Against The Stream ~ GREAT EXPECTATIONS,
GREAT DISAPPOINTMENTS
IF YOU GO TO INDIA,
away from the cities and towns into the countryside,
you will find life going on much the same as it did
hundreds, or even thousands of years ago. Many villages
still have no electricity, TV, telephones, paved roads,
or even running water; people till their fields using
primitive ploughs pulled by cows or buffaloes, draw
water from wells, cook over cow-dung fires, etc.
In such conditions, it is easy to visualize
the Buddha walking, barefoot, from place-to-place,
with just an alms-bowl; His robes would probably be
dusty and travel-stained and not often washed. Nor
would He be clean-shaven every day, as we now are.
He wouldn’t always have a specific direction
in mind, and would not be in a hurry, but would spend
time with people who wished to learn something, or
whom He thought He might lead onwards. With His great
wisdom, He could discern the capacity of people to
understand, and teach them accordingly. Can you see
Him, this Great Teacher?— Teacher, Human-being,
not God, or Savior, for Buddhism rejects the idea
that anyone can save another from the effects of his
own deeds.
In Richard Bach’s book, Illusions,
or the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, there is
a delightful little anecdote about a colony of creatures
that lived on a streambed. They spent their entire
lives clinging to rocks and weeds, with the water
flowing over them. Once, one of these creatures, tired
of clinging to the same stone, announced that he would
die of boredom if he lived so any more, and had decided
to let go and see where the current would carry him.
"Fool!", said the other creatures nearby,
"No-one has ever done that before! You’ll
be dashed against the rocks by the current and will
then die a lot quicker than by boredom!" But
he, disregarding their warnings, let go, and was immediately
carried away by the current.
At first, he was dashed against the rocks
as the others had predicted, but wasn’t killed.
Instead of resisting the rushing water, he allowed
it to carry him, and was soon lifted above the streambed,
clear of the rocks and weeds. Other creatures below,
seeing him pass by overhead, exclaimed in surprise:
"Look— a being just like ourselves, yet
he flies! He must be a Savior, come to save us! A
Savior! A Savior!" "No!" he cried,
"I am no Savior, but one just like you. I let
go, and the current carried me. If you let go, you
too will be carried along!" But they didn’t
hear him, or chose to ignore his words, and cried
all the more: "A Savior! A Savior!" And
he was swept along, out of sight, and the other creatures
remained clinging firmly to the places where they
had been born, making legends of a Savior.
Although the Buddha stated clearly that
no-one can save another, but that all must work out
their own salvation, many Buddhists look for saviors
to save them, praying to various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas
to forgive their sins, erase their ‘bad karma’,
etc. Indeed, it sometimes seems that they even expect
monks to be saviors and supermen, too, not wanting
them to be human at all. They pay so much respect
to monks, and put them so high, that they almost need
telescopes to see them in the sky! Then, if their
heroes do something wrong or that they don’t
like, they are disappointed and the monks fall in
their esteem. But why are they disappointed? Because
the monks did something wrong, or because they put
them so high to begin with? Great expectations breed
great disappointments. And if monks let themselves
be so elevated, how can they possibly live up to such
expectations? To try is to court disaster, because
although we might like to be enlightened, what we
would like to be, and what we are, are two different
things. We would like to be enlightened, of course,
but we don’t become enlightened merely by wishing
to be enlightened; enlightenment comes to us when
we have earned it and are ready for it, and not before.
Now, while elevating monks very high, at
the same time many people put themselves very low,
thinking, perhaps, that they are thereby exempt from
the Law; they use the monks as an excuse for doing
things that they know they shouldn’t do. Once,
a man came to tell me that he’d seen a monk
smoking, and said he thought it was very bad for monks
to smoke. I agreed with him, but said: "How can
you talk about others when you are smoking even as
you are telling me?" He rationalized this by
saying that, as he was not a monk, it was alright
for him to smoke. Was this sound reasoning, do you
think? Let us examine the mechanics of such thinking
a little here.
As a monk myself, I’ve seen things
from both sides of the fence and so am qualified to
say that the Buddha’s Way, contrary to what
many Buddhists obviously think, is not only for monks,
nuns, and others who live in temples and monasteries.
It is open for anyone and everyone who sincerely wishes
to follow it. Not understanding this, many Buddhists,
in their ignorance and indolence, want and expect
others to do everything for them. To remedy such misconceptions,
it should be clearly stated that there are not two
Laws of Life, one for monks and another for the laity,
but only one. And this Law of Cause-and-Effect makes
no distinctions as to whether a person shaves his
head or not, whether he wears a robe or ordinary clothes,
whether he stays in a monastery or at home with his
family. It is impartial, and has no preferences. If
a monk takes hold of a burning coal he will be burnt
by it, just as would a layman. A monk is subject to
sickness, aging and death, just as are lay-people;
he is not exempt from these things.
According to the Buddha, intention is the
strongest factor in the making of karma; He said:
"Intention, O monks, I declare to be karma".
You get the results of your karma, and I get the results
of mine. If it were possible to transfer our karma
to others, our enemies would transfer all their ‘bad’
karma to us and be rid of it, leaving us to suffer
the effects of their bad actions— and would
not that be convenient for them? However, how could
it be? And, in the same way, how could it be possible
to transfer our ‘good’ karma to others?
The reason why, as Buddhists, we are advised to practice
transferring our merit to others— if we dare
even suppose that we have any merit to begin with—
is because it opens the mind and heart of the person
doing it, which is a meritorious action in itself,
is it not?
It is imperative to see the Buddha as He
was when He was alive on this Earth: Enlightened,
but a human being, a very warm and caring human being.
To deify the Buddha, as many people have done, and
pray to Him for assistance and salvation, is a great
mistake, for He never told anyone to believe in Him
or pray to Him, but to find the Truth for themselves
and thereby become Enlightened and Liberated from
Ignorance. The Enlightenment of the Buddha is just
that: The Enlightenment of the Buddha; it is not our
Enlightenment. So, too, with merit; we must acquire
our own, not pray or beg for it, and find our own
enlightenment; we shall remain within Samsara until
we do, and no amount of praying to be saved will release
us therefrom.
Saints— Arahants and Bodhisattvas—
are rare today, and not to be found in every temple
or church, and if we expect to find them there, we
will surely be disappointed. And would we be justified
in blaming anyone for that? Could we reasonably blame
monks or priests for not living up to our expectations
and not being saints? Who could we blame but ourselves,
for expecting so much? The walking of the Way is the
most important thing, and there is no substitute for
this, no-one can do it for us, just like no-one can
eat for us. If no seed is sown, there will be no harvest;
if there are no causes, there will be no effects,
and it will be absolutely useless to complain that
the Buddhas or Bodhisattvas or the monks didn’t
save us. View the monks as teachers of the Way, whether
they themselves follow the Way or not; the most important
thing is that we learn, and Learn, and LEARN. And
when learning is sufficiently important to us, we
will not mind who we learn from.
In school, when we study geography or history,
do we care if the people who teach these subjects
have ever been to the places they talk about or witnessed
the historical events they describe? And do you suppose
that when monks speak about Buddhas, Arahants, Bodhisattvas,
Nirvana, Heaven, Hell, etc., that they are speaking
from their own personal experience, or from what they
have heard or read elsewhere? Maybe they are speaking
from their own experience, but probably not. If they
are, that still does not make it true for anyone else;
we must experience for ourselves, and only then will
we know. This is why the Buddha exhorted people not
to believe what He said, but to "Test my teachings,
as a goldsmith would test gold".
Someone once told me of a certain famous
monk (the founder of the particular sect of Vietnamese
Buddhism that he followed): "He was an Arahant—
100% sure!" I asked him how he could be so sure
when he had not even met the monk, and was not an
Arahant himself? To recognize an Arahant as such,
a person would have to be an Arahant himself, would
he not? Arahants— genuine Arahants and Bodhisattvas,
not the usual fake ones of today, of which there are
not a few— would hardly go around making a show
and declaring themselves so. We might say— as
I say about people like Thich Quang Duc or Mother
Theresa— that we think such a person is an Arahant
or Bodhisattva. But that would be just our personal
opinion, and have very little to do with whether a
person were actually so or not; our opinion would
not make them so.
Years ago, I addressed a group of Catholic
nuns in a Buddhist temple in Manila; they were about
to go for missionary work in various countries with
large Buddhist populations, and wanted to know something
of Buddhism. During my talk to them, I quoted from
the Christian Bible so as to emphasize certain points
and make comparisons. When I had finished and it was
time for questions, one nun said: "We heard you
quoting from Holy Scripture", (meaning the Christian
scriptures, as if they are the only scriptures in
the world regarded as ‘holy’); "Are
you allowed to do that?" I replied: "A diamond
is a diamond no matter where it is found". We
do not expect to find Truth only in books, and certainly
not only in Buddhist books. Truth is not limited like
that, and if we understand what the Buddha taught,
we will be able to see the Dharma not only in the
scriptures of other religions, but in everything,
everywhere. Dharma is beyond Name and Form, and without
limits.
Although Mother Theresa was a Catholic nun
herself, she did not care that most of the sick, destitute
and dying people she helped on the streets of Calcutta
were probably Hindus or Muslims; she didn’t
use her compassionate help as a means to convert them
to Catholicism. The idea of doing so would probably
never have entered her head! You see, the word ‘Catholic’
has two forms, one a noun, and the other an adjective.
When used in its noun-form, we might say: "Such-and-such
a person is a Catholic", meaning a follower of
the Catholic branch of Christianity. But in its adjective-form,
such as when we might say that a person "has
a catholic point-of-view", it means ‘universal’,
‘liberal’, ‘broad’, ‘wide-open’.
I thought of Mother Theresa as being Catholic in its
adjective-form rather than its noun-form. If people
call her a saint (as many do)— or even a devil!—
would that have changed what she was in any way? Her
compassion and selflessness constituted her sainthood,
and it was hers; to canonize her will be as superfluous
as painting a rose!
Is it not strange that, while Buddhism teaches
that there is no Self— that a separate, personal
‘self’ or soul is an illusion— personality
matters so much to many Buddhists? We are usually
more concerned with the personality of the teacher
than with his teachings, and this becomes a great
obstacle. Often, we hear people criticizing monks,
and saying that they like this monk, but not that
one, while usually disregarding the Dharma altogether.
This side of Enlightenment, we have ego, and because
we are limited thereby, are subject to making mistakes.
However, even though we are still unenlightened, there
is no need for us to be bound up within the limits
of ego and to act in egoistic ways. We can, if we
want, go beyond, by reminding ourselves that the Dharma
should occupy central place in our dealings with others,
and not self.
|