84,000 Ways

As part of my research for my thesis, I’ve visited some Korean temples in one or another tradition. I’ve also visited Vietnamese, Japanese, and Thai temples in the L.A. area and it strikes me how divided the Buddhist community is on ethnic lines. Immigrant Buddhists and largely non-Asian converts generally have completely different communities, even if they are part of the same tradition.

Clearly, immigrants from abroad have particular priorities, such as maintaining their language and culture.  In addition, the stress of living in a foreign culture can lead to a desire to have some space where you don’t have to manage the obstacle course of intercultural communication in every moment. Convert Buddhists, on the other hand, don’t have these issues to deal with. In addition, as so many have come to Buddhism initially through books that present Buddhism in a particular light—as a tradition of meditation or as a philosophy, for example—convert Buddhists expect something different at a Buddhist temple. Asian laypeople generally don’t meditate all that much, even if they are members of tradition that stresses meditation. They tend to chant mantras and sutras and leave the long hours of meditation to the monastics.

The problem I see with convert Buddhist is that their view of what makes a Buddhist, at least in terms of practice, is rather narrow.  When I talk to people about monastics in Asia and how not all of them spend all their time in meditation, they’re shocked. In the Korean Jogye order, for example, only about 5%-10% of the monastics attend one of the two meditation retreats held each year at temples across South Korea. The rest are tending to the ritual needs of the laity, running social service programs, teaching, studying, or doing administrative work. Some specialize in ritual practices like chanting even though it is ideally a Seon (Zen) tradition.

Personally, I think chanting, prostrating, ritual and meditation are all valid ways of approaching the Dharma. Lay or monastic, if you’re not sitting on a cushion, that doesn’t mean you’re not “doing it right.” In fact, there are traditions of Buddhism that don’t do any silent meditation. If there are 84,000 teachings, then there must be 84,000 ways to practice as well.

Comments

[Bhikshuni Ariya]

JOURNALISTS

The journalism we want is the only true one: inform the facts to the People of UK

Freedom of Press is an illusion in UK, because it is a slave of Gordon Brown. Consequently, it never publishes that which is against its profits, that is, against announcements paid by the transitory government of Gordon Brown.

China is slaughtering Buddhist Monks and Nuns with the official approval of Gordon Brown, therefore, freedom of press about the true facts in Tibet is an impossibility in UK, because Gordon Brown, for money, refused Human Rights to all.

Business with China being Gordon Brown chief aim, even at the price of genocide.

UK signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to all people in the world, to the People of Tibet, too. UK signed the International Convention for the Prevention of Genocide, anywhere in the world, in Tibet, too.

However, Gordon Brown broke the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Convention for the Prevention of Genocide.

Therefore, China is now slaughtering Buddhist Monks and Nuns in Tibet with the approval of Gordon Brown.

Such being the fact, the time has come when British Journalists must strive to own their newspapers, journals and magazines. Or Freedom of Journalism, together with Journalists, are dead in UK.

Journalists blogs in paper, newsletter size, advertised by way of Internet as well, or by any other means available, even by word of mouth, presenting classifieds announcements, accordingly, and sold by yearly subscription, win by presenting the facts to the People of UK, and to Humanity as well.

A journalist who labours in the path of facts, shall always be a winner in his career, and will have thousands of faithful readers, yearly signing pre-paid subscriptions of their favorites journalists.

Awaken, British Journalists!

[Christian]

As a scholar, you are spot on.

But as a buddhist, you could differ.

Personally, I don't think that a Pure Land take over the Seon has been a good thing at all in Korean buddhism. I am aware of the situation in Japan, but I have to disagree: as far as I know, the Buddha did not reached Awakening by means of chanting or praying and this is certainly not what I have been taught in Vajrayana as the main way. On the contrary, the Buddha gave signs of decline of the doctrine, amongst which the attachment to rituals.

Of course, this does not disqualify rituals, chants, ethical conduct, gardening and whatnot, but they can in no way be efficient without study and sitting meditation. These are the foundation that makes anything else meaningful, __if awakening is the goal.__ If the purpose is to create some karman related to the dharma, well, let the people go for it, but I thought that Mahayana, as opposed (rhetorically) to Theravada, was the bodhisattva way, so monks should encourage laity to practise the praj~na too, right?

Keep in mind too that rituals in Korea are most probably the main source of income for the monasteries in Korea, so they are a double-edged sword for the monastics...

I don't like the idea of monks living in the mountains and relying on the credulity (prayers to deities as if they really existed, or prayers to spirit of the mountains, so the kid passes his exams) and laziness (no meditation at all, little knowledge of ethics --- you'll see buddhists eating animals alive here, or asking for fishes and seefood to be killed for them) of the laity.

Monasteries are not meant to be clubs.

[mind]

I agree.
Non attachment to Views. Whenever and wherever there is always analytical meditations.