Ajahn Brahm: Letting Go vs. Clinging (video)

Seth Auberon, Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ajahn Brahm (BuddhistSocietyWA); Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Doctrines and Terms

(Poh Ming Tse Temple, 2014) Ajahn Brahm: Freeing Our Minds from Our Mental Prisons

Ven. Ajahn Brahm, an ennobled and very humorous Western monk who emerged from the Thai Forest Tradition in Isan under Ajahn Chah, now lives and teaches in Australia. He had just come from teaching at a retreat when he chose to explore ways of letting go in the Buddha's teaching. Indeed, there is danger in clinging (upadana) and liberation in letting go, internally renouncing, and freeing ourselves from suffering.

Orange is the new black, but for free robes not bound jumpsuits (dreamstime.com).

Prison is a scary place yet not nearly as fearful as our mental prisons, ones we've created as terrifying places we are imprisoned even as we walk around free to do as we like. In this video teaching by the ennobled and humorous Western Theravada monk, brought to us by the Buddhist Congress and Angulimala Fellowship, Ajahn Brahm shares his insights and wisdom on the most important prison break we can attempt. It is peppered throughout with the distinctive flavor of Ajahn Brahmavamso's trademark humor. See video below from 2010 when he began this thread.

MENTAL PRISON: Some of us are as tortured and trapped as prisoners in prison cells.

 

Non-clinging (nekkhamma) is a Buddhist Pali term translated as "the pleasure of letting go" or "renunciation." It conveys, more specifically, "giving up worldliness and leading a higher life" or "freedom from crippling lust, craving, and addictions." In the Noble Eightfold Path, it is the first practice associated with "Right Intention."

In the Theravada list, it is the third of the Ten Perfections, involving non-attachment and non-clinging to suffering. How do we cling to suffering? The root of our self-injury is clinging to the Five Aggregates, to wrong views of self.

Milarepa's Tibetan Vajrayana writings are canonical Mahayana Buddhist texts that emphasize the temporary nature of the physical body and the need for non-attachment.

 

Non-clinging is also a central concept in Zen Buddhist philosophy. One of the most important technical Chinese terms for "non clinging" is wú niàn (無念), which literally means "no thought." This does not signify the literal absence of thought, but rather not clinging to or identifying with thought, the state of being "unstained" (bù rán 不染) by thought -- like a lotus flower born in water and grown up in water rising above water and remaining unstained by water.

Therefore, non-clinging is being detached from one's thoughts. That is, it is to separate oneself from one's thoughts and opinions [of course, they are not actually one's own] in detail as to not be harmed mentally and emotionally by them (see The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch translated by Philip B. Yampolsky).

I can do this monastic stint standing on my head...because I'm free (annenbergproject.org)

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"Freedom from sensual lust"

Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Doctrines and Terms

Gokyo Ri peak (Hendrik Terbeck/flickr)

The real meaning of "renunciation" (nekkhamma) is an internal act not an external one.

It is not by shaving one's head and face and donning saffron robes that one moves toward enlightenment (bodhi, awakening) and nirvana (moksha, liberation from all suffering). There are many monastics who yet cling and are therefore no closer to freedom than householders).

The word is apparently derived from nir + Ö kram, "to go forth (into the wandering, left-home-life of an ascetic)." But in Pali language texts, this term is nevertheless used as if it were derived from lust (kāma as in Kama Sutra) and always as an antonym to kāma (craving for sensuality). 

It is one of the Ten Perfections (pāramīs or pāramitās as in the Prajna Paramita, the famous "Perfection of Wisdom" literature).

  

Nekkhama-sankappa, the "intention of renunciation" -- thoughts free of lust, thoughts of renunciation, is one of the three kinds of right intention or right thought (sammā-sankappa), the second factor in the Noble Eightfold Path (see Magga, 2), its antonym being kāma-sankappa, lustful thoughts and intentions.

Four Ways to Let Go and Get Free

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What is clinging?

Maitreya Buddha, Gandhara (wiki)

"Clinging," according to the Path of Purification (Vis.M. XVII), is an intensified degree of craving. The four kinds of clinging are:

1. sensual clinging,
2. clinging to views,
3. clinging to mere rules and rituals [as if they could ever in and of themselves lead to or result in enlightenment],
4. clinging to personality-belief.

(1) "What now is sensual clinging? Whatever with regard to sensuous objects there exists of sensuous lust, sensuous desire, sensuous attachment, sensuous passion, sensuous delusion, sensuous fetters, this is called sensual clinging.

 

(2) ''What is clinging to views? 'Alms and offerings are useless [without karmic benefit to the giver]; there is no fruit and result for skillful and unskillful deeds: all such views and misconceptions are called clinging to [wrong] views.

(3) "What is clinging to mere rules and rituals? Holding firmly to the view that through [the observance of] mere rules and rituals one may reach purification [enlightenment and liberation, bodhi and nirvana), this is called clinging to mere rules and rituals.

 

(4) "What is clinging to personality-belief? The 20 kinds of ego-views [beliefs about self, identity, ego] with regard to the groups of existence, these are called clinging to personality-belief" (Dhs.1214-17).

 

This traditional fourfold division of clinging is unsatisfactory. Besides clinging to lustful objects of the sense, we would expect either clinging to fine material spheres and immaterial spheres of existence or simply clinging to continued existence (bhava-upādāna, continued being, which can never be static, and is therefore translated as becoming).

Although a non-returner, a person who has gained the third stage of enlightenment, is entirely free of the traditional four kinds of clinging, that person is not yet freed from rebirth, as one still possesses clinging to continued-becoming. The Commentary to the Path of Purification (Vis.M. XVII), trying to get out of this dilemma, explains sensual clinging as including here all the remaining kinds of clinging.

 

"Clinging" is the common rendering for upādāna, but "grasping" would come closer to the literal meaning of it, which is "uptake" or the habit of repetitive craving; see Three Cardinal Discourses (Wheel 17), p.19.

America's Amazing "Buddha Girl"

Mother Asokha with Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

The amazing "Buddha Girl" -- Ratanayani -- at nuns' full-ordination ceremony for three Western Theravada Buddhists, Dharma Vijaya Temple, L.A. supported by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Quarterly, Ruth Denison, Ven. Karunananda Theri, family, friends, Nov. 2012 (WQ)

Bible Belt South: Georgia borders North and South Carolina (aussiefitzy.com)

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Bright Buddha banner (Georgie_girl/flickr)

DHARMA VIJAYA TEMPLE, Los Angeles - Wisdom Quarterly loves and supports "Buddha Boy," Nepal's Ram Bahadur Bomjon (aka Ven. Dharmasangha, formerly Ven. Palden Dorje).

Apsaras (Andreadaddi/flickr)

And late in 2012 we met an equally amazing American "Buddha Girl," the samaneri Ratanayani. She is a Cambodian-American (Theravada Buddhist) child in the U.S. who felt so strongly about ordaining as a nun and making known the Buddha's liberating teaching (Dharma) that she swayed her Georgia town to make accommodations and swayed her reluctant brother (photographed above in Buddhist robes next to her as he holds his breath with arms crossed) to come along with her on this monastic journey.
 
She is a samaneri (a female novice, "little ascetic," probationary "Buddhist nun-in-training"). She intends to become a bhikkhuni (fully ordained Theravada nun) in America's Bible Belt.

Angkor Thom (Ramsch_ursel/flickr)

We spoke to her mother, who told us the details and have been hit and miss about publishing the story without an extended sit down interview with the family.

Buddha Boy, a bodhisattva intent on training in the Ten Perfections to eventually become a supremely enlightened teaching buddha (samma-sam-buddha).

The venerable novice Ratanayani ("Jewel Vehicle") is a Cambodian-American Buddhist, the first "little nun" (samaneri) from Clayton County, Georgia, Southern United States of America.

Her family has many accomplishments to announce. For example, on November 5, 2013 the novice and her brother, Jadetha Samanera, were set to receive the first proclamation from Commissioner Jeff Turner of Clayton County, Georgia. This award was the first ever issued by a commissioner to any Buddhist monastic in Georgia's history.

The award was presented in the town center with reporters from local papers in attendance. We will offer more "Buddha Girl" coverage but first, What is a Buddhist "novice"?

• Going Forth: A Call to Buddhist [Monasticism]
• The 10 Training Precepts of a Buddhist Novice
• Novice Chants (excerpt from The Khuddakapatha)

10 Questions of a Novice

Samanera Pañha, "The Novice's Questions" (Ven. Piyadassi, edited by Wisdom Quarterly)

1. What is one? All beings subsist on nutriment [Footnote 1].
2. What is two? Name and form [2].
3. What is three? The three types of
   feeling (sensations) [3].
4. What is four? The Four Noble Truths [4].
5. What is five? The Five Aggregates of Clinging [5].
6. What is six? The six internal sense bases [6].
7. What is seven? The Seven Factors of Enlightenment [7].
8. What is eight? The Noble Eightfold Path.[8].
9. What is nine? The nine abodes for beings [9].
10. What is ten? Endowed with ten qualities, one is called an arhat (a fully enlightened person) [10].

FAME: depressed, drunk, sickly Selena (W)

FOOTNOTES: 1. "There are these four nutriments for the establishing of beings who have taken rebirth or for the support of those in search of a plane to be reborn. What are the four? Physical food, gross or subtle; contact as the second, intention [a representative mental formation] the third, and consciousness the fourth" (SN 12.64).

2. Mental and physical phenomena.

3. Pleasant, painful, and neutral (neither pleasant nor painful).

4. Disappointment (suffering), the origination of disappointment, the cessation of disappointment, the path of practice leading to the cessation of disappointment.

5. Form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness.

6. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind.

7. Mindfulness, keen investigation of mental phenomena (dhammas), energy (persistence), rapture (joy), serenity (calm), concentration (collectedness), equanimity (non-bias).

8. Right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

9. Seven stations of consciousness and two spheres. There are beings with diversity of diverse form (body) and diverse perceptions, such as human beings, some devas, and some beings in the lower realms; this is the first station of consciousness. There are beings of diverse form and singular perceptions, such as the devas of Brahma's Retinue generated by the first meditative absorption (jhana); this is the second station of consciousness. There are beings of singularity (not undiversified) form yet diverse perceptions, such as the Radiant Devas; this is the third station of consciousness. There are beings with singular form and singular perceptions, such as the Effulgent Streaming Devas; this is the fourth station of consciousness. There are beings who, with the complete transcending of perceptions of [physical] form, with the disappearance of perceptions of resistance, and not attending to perceptions of diversity, [perceiving] 'Space is boundless' arrive at the base of consciousness of Boundless Space; this is the fifth station of consciousness. There are beings who, with the complete transcending of the base of Boundless Space, [perceiving] 'Consciousness is boundless' arrive at the base Boundless Consciousness; this is the sixth station of consciousness. There are beings who, with the complete transcending of the base Boundless Consciousness [perceiving,] 'There is nothing [or no-thing],' arrive at the base of Nothingness (the Void); this is the seventh station of consciousness. The base of non-percipient beings and, second, the base of Neither-perception-nor non-perception; these are the two spheres (Maha-nidana Suttanta, DN 15).

10. "The right view of one beyond training (asekha), the right intention (non greed, non harming, non wrath) of one beyond training, the right speech of one beyond training, the right action of one beyond training, the right livelihood of one beyond training, the right effort of one beyond training, the right mindfulness of one beyond training, the right concentration of one beyond training, the right wisdom of one beyond training, the right release (liberation) of one beyond training" (AN 10.112). 

Love, Sexuality, and Awakening: Retreat

Ven. Amma Thanasanti Bhikkhuni (awakeningtruth.org) and Dr. Sharon Beckman-Brindley (metta.org); Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Fragrant blossoming lotus flower, the symbol of opening (tvladusi/flickr.com)

 

Dr. Beckman-Brindley, Ven. Thanasanti

The theme of this retreat is our relationship with various facets of love as part of a path of Buddhist awakening. "Love" includes a broad range of experience -- from a sense of friendliness and compassion, to appreciation toward ourselves, to the desire to release our masks and defenses and rest in a shared intimacy with others [a loss of self and merging with someone or something larger].

Sometimes in our daily life, this shared intimacy is expressed through romantic sexual involvement. [Other times it is sought diving within through asceticism and spirituality.] Ultimately, resting in love, we can embody an unconditional love that has no expectations, where love is an essential quality of "being" rather than a state or circumstance we long for [a trait rather than a temporary state].

 

Time for reflection (true-enlightenment.com)

This will be an eight precept retreat in which we refrain from killing and harming, and from stealing, any sexual activity, incorrect speech, and/or substances which cloud the mind. There will be two meals and an evening snack. We will begin the week using the Foundations of Mindfulness in silent practice. After a few days of silence, we will introduce sessions of Insight Dialogue to explore the theme.

It runs from Saturday May 23-30 in Loveland, Colorado, at Sunrise Ranch within easy access of Denver Int'l airport, yet secluded from the bustle of city life, in the Rocky Mountain foothills. Program contact: Katherine Wolfe (wolfalohalani@gmail.com). More 
 
ELIGIBILITY: This retreat is suitable for anyone self-identified as a woman who has a regular meditation practice and has done a seven-day mindfulness retreat.

DONATION: The teachings are offered on a dana basis (the Pali word for "generosity," the Buddhist practice of giving to one’s capacity).

SCHOLARSHIP: Dana has played an essential role in the Buddhist tradition. In the spirit of this tradition, Awakening Truth does not want cost to be an obstacle to participation and so, are committed to offering financial assistance to those who need it. If you cannot attend the retreat due to cost, please contact the retreat committee: 720-295-1321 or awakeningtruth.retreats@gmail.com.

SPONSORED BY: Awakening Truth, a 501(c)3 organization based in Colorado with the intention of supporting Buddhist nuns, bringing the teachings into the modern world and building a training monastery for [blended-Theravada] Forest Tradition bhikkhunis.

TEACHERS

Sharon Beckman-Brindley, Ph.D., is a Senior Insight Dialogue Teacher who teaches Insight Dialogue retreats worldwide. A clinical psychologist, she has served as team leader for Metta’s Relational Insight Meditation Program; she also serves on the Metta Programs Teachers Council. She has practiced vipassana (insight) meditation for over 30 years. Since 2001 she has studied and practiced the Dhamma and Insight Dialogue intensively with Gregory Kramer. She is also a co-founder and a guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville, Virginia and is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leaders Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She also has over 30 years of practice as a psychotherapist, who has led workshops and retreats on meditation and its integration with psychotherapy for over 15 years. She is a stepmother and a grandmother and lives with her husband and their two cats in Charlottesville.
 
Amma Thanasanti Bhikkhuni is a guest in Metta’s Teacher Training program. She has been meditating for over 30 years, a [Theravada or more eccentric American monastic] Buddhist nun for over 20 years, and has been teaching internationally for over 15 years. He work spans rigorous understanding of Buddhist teachings, non-dual meditation, depth psychology, subtle body energies, and the Divine Feminine. She teaches meditation as an art and skill, integrating body, heart, and mind with finesse and compassion. She founded Awakening Truth [whose rainbow motif suggests a particularly welcome climate for lesbians and gays], whose mission is to create a nun (bhikkhuni)'s training monastery and seeks ways for monastics and lay practitioners to work together to support whole-life practice. She is currently based at the Shakti Vihara Hermitage in Colorado Springs.

"What the Buddha Never Taught" (book)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Tim Ward; TheSecularBuddhist.com

Golden Buddha in characteristic Thai or Siamese style (Anekoho/flickr.com)

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20th Anniversary Edition (Goodreads.com)

To understand what the Buddha taught in theory, it is good to discuss practices he did did not teach. What did he teach?

So let's have a behind the scenes look at life in a Thai forest monastery. Tim Ward wrote a classic and humorous "behind-the-robes" account of his journey to Northeast Thailand to live in a Buddhist forest monastery for Westerners as a temporary monastic.

 

"There is still a place in the jungles of Thailand, where you can leave it all behind..."

This book became a classic and a bestseller in the 1990s. It is funny and clear, a true-life “behind the robes” account of life inside one of the strictest jungle monasteries in Southeast Asia. 

In Wat Pah Nanachat, the monastics keep the 227 rules laid down by the Buddha, including refraining from all killing. But how does a foreign novice cope with a cobra in the outhouse or the temptation of a Mars Bar in his alms bowl? Find out in this newly reincarnated 20th anniversary edition, with a new introduction by the author Tim Ward and a new foreword by Wade Davis.
 

The Buddha reclining into final nirvana (kwanyinbuddha/flickr.com)

Episode 49: author Tim Ward

Thesecularbuddhist.com

Ward, author of What The Buddha Never Taught, talks about his experiences as a Theravadan monk (novice) in Thailand. 

This podcast has featured two former Western monastics who have written books about their experiences -- original "Buddhist Atheist" Stephen Batchelor and Stephen Schettini. Today a third guest exposes an underlying thread in their experiences -- a personal resonance with the particular form of practice was lacking. That's not to say that it's not there for many, if not most, Westerners who take robes (ordain temporarily or permanently).

But the reasons why some have left the alms bowl behind seem very similar if not identical. Many of the recent discussions on the Facebook Fan Page for "The Secular Buddhist" have centered on this topic: What's right for one individual, culturally, may not be right for another. And that's okay, of course. Secular Buddhism is about creating an opportunity for spiritual practice, self-cultivation (meditation), and fostering communities of support for those more comfortable with a secular (non-religious) worldview. Many of us are less comfortable with the trappings of organized religion and supernatural explanations. We find more resonance with practicing in our own, non-traditional way.

And as Buddhism expands in the West, it is inevitable that it find its own forms, which reflect the culture it finds itself in. Some of us deal quite well with faith approaches to meditative practice, while others take a more skeptical view. But a PRACTICE of reducing suffering, of self and others, remains. We share this vision, and however we get there, however winding the path, the core practice of that path is the same. LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

Why would anyone become a hermit?

Publisher's Weekly (review edited by Wisdom Quarterly)

Ward's funny title is based on famed book

According to Ward's delightful account of his stay in a Thai Buddhist monastery, there are many things that the Buddha never taught [but they are practiced anyway].

 

One is the extreme rigor of the Pah Nanachat monastery, involving rising at 3:00 am for [paritta] chanting, walking on gravel roads in bare feet, and eating only one big meal a day.

• The same thing is every day practiced in California near San Diego at Metta Forest Monastery. It is a branch of the same strict revivalist Dhammayut school Ajahn Thanissaro (Geoffrey DeGraff) was relegated to after being expelled from Thailand -- for almost becoming an abbot there, an act that would have given functional Thai land ownership to a foreigner (farang), which the Thai Sangha and government were not willing to tolerate -- when his Thai teacher passed away.

Ward concludes that the final lesson is about the redemptive power of laughter.

A Canadian journalist, he traveled around Asia for six years, eventually winding up at Wat Pah Nanachat, which was built to spread Theravada Buddhism to farangs ("foreigners," non-Thais). 

 

Among the motley crew the author finds at the jungle monastery are an ex-gospel singer from England, a former accountant from China, and a former real estate millionaire from Chicago, USA.

The head monk is an Australian who used to play jazz guitar in his last life. The book is Ward's affectionate, and often very funny, account of his sojourn in this place of meditation and renunciation.

The volume could have been improved by some sharp editing, but its little redundancies and repetitions help capture the often monotonous life of the monk.

Encouraging journeys of self-discovery

Tracy Sherlock (Vancouver Sun)

Siddhartha's search for life's meaning

"If you're looking for the meaning of life, you'll benefit from seeking it out yourself," says author Tim Ward, who spent time in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand in the 1980s.

 

"I think it's really valuable for everybody, preferably in their 20s, to really come up against the question, 'Where does meaning reside?'"

"I think that there is an answer," Ward continues, "and that is that part of what it is to be human is to generate meaning." 

 

Ward wrote about his experiences in What the Buddha Never Taught, which has been released in a special 20th anniversary edition with a foreword by Canadian anthropologist and author Wade Davis. 

Young I left the household to wander

"One of the things I look at with regret in our current society is that so many of those meanings are given to kids, they sort of just jump onto meanings without having to feel what meaninglessness is like," Ward said.

 

"They want a career where they will make a lot of money, so they can live in a nice house and drive a big car because that's what successful people do. That makes me cry and tear out what last bit of hair I've got. Where's your struggle to find the meaning that's in your bones?"

"If anything, that's my hope for this book on its 20th anniversary that it will encourage younger readers to do that fighting for the meaning in their life, and not accept the values that are given to them." More

Suburban school boy to Shaolin monk (video)

Amanda Cable (DailyMail.co.uk, 11-14-08); Pat Macpherson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Shaolin monk demonstrates pain tolerance by breaking bricks with his head using a sledgehammer, indicating that most of us live nowhere near our human potential (Reuters).

(Nat'l Geographic) "Myths and Logic of Shaolin Monks" (kung fu documentary, see Part 2)

 

Ahmet gave up the trappings of suburbia for the good life.

He's the ordinary north London boy who became a Chinese warrior monk. And his story is as astonishing as it is inspiring.

 

Matthew Ahmet is 20 and he's hard, very hard. His head is shaved, and his body bears the ravages of a violent life. A mark on his forehead shows where a metal bar came crashing down on his skull. His forearms have been sliced repeatedly by razor-sharp knives, and his left arm has a "punishment" burn from boiling water.

 

So when he sits down, flashes a beautiful smile and talks about spreading happiness and peace, it comes as a great surprise. Matthew left his home in Enfield, north London, at the age of 17 to become a Shaolin Buddhist monk in China. In doing so, he renounced all the worldly belongings that are the staple diet of teenage life and entered upon a grueling regime of training, sacrifice, and punishment. Each mark on his body bears testament to this new and extraordinary life. Ahmet says:

Publicity poster for Ahmet's Shaolin show

"Recently, I went to visit an old schoolfriend of mine, who is at Manchester University. I met him at the digs he shares with his friends and I was stunned. There were dirty clothes everywhere, unwashed dishes and belongings just thrown around. In China, I wash my own robes in a bucket of cold water, which I also use to bathe in. I sleep on a bunk bed with no mattress, lying directly on a plank of wood. Everything in my new life is so neat and disciplined that I can't imagine being a typical student now."

Does this earnest young man, who looks like a feral youth but who is in fact gentle and thoughtful, miss anything about his "old life"? He says with a brilliant smile, "Hot showers. When I do go home, I love the luxury of being able to have hot water running over my body." More

Buddhism and Social Action

Amber Larson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Ken Jones, "Buddhism and Social Action: An Exploration" (Paul Ingram, editor, Buddhist Society's journal The Middle Way (Vol. 54, No. 2)

WARNING: Graphic self-immolation! A harmful and condemnable act of suicide conflating Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist concepts praising martyrdom in the name of "protest" -- bringing attention to U.S. War on Vietnam abuses by a Zen Buddhist monk. This harmful idea currently modern Tibetan monastic extremists.

1.1 Buddhism and the new global society

Protester (Time/Ted Soqui/Shepard Fairey)

It is the manifest suffering (dukkha, disappointment, lack of fulfillment, unsatisfactoriness, misery) and folly (moha, delusion, wrong view, avijja ignorance) in the world that invokes humane and compassionate social action in its many different forms.

For Buddhists this situation raises fundamental and controversial questions. And here, also, Buddhism has implications of some significance for Christians, humanists, and other non-Buddhists. By "social action" we mean the many different kinds of action intended to benefit humankind.

 

These range from simple individual acts of charity, teaching, and training, organized kinds of service, "right livelihood" (nonharmful survival) in and outside the helping professions, and through various kinds of community development as well as to political activity in working for a better society.

(Nati) Burmese Theravada monks lead Saffron Revolution against dictator

 

Occupy L.A. activist (WQ)

Buddhism is a pragmatic teaching that starts from certain fundamental propositions about how we experience the world and how we act in it. It teaches that it is possible to transcend this sorrow-laden world of our experience and is concerned first and last with ways of achieving that transcendence.

What finally leads to such transcendence is what we call wisdom (paññā or prajna). The enormous literature of Buddhism is not a literature of revelation and authority. Instead, it uses ethics and meditation, philosophy and science, art and poetry to point a way to this wisdom.

 

Similarly, Buddhist writing on social action, unlike secular writings, makes finite proposals which must ultimately refer to this wisdom, but which also are arguable in terms of our common experience.

 

In the East, Buddhism developed different "schools" or "traditions," serving the experiences of different cultures, ranging from Theravada Sri Lanka through Vajrayana Tibet and Mongolia to Zen Japan. Buddhism may thus appear variously as sublime humanism, magical mysticism, poetic paradox, and much else.

"Anonymous" NSA/CIA spy

These modes of expression, however, all converge upon the fundamental teaching, the "perennial Buddhism." Drawing upon the different Asian traditions to present the teachings in an attempt to relate them to our modern industrial Western society.

 

From the evidence of the Buddha's discourses, or sutras in the "Long Discourses" (Digha Nikaya), it is clear that early Buddhists were very much concerned with the creation of social conditions favorable to the individual cultivation of Buddhist values. 

An outstanding example of this, in later times, is the remarkable "welfare state" created by the Buddhist emperor, Asoka (B.C.E. 274-236). Ven. Walpola Rahula stated the situation -- perhaps at its strongest -- when he wrote:

"Buddhism arose in India as a spiritual force against social injustices, against degrading. superstitious rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices; it denounced the tyranny of the caste system and advocated the equality of all [people]; it emancipated woman and gave her complete spiritual freedom."

- Ven. Rahula (1978)

Lula, Freedom's daughter (occupyla.org)

Buddhist scriptures indicate the general direction of Buddhist social thinking, and to that extent they are suggestive for our own times. Nevertheless it would be pedantic, and in some cases absurd, to apply directly to modern industrial society social prescriptions detailed to meet the needs of social order which flourished 2[6] centuries ago.

 

The Buddhist householder of the "Advice to Householders Discourse" (Sigalovada Sutta, DN 31) experienced a different way of life from that of a computer consultant in Tokyo or an unemployed black youth in Liverpool [England].

And the conditions which might favor their cultivation of the Middle Way must be secured by correspondingly different -- and more complex -- social, economic, and political strategies.

 

It is therefore essential to attempt to distinguish between perennial Buddhism on the one hand and, on the other hand, the specific social prescriptions attributed to the historical Buddha which related the basic, perennial teaching to the specific conditions of his day.

(Blazing Wisdom) Buddhism: Philosophy, Religion, or Science of Mind

We believe that it is unscholarly to transfer the scriptural social teaching uncritically and with careful qualification to modern societies, or to proclaim that the Buddha was a democrat and an internationalist. The modern terms "democracy" and "internationalism" did not exist in the sense in which we understand them in the emergent feudal society in which the Buddha lived.

Buddhism is ill-served in the long run by such special pleading. On the other hand, it is arguable that there are democratic and internationalist implications in the basic Buddhist teachings.

 

Wat Maha Leap, Cambodia (BokehCambodia/flickr)

In the past 200 years society in the West has undergone a more fundamental transformation than at any period since Neolithic times, whether in terms of technology or the world of ideas. And now in the East, while this complex revolution is undercutting traditional Buddhism, it is also stimulating Asian Buddhism; in the West it is creating problems and perceptions to which Buddhism seems particularly relevant.

 

Throughout its history Buddhism has been successfully reinterpreted in accordance with different cultures, while at the same time preserving its inner truths. In this way has Buddhism spread and survived.

 

The historic task of Buddhists, both East and West, in the 21st century is to interpret perennial Buddhism in terms of the needs of industrial humans in the social conditions of their time and to demonstrate its acute and urgent relevance to the ills of society.

(PS) Zucotti Park: Buddhist monk visits Occupy Wall St. protests

 

To this great and difficult enterprise Buddhists will bring their traditional boldness and humility. For certainly this is no time for clinging to dogma and defensiveness. More

• VIDEO: Buddhist leader supports Occupy Wall St.
• VIDEO: Ken Jones' Critique of Western Buddhism
• VIDEO: Racist Burmese Buddhists attacked Rohingya
• VIDEO: We Are All Caught in the Idea of Progress (Krishnamurti and guests)

Relationships and "Bodhicitta" (video)

Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Western nun Ven. Thubten Chodron (sravasti.org)

(Sravasti Abbey) Ven. Thubten Chodron interviewed by Asian "Buddhist Television Network"

 

Lay practitioner meditation (la.shambhala.org)

Enlightenment-mind and Relationships are the twin topics of Ven. Thubten Chodron's Dharma talk delivered at the Buddhist Library in Singapore. In another talk in 2010 in Idaho, Sravasti Abbey brought us a talk about Kindness and Forgiveness. How is this ani (Tibetan Buddhist nun or gelongma) able to speak with such authority? She is not, regardless of her name, related to famous Shambhala Buddhist nun Pema Chodron. She ordained in 1977, making her part of the first generation of Western monastic practitioners in America. That length and depth of practice put her in touch with the Dharma, as a Westerner would approach and apprehend it. Her own meditative calm and broad study allows her to pass the teachings on to subsequent generations of Westerners and displaced Tibetans.

(Peaceful1987) A wonderful Dharma talk by American Buddhist nun Thubten Chodron

• Typhoon Haiyan, strongest cyclone of 2013, kills 100+

Study when practicing (Bhikkhu Bodhi)

American monk Bhikkhu Bodhi (bodhimonastery.org), making "The Case for Study" (Buddhist Publication Society) edited for Wisdom Quarterly (Access to Insight) by Dhr. Seven

The Buddha, Gandhara, ancient Indo-Greco Afghanistan (Boonlieng Wongchaowart/flickr)

 

Wisdom: leaf from the Bodhi tree

The recent upsurge of interest in Buddhism, both East and West, has been marked by a vigorous practical orientation. There is a drive to discover the peace and freedom to which the practice of Dharma (Pali, Dhamma) leads.

 

This zeal for practice, however, has often been accompanied by another trait -- the tendency to neglect or even belittle the methodical study of the historical Buddha's teachings. This is not likely to be fruitful.

Arguments are offered in defense of this anti-study attitude; they have already become familiar currency among us, for example:

• Study is concerned with "words and concepts," not with realities.
• It leads only to learning, not to wisdom.
• It can change our ideas but fails to touch us at deeper levels. 

To clinch the case, the testimony of the Buddha himself is sometimes enlisted. The Kalama Sutra is misunderstood and misquoted. His famous remarks that to learn much without practicing much is like counting the cows of others or like carrying a raft on one's head instead of using it to cross over to the further shore (nirvana).

 
This contention, to be sure, has its aspect of truth. But it also suffers from a one-sided emphasis that may actually thwart rather than aid our progress on the Buddhist path.

It is certainly true that learning without practice is fruitless. But the other side of the issue should also be considered. Should a person gather cows if s/he knows nothing about how to take care of them? Should one try to cross a rough and dangerous body of water without knowing how to operate a raft?
 

Past buddhas revealed by the Budda, Theravada art, ancient Thailand (Trianons/flickr.com)

 
The Buddha insisted that followers learn and transmit the Dharma -- both in the letter and the spirit.
 
Rather than appealing to traditional formulations and facile quotes, let us inquire ourselves into the value and function of Dharma-study.
 
The point at issue, it must be stressed, is not study as an academic discipline or the accumulation of a wealth of learning. It is, instead, about the acquisition of a sound and solid working knowledge of basic Buddhist doctrines.
 
To see why this is essential, we must recall that the entire practice of the proper Buddhist path develops out of the act through which we enter the path -- the going for [guidance] to the Triple Gem [Budddha, Dharma, and Sangha].

If we have taken this step honestly, with correct motivation, it implies that we have acknowledged our need for spiritual guidance and have entrusted ourselves to the Buddha as our guide and to this teaching as our vehicle of guidance [and to those who have successfully completed the path, the Noble Sangha or "Community of Enlightened" individuals, both lay and monastic].

By taking [guidance from] the Dharma, we accept not merely a technique of meditation that we can use at liberty for our own self-appointed purposes, but a profound and comprehensive teaching on the true nature of the human condition. This is a teaching designed to awaken in us a direct perception of  Truth as the means for reaching the full and final end of suffering (nirvana).
 

In the Buddha's Words

The liberation offered by the Dharma comes, not from simply practicing meditation in the context of our own preconceptions and desires, but from practicing upon the groundwork of the right understanding and optimal intentions communicated to us by the Buddha.
 
This cognitive character of the Buddhist path elevates doctrinal study and intellectual inquiry to a position of great importance.
 
Though the knowledge that frees the mind/heart from bondage emerges only from intuitive insight and not from a collection of doctrinal facts, genuine insight always develops on the basis of a preliminary conceptual grasp of the basic principles essential to right understanding. In the absence of it, growth will inevitably be obstructed.

The study (suta) and systematic reflection (anussati) through which we arrive at this preliminary and preparatory right view necessarily involve concepts and ideas.
 
Before we hasten to dismiss Dharma-study as being, therefore, only a worthless tangle of words, let us consider that concepts and ideas are our indispensable tools of understanding and communication.
 
Concepts can be valid or invalid tools of understanding; ideas can be fruitful or useless, capable of bringing immense benefit or of entailing enormous harm. (Few things are worse than grasping Buddhism correctly, which is likened to taking hold of a snake by the tail rather than the neck. Grabbing it by the tail is easy, but then it reaches back to bite and destroy one; taking it by the neck is difficult but safe. Then something useful, like the basis of an antidote to snakebites, can be extracted).

The object of studying the Dharma as part of our spiritual quest is to learn to comprehend our experience correctly, so that we become able to distinguish:

• the valid from the invalid,
• the true from the misleading,
• the wholesome from the unwholesome.

It is only by making a thorough and careful investigation that we will be in a position to reject what is detrimental to our growth and to apply ourselves with confidence (verifiable-faith) to cultivating what is beneficial.

Without this preliminary conceptual clarification, without having succeeded in rectifying our views, there can indeed be an earnest attempt to practice Buddhist meditation techniques. But there will not be the practice of meditation pertaining to the integral Noble Eightfold Path (which begins and ends with "right view," the first being preliminary and conceptual, the second being ultimate and the result of direct experience).

And while such free-based meditation may bring its practitioners mundane benefits like greater calm, heightened awareness, and pleasant equanimity, lacking the guidance of right view and the driving power of right motivation, it is questionable whether practice can ever lead to the penetrative realization of the Dharma, to its final goal, the end of ignorance about the Four Noble Truths and therefore the complete cessation of suffering (nirvana).
 

Bhikkhu Bodhi (dannyfischer.org)

It is difficult to give a single word of counsel on the subject of study applicable to ALL followers of the Dharma. Needs and interests vary so greatly from one person to another that each will have to strike a personal balance between study and practice that suits one's own disposition.
 
But without hesitation it can be said that ALL who earnestly endeavor to live by the Buddha's teaching will find their practice strengthened by methodically studying the Dharma!

Such an undertaking, of course, will not be easy. However, it is just through facing and surmounting the challenges we meet in life that our understanding will ripen and mature in liberating wisdom.