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

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Courtesy

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