The defilements of the mindful decrease
Those who always earnestly practise ‘mindfulness of the body’ who follow what should not be done, and constantly do what should be done, of those mindful and reflective ones, the corruptions come to an end. (Pakinnaka Vagga - The Dhammapada)

The challenge to the sangha in the 21st century

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Challenge: The Sangha - the order of fully ordained monks and nun s- is the visible representation of the Buddha in the world; for twenty-five centuries, it has sustained the continuity of the Dhamma among humankind; by its procedures of ordination and transmission it ensures that the Buddha's legacy remains alive.

The presence of the Triple Gem thus depends upon the Sangha, which symbolizes the Third Gem, the ariyan Sangha or community of noble sages who have realized the ultimate, world-transcending truth.

The Sangha has survived for some 2500 years; that's longer than the Roman Empire, longer than all the dynasties of the Chinese emperors, longer than the British Empire. And it has survived without weapons, without financial resources, without armies, merely through the power of wisdom and virtue.

However, there is no guarantee that it will continue to survive or that it will continue to make vital and important contributions to human life. This is a task that depends on the members of the Sangha themselves, on each new generation of monks and nuns, and this is an extremely important task, because the future of Buddhism depends on the future of the Sangha.

As we know, the Sangha has always existed in close interaction with the Buddhist lay community. The relationship between the two is one of interdependence and collaboration.

In traditional Buddhism, the laity provides the members of the Sangha with their material requisites - robes, food, dwellings, medicines, and other material supports - while the Sangha provides the lay community with teachings and with examples of those who lead lives fully dedicated to the Dharma. For the Sangha to continue, this relationship must be maintained in some form, but the changes taking place in society may well place this relationship on a new footing.

The most weighty factor affecting the Sangha-laity relationship has been the transition, first, from a traditional social order to a modern social order, and then to a technological social order. Now the distinctive mark of this change is the shift from an emphasis on industrial production to the acquisition and distribution of information. This shift has already taken place throughout the West and in the most advanced social strata in all countries around the world.

It is sometimes characterized by saying that we are moving from the Industrial Era to the Information Era, from a production-based civilization to a knowledge-based civilization.

The transition to an "information-intensive" society will alter the nature of the Sangha-laity relationship in radical ways, and these will challenge the Sangha to come forth with novel solutions to preserve the relevance of the Dharma. I make no claim to be a prophet, and I can't foretell the future in detail, but judging from present trends, I will try to sketch some of the more important challenges facing the Sangha as I see them.

The role of higher education. In the Information Era, a high percentage of a country's population has acquired a university education. People have access to much greater stores of knowledge and information than they ever had in the past, and their understanding of mundane realities, and even of Buddhism, is much more sophisticated than in previous epochs.

They will expect the Dharma to measure up to the standards they have acquired through their academic training and won't simply accept the teachings presented by monastic teachers out of reverence and unquestioning trust in an age-old tradition.

They have been trained to question and inquire, and they will apply the same approach when they come to the study of Buddhism. Hence the monks and nuns have to be ready to answer questions. They can't expect to receive humble deference from the laity; they have to earn respect by clearly explaining the Dharma, and by explaining it accurately and convincingly.

The monks and nuns themselves will need to have received higher education, primarily in Buddhism but also in subjects indirectly related to the Dharma, such as modern philosophy and psychology and other relevant areas. Exactly how to integrate such mundane knowledge into a monastic curriculum is a difficult issue; the solution would have to be worked out by those responsible for monastic education.

The role of publishing. Closely related to the opportunities for higher education among the laity is the role of publishing. The use of writing transformed Buddhism sometime around the second century B.C.; and so beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, the printing press and commercial publication have transformed Buddhism.

There are now hundreds of books available in English on all aspects of Buddhism, both popular and scholarly, and many books are available in other languages. Thus any diligent student of the Dharma can acquire an extensive knowledge of Buddhism based on books.

The micro-computer has further revolutionized Buddhist Studies. Any diligent person with a notebook computer can store an entire Buddhist library, including several Tripitakas, on his or her hard disk. Through the internet they can access vast resources on Buddhism and engage in discussion groups on virtually every topic related to Buddhism.

Thus book knowledge of the Dharma isn't a special privilege of monks, and for a knowledge of Buddhist scriptures and commentaries, one is no longer dependent on the monastery, as one would have been in a traditional Buddhist culture. Buddhist Studies is also offered as a subject in universities and there are many outstanding lay scholars who are doing research in highly specialized areas of Buddhist Studies.

For us, this raises the question what we as monks will have to offer. I would say that our task will not be to compete with lay Buddhist scholars. We should certainly seek to acquire scholarly knowledge of Buddhism, from as many reliable sources as possible, and we should learn from lay scholars when necessary.

But what the Buddhist monastic life offers is an opportunity to put Buddhism into practice; it gives the opportunity to combine study of the texts with the living application of their principles in a life based on faith, devotion, and commitment to the Triple Gem. We have to unite scholarly knowledge with practice, intellectual understanding with faith and commitment. We cannot settle for mere knowledge without practice; nor can we have blind practice without clear intellectual understanding.

The role of mental training. The Dharma will convince people not only by its intellectual appeal, not only by its practical ethics, but particularly by its system of mental cultivation. This is what distinguishes Buddhism from virtually all other religious systems: its emphasis on the central role of the mind in determining our happiness or suffering, and the practical methods it offers for training the mind.

So a very important "door of entrance" to the Dharma for many people is the practice of meditation. This is the special "door" for those who come from non-Buddhist backgrounds, as has been particularly the case in the West. But meditation has also been a "door" for traditional Buddhists who approach the Dharma from scientific backgrounds and bring along skeptical, inquisitive minds.

I don't think meditation alone is the answer, and in this respect I am critical of those teachers in the West who want to extract meditation from Buddhism, rejecting Buddhist doctrine and religious faith. I think a balanced approach is necessary: a triple balance between faith-and-devotion, the study of Buddhist teachings, and the practice of meditation.

Faith transforms the emotions, study brings right view, and meditation brings tranquility and insight. Many people today are first attracted to the Dharma through meditation. Once they gain concrete benefits through meditation, their interest in the Dharma will be awakened and then they can be gradually led to an understanding of Buddhist doctrine, to the study of Buddhist texts, and then to faith, devotion, and even the monastic life.

The Sangha as offering challenges. The Sangha seeks to preserve and honour ancient traditions, and to live without being encumbered by a excessive number of conveniences.

In this way, the Sangha challenges others to adopt a frugal lifestyle, to respect what is ancient, to honour and revere the natural environment. In the modern world violence is exploding between people of different ethnic and religious groups, who are convinced they can solve their problems by the use of force.

The Sangha is based on the principle of non-violence, on the conviction that patience, discussion, and compromise is essential to harmony between human beings. Thus the Sangha challenges people to solve their problems through mutual understanding, tolerance, and loving-kindness.

By upholding the world-transcending Dharma, the Sangha challenges all our attempts to settle down and find a comfortable place in the world; it challenges people to understand that the supreme wisdom, our ultimate freedom, lies beyond the boundaries of the world.

A voice of conscience. This leads me to speak about one other major challenge facing the Sangha in today's world.

Today vast, terrible problems are crushing the lives of millions of people and threatening untold harm to countless others. I have in mind such problems as raging ethnic conflicts and destructive wars that take dreadful death tolls among innocent civilians, including women and children.

I think of oppressive governments that imprison their citizens without just cause, torture and torment them, and hold even the free citizens in a constant state of fear. I think of the gap between the rich and the poor, and between the rich nations and the poor nations. I think of the ravenous illnesses that claim millions of lives among poor people around the world, illnesses that could be easily eliminated at minimal costs.

I think of the degradation faced by millions of women forced into lives of prostitution, often by their own families, on account of their poverty.

I think of the hundreds of billions of dollars squandered each year, all around the world, on weapons of enormously destructive power, while perhaps half the people in the world barely obtain enough nutritious food to sustain them each day.

And finally I think of the reckless ways in which we are degrading our environment - our air, our water, our soil, our food - without any concern for future generations. In my view, it is a task for the Sangha to serve as the voice of Buddhist conscience in the world.

That is, the Sangha at least its most prominent members - should be capable of giving expression to Buddhist ethical values in dealing with these vast, overwhelming problems that confront humanity today.

Courtesy: Bodhi Bulletin

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The future cosmic religion

Part one of this article was published on 12.07.2006

Dr. Ruwan M Jayatunge M.D.

Cosmic religion: "Karma" is a Sanskrit word meaning "action". It indicates that as a consequence of the law of cause and effect, each action creates a future action, and this produces an uninterrupted eternal chain. On the one hand we put our karma into existence through thoughts, words, and deeds. (According to Newton's 3rd law every action has an equal and opposite reaction) On the other hand, each thought, each word, and each deed expresses our karma.

Some effects of these causes are latent; they still have to come to the surface, whereas those, which have already appeared, represent our present situation. Karma, therefore, is not a force, which lies outside us, because it is in fact the totality of causes and effects which we have established in the past and which have a deep influence on our present actions.

The wheel of life, or "samsara", is an ancient symbol that has the same meaning in Buddhism and Hinduism. It symbolises the cycle of birth, life, and death. When one revolution of the wheel is completed, life begins again with rebirth. The word Karma is used to refer to volitional acts as well as the forces that arise from these acts. The idea of karma had existed in ancient Indian philosophy before the time of Siddhartha Gautama, and it became an important element of Buddhist philosophy.

The law of karma states that there is a connection between the moral quality, the level of skill in volitional actions, and the resulting states. Buddhists understand karma as a natural law. There is no higher instance, no judgement, no divine intervention, and no gods that steer man's destiny, but only the law of karma itself, which works on a global time frame.

The physical and psychological aspects of Life

Buddhists hold that the retributive process of karma can span more than one lifetime. Rebirth, or reincarnation, has always been an important tenet in Buddhism; and it is often referred to as walking the wheel of life (samsara). It is the process of being born over and over again in different times and different situations, possibly for many thousand times.

According to Buddhism, there is no division between physical and psychological aspects of life. The experience of one influences the other. The life of each human being is eternal, because it is part of the Universe, which exists eternally. Life is a multi forced concept that may refer to the ongoing process of which living things are a part or the period between fertilization or mitosis and death. No human being can therefore be created or destroyed.

Buddhism and Theory of Deconstruction

The Buddhist concept of eternity of life is equivalent to the physical law of the conservation of energy and matter, according to which they are never dispersed, but are transformed into different forms.

Buddhism furthermore affirms that the universe has neither been created by an original cause nor moves towards a goal. Due to the capacity of regeneration, immanent in life itself, the universe has always existed.

Buddhism preceded some ideas typically associated with deconstruction and postmodernism for over 2,600 years.

The lack (emptiness) of the subject and form, decentralization / multiplicity (Absolute / Relative) of signification and truth, quantum physics and interdependent origination - all point to inescapable parallels between Buddhism and the postmodern.

Buddhism liberates, offers a glimpse into the absolute, a sense of transcendence in the realization of fundamental emptiness, realization of the emptiness of the present moment, the emptiness of existence and mind both Buddhism and psychology endeavor to alleviate suffering and to grasp the nature of Mind.

Derrida's deconstruction was a complex response to a variety of twentieth century theoretical and philosophical movements.

Our ability to describe consciousness and mind is contingent on our ability to construct a language and a vocabulary for its description. Language is observation. Consciousness is more like space and time present here and now within each of us, but also extending indefinitely into the Universe. Not only it is best comprehended and described as analogous to space and time, using the current model of space but also, quite literally, it "is" space and time.

As Jacques Derrida says "the original absence of the subject of writing is also the absence of the thing or referent". Deconstructionism, a body of ideas closely associated with post-structuralism and post-modernism, is a strategy of analysis that has been applied primarily to linguistics, literature, and philosophy.

The concept of Nirvana

Jacques Derrida's main concern was to critique metaphysics and its impact on the theory and practice of philosophy and writing. He rejected two main characteristics of Western philosophy: meaning is grounded in metaphysical presence, and time is oriented to its end. Derrida posed two main alternative ideas: meaning is an affair of language's systems of differences without positive terms, and writing is prior to speech.

Nirvana (in Sanskrit Nibbana) is the culmination of the persuit of liberation.

It denotes a condition of being devoid of passion such as lust anger or craving and is thus a state of great inner peace and containment. Nibbana is said of the mind which no longer is coming and going but which has attained a status in perpetuity , whereby liberation can be attained.

It carries further connotations of stilling, cooling and peace: the realizing of Nirvana is compared to the ending of ignorance which perpetuates the will from passing through life after life , which causes ( and is caused by) among other things craving, consciousness , birth, death, greed, hatred, delusion, ignorance.

Nirvana then is not a place nor a state; it is an absolute truth to be realized.

'Buddhism is not always a question of knowing and seeing and not that of believing. The teaching of the Buddha is qualified as Ehi-Passiko, inviting you to come and see, but not to come and believe'.

Ven. Dr. W. Rahula,"What the Buddha Taught"