Western Buddhism and Communities
by Al
This evening, my mind returns to the question of a Western Buddhism and the way things can or should develop for Buddhism in the Western nations.
I have spent the evening reading a tantric text (the Susidhikara Sutra used within Tendai) and it brought to mine the situation with priests in Japanese Buddhism. For those that don’t know, the vinaya are generally not held by specialists in Japanese forms of Buddhism. (For those that are unaware, the Vinaya are the vows held by monks and nuns in Buddhism going back to the time of the Buddha.) When you meet a Japanese “monk” (such as a Zen monk), he is not really a monk by the standards of other Buddhist traditions. This is because he does not maintain the Vinaya. As far as I know, the usage of the term “monk” is largely because of translation issues into English. Many groups use the term “priest” for these individuals (though not “priestess,” strangely enough).
Priests in the Japanese traditions are, by the standards of the rest of the Buddhist world, householders or lay practitioners, Upasakas or Upasikas. The ordination platform, since the time of Dengyo Daishi, who founded the Japanese Tendai sect, has largely been based on the Bodhisattva Vows. While the Vinaya was held by various individuals in Japanese history and, I believe, reintroduced a couple of times, the practice of following these vows and having “true” monks or nuns has never become a standard part of Japanese Buddhism after the Nara period, more than 1,000 years ago.
For most of the Buddhist world (I keep using that phrase…), this is a very serious issue when it comes up. I recall seeing what were nearly yelling matches on E-sangha over this issue in the past with monks and nuns of other traditions being rather dismissive of Japanese Buddhism because of this, which does not always go over well with the Zen, Pure Land, Nichiren, etc. practitioners of Japan.
What brings this to mind to me, other than working with a text important in Japan, is that this is likely to be similar to the ongoing case for Buddhism in America. I have another book, “Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia,” that arrived the other day. It is a collection of essays on Buddhism in the West and one of those essays is “Neither Monk nor Nun: Western Buddhists as Full-Time Practitioners” by Sylvia Wetzel. She makes the point that most Dharma teachers in the West (specifically the United States) are lay teachers working in Dharma Centers and, in fact, many or most of them are women. We have a situation in America where very few people become monks or nuns. Of those that do, most do not remain so for long. My teacher used to be a monk but returned his vows. Alan Wallace, who writes and teaches quite extensively on meditation, was a monk for 14 years, even training with the Dalai Lama. Eventually, he returned his vows, returned to the West, went to graduate school and was married. He still teaches though.
The long-term situation for Buddhism in America is such that it is nearly impossible to live as a monk or nun and keep one’s vows. We do not live in a Buddhist society and the requirements, for example, to not handle money at all or to have no contact with the opposite sex, simply are not possible to follow without the support of a community. For the rest of us, we have to support ourselves and the Dharma, often through working jobs. Being enmeshed in day to day life as householders means many, if not most, of us become married and even have children. For my friends who are Pure Land Buddhists, this is part of why they are part of established temples or churches here in the West with dedicated clergy. They generally seem to acknowledge that practice is difficult while living a normal day to day life. Most Buddhists here are converts to sects that have only been established in the last 40 (or 20 or 10) years, which makes that kind of structure unavailable and (to many) possibly undesirable.
From the point of view of traditional Buddhism, this situation is a real problem as the lack of monks and nuns in significant numbers and as the teachers here does not speak well for Buddhism in Western nations. I’m less sure that this is a problem but, outside of Japan and, in some ways, Tibet, this is a rather serious break with a tradition that dates back to the Buddha. The main problem that I see is that the distractions of day to day life really can and do interfere with practice. Practicing for an hour or three a day before or after your work is not the same as living a life totally focused on practice and the study that goes with it. Of course, one dirty little secret of monastic life is that many many monastics in history have actually spent very little time practicing. The vision of monks spending their waking hours meditating, chanting, or practicing liturgy are often just fantastic visions with little basis in reality.
I do think that there is a real possibility for another alternative. This alternative is the creation of temples, monasteries, Dharma Centers (call them whatever you want, even villages), as communities and retreat centers for study and practice for householders. Part of this is a vision of community for Buddhists outside of our rather consumerist and superficial culture of competition and gain. There are places, I believe Great Vow Monastery in Portland is one, where people live as residents but only a few are permanent and others are merely there for a (long or short) while. Of those that are permanent, most of these have jobs in the “real” world, which give them and their community the financial ability to survive in our money oriented society. The community created by bringing people together, temporarily or permanently, into a place allows people to continue to practice in a more intense way than they may be able to living in the isolated fashion that most of the West follows. This is a joining, and not a terribly unique one, of the various communitarian movements in the last 40 years towards communes, cohousing and the like, with spiritual community. Plenty of places like this exist but they are not part of a movement nor done with an explicit idea that they could be part of something much larger for the Buddhist community here. I expect that most people who establish these communities or live within them are simply trying to adapt to living both a Buddhist life but also surviving. I’d like to see a more explicit embrace of this as a model kind of community. There are good and bad ways (or “optimal” and “non-optimal”) ways to plan, create, and reside in such communities. People have learned lessons the hard way and it would be good to see these lessons shared with others who might wish to live in a similar manner.
This kind of life is not an option for everyone but communities like these give even non-residents the opportunity to study and practice through retreats or other kinds of more temporary programs. It is necessary to have centers of some sort for Buddhism to survive and prosper here and this strikes me as a more sustainable model in the long-term.
Comments
What would be the colour scheme of this “Community”
Don’t tell me We can have it in any colour providing it is Black …Right
I think I’ll give it a miss if You don’t mind
Dhammagevesi
I’m not sure that I understand your question. How does a community have a color scheme? It isn’t interior design plan.
I think that Buddhism has a great future in the west and that it will develop it’s own style as the Dharma does in all countries.
That’s the beauty of Buddhism, it’s a very fluid belief system and blends well with each new culture that it touches.
Hey Al,
This post raises several interesting ideas/questions/issues for me:
In regards to how Japanese priests are viewed “by the standards of the rest of the Buddhist world,” I’m not sure if the “rest of the Buddhist world” really regards priests in the same category as householders. In point of fact, I think most non-Japanese polemic writers on the subject of Japanese Buddhism tend to disregard the whole of the tradition as “not really Buddhism” precisely because priests are not monks.
Having said that, though, it’s important to remember a couple of relevant socio-hisorical facts. Many Buddhist in China and Korea really don’t like the Japanese in general (with the possible exception of Taiwan) because of Japanese colonialism prior to WWII. So some of this has little to do with Buddhism and much to do ethnic, racial, cultural, and historical stuff. This isn’t to say that two polemical writers couldn’t have an interesting and lively debate about what “counts” as Buddhism in Japan or anywhere else; it’s just to never forget that Buddhists aren’t just Buddhists — we’re just as embedded in and effected by socio-political forces as the next guy.
Your paragraph that begins with “the long-term situation for Buddhism n America” brings up several interesting ideas for me. For example, when you say that we don’t live in a “Buddhist society” that makes it easy for monks and nuns to keep the precepts, have no contact with money, etc., I’m reminded that for at least a 1000 years, monks in China had no problem with “breaking” vinaya precepts. It’s a well-established bit of history that Chinese monks handled money and grew their own food. They did this because the economics and larger cultural milieu of China would not allow for homeless monks begging for food. I think we have this mistaken idea in our heads that monks always lived by these pure precepts in an uncomplicated way. But they didn’t. This is not to denigrate monks or nuns. This is simply to remind us that Buddhism is adaptable and we can find solutions to these “problems” of Buddhism in the West by looking at Buddhism’s own history. You could make a pretty strong argument for deep and important social structural commonalities between Chinese culture and American culture.
You say “traditional Buddhism.” What do you mean by that? What is traditional?
I am going to have to disagree with the notion that a “lack of monks and nuns in significant numbers” is a real problem for Buddhism in America (or anywhere for that matter). And I’m going to disagree by your own logic. If you accept that Japanese forms of Buddhism are legitimate forms of the tradition, and accept that Japanese priests and ministers are not monks or nuns, but that the Japanese Buddhist tradition has been thriving for about 1500 years, and it has been thriving without fully-ordained monks for half of that, then the lack of monks in the West is not necessarily the death knell for Buddhism outside Asia. (If you don’t accept that Japanese Buddhism is “real” Buddhism, then, of course, this argument’s moot and Buddhism has all but died out in this country with the possible exception of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas.)
As I understand it, the Zen Center’s Green Gulch and Tassajara centers operate much like you describe as communities of practice for householders that are quasi-monasitc. So I think you’re on the right track with this idea.
Anyway, very interesting post and I appreciate your thoughts.
The point about the ethnic situation is something to be kept in mind. That is a good point. I’ve heard these comments from Thai teachers (in Australia and United States) though, so it isn’t limited to China, Taiwan, or Singapore though.
The lack of nuns and monks being an issue isn’t necessarily my personal point of view (which I’m not sure that you’re clear on) but it is something that I find very much worth reflecting on.
I am aware of the Chinese situation for monastics historically, just as I am aware that priests in Japan take a vow about not drinking and get completely drunk fairly often (as reported to me by numerous parties) to let off steam. The fact that people don’t maintain vows in many places, at least as worded when they take them, is known. Sometimes it is tolerated by the system as a whole and sometimes it is simply individuals not maintaining vows. I am sympathetic in that there is no great white father enforcing these vows and it is up to us to maintain them as best we can. People will do that to varying degrees, obviously. That being said, taking a vow to not handle money and then handling money, whether sanctioned by tradition at this point or not, is not something that I’d be willing to do. If I take a vow, I do my best to follow it, not just for a day. If I cannot follow it, I return the vow. This is what has happened to the former monastics that I knew. Either following the vows was simply not possible or, after a time, they no longer wished to do so (some wish to be married, for example, and have kids).
This means that the fact that the Chinese, perhaps, simply ignored vows that didn’t work for their culture does not mean it is a model to emulate as Buddhism grows in America. It would be better to not even take those vows (the vinaya) if you are not going to follow and maintain them. A broken vow is like a broken pot and really doesn’t hold much.
I’d also like to do more than emulate the Protestant Christian model, which so many non-Christian religions wind up doing in America. This isn’t a dig at anyone but setting up churches is not desirable to me. I’d rather find new models.
As to my “traditional” comments, I’m speaking of communities where the Vinaya tradition, which does go back, clearly, to the time of the Buddha, has been maintained. While specific vows within the Vinaya split into different versions at points, there has been a tradition of ordained monks and nuns going back to the founding of Buddhism. In nations where this still survives, largely places like Thailand, the fact that monks and nuns don’t exist in certain other nations is said to be part of the degeneration of the Dharma in those places. I’ve had people say this straight up to me as to why Japanese Buddhism, for example, is degenerate and not real Buddhism. I don’t agree, or I wouldn’t practice as I do, but it is a point that is going to continue to come up so we should think about responses to it here, where most teachers are not monastics.
I don’t agree with the criticism and I think that the Japanese approach, by and large, is perfectly valid and that one can be a religious specialist, as it were, without being a Vinaya holding monastic. I do not think that we are going to have many monks or nuns here (if one means “people who fully maintain the Vinaya” by those terms) as a common part of Buddhism. Since most American Buddhists are householders, it does make sense to focus on other models unless we think we can find a way to make monasticism work here.
I would expect that the Zen Center’s communities work that way but I haven’t been out there yet. (I have friends who go to Great Vow for retreats or who know the teachers there otherwise, which is why it was my example.) I’ll be out at Green Gulch for an event in June so I expect that I’ll have a chance to ask questions then.