Tradition

If You Know the Vinaya You Can Kill a Chicken

| arun

As I sit here waiting, I’ve had the opportunity to start stepping through Sects and Sectarianism: the Origins of Buddhist Schools, and loved this quote on the Vinaya.

Actually, for those of us who live the Vinaya every day, it is obvious that much of it operates as guidelines. There are countless situations that crop up constantly which are not explicitly dealt with in the Vinaya. The Vinaya itself includes principles for how to apply precedents in new situations. Very often, the rules of Vinaya are phrased in a legalistic manner which makes them quite easy to get around in practice, if one is so inclined. And so in Myanmar they say: ‘If you know the Vinaya you can kill a chicken’. It is, perhaps, only in the minds of academics that the Vinaya minutely governs every facet of a monk’s life. In real life this is simply impossible. This has nothing to do with the question of whether one takes a rigorist or laxist approach to the rules, emphasizing the letter or the spirit. It is simply to acknowledge the plain fact that the rules only cover a limited amount of contexts, and beyond that we must use our best judgement.

You will hear this quite a bit from monks. This reminds me of some thoughts from Ven. Dhammika in response to Ven. Ming Yi’s trial a couple months ago. Back to waiting…

A Customized Buddhism

| arun

The Tricycle Editors’ blog features a quote from Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano’s Summer 2007 article.

For most of us born in the Western world, remote from Buddhism of any institutional kind, knowledge of the dhamma has come entirely from books and, occasionally, spoken words, some quite excellent and informative, certainly. But this kind of learning still retains a somewhat ethereal air in the absence of actions, traditions, and spiritual observances in which we can participate. That the Buddhist religion has survived so long in the world is a result not so much of the durability of manuscripts as of the power of ideas embodied in custom; and custom, for all our abundant sources of information, is what we lack and cannot in the long run do without. Books crumble easily enough; thought crumbles faster, if not made firm by some sort of concrete practice that holds together believers and sees to the transmission of the teaching to the young.

It’s not every day you see me linking to the Tricycle Editors’ blog! Tricycle has made available the full text of the article too—I sincerely appreciate them including it.

Much to Offer

| arun

Phra Cittasamvaro writes about the custom of the offering cloth and the issue of contact between men, women and celibate monks and nuns.

The etiquette with the offering cloth is this: if a female is offering food, clothing or medicine to a monk, he will lay a cloth/bowl or other suitable item in front of him. The lady puts the item on the cloth and it is then ‘offered’ – which means it has formally been given to the Sangha of monks. And of course vice versa between nuns and laymen.

[…]

Things are ‘offered’ in this way so there is no discrepancy between what has been given to the monk and what has not – so that he does not take something on presumption, that the owner might not feel is appropriate. If a layperson touches the offered item after this point, it is then considered ‘unoffered’ and the monk will not take it for his own use.

The post ends with a discussion of cultural traditions and attitudes (namely attitudes towards others’ cultures). It’s certainly nice to discover that some of the customs I’ve witnessed (such as the “drop method”) are not merely idiosyncratic customs of particular monks I know.

Become New by Becoming Old

| arun

Over on Dharma Folk, John presents an illuminating discussion on how Buddhism becomes new by becoming old—by presenting new teachings as reformulations of even earlier ones—and how this dialectic may be less applicable in our modern world. But presenting new ideas as old ones isn’t the only way to market them.

The other option for religions to grow and change is simply to call what’s new new. To change the way we practice because it fills a need, whether personal or societal. The only problem with the new being new is that it then operates on the periphery of what Buddhism is. Without a myth to explain how something is Buddhist, or even more Buddhist than what is out there, people who practice in their own way and dance to the beat of a different drummer may not get lumped in with Buddhism at all.

So I’m curious about the point at which novel practices undermine the (apparent) authenticity of one’s lineage.

Practice Past Authenticity

| arun

Karen Maezen Miller writes of her Japanese garden as an analogy to the discussion of authenticity and context of American Buddhism:

Shortly after my husband and I moved into our house with its old garden, we invited the experts and academics over tell us what to do. Some would say that our backyard is Southern California’s oldest private Japanese garden, dating from 1916. Some would say that it isn’t; that by virtue of geography, topography, plant selection, and cultural anthropology, it can’t ever be Japanese. We were twisted into a fit by these and other debates about the right way to care for the place. Heaven forbid we make a fraudulent move when we were already paralyzed by ignorance from the get go!

She makes a worthy point that we shouldn’t let ourselves be paralyzed into inaction while we fret over the authenticity of our practice. It’s worth noting that this very same discussion occurs frequently in the Buddhist Asian American community, as I was regretfully honored to be reminded of the other weekend. As Miller writes: Practice is practice. Debates, however, are debates.

Investigating Buddhist Sectarianism

| arun

Over on Dharma Folk, an illuminating post by John takes a truly marvelous quote from Ajahn Sujato regarding mainland Southeast Asia’s ‘conversion to’ Theravada Buddhism:

When these areas ‘converted’ to Theravada (which mainly occurred around the 11th-12th Centuries), it is impossible that all the monks took new ordinations. Of course, the official histories will assert that when the religion was reformed that all the monks conformed to the new system. But the practicalities of this are absurd: sending city administration monks wandering through 1000s of miles of tiger-stalked, bandit-infested, ghost-haunted jungle tracks seeking out countless little villages, trying to persuade senior monks that their ordination is invalid or improper and must be done again, all on the basis of some political compromise in a far-distant capital, in a region of ever-shifting borders and allegiances. As history this is sheer fantasy, and the reality must have been that the reforms would directly affect only certain central monasteries.

This book looks like it has a lot to say about tradition, especially in the context of the Theravada bhikkhuni lineage. Definitely a book I’ll be checking out soon: Sects and Sectarianism: The Origins of Buddhist Schools.

Old School Buddhism

| arun

The Dharma Mirror blog presents a snapshot contrast between Theravada and Mahayana. There is one particular sentence that stands out for me, and which I deeply appreciate:

It is often thought that Mahayana developed out of the Theravada tradition, but this view is not quite accurate, as both traditions have developed over history.

The reader is then pointed to an article by Ron Epstein, “Clearing Up Some Misconceptions about Buddhism.” I’ve generally considered myself a non-denominational Buddhist, but I realize that this term has loaded connotations. As a result of both historical/cultural accident and personal affinities, I’ve mostly grounded myself in the Theravada tradition. I like to translate Theravada as “Old School Buddhism.” Far from the most appropriate translation, but it definitely appeals to my local English dialect and also to an age-old Theravada tradition, where we like to see ourselves as upholding the timeless customs of the Enlightened One. The truth behind this sentiment is very much open to debate. Sometimes “being traditional” is itself a practice of reinterpretation.

Kathina Time is (Almost) Here

| arun

Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery has announced its celebration of the Kathina holiday this fall. Click on the link and you’ll find a description of the festival itself.

If you haven’t attended a Kathina celebration before, you’re in for a treat. I’ve come to think of it as the equivalent of all our lay holidays rolled into one. There is the abundance of Thanksgiving with gratitude for the completion of a long retreat and for having monastics in this country. The chance to gather together with gifts resembles the winter holidays of Hanukkah and Christmas, combined with a kind of birthday anniversary marking another year of monastic life. It’s a particularly joyous time to show appreciation for those who have gone forth into the homeless life and who provide support and inspiration to lay practitioners. It’s especially timely as fall and winter draw nearer, when visitors become less frequent and a full storeroom of supplies is so valuable.

Some close friends and I have for several years now been recontextualizing Kathina in the giving spirit of Hanukkah or Christmas as another opportunity to bestow gifts on friends, temples and 501(c)(3)s. Since this degeneration of Kathina into a Christmas-clone is (so far as I know) practiced only within small and isolated circles, I’m not too worried about the potential dilution and commercialization of what was once a mighty and precisely meaningful Buddhist holiday. I can’t shake the guilt though—I’m an Asian Buddhist kid whitewashing a perfectly fine and ancient Buddhist tradition with commercialized Western cultural values. But I like it this way.

Customary Perspective

| arun

On a topical note, I ran across a couple of articles on nokanshi(“encoffineers”), a central theme in the Oscar-winning movie Departures. One perspective presents the nokanshi as a traditional practice that preserves the spirit of Japan’s cultural artistry—a practice that may seem irrelevant in modern times.

Such an “art” of preparing the dead body seems unnecessary in today’s modern Japan: by law, the body will soon to be cremated, so pragmatism dictates only the minimum preparation. In Departures, even the grief-numbed family of the deceased cannot fully comprehend why this art is taking place. Other funeral directors do not really acknowledge that the occupation of nokanshi even exists in modern Japan.

In contrast, a post on the Wall Street Journal describes the popularity of this specific funeral custom in light of recent commercial development.

In the past, encoffination was often a matter-of-fact procedure performed by family members, neighbors and doctors to prepare the body for the wake, funeral and cremation. It wasn’t performed as a formal ceremony or even considered a part of the proper funeral … Two decades ago, a 40-year-old company called Sapporo Nokan Kyokai, based in the northern city of Sapporo, started promoting encoffination as a formal ceremony, for an additional charge. The company had long been performing the ceremony in Sapporo, but it had begun to receive inquiries from people in other parts of Japan, where the ritual was less common. Some of these people had attended funerals in the Sapporo area and liked the proper, personal attention given to the deceased.

These two articles aren’t written in opposing terms, but they offer different perspectives on a “foreign” custom. On one hand, the nokanshi profession stems from a primal artistic urge that is an inseparable part of Japanese culture. On the other hand, the fully ritualized nokanshi is a contemporary phenomenon in its widespread form. Again, these descriptions aren’t mutually-exclusive. They remind us that foreign customs and rituals are not necessarily “traditions” that date back centuries, and yet can still be just as meaningful as traditional customs that do.

In the context of Buddhist Asian customs, it’s easy to get caught up in a romantic notion of a timeless and unchanging tradition. This often mistaken assumption provides the foundation for unskillful conclusions. For example, the false assumption that tradition equals authenticity, or that ancient means irrelevant. Some of these foreign customs have developed to address modern concerns in an urban and industrialized context. It’s a point to keep in mind when we wrestle with terms such as “modern” and “traditional” Buddhist practice.

Say It Like It Is

| arun

A couple of recentposts talked about Western Buddhism without any reference to Asians… or did they? On Progressive Buddhism, Kyle discusses “urban white liberal converts”, “rural converts, who tend to be white or black” and the “traditional” Buddhists. Provided in context:

the traditional Buddhists, who have been somewhat marginalized in the mainstream community

the local traditional population, which obviously only offers its one tradition

Over on Sweep the dust, Push the dirt, Jack Daw remarks:

Western Convert Buddhists insist that they are not taken seriously by other culture-based traditions and those Culture-Based Buddhists (I have no better term) insist that they are not well-represented in the mainstream media.

The authors of both articles frame the terms traditional and culture-basedwith regard to representation within the mainstream. Perhaps coincidentally, I have only read complaints of a lack of representation within the mainstream Buddhist media specifically in terms of Asian (American) Buddhists. Indeed, I wrote most of them. Are Kyle and Jack Daw euphemistically avoiding using the word Asian to talk about Asians?

To be clear, not all Asians identify as “traditional” or “culture-based”—but how many of those “traditional” or “culture-based” Buddhists who “insist that they are not well-represented in the mainstream media” are not Asian? When it comes to the cultural affinities of their Asian writers, The BigThree prefer to publish those who are more “traditional” and “culture-based” (and dead). It is precisely the less “traditional” and “culture-based” of the Asian American Buddhist community who are speaking out on this issue.

I’m well aware that, ironically, when race is obvious, white people will go out of their way to avoid explicitly mentioning race so that they don’t appear to take race into account. This inanity only highlights their racialized judgment. Let me be explicit: I prefer to be identified as Asianthan by some inept euphemism for it.

Update: I deleted a comment I reposted here from Kyle on Progressive Buddhism. He explains more in his comments at the bottom of this post. Someone or some people have identified themselves as myself and another blogger, and harassed Kyle with personally abusive emails. His furious reaction is little different than I would have reacted in the same shoes (and probably even more restrained than I would have been). It is a very sad state when others stoop to this level of depravity—apparently some people enjoy nothing more than watching the world burn.