Buddhism in Modern Life
by Ananda W.P. Guruge
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The topic as it stands has several parts
to it: What is modern life? What is Buddhism? And what role
has Buddhism to play in modem life? Modem life in itself is
very difficult to define. One might say that modem life is characterized
by the fact that the world is getting smaller; that people are
having greater access to each other; that communication barriers
are fast disappearing; that it is possible for one to know what
happens everywhere in the world within a short time, and thereby
pen-nits participation in the life of a larger cross-section
of the world than one could have ever imagined. That would be
one aspect of modern life. Related to that would be modern life
understood in terms of science and technology. Man in his attempt
to conquer nature, disease, natural barriers, has performed
certain feats of a technological complexity which are quite
mind boggling. That is another aspect of modem life. A third,
perhaps a more disturbing aspect of modern life, is that with
the world getting closer, communication barriers breaking away,
and scientific and technological advance becoming so rapid,
we have come face to face with several problems in terms of
economic and political rivalry, pollution, population explosion,
scarcity of resources and the indiscriminate use of resources
that might not be replaced. With these come a host of other
issues which can be plainly labelled as "survival."
Can Modem Civilization Survive?
To
this one may add also a moral dimension - an ethical question
- and ask: "To what extent, in the process of modernization
and conquering nature, have we deviated from the ability to
conquer ourselves? Has the struggle for survival meant that
the modem man has become a slave to selfishness, bound by his
own desires and his whims? Have we lost all the things of very
special value to human beings such as inter-personal relations,
the anxiety to look after the well-being of others, the spirit
of being of selfless service to others? Have we lost these?"
So
when one thinks of modern life one can think in terms of a great
degree of optimism and, at the same time, an equal degree of
pessimism. One can be so pleased that we live today at a time
when there seems to be nothing that man cannot conquer. Maybe,
there are still some diseases that challenge him. Maybe, there
are still certain places in the universe where man would like
to be, and still he has not developed his technology to be there.
But it appears as if all these are within reach of man. With
this optimism about man's capacity, comes the pessimistic aspect
that we have, in the process, lost something. Let us keep both
of these in mind.
Buddhism
Then
let us look at what Buddhism is. What do we understand by Buddhism?
It can mean many things to many people. To someone it can be
only life of the Buddha; the example that the Buddha and his
immediate disciples set -that glorious feat of a man, who stood
before men as a man and declared a path of deliverance. This
is one kind of Buddhism. To another, Buddhism would mean the
massive doctrine as recorded in the Buddhist literature, which
indeed is voluminous and contains several thousand pages recording
the words of the Buddha. And in it is described a very lofty,
abstruse, complex and learned philosophy of life. Then based
on whatever the Buddha taught, whatever the practices current
at the time of the Buddha, there has grown a very rich culture,
a culture which has extended to all ' parts of Asia for over
2500 years, and to which people from various walks of life with
various backgrounds from all these countries have made a lasting
contribution. A large number of sects or schools or philosophical
systems have evolved and all of them, quite rightly, go under
the name of Buddhism. Then comes another definition of Buddhism
and that is the kind of ritual that has grown around the doctrine
of the Buddha as a result of his teachings and the way of life
preached by him, becoming a religion. Whether the Buddha intended
it or not, his teachings became a religion, a religion to which
people were prepared to hold allegiance and which has its own
ritual, organization, and ways or criteria for deciding what
is properly done or what is improperly done. Now that is another
kind of Buddhism. If one were to take each of these aspects
separately, and try to examine the impact of what he would call
Buddhism on modern life, it would certainly be an enormous task.
To
me Buddhism is all these. It is the Buddha and his life, the
doctrine, the culture that evolves around it, and the ritual
that is connected with it. Once we take this to be one large
body of human experiences, distilled in the finest form and
presented to us in such a manner that each one of us could select
that part which appeals to us, we begin to see the remarkable
uniqueness of Buddhism. During the days of the Buddha himself
he used to emphasize this point. One need not be a scholar and
learn everything. Buddhism is not like studying a subject like
mathematics where you have to learn all your theorems and different
methods of working out the various types of problems. If you
know the fundamentals, the basis, a scholarly detailed study
is not an important precursor to practice. So out of this vast
Buddhist culture, religion, or literature, or the vast body
of experiences that come to us as Buddhism, each one of us would
find that which is relevant to our life, to our type of problems.
A Timeless Doctrine
I
have often wondered how Buddhism came to be called 'Akalika"
which means "timeless" - that it exists for all
time. The more I see the changes that have taken place in Buddhist
culture or religion, the more I see how it keeps on adjusting
to the needs of different eras, populations, individuals, the
more I see that it has been possible for the Buddha to evolve
a message that would remain eternally fresh. So if Buddhism
has an application today and if Buddhism has a place in modem
fife, it is because of that timeless relevance, emanating from
a set of eternal values. To talk of a characteristic of being
eternal is a very paradoxical way of presenting or describing
a religion which has the principle doctrine of impermanence
at the bottom of it. the characteristic of timelessness comes
from the fact that it had understood that everything continues,
but continues in a flux, in a process of continuing change and
evolution. Thus Buddhism was able to adjust to different times
and civilizations. We can therefore without any hesitation approach
any aspect of Buddhism as something relevant and applicable
to us today.
What
are these elements that make Buddhism timeless? Let me take
just a few of them. First of these would be the recognition
of the responsibility of the individual. the Buddha is one of
the most remarkable religious teachers who emancipated man from
all bonds - bonds of supernatural ties, a Godhead, a creation,
sin Of- any other characteristic inherited from anyone else
(rather than what you yourself have done). So when the Buddha
says that each person is his own master, he promulgates a principle
whose applicability becomes stronger as man begins to get more
and more confidence in the control of himself and the environment.
So if, today, with scientific and technological development,
man feels that he has come to a point where his own intellect
makes him superior to anybody else or allows him able to solve
any problem that he has, whether physical or ethical or political
or whatever, would not the principle that man is the master
of himself - that he has to be responsible to himself because
whatever he does he inherits - become one of the most important
ways of looking at himself?
So
this fundamental approach to making man free from all bondages,
spiritual and otherwise, is one of those very important doctrines
of Buddhism that have contributed to its timelessness. As we
advance, as greater progress is made by man, there will be the
greater need for him to assert that he is the master of himself.
The more he asserts himself to be the master of himself, the
more is he reiterating the Buddha's own statement: 'Atta
hi attano natho."
Freedom of Thought
Then
comes another equally important doctrine. The doctrine of open-mindedness
- the liberty of thinking. Buddhism not only frees us from a
Godhead or super natural tie but also liberates mankind from
dogma. Let us visualize the time when the Buddha was preaching.
It was a time when various religious teachings were in a ferment
and India of the 6th century B. C. was one of the most interesting
places to be. Religious teachers propounding various types of
doctrines were vying with each other to have more and more converts.
Besides these new teachings, there were religious systems that
were deep rooted. In all these religious systems, the theory
was: "We have found a way." This is the correct path."
"You come, you will be saved." Into their midst comes
the Buddha who says: "Do not believe what your book says.
Do not believe what your teachers would say. Do not believe
what your tradition says. Do not take anything merely because
it comes to you with the authority of somebody else. Make it
a personal experience. Think for yourself. Be convinced. And
once you are convinced act accordingly." Now this was a
very refreshing manner in which man was given one of the greatest
freedoms that he is fighting for, the freedom to think for himself.
If under feudalism, before the present advances were made, we
were not able to assert so much of our light to think for ourselves,
as these advances take place we will be asserting that right
more and more. We will be wanting to feel that we are convinced,
after our own investigations, after we have been able to go
through the principles, the facts, the pros and cons. This we
consider an inviolable right This is the second doctrine, whose
applicability to modern times, and future times, would continue.
Role of Buddhism
Then
comes the most important question - apart from supporting what
man will want to assert for himself today and in the future,
has Buddhism a corrective role to play? With this question comes
the most important aspect to which all of us should pay a fair
amount of attention today. While man is making all these advances,
we also find that the pressure of modern life - the rivalry
for survival, the rivalry for doing better than the other, the
desire to live a life of competition economically, politically,
culturally, or in whatever form - has brought tensions. In order
to relieve these tensions man has evolved more and more recreations
and relaxations. They apparently result in slight relaxation
of the tensions but seem to take people more and more into a
vicious circle. Because of the tensions one engages oneself
in a variety of escapist activities, and because these escapist
activities take too much time, one has to catch up with the
process of survival, only to oneself in a worse period of tremendous
tension. The greater the economic progress, the greater the
political enlightenment, the more the people need sedatives
and tranquilizers to keep themselves doing their normal duties.
You have to take one pill to keep awake, one pill to sleep,
one pill to relax and so on. This kind of modernization that
has come in, wherein man's tensions have mounted to a point
where he finds that all that he has gained is of no use, is
a very serious situation. In addition to these tensions comes
another facet wherein, with the greater amount of leisure that
man gets today as a result of freedom from work drudgery, he
has another problem to cope with - that is, boredom. So with
tension on one side, boredom on the other, comes a variety of
other complications which make many people really unhappy. Today
one may ask the question: Are we in a situation where people
are really happy or are we in a situation where people at last
have realized that in spite of all that they could gain, they
have lost something in the form of some fundamental aspects
of life? Who is to be blamed? Are we to blame science? Are we
to blame technology? Are we to blame the political systems?
Are we to blame the economic system that we have inherited or
we have developed? Or are we to blame ourselves?
You are your own Master
Going
back to the Buddha's own way of looking at the problem you will
say, you hold the reins of life in your hands. Because whatever
has gone wrong you are responsible, you are your own master.
You have let it go - allowed it away out of your hands. It is
easy to blame a person, saying "You have let an opportunity
pass. It has slipped away from your hands!" But does that
help? The greatness of Buddhism lies in the fact that it does
not stop after placing the responsibility on you, it does not
say "Now that is it. We have now found the culprit."
It proceeds to the next stage of saying: "Here are a few
things that could be done."
If
one were to go around looking at the various types of religious,
psychiatric, psychological measures that have been evolved in
order to save man or to cure man from tension on one side and
boredom on the other side, you would find that there are many
but not one as inexpensive and as practical as some of the very
simple directions that Buddhism offers. One would ask the question
- does this mean that once you become a Buddhist you would be
freed from the tension and boredom of modern life? To answer
that question is very difficult because no one becomes a Buddhist.
There is no one who is to be labelled as a Buddhist. Because
Buddhism is not one of those philosophies or ways of life or
religions - I use the word religion because there is no other
classification to which it can be put squarely - wherein there
is a need to have a label. During the days of the Buddha, people
went to him, listened to him and if they were pleased with him
they would say, I take refuge in you, I take refuge in your
teachings, I take refuge in the Sangha, the community, the disciples
who are following this way of life." Even today that is
all that is needed for anybody to call himself a Buddhist. Having
been convinced that what the Buddha has taught has some relevance
to one's life problems, one feels that it is a way of life that
could be followed with profit, by taking refuge in the Buddha,
the Dhamma and the Sangha. With this inner conviction he becomes
a Buddhist with absolutely no ceremony, no ritual of any kind,
no registration, no other legal requirements. It is what F.L.
Woodword, one of the finest translators of the words of Buddha,
calls "a do-it-yourself religion."
What
is very significant today is that there may be thousands of
people who have never gone into a Buddhist temple, never got
into the ritualistic set-up which has evolved in the Buddhist
countries, but who in their own heart have seen the validity
of the message of the Buddha and who are leading a life according
to the tenets of Buddhism. In fact, we are finding that a vast
majority of the world's population hold allegiance to the Buddha
for one reason or another. This is one of the most remarkable
things that one would regard as almost a miracle.
A Way of Life
The
way of life the Buddha preached was very simple. To the layman
it consisted of just five simple precepts: do not kill, do not
steal, do not engage in sexual pleasures through wrong means,
do not lie, do not take intoxicants - a very simple set of precepts
indeed. But the Buddhist way of life, the way the Buddha described
does not end with this kind of precepts. Simplified in a manner
that anyone could understand, there are three things that each
person is expected to do, namely (using the Pali words because
most of you are familiar with them) Dana, Sila and Bhavana.
Dana would mean liberality, generosity - the act of giving.
It is very important that Buddhism begins with Dana as
the first virtuous act which one should engage in, in order
to put himself on the correct path, because giving is an act
of sacrifice. To be able to give something is to prepare your
mind fully to give up something that you have, something you
treasure, something to which you are attached. Thereby you counter
one of the biggest causes of all the problems which, again in
Pali, is called Lobha or desire or greed. It is very
interesting to see how the way of life is presented to us in
a manner that in following it step by step we get rid of some
of the human weaknesses and characteristics that cause tension,
and the boredom that is bothering most of us today. Liberality
is to counteract desires, the greediness, the clinging nature.
Then
Sila is adherence to certain precepts, or ethical or
moral conduct. Buddha was fully aware of the fact that one could
not set rules and regulations for everybody in the same manner.
So there are a few rules for the lay people. There are a few
more for those who want to enter into a committed religious
life, and still more for monks, who have committed themselves
to adhere to a very strict path of discipline and purification.
So the Sila is a graduated thing, so that each person
picks up that which he is able to follow for the present.
In
Sila, or moral conduct or the ethical teachings of the
Buddha, we come back to this original doctrine: they are not
commandments, they are not prescribed from above, they are not
prescribed by the Buddha as commandments to obey. Each one of
the precepts, which we, as Buddhists, take, is a promise unto
ourselves of our own freewill. And the way they are worded is
I take upon myself the discipline of not killing", I take
upon myself the discipline of not stealing" and so on,
because I am the master of my own destiny and it is I who should
decide which kind of life I should lead. The Buddha as a guide
had shown certain fundamental weaknesses, or faults, that one
should try to avoid. The second cause of most of the problems
we have is our animosity, or hatred to others. In Pali we say
Dosa. Sila is one of those antidotes for this second
cause of all our weaknesses. When we follow Sila we control,
or rather we completely eliminate the cause of hatred. The Buddha
was one of those who were very conscious of the many effects
of hatred. He had seen people ruining themselves as a result
of hatred. That is what made it possible for him to state very
categorically that hatred never ceases by hatred, that the more
you hate, the worse it becomes. You hate me, I hate you: I hate
you more, you hate me more and the hatred keeps on increasing
to a point where both you and I burn ourselves in our mutual
hatred, and to the Buddha the only way to solve it is that one
party must stop. Because without one party, or better still
both parties, trying to conquer hatred with friendship, hatred
with non-hatred, this sequence of hatred would never cease.
One way of dealing with it is based on the entire doctrine of
the virtuous life of Buddhism. Because a virtuous life is attacking
the second cause of our weaknesses, namely hatred, we have in
Buddhism a most interesting, and again a timeless doctrine,
of loving kindness. Loving kindness, which is the cornerstone
of Buddhism, (the foundation on which the Buddhist doctrine
is built) has not been taken by the Buddha as merely a simple
ethical principle. He had analysed the principle of loving kindness
into sublime life.
Then
comes Karuna - compassion. Compassion is more easily
generated. You see somebody in trouble, you see somebody who
needs your help, your heart moves towards that person and you
rush to help him. That quality of rushing to somebody's help
~ feeling sorry for the other who is suffering, that is another
aspect of loving kindness.
Then
comes a third aspect of it which is more difficult to practise,
and that requires tremendous love and pains, that is called
Mudita that is, to share in others' happiness - to wipe
out from your mind all traces of jealousy and envy, so that
you enjoy the well-being of the other person, your neighbour,
even your enemy.
Last
of all comes the fourth aspect of loving kindness and that is
total equanimity, Upekkha. You have no friends, no enemies,
no one higher, no one lower. You have absolutely no distinctions
between one person and another, and you are totally merged in
a kind of unity with all beings, all things, all situations.
So once you are able to live a life in which all these four
characteristics govern your actions, there is no place for hatred,
there is no place for rivalry, there is no place for competition.
So this second principle of Sila looks after this set of troubles
that we would have.
Last
of all comes the most significant, and the one to which you
will be preparing to proceed immediately after this, that is
Bhavana - meditation. Bhavana means the training
of the mind. The word itself etymologically means development
- a further development of the mind. The Buddha believed, and
he is one of the earliest to state it in that manner, that everything
emanates from the man's mind. The organization that I represent
has as the preamble to its Constitution "As wars begin
in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences
of peace must be constructed." And that reflects the first
line of the first verse of the Dhammapada. A pure mind,
a trained mind, a well-developed mind, a mind that can be controlled
at will, a mind that does not go on to subjects that are conducive
to tension and boredom, but keeps alert, keeps on developing
itself, discovering itself and within itself the secret of life,
the problems of life and the reality of life, is man's greatest
treasure.
I
am not surprised today that there is almost a craze, in the
highly technologically developed part of the world, for all
types of meditation. It makes no difference who preaches what,
or what philosophy or technique is adopted. But the fact remains
that the people are beginning to realize that a moment of quiet
contemplation, a moment of deep penetrative thinking, a moment
of well-directed properly controlled functioning of the mind,
is an essential thing for the well-being of Man.
Two
thousand five hundred years ago the Buddha taught exactly the
same way. And if there is nothing else that the man of today
needs, he needs peace of mind. He wants to get away from his
tensions and battle against boredom. And I see the answer in
Buddhism, particularly in the three-fold path of Dana, Sila,
Bhavana.
Look
at the Buddha's own principle as the basis or beginning of his
religious life. We hear of so many people who go from rags to
riches but here was the case of a man who went from riches to
rags, in search of, we may say, peace of mind - that greatest
of blessings. As a result, he saw for himself, then taught to
others, that the great handicap, the source of all trouble,
is attachment.
So,
if somebody were to come today and say: I can take you straight
to Nibbana this very minute," I think most of us
will have lots of excuses to give. Someone will say, can't I
wait till my daughter gets married?" Another might say,
can't I wait till this World Fellowship of Buddhists General
Conference is over?" can't I wait till I have finished
my assignment in Bangkok?" We have our own preferred times
when it comes to the ultimate goal.
Whatever
be our decision as to reaching this goal, there is a point at
which we have no escape. We cannot deny the fact that all modern
developments have nothing to offer but insecurity and competitiveness
as well as tensions and boredom associated with them. Buddhism
offers a few very simple and very efficacious methods to combat
that. And with this I feel that Buddhism has a role to play
in our life and a role in which we, from the Buddhist countries,
have an important part to play. It is our responsibility to
share our thinking, our knowledge, and our experience, with
as many as possible, so that ultimately we all see that the
message of the Buddha, which is meant for the good of mankind,
continues to reach mankind in every nook and corner of the
world.
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