As It Is ~ SEARCHING TOO HARD
AS REFERRED TO IN
the previous article, "Images," when people
come to something with their eyes and minds open,
it is easier for them to understand it, and see deeper
and clearer, than for people who have grown up with
it and perhaps never examined or questioned it.
For this reason, Westerners who come to
Buddhism have an advantage over Asian Buddhists, for
though the forms that Buddhism has taken over its
long history are all Asian, the essence of Buddhism?
the Dharma?being universal, transcends all forms and
cultural accretions.
Sadly, many Westerners do not make the most
of this advantage, or simply do not understand it,
and so easily get side-tracked, or fall into the trap
of choosing and identifying with one of the numerous
ethnic forms of Buddhism, such as Chinese, Japanese,
Burmese, Sri Lankan, Tibetan, etc., and become polarized
thereby, whereas, if they had used their common sense,
and followed up, instinctively, on what they had stumbled
on initially (and many Westerners seem to have an
inborn affinity with Dharma), they might have gone
to the roots instead of fixing their attention on
the branches and twigs. To study the forms is very
interesting, anthropologically, no doubt, but to base
one's life on one of them, and conform to it to the
exclusion of other forms and ways, will result in
a narrowing instead of an opening and a flowering.
There is some excuse?that is, it is understandable?for
people who are born into and raised in a Buddhist
culture to take sides like this, and become sectarian
(it happens with any/every people, in whatever religious
background they have been raised). But for Westerners,
coming new to it from the outside, without any bias
towards one side or another, there is little excuse
for accepting and adopting the first form they come
to, and for not investigating things clearly. I am
not suggesting that all Western Buddhists proceed
like this, but there are enough of them to warrant
writing this about them. Having somehow sloughed off
the fetters, dogmas, and superstitions of their Judaeo-Christian
conditioning (or some of it, anyhow), they then proceed
to drape themselves with Buddhists chains, as if they
were garlands; the name and the form might be different,
but the condition is essentially the same.
If I were to tell all the tales I have heard
of the foolish things that Westerners?having become
monks?get up to, in their desire to become enlightened,
it would form a small book on its own, so I will mention
just a few to serve as illustrations (and hopefully
as warnings to others who might think of becoming
monks).
All Buddhist monks, of whatsoever sect or
school of Buddhism (and I should include Buddhist
nuns, too, otherwise I might be accused of being sexist),
have a rule to abstain from eating after 12 noon until
dawn the following day. There are several reasons
for this, not the least of them being the desire to
cause as little inconvenience as possible to the lay-people
who provide the food for the clergy. It was originally
only a minor rule, however, as can be seen from the
fact that for the first twenty years of the Buddha's
forty-five-year-long ministry, monks were allowed
to eat at any time. The proximate cause for this rule
being made by the Buddha arose one evening when a
certain monk went out with his bowl for alms to a
village, where he saw a woman drawing water from a
well. Standing quietly at one side?as monks are not
allowed to attract attention to themselves or ask
for anything when out on alms-round ? he waited for
the woman to finish her chore and notice him. When
she turned around and saw this cloaked figure standing
in the half light however, she got a shock and, being
pregnant, had a miscarriage as a result. Consequently,
when this was reported to the Buddha, He promulgated
the rule that monks should eat only up until noon.
There were other reasons, too, among them the cutting-down
of time monks spent thinking about food and eating
it, and another, that of self-restraint.
Over the ages, this rule has come to be
somewhat of a fetish, and many monks (and lay-people,
too), place undue importance on it, seeming to think
that enlightenment might be gained as a result of
not eating after noon. But enlightenment is not so
easily attained, alas! If only it were! Other monks,
however?mainly from the colder countries to the north
and northeast of India, to where Buddhism later spread,
like Tibet, Mongolia, China, Japan, and Korea?choose
to disregard this rule and eat three times a day,
unlike the monks of Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, and
Sri Lanka, who eat twice a day within five hours,
and fast for the remaining nineteen hours, but whose
intake of food is often the same as that of monks
who eat three times a day.
I once spent some time with a certain Western
monk who was well known?or perhaps I should say 'notorious'?for
his meticulous observance of the rules, and who had
a habit of pulling other monks up for not being as
strict as himself. One day, he said to me: "You
should brush your teeth after your forenoon meal,
in case any particles of food that are lodged between
them slip down into your stomach afterwards, constituting
a violation of the rules." That struck me as
absurd. I wonder if the Buddha would have thought
of something so petty?
And here is another tale regarding this
rule, about a group of Western monks who had been
invited to someone's house for lunch. However, they
were delayed, and arrived a little late, so did not
have time to finish their meal before 12 o'clock.
Several of the monks, who were on a strict-observance-of-the-rules
trip, were anxiously watching the clock, and as the
minute hand got near to 12, they put down their cutlery
and ceased eating. One of them, however, who was not
so strict, continued eating some cake he had started
on, and became aware that the other monks were casting
worried looks at him, and when one of them remarked:
"I wonder what the Buddha would have said about
eating over time," he replied: "He would
have said: 'Eat your cake!' " which is just what
he did.
The following story reached me from a German
monk friend of mine who lives in Thailand, and concerned
an Australian monk who told someone that when monks
travel, they should carry with them some rope or cord
to use as a clothes line, for if they were to use
the clothes lines of places where they might sojourn,
they could not be sure that they had not previously
been used for hanging robes that monks had bought
themselves (or which had not been 'properly' offered
to them by lay-people), and the dye from an improperly
offered robe might get into their own through the
medium of the clothes line, thus besmirching its purity!
How ludicrous! It is amazing how they can think up
such things, instead of directing their energy to
more important matters.
Needless to say, Western monks are somewhat
'odd', merely by reason of them being monks, but I
think it can be fairly said that most of them are
sincere, in their own ways, about their search for
enlightenment, even if their efforts are sometimes
a bit misguided. However, out of haste, and/or not
understanding that the state of enlightenment known
as Nirvana is unconditioned, and cannot be attained
by anything we might do in our desire to attain it,
they set about practicing all kinds of austerities
and disciplines, and easily fall into playing the
'holier-than-thou' game with their rules. This is
tantamount to what is known in Pali (one of the Buddhist
scriptural languages) as 'Silabbattaparamasa', or
a belief in and clinging to rites and ceremonies as
a means of 'making merit' and/or attaining enlightenment;
according to the scriptures, it is one of the three
fetters or hindrances that fall away upon the attainment
of the first stage of Buddhist sainthood known as
'Sotapatti', or 'Entering the Stream'. So, far from
being weakened and broken, this fetter is only strengthened
by the misconceived efforts of such monks (though
it must be said that monks are not the only ones who
enter such blind alleys).
Our greed or desire for Truth or enlightenment
only drives enlightenment away. J. Krishnamurti once
said: "The Sublime is not within the structure
of thought and reason, for thought has always a measure.
Nor is it the product of emotion and sentiment. If
you are seeking the highest you will not find it;
it must come to you, if you are lucky, and luck is
the open window of your heart, not of thought,"
meaning to say?if I may offer an interpretation?that
we cannot find enlightenment, cannot attain it by
any effort, for it is unproducible, and cannot be
caught by any snare we might set for it; the only
thing we can do is to prepare ourselves for it, to
become more sensitive, open, and receptive, so that
enlightenment might arise; we can develop an interest
in, a joy in, a passion for Dharma, can attune ourselves
to it, and if enlightenment doesn't arise, we can
try to live in an enlightened way, and this, to a
great extent, is within our capacity. And from this
should arise a feeling of joy, a sense of living in
harmony with Dharma that transcends the personal happiness
we seek. Enlightenment might then arise later, and
take us by surprise, without being sought.
There is a passage near the end of Hermann
Hesse's famous and beautiful novel, Siddhartha, where
the principal character, whose name forms the title
of the book, meets again his boyhood friend, Govinda,
when they are both old men, and Siddhartha says to
Govinda: "When someone is seeking, it happens
quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is
seeking, that he is unable to find anything, unable
to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of
the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because
he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have
a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive'
to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed
a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do
not see many things that are under your nose."
In this book, also, Siddhartha meets the
Buddha, and speaks with Him, and, although he is immensely
impressed with the Buddha and His teachings, he cannot
accept and follow them, but must find his own way.
He tells the Buddha that never before had anyone explained
things so clearly and logically, and yet, in His system,
there was a flaw: it was impossible to convey to another
what He had experienced during His Enlightenment under
the Bodhi tree, as it was something so personal, and
had to be experienced by the individual, each for
himself; it cannot be transmitted.
Some Western monks remain in robes until
they die; some remain for 20 or 30 years, then disrobe
and return to lay life; others remain for just a few
years and then leave. I remember a remark once made
by an Australian monk who resides in Singapore about
some Westerners who leave the monk hood, and I agree
with it: "They are not just not monks anymore,"
he said, "but not even Buddhists!" This
is probably because, having tried and failed to attain
anything of lasting value through their austerities
and weird practices?tried and failed to 'storm the
gates of Heaven' kind of thing?they conclude that
there is nothing to be attained, and, in their disillusionment,
discard everything, and not just the robe. What a
pity! If only they had not been in so much of a hurry!
If only they had not set their sights so high, and
been content with the small successes that they all
surely had on their way. I cannot say what, exactly,
I have 'got' from my years as a monk, but I feel that,
if I were to disrobe (and this is a possibility, although
I have no plans to do so), I would still have something
left over, as the Dharma doesn't depend upon whether
one has a robe and a shaved head or not; it knows
no such restrictions, but is applicable and available
to everyone; and I can say this with authority, from
within rather than from without. I could say exactly
the same things if I were not a monk, but many people
would not listen, as they are so attached to the monks,
so under their shadow, considering them to be the
authority. This is wrong, and I use the robe to inform
people that it is wrong. I have said it before, and
I will say it again: the center place of Buddhism
belongs to no person or persons?not even the Buddha
Himself?but only to the Dharma; it is not, or was
not, a personality cult. Unfortunately, over the ages,
people have come to overly depend upon the monks,
feeling that only they can understand the Dharma well,
instead of exerting themselves and trying to realize
it themselves. But this is not so, and I have come
across some lay people who are better Buddhists, and
more learned and humble, than most monks I have met,
and I say this here not to be critical of the monks,
but in order to encourage, uplift, and inspire lay
people, and help them to overcome the erroneous idea
that, as laymen, they are somehow 'second class' Buddhists.
Shaving one's head and donning a robe does not automatically
make one better or holier than people who live the
family life. It might be that the lifestyle of the
monks, cut off from the emotional ties and problems
of family life, makes it easier for them to follow
the Way (whether they take advantage of the opportunities
provided thereby or not is another matter, of course;
it does not automatically happen), but it must be
stressed, again and again, that the Dharma is not
exclusive, is not the monopoly of any class or group
of people, but is open to all. Nor is it necessary
to call oneself 'Buddhist' to live by and benefit
from the Dharma, as it is universal and omnipresent,
transcending all barriers and artificial divisions.
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