Engaged Buddhism & Monasticism

[sabaijai]

FINDING MY RELIGION

Pastor Heng Sure on what Buddhism has to do with healing the world

Rev. Heng Sure, who runs the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, has been active in social causes since his days as an antiwar activist in the 1960s. This week, in the second installment of a two-part interview, I talk with him about how spirituality has shaped his worldview and what Buddhism has to do with healing the planet.

Sometimes people criticize monastic life as a form of escape. They see living in a monastery as a way to shut out the cares of the world. What do you think about that?

That's certainly a stereotype, but I think it's false. Anybody who has ever lived in a monastery will tell you, it's no place to escape from the world.

Why not?

In the monastery, there's really nowhere to hide. There's no TV, no magazines, no toys. There isn't a pill cabinet. You're basically there with your mind -- that's it. Compare that to the normal living room. The average TV is on six and a half hours a day. Now, that's an escape. Think about the percentage of folks who depend on psychotropic medication to get through the day and night. How many kids now are hooked on Ritalin? How much time do you spend shopping? People who point the finger [at the monastic life] probably haven't spent time with their own minds. If they did, they'd discover that you can't escape. All that stuff in your mind is waiting for you to pay attention to it. Once you sit down [to meditate] and become quiet, this closet of memories, afflictions, anxieties, hopes starts to open up. So the monastery is the last place to go to get away from all that. There's nothing to divert you. You've only got what you've been ignoring all this time: the contents of your own head.

But if you stay inside the monastery, and you don't go out in the world to interact with people, then you are kind of escaping, aren't you?

You might say that. However, we have something called engaged Buddhism. I'm an engaged Buddhist, and I'm out of the monastery every day. The idea is that you find ways to apply the insights of meditation and dharma teachings to social, economic and political injustices.

You mentioned something to me before about going to a soup kitchen to feed the homeless. Is that what you mean?

Exactly. But there's an interesting twist to this. Let's say you stand in line at St. Anthony's [soup kitchen in San Francisco] and directly hand food to 200 people. That's terrific; you've done a good job. Then you go away and you wait until the next time to engage some more. If, on the other hand, you sit on a cushion in a room silently, and you make your mind free of anger, you're also doing something good in the world. Minds touch all the time -- your mind is in contact with your family, your kids, your neighbors. If your mind is quiet, you're in touch with the whole world.

How do minds touch?

I'll give you an example. Somebody who is nervous gets on the BART train. They're really in a rage. Well, everyone around them picks up on that immediately -- they all feel it. And when somebody who is mellow and happy gets on that train, they pick up on that, too. We're broadcasting and receiving states of mind all the time. So, when you're sitting there in the monastery, and your mind is genuinely peaceful and calm, you're sending out that signal. You're doing the most valuable work in the world. You're transforming consciousness. I think that's what being an engaged Buddhist -- or Jew or Christian or Muslim -- is all about.

Not everyone can devote themselves to spiritual pursuits like a monk does. People need to earn a living, raise their families and all the rest of it. So, what are you suggesting they do?

I would say that if you can sit in your bedroom, if you can sit in traffic, if you can sit at your cubicle, then you're really doing something. How many workplaces do you know where people are in despair? They're just sitting there feeling undervalued, so frustrated that their idea got shot down or whittled away, or they had the project of their life transformed by some know-nothing junior executive. If we had workplaces where people spent eight hours a day really taking care of their minds and refusing to let themselves get anxious or fall into despair, then that would be something. That would be the IPO to invest in.

That certainly isn't what you hear people talking about in business magazines or on CNBC. Instead, we hear a lot about productivity, performance, profits.

Exactly. We invest in these ventures, but we don't pay attention to what's happening beneath the surface, to ourselves and the world around us. The world is going bankrupt in terms of natural resources. We're running out of oil. And we're still asking ourselves, "What's the problem? Why are we in this mess?" We're counting the leaves on the ends of branches and not focusing on the root. The root is the mind. That's where the problem lies.

So what is the answer? Meditation?

The answer is prayer. The answer is ancient technologies. We're out there investigating new technologies, but our own fundamental ancient technologies, we haven't investigated.

Which technologies are you referring to?

Prayer is a technology. So is generosity, compassion. So are tithing, fasting and silence. Every single religious tradition has tools that we can use. Look at the Ten Commandments. It says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness." That's so powerful, and yet, every day, we're out there lying to one another, you know, to survive. We call it being smart. We call it making a profit. But it's hurting us.

But the rewards of using these "technologies," as you call them, are not immediate. It's easy to find gratification by eating a candy bar or turning on a sitcom, right? When you talk about practicing compassion or generosity, that takes more time.

Well, that's definitely true. People tend to go for the quick fix. If we had some national leaders who addressed and valued wisdom -- people who said, "We're not looking for the short term; we're looking seven generations ahead" -- then it might be easier for the rest of us to do.

Does anybody really talk like that?

Native American wisdom does; Jewish wisdom does. You know, all the saints, the fathers, every tradition talks that way. So do many scientists. They're telling us that we need to be concerned about the fate of the world. Unfortunately, not enough people are listening to them.

One of the things you told me last week about your two-and-a-half-year walking pilgrimage was that it taught you that people can change. You encountered all sorts of folks who were initially skeptical, even hostile, about what you were doing. But eventually they came to appreciate you. Do you still believe that people can change?

Oh, sure -- definitely I do. I know that people can change. I can sense their deep thirst for goodness, for kindness. When I'm out in the world, I really practice my principle of using my mind as a transmitter. I want my mind to be a place of kindness, and I can come back to that, thought after thought. I think anybody I'm connected to feels it, and it has an impact. It's more than wishful thinking. I see changes happening.

But as you just pointed out, people aren't really listening to the wise voices. They're not hearing what they need to hear. What makes you think that's going to change?

Well, I think we're at a cusp period. The global communications network that has emerged in my lifetime has given us the ability to be in touch with one another, to really know and care about what people are doing in [remote] places like Afghanistan and China. But what we've discovered about this ubiquitous connectivity is that we don't know what to say to each other. There's a race going on right now. There are two different clocks running: One is the deterioration of the planet. The other, I think, is this need to speak meaningful words. If we can keep the planet going, there is a new generation coming along who is ready take up that conversation.

Who are you talking about?

The new generation that comes in the door at the monastery; these are mostly American kids. Some are Chinese American, African American, but they're definitely kids that were raised here. They are kids -- we're calling them post-despair kids -- who had alcoholic habits at age 14, drug habits when they were age 16. They were burned out on the mall when they were, you know, pubescent. Now they're college students who come in the door and say, "Tell me something true." We say, "Sit down, meditate. Let's look into Buddha dharma. Let's talk about true principle. Let's look into what the ancients said. Let's pick some old books up and talk about ancient technology." And when we do that, these kids go, "I felt that. What was that?" It goes right through the despair, right through the cynicism.

And that makes you hopeful?

Yes, it does. Those kids grew up with the ubiquitous connectivity that I mentioned before. They grew up with this sense that the world is a network. And they're going to have something to say.

How does that relate to the problems we're facing on the planet?

The world is this vague, huge presence. What is the world? It's whatever the media tells me it is. It's my globe, or it's a telephone call, you know. I can't really deal with the world. I can deal with my mind. I can deal with my next thought, but the mind is a portal to the rest of the world. I'll tell you a story. I spoke at the Vedanta Society for the Hindus, in Olema. I was talking about filial respect, which is something I like to talk about.

Meaning, respect for one's parents?

Yes. I was talking about how we touch all of humanity with our minds when we show respect for our parents. It's kind of like how a tree goes down to the taproot, and that taproot touches the groundwater, and that groundwater nourishes all plants. And if you try to go out through the branches, there's an infinite number of them. But if you go back to the taproot, you find yourself, through repaying that kindness to your parents, at once in touch with all of humanity. And so I finished the talk, and this guy comes up -- a really neat, geeky-looking guy -- and he says, "Can I tell you what I heard?" I say, "Yeah, sure."

He says, "I do computer science." I said, "Oh, good. So do I." And he says, "You talk about your heart being the universal door to all great compassion through your parents? Well, here's what I think. In my world, you would call that a single-server portal with infinite bandwidth." And I said, "Yes."

What does that mean, exactly?

Through that portal, you touch everyone. And if your mind refuses to be in despair, then you just hang on and, bit by bit, people feel it. You can do that over and over again. Over time, you've done what you need to do, and the world will be better by that much -- thought by thought. That's why Buddhism is not pie-in-the-sky. Buddhism is real. It's about asking yourself, what was your last thought? Did you let it go? Or did you bring it back? If you can do that, you've done the work of making peace in the world, thought by thought by thought.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...9/findrelig.DTL

[Abandon]

nice article. The only sticking pint for me is the part about parents ... Respect and gratitude for ones parents is fine when it is coming from Asian culture where parenting is good. But many of us did not have good parents, and it is more a wellspring of anguish than of Metta.

[camerata]

The first part of the article was pretty interesting too. The guy took a 6-year vow of silence and did a 2.5 year pilgimage on foot, prostrating himself every three steps. During that time he was robbed multiple times and had a gun held to his head three times.

[lost_in_space]

nice article. The only sticking pint for me is the part about parents ... Respect and gratitude for ones parents is fine when it is coming from Asian culture where parenting is good. But many of us did not have good parents, and it is more a wellspring of anguish than of Metta.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I vaguely remember a story about a Tibetan monk who was teaching in the U.S. Seems the child/parent relationships, which he often used to teach 'metta' (lovingkindness) meditation, didn't work because of all the unresolved issues Americans had with their folks. Usually in metta meditation, you start with sending metta to easy 'targets' and then move on to the more difficult, which in the states seems to be rather diiferent from Tibet. He adapted tho', one of the hallmarks of Buddhism.

[Abandon]

Yes, I recall that story too ... he noticed that as the metta retreat wore on people got more and more agitated. Finally someone cracked and told him straight that they could imagine spreading their metta to anyone BUT his parents. The teacher then had them write down what conjoured up the feeling of metta for them. I think kittens was the most popular. Nice that he was cutlurally adaptable.

[Suthep_Steve]

Yes, I recall that story too ... he noticed that as the metta retreat wore on people got more and more agitated. Finally someone cracked and told him straight that they could imagine spreading their metta to anyone BUT his parents. The teacher then had them write down what conjoured up the feeling of metta for them. I think kittens was the most popular.  Nice that he was cutlurally adaptable.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I do think this is throwing the baby out with the bath water here.

In Mahayana Buddhism there are two main ways of developing Loving kindness -> Great Compassion -> Bodhichitta.

The most powerful are the practises based around exchanging self with others, associated with what is part of the wisdom lineage which comes from Buddha to Manjushri and through various teachers such as Shantideva to the Tibetan Master Je Tsong Kharpa who founded the Gelug tradition in Tibet.

The second method is based around the love and gratitude we feel for our mother and is part of the Method lineage which Buddha gave to Maitreya and came down through various teachers to Je Tsong Kharpa who like his predecessor Atisha presented a union of both the wisdom and method lineages.

In my experience over 90% of western Buddhists have a great relationship with their Mums and can quite quickly get over a lot of the cultural problems we westerners have with Electra and Oedipal complexes and the like.

Even for those who have had a really hard time with their Mums you can get them started with a substitute figure that normally exists in their life such as a Father, Grandmother or an Aunt. But the mother child relationship is a very powerful one and is by far the best to use if you can.