Statues of Buddhas representing the Five Buddha Families in Kathmandu, Nepal, being readied for their future homes and shrines. Prof. R. Thurman, from Fearless Mountain Newsletter (formerly The Sanghapala Newsletter), Autumn 1996 * 2539 -- Volume 1, Number 4 http://www.buddhistinformation.com/slightly_demented_vision_of_robe.htm In the process of studying the history of Buddhism and teaching Buddhist texts again and again, and sending a lot of people from classes to meditation centres, I discovered, in the early 80's, that monastic institutions were to me the most revolutionary and the most important of institutions. When I reported this to His Holiness he just laughed and laughed. "What is this?" he said. "An ex-monk is now going on and on about monasteries? You can afford to do that now. You know, with your beloved wife and your four children, that now you're safe -- you'll never be back! You can go and promote them as much as you want, knowing you won't have to go there -- ha, ha, ha. . ." He thought that was very funny. We were also talking then about his frustration with the conservatism within the monastic communities -- not only the Tibetan ones but others, too -- and how they were acting as though they were still in their original cultural matrix in Asia and were unwilling to modify things, and so on. He wished to find some kind of basis on which they could improve things but he did not really have the time to do that. So slowly I began to organize, at Amherst, what I called "monasticism conferences." I brought a lot of Christian and Buddhist monastics of different traditions, a few Hindus and a few Sufis, together in conference after conference. We had over half a dozen conferences and they began to discover, beyond ideology, at a level of practice and daily living, that there was a real commonality. The monastic effort, irrespective of religious ideology, was a globe-spanning effort that had been trying to restrain what I consider has been the arch-enemy of monasticism for thousands of years -- the other global, universalizing institution that started when the Buddha started monasticism -- militarism. Modern militarism also began 2,500 years ago, with Ajatashatru, the King of Magadha, the empire building of the Kamineds, and the Axial Age, the Trojan War and all that. It's actually been neck and neck ever since then, if you look at the planet in a global way. Discovering that was a terrible shock, because if you follow the traditional Buddhist view that the existence of the Dharma on the planet depends upon its rootedness in a Sangha which includes the four-fold Sangha of Bhikshu, Bhikshuni, Upasaka and Upasika, you see that there is practically no Buddhism left. It was destroyed and wiped out in almost every country -- apart from two or three Theravadan countries and a couple of secularized countries. There are a few monasteries in Japan, for example, but the Vinaya was destroyed there a century ago by forcing all the monks to marry, which was a government policy to disempower the monasteries, though that might be shocking to hear for modern Zen Buddhists. It has become important in my mind that we rediscover this. Shakyamuni Buddha was an engaged Buddhist -- there cannot be any question. He was unengaged for about a week or two under the trees in the Bodhi forest. In the Tibetan tradition they have him saying this thing about "How profound, deep, peaceful, untroubled... clear light... how neat, I love this... like an elixir of immortality... I'm totally stoned out here in the woods." And then he says, "Oh, I don't think I should tell this to anybody because whoever I tell it to certainly won't understand it." That was his unengaged Buddhism; he had about five minutes of it. Then Brahma and Indra showed up and said, "Hey, come on, get down there." So he walks to Saranath to found a monastery -- that is engaged Buddhism. We think of a monastery as a place for dead people. We have to realize that our culture is formed by Protestantism. Martin Luther slammed the monasteries, saying, "Shut down all the monasteries in northern Europe." So you shut down the counter-force against militarism on the planet in those countries of northern Europe and what happens? The planet gets conquered by a bunch of berserk militarists. That is what we have been doing, and America is the most rabidly berserk militarist country in history; even with our ideals of liberty, we have the biggest army and defence system and the most nuclear weapons. It's totally unbelievable. Look at the business in Iraq. I admit it's a weird analysis (and my sociological colleagues blink when I tell them about it) but if you remove monasticism from a social mix, what happens is that all the productive energy of people has nowhere to go but into over-production of everything. So they go out and conquer the whole world. No one wants to produce a spiritual state to invert and internalize the energy, to produce a different, higher world, so they just transform this world and they wreck the whole place -- it is within an inch of being wrecked, as we know. Therefore, the Buddha was like the founder of a peace corps. We have to stop seeing him as some pious person in the hills, just speaking in dulcet tones. The Buddha was founding a peace corps and was risking being burnt at the stake. He said, "Hey, go out and tell everyone the gates to Nirvana are OPEN. Tell people from any caste." Don't forget that Buddha was a West Point-er. He was 29; he was a military cadet in a palace. Princes in India studied in the army, in warfare; they were Kshatriya -- the warrior-nobles. So naturally when he wanted to conquer the world for the Dharma he wanted an army. * * * In the near future there will be more wars like this one in Iraq, I fear. So to meet (Bhikkhu) Amaro and to hear about his community was such a treat for me, because the idea of going back to the primary thing is important. Remember how one was originally ordained by the Buddha -- the Buddha just said, "Ehi bhikkhu" -- that's all. "Come here, beggar. Come here, mendicant." Now, enlightenment is the deconstruction of identity. If you attain enlightenment, in a way you don't even know who you are any more, much less "Where am I going to wash the dishes?" You might even wonder "What is my name?" If you have no idea of what your name is, you might as well have no hair and wear a weird robe because you don't even know who you are. If he is going to teach you something that will give you the realization of the total deconstruction of identity, he has to take care of you and reconstruct some sort of useful pattern within your own relativities -- because otherwise he is not fulfilling his responsibility. This is the purpose of the Vinaya. He can't just deconstruct your identity and leave you standing in the middle of the traffic. So he would say "Ehi bhikkhu" and your hair flew off and your robes would change. There you were, floating around happily, living your life as a monk, and people would give you a free lunch. So we have to go back to the primary thing and forget all that nonsense about hierarchy and who is the big boss -- that is all nonsense. The Buddha was deconstructing the serious Brahmanical family/father/patriarch/serious authority/guru business and was liberating people. He was not putting them under rules and authorities at all. In all of the cultures where it has become like that -- if you feel that the Buddhist monastic orders are solely trying to prop up the culture -- I am sure that we are just seeing corruption in the tradition. Essentially, they are all trying to unravel the culture they are in. My appeal to you is, in the process of your work, please try at least to entertain what is, I grant you, this slightly demented vision: that the most activist thing -- the peace movement, the engaged movement -- would be if one group of Westerners could crank up the generosity to provide a permanent free lunch to any group of people who want to take serious ordination -- even if they're not that brilliant, not that great a yogi, not a great intellectual scholar. Remember that the key to monasticism is that you can be useless. You can be honoured and supported for simply restraining certain negativities. By doing that, you represent a channel to Nirvana for other people and the generosity they devote to you is an essential practice for them -- it is not just some side thing they do now, and then later they do real practice. Dana is the first paramita; it is practice. Prof. R. Thurman Fearless Mountain Newsletter (formerly The Sanghapala Newsletter), Autumn 1996 * 2539 -- Volume 1, Number 4