andyinkat

I enjoyed it more first time around when I read it yesterday. Must've been mangosause.com

Nice to see a sharing of resources around the websites.

I'm heading in the opposite direction to you - I've just been in Nepal for 18 months where I set up a school for street children in Kathmandu. Now I'm off to teach in Isan, Thailand.

If you REALLY want to know and have a helluva lot of time on your hands you can read all about it in the detailed journal I kept as a weblog. The url is:

http://andyinkat1.blogspot.com and part 2 on andyinkat2.blogspot.com

But in a nutshell I'll say this:

Getting a visa is really difficult. You get 5 month's tourist visa (initial entry 2 months then 3 one-month extentions) in a western calander year. It's very difficult to stay longer but if you are attached to a prestigious enough institution they might have the right contacts. Few western volunteers manage to outstay the 5 months. This is the reason I've very sadly had to leave my school.

Secondly I'd like to say that by a wide wide margin, teaching Nepalese children has been the most rewarding, fantastic experience of my life. The country is EXTREMELY poor and has one of the worst education systems in the world. Apart from the privileged few in private education the educational experience most children get is appalling. As a result when you turn up you will be regarded by the children and their families as a god - you will get so much love and appreciation you'll never be the same again.

However - the country is gripped in a very serious political crisis, there is a civil war raging, and education is unfortunately used as a pawn in a deadly game. No foreigner has ever been harmed in the conflict but schools are routinely targetted. Private schools are targetted and sometimes bombed and burnt. Strikes shutting down all educational establishments are so frequent that they account for up to HALF the school year at the moment. If you are in Kathmandu there is security (but even there I wrote in the journal about a bomb going off by my school and being woken once with a rifle pointing at my head) but outside the capital you're in Maoist country. For me personally it was precisely because the situation was grim and the country so desperate that I went - I felt that the worse the situation the more I could do - and I was right. But if you are more concerned with your personal safety you might want to think carefully. To clarify - it is VERY unlikely you would come to any personal harm, but the frequency of strikes, disruption and the overall political climate does make life frustrating.

Yet for all that the people and especially the children are truly truly wonderful.

Pay: well if you are familiar with Nepal you must be familiar with the extent of real poverty there. We paid our teachers the equivalent of £30 per month. If you get a job in a fancy private school of course the pay would be higher but if you want to help the children who are neglected by the state you're more likely to get paid in accommodation, food and more gratitude than you can bank.

I could go on for ever; PM me if you want more specific insights - and read my journal!

Firstly it is important to have some background understanding of the nature of ethical rules in Buddhism. Judaism, Islam and Roman Catholicism all have clear-cut rules covering many aspects of life for all followers of those religions. Whether you believe that they were handed down by the divine or grew out of communities, the common dimension is that they all originated as religions within society - i.e. they had long-term social interests at heart.

Note that Jesus did not lay down prescripive rules as his message was not primarily social - he believed that the end of the world was imminent and his ethics (leave your father, mother, wife; give all your possessions away) reflect such short-term expectations.

Lord Buddha's agenda was different again. He was a renunciate. There was an established social system in his world - the Caste system and there were very tightly regulated rules for everyone depending on their caste. By inviting people to join his Sangha, the Buddha was effectively inviting individuals to abandon their society altogether - to renounce family, possessions, status, everything.

Now here lies a key difference between Buddhism and the other religions I mentioned; the latter are egalitarian - everyone can follow the same rules, the same path and achieve the same goal in this lifetime. Not so Buddhism. Lord Buddha and the vast majority of Buddhist paths that have evolved since his time clearly acknowledged that only a select few can make a full commitment. the majority would or could not - in any single lifetime.

But the Buddha brought in quite a remarkable policy here - rather than develop a system whereby his movement would keep themselves separate from the masses he deliberately devised a system that made his Sangha dependent on the majority. The Sangha is dependent on the lay community for physical needs - food, clothes, shelter.

Thus the Buddha instituted a system of rules fo rhis Sangha - the monks (and nuns when they existed) which were not intended to be universal laws. Thus monks are not allowed to harm any living creature; they are not allowed to garden or plough or till the land as they would kill insects. Obviously this rule cannot be universalzed - the monks are dependent on the laity to produce the food, thereby killing life.

While he prescribed 227 Vinaya rules for his sangha, Buddha did not give rules as such to the laity; rather like Jesus he offered general ethical guidelines which needed to be interpreted within the context of the mainstream social mores and, to an extent, within the context of one's individual conscience and level of commitment.

What all this speel amounts to in a nutshell is that there is no Buddhist rule on animal rights, abortion, euthanasia or any single ethical issue.

However I can go a little further; Tibetan Buddhism and Thai Theravadan Buddhism in practice seem to take opposite positions on the killing of animals, yet they both follow Buddhist logic. Only this week His Holiness the Dalai Lama appears to have persuaded KFC not to open a brach in Lhasa, capital of Tibet. Now the geography and climate of Tibet are such that it is impractical for the society as a whole to be vegetarian so the main line of reasoning is to minimise suffering by killing as few animals as possible. Thus they will kill a yak because one beast will feed many people (and they use all parts of the carcass for other things) but they don't like to kill chickens or fish because many have to die to feed one stomach.

In Thailand the logic works differently. They accept a scale of consciousness whereby a highly developed mammal is higher up the cycle of rebirths than a fish or bird thus they justify killing 'lower' animals more easily than 'higher' ones.

In all cases however, intention is central as it is intention and not the outcome that determines the karma of the act. Enjoying killing causes bad karma; killing reluctantly and out of percieved necessity is karmically less serious - but kill karmically bad, and a butcher can expect a very low rebirth. This logic can lead to the (in my mind) ethically dubious consequence that a person is more concerned with their own karmic consequences than the interests of the other - be it suffering animal or human, but I see this as a failure to understand the spirit of the Buddhadharma.

I am also aware that in many SE Asian 'Buddhist' societies there is a history of what to western sensibilities (and mine) would be seen as staggering animal cruelty but however widespread it might be it is not condoned in any Buddhist teaching as far as I know.

It also tends to be the case that Mahayana Buddhism is less 'eschatological' - the goal is to become a bodhisattva (buddha-to-be) and continue to be reborn within the world rather than 'escape' it, so it has developed more 'this worldly' interests including an interest in the spiritual development of the laity. Thus there are Mahayana sutras which advocate vegetarianism and compassion towards animals for all followers rather than focus on the monastic sangha.

Hope this helps.

So does that mean he can choose to eat meat pr choose not to eat meat (aside from those proscribed by the Vinaya)? A monk following that line of behaviour will have violated the precept.

Quite simply, the monks eats whatever has been put into his bowl, without preference. In a Buddhist culture the laity will know what food is permissible and not permissible to give to a monk, so in normal circumstances the onus is on the lay persons to give appropriate food in appropriate amounts.

Meat is rupa and the way a monk or anyone else perceives it is nama. When nama and rupa come together (whether the meat, in this case, is eaten, seen, heard, smelled, touched, etc) the resulting citta (mind moment -- your mental state?) is either kusala (skilful, wholesome) or akusala (unskilful, unwholesome) depending not on the act but on the intent. This is what is meant by the explication on intent.

Yes, this is exactly right. the intent should be to eat the food without attachment, be it desire for taste or dislike. Like I said above, this is the mentality I try to adopt as a lay buddhist.

Wolf5370 is quite correct. Please allow me to add a little more detail.

The 'thin' version is the 'historical' Buddha, Siddhatta Gotama (in Pali) who was a monk from his enlightenment until his passing away. He was born in Nepal and spent his adult life in India.

There is also an extrememly thin (i.e. barely living skeletal) version often depicted on murals etc. which confuses westerners. This was Siddhatta when he practiced extreme aceticism and lived on a grain of rice a day (so the legend recounts) BEFORE he was enlightened. Once he gained a direct insight into the folly of this path (being the opposite extreme from the indulgent hedonism of his earlier life) he abandoned it and discovered the Middle Path. Thus the form you describe as 'thin' is understood to be the ideal physical form.

The 'fat buddha', often depicted as laughing and jolly and with children is Pu-Tai, an ancient Chinese bodhisattva. Mahayana Buddhism (which is prevalent throughout North and East Asia including Vietnam) differs from the Theravada of Thailand in that the goal for an individual is to become a future Buddha. A 'Buddha-to-be' is known as a Bodhisattva. So Pu-Tai was a kind of saintly figure who in a future incarnation will become a Buddha. Pu-Tai was depicted rather like a Chinese Santa Claus - he was a cheerful wandering monk who always carried a sack full of treats for children he met. In Chinese culture as with many others in Asia 'chubbiness' is a sign of wealth (i.e. you have enough to eat) and also can symbolise 'spiritual wealth'. It is regarded as lucky to rub the fat buddha's tummy, whereas you would not be advised to touch a statue of Siddhatta.

So to sum up, the 'thin' and 'heavy' figures you refer to are depictions of two different historical persons. As Wolf explained, in keeping with the Mahayana belief in bodhisattvas, His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama is regarded by his devotees as a being that has 'made it' - i.e. achieved buddhahood and returns as a bodhisattva - a living enlightened being to guide others on the way.

These three viewpoints are very contradictory.

You didn't quote the source; I'd say that the above quote is a WESTERN philosophical viewpoint. It is a western mindset that assumes that if MY Truth is right , yours must be wrong.

I'm going to desist from my habitual long expositions tomight and just say that if you study the hisory of Eastern philosophy you get an interestingly different set of assumptions.

I'll take Mahayana Buddhism as one example: in the Mahayana there are many Buddhist sutras and each one claims to be the Ultimate Truth. They do not assert that the others are in error but that they are versions of relative truth, and ultimate truth can only be accessed through relative truth.

For me the greatest thinker in all history was Nagarjuna, generally regarded as the founding father of systematic Mahayana philosophy. He analysed all the philosophies known in India - Hinayana Buddhist, Jain, various Hindu schools and pushed their thought systems to the limit. He found them all ultimately to be contradictory and defeated themselves by their own logic. He didn't replace them with an alternative 'Truth'; he championed the phrase 'Sunyata' - impossible to translate as western thought imposes wrong understanding on it but it is commonly rendered 'emptiness'. Your article seems to adhere to this way of thinking.

The Bhagavad Gita also effectively incorporated conflciting Hindu philosophical systems within an all-embracing system which recognises that most people need to relate to the Ultimate on a relative level and there is nothing wrong with that - as long as it is not mistaken for the ultimate.

Personally I like this way of thinking very much - it is inherently respectful of others' positions. Early (and some contemporary) Christian missionaries to India, China and other Asian civilizations often were initially very encouraged at the warm reception their gospel received, but couldn't grasp why people were not thereby ditching their native religion and converting. They didn't get how Hindus, Buddhists and others could accept the 'Truth' of Christianity AND the 'Truth' of other paths.

I got through the first few lines then developed a sudden desire to listen to Monty Python's 'What have The Romans Ever Done For Us?'

Now why do you think that was?????

Haven't got that far yet Dan - I mean WHEN I get a Thai gf I'll know how to treat her.

Awful. terrible. (She is f***ing gorgeous though!)

200 falang boyfriends - that's about right, isn't it?

Rainman son,

My how you've AGED since lurking this forum. It's not doin gyou any good y'know!

It certainly makes a very touching story GS - thanks for sharing it.

Diogenes,

Actually I've just spent the last two years in Nepal (note my username). I was living in Boudha, Kathmandu which is th eheart of the Tibetan Buddhist community. I have many western friends who are living and studying in Tibetan monasteries (as monks) and they are very happy. There is also a particularly excellent one which does long courses in English for lay people and all costs (course and decent accomodation) amounts to about $10 per day. However it is all TIBETAN buddhism (all 4 schools are well represented) and this is quite different to Tharavadan.

For anyone who wants to *ahem* 'butterfly' around different Buddhist traditions but seriously there are two places I would recommend - I've spent some time in both.

One, in Nepal is Lumbini, Buddha's birthplace. All the Buddhist countries have built or are building monasteries and temple sin their own traditions and it is easy to visit/stay in the whole rainbow of them. Lumbini does have some problems however and most are very understaffed at the moment.

The other place the the main pilgrimage destination for Buddhists - Bodh Gaya in India. Again, all tradtions are fully represented and it is a very well-established pilgrimage centre. As such it doesn't have the solitude and tranquility of Lumbini. It is very easy to get long term visa in India for a serious student of Buddhism.

Both Buddhist centres would offer a genuine way to experience the disciplines and practices of the different Buddhist schools without having to travel so much.

That's really excellent advice Dan, thanks.

The rice quote appears in the Lonely Planet guide to Laos, attributed to French colonial sources.

Thanks!

in this world of instant its very hard to think I may have to wait a few lifetimes for anything....'sigh'...

That’s a wonderfully witty and perceptive comment Bina. Instant gratification – the western disease. One of the great distortions of the buddhadramma in the West is to try to force it into a “I want it all and I want it now” framework. Such is the western ego.

There is another thread in this forum on ‘what is the nature of enlightenment’ – I chipped in a bit but tried to desist as it was getting very intellectual. But since you touch on it here let me make a brief observation – my understanding of the ‘goal’ of Buddhism if you will.

For me the key concept that makes sense of most of the Dhamma is ‘sati’ (in Pali) – often translated ‘mindfulness’. It means being fully aware, fully present in the moment. I think that Zen tends to express this particularly well but it is also clearly outlined in Theravada. The present moment, if looked into deeply enough, is an eternal moment.

The western mindset with the heaven/afterlife scenario projects the goal into the future and it takes this mindset into its understanding of nibbana/nirvana and looks for some distant goal. But ironically looking for a distant future goal is to lose focus on the present moment. A glimpse of the eternal now is possible – now.

For me – and I stress this is my personal understanding, not based on any high authority, enlightenment is simply moments of mindfulness all joined up. In other words every moment is a mindful moment.

A glimpse, an isolated momentary experience is achievable in many ways, not just through Buddhist training. Referring to earlier issues on this thread, I’m sure drug experiences can offer such a transient experience (altho’ I can’t personally verify that), as can ‘highs’ gained from art, nature, sex, many such methods. However they are transient and the Buddha insisted that of themselves are of no great worth. Buddhist training offers methods to put your mind in a position to make such experiences more likely to recur, and Buddhist ‘philosophy’ offers a structure to make sense of it all.

So, to make sense of all this in a sentence, what I’m basically saying is,

Forget about the future! Live in the Now.

From what you wrote Bina, it seems to me the man is using western language in a rather shallow way - much like western people with secular outlooks might throw in the term 'God' without much philosophical depth. I believe that most young thais have no more 'real' grasp of their state religion than most young Europeans do of Christianity. So I can't really interpret what he meant fo ryou - you'd have to get him to clarify.

This thread has also brought up a separate issue I'd like to share my views on.

I don't personally agree with all aspects of contemporary Thai Theravadan Buddhism - however I do wish to UNDERSTAND it. This for me is all the more imperative when it is the dominant form of religion in my adopted home. I feel that any form of 'my Buddhist path is better than your Buddhist path' is utterly unsklful. The Buddha welcomed level-headed rational debate between different religious paths and there has been a long and healthy tradition of inter-Buddhist debate down the millennia.

I think that one of the subtest and most dangerous forms of attachment is not to the physical or even the mental, but to the Dhamma. Budda taught that the Dhamma (teaching, Truth) is a raft, a vehicle - not to be clung to. You do come across people who seem to understand this theoretically and quote all the right passages, but in practice you can tell from their behaviour and reactions that they are very attached to their concept of enlightenment; their version of the Dhamma/Dharma is the RIGHT one, all else is error. This is very ironic but was clearly understood and anticipated by the Buddha. After all, if you are truly endeavouring to lose your false ego what's all this 'I want enlightenment' about?

On the issue of women and enlightenment, the Pali Canon is unique in the scriptures of the major world religions in having a whole book, the Therigatha which is written by women - they are the songs of enlightened women during the lifetime of the Buddha. Sadly, for historical reasons this 'freshness' dried up within the Theravada tradition. There are reasons for this but they require an understanding of complex background issues. To repeat, I don't defend the position - quite the contrary in fact. Since nobody contributing to this thread is actually disagreeing on this issue I'd rather leave it anyway and suggest you talk to an Ajahn (Achaan). I would however like to suggest that to me at least, there is far more that is positive about Theravadan Buddhism than is negative and it is quite a distortion to home in on one issue to the exclusion of all else.

PS Stroll - I found your thread on becoming a monk and added a comment. :-)

Bina, Stroll et al,

To clarify further, Stroll is correct – I was not giving my own opinion, I was giving the traditional Theravadan position on the role of women and lay people. I see from other posts that Darknight adheres to a Zen position which is very different. My MA thesis was actually entitled “The Role of Women in Buddhist Scriptures” in which I did a comparative study of this issue within Theravadan, Mahayana (including Zen) and Tibetan scriptures, so I’m not completely uninformed – I’ll spare you the scholarship however.

Like I said, it’s not MY view – indeed this was one of the main factors that prevented me from considering ordination within that tradition and led me towards Tibetan Buddhism which does include female Buddhas within its pantheon.

Bina – you ask about predestination/fatalism. I think the Buddha spelt out a clear middle path between fatalism and free will in a way that makes rational sense. What happens to you is the result of causes and conditions ‘you’ created in the past – i.e. your kammic seeds ripening. However, how you RESPOND to these events is your free will and will create the future conditions. For instance, if something bad happens to you, you can react with anger, which will create further negative conditions in the future; or you can respond positively in which case you create the conditions for positive outcomes in the future.

Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that, you might say. You don’t INTEND to react with anger, it just happens. But that is where the Buddhist practice comes in; through the mind training laid out by the Buddha your subconscious gradually transforms so that when you do react to events the reaction is governed by wisdom, compassion and skilfulness.

Past kammic seeds have to ripen sometime. When they ripen depends on the right conditions coming together. Sometimes it might be ‘instant’, sometimes it might be months or years later, sometimes it might be one or more lifetimes before the results manifest – in the latter case this might seem like ‘fate’. But only the omniscient mind of a Buddha can know when kamma will ripen; for us unenlightened mortals speculation is unprofitable (although there are plenty of ‘folk’ practices which claim to give answers) and the best position to take is to accept that whatever ‘fate’ throws at us is the outcome of past errors, be grateful that they are ripening now as that means they are finished with, and use the situation to sow positive kammic seeds and thus take control of our future ‘destiny’.

That's right; I'm on my way. i have a pathological fear of singing and dancing in public but I guess I'm just gonna have to conquer that!

Sorry Stroll, just found this thread - seems to have gone dead and I don't know where you are now with this notion.

However I used to know students of Ajahn Sumedo (mentioned in one of the first posts) very well. They were westerners who'd practised in Thailand and also in the west but in the same discipline.

Wats do vary a lot as to how strict they are - I'm presuming you want the real deal, not the 20 fags and 10 mins meditation a day deal. Ajahn Sumedho's wat (his teacher was Ajahn Chah) is strict and has the great advantage of teaching in English. If you want to join the sangha short term i think you'd be taken on as a novice - which is to say you'd keep to the same discipline but you'd wear the while robe of an anagarika.

I recommend you track down the book "What The Buddha Never Taught". It's an account of a western guy who joined Ajahn Chah's western sangha for a few months and didn't hack it. As such it's a bit unfair to the sanhga as he didn't get what the whole deal is, and its a few years old now but it will blow away any romantic illusions you might harbour - and its an entertaining read.

For instance (and to link with another thread I've just added to here) he notes how when the monks go on bindabat (alms round) the Thai monks are given vegetarian food by the villagers but he at the end of the line (and a vegetarian) would be given steak! An enormous sacrifice for poor villagers but they believed that all westerners eat steak so they gave with good intention.

Anyway, you should read that book; whether you're currently off the idea or not i think you'd get a lot from it. Plus you should pay a visit to the western wat founded by Ajahn Chah - the name escapes me but I'm sure you could easily find out.

In England I'd been a strict vegetarian for my life, since my early 20s and for a while was an animal rights activist. I drifted into the Dhamma about the same time, partly because in my western mindset it seemed at the time that the dhamma was very 'rational' and promoted vegetarianism. I see now that I was being typically selective in my understanding of the path.

When back in the UK I maintain a vegetarian diet - because I have full control over what I buy and cook. In Buddhist countries in Asia I compromise; i try to follow the spirit behind the Buddha's prescriptions to his monks.

The Vinaya (rules for monks) does indeed teach that they must not directly kill, and they must refuse meat if they know the animal was killed expressly to feed them. However if the meat is already cooked and is to be eaten anyway and it is offered to them they must accept.

There are two reasons behind this. One is the concept of non-attachment. To have a craving for the taste of meat is an attachment of course, but to be repulsed by or dislike meat is similarly an attachment. Food is to be taken like medicine - it is for the health of the body in order to ensure the mind is undisturbed - nothing more. Of couse you may well have met individual monks who have a clear craving for meat - don't be misled into thinking the robes automatically confer a higher spirituality; they are at various stages along the path too.

The second reason is to do with 'dana' or generosity. The main way in which lay people can work towards enlightenment is to gain merit for a favourable rebirth, and a major way of gaining merit is to give food as well as clothing and other necessities to a monk. If the monk refuses the offering he effectively denies the donor a chance to earn merit (this by the way is also why monks don't smile and say thank you when given food - the reward would be instant and no merit would be gained!).

I'm not a monk but I extend this logic to the concept of hospitality. If I am invited to a meal and the host gives me, with sincere heart meat to eat, if i refuse I deny him/her merit, so I accept. I haven't conquered the non-attachment to the taste of meat or thoughts of the poor animal that gave its life against my will, but i'm working on it!

I do admit to personally struggling with the lack of interest in 'secondary effects' in tradtional Buddhist logic. By this I mean by eating meat you are indirectly responsible for the suffering of a sentient being. It is a philosophy developed in certain Chinese forms of Mahayana Buddhism and i think exists in certain schools of thought in Vietnam, but as far as i know traditional forms of Buddhism in Thailand don't go down this road and I have no intention of 'preaching' to Thai Buddhists about the error of their ways from a western perspective.

This has been another way-too-long lesson in response to some earlier questions about what Buddhism appears to teach about this subject. My apologies for failing to be concise.

Why is life complicated? SHE'S complicated - and that's a good thing!

Obviously she's got you intrigued enough that you're not going to walk away. Maybe she is more rational and level-headed than you are but even so, like the other guys said, TAKE IT EASY!!!

Good luck :-)

Stroll - and especially Chonabot - are you thrown on stage to participate when you go to Karaoke or do you get away with hiding in the background?

Obviously what he quoted is not MY opinion, and in his flaming of me in another thread he hasn't noticed that I'm latterly of the Tibetan tradition for which this view does not apply.

He clearly has no experience of training within a sangha or learning about Theravada. There are a couple of ill-informed, angry egotists following me around this forum - sad but no point rising to it.

Oxford Will - PM or e-mail me if you want to know my Dharma background. Ironically I don't feel that this is an appropriate forum for a worthwhile exchange of ideas and knowledge about Buddhism.

I nicked the quote the other day but I don't remember exactly where - probably from somewhere within the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree.

I'm moving to a town on the border with Laos amongst ethnic Laotians.

Actually, I spent some 12 years teaching and lecturing on the question 'What is the nature of enlightenment'. Then I finally jacked in the wold of academia and took myself off to a monastery. One day I was with my good friend who was a monk when our teacher walked by.

"Lama", began my friend, "What is enlightenment?"

Our teacher roared with laughter before finally replying.

"It doesn't matter" he said.

Finally, I began to understand what I'd been teaching all those years.