I fully determined to give appropriate attention to the non-Path dishes, to become a supporter of the Sasana.

I also now understand that it is a mistake to limit my grazing range on the basis of accustomed tastes, for even Adept Buddhisms have come through foreign cultural filters, but that others’ Folk Buddhisms might in their abstruseness serve little to improve my understanding. However, I might personally like exotic cultures for their own sake, or a particular culture, whose exploration can be as expansively illuminating for me as mastering foreign tongues. I think I’m willing to try anything at least once.

I am prepared to eat sumptuously but with discrimination, to consider the full Buddhist fare without upsetting the stomach. My personal accustomed feeding patterns may hinder or help me. Let’s review these:

Simply uninformed

I feel quite “in the know” at the samadhi counter, quickly picking out a couple alternative objects of meditation for my dinner plate and moving on. I have a bit of trouble telling a perception from a formation as I pass by the aggregates of clinging. But then I get to the area where I am to seek admiral friends, most of whose attire is mortifyingly out of fashion, and the alleged best of whom won’t even watch a football game with me, nor share celebrity gossip nor investment advice nor even a drink. Then I am supposed to take refuge in, and bow to them? Won’t they get lodged between my teeth or give me heartburn?

Living in the West I have an unprecedented quantity of information about Buddhism readily available, but it is lopsided. I understand that this book that I have almost finished, was written to correct this deficit. Most particularly, almost everything available in the West is about the narrower Path perspective, almost nothing about the broader Sasana perspective, with its leaves and roots, blossom and sources of nutriment: sun, water and soil. But without a strong basis in refuge and in community I will be ill-prepared and hardly inspired to take up the Path. With a strong basis in refuge and in community, I will develop many wholesome qualities, gradually, starting at a tender age and already long before even considering entering the Path; I will help to sustain and promote the Sasana, generously and for the benefit of many; and, hey, I will commune with Noble Ones of radical and subversive influence almost on a daily basis, who stand as a persistent reality check for all of my samsaric inclinations.

Stuck in the familiar

One morning the abbot of a Burmese monastery in Texas announced that the monks were to appease the tree spirits who had happily inhabited two trees until said trees had been cut down during an ongoing construction project. They were to chant a bit of Pali and then the abbot would talk to the spirits. It seems that the nats had been up to some mischief, since losing their homes, at the expense some members of our larger community. Your author, an American monk, had never heard of such a thing, but after several years in Burmese monasteries nothing surprised him. Nonetheless, a cloud of skepticism passed over his face on this particular occasion:

“When you talk to the nats, are you going to talk to them … in Burmese?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this is Texas. They are Texan tree spirits. How can they understand Burmese? They probably have names like Dusty, Clem and Pedro.”

“I think tree spirits can understand any language. But just in case, … you talk to them in English as well.”
I like dinner rolls, cold cuts and cole slaw. But then I live in a comfort zone, disinclined to step beyond the preconceptions, the views, values and patterns of thought and behavior I grew up with, into that realm where people are a bit weird an unable to think so freely as I. I find myself, as I scan the buffet, thinking things like, “Rules are for stupid people who don’t already know how to do the right thing,” or “There is no such thing as karma,” or “Buddhism is about discovering your true self so that you can act natural.” For I am a freethinker.

Generally we do not recognize that we are conditioned by our folk culture any more than we recognize that we speak with an accent. I don’t yet fully realize the tacit and undiscriminating trust I place in my own folk culture. Any culture has its gems of caprice waiting to be discovered. In ours we believe in an innermost heart that seeks to express itself unhindered by, uh, cultural constraints. In someone else’s they have equally equally fanciful notions. This mandates Refuge. Without grasping the lifeline of the Triple Gem I have almost no chance to reconsider the bias of my upbringing, to place my trust instead in the Buddha, in his teachings and in the Noble Ones. Trust in something is unavoidable. Discrimina-tion in my trust is nonetheless an option. Freethinking is, alas, very rare thing.¹

My comfort zone is likely to be violated, I understand, in two ways. One is an almost inevitable result of deeper Buddhist practice. Once I enter the path with full determination, begin to explore the deep and previously unacknowledged regions of my own mind and experience, and discover that many of my most deeply held assumptions and habit patterns don’t hold water, the world becomes like a foreign land, much less substantial than I had thought. This can be scary, like the floor suddenly giving out under me. More than ever I will need the Noble Ones to hold me, the ones who warned me that this might happen.

But I’m not there yet. The other violation of my comfort zone is the encounter with those very exotic cultures that have been the caretakers of Buddhism in the course of the last one hundred generations, the cultures that have brought the peculiarity and anomaly to the practices and beliefs of the local traditions, to the garb of the monastics, to the style of the liturgy, to the presence of unfamiliar figures in temple statuary, to unfamiliar rites at temple altars, to unknown scriptures on temple bookshelves, ant to hocus pocus all around.

I did not intend to become Indiana Jones in pursuit of my spiritual aspirations, but the most worthwhile artifacts are to be found in exotic places, even on geographically Western soil. I think of the beatniks of San Francisco who first sought out “Zen Master” Shunryu Suzuki Roshi at the Sokoji Temple and were quick to peg him as “like, squaresville.” Fortunately they, at least some of them, revised their first impression and dared to place their trust beyond the familiar when they returned to the temple. I too will venture into Asian temples, because 99% of the world’s adepts are there and particularly because examples of a fully functional, sustainable Sasana are still extremely rare outside of Asian communities, the kind of place in which my kids, for instance, can play among the leaves and be nourished by sun, water and soil.

Nonetheless, it makes almost no sense whatever for me to learn someone else’s Folk Buddhism, unless I happen to be an anthropologist, since someone else’s Folk Buddhism is an attempt to harmonize with someone else’s folk culture, which cannot help me in mine. I need only to respect someone else’s Folk Buddhism, with all its cultural accretions, not to make it my own. On the other hand, while Adept Buddhism can seem remarkably modern, it always has culturally-conditioned factors of its own, such as anjali – present from the time of the Buddha – and the intensely ritualized conduct of Zen.

As someone stuck in the familiar, my first inclination is to try to expunge my Buddhism of all foreign cultural influences, but I see how this will unnecessarily and arbitrarily lead to to throwing out the Buddha with the bathwater. A bit of Indiana Jones’ daring is called for, at least a willingness to explore exotic places. Playfulness is also apt. My kids will love it.

Seeking the exotic

There are days in which I seem to swing in the opposite direction, to reach out for unfamiliar contexts and unique experiences, to eat of octopus or of mountain oysters, to sip of kop luwak coffee, or of bird’s nest soup, to seek mystical and peak experiences or simply, through Buddhism, to enter into exotic cultures.

Like many others I might in my relentless search for special experiences flit around from one opportunity to the next, attend a seminar one weekend in which an initial Awakening experience is promised in a comfortable group setting, and a Sufi dancing workshop the next, chanting nembutsu the weekend after that. Unfortunately, I am a bit of a sucker for snake oil.

What is in danger of being lost in the quest for experiences is the well-rounded development of my complete human character. The bread and butter of the gradual path taught by the Buddha do not come with peak experiences attached; they are more humdrum than that. I do best to begin with Refuge, generosity, kindness and renunciation and move on from there. Higher attainments, which do often involve uncommon experiences, are generally reserved those who work at it full time for many years, particular those who take advantage of the monastic path. Slow and steady wins the race. Lining up unintegrated peak experiences that do not have a history of working together will produce something like a centipede who is unable to coordinate its myriad feet. Wriggle as I might, I will make no progress along the Buddhist Path.

To make matters worse, I live in a consumer culture which markets not products and services but experiences. I do not simply buy an iThingy or a potato chip, but a special experience, one that will transform me into one of the gleeful smiling models in the ads. This is dangerous where it intersects with Buddhist practice. As noted, Folk Buddhist movements already have a bit of a history of extolling experience. With the help of modern marketing it is bound to create the kind of acquisitiveness that Buddhist practice is intended to overcome. Rather than renouncing one thread of samsaric life after another as we make progress along the Path, we end up adding one marketable product or service after another to an already karmically overburdened life.

What I will pursue is a middle-way between the familiar and the exotic, swinging too far neither to the one or the other extreme.

… Continued next week.

1 I think I may have experienced a brief free thought just last month, albeit the content of which I cannot seem to recall.

Growing the Dharma: History of the Dharma and Sangha

You are reading a serialization of the ebook Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. In this installment we complet the chapter on the history of Buddhism. Next week we will look at how the Sasana plays out in its social context, in particular at Folk Buddhism.

Chapter 6. Propogation and Evolution of the Sasana (2/2)

 

The History of the Dharma Gem

The Buddha’s greatest accomplishment, aside from Awakening, is the exposition of the Dharma. The function of veneration is inspiration, the opening of hearts to its influence. Perhaps the most complete way to honor the Dharma, available to all from the earliest days, is to actually study, practice and live according to Dharma. In the earliest days oral recitation and memorization of a rather vast scriptural corpus was also indicative of reverence for the Dharma, even while distributing the memorization effort communally over many monks or monasteries, often each specializing in a certain tract. Remnants of this practice are found to this day in the daily devotions of millions of adherents, even after written language has rendered this inefficient purely as means of preservation. In Burma and other lands the practice of memorization is highly valued to this day and many monastics can recite vast amounts of scripture from memory.

Sometimes veneration of the Dharma carries over to the language in which it is preserved. In particular, the Theravadins early on decided to preserve the canonical literature in Pali, the Indic language in which it had come to Sri Lanka and which they assumed must have been the original language of the Buddha, while elsewhere the equivalent literature was largely translated into local vernaculars. Accordingly, the status of Pali grew in stature over the centuries such that it became the original or most perfect human language, and the language spoken by all buddhas of every era. In East Asia, dharanis , certain short texts assumed to have magical or protective qualities, have been preserved over the centuries in original Indic languages transliterated into Chinese characters to capture the sounds but not the meanings of the texts.

A remarkable development within Buddhism is the gradual augmentation and sometimes complete supplanting or of the scriptural corpus in virtually every tradition. Some of these later texts are apocryphal, that is, they purport to be early texts, often words spoken by the Buddha, either in the text themselves or in subsequent tradition. This is the case in the Theravada Abhidhamma and for many Mahayana sutras. Often an origin story has survived alongside newer texts that clarified for an earlier audience why no one seemed to have heard of these texts earlier. Typically these involved preservation by deities, dragons or simply concealment in caves for later rediscovery. The Theravada Abhidharma was delivered by the Buddha in a heavenly realm. The great philosopher-monk Nagarjuna was purported to have special access to ancient secret documents preserved underwater by dragons (nagas) that formed the basis of his system of thought.

The variety of the vast scriptural corpus to which the Chinese were heir must have bewildered the early Buddhists, who would have had little notion of what was early and what was later. As a result distinct schools formed each giving allegiance to a favorite sutra. Of the four major schools in China, the foundational scripture of the Hua Yen School was the voluminous Flower Ornament Sutra, that of the T’ien Tai School was the Lotus Sutra, that of the Ching T’u (Pure Land) School was the Amitabha Sutra, and the Ch’an (Japanese, Zen) school couldn’t make up its mind, apparently vacillating initially between the Lankavatara Sutra and the Diamond Sutra, then declaring itself “a transmission beyond words and letters.”¹ And so, veneration of the Dharma began in some schools to mean veneration of a specific text. Particularly prominent in this regard has been the Lotus Sutra which claims in the text itself to be original and which offers little in the way of practice aside from recitation and transcription of the text. Within this text we find the Buddha proclaiming,

“… after the extinction of the Tathagata, if there be any people who hear even a single verse or a single word of the Wonderful Law-Flower Sutra, and by a single thought delight in it, I also predict for them Perfect Enlightenment. Again, let there be any who receive and keep, read and recite, expound and copy even a single verse of the Wonderful Law-Flower Sutra, and look upon this sutra with reverence as if it were the Buddha, and make offering to it in various ways with flowers, perfume, garlands, sandal powder, perfumed unguents, incense for burning, silk canopies, banners, flags, garments, and music, as well as revere it with folded hands, …”²

These devotional practices around the Lotus Sutra entered T’ien Tai Buddhism in China and eventually many of its offshoots in Japan, for instance, in the recitation of the name of the Lotus Sutra in Nichiren Buddhism, including modern Soka Gakkai.

The History of the Sangha

The Monastic Sangha has been historically the most stable element of all in Buddhism in spite of the evolutionary tendencies of its sister gems. The Vinaya in at least three recensions is still preserved and observed to this day in very archaic form throughout Buddhist Asia, except only marginally in Japan, unlike any particular sutta/sutra corpus. The Patimokkha is almost invariant. The wayward Japanese case is instructive of the need for this particular kind of stability, as we will see in later chapters.

Nonetheless, a common change in the monastic role, almost across the board, is the assumption by monastics of priestly functions largely absent in early Buddhism, roughly mediation with deities or mysterious forces through the performance of rites and rituals. For instance, it is very common for monastics to offer blessings, spells of protection, or good luck, to dispel ghosts or evil spirits or to work miracles in most traditions, even while the Buddha clearly intended that such things be left to the Brahmin priests. In the Theravada tradition, which is relatively more orthodox in this regard than most, monastics wield the eleven verses of protection (Pali, parittas), each one specific to offsetting its own type of unfortunate eventuality, from complications in childbirth, through fire, to snakebite. Such functions are only largely absent in early Buddhism, for the Buddha himself seems to have opened the door a crack to priestly functions, through which a crowd of human demands subsequently forced its way. Once, after a monk had died from bite of snake, the Buddha explained that if this monk had developed kindness toward snakes the snake would not have bitten him, and the Buddha even recommended a verse for this purpose, which is recited to this day.³ This is the only verse of protection the Buddha seems to have endorsed in the early scriptures, but the offering of blessings became and remained a secondary monastic function throughout most of Asia.

China provided some direct challenges to monastic deportment of a different kind that required some adaptations. Monastics in India were home-leavers by definition, yet family and home were solidly at the center of Chinese social values. The Monastic Sangha seems to have deflected social criticism on this point through the expedient of tracing ordination lineages, which publicly established a analogy between the layperson’s parental relations and the monastic’s relationship to his or her preceptor/teacher. With a little fudging and creative imagination, family trees reaching all the way back to the Buddha were drafted, spanning far more generations than almost any indigenous Chinese family history. The Sangha, now organized by ordination lineage, became in effect a really big family, such that a new monk or nun not so much left family as swapped family, thus appeasing otherwise bruised Chinese familial sensitivities. Perhaps as a consequence of the emphasis on family lineage, monks seem to have developed closer relationships with their core families, traveling less freely from monastery to monastery. Teachers began to protect their students from the influence of other teachers, introducing strong sectarianism at a local level.

Furthermore, while monastics in India lived, as mandated in the Vinaya, on alms, beggars in China were pariahs. As a result, it seems, monks and nuns in the Land of the Chopstick became more self-sufficient in the new land, relying more on large donations than on small daily alms, often in the form of land grants through which monasteries could earn wealth through renting land to farmers. Often monastics became farmers themselves, forcing modifications of the otherwise cumbersome monastic robes or of their abandonment in certain situations in favor of monastically appropriate work clothing. On the other hand, as monastics became more self-sufficient, monastic discipline was actually tightened in others ways: monastics, now freer to choose their own diet, stopped eating meat altogether in China, and fifty-eight additional precepts were undertaken in a supplementary ordination, the Bodhisattva Precepts.⁴

The governance of the Monastic Sangha in India, as mandated in the Vinaya, was designed as a consensual democracy operating at the monastery level, with relative freedom from outside interference envisioned. The government in China seems habitually to have interfered in the governance of any nongovernmental organization, relegating it to a place in the authoritarian hierarchy. As monasteries became more integrated into this system, seniority within the Sangha seems to have become more pronounced and reflected in the color, design or quality of the attire of senior monks. Similar changes in monastic governance under government collusion have arisen in other lands as well.

Nonetheless, the monastic institution has remained remarkably archaic right up to the present day. Consider attire for instance. It might make rational sense for modern Buddhist monks to wear uniform modern attire, for instance, saffron-colored double-breasted suits with sleeves and zippers, maybe tasteful epaulettes with little Dharma wheels. Such modern attire would still retain the function of distinguishing monastics from laity or from the clergy of other faiths, and would in addition spare monastics the mortification of being millennia out-of-fashion. Although adaptations to attire occurred by necessity in colder climates, the traditional robe was retained in some form everywhere, albeit sometimes only for use in formal contexts. The lack of central authority in the Sangha in most of the Buddhist world probably played a role in this conservatism, since small local sangha would be disinclined to make such a change without coordination with many other sanghas, knowing that few in the broader community would understand what a locally adopted uniform would mean.

The Sangha has almost everywhere retained the authority as the holder of the unblemished Dharma. However in a few instances that role has been extended to others. There have occasionally appeared outstanding lay teachers, for instance, in recent times Dipa Ma, a laywoman famed as a meditation instructor, even to monks. In Tibet an academic degree conferred along with the title geshe created a new class of authorities. This degree is traditionally only conferred to monks, but a monk who disrobes continues to hold the degree, thereby representing a lay geshe. Sometime tulkus, reborn lamas, chose not to enter the Sangha, yet retained the authority they had earned in their previous lives as teachers and monks. In modern times academic degrees carry a certain degree of authority and in the West the preponderance of Buddhist teachers are so far non-monastics.

The Sangha has perhaps evolved furthest in Japan, largely as a result of government interference at different points in its history. The result is that the Sangha had been by the mid-twentieth century almost completely replaced by a priesthood, a non-renunciate clergy largely specializing in rites and rituals, even in the once particularly monastically oriented Zen school. This also affected Korea to a limited extent during Japanese colonial rule.⁵

A pervasive factor in the history of the Monastic Sangha is the sometimes less than ideal excellence of the Monastic Sangha. Early accounts of monastic behavior in the Vinaya show that this has been the case since the time of the Buddha. The following account describes the infamous Group of Six:⁶

Now at that time, unscrupulous monks … were in residence at Kitagiri. They indulged in the following kinds of bad habits: they planted … small flowing trees, … , they plucked them …, they tied them up into (garlands) …. These take or send garlands … to wives of reputable families, to daughters …, to girls …, to daughters-in-law …, to female slaves of reputable families. … These eat from one dish together with wives … female slaves of reputable families. They drink from one beaker; they sit down on one seat; they share one couch; they share one mat; they share one coverlet; they share one mat and coverlet. The eat at the wrong time; they drink intoxicants; they wear garlands, perfumes and cosmetics; they dance and sing and play musical instruments, and they sport. They dance when she dances, they play musical instruments when she dances, they sing when she dances; they dance when she sings …, they dance when she plays musical instruments … they dance when she sports … they sport when she sports. They play on a chequered board for gambling; they play on a draught-board; they play with imagining such boards in the air; they play a game of keeping stepping on to diagrams … they play at blowing through toy-pipes made of leaves; they play with a toy plough; they play at turning somersaults …

Virtually every rule in the Vinaya was reportedly developed in response to monastic misbehavior of one kind or another.⁷

Any human institution is subject to degradation, where at least some of its members will inevitably fall short of, or even subvert, the mission with which the institution is charged. This is true, for instance, for government and for academia, for journalism and for health care. The Monastic Sangha, even as the historically most durable institution on the planet, has rarely if ever been exceptional in this regard. For often people ordain with mixed intentions: In many lands, for instance, there is economic security or educational opportunity consequential to becoming a monastic, or simply social status. As a result there will often be monastics with poor discipline, little interest in spiritual attainment and little capacity for inspiring the laity or sustaining the Sasana, alongside those sincere and inevitably more adept monastics of pure and noble intention.

Fortunately there is a kind of thermostat that provides a check on the degradation of monastic excellence: With decreased purity comes a decrease in the inspiration experienced by the laity. With a decrease in inspiration, support for monastics decreases. With decreased support, wayward monks of mixed intentions leave the Sangha or fail to enter it in the first place. With the loss of wayward monks the purity of the Sangha increases as the adepts remain undaunted. With increased purity …, and so on. Unfortunately this this thermostat seems to allow too much swing in excellence and has brought forth the intervention of devout kings and other government authorities at certain times. This apparently first happened under King Ashoka, who was reported to have overseen the forced expulsion of many monastics in an effort to purify the Sangha, many of whom had perhaps entered during a period of his own perhaps all-too-enthusiastic support.⁸

The History of the Goal and of the Path

We’ve noted an impressive historical shift in the contents of the scriptural corpus in almost every Buddhist tradition. The Abhidharmas in their various forms have hybrid origins, involving propagation, evolution and cross-fertilization. Their core certainly arose very early in an attempt to catalog and systematize the Buddha’s conceptual vocabulary. Beyond this, in India, a trend toward highly analytical philosophical and often speculative analysis infected many traditions, Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Although the Abhidharmas have early roots, scholars place the real effort in each case after the time of Emperor Ashoka, with quite distinct results in different sects. Although the Theravadin Abhidharma makes no reference to its own origin, the later commentarial tradition attributes it directly to the Buddha, who is said to have taught it a heavenly realm. Some sects refused to participate in the Abhidharma project altogether, including a Sautrantika (Sutta Only) sect that branched off of the Sarvastivada.

The Mahayana movement represented a displacement of most of the canonical corpora by new sutras as they came on line. Gombrich (1990) suggests that this was facilitated by the circumstance that Buddhist texts were now appearing commonly in hard-copy rather than oral form, which offered opportunities for new or obscure texts to “go viral,” in modern parlance, unfettered by the editorial influence of communal recitation, though “viral” here would describe, given the technology of the time, dissemination in a matter of centuries rather than of hours or days. This process began in India and continued in Central Asia where Buddhism probably through cross-fertilization among the various religious traditions traveling the Silk Road, and in China. The themes characteristic of the Mahayana included compassion, emptiness, the bodhisattva ideal, rich mythological embellishment, and an elevated notion of buddhahood. Many of these themes had been anticipated but not fully developed in the early suttas or by the early sects. Moreover, their mythical bodhisattvas and fantastic imagery provided many with a good read. Although the early discourses of the Buddha were available in Chinese translation, in the Land of the Chopstick the study of the Mahayana sutras largely eclipsed that of the early discourses.

Although the Mahayana sutras were new and not early, that does not necessarily mean they were not, in our terms, authentic. Many of them developed and clarified very sophisticated and subtle core themes introduced in early Buddhism, with great skill. Some clear shifts in the content of the Dharma can be discerned in various schools, particularly in the Mahayana. Each must be assessed on its own merits.

The most dominant theme to characterize the Mahayana is the bodhisattva ideal. Early Buddhism embeds the life of the practitioner in a greater epic story, a path toward personal Awakening, toward becoming an arahant, a path that spans many lives of sincere practice. In the Mahayana the storyline took a bit different form: The Path now lead toward becoming a buddha, conceived as a far more exalted state. Entering the path toward buddhahood one becomes a bodhisattva, which is what the Buddha is called in his previous lives as represented in the early Jataka stories. As a bodhisattva one’s primary concern is the well-being of others to the extent that one works for the Awakening of others as much as for one’s own Awakening.

The Mahayana is also described as being more lay-oriented than Theravada, early Buddhism or other pre-Mahayana sects. The bodhisattva ideal might have helped make lay practice more respectful, given that the Buddha lived most of his previous human lives, according to the Jataka tales, as a layman, yet was presumably making respectful progress toward buddhahood. This is not to say that Mahayana is a movement against monastic authority as many have suggested. First, monastics have generally thrived in the Mahayana. Second, it is widely agreed among scholars today that monastics were the driving force of the Mahayana.⁹ Rather, Mahayana has developed a wide range of distinct schools suitable for a wide range of aspirations, many of which are oriented exclusively toward clearly intermediate soteriological goals, short of full awakening. For instance, alongside the Ch’an (Zen) school, which has consistently held to full Awakening as the end-all and be-all of Buddhism, we have the hugely popular Pure Land school that narrows of the goal of a very devotional form of practice to a felicitous rebirth into a particular heavenly realm (the Pure Land).

Buddhism has always provided for intermediate goals, since few of us are ever of perfect aspiration. However, these options have some distinct features in the Mahayana tradition. First, whole formally distinct schools are defined around these intermediate goals. For instance, we find Pure Land Buddhism independently promoted in Sung China, primarily by White Lotus Societies generally under lay leadership. Second, the mechanisms for achieving these intermediate goals in these schools are often not fully envisioned in Early Buddhism. Rebirth in the Pure Land ensues through appeal to the power of the vow of Amitabha, a Buddha who presides over the heavenly Pure Land and whose past reserve of good karma is readily shared with those who exhibit sufficient devotion to Amitabha. This dependence on an external agent for salvation contrasts rather markedly with the Buddha’s early teachings. Third, goal of Awakening is rarely entirely dismissed, rather simply put aside as unattainable in this life. The Pure Land has most often in its history allied itself, and shared its monastics, with schools that are more clearly oriented toward Awakening, for instance in the common modern syncretism of Pure Land with Ch’an in Chinese temples.¹⁰ Finally, the idea that the present is a degenerate age in which we all are no longer capable of Awakening, is often used as a justification for the need for the intermediate school.¹¹

Has the Sasana Upheld the True Dharma?

The trees once domesticated for their sweet, plump and nutritious fruit but long entrusted to nature might eventually produce fruit scrawny, sour and barely digestible. Flowers once domesticated for their fragrance and brilliant blossoms but then allowed to grow wild where abundant water, sun and god soil are lacking, could be expected to evolve into more scraggly forms, perhaps soon no longer to represent flowering plants at all. If the plant-genetic metaphor recruited to understand propagation and variation in Buddhism is apt, one might would the merciless process of natural selection likewise to degrade the pristine values, practices and understandings of Buddhism, when the Sasana has been let loose in an arbitrary culture, for instance, a culture that sees no virtue in renunciation or in which patience and harmlessness are denigrated. What does this metaphor suggest about Buddhism’s chance of survival in a capricious and often hostile folk-cultural environment?

Indeed, with all of the changes sweeping back and forth through Buddhism – the swapping out of old scriptures and swapping in of new, the expanding levels of devotion to a founder increasingly deified then sometimes displaced, the blending in of folk culture and folk religion, preoccupation with an elaborate mythology, priests running around blessing people – one might expect Buddhism variously to have morphed into paganism, witchcraft, devil worship, a force in the battle of Good vs. Evil, philosophical speculation or New Age sagecraft, and certainly not to be capable of upholding the integrity of the extremely sophisticated and therefore fragile understandings and remarkably high standards that otherwise characterize Buddhism. The question for us is: How far has Buddhism evolved in the wild from its original intent? Far enough to lose its early functional authenticity?

What we discover in Buddhist history are the following:

First, the Sasana is malleable. It has taken on new practices and understandings through cross-fertilization from new cultural influences, sometimes forming hybrids that might as well be classified as Tantric Hinduism or Taoism as well as Buddhism. It has encouraged innovation from within. It seems quite willing to absorb the wacky along with the sublime.

Second, alongside its liberalism the Sasana seems to have some very conservative or orthodox elements that rarely budge. In particular it has preserved the primary elements of the flower of the authentic early Sasana remarkably well in almost every tradition. These include trust in, and veneration for, the Triple Gem and the distinguished role and mission of the monastic Sangha. It includes even certain small functional elements such as gestures of respect that one would expect to have preferred equivalences in new cultures.

Third, the particular goal of Awakening, or at least more generally of mental development specifically in that direction, is repeatedly articulated in diverse traditions. Even traditions that eschew practice toward the goal of Awakening tacitly recognize the significance of that goal. Moreover, many diverse traditions claim to have produced a series of Awakened beings or at least of Noble Ones who have attained preliminary levels of Awakening. Although it is difficult to evaluate these claims directly, it is reasonable to assume that the time and energy devoted towards these attainments would hardly have persisted over the centuries if these claims were not true.

Fourth, the Path of practice is repeatedly recognizable at least in broad outline. One can often distinctly recognize each of the factors of the early Noble Eightfold Path or some equivalent practice, or at least the primary three trainings of virtue, cultivation of mind and wisdom. Nonetheless, recognition of these equivalences is often an art that also requires direct experience with more than one tradition. Consider, for instance, how virtue and mindfulness practice get folded together in the ritualization of everyday conduct in Ch’an Buddhism. However, it is reasonable to assume that if a tradition is producing a series of Noble or Awakened Ones, the authenticity of its Path has been upheld.

Where does this resilience come from? To answer these questions we need to consider the dynamics of the Sasana in its social or cultural context. This will be the task of the next two chapters. This will also allow us to understand that authenticity resides not in strict adherence to a particular version of Dharma as much as in a healthy Sasana.

1Incidentally, the Diamond Sutra is the earliest known dated book ever to be mechanically printed.

2Kato, et al. (1975), pp. 186-7.

3Ahi Sutta, AN 4.67. This particular case might, for all I know, have to do with snake psychology than with the manipulation of more mysterious forces. Just an attitude of kindness seems to manifest in a difference in one’s relations with people and other mammals, in any case.

4REF

5Richard Jaffe’s (2001) book Neither Monk nor Layman provides a gripping account of this development.

6Suttavibhanga, abridged from Horner 2006, vol. 1, pp. 314-318.

7This particular passage is the beginning of the origin story for Sandhadisesa 13, the rule on the corrupting of families.

8This is the account provided in the classical Mahavamsa. See, for instance, Strong (1983), p. 23, Dutt (1978), p. 237.

9REF

10This will be discussed further in subsequent chapters.

11Ditto.

 

 

 

Growing the Dharma: the Rest of the Buddhist Community

You are reading a serialization of the ebook Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. In this chapter we look at the Buddhist community as it is constituted in the earliest texts and generally lived to this day. Last week we began discussion of the ten-point mission statement of the monastic sangha as spoken by the Buddha and how it is implemented. For illustration I have been drawing parallels with the discipline of the modern scientific community. Let’s conclude our enumeration of these ten points, then look at the lay role in the Buddhist community.

Chapter 5. The Buddhist Community (2/2).

“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 Dharmic questions arise. They thereby constrain popular speculative views of Dharma with a firm anchor in the practice and understanding of the Noble Ones.

Although most people do not have 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 before they devolve into pure fantasy.

“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 no other religion has been able to penetrate foreign cultures without military conquest as naturally as Buddhism. This has been possible because the integrity of the authentic Dharma is preserved in an excellent community that enjoys insularity, is strong in its practice, is sustained by the laity and is actively involved in its own education. Something as refined as Buddhism might otherwise easily degrade into superstition, pop psychology or religious intolerance, even in its native culture, but the anchor of the Sangha is difficult to budge. This theme will be developed further in Chapters Seven and Eight.

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. Something as refined as Science might otherwise easily 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 almost a constant throughout Buddhist Asia.¹ 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 Dharma 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 books or listen to his Dharma talks, how well he avoids that most disquieting of words “renunciation.” Such a change would compromise the comfort of the Sangha, because it would put its essential functions under outside less adept 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 were self-qualified simply by hanging up their shingle, “Venerable Siegfried,” 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 quick flash of unprecedented popularity. Influence over casual seekers would grow for a time, but fewer and fewer people would be inspired or guided into deep practice and study of the Dharma. Fostering of discipline is critical.

The discipline of the scientific community is perhaps its most archaic element. Interestingly it is not preserved in a uniform document 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 how to regulate it, 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 less adept 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 Himmelgruber, BA.” 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 early 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 one that has endured the longest.

The Shape of the Lay Community.

The Third Gem has a distinct advantage over Gem One and Gem Two: immediate living presence. It ennobles the Community 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 Dharma.

The Noble Ones in particular are the most qualified teachers, the adepts, the most admirable friends who impart the Dharma both verbally and bodily, through explanation and by 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. There has generally been the assumption that the Sangha stands apart qualitatively. This is the excellence it should try to maintain.

Relatively few in the general population will have the time, energy or inclination to enter the Dharma deeply. Indeed the understanding of the typical lay Buddhist has been very limited, it has often been subject to misunderstandings, it has generally regarded Nirvana as a place and monks as wielders of magical powers. 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 and therefore closest to the sun. It has generally been a working assumption that the laity is also much more concerned than monastics with the more excessive devotional practices. The Buddha, for instance, before his death when asked by Ananda what to do with his body, replied that it was no concern for the monks,

“For there are, Ananda, wise nobles, wise brahmans, and wise householders who are devoted to the Tathagata, and it is they who will render the honor to the body of the Tathagata.”²

Nonetheless, the Buddha stated that the Dharma is not held in a tight fist; there is nothing esoteric in the teachings; they are open to all. As the laity opens its heart to the Third Gem and rubs shoulders with individual adepts, the teachings flow in more freely. The lay Buddhist benefits as the adepts clarify and correct his views upon request, or proactively when greed, hate and delusion become manifest. 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 Nirvana, there are kind and friendly helping hands available to explain the meaning of the Buddha’s life and Awakening in detail and to clarify step by step the highly sophisticated teachings to lead the instructling toward and up the Path toward Awakening. With work the lay devotee can become quite adept himself but will likely avail himself of the ever-present opportunity to join the Sangha in order to pursue the Path more fully with the full and enthusiastic support of his generous neighbors.

Most immediately the Sangha provides a constant breathing example of what it is to live a Buddhist life. It members 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 the village! 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. The needs of the monastics are modest but constant, and in fact, according to the Buddha’s regulations, somewhat artificially constant. This puts the devout layperson right at the center of the wholesome practice of generosity (Pali, dāna), which becomes the lifeblood of the Buddhist Community, producing 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 early communal life centered around the monastics, and later around the monasteries as they commonly become at the same time community centers for the Community.

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 Community is one of complementary roles in partnership. The Sangha upholds the teachings, spins off Noble Ones and thereby serves the Community. 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 Buddhist Community supports the Sangha’s material needs. Generosity on both sides binds the two together.

It is important to recognize that there is little here in the way of hierarchy. What authority the Sangha holds arises from its own attainments, teachings and conduct. The Sangha 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 actually has more coercive power: 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, monasteries³ can be very happy places in which to practice fundamental Buddhist values, along with selfless veneration. Monasteries encourage community involvement, require no sophisticated knowledge of Dharma and provids a wholesome environment into which to bring the kids. They 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.

1The most notable exception is Japan, long subject to government interference. See Jaffe (2001).

2Mahaparinibbana Sutta, DN 16.

3… like the one I am very fortunate to live in …

Growing the Dharma: Transcendence

You are reading a serialization of the ebook Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. This chapter deals with the question, Why did the Buddha teach rebirth? This is a bit different aspect of what falls under Buddhist religiosity than the social concerns of the rest of the book, but is included for completeness. In short, this chapter, serialized in two parts, is really an independent essay.

Chapter 4. Transcendence (1/2)

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, marvel at what their motives might have been and try to imagine what it was like to start a project of this size such that they would not live to see past its earliest stages. This undertaking certainly required a great trust that others would be there to continue the work through the generations and centuries to come. It certainly required patience when progress must have seemed so snail-like 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, after the ephemeral gains, losses and fatigue of their small lives would have been long forgotten. The small lives of the founders would have acquired huge significance as instruments of this project. I imagine that sicknesses, deaths, births, droughts would have barely deterred the founders in their determination to see the work continue without interruption. This is a meaning that transcends this fathom-long body and these few decades of life.

This particular sample of selfless urgency and determination, of meaningfulness and zeal, comes out of a religious context, but similar examples are easily found in secular realms as well, for instance, in science or in art or among explorers, in which agents characteristically give themselves over completely to a project perceived as somehow dwarfing their own selves in magnificence. That greater context is often ill-defined: the glory of God, the march of human knowledge, lasting beauty, going down in history. Others die for their country, and still others dedicate themselves tirelessly so that others will not have to die for theirs. Even in secular contexts this kind of zeal is often recognized as “religious.” The alternative to this religious zeal is to think of science, art, or whatever, as a job, one that pays the bills until one retires after which one can devote oneself full-time to fly fishing. I speculate that only at the higher transcendent level of meaning will genius arise.

Without careful deliberation, our human life is tossed by the sea, blown by the wind, a plaything of circumstance. This is presumably how most animals live, simply responding to changing conditions one by one with predictable needs and fears. When this life presents the human with mere sensual pleasures it is still formless, arbitrary, directionless and existentially empty, until boredom, depression or despair catches up to its indulgences.¹ With deliberation giving rise to determination and vow, the human life is quite different. The highest meaning however is not something the human adds to his life, but that into which he embeds his life, as if his life were a single scene, or maybe a cameo appearance, in a larger play. A life devoted to service of God, a life devoted to beauty, a life devoted to developing the conditions for Awakening, these exemplify one’s relationship to a higher meaning that transcends this present life, and at the same time adds satisfaction to this present life.

The aim of our practice is no less than 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 higher meaning in our practice we can instead easily see no further than making our present lives temporarily more comfortable until we die, at which point any progress along the path will disappear anyway, along with the entire human predicament that evoked it. Our practice will be like beginning construction on a village church, rather than a Cathedral, which we expect to occupy and preach in in this very life. The result might indeed be competent, but hardly magnificent, something more like common psychotherapy than the Path to Awakening. We will have failed to transcend a petty fathom-long body and few decades of life and thereby squandered the opportunity for an Awakening that might otherwise have been possible, even in this very life and body. I speculate that only at this higher level of meaning will Awakening arise.

Rebirth

“I’m Saved!”

Buddhism is about salvation, it’s even about, uh, being born again. The soteriological aim of Buddhism is Nirvana, the Buddhist form of salvation. Rebirth is an integral component of the Buddha’s thought about this. Nirvana is achieved as the escape from Samsara, from the beginningless and heading-toward-endless round of birth and death.

The Buddha described the second of two knowledges realized prior to his Awakening:

“When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings. … I discerned how they are inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate in accordance with their kamma: ‘These beings — who were endowed with bad conduct of body, speech, and mind, who reviled the noble ones, held wrong views and undertook actions under the influence of wrong views — with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell. But these beings — who were endowed with good conduct of body, speech and mind, … have re-appeared in the good destinations, in the heavenly world.”²

As before, I suggest that the most important question with respect to Buddhist authenticity here is not “Is rebirth really true?” but rather the more functional “Why did the Buddha think it was important to teach rebirth?” In general he scrupulously avoided any kind of metaphysical speculation. For instance, in a famous passage he picks up a handful of leaves:

“‘What do you think, monks? Which are the more numerous, the few leaves I have here in my hand, or those up in the trees of the grove?’

“‘Lord, the Blessed One is holding only a few leaves: those up in the trees are far more numerous.’

“‘In the same way, monks, there are many more things that I have found out, but not revealed to you. What I have revealed to you is only a little. And why, monks, have I not revealed it? Because, monks, it is not related to the goal, it is not fundamental to the holy life, does not conduce to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, tranquility, higher knowledge, enlightenment or Nibbana. That is why I have not revealed it.’”³

The teaching of rebirth therefore must function to help attain the goal of the holy life. How can it do this?

Rebirth turns a narrowly circumscribed attempt at happiness and comfort within this single life into an epic struggle for salvation from a beginningless history of suffering with endless consequences for the future. Unless that struggle succeeds history will repeat itself ceaselessly into the future. This realization enhances the urgency of saṃvega, horror at the predicament in which we all find ourselves. As the Buddha spoke,

“Which is greater, the tears you have shed while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time — crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — or the water in the four great oceans?… This is the greater: the tears you have shed…”⁴

He also talked about the blood spilled, the mountains of bones we have left behind, the cemeteries swelled. We need not succeed fully within this life in this struggle, but we can make great strides then continue in the next life and the next. This is the source of hope, pasāda, the calm trust that through diligent practice we are well on our way to winning the struggle to replace step by step the lot of the common being with something magnificent, with a Buddha. 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 immediate gain, because it is your virtuous karma 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. Even if rebirth should fail and bring our project to a halt at our deaths, we will have lived a life of great meaning.

The main alternative to rebirth is annihilationism (Pali, ucchedavāda), the view that all our efforts and progress, everything, comes to naught with the breakup of the body. At our death it will matter not one twittle whether we’ve practiced assiduously or just goofed off. The hapless annihilationist lacks the urgency that might otherwise propel him toward Awakening, even in this life, and the Buddha repeatedly reproved his viewpoint.

This former, deeper perspective is the function of rebirth in early Buddhism, and explains why the Buddha, otherwise so wary of philosophical speculation, took a clear and firm stand in this one case. What is really at stake, as with Refuge, is the attitude behind our practice. Bhikkhu Bodhi states more succinctly than I have:

“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 spurus on in our own pursuit of the path and will reveal the profound significanceof the goal toward which our practice points …”

So, the primary function of rebirth is the perspective it lends to the pursuit of Nirvana, the final end of tears, blood, bones and cemeteries. A secondary is simply to provide intermediate resting places on the way that mark our progress or regression on the Path. Generally six kinds of realms are envisioned into which one might be reborn, Hell, Ghost, Asura, Animal, Human and Deva, depending on one’s practice. And within the human realm one might be born sickly, long-lived, ugly, beautiful, rich or poor. There are frequent references to this system in the early suttas, for instance,

“Just as rust, iron’s impurity, eats the very iron from which it is born, so the deeds of one who lives slovenly lead him on to a bad destination.”⁵

By the same token, through one’s meritorious practice one accrues benefit, life becomes less of a problem. This happens within this very life, but all the more when one’s practice trajectory extends over many lives. In this way rebirth frames even the more immediate goal of practice in a way that inspires urgency.

This seems to be the function of rebirth, to frame our practice in greater-than-life terms and thereby to inspire urgency and meaningfulness. I am aware that rebirth raises skeptical eyebrows in much of the expectedly astute readership of this book because many of us tend to demand independent verification for religious (or religious-sounding) truths.⁶ However, if we assume the annihilationist position and reject rebirth outright we lose this function and we have therefore stepped beyond the scope of authentic or core Buddhism. Therefore it behooves us to ask, for the benefit of those who balk, and for the enrichment of understanding of those who do not, “How much wiggle room do we have for upholding these functions?” I certainly do not want this issue to become a deal breaker for anyone intent on the Path.

The secondary issue of realms of rebirth is easily put to rest. Assuming for the moment rebirth as a linear process that lines lives up front to back, realms of rebirth function to express that our practice or malpractice can save us from, or get us into, a heap of future trouble. Hell and deva realms in particular add vivid imagery to our success or failure. On the other hand, we hardly need to leave the human realm to experience heaven or hell; we already manage to do it right here! We might well be reborn over and over in the human realm into various circumstances of bliss or woe and we sacrifice no functionality and therefore no authenticity in our understanding. We can then just as well regard these realms as colorful and perhaps effective mythology, and leave it at that … or take them as real.

We have three optional views that define the wiggle room to retains the functionality of rebirth:

1. Rebirth is literally true as described in early Buddhism. Probably this is the dominant view historically.

2. Rebirth is an approximation for something more subtle, potentially verifiable, yet largely equivalent with regards to the functionality that authenticity demands. This is a view seldom considered.

3. Rebirth as literally understood is a beneficial working assumption even if it is a pretense. This is the Buddha’s own recommendation, as we will see, for the skeptical.

The view that the Buddha never taught rebirth at all requires great imagination, that a ring of monks tainted with brahmanic views slipped heretical changes systematically into sutta after sutta shortly after the time of the Buddha and then managed to popularize these changes to such a degree that no contradictory suttas survived. It requires dismissing the drive for transcendent meaning in Buddhist practice that I have argued here is essential for the Path of Awakening. Let’s look at each of these three optional takes on rebirth.

Literal Truth of Rebirth

Consider this: If you know that water is flowing into one end of a pipe with only one inlet and only one outlet, you know that it must be flowing out the other end. The pipe in this metaphor is our present life and the water is (old) karma (Pali, kamma).⁷ Our old karma at any point in time is the content of our character, our impure habit patterns of body, speech and mind, our tainted views, our identities, our pleasures and our anguish, our skills, our strengths and faults. Karma is conditioned continually throughout our lives through our intentional actions (new karma), and also corresponds to the well-being we experience directly as the quality of our life. Let’s let the degree of purity of the water represent the quality of life or character (good or bad karma). A strong Buddhist practice should serve to turn scuzzy water flowing into the pipe into pure flowing out.

The crucial point is that there is water flowing into our pipe and that therefore it should not surprise us that there is water flowing out.⁸ Think, for example, about your habit patterns, your tendency to anger, for instance, or to indulgences, the way jealousy manifests, or envy, the way judgments arise. Where did all that come from? Why does it always seem that we are playing out an ancient script that we did not write, at least in this life? I know I am not smart enough to have come up with more than a few of the things that have arisen in my mind in my years (most of which are premonastic). And I was coming up with twisted actions almost from infancy. How about you? A chant of repentance used in a Zen tradition runs like this,

“All my ancient twisted karma,
From beginningless greed, hate and delusion,
Born of body, speech and mind,
I now fully avow.”

There is something that rings true about the obscure antediluvian origins of our habits. We are each engaged in an epic struggle with karmic forces from the ancient past. And therefore, it follows, with outcomes that will reach endlessly into the future. For if water is flowing into the pipe of our life, water must be flowing out! It is hard to conceive that this ancient flow of water through many lives is capped with you. Why not with the life before?⁹ We are therefore largely conduits for karma with some opportunity for purifying it, scuzzifying it or eliminating it altogether in our lifetimes. For karmic water to have someplace to flow, there must be rebirth!

Before poking holes in this argument, let’s consider some verification. Rebirth and reincarnation are recognized in divergent cultures and religions throughout the world. Maybe many find consolation in this belief, though that is not its function in Buddhism, where ending rebirth is rather preferable to extending it. Second, the modern objection to the conventional model of rebirth is hardly decisive. It is that there is no material coupling known to science by which the water flowing at the outlet of one pipe would find its way to the inlet of the next pipe where physical death intervenes. That is, the answer to the question, how one’s karmic dispositions at one’s death could possibly find a home in a new life, requires a greater independence of mind and matter than many modernists and most scientists would be willing to concede. However the results of extensive recent research involving the memory by very young children of events and circumstances of previous lives¹⁰ that make a compelling case that such an elusive mechanism must exist, even if it has yet to be identified. Even so, this is far from verification of the entire model of rebirth nor of its ubiquity.

Even if one finds this literal model of rebirth compelling, it concerns me that people might stake their entire Buddhist practice on a model that they might potentially be dissuaded from, should additional scientific evidence turn against it. A well-known Western monk recently stated that if he were to learn there is no rebirth he would disrobe. Can this be unshakable trust in the Dharma? This alone makes it worthwhile how far an understanding that retains the functionality of rebirth might bend to the evidence.

1Victor Frankl (2006) attributes much of what is diagnosed as neurosis in fact to no more than the experience of meaninglessness. He describes how inmates of Nazi concentration camps pretty predictably gave up hope when they felt they had nothing to live for. For him personally, thoughts of reuniting with his family and reconstructing and publishing his research kept him going, even though he estimated at the time that his chances of survival were no better than 1 in 20. Yet as he attributes to Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

2MN36.

3Simsapa Sutta, SN 56.31.

4Assu Sutta, SN 15.3.

5Dhammapada 240.

6For some reason our criteria seem often much less demanding when we feel we are safely beyond the scope of the religious.

7Actually if Awakening occurs in this present life then miraculously water flows in but not out, but this is the rare exception.

8Note that what enters into the pipe is not “you.” You are too chubby. But paradoxically it is the delusion of you that enables “your” pipe to empty into the next.

9This would actually be a kind of conceit. A similar mindset was satirically expressed in a series of ads for a local men’s clothing store, “You are the product of billions of years of evolution. Your suit is ready!”

10This compelling research is particularly due to Dr. Ian Stevenson (2000, etc.) and his colleagues at the University of Virginia. Frankly, I find it quite solid and astonishing.

Growing the Dharma: Refuge in Dharma and Sangha

You are reading a serialization of the ebook Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. This concludes the chapter on Refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

There has been some additional discussion over at Dhammawheel.org here.

Refuge in the Dharma

“Well expounded is the teaching of the Buddha,
Directly visible, with immediate fruit,
Inviting investigation, leading onwards,
To be realized by the wise each for himself.”¹

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 and so on. The Dharma 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 Dharma 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.”²

The Dharma also stands out in its empirical quality, “inviting investigation.” This phrase translates Pali ehipassiko, which is an adjective formed from “come” and “see.” The Dharma 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 inspired to trust in the Dharma in the first place upon learning of this refreshing quality of the Dharma.

Some caution is, however, in order lest one think this means that we should trust our own experience above all. In fact, for the Buddha the typical “uninstructed worldling” is actually astonishingly deluded and the Dharma 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 …”³

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 trust that the Buddha knew what he was 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 Dharmic Path but they take time and effort before we can say, “I have come and now I see.” Until then trust is essential.

For instance, the Buddha taught that craving is the origin of suffering (the Second Noble Truth). At first this may seem at least to some 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 and perhaps even business success. Therefore, we conclude, craving clearly leads not to suffering but to happiness! Refuge entails instead that we decide to trust the Buddha before our own premature views about 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 in the Dharma we would never have scrambled to the mountaintop. We’ve already taken refuge implicitly in many faulty non-Buddhist ideas and habits taught to us from a young age or absorbed through too much TV, and we are bound to cling to those until we take Refuge in the Dharma, mistaking them for products of our own “free” thinking. As the contemplation at the beginning of this subchapter states, it is the wise who realize for themselves. The Japanese 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 Dharmic 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.”⁴

The Buddha goes on to argue how belief in rebirth, for instance, apparently as controversial in Buddha’s day as it is today, fits this criterion, as a working assumption for the unconvinced if need be. He does not argue for rebirth on the basis 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 in a core role. We will follow up on this in the next chapter.

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.⁵

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 Noble Sangha 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 Noble Sangha in terms of spiritual attainment. The subsequent lines refer to the practice of giving alms and veneration to monks and nuns, the Monastic Sangha. 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, often compared to sowing 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 Noble and Monastic Sanghas, the soil and the roots, in the last chapter, and will examine this in detail in the next chapter. Suffice it here 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 refers to the Monastic Sangha. This gets confusing but the confusion seems to be deliberate. If we think of the Monastic Sangha as a school that trains people to become Noble Ones but actually includes some monks and nuns of little attainment, for instance, the newly ordained, we realize that offering alms to the Monastic Sangha is a necessary function for ensuring that there are Noble Ones in the world.

Moreover, the monks and nuns play an important ritual role as objects of veneration for it is they who are readily recognized as a Sangha through their (especially now atrociously) distinctive attire. As such the Monastic Sangha not only substantially includes the Noble Sangha, but nuns and monks collectively or individually symbolize it, even if sometimes much as a piece of plaster sitting on a modern altar might count as the Buddha, or in play a stick might count as a horse, or in battle the loss of the flag might count as defeat. Monks and nuns are particularly opportune ritual objects since they live and breathe (unlike Buddha statues), accept alms and actually eat them, and have a good shot at spiritual attainment.

In fact, the Vinaya requires that monks and nuns not offer teachings if their audience shows disrespect for them.⁶ 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.”⁷

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.

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. 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 have learned to recite the Refuges. He begins to absorb a few Dharmic aphorisms and learns 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 with gusto. He will someday become aware of the stem and may consider broadening his world to include the Path upward, perhaps ordain. A full encounter with saṃvega would likely bring him to that decision. Regardless, 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 a devout Buddhist community seems in itself capable of inducing remarkable results. I see this in many 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 some 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 on the basis of devotional practice.

A totally different profile would be someone who has not grown 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 aboutNoble 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 bya 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.

A Path without Religiosity.

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 “sangha” 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 short 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 is unaware of the Sasana, the living flower. Accordingly 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.

My sense is that 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.

1AN 10.92.

2Dhammapada, 190-191.

3AN 3.65.

4AN 3.65.

5AN 10.92.

6The Vinaya rules of etiquette (Pali, Sekhiyā) specify that a monk will not teach to one who is not sick yet carries an umbrella, club or weapon; wears sandals or shoes; is in a vehicle or on a bed; sits clasping the knees; wears a turban or other head covering; sits on a higher seat, sits while the monk is standing; walks preceding the monk or on a pathway while the monk walks off the path. These would have been disrespectful in the Buddha’s culture.

7MN 141.

Growing the Dharma: Refuge

Refuge in the Triple Gem (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha) is where Buddhist practice begins. Sometimes it is said that it is what makes a Buddhist. Notice its prominent role given to it last week as the nutrients that feed the flower of Sasana. Refuge is the locus of trust, faith, confidence, whatever you want to call it.

One way to underscore the importance of Refuge for the Western Buddhist convert is to acknowledge that we grow up with many tacit presuppositions, many unstated assumptions, values, conceptualizations, biases that we often don’t even know we have. When we attempt to understand Buddhism we generally start with our tacit presuppositions and then try to reconcile what we learn with them every step of the way. This is an almost impossible task. Refuge allows us to abandon those presuppositions, to start our exploration from the Buddha’s perspective, not our own.

You are reading a serialization of the ebook Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. This chapter on Refuge will conclude next week, in which we will look at Dharma and Sangha.

Chapter 3. Refuge

The flood waters were rising and some of the huts at the river’s edge were beginning to be swept away. Villagers began to panic as they came face to face with the foolishness of having built their village against a sheer cliff at water’s edge. Many of them began running frantically back and then forth along the river bank, beside themselves with indecision, some of these overloaded with small children and belongings. Others backed away from the rushing waters up to the cliffs, looking helpless and forlorn. Still others went about their normal business as if this day had brought nothing new.

The chief, ever courageous, emerged from his hut, assessed the situation by scanning the length of the river with discerning eyes, grabbed up his youngest daughter in one hand and his exquisitely embellished staff of authority in the other, and shouted,

“Follow me, villagers!”

He had picked a point along the shore at which he plunged boldly and confidently into the water at a right angle headed directly for the opposite shore. He waded deeper and deeper as the water reached his waist, then his chest, but his determination remained unaltered. Many others followed immediately behind, holding belongings and frightened children over their heads, leading horses and dog-paddling beleashed dogs.

However, the more timid waited at the shore and watched the chief’s progress, while others, the more panic stricken, continued to run up and down the shore and others, the flood deniers, went about their normal business oblivious to the chief’s actions. Gradually the chief and his closest followers, having nearly disappeared below the waves, began to ascend as they approached the opposite river bank. But by this time the waters had risen even further, many of the trailing timid were tragically swept away in the raging waters for having hesitated, followed soon by the panicked and by the deniers. The chief had saved half of the villagers.

Trust

We live in a relentlessly uncertain world yet need to make decisions in that world. It is the rare decision indeed that comes with absolute certitude. Trust¹ is that which bridges the gap between the little we actually know and the heap we would need to know in order to make a decision of predictable outcome. Trust belongs to the nuts and 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 better or worse to our baby sitters, to our teachers, to our accountant, to TV pundits, to our dentist, to the authority of science, and for some of us to our national leaders.

We grow up trusting a mass of tacit and unexamined assumptions instilled at such a young age that we are scarcely aware of them and have no memory of when we started trusting them. Moreover, in this modern age of mass media and mass marketing values have become cheap, manufactured at will and instilled into us through the mass media, planted and cultivated by the marketers one year then overturned the next to grow something new. We worship celebrities for no good reason other than that they are celebrities, we celebrate greed, we obsess over hair and clothes, our cars and personal entertainment centers are shrines, we are taught from the youngest age that “good” is inevitably expressed through the barrel of a gun because that is all that “bad” understands. This implicit trust is unexamined and undiscerning.

Trust in the Triple Gem must be great enough to overcome our tacit and unexamined trust. We do best to start our practice of exploration from the perspective of the Buddha, not from that of Madison Avenue, John Wayne or Rupert Murdock. We do best to replace unsavory influences with savory. Since trust is unavoidable, replacing unexamined trust with discerning trust seems like a good idea. Trust in the Triple Gem is essential for bending our minds around Buddhism, not always an easy set of ideas and practices to internalize. Until we understand 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, to nourish our Buddhist aspirations and practice just as sun, water and soil nourish a flower. This is what first turns our heads toward virtue, wisdom and peace.

Many people trust in a rational mind that can keep their options open until certitude is realized. That is timidity. There is no more discernment in timidity than there is in denial, for in timidity we invariably fall back on our tacit unexamined assumptions. Timidity or denial is each a are both decisions based in misplaced trust to forgo making a more deliberate, informed and bolder decision. There is no getting around trust in an uncertain world. Life-altering decisions generally arise from a sense of urgency that demand big acts of trust and therefore enormous courage; they are way beyond the reach of the timid who cling fearfully to certitude and baby steps. This is the courage of the great explorers, 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 by desperation. The Buddhist Path fully embraced by the one resolved to ascend the stem toward Nirvana will shake one’s life to the core and this will demand a particularly courageous trust.

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 Ones on alms rounds. Many in the West who are not born Buddhists gain the initial trust through encounters with Buddhists, who often exhibit profound peace and kindness, or through the profundity that shines through the Buddha’s teachings even before we grasp more than a hint of their import. That trust will grow the deeper we progress.

There is great drama in these great decisions, initially urgency and fear, then reflection, then resolution, then outcome. Where trust is ongoing, devotion or reverence might follow. The resolution to trust is experienced as a sudden relief, almost as if it were already safety. The uncertainty behind the initial fear may not yet be eliminated but the urgency has been addressed and worry has been given over to fortune. The sense of ease is a refuge, a sense of entrusting oneself, much as we as children entrust our well-being to our parents.

The trust we place in the Triple Gem often arises from a sense of urgency as great as that of the villagers in the story above. This is called in Pali saṃvega, a kind of horror at the realization of the full nature and depth of the human condition.² It is said that the Buddha-to-be experienced saṃvega 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. Saṃvega arises when we lose our capacity for denial, which is likely to happen when frivolity ceases. The Buddha-to-be then recognized in the sight of a wandering ascetic an option that gave rise to the bold resolution to address his despair. It is said that he then experienced a sense of calm relief that in Pali is called pasada, the antidote to the distress of saṃvega.

Underlying the metaphors of both Refuge and Gem is the property of protection or safety. A refuge at the Buddha’s time was understood as the protection provided by a mentor, patron or benefactor in return for a vow of allegiance.³ Gems were generally believed to have special protective properties. Refuge in the Triple Gem represents, particularly for those not born Buddhist, a bold decision to entrust oneself to a way of life, understanding and practice that will at first have all the uncertainty and mystery that virgin territory has to the explorer, a deep and dark cave has to the spelunker. Just as a plan of action is a refuge to relieve the panic of the castaway or the buried in rubble, entrusting oneself to a Path of practice toward Awakening provides refuge from saṃvega.

But is it a trust that arises out of wise reflection and discernment?

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.”⁴

Most religions worship some personality. Buddhism is striking in that the role of veneration is occupied primarily 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 form of genius.

Second, he was able to teach what he had attained, to lay out the Dharma, the proper understanding of reality and the means to tame, drive and master humans and whoever else wanted to travel the Path. This was his second form of 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 form of genius is rarely mentioned as such, but the reader should appreciate the immensity of this accomplishment in a couple of chapters. In short, the Buddha’s three-fold genius is directly tied to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.

When we take Refuge in the Buddha we see in this towering 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 might actually start to begin to commence starting to emerge 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 as a part of Refuge is a good place to begin our study of religiosity in Buddhism because it is clearly an affective, that is, emotional, quality of mind deliberately cultivated as a part of Buddhist practice. It is clearly recommended by the Buddha in the earliest teachings. Its expressions from the earliest times were clearly culturally conditioned, yet remained largely unembellished by any metaphysical or supernatural quality. Finally, its simple roots would grow with time into sometimes wildly embellished forms in some of the later traditions.

Let’s begin with the opportunities and expressions of veneration in early Buddhism. The living Buddha was venerated and he expected to be venerated according to the customs of the culture in which he lived. These included a number of physical expressions, most significantly anjali (in Sanskrit), 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. Buddhism would carry this originally culturally-conditioned form from India to every land I am aware of in which Buddhism has taken root regardless of how dissimilar the culture. We could theoretically replace anjali with waving, saluting or pulling one’s ear and perhaps retain the authentic function of veneration, but we don’t.

Veneration to the Buddha was also expressed early on through full prostrations sometimes touching the Buddha’s feet, by circumambulation while keeping the Buddha on one’s right, by covering one’s otherwise bare shoulder with one’s robe, 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. And this in fact began with the Buddha’s re-encounter after his Awakening with the five ascetics to whom he delivered his first Dharma talk.⁵

Bowing belongs to ritual conduct, as does shaking hands or wearing a tux to a formal dinner party. Robert Sharf writes, “Ritual habituation inscribes the self with a set of perceptual orientations, affective dispositions, automatic responses that are precognitive.” It begins by enacting these as if in play within an implicit frame of reference that one does not have to believe in or acquiesce to any more than one believes in the grammar of one’s mother tongue. To bow to the Buddha is to enact veneration for the Buddha, to enact veneration of the Buddha is to feel veneration for the Buddha, to feel veneration for the Buddha is to put aside one’s preconceptions and open one’s heart to the teachings of the Buddha. To do this is to align with the Buddha’s path.⁶

There is however 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.”⁷

The early 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 famous Parinibbana Sutta⁸ 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. The Buddha also recommended contemplations about himself for recitation such as the one that began this subchapter, alongside contemplations of the Dharma and Sangha.

The Buddha also specified four significant places from his life as destinations for pilgrimage after he would be gone.

“There are four places, Ananda, that a pious person should visit and look upon with feelings of reverence. What are the four? Here the Tathagata was born! This, Ananda, is a place that a pious person should visit and look upon with feelings of reverence. Here the Tathagata became fully enlightened in unsurpassed, supreme Enlightenment! … Here the Tathagata set rolling the unexcelled Wheel of the Dhamma! … Here the Tathagata passed away into the state of Nibbana in which no element of clinging remains! This, Ananda, is a place that a pious person should visit and look upon with feelings of reverence.”⁹

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. Rather it must have had a functional basis related to Buddhist practice and understanding. Let’s turn to that. We Westerners tend to find scorn more natural than veneration, so this requires some examination.

First, veneration will spring forth of itself one way or another in most areas of human discourse. To try to strip it away is only to create something sterile, like trying to strip away hugging from procreation. This is not to say we are smart about who we venerate any more than we are smart about who we hug. Consider that the most common objects of veneration in our culture are celebrities, such as bad actors and robber barons, and consumer goods, such as iPods and whiter-than-white laundry detergent. We attribute to our celebrities fantastic wealth, sparkling charm and voluptuous sexuality much as the people of Buddha’s India attributed divinity to the great ascetics, brahmins and cows, and we attribute to our recent purchases the capacity to conjure up such wondrous attributes. Veneration, like trust, is unavoidable, but can be either discerning or stupid. We might choose, or be taught by our parents, to venerate genius and remarkable achievements: Mozart, Einstein or Gandhi. Or the Buddha. We tend toward becoming what we venerate.

Second, physical expressions of veneration are direct causal factors in attaining certain wholesome qualities of mind that we try to develop on the Path. In particular they powerfully and immediately 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 God as an object of veneration in most. Veneration is certainly similarly abused for social control – for instance, requisite veneration of superior officers, judges or the police – but again the watchword, as it always is in Buddhism, is discernment.

The astonishing power of veneration for cutting through the competitiveness that comes natural to us humans and through the need to compare oneself to others can only be experienced through entering this practice completely.¹⁰ In Buddhist terms humility, weakening of the craving for being somebody, relaxes suffering, and thereby creates an immediate sense of ease. As 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.”¹¹

Third, veneration opens the heart to the influence of worthy teachers and teachings, just as expressions of veneration open the heart to veneration. One cannot learn from someone one does not first hold in high regard. When we show proper respect to the elderly, school teachers, professors, piano teachers and good cooks, we take seriously what they have to impart and so learn more quickly. When someone exhibits real talent we are sometimes awe-struck and when we are awe-struck we are moved to make that person’s qualities our own.

In short, veneration when brought together with discernment is a powerful support for what we seek on the Buddhist Path. Although its expressions are inevitably culturally determined, its indispensable function in Buddhist life and practice has been a bedrock of Buddhism throughout time and space. It also lends to Buddhism much of its religiosity, its devotional part, and is the focal point of sometimes extensive embellishment in the later traditions. Whether this embellishment has been helpful or even healthy will be a major theme in this book.

1The Pali word that is meant here is saddha, alternately translated as “faith” or “confidence.” I have come to find ‘faith’ as most, uh, faithful to the Pali term. However it also carries misleading connotations when used in a religious context, often equated with “blind faith,” although that is something authentic Buddhism never asks of us.

2See AN 5.77, 5.78, 5.79 and 5.80.

3Thanissaro (1996), p. 1.

4AN 10.92.

5Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, SN 56.11.

6See Sharf (2005).

7Vakkali Sutta, SN 22.87.

8Final Nirvana Sutta, DN 16.

9DN 16, Mahaparinibbana Sutta.

10Suzuki Roshi, shortly after arriving in San Francisco, was surprised to discover how much resistance his American students had to bows, particularly the three full prostrations that he asked of them in the early morning. He accordingly adapted this practice to the West: He required of his American students nine full prostrations, a custom that has now endured for nearly half a century at the San Francisco Zen Center and its affiliates.

11AN 6.25.

Growing the Dhamma: How the Religious Context Works

This is part 2/2 of the Second Chapter, “Buddhist Life and Practice,” and the fourth installment of the weekly serialization of Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. This explains how the various parts of an organic Buddhism, including the Triple Gem and the two-part Buddhist community work together to the benefit of the sasana.

How the Religious Context Works

The choice of the botanical metaphor is intended to emphasize the physiology of Buddhism, the parts and the interrelatedness of the parts functioning together as an organic system. The dominant operating principle of the leaves, the roots, the nourishment of the Triple Gem and the Sasana is friendship! In particular admirable friendship (Pali, kalyanamittatā) is possible when Noble Ones walk among us to provide wise role models and instructors. The principle is to offer to all the opportunity to hang out with persons consummate in virtue, in generosity, in serenity 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’.”¹

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 Dharma, 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 the organic system that shines through the words that the core of authentic Buddhism is preserved in its full integrity. The Sangha is accordingly 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 Noble Sangha arises, like all things, from conditions and these conditions are secured by means of the Monastic Sangha. The Buddha expressed this,

“And if these monks, Subaddha, live rightly, the world will not be empty of arahants.”²

The world will be even less be empty of the Noble Ones, many of whom are not yet arahants but nonetheless attained of lower levels of Awakening. The Monastic Sangha is both training ground and dwelling place for the Noble Sangha, much like a university is both a training ground and a dwelling place for scholars. We will see as the themes of this book develop how without Noble Ones Buddhism can hardly retain its integrity, and how Noble Ones will be very few indeed without a strong monastic community or something like it.

The Buddha lived in a very religious culture and simply made use of much of what he saw around him while dismissing what he felt was useless or harmful. He made use of a range of what we regard as religious elements in crafting his own system of thought, not only to define practice and understanding, but also to provide the proper context to inspire correct practice and understanding now and for generations to come. I hope the reader will gain an appreciation by about the middle of this book of just how rational, carefully conceived and well-articulated the system was that he crafted. Although the main concern of his teaching career was with the Path (and secondarily with monastic regulation!), theBuddha understood that a Stem does not stand by itself, that it exists in a broader context. He was concerned to create the most nurturing context.

So far our references are largely to early Buddhism with some hints of later historical changes in the BudThis explains how the various parts of dhist traditions. We will look at these later changes in detail in the later chapters because they contribute much to the modern Buddhist landscape. They also provide a further perspective on the mechanisms of religiosity that the Buddha put in place, particularly with regard to the resilience of Buddhism alongside its adaptability, its capacity for retaining its authenticity even while manifesting innovation. Let me prepare for further discussion by concluding this chapter on the issue of authenticity in Buddhism.

Authenticity

Imagine someone has made up an elaborate and original joke that was then retold many times. Sometimes the retellings have made use of different words, sometimes even of different languages, sometimes they have added an embellishment or stripped away minor details. Characters might have changed names or gender, settings might have varied, elephants might be replaced by hippos. As we catalog the retellings we will find that some missed the point of the joke completely, but that others have recounted the joke in the same skillful way as the original, keeping the story line functionally intact, introducing the relevant information at just the right time and culminating in a punch line that has evoked almost the exact same response in the hearer as the original.

What shines through in an authentic retelling is the functional core of the original story. But how has the core been lost in some cases yet preserved in some cases in spite of a long history of alterations, so much so that they are unmistakably recognizable in the former cases as a manifestation of the same story? I suppose that authentic retellings have been transmitted by adept humorists who have understood the point of the joke and the art of telling it. Even if it is transmitted to them with some small error, they will know how to correct it to restore its functional integrity, because they get the joke.

Buddhism is like a good joke. It has always shown an enormous capacity for tolerating change, producing innumerable manifestations, and yet protecting the integrity of its core message. There is, in other words, 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.”

The early manifestation of Buddhism derived from what was taught literally by the Buddha. Scholars have a fairly good idea of what early Buddhism looked like before it began to undergo retelling. It consisted of two parts, the Dharma and the Vinaya, the doctrine and the discipline. Roughly the Pali Suttas, particularly the Digha, Majjhima, Samyutta and Anguttara Nikayas as well as the Suttanipata and the Dhammapada of the Khuddhaka Nikaya along with the equivalent Chinese Agamas are acknowledged by scholars to constitute the most reliable evidence of the early Dharma. The Vinaya, the monastic code, is available in several redactions.³ I should note that these ancient Suttas and the Vinaya are not entirely reliable texts, having passed through both oral and orthographic transmissions and suffering from faults of memory, embellishments, insertions, deletions and other edits along the way.

The Buddha and his early disciples seem to have anticipated that what he had taught would manifest in different and unpredictable ways and revealed his interest in preserving the functionality rather than the literal or frozen content of doctrine and discipline. First, a broadening of what constituted Dharma included whatever led to the same narrowly defined goals.

“As for the qualities of which you may know, ‘These qualities lead to utter disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding’: You may categorically hold, ‘This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher’s instruction.’”⁴

So, Dharma was not strictly confined to the words of the Buddha, but includes whatever shares their function at the highest level.

Second, the Great Standards (Pali, Mahāpadesa)⁵ generalized recognizable teachings to novel or uncertain circumstances. A particular view that suggests itself under such a circumstance can be tested by standing against the Dharma and the Vinaya and if it accords then it can be accepted.

Third, the Vinaya provides support for applying the Great Standards to monastic rules by providing for every rule an origin story that reveals the function of the rule. For instance, there is an early rule that monks should not drive ox carts. The origin story clearly reveals the intent of the rule in avoiding the exhibition of extravagance. Applying this to modern circumstances entails that monks probably should not fly first-class, nor drive a Mercedes, … but that ox carts are probably OK.

Finally, the Buddha anticipated that a level of adeptness in the Dharma would be required for its preservation, those who understand the point and can retell it correctly. This was a function of the Monastic Sangha as we will discuss some chapters hence.

We can think of the core of authentic Buddhism as a kind of eau de Boudhisme. It is the functional system that shines through in early Buddhism, but stripped of this particular manifestation and stripped of extraneous elements of the ancient texts irrelevant to the functionality of that system. Authentic Buddhism thereby turns away from the allure toward literalism lurking in early texts, and toward the flexibility admitted by the Great Standards, by the expansive meaning of Dharma, by the early functions revealed in the Vinaya origin stories and with by the adepts in their role of retelling the authentic Dharma in a way that best preserves its integrity in a particular cultural context.

This functional aspect can also be helpful in interpreting the early texts themselves to recognize what is really authentic. It suggests that it might sometimes be more interesting and helpful to ask when confronted with a particular teaching not “Is this really true?” but rather “Why was this said?,” to lay bare the function of the teaching. For instance, there is constant reference to devas, godly beings, in the early texts. These are very old texts; of course they are going to have things that raise modern eyebrows! The question of whether devas really exist or whether as Buddhists we should believe in devas, is of little consequence. More revealing is the question, What role do these supernatural beings play in the texts? If they have no recognizable function, maybe they are not core teachings. In fact, devas in the texts generally pop in on the Buddha much like laypeople, bowing to the Buddha and listening to discourses. They certainly are not there to demand worship or sacrifice. Instead they venerate the Buddha and even the monks, and generally act as cheerleaders of the Dharma. Their role therefore seems to have been largely rhetorical; it would have impressed the ancient Indians that even the gods look up to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. The search for the functionality, if any, quickly reveals the relevance of an element of the teachings to authentic Buddhism.⁶

As mentioned, the ancient scriptures are often an unreliable victim of ancient editing. However, seeking functionality can help the adept reader of the early scriptures interpret them properly. His task is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle in which some pieces are annoyingly missing, and in which other pieces have been mixed in, to the adept reader’s vexation, from other jigsaw puzzles, but at some point nevertheless recognizes, “Oh, I get it: This is the Golden Gate Bridge!” At some point a particular interpretation of the whole shines forth that one cannot easily back out of. Although it cannot be proven decisively and still admits of debate, the convergence of evidence from many sources becomes so overwhelming to those who see what shines through, that doubt disappears. And what shines forth in each case is a functional system. The Buddha was a very systematic thinker.

The Buddhist adept accomplished in Buddhist practice is in a far better position to witness this shining through than the mere scholar because the former has his own experience as potentially confirming evidence. He is like the jigsaw enthusiast who has actually been on the Golden Gate Bridge, who is already familiar with its features and the contours of the land- and sea-scape around it. Once the Golden Gate Bridge has shone through it becomes the basis of interpreting the remaining unplaced pieces, and rejecting some altogether as intruders from other people’s jigsaw puzzles.

Nonetheless it can be exceedingly difficult to actually trace a functional feature of authentic Buddhism from early Buddhism into a later manifestation, as found, for instance, in Chinese Mahayana or Tibetan Vajrayana, in order to make the case that the later counterpart actually preserves the function of the original. The difficulty is compounded by the substitution of later texts for the earliest scriptures, which is endemic in the history of Buddhism. For instance, although many find Zen close to the Theravada forest tradition through experience in both traditions, there is little strictly textual basis for the connection. Part of the genius of Zen language as compared to Indian is the former’s minimalism, its ability to focus on the one thing upon which everything else hinges, to describe that and let the rest find its place implicitly. Because of such subtleties we must hope that the adepts, and ideally the Noble Ones, have been ceaselessly at work ensuring authenticity as these traditions have developed historically.

By way of example, mindfulness practice is clearly a key functional element of early Buddhism, one formulated in the lengthy Satipatthana Sutta and in other early discourses. In Japanese Zen there is a method of meditation that was named shikantaza by Dogen Zenji,⁷ which clearly has something to do mindfulness or awareness but is described by Dogen with very concise instructions that are textually quite distinct from the Satipatthana. It would therefore be very difficult to make a argument for functional equivalence that would satisfy the scholar, but it would be feasible for an experienced practitioner. I am fortunate personally to have trained in shikantaza and then many years later of studying the Satipatthana Sutta and modern vipassana techniques, which at least in this one case give me something of an adept’s insight into what shines through. I can definitively testify that there is an astonishing functional equivalence among these techniques. If my subjective testimony can be taken as reliable, this is one example of a feature of authentic Buddhism that has been carried historically through place and culture, evolving into a radically different manifestation, yet fully maintained its authenticity right down to the punch line. This is the genius of Buddhism.

1Upaddha Sutta, SN 45.2.

2DN 16.

3See, for instance, Pande (2006), pp. 1-16.

4AN 7.79.

5See AN 4.180 and a similar passage in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, DN 16.

6I am putting aside for now the function of deva realms in early Buddhism as destinations of fortunate rebirth. I will take that up in a later chapter.

7See Fukanzazengi (universal recommendations for zazen). The term shikantaza, interestingly, is a kind of word play. Literally it means “just sitting” in the characters Dogen uses to represent it, and his instructions are almost entirely about sitting posture. However in Japanese shikan is pronounced the same as a Chinese phrase (zhi-guan in Chinese) written with different characters that mean “insight-serenity” or “vipassana-samatha,” used in the name of an early Chinese meditation manual. (See Bielefeldt, 1990, pp. 71-72.) Dogen cleverly rolled both function and instruction into two syllables.

Growing the Dhamma: Buddhist Life and Practice

The third installment of the serialization of the book Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework is the first half of Chapter 2. A couple of commenters have expressed appreciation for serializing it in this way, as we can focus on and discuss each section as a group as we go along. The second half of chapter 2 will discuss more directly the functionality of the morphological system laid out here.

Chapter 2. Functional Elements of
Buddhist Life and Practice

Bo Bo was a typical young man born into a typical Buddhist family in a typical Buddhist land. He was taught even as an impish toddler to revere the Triple Gem, the nutriments of Buddhist practice and understanding. The Buddha for the youthful Bo Bo had exemplified certain values such as selflessness, virtue and serenity and the Dharma had been accessible primarily through a few aphorisms like “Happiness comes only from within” and “generosity creates great merit,” and maybe from hearing some stories of the previous lives of the Buddha. The Sangha of Noble Ones, with whom the had been in almost daily contact provided 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. Bo Bo had lived as a part of the Buddhist Community, devoutly supportive of the monks and nuns, and generally practicing generosity and virtue in an uplifting environment. He grew 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.¹

Bo Bo noticed that people adopt any of a wide variety of ways of life. He himself for a time thought of marrying his cute neighbor, Yum Yum, and of raising a family, but not quick to make decisions he was reminded by the monks what a problem that soap-operatic life can be. He noticed that the Noble Ones were far more content and full of active goodwill than anyone else in spite of their utterly simple needs. After struggling with life’s vicissitudes for a number of years and contemplating suffering, Bo Bo’s understanding progressed to the point that conventional life makes little sense. Whereas before he thought that he had two options in life, the worldly life and the holy life, he now realized that for him there was only one way ahead: to forsake a personal footprint in favor of the selfless Path that blossoms in Nirvana. And so, Bo Bo joined the monastic order and began to study as the student of one of the neighborhood sages, and from that root began to climb the Path. Eventually he became one of the Noble Ones himself and began to make a big difference in the lives of others. With time and determination his practice would blossom one day into the fruit of arahantship.

A Functional Sketch of Buddhism.

Buddhism is like a flower, a system of integrated inter-functioning parts each of which helps sustain the whole. I choose a flower for this botanical metaphor rather than a berry bush or asparagus because we are all familiar with the whole plant. Here in a nutshell is how Buddhism in virtually all of its manifestations, early and traditional, maps onto the major parts of the flower:

• The stem that supports the blossom is the Path, the instructions for practice and understanding, expressed in early Buddhism as the Noble Eightfold Path, and leading to Nirvana.
• The leaves and roots are the the Buddhist Community. The roots are specifically the Monastic Sangha (Pali, bhikkhu-saṅgha), the order of ordained monks and nuns, actually a special role within the Community. The leaves and roots collect nourishment of sun, water and soil in order that the flower thrive.
• The blossom of the flower is Nirvana.
• The sun, water and soil that nourish the flower are the Triple Gem, respectively the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. They inspire and bend the mind toward wholesome development.

Now, here is the same thing at a finer level detail:

Blossom. This is Nirvana (Pali, nibbāna), the highest attainment of human character, liberation from suffering, liberation from the taints, perfect wisdom, virtue, Enlightenment, Awakening, transcendence of the round of rebirths. Notice that most religions seem to have the goal of liberation or salvation, often pertaining to a life beyond this one. Nirvana therefore, simply by virtue of this, has an aspect of religiosity, though other religions would each understand salvation quite differently. The transcendent nature of Nirvana will be the subject of Chapter Four.

Stem. This is the Path (Pali, magga) of individual practice and understanding that leads to Nirvana. This is the most uniquely Buddhist part, and therefore, simply by virtue of this, the most distinct from religiosity. The underlying principle behind practice is loosening the entangling bonds of personal neediness, aversion and views. All the strands of the stem 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 spheres. Since this is the part of the flower that has the least to do with common religiosity it will be the one I write about the least, even though it is the part the Buddha spoke of the most. So I will summarize it here in sufficient detail while I have the chance.

One useful summary, called a gradual path, presents elements of the Path in the order in which each should be initially pursued:²

Generosity,

Virtue,

The heavens,³

The drawbacks, degradation and corruption of sensual passions,

The rewards of renunciation.

Then when the mind is ready, malleable, free from hindrances, elated and bright, the following should be taken up:

The Four Noble Truths.

The Fourth Noble Truth is the Eightfold Noble Path, the Path proper:

Wisdom Section:

Right View,

Right Resolve,

Virtue Section:

Right Speech,

Right Action,

Right Livelihood,

Samadhi Section:

Right Effort,

Right Mindfulness,

Right Samadhi.

If the Path is the Buddha-Dharma proper, the main focus of the Buddha’s teaching and what the individual of high aspiration devotes himself to fully, it nonetheless exists in some context; everything has a context. The individual’s motivation and trust is a prerequisite for entering the Path, certain social conditions give rise to the individual’s motivation and trust, and provide the resources in time and training to enable the individual to pursue the Path. How many of these nested contexts should be subsumed in the Buddha-Dharma as well? This is rather easily answered: Whatever the Buddha thought important enough to address.

Leaves and roots. This is the Community (Pali, parisā), including the life and activities of the community, which also tends to be the locus of religiosity. The Community was from the beginning divided into parts, lay and monastic, with clearly defined social roles, but a member of either can begin the long ascent up the stem.

Leaves. This is the Buddhist Community as a whole but its main component is the lay community. The main characteristic of the Buddhist lay community is that it is not explicitly organized nor regulated in any special way, nor under any higher command, 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 Monastic or institutional Sangha, 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 Noble Ones, who are the Sangha proper. The particular organization of the Monastic Sangha is a primary teaching of the Buddha, the topic of the massive Vinaya. The Monastic Sangha is an institution in some ways comparable to religious institutions, though the functions of its clergy are in many ways quite distinctive. In particular monks and nuns were not priests, at least in early Buddhism, that is, their role was not to act as an intermediary between the laity and supernatural forces, nor to perform rites and rituals on behalf of the laity.

The Buddha spoke in no uncertain terms of the dangers of rites and rituals (Pali, silabbata), even classifying attachment to these as the third of the ten fetters to be abandoned on the Path.⁴ One should be aware, however that 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, unfolding one’s napkin onto one’s lap at a proper dinner or waving goodbye and saying “Ta-ta.” Certainly, as we will see, the Buddha fully endorsed bowing and other physical expressions of reverence. Where the Buddha saw an error is in the attribution of the efficacy of rites and rituals for the purification of one’s karma or future well-being, which can only come through virtuous actions.⁵ Likewise 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 as exhibiting paranormal powers such as levitation in the presence of the laity.⁶

Although the lay community is not explicitly organized, its behavior plays off that of the Monastic Sangha. We will look at this relationship along with the organization and functions of the Monastic Sangha in more detail in Chapter Five, on community.

Nourishment for the Flower. Refuge is the part of Buddhism that allows the roots and leaves to absorb the nourishment of the sun, water and soil. Devotion in Buddhism focuses on the Triple Gem of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. These nourish the entire practice, and in fact, taking Refuge in the Triple Gem generally constitutes the beginning of Buddhist practice, or the point of becoming a Buddhist. Although the devotion of expressing reverence for the Triple Gem gives Buddhism more than anything else its religious flavor, lending it something at least the flavor of worship, it should be noted that, at least in early Buddhism, devotion is not directed toward an otherworldly being or force, but toward things this-worldly: toward a remarkable person, albeit long deceased, toward a set of teachings for and by humans, and toward real people who happen to embody those teachings completely in their own lives.

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 trust in the teacher(s) and teachings, and direct experience of what these point to. Trust (Pali, saddha) is necessary simply to put aside accumulated faulty notions, mostly cultural in origin, in order to open oneself completely to the light of the Buddha’s insight. Veneration of the Triple Gem is an important psychological element in the development of that necessary trust. It is however nothing whatever like blind faith, but more like the trust a student of science puts into her teachers or a science graduate student puts into the specific paradigm her professor advocates. 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 trust that is replaced gradually with knowing from experience. Refuge in the Triple Gem will be the topic of Chapter 3.

Devotional aspects of Buddhism would proliferate in perhaps all of the later traditions but particularly in northern lands, as we will see in subsequent chapters. Often it became so pronounced that it recast the objects of devotion, particularly the Buddha himself, into something quite unanticipated.

The sun. This is the Buddha himself. Conviction in his Awakening inspires the Community’s commitment to deeper practice. The Buddha stands an an example to emulate, an admiral friend, vividly present at least in the accounts of his life and in the Dharma-Vinaya, his teachings, and in the deportment and understanding of those among us most shaped by his influence.

Water. This is the Dharma. The teachings of the truth that the Buddha directly experienced and the instructions for perfecting the human character constitute the pure 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 attaining Nirvana but progressing at least as far as the first stage of Awakening, enough to discern Nirvana and to attain unshakable trust in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. The Sangha nourishes the Community through its visible example, its direct experience and its teaching. Now, the Sangha here is properly called the Noble Sangha, or synonymously the Noble Ones, who are much like saints, to distinguish it from the Monastic Sangha, the members of an institution designed to spin off Noble Ones. The roots are buried deep in the soil, the monks and nuns have Noble Sangha between their toes, a soil made rich by the many generations of Noble Ones.

This model of the flower of Buddhism will serve in the remaining chapters to put the elements of religiosity in their proper perspective. The stem, since it is rather unique to Buddhism, has little in common with non-Buddhist religions. If we consider that the Path represents the bulk of the Buddha’s teachings Buddhism thus appears rather secular in nature, but the complete context of the Path frames it in a fringe of religiosity. If on the other hand we consider that the great bulk of Buddhists through the centuries have lived in the leaves and been only incidentally concerned with the complete Path, Buddhism appears decidedly religious with the stem as a special opportunity for intense training.⁷

One last term has not been mentioned: The life of the flower itself is the Sasana (Pali, sāsana) or the Buddha-Sasana, which often translated into English as “dispensation,” but no one ever knows what “dispensation” means. The Sasana is Buddhism in all of its aspects, including its growth, propagation and perhaps eventual demise, its doctrinal evolution and its application and relevance for real live people and its accretion of religious elements and other elements of folk cultures. The Sasana might be called the living Dharma, for without the Sasana Buddhism would be dead doctrine and dead practices, for none of us would ever have heard of Buddhism nor enjoyed access to its teachings. Sasana is important because we have a debt to Buddhists past, a responsibility to Buddhists future and both to Buddhists current.

1AN 4.34.

2Ud 5.3.

3This can be understood metaphorically as standing for the accrued personal benefits of practice, or karma.

4SN 45.179, 45.180, DN 33.

5For example, see AN 5.175, AN 10.176, Thig 12.1, Sn 2.4 (Mangala Sutta).

6Kevatta Sutta, DN 11.

7The perspectives from the point of view of the teachings and from that of the typical Buddhist are what I will later call Adept Buddhism and Folk Buddhism respectively. Of the two, Folk Buddhism tends to be more recognizably religious.

Growing the Dharma: Introduction

This is the second serial installment of my recent ebook draft. I couple of people who posted comments to the first installment see value in focusing on one segment at a time as a readership community.  I encourage critical feedback and comments. I don’t expect what I write to be wildly popular; I wrote it precisely because it runs counter to dominant but improvident trends in Western Buddhism. The complete ebook is here.

Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework

Chapter 1. Introduction

Is Buddhism a religion? Of course the answer 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 rather a way of life. It seems to me this is exactly what is expected of any religion when embraced fully: it should be a way of life. But let’s go on:

3. A religion is a matter of family resemblance,¹ that is, if it looks like a duck it is.

This last seems at first like a sloppy criterion, but 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 family resemblance criterion the deciding factor.

The degree of this family resemblance, or the elements that indicate this 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 what I will call Path elements–the somewhat unique and therefore more “secular” doctrinal aspects and program of personal practice. Yet some have argued recently that Buddhist religiosity is rather a product of cultural accretion that began after the Buddha and has little to do with the core message of the Buddha. Indeed, if we take the core message of the Buddha to be the Four Noble Truths, which includes the Noble Eightfold Path of practice, this view has some merit, as these indeed are rather short on elements one would be inclined to call “religious.” For instance, there is in the Noble Eightfold Path

• No “Right Bowing,”
• No “Right Robes,” and
• No “Right Ecclesiastical Governance.”

My response to this will be something of a middle way. The evidence, which will be reviewed here, makes it undeniable that many elements of religiosity were an intrinsic and functional part of the early Buddhist message, albeit carefully circumscribed in many ways. However through cultural adaptation in virtually every tradition the degree of religiosity has grown more prominent, sometimes exceedingly more prominent. On the other hand, this fortified religiosity, I will maintain, seldom obscures the core message of early Buddhism, in spite of appearances.

In this book I will outline the important aspects of religiosity in early and authentic Buddhism and will illustrate its enhancement in a sample of later traditions. I will then turn to the process of cultural adaptation that shaped these historical traditions and its implications for modern Buddhism. Buddhism stands out in the following two ways: First, if it is a religion it is the earliest world religion, succeeded 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 has been remarkably well preserved through these cultural adaptations. This combination of resilience and tolerance to adaptation is likely what made Buddhist the first world religion. I will locate the mechanism, as a matter of fact, outside of the Path elements, in the more religious elements.

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 allows 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 early functionality throughout the Buddhist world in spite of enormous variation. 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 relieved. It also includes placing trust in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, a prominent role for the monastic order and particular emphasis on the practices of generosity and virtue.

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 other laity, the garb of the other monastics, the style of other 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.

I hope to gain in this book a recognition and explanation of the great resilience of Buddhism in retaining the integrity and functionality of its authentic teachings that exists alongside a great tolerance for adaptation and change.

Religiosity in Buddhism

Religiosity seems to be a universal, found throughout the world. Scholars of comparative religion have looked at this in detail, but here are the recurring features that I observe in almost all religions and that 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 or sacred 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 sacred 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.
• Salvation. The ultimate goal is generally some form of transcendence of this one worldly life.
• Clergy. There is often a class of professionals who dedicate themselves to understanding and practice of the religion, who generally conduct or lead the rituals and who take care of the community and sometimes enjoy the status of ritual artifacts themselves.
• Institutions. The community is generally organized according to certain principles and this organization sustains the clergy, owns ritual spaces and objects and provides some degree of governance and authority.

A shorter list of topics I will focus on here is as follows:

• Devotion.
• Community.
• Salvation.

I make no further attempt to define religiosity than to provide this list and its summary. The common statement, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” seems generally intended to sweep aside many of the elements on this list, particularly the more institutional elements. Why this list comes together as something requiring special attention, evoking even alarm, in the Western mind is discussed in a few chapters.

It is worth noting parenthetically that each of these features listed here to as characteristic of religion is nonetheless found also in what would normally be regarded as secular contexts, or at least their close counterparts are. 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 typically a sense of tradition. Government functions and places of government exhibit almost every one of these features, by my count, with appropriate substitution of terms, elected officials for clergy, etc. Armies likewise exhibit most, with analogous substitutions, maybe because they need to be equipped to deal with fundamental issues of life and death. Even Academia exhibits a lot of these features. We are, in other words, far from a definitive definition of religion, but this characterization will suffice for our purposes.²

These elements in Buddhism that I collect under religiosity, or under devotion, community and salvation, we will see, have a unique flavor in Buddhism that doubtlessly originated with its founder. In their early manifestation they are functionally very rational, systematic and clearly articulated. The functions they serve are as follows:

1. They provide methods of practice that help purify and develop the mind in wholesome ways, but that lend themselves to community, casual and even children’s practice.
2. They provide a social infrastructure in support of off-the-deep-end types of intensive practice and study and for its propagation and transmission to future generations in its full integrity. That is, they support the Buddha–Sasana, lived Buddhism in all of its dimensions, including historical and social.
3. They provide an attitudinal context that gives rise to individual aspirations to undertake the intensive practice and study that can culminate in Awakening.

To purge these religious elements across the board from one’s understanding is simply to miss the larger context in which the Path of practice is sustained; it is to fail to appreciate the past and to take responsibility for the future. If Buddhists of the past had purged religiosity from Buddhism in this way, had been consistently spiritual but not religious, there would be no baby left for us in the twenty-first century befuddlement to throw out with the bathwater.

Overview

My reasons for writing this book are as follows:

• Buddhist elements of devotion, transcendence and community tend to be poorly comprehended and unappreciated in the West, producing a limited and lopsided system of understanding and practice. I hope this book will contribute to a more well-rounded practice and understanding within a still incipient Western Buddhist movement.
• Religiosity is deeply implicated the sometimes wild culturally conditioned variations observed among and within the various Buddhist traditions. I hope that by bringing some order to these variations, I hope this book will provide a perspective that will make the Buddhist landscape easier to navigate.
• The non-Path elements of devotion and community provide the mechanisms that underlie, as I will show, Buddhism’s remarkably tolerance of variation including its capacity for absorbing many elements of local cultures, alongside its amazing resilience with regard to maintain its authentic functions. I hope this book will serve to articulate this important yet rarely recognized aspect of the genius of Buddhism.

I will begin with religiosity in early Buddhist doctrine, drawing on early sources, particularly the Pali discourses and monastic code, to show the functional role of devotion, transcendence and community in early Buddhism. I will make use of a botanical metaphor, in particular its physiological aspect in order to bring out the functional interrelatedness among the various elements of practice and understanding. I will discuss how the religious elements are integrated into an organic whole in clear and rational roles.

I will I then seek to deepen our understanding of these roles progressively as I turn to historical, sociological and personal aspects of these religious elements. Just as we turn from botany to plant genetics in order to understand change and variation through time, we will turn from doctrine to history in order to see how Buddhist traditions have taken on many different forms, particularly embellishing under cultural pressures the religious elements that concern us, yet remarkably preserving for the most part the early physiology. Just as we turn from botany and genetics to hortoculture in order to understand the role of human intervention in the well-being of the plant and in the breeding of domestic variants with desirable features, we will turn from doctrine and history to the sociology of Buddhist communities in order to understand the role of an adept subcommunity in domesticating and maintaining an authentic Adept Buddhism, alongside which a wilder Folk Buddhism inevitably exists. This is the source of Buddhism’s resilience.

Finally, just as the gastronome must make choices among the great varieties of domestic and wild foods at hand in the culinary world, the would-be student and practitioner of Buddhism in the West must find his way among the great variety of Buddhisms, Eastern and Western, spiritual, religious and secular, early and traditional, Theravada and Mahayana, village and forest, folk and adept, in the modern landscape. Having brought the reader from the field almost to the dinner table, I will conclude with tips on navigating the Buddhist buffet counter.

1This term comes from Wittgenstein.

2See Tweed (2006) for a discussion of the many attempts to define religion, and a recent bold attempt at a new one.

Growing the Dharma: Preface

Hmmm, the hits to this blog are in sharp decline. This is certainly because I have rarely posted in recent weeks, and in fact intend to do no writing until after vassa (rains retreat). Lest this blog realize final liberation before the rest of us, I have come up with the idea of serializing my ebook, Growing the Dharma. So here begins my serialization in bite-size  perhaps weekly segments. Much of this material has appeared on this blog before, which will lead some loyal long-time readers on a walk down memory lane, though never in such a polished and integrated form as in its present re-embodiment.

Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework

Preface

“I’m spiritual but not religious!”

We’ve all heard this statement, generally along with an off-hand dismissal of “organized religion.”

Westerners often see polarity between the personal and the social. We love the lone individualist, including the spiritual virtuoso who boldly takes the path less traveled. We love it when Buddhism exalts that spiritual virtuoso, the light unto himself, the one who retreats from city or village life to explore in solitude life’s questions, an ideal well represented in the life of Buddha himself, who after much travail shattered the constraints to which the common person is subject. We love these guys but we have trouble reconciling them with temple life, the chanting, the bows, the hierarchy, the postures, the robes.

I wrote this booklet because I have become convinced that we Westerners often have little sense of the relationship between the spiritual and the religious, and that we have been limping along in a kind of disembodied Buddhism as a result. In fact the Buddha was not only a great psychologist but also a great social thinker whose vision of the ideal society resulted in what has become the oldest human institution on the planet.

Our misunderstanding begins with a failure to appreciate just how radically different this lone individual who has broken free is from the rest of us. He has broken through not so much social constraints as his own human nature, bursting the limitations of hundreds of millions of years of evolution that have otherwise produced frightened, greedy, hateful and confused beings, and has instead entered the rationalized and ethicized awareness of the Noble Ones. In our misunderstanding we then fail to appreciate the critical importance of the social context necessary, both to produce the conditions in which Noble Ones might arise, and to carry their civilizing influence into the world at large, a social context born with the Awakening of the Buddha and taught by the Buddha, our great teacher, as the Sasana (roughly, Buddhist movement) that has carried the flame of what he discovered to light one hundred generations of Buddhism.

I wrote this little book in order to develop readers’ appreciation of the reach of the Buddha’s thought, to provide a more complete and organic view of what Buddhism subsumes, to describe the groundwork of Buddhism that is all too commonly dismissed in the West as “just religion” even while it is so intrinsic in the East that it hardly bears mentioning. At the same time I hope to develop tools for critically assessing Buddhist traditions, to see at what point the flames they carry begin to sputter, sometimes choked by the accretion of too much religiosity or by the incursion of many other popular notions.

It took me many years to come to the viewpoints represented in this book. As a Westerner, a former academic, not religiously trained as a child, I came to Buddhism initially in its Western manifestations with a rational secular mindset. The supernatural has never been a draw for me. Alan Watts and Stephen Batchelor were early influences on the Path. My early exposure to Western Soto Zen showed me a ritual world that initially made no sense to me at all.

In the end I was curious and open-minded enough to want to get to the experiential bottom of this ritual world, held my nose and jumped in bodily. I trained in the Suzuki Roshi tradition at the San Francisco Zen Center, lived at its monastery, Tassajara Mountain Center, was a founding member of its offshoot in Austin, Texas, where I subsequently ordained, learned almost all the ritual ins and outs and ceremonies, and came with time to appreciate the roles of these things in a particular form of Buddhist practice. Established as a Zen priest, very much concerned with the future of Buddhism in the West, my curiosity and modest reserve of open-mindedness extended to the many ethnically Asian temples found in Texas, California and elsewhere, which felt to me intriguingly different from Western centers.

Somehow innately interested almost from the beginning in monastic practice I also began studying the Vinaya, the traditional monastic code that goes back to the Buddha and a recognized pillar for Buddhism throughout Asia – except in Japan, in whose tradition I had ordained. I considered ordaining in a Vinaya tradition for many years but still clinging to worldly ways had many doubts about my own capacity for living a celibate life. The deciding straw arose after much study and contemplation with the realization that the Monastic Sangha is, by the Buddha’s design, the lynch pin of the Sasana. The conclusion seemed inescapable to me that without real monks and nuns practicing in the traditional way Buddhism was not going to make it in the West! It never has anywhere else, it will not here.

I resolved to myself, “It’s a clean job, but somebody has got to do it!”

I ordained as a bhikkhu (full monk) in Burma, lived there for over a year and have been living here at a Burmese monastery in Austin, Texas now for a number of years. Living embedded in a devoutly Buddhist Asian culture and one that is decidedly pre-modern, inhabiting a world full of magical forces and tree spirits, has given me an appreciation for Buddhism’s rare ability to blend with elements of folk culture, and yet at the same time retain its full integrity, particularly in the minds and lives of its most adept and respected representatives.

Were this an academic work I would at this point in the Preface thank the various foundations and institutions that have supported me during the process of research and composition. As a monastic that support is constantly there along with the freedom to structure my time and energy as I feel benefits the Sasana. Therefore I would like instead to thank the many donors and supporters of the Sitagu Buddha Vihara in Austin, Texas (USA), and of the Sitagu Dhamma Vihara in Maplewood, Minnesota (USA) and the Calgary Myanmar Temple (Alberta, Canada) and of the monks and nuns who have lived there. Your devotion inspires me. I want to thank Alan Cook and Kitty Johnson for proofreading and Prof. Tom Tweed for commenting on earlier draft and encouraging me to extend and consolidate certain metaphors.

Bhikkhu Cintita Dinsmore
Austin, Texas, USA
July, 2013