BUDDHIST RETREATWHY I GAVE UP ON FINDING MY RELIGION.

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By John Horgan @ http://www.slate.com/id/2078486

Buddha: a pragamatist focused on reducing suffering For a 2,500-year-old religion, Buddhism seems remarkably compatible with our scientifically oriented culture, which may explain its surging popularity here in America. Over the last 15 years, the number of Buddhist centers in the United States has more than doubled, to well over 1,000. As many as 4 million Americans now practice Buddhism, surpassing the total of Episcopalians. Of these Buddhists, half have post-graduate degrees, according to one survey. Recently, convergences between science and Buddhism have been explored in a slew of books—including Zen and the Brain and The Psychology of Awakening—and scholarly meetings. Next fall Harvard will host a colloquium titled "Investigating the Mind," where leading cognitive scientists will swap theories with the Dalai Lama. Just the other week the New York Times hailed the "rapprochement between modern science and ancient [Buddhist] wisdom."

Four years ago, I joined a Buddhist meditation class and began talking to (and reading books by) intellectuals sympathetic to Buddhism. Eventually, and regretfully, I concluded that Buddhism is not much more rational than the Catholicism I lapsed from in my youth; Buddhism's moral and metaphysical worldview cannot easily be reconciled with science—or, more generally, with modern humanistic values.

For many, a chief selling point of Buddhism is its supposed de-emphasis of supernatural notions such as immortal souls and God. Buddhism "rejects the theological impulse," the philosopher Owen Flanagan declares approvingly in The Problem of the Soul. Actually, Buddhism is functionally theistic, even if it avoids the "G" word. Like its parent religion Hinduism, Buddhism espouses reincarnation, which holds that after death our souls are re-instantiated in new bodies, and karma, the law of moral cause and effect. Together, these tenets imply the existence of some cosmic judge who, like Santa Claus, tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before rewarding us with rebirth as a cockroach or as a saintly lama.

Western Buddhists usually downplay these supernatural elements, insisting that Buddhism isn't so much a religion as a practical method for achieving happiness. They depict Buddha as a pragmatist who eschewed metaphysical speculation and focused on reducing human suffering. As the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman put it, Buddhism is an "inner science," an empirical discipline for fulfilling our minds' potential. The ultimate goal is the state of preternatural bliss, wisdom, and moral grace sometimes called enlightenment—Buddhism's version of heaven, except that you don't have to die to get there.

The major vehicle for achieving enlightenment is meditation, touted by both Buddhists and alternative-medicine gurus as a potent way to calm and comprehend our minds. The trouble is, decades of research have shown meditation's effects to be highly unreliable, as James Austin, a neurologist and Zen Buddhist, points out in Zen and Brain. Yes, it can reduce stress, but, as it turns out, no more so than simply sitting still does. Meditation can even exacerbate depression, anxiety, and other negative emotions in certain people.

The insights imputed to meditation are questionable, too. Meditation, the brain researcher Francisco Varela told me before he died in 2001, confirms the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, which holds that the self is an illusion. Varela contended that anatta has also been corroborated by cognitive science, which has discovered that our perception of our minds as discrete, unified entities is an illusion foisted upon us by our clever brains. In fact, all that cognitive science has revealed is that the mind is an emergent phenomenon, which is difficult to explain or predict in terms of its parts; few scientists would equate the property of emergence with nonexistence, as anatta does.

Much more dubious is Buddhism's claim that perceiving yourself as in some sense unreal will make you happier and more compassionate. Ideally, as the British psychologist and Zen practitioner Susan Blackmore writes in The Meme Machine, when you embrace your essential selflessness, "guilt, shame, embarrassment, self-doubt, and fear of failure ebb away and you become, contrary to expectation, a better neighbor." But most people are distressed by sensations of unreality, which are quite common and can be induced by drugs, fatigue, trauma, and mental illness as well as by meditation.

Even if you achieve a blissful acceptance of the illusory nature of your self, this perspective may not transform you into a saintly bodhisattva, brimming with love and compassion for all other creatures. Far from it—and this is where the distance between certain humanistic values and Buddhism becomes most apparent. To someone who sees himself and others as unreal, human suffering and death may appear laughably trivial. This may explain why some Buddhist masters have behaved more like nihilists than saints. Chogyam Trungpa, who helped introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the United States in the 1970s, was a promiscuous drunk and bully, and he died of alcohol-related illness in 1987. Zen lore celebrates the sadistic or masochistic behavior of sages such as Bodhidharma, who is said to have sat in meditation for so long that his legs became gangrenous.

What's worse, Buddhism holds that enlightenment makes you morally infallible—like the pope, but more so. Even the otherwise sensible James Austin perpetuates this insidious notion. " 'Wrong' actions won't arise," he writes, "when a brain continues truly to express the self-nature intrinsic to its [transcendent] experiences." Buddhists infected with this belief can easily excuse their teachers' abusive acts as hallmarks of a "crazy wisdom" that the unenlightened cannot fathom.

But what troubles me most about Buddhism is its implication that detachment from ordinary life is the surest route to salvation. Buddha's first step toward enlightenment was his abandonment of his wife and child, and Buddhism (like Catholicism) still exalts male monasticism as the epitome of spirituality. It seems legitimate to ask whether a path that turns away from aspects of life as essential as sexuality and parenthood is truly spiritual. From this perspective, the very concept of enlightenment begins to look anti-spiritual: It suggests that life is a problem that can be solved, a cul-de-sac that can be, and should be, escaped.

Some Western Buddhists have argued that principles such as reincarnation, anatta, and enlightenment are not essential to Buddhism. In Buddhism Without Beliefs and The Faith To Doubt, the British teacher Stephen Batchelor eloquently describes his practice as a method for confronting—rather than transcending—the often painful mystery of life. But Batchelor seems to have arrived at what he calls an "agnostic" perspective in spite of his Buddhist training—not because of it. When I asked him why he didn't just call himself an agnostic, Batchelor shrugged and said he sometimes wondered himself.

All religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created for our benefit, as a stage for our spiritual quests. In contrast, science tells us that we are incidental, accidental. Far from being the raison d'être of the universe, we appeared through sheer happenstance, and we could vanish in the same way. This is not a comforting viewpoint, but science, unlike religion, seeks truth regardless of how it makes us feel. Buddhism raises radical questions about our inner and outer reality, but it is finally not radical enough to accommodate science's disturbing perspective. The remaining question is whether any form of spirituality can.

BUDDHISM - A BRIEF INTRODUCTION FOR WESTERNERS

If it leads to compassion, you know it's knowledge. Otherwise, it's just more information.

by Gerald Grow

Copyright © 1996. Revision of March 13, 2008. All rights reserved. An original WWW publication.

Available at http://www.longleaf.net/ggrow





European history was deeply changed when Protestantism arose in 1517 in rebellion against the Catholicism of its day. In a similar way, Buddhism arose on the northern border of India around 500 B.C. in response to the Vedantic Hinduism of its day. Like medieval Catholicism, ancient Hinduism was a religion of rituals, with an elite priesthood who administered a complex theology. It supported a society in which people were rigidly divided into a system of caste, role, and power.

Like Martin Luther, Buddha proposed radical alternatives to the religion of his day--some of which resemble the ideas of the Protestant reformation. Buddha advocated individual effort, plain language and simple means. His approach emphasized direct experience rather than relying on priests or theology. In his vision, all people (including women and the poor) were equal and equally capable of spiritual development.

Although some sects later considered him divine, Buddha spoke of himself only as "one who is awake." Original Buddhism was less like a religion than like a set of psychological practices--exercises to do with your mind until you no longer need them--a raft to be discarded after you have crossed the stream.

The core of Buddhism spread to India, China, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Tibet--where it combined with the native traditions of each place to produce results as different as Zen --with its Japanese starkness and piercing beauty--and the colorful cheerfulness of Tibetan monks. Thailand and Burma claim to be the most direct descendants of Buddha's vision, though, naturally, others claim to be the true religion as well.

Buddhism seems to have arrived in America sometime in the 19th Century. Emerson and Thoreau were touched by it. According to Peter Matthiessen, the first Zen master known in America arrived in the 1890s, and shortly afterward, D. T. Suzuki began a long career of translating texts and writing about Buddhism, influencing such influential thinkers as Jung, Heidigger, and Toynbee in Europe and, in America, Aldous Huxley and Eric Fromm. Zen attracted the interest of several prominent American artists of the Beat Generation, including Allen Ginsberg and John Cage. Buddhism arrived in this country a second time after a wave of Tibetan lamas (driven out by the Chinese invasion of 1950) arrived in America the 1970s, established centers like the Naropa and Nyingma Institutes, set up schools and publishing houses, and began teaching on a wide scale.

Buddhism has attracted a large following among American intellectuals, perhaps because Buddhism contains so much insight on how to use the mind to tame the mind's excesses. Though many seem to have been puzzled by Bertolucci's 1994 film, "Little Buddha" (with its sudden shifts among realism, fable, and Indian operatic styles), it spoke to a growing interest in this country in the spiritual teachings of other cultures.

The Message of the Buddha

Buddha described his message in simple terms (the Four Noble Truths) that are somewhat difficult to discuss, because they do not refer to ideas so much as to experience.

1. Life is Suffering

To live is to suffer. Life is accompanied by inevitable pain, sickness, disappointment, disillusion, decay and death. This place we live on, the earth plane, is characterized by inevitable and unavoidable dissatisfaction, disappointment, rejection, failure, pain, yearning, decrepitude, and loss. "Suffering" in Buddhism refers not only to physical pain, aging, sickness, and death, and to emotional pain like fear, loss, jealousy, disappointment, and unrequited love, but also to the existential sense that, somehow, deep down, life is permanently out of joint. Everything is touched by the shadow of dissatisfaction, imperfection, disappointment. Suffering, in the Buddhist sense, is a pervasive condition. No one escapes it. Even enlightened teachers grow old, suffer the pains of decay, and die.

2. Suffering is Caused by Attachment

Suffering arises because everything changes, everything is impermanent. Everything is in process, all the time. Whenever we hope to find any lasting happiness by means of something that is changing, suffering results. This means that nothing in the realm of ordinary human experience can provide lasting happiness, and trying to force things to stand still and make us happy is itself the main source of misery.

"Attachment" in Buddhism extends far beyond the sense of "greed" or "clinging" to something closer to what the Christian tradition would call "pride"--a self-centered isolation, the separate selfhood, "ego" in the worst sense.

This selfhood acts upon others and the world as if they were forever separate from oneself, generating what author Charlene Spretnak described as "the continuous chain reaction of craving, jealousy, ill will, indifference, fear, and anxiety that fills the mind." This is a deep, pervasive, but normal kind of alienation--one seemingly built into the nature of the human nervous system.

In Buddhism, three concepts are said to characterize all things: Anicca -- Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. Anatta (or anatman) -- There is no separate self. What appears separate and enduring turns out to be changeable and "composite." What we experience as identity turns out to be a changing constellation of varying influences. Dukkha -- to believe otherwise, to cling to any thing or anyone (including yourself), expecting it to be enduring, whole, and a self, is to create and amplify suffering. And we all do it -- at least until we become, we hope, enlightened. Naturally, these concepts have been interpreted in many ways by many thoughtful people, including the Mayahana interpretation that our ordinary self is a non-self, but that we have a deep, true Buddha-nature that can be awakened.

The most pervasive form of self-centered suffering takes place as we project upon everyday experience a huge burden of extraneous interpretations, associations, fantasies, emotions, painful memories, and diversions. We act then with the Buddhist big three problems: greed, aversion, and delusion. Greed sucks things in to our purposes, violating their natures as necessary. Aversion shoves things away, denies, distorts, destroys them--again violating their natures. In the state of delusion, we float, confused, not seeing, not knowing, insulated from the pain and salvation of deep experience.

Instead of seeing each moment as it is, we react to each moment from our past pain and frustration; then we react to the pain and frustration; then we react to that reaction; and so on and on. In this way a special form of mental torment is created that consists of seemingly endless layers of pain, negative emotion, self-doubt and self-justification--known in Buddhism as "samsara," the illusory world we think of as real. It is what, in honest moments, many people might call "normality."

I think of it this way: Instead of experiencing life directly, we create a worldview and experience it. That worldview serves to protect us through a system of explanations; but it also makes each of us into an isolated self, separated from nature, from real experience, from spirituality, and from one another--causing all experience to be distorted and "out of joint," and ourselves to suffer from living at one remove from life. We are nearly always, in some degree, outsiders to the world and even to our own experience.



Buddhists have given deep attention to the ways human beings are at once empowered and entrapped by the categories we create for thought and language. Racial prejudice is a straightforward example of what Buddhists mean by suffering that is created by the mind; it is based on mental categories that distort perception and project our expectations onto others. The fundamental Buddhist act is to accept responsibility for one's projections, and to learn to know, first hand, how the mind creates illusion and amplifies suffering.

3. Freedom from Attachment is the Cure for Suffering

If we could be released from attachment, we would be released from suffering. And our primary attachment is to the concept of a separate, isolated self--from which we derive all other attachments and experience all other sufferings.

This I understand to be the central belief of Buddhism: When we fully face, accept, and lighten the self-amplified sufferings of our lives; when we begin to experience life beyond our delusions and confusions, beyond self, beyond culture, beyond knowledge--what we find is not a meaningless universe of alien forces, but our true home.

Life is real. Reality is good. Goodness, gratitude, love and joy are the natural state of the awakened heart.

When people begin to feel released from their self-sustained sufferings, they experience life more fully, they become more cheerful and compassionate. Most people have heard of the ultimate release--"nirvana"--a state of mystical unity with the cosmos. Fewer people know the moving story of how the Buddha and his major followers throughout history have approached nirvana, only to turn back from that mystical escape and devote themselves to a life of helping others in this imperfect world.

Enlightened people do not cease to experience the pain of existence. They only stop creating illusions that amplify that pain and cause new suffering. The rest of us, far from being enlightened, might try to stop making things worse than they are, to stop creating unnecessary suffering, and, by accepting life as it is, accept also the depth and vibrancy of experience.

4. The Way Out of Suffering is through the Eightfold Path

Buddha taught a method to lead away from self-sustained suffering toward a more enlightened and compassionate life--through the pursuit of morality, meditation, and wisdom, described as eight pursuits: right speech, right action, right livelihood, right concentration, right mindfulness, right effort, right understanding and right thought.

Because it avoids the extremes of asceticism and indulgence in favor of a life of moderation, nonviolence and compassion, Buddhism is known as the "Middle Way."

In the West, we tend to expect theological concepts to come in the form of logical propositions -- something that traces back at least as far as Aquinas' adaptation of Aristotle. Buddhism has a philosophical literature, to be sure, but most of the Buddhist writings encountered by lay persons seem not to be theo-logical as much as they are concepts that inspire and guide practice.

In this sense, Buddhism bears a resemblance to hatha yoga, Taoism, or tai chi. These are not systems of thought as much as they are systems of action -- practices. Theology, belief, and faith are surely intended to change the mind and heart. Practices such as the Buddhist practice of meditation and the other aspects of the eight-fold path, are another method to change the mind and heart, a method that -- as I understand it -- depends less on what you believe about God than on what you do each day.

Some Buddhist teachers emphasize the use of "skillful means," something kin to the Jesuit's willingness to adapt Catholic rituals to accommodate local customs. In skillful means, you take on a set of practices and concepts -- not because they stand for eternal truths, but because they get you somewhere. And, once you get there, once you cross the stream, you no longer need to carry the raft on your shoulders. In the words of St. Paul, you put away childish things. Indeed, perhaps all beliefs, all ideas, all concepts are but skillful means.

Buddhist Meditation

Meditation is but one part of the Buddhist path, but it is a part that is accessible to anyone, anywhere. Though Buddhist meditation cannot be learned in any depth without a teacher, the basic practice is simple. In meditation, Buddhists do not remove themselves from the world as some other schools of meditation do; rather, Buddhists practice a kind of awareness that enables them to be more fully present in the world.

Original Buddhist practices (known today as "vipassana" or "insight meditation") are sometimes austere. They may require years of daily sitting in silent meditation. In several cultures, such as Tibet, Buddhism developed into a multifaceted religion ("Mahayana" and "Vajrayana" Buddhism) which adds singing, movement, temples, ceremony, priests, scriptures, art, and other "religious" activities, so that it appeals to a greater variety of people. Still, vipassana meditation remains the underlying mental technology upon which Buddhism rests.

In a characteristic Buddhist meditation, you sit quietly and, in a non-directive way, allow attention to gently settle upon the ever-changing process of your breathing. When you become aware that your attention has shifted to something else, notice this fact, label that moment simply as "thinking," and guide your attention back to the breathing.

Why would anyone do this? Over time, this kind of mental inventory has the effect of changing the relationship you have with your thoughts and feelings. Little by little, you stop blindly reacting to them and begin to develop a space in which to choose how to respond, how to act, what to intend. You start to unhook the automatic cycle of reactivity and gain some freedom, as if your thoughts were only clouds floating across an immensely large, deep sky. It is important, however, not to blame yourself for having reactive thoughts and feelings. Those seem to be a natural part of being human. It is also natural to apply yourself in a disciplined way to learn to live less reactively.

Another instruction attributed to the Buddha directs you toward feeling love, kindness, and compassion progressively for yourself, those close to you, other people, those who have wronged you, and ultimately for all beings.

To the Western mind, it seems absurd that millions of people, sitting in silence, can change the world, end wars, improve humanity, feed the poor, care for the sick, etc. But it not so different from the Christian belief that prayer prepares one to be more loving and more just.




Meditation is an attempt to address the most fundamental causes of human misery. The Buddhist attempt to end war begins with cultivating inner peace, developing an unwavering ability to see things as they are, and treating all beings with compassion and respect.

The Buddhist View of the World

A few Buddhists concepts seem strange to the modern mind. Buddha inherited the Indian belief in reincarnation: Each person has lived before, and past lives influence how you experience this one.

More strange, Buddha said that, although people reincarnate, they have no souls. In part, this seems to be a reaction to the ancient Hindu belief in an immutable, eternal soul (atman) that migrates through many lifetimes.

In part, though, Buddha arrived at this conclusion by his radical method of awareness. Buddhism invites you to look unwaveringly at every experience and ask, "Is it solid, unchanging, whole?"

The answer, Buddhists say, is always, "No"--even when asked of the soul. Everything changes. Everything is impermanent. It is our attempt to attach ourselves to impermanent things, and gain happiness thereby, that guarantees and perpetuates suffering.

In some important ways, the Buddhist view of the universe resembles the view developed by 20th-century physics. Except for the mental categories we impose upon experience, we find nothing in experience that is immutable. There is no constant but our own misconceptions and our own doomed instinct to deny change. Every "thing" is actually a process--it arises, develops, flourishes, declines, and dissipates. All nouns are still-photos from the movie of life--which is made up of verbs. All that we see around and inside us is the result of trillions of simultaneous processes, arising and declining in a symphony of different overlapping rhythms at once. All that appears solid in this cosmos is in reality a shimmering, substanceless dance of energy in flux.

This shimmering immensity of inexhaustible becoming, out of which all things arise and to which they return, is lightly labled by such terms as emptiness, the void, the one reality, and Buddha-mind.

But where the shimmering reality of physics leaves us adrift like meaningless specks in an incomprehensible universe, Buddhism envisions a reality beyond meaning and meaninglessness, beyond knowing, beyond self, beyond duality, beyond suffering--a dance of all things, in which we can become enlightened, interconnected, and compassionate dancers.

The crucial distinction, I believe, is this: Many people have looked deeply into the human condition and come back cynical, ironic, bitter, or insane. Buddhists would say that such people did not look deeply enough into suffering to detect their own contribution to it, and hence the direction out.

Buddhists teach this: True insight leads to compassion. Insight is compassion. Seeing your own condition, your own imperfections, your own joys and thoughts, pains and disappointments, illusions and delights, shows you, not "your" separate and individual mind, but "mind" itself--the universal shared experience of all people.

Pain is not just "your" separate and individual pain. It is "the" pain that others, everywhere, feel.

Joy is not "your" separate and individual joy. It is "the" joy that others, everywhere, feel.

When you dig deep enough, all the wells run together in a place where every wave celebrates that it is the ocean moving through form after form.

People ask, "Is there a God?" "Do we live after death?" "Does life have meaning?"--To all such questions, the Buddha replied with directions to attend to the immediate problems caused by the way we use our minds to distort life and amplify suffering. He taught that we must first remove the poisoned arrow from our consciousness. Afterwards, we can have intricate discussions about where the arrow was shot from, who made it, what wood it is made from, how the point was sharpened, what kind of bow was used, and whether there is a God or an afterlife.

Meanwhile, act now to counteract the habits that poison the mind. Act now to remember the clarity, compassion, and joyfulness of your true nature. Nothing else is as urgent. And this human life, right now, is a rare, precious opportunity to choose to return to the roots of your being, avoid reactivity, and promote clarity, kindness, and compassion.

According to Buddhism as I understand it (and I am not a Buddhist, only a grateful student of human spirituality) the dance of process, continuous change, and boundless creative vitality is what is ultimately real; and we are born with the potential for knowing it directly -- and most directly in the most ordinary moments of our daily lives. As some Zen practitioners put it, everything is interconnected; therefore, if one thing is real, everything is real. So attend wholly to the one thing before you, and it will make all the rest of the universe stop reeling and become real again. And the radiance of the entire universe will dwell in that one small thing.

Where Christianity envisions Heaven and Hell, Buddhism directs our attention to the several tastes in the tea, to how the changing light shines through each particular leaf, to the way this person is speaking to us now -- and to the eternal moment inside ordinary things.

No matter what our abstracting mind and categorical language tell us, there is no dance separate from the dancers. The dancers and the dance are one. And one with us.

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For further reading

The one book I most recommend to start with is: Buddhism, A Way of Life and Thought, by Nancy Wilson Ross. Vintage Press.

Peter Matthiessen, Nine-Headed Dragon River (Boston, Shambhala, 1987) (A moving, poetic account of Matthiessen's spiritual experiences as a student of Zen.)

Huston Smith, The World's Religions (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991).

Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991). (Her Buddhist critique of deconstruction is well worth looking at.)

Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation (Boston: Shambhala, 1987).

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.

Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior (Boston: Shambhala, 1984).

For a more technical, scholarly account, see Rahula, Walpola, What the Buddha Taught

Gerald Grow's mind-clearing exercise, a Westernized version of a basic Buddhist meditation.

Gerald Grow's photo essay, "Dissolution of the Mandala.

Gerald Grow's essay, "Touching the Face of the Buddha."

"We are literally made from stars." -- a brief inspirational essay on interconnectedness.

BUDDHISM IN ASIA: CHALLENGES & PROSPECTS

I - Historical Context & Buddhist Revival

Buddhism in Asia can be classified geographically or traditionally; that is, according to the different schools (Yanas). The two main schools are Theravada (also known as Hinayana and Savakayana) and Mahayana.

The East Asian countries of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam are all Mahayana; only in South Vietnam is there a small group of Theravada. Tibet, Mongolia and parts of the former Soviet Union are in the Vajarayana tradition that grew out of Mahayana and that influences China, Korea and Japan. The South and Southeast Asia countries of Sri Lanka, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Siam (now officially called Thailand) all follow the Theravada tradition.

Some modern scholars, especially Dr. Malalasekera of Sri Lanka, who founded the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB) in 1950, felt the term Hinayana (small vehicle) is pejorative. He proposed the name of Theravada that was historically one of the 18 schools within Hinayana. The term Theravada is now officially accepted in Buddhist countries in South and Southeast Asia.

Some years ago, I was invited to give lectures in Taiwan and Japan on Thai Buddhism. Most members of the audience were surprised that we also believed in serving all sentient beings, for the benefit of others rather than ourselves. The prevailing belief among Mahayanists is that the Hinayanists only care for their personal liberation. We need to understand each other more appropriately.

This reminds me of my late teacher, the renounced Bhikkhu Buddhadasa who said that we must know the essence of our tradition, which is to overcome selfishness - to transform greed into generosity, hatred into loving kindness, and ignorance or delusion into wisdom or right understanding. He also warned that many negative elements appear in Buddhism, especially when it coexists with nationalism, Hinduism, feudalism, occultism, capitalism and the like.

We should not boast that our Buddhist tradition is the best. We must not only tolerate but also study and respect our friends' tradition and religion, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikkhism and Judaism although their customs and languages may be different from ours. With an open heart and sincerity, we can really learn from different religions and traditions, if we use skillful means in applying Dhammic language beyond worldly language.

Bhikkhu Buddhadasa urged all of us to collaborate with friends from different traditions and religions - even agnostics and atheists - since all humans are spiritual beings, who can really go beyond being an economic or political animal, trapped by intellectual or personal pursuits. He felt that if human beings unite together spiritually, we could be a strong moral force to overcome the modern worldly evils of greed - economism and consumerism; hatred - militarism and imperialism; and delusion - mainstream education without contemplation and mainstream mass media.

Unfortunately Buddhism in Asia became part and parcel of nationalism or the Sangha was too close to the powers-that-be.

This is especially true in East Asia starting with the China of the Tang dynasty (618-906) when Buddhism was very vigorous and powerful, politically, socially and spiritually. Once the rulers who supported Buddhism were got rid of, the Confucians made it clear that Buddhism could remain in the Middle Kingdom provided that it only cared for the welfare of those in the next world and for those who sought inner peace privately without any social or political commitment. This is true of Korea, Japan and Vietnam too.

In Japan, it was as late as the Meji period that Buddhism lost its role entirely - politically and socially. Monks who resisted state powers were killed, put in prison and demonized. The book Zen at War by Brian Victoria shows us clearly that Japanese people used meditation practice to serve the emperor and the nation violently. Monks were encouraged to marry and now there are very few monks and nuns in Japan. Rather there are married priests who perform religious rituals, mostly at funeral services.

In Korea, especially after the Japanese occupation in the 19 th century monks were encouraged to marry in the Japanese fashion. Most of the abbots who had been meditating without social or political awareness, urged their followers to pray for the Japanese emperor. Young patriots and intellectuals became Christians to fight for Korean independence. Being Christian, one was protected psychologically and politically by western imperialism that used Christian missionaries for political purposes. This could also be found in many Asian Buddhist countries; only in Korea were there more Christians than Buddhists and the Christians held all the important political positions.

In 1860 Vietnam was a French protectorate. French missionaries were backed by the French government to educate Vietnamese Catholics to serve the new rulers and to advance socially, economically and politically in a limited degree. The Buddhists were left behind to pursue personal well-being in the so-called backward Vietnamese culture, where even language had to adopt the Romanized form.

As for the Theravada tradition South and Southeast Asia, every country, except Siam, became part of the British or the French empire. However, monks remained at the heart of the lay people at the village level. The patriarchs who used to influence the Kings lost their role, except in Siam. The Siamese were more fortunate as one of their princes, Mongkut, joined the Sangha for 27 years. He not only studied Pali, the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism, and the Buddhist tradition, but also English and Latin. So he was more advanced than his contemporaries in Asia vis-à-vis Western imperialism. He also studied western science and technology. This put him in a position to challenge Christian missionaries in their teaching of the gospels that were being questioned by westerners of the 19 th century. His skillful means also encouraged him to be gentle and flexible with Western expansion. After the demise of his brother, he became King Rama IV in 1851 and opened the country to Western capitalism. Siam remained independent despite some disadvantages and Siamese Buddhism could be proven as not inferior to Western science.

One of his lay disciples, Chao Phya Dipakaravamsa, who later became Foreign Minister and a great historian, wrote a book against Christian accusation that Buddhism was antiquated and full of superstitions and magics. The author argued that the essential teaching of the Buddha was scientific and could be proven logically by modern Western approaches. The book was summarized in English by Henry Albaster and published in London in 1871 with the title of The Wheel of the Law.

This must be the first sign of modern Buddhism in the West. Likewise in Sri Lanka, Buddhist monks had a big debate with the Christian missionaries in 1873 with a strong implication that Buddhism is more relevant to the modern world than Christianity. The news of this debate reached the USA. Hence Colonel Olcott and Madame Blavatsky traveled from the New World to Sri Lanka. Colonel Olcott was the first Westerner who declared himself a Buddhist and wrote a number of books on Buddhist catechisms. Madame Blavatsky and Olcott influenced a young Singhala who declared himself an Anagarika with the Buddhist name of Dhammapala and who became a champion of modern Buddhism, with the establishment of the Maha Bodhi Society in India to propagate the teaching of the Buddha in the land of its Founder. The Society was also established in England to spread Buddhism in the West.

Concurrently British colonials, especially T.W. Rhys Davids, in Sri Lanka also studied Pali in order to understand ancient knowledge and the law of the country and became fascinated by the message of Buddhism. Hence the Pali Text Society was founded in England in 1881, followed by the teaching of Buddhism in one or two English Universities, which led to the foundation of the Buddhist Society in London in 1925 - the first landmark of Buddhism beyond Asia.

In China, the modern attempt to revive the Sangha from its state of intellectual and moral decline was part of a general movement towards national regeneration which rose around the beginning of the 20 th century as a response to two oppressive forces: the general backwardness of China's ‘feudal' society, and the impact of the West. It took place in an international context. The Buddhist revivalists established contacts with Japan, India and the Buddhist countries of South and Southeast Asia, and even with Buddhist societies in the West. Some of them studied, for the first time in Chinese history, the Theravada tradition of the Pali Canon, and occasionally, after many centuries, Chinese Buddhist scholars even took up the study of Sanskrit. Moreover, the attempt to revive Buddhism must be regarded as a reaction against one aspect of Western dominance: the impact of Christianity. The movement was deeply influenced by the presence of well-organized Catholic and Protestant missions in China, which stimulated the reformers to get organized and develop institutions and missionary methods similar to those of their Christian rivals.

The first champions of a Buddhist revival were - characteristically - laymen who around the beginning of the last century launched a movement to produce Buddhist scriptures and treatises using modern printing techniques and to raise the cultural level of the Sangha by founding Buddhist seminaries. The political situation was unfavourable, for both the late Ch'ing and early Republican governments regarded the clergy as an easy target, and did not hesitate to confiscate Buddhist institutions to be made into schools, and to appropriate monastic landed property in order to finance their modernization programmes. Various attempts to organize the Sangha on a national scale in order to resist the combined pressure of government policy and Christian missions finally led to the founding, in 1929, of the nationwide Chinese Buddhist Association by the two leaders of the revival movement: the venerable abbot T'ai-hsu (1899-1947), who represented the more progressive wing, and the more conservative Yuan-ying (1878-1953).

In the following decades the Association undertook a number of activities that led to a revival of Buddhist studies and to a heightened awareness of the values of Buddhism. But a large-scale renaissance did not take place. The general intellectual and political climate in China, dominated by the force of scholar ideologies such as nationalism, ‘wholesale modernization', and Marxism-Leninism, left little room for religious activism. And, most important, the revival remained restricted to a small modernizing elite of monks and cultured laymen. The overwhelming majority of the Sangha was not touched at all. Moreover, the new Buddhist organizations generally suffered from inexperienced leadership, personal controversies and lack of funds, and the close relations between Chinese and Japanese Buddhist institutions definitely harmed the image of the movement. As such contacts were consciously used by the Japanese government for the purpose of political infiltration and ‘Japan-promotion'.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the tensions were aggravated. In general, the new regime abstained from direct and forceful repression, as Buddhism was expected to die out by itself, like other residual phenomena of the ‘feudal' past. However, violent action against the clergy and widespread vandalism were committed during political mass campaigns, particularly in the hectic years of the Cultural Revolution (1965-9), and the Tibetan revolt in 1959. This was followed by harsh repressive measures against Tibetan Buddhism. In so far as Buddhism is tolerated, it clearly is a truncated Buddhism reduced to religious worship, and divested of all the social and economic functions that monasteries used to have. The Sangha itself, for which there is no reliable quantitative data, has no doubt been decimated by laicization and lack of new ordinations. To some extent, the updated Chinese Buddhist Association set up after 1949 has been politically useful as a channel for implementing religious policy, and as a representative ‘people's organization' in entertaining formal contacts with Buddhist groups abroad.

In general, the prospects for the Buddhist clergy in China are rather gloomy. It may be argued that the Chinese Sangha has for many centuries been exposed to the pressure of hostile ideologies and still managed to survive. But the monasteries, large and small, always remained in the possession of the material means to do so. Since the early 1950s, their economic base has been destroyed. Temple lands have been confiscated and redistributed, and, apart from a few ancient temples that are at least physically preserved as historical monuments, Buddhist institutions are wholly dependent on the believers' contributions. Even if in the most recent years (since1976) there are signs of a somewhat more liberal policy, yet the ideological pressure and the lack of means of subsistence, this time coupled with an excessive emphasis on wholesale modernization, are not conducive to the existence, let alone the flowering, of Chinese Buddhism as an organized religion.

Buddhism in Taiwan fared no better than the mainland as long as the Kaomintang ruled the Republic of China dictatorially. When the country became democratic, Buddhism was free of State control and began to have a role in social welfare and as Taiwan became prosperous economically Chinese Buddhism from the Republic of China expanded worldwide. However, its role is yet to involve social change using Buddhist skillful means.

Vietnamese Buddhists were awakened from their isolation from social concerns after the Americans left the country, but it was too late to gain any significant ground. Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hanh was in exile for over three decades before being allowed to return to the country briefly in 2004-5 and the Sangha in Vietnam was oppressed by the Communist regime, no better than China until the visit of Thich Nhat Hanh. It seems the Vietnamese government is beginning to realize that the Sangha can play a vital role in restoring traditional Vietnamese culture to stop the influx of the monoculture of consumerism.

However, the awakening of the Buddhists in South Korea after the Korean War and the demise of Korean dictatorship gave hope for the revival of Buddhism there, despite the mainstream Sangha that is connected too closely with materialism and consumerism. Indeed Buddhism in any capitalist country of Asia faces this new danger to such a degree that most leaders, in the Sangha as well as in the laity, are not fully aware of.

In Japan traditional Buddhism is still engaged by and large in funeral services and making money from tourism. There are some exceptions like Professor Kenko Futaba (President of Ryukoku University from 1983-1995) who was a pioneer in engaged Buddhism, as he campaigned passionately for the rights of minorities in Japan and was actively involved in enactment of the law liberating Japan's untouchables, the burakumin.

By and large only the new Buddhism in the lay movements have had any social impact in the country and elsewhere, especially the Rishokosaikai and the Soka Gakkai. Yet both still concentrate their activities on social welfare rather than social change. Although the Soka Gakkai engages directly or indirectly in politics through its political party - the Komeito - the party offers nothing new, in terms of nonviolence and social equity.

After Mongolia gained its independence, Buddhism plays a major role in developing democracy and alternative education. The kingdom of Bhutan has also developed the notion of Gross National Happiness instead of Gross National Product. This has attracted the attention of many movements in the world which seek alternatives to mainstream economism.

In India, despite the demise of Buddhism for so many centuries, once Dr. Ambedkar declared himself to be Buddhists in 1956, millions of the untouchables have embraced the path of the Buddha. And since the Dalai Lama and Tibetan teachers came to live in India after the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, quite a number of Indian leaders have embraced Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama has now become a key figure in helping the Ambedkerite Buddhists to grow spiritually and nonviolently.

II - Challenges & Prospects

In the mid 20 th century quite a number of concerned Buddhists felt that Buddhism in various Asian countries had been separated from each other for centuries and that Buddhists do not know each other well. The abovementioned WFB was created in 1950 in an effort to address this. However it is linked directly with governments and Buddhist establishments and afraid of interfering with the governments that support it economically. Hence it is only a platform for a reunion of various Buddhists to declare how wonderful Buddhists are. There is no consideration of social suffering which is the first Noble Truth. WFB has no stand on Tibet and the Chinese invasion-nor on Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese military junta, who even held the Buddhist Summit in Burma two years ago. There is little understanding of gender issues and social justice - not to mention social structures within the Sangha that on the whole are unjust and controlled mostly by male chauvinism.

Almost two decades ago, some of us felt a need for an appropriate role of Buddhism in the modern world. Some call it small buddhism (small b) that is not clinging to any particular culture, school of thought, or country. Hence the words Engaged Buddhism or Socially Engaged Buddhism were coined to be a Buddhist liberation movement in Asia and beyond. The International Network of Engaged Buddhists was founded in 1989 as a contrast to the World Fellowship of Buddhists.

I believe that the challenges and prospects for contemporary Asian Buddhists is to convey the teachings of the Buddha appropriately for the 21 st century. Many good Buddhist teachers are excellent in providing techniques for inner peace, which is the heart core for world peace. However contemporary Buddhists need to understand the complexity of the modern world with proper Buddhist perspectives.

A major problem that the post-colonial world has long faced is how to be "modern" yet non-Western. The discourse of Modernity (in the context of development) often smacks of imperialism. Developmental modernity is deeply rooted in old-fashioned, racially defined Europeanization, implying racial hierarchies. As such, the threat of alienation looms over those who unequivocally adopt such modernism. For the bulk of humanity, which is non-Western (and non-white), this is a major problem they have long been confronting.

The capitalist promise of emancipation through continuous economic growth and technological advancement has also been a vain hope. This is because without a proper perspective, the economy can never grow large enough; technological advancement can never be advanced enough; we never have enough wealth and so on.

Economic growth brings with it great danger such as ecological disaster and increasing income disparity. In New York City, Noam Chomsky reports that nearly 60% of black youth lack economic and educational opportunity, have no access to even the most basic social services and little sense of security. Their plight is not significantly different from the inhabitants of Bangladesh. Similar situations are present in Europe. The BBC recently reported that the living conditions of some poor children in London are comparable to those that Charles Dickens wrote of in the 19 th century.

With this understanding, my vision of the future is not rooted in the capitalist myth of emancipation. For me, the future must be built on traditional wisdom and culture. As Helena Norberg-Hodge has argued in her book Ancient Futures, the future of the world cannot be found in New York, London or other Western metropolis. Rather it is found in communities we find in the Indian states of Ladakh and Kerala and grassroots movements like the Assembly of the Poor in Siam. Indeed when Tibet become autonomous that would example of a modern state of stressing on with Buddhist democracy, peace, nonviolence, ecological balance with respect to indigenous cultures and spirituality.

The future of the world must not neglect the spiritual perspective. There is a wealth of wisdom that can be garnered from religious traditions. The counter-modernity spirit advocated and practiced by Gandhi is helpful.

As a Buddhist, I feel that the teachings of the Buddha have much to offer to mitigate the suffering in the world. There are differences between the East and West although I do not see them as opposites or hierarchical relationships where one side is privileged. Seeing the world in terms of opposites is a source of intolerance, bigotry, fundamentalism and racism. Once you say "I am", the terms "you are" and "we and they" naturally follow, leading to conflict and fragmentation, threatening the cultivation of the whole unit at the individual and collective levels.

In the current phase of transnationalism there may be similarities between the fate of Easterners and Westerners. There seems to be an emerging powerful capitalist class of elites in nations across the globe engaging in similar patterns of capital accumulation, consuming, and thinking. We live in a world characterized by the intensification, radicalization, and universal spread of an extreme form of modernity that now relies simply on its own justification and devours all other forms of actualization of human beings.

In the post-Cold War world, East and West, a spirit of capitalist triumphalism is breeding hubris, delusion, and arrogance, overwhelming many leaders. This is particularly strong in the West in the wake of the apparent victory over the Communism. The aggressive promotion of free-market capitalism preached by the neoliberal school of economics is a stark manifestation of this of capitalist triumphalism . As John Ralston Saul has noted, a new Holy Trinity has been discovered, with competition as the Father, efficiency as the son, and the market place as the Holy Spirit.

Tolerance for socio-economic diversity and alternative models of development is almost non-existent. Formerly diverse ways of life worldwide are being eroded by a consumer culture. This oppressive environment is destroying meaningful freedom, democracy, and human rights. I humbly and sincerely recommend that these negative trends may be overcome by discovering the teachings of the Buddha. I want people world wide, especially those indoctrinated into capitalist and consumer culture, to see the Buddha simultaneously as the Enlightened One and as a simple, humble monk. It was simplicity and humility that enabled the Buddha to achieve enlightenment. This is the antidote needed.

By simplicity, I mean freedom from attachment to material and sensual pleasure. Gain, honor, sensual happiness and praise ultimately lead to loss, ignominy, suffering, and denunciation, respectively. The Buddha, who wandered as a monk for six years before enlightenment called these the eight worldly conditions and stated that whoever is bound to these will never be free from the cycle of birth and death. Simplicity contributes to the realization of a noble life because it guides us down the Noble Eightfold path. Where consumerism holds personal material success in the highest esteem, one learns from the Buddha to constantly reduce attachment and to envision success as overcoming attachment to personal gains and possessions. Free from these attachments, one has sufficient time and energy to nurture the seeds of peace within. From the Buddhist perspective, a prosperous person is self-reliant; has self-dignity, is proud of his/her culture; is content, generous, and ever mindful. Income and wealth are not indicators of prosperity in Buddhism as in global capitalism. With the right understanding of simplicity a peaceful life relates harmoniously with all sentient beings and the natural environment. The five senses are not indulged through abuse of thought, speech, and action. We understand that consumerism and the like can endanger the earth's biosphere and strengthen transnational corporations and institutions that care more for profit than the well-being of people. Simplicity guides one to be mindful of how to create and use wealth giving more than taking from others.

Humility also implies the respect for all sentient beings. If we are humble, we co-exist and do not see ourselves as exceptional or superior. If one is always right or good, then the other is always wrong or evil. Through humility we can learn to see the consequences of our actions and struggle for greater social justice and equality.

Equality is often misunderstood as a concept. It does not mean sameness, for some people need more than others. A sick person requires more resources than a well person, an educated person requires not more, but different things than an uneducated person and so on. Equality also tends to denote a leveling up process equated with striving to be like the rich and powerful. We seem to forget that equality can also be attained if the rich live more simply and share their wealth with the poor.

Consumerism and unlimited growth directly contradict the concept of environmental sustainability and technological advancements and can only delay the impending ecological disaster. This leads to the question of whether the whole international capitalist system - from its agents, institutions, and structures to its basic culture and ideology - is inherently defective. From a Buddhist perspective, it definitely is.

The real meaning of the word Buddha is "to be awake". When we are awakened to simplicity and humility and aware of the suffering engendered by greed, hatred, and delusion, our consciousness is restructured. We become mindful about ourselves and others and are naturally led to restructure human society. The restructuring of the individual human consciousness and the society is complementary to each other and both are desperately needed. The global economy is fueled by insatiability and makes a virtue of greed and consumerism. The Buddha taught that the wheel of righteousness (dhammacakka) must control the wheel of power (anacakka). In the modern world, the quest for greater profit ultimately determines the actions of the rich and powerful, thus any top-down attempt to redress class and ecological problems is likely to fail. The teachings of the Buddha, however, state that the rich and powerful, especially the rulers, must have only one overriding concern - the upholding the law of dhamma.

The Buddha was a simple and humble monk. I would like everyone captivated by the culture and ideology of consumerism and indoctrinated into a belief in the linearity of history to see this simple truth. Then consider the truth that the Buddha's simple and humble teachings provide a different way of seeing the world and if properly understood and practiced, and lead a way to a noble life. I am so very happy to say that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is also a simple and humble monk. He is indeed guiding many of us with his compassion wisdom and skillfulness very patiently to the hopeful future not only of Asia, but the world

......

Courtesy

http://www.sulak-sivaraksa.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=74&Itemid=103

A REVIEW OF ENGAGED BUDDHISM: BUDDHIST LIBERATION MOVEMENTS IN ASIA

Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia. Edited By Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King. New York: State University of New York, 1996, xii + 446 pages, ISBN 0-7914-2844-3, $24.95

Reviewed By Mavis L. Fenn

Assistant Professor
St. Paul's United College
Waterloo, Canada
mfenn@watarts.uwaterloo.ca
________________________________________

Engaged Buddhism is a collection of eleven articles that focuses on engaged Buddhism in Asia, Buddhism that arises out of "a new awareness of the social and institutional dimensions of suffering" (p. 10) and seeks to "influence temporal power" in ways that will reduce institutionalized suffering (p. 19). Taken together, these articles provide an excellent introduction to the field of engaged Buddhism and to the major leaders, issues and activities that constitute Buddhist liberation movements in Asia.

The central nine articles are framed by an introductory essay by editor Christopher S. Queen and a conclusion by Sallie B. King. In his introduction, Queen outlines the ingredients he feels characterize a liberation movement. It is defined as "a voluntary association guided by exemplary leaders and a common vision of a new society (or world) based on peace, justice, and freedom" (p. 10). It is this emphasis on the social and on the here-and-now that distinguishes a liberation movement from the more traditional notion of liberation, "a highly personal and other-worldly notion of liberation" (p. 10). In addition, ritual and spiritual practices like meditation, traditionally associated with religious specialists, have been appropriated by the laity.

Queen traces the origins of engaged Buddhism, beginning with the thorny issue of whether or not it represents continuity or discontinuity with traditional Buddhist social teaching and action. He reviews the work and influence of Walpola Rahula, including brief summaries of criticisms directed to Rahula's view of the early sa.mgha. This section provides a valuable summary for anyone interested in scholarly views of the socio-political content in the Paali Canon or its place in Theravaada Buddhism. The type of engaged Buddhism envisioned by Rahula—"that of monks legitimating and staffing the government in all of its functions, including warfare—does not resemble contemporary engaged Buddhism" (p. 19). Nor, concludes Queen, has it been "a typical pattern in the social history of Asia" (p. 18).

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http://www.buddhistethics.org/5/fenn982.html

BUDDHISM IN THAILAND IS IN NEED OF RADICAL CHANGE

Thai nationalists tap a source of empty pride
By METTANANDO BHIKKHU, Bangkok Post, Feb 7, 2007
The writer argues that Buddhism in Thailand is in need of radical change, but definitely not through the grandiose status of a National Religion
Bangkok, Thailand -- In every change there is always a chance. This saying is true not only in business, but also for Buddhist nationalists in Thailand who are trying to make Buddhism a national religion under a new constitution that is being drafted.
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At present it seems the winds of change are blowing in their favour, but they have not considered the full implications of appointing Buddhism as the National Religion, which would give empty pride to the majority of Thais who, sadly, have little awareness of what is going on in their own religion.
The nomination of a National Religion is not only undemocratic; it would be oppressive to other equally nationalist Thais who are not Buddhists and hurt the peace process in the South. And it would mean nothing, in practice, for Buddhist monks under the oppressive Ecclesiastical Act of BE 2505 (1962) which was issued during the military dictatorship of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, based on the assumption of Buddhism as Thailand's national religion.
According to the Lord Buddha, the Sangha or the Buddhist Community is the family of monks and nuns who respect each other according to their seniority of ordination. It serves not only as an institution for spiritual development with healthcare and freedom of education; it also has system of regulations independent of the state.
The Buddhist community has survived for over 2,000 years in many countries without support from government.
There is a huge defect in the Ecclesiastical Act, which was written to impose a feudalistic structure of administration on top of the Sangha, wherein the once universal brotherhood among monks has been eroded and their rights as citizens of Thailand sacrificed to the security of the feudal hierarchy of their superiors.
Under this Act, all Thai monks are ruled under a feudal system, another state within the kingdom wherein abbots serve as state officers and they have authority to rule over their temples. A rotation of positions is not included in this system.
One outcome of this law is seen in the Thai language: the original meaning of Sangha as a ''community'' has been lost. Now the word ''sangha'' in Thai means an ''individual monk''.
Unbelievably, in Thailand where monks are highly respected, under this feudalistic law monks who apply for citizen ID cards at any local office of the government are threatened with being defrocked.
Also, monks have no right to apply for passports without consent from each member of their ecclesiastical hierarchy, which normally takes months to complete before the application form can be forwarded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Monks who are liberal, reformist or those who disagree with any policy of the Ecclesiastical Council risk getting no consent for their passports, and thus no freedom of movement.
They are also barred from communicating through any form of state-run public media.
Taking comfort in the feudal culture of the Thai clergy, the Ecclesiastical Council of Thailand never endorses any bills, document or policies of the United Nations which endorses rights or equality among people.
The clergy's oppressive system is not its only problem. The monks' education system also needs much improvement. Currently, there is no teaching of Thai culture, society, history or geography in the ecclesiastical syllabus. All these subjects have been classified by the monastic council as merely secular.
While Pali literature is promoted by the Ecclesiastical Council, the only text is an archaic one on Pali grammar composed by a princely monk, formatted like the Victorian English grammar book, making it extremely difficult for students to comprehend. This text also prevents them from understanding Pali grammar as taught in other Buddhist countries, such as Sri Lanka and Burma. Instead of studying the Tripitaka, the canonical literature of Buddhism, the Ecclesiastical Council views that the Tripitaka is too holy for anyone to study or interpret. With this reason, they include only commentaries, mostly written by the monks of Mahavihara temple in Sri Lanka in the 5th-10th centuries AD as their set texts, second-hand literature written 1,000 years after the Buddha.
Up till now there has been no attempt by any government of Thailand nor the Ecclesiastical Council to change the syllabus because it is bound to the old, feudal royal ties. Unlike the Tripitaka, the commentaries have no room for radical analysis or criticism. They focus mainly on defending the Buddhist faith and glorifying Lord Buddha by miracles and supernaturalism. These stories do not encourage monks to be aware of their social responsibility, blaming all vicissitudes of life on past karma or conduct.
The impact of such commentarial literature is present and clear in every Theravada country: status quos are endorsed; women are seen as inferior creatures; all inequalities in society are seen as displays of the Law of Karma and all victims deserve their fate and humility; all this makes social development planning almost impossible.
It is not surprising that instead of being a religion of peace and wisdom, Buddhism in Thailand fosters supernaturalism. Many high-ranking monks in Bangkok are astrologers, masters of the occult arts or entrepreneurs in the amulet industry, making Thailand one of the world's largest amulet producers. The amulet market, also controlled by the Ecclesiastical Council in Thailand, is as lucrative as that of the underground lottery: billions of baht circulate in this business daily, and it is all tax-free.
Buddhism in Thailand is in need of radical change - but not through the grandiose status of a National Religion. Rather, we need a separation of Church and State, so that Buddhism can be freed from governmental control and the feudal lords of the Ecclesiastical Council. It will be good not only for Buddhists, but for the development of democracy in Thailand.
Mettanando Bhikkhu is a Thai Buddhist monk and a former physician. He is special adviser on Buddhist affairs to the secretary-general of the World Conference of Religions for Peace.