Eastern Horizon 65- Sept 2021 Edition by Eastern Horizon YBAM

2021 International Contemporary Buddhist Seminar 10 - 11/7/2021

Zoom Meeting

Some 200 local and foreign participants signed up to discuss the changes in Buddhist practice and the future development of Buddhist organizations after the end of the pandemic.

Organizing Committee Chairperson Chan Yon Sin expresses his concerns and suggestions on how Buddhist organizations can keep up with the times and prepare for the post-pandemic environment.

YBAM President Yong Kuei Yoong gives his opening speech to the participants.

The Guest of Honor at the opening ceremony, Tan Sri Lee Kim Yew, mentions that the pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges for everybody but with Dharma practice should be able to overcome them.

Keynote speaker Venerable Hui Min speaks on the three preventive measures against the pandemic, namely, vaccination, immunity, and cultivating a calm mind and healthy body.

The Question and Answer session after the seminar.

Editorial

How to Remain Positive during the Pandemic

Dan Harris, the well-known ABC News anchor who wrote 10% Happier, asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama on his news program Nightline in May 2020, how one should respond to the Covid-19 crisis. The Dalai Lama offered the following advice, especially to those who are having a difficult time dealing with the pandemic:

(a) Practice meditation - be it one minute, five minutes or 10 minutes each day, especially when we wake up. This basically involves training our mind to be positive so that we adopt a positive approach to life. Whatever type of meditation we may follow, the main purpose should be to calm the mind so that we can respond to a situation mindfully rather than reacting with thoughts of fear, worry, or doubt. (b) Practice compassion – this will lessen our attachments to our ego as we look to those around us who may need help. The Buddha taught us that we live in an inter-connected world, so we should not just think of our own well-being but that of others too. It is when we cultivate thoughts of loving kindness and compassion for others, that we too will benefit from such wholesome thoughts. As the Dalai Lama said to Dan Harris, “Taking care of others is actually taking care of yourself.” We can say that the essence of the Buddha’s teaching is all about how to develop our mind. When we cultivate a positive attitude, we are able to respond to difficulties in life by being more relaxed, calm, peaceful, and equanimous. This is the exact opposite of having a negative mind state when we react to difficulties or a crisis with anxieties, worries, fears, and frustrations.

In the Buddha’s own words, he said that for one who contemplates wisely, anxieties and troubles that have not yet arisen do not arise, and those already arisen will cease. But for those who does not contemplate wisely, anxieties and troubles that have not yet arisen will

arise, and those that have already arisen will increase. (Sabbasava Sutta, MN 2)

When we understand the Buddha’s teaching, we realize that the pandemic vividly illustrates a core Buddhist principle: That we are all equally subject to birth, aging, sickness and death. All things — physical and mental — are in continuous change, not remaining the same from one moment to the next. Consequently, although we crave stability and pleasant experiences, there is no real security, and happiness is fleeting. We are just not in control.

Psychologists have revealed that 90% of things which we worry about are out of our control; so it’s not helpful to worry about them. However, for the 10% that we can control, we should do something about it, instead of worrying. This is the same advice that the 8th century Buddhist pandit, Shantideva taught: “If a problem can be solved, why worry? If the problem cannot be solved, worrying will do you no good.” (Verse 10, Chapter 6, Bodhicaryāvatāra) Even though the pandemic is still around, we also know that all phenomena are impermanent; as such Covid-19 cannot last forever. It is therefore reassuring to hear what the Dalai Lama said to TIME magazine on April 14, 2020:

“As a Buddhist, I believe in the principle of impermanence. Eventually, this virus will pass, as I have seen wars and other terrible threats pass in my lifetime, and we will have the opportunity to rebuild our global community as we have done many times before. I sincerely hope that everyone can stay safe and stay calm. At this time of uncertainty, it is important that we do not lose hope and confidence in the constructive efforts so many are making.” May all of you stay safe and healthy! August 31, 2021 Malaysia’s 64rd anniversary of independence.

CONTENTS 04

04 10 13 15 18 20 26

LEAD ARTICLE Buddhist Mindfulness and Secular Mindfulness By Venerable Thubten Chodron

TEACHINGS Faith in the Triple Gem

By Venerable Ajahn Anan Akiñcano

Meditation in Everyday Life By Venerable Dharma Master Cheng Yen

How Do We Learn the Dharma? By Lama Jampa Thaye

FEATURE How Practice Can Actually Get Better after Having Children By Sumi Loundon Kim

FACE TO FACE Learning to Live with Uncertainty By Venerable Ayyā Adhimuttī

What is Mind Training? By Geshe Tenzin Namdak

ISSUE NO.65

SEPTEMBER 2021

31 33 36

Learning from Ehi Passiko By Zulhaqem bin Zulkifli

What is Pure Land Practice? By Jiawen

Women and Buddhism in Modern Society By Dr Caroline Starkey

Adaptation and Change – Lessons from Young American Buddhists

Yasodhara as a Model for Modern Women

By Chenxing Han

By Prof Vanessa R. Sasson

FORUM Can Anger be a Positive Emotion? By Venerable Āyasmā Aggacitta, Venerable Min Wei & Geshe Dadul Namgyal

...................................................................... September 2021 ISSUE NO.65 (Published 3 times a year)

53 56 58 60 62

BOOKS IN BRIEF

BOOK REVIEWS Women in British Buddhism By Benny Liow Woon Khin

Be the Refuge By Benny Liow Woon Khin

Yasodhara and the Buddha By Benny Liow Woon Khin

DHARMA THOUGHTS The Practice of Dana

By Vijaya Samarawickrama

EASTERN HORIZON PUBLICATION BOARD CHAIRMAN : Dr. Ong See Yew

EDITOR : Benny Liow (bennyliow@gmail.com) ASSOCIATE EDITOR : Wong Zhi Yi SUB-EDITOR : Dr. Ong Puay Liu MANAGER : Teh Soo Tyng

ASSISTANT MANAGER : Goh Jong Kit SECRETARY : Ho Yin Ching

ART DIRECTOR : Geam Yong Koon

PUBLISHER : YBAM <ybam@ybam.org.my>

PRINTER : Nets Printwork Sdn Bhd Lot 52, Jalan PBS 14/4, Taman Perindustrian Bukit Serdang, 43300 Sri Kembangan, Selangor, MALAYSIA. Tel : 603-89429858 Email : info@netsgroup.com.my EASTERN HORIZON is a publication of the Young Buddhist Association of Malaysia (YBAM). A non-profit making project, this journal is non-sectarian in its views and approach. We aim to inspire, stimulate and share. The opinions expressed in EASTERN HORIZON are those of the authors and in no way represent those of the editor or YBAM. Although every care is taken with advertising matter, no responsibility can be accepted for the organizations, products, services, and other matter advertised. We welcome constructive ideas, invite fresh perspectives and accept comments. Please direct your comments or enquiries to: The Editor EASTERN HORIZON Young Buddhist Association of Malaysia 9, Jalan SS 25/24, Taman Mayang, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, MAlAYSIA Tel : (603) 7804 9154 Fax : (603) 7804 9021 Email : admin@easternhorizon.org or Benny Liow (bennyliow@gmail.com) Website : www.easternhorizon.org KDN PP 8683/01/2013(031165)

EASTERN HORIZON | LEAD ARTICLE

Buddhist Mindfulness and Secular Mindfulness

Mindfulness is currently a popular practice in our society. It is discussed in news magazines. TV hosts interview instructors of mindfulness. Shops sell special clothes, timers, and bells to help practitioners of mindfulness, and mindfulness sessions are fitted into the work schedule in offices, businesses, and locker rooms. Mindfulness has become the latest craze that is supposed to lead us to relaxation and reduce our stress.

By Venerable Thubten Chodron

It is important to differentiate the two types of mindfulness so that people are clear what they are practicing and why. (Photo by Sravasti Abbey)

Venerable Thubten Chodron is an American Buddhist nun who received her novice ordination from Kyabje Ling Rinpoche in 1977, and in 1986 she received bhikshuni (full) ordination in Taiwan. She studied and practiced Buddhism of the Tibetan tradition for many years in India and Nepal under the guidance of HH The Dalai Lama, Tsenzhap Serkong Rinpoche, Lama Zopa Rinpoche and other Tibetan masters. Ven. Chodron emphasizes the practical application of the Buddha’s teachings in our daily lives and is especially skilled at explaining them in ways easily understood and practiced by modern people. She has published many books on Buddhist philosophy and meditation in multiple languages, and is currently co-authoring with HH The Dalai Lama a multi-volume series of teachings on the Buddhist path, The Library of Wisdom and Compassion. https://thubtenchodron.org

The secular mindfulness practices that are helpful to people across society originated in the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. Today they have developed in a way that diverges from their origin in a spiritual tradition. It is important to differentiate the two types of mindfulness so that people are clear what they are practicing and why.

A Buddhist friend in Singapore who teaches secular mindfulness told me that in a multicultural, multireligious society such as Singapore (and the US), people who are not Buddhist may want to learn secular mindfulness meditation to help them be calmer and to get in touch with their feelings. But they will not be drawn to the practice, and thus will miss out on its benefits, if mindfulness is billed as a Buddhist practice. On the other hand, people who are seeking a spiritual path and want to learn Buddhism because they seek spiritual liberation or full awakening will want to study with a Buddhist teacher and learn about subtle impermanence, the four noble truths, selflessness, the altruistic intention, rebirth,

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and so on. They will learn how to do both analytic and placement meditation on these topics, a skill that they will not find in the practice of secular mindfulness.

What is mindfulness? Buddhism defines mindfulness as a mental factor that focuses on a virtuous object and is able to keep the mind focused on that object. Though the traditional definition calls for a virtuous object as the object of focus, it could also be a neutral one such as the breath. In Pali (sati) and Sanskrit (smrti), mindfulness is the same word as “memory” or “remember.” Mindfulness functions to prevent distraction to other objects. Cultivating mindfulness pertains to both our practice of ethical conduct and to our development of concentration. Mindfulness in practicing ethical conduct In the context of ethical conduct, those of us who are Buddhists cultivate mindfulness of our precepts, whether lay or monastic, and of the ten virtuous actions that we aspire to cultivate. We remember the values and principles we want to live by and act according to them. When we forget our precepts, carelessness and complacency ensue. By neglecting to reflect on our values or on what kind of human being we want to be, we get pulled this way and that by objects of attachment and anger that come into the mind. When memory of our values and precepts disappears, we can’t use them to frame or support our day-to-day life and live in an ethical manner. Mindfulness works closely together with another mental factor called introspective awareness (P. sampajañña, Skt. samprajanya), also translated as “mental alertness” or “vigilance.” This mental factor is like a little spy that observes if we are mindful of our values and precepts and whether we’re acting in accordance with them. It’s a little corner of the mind that investigates, “I’m talking. Is what I’m saying truthful? Does it promote harmony among people? Is it kind? Is this an appropriate time to say this?” Introspective awareness observes, “How is my body moving now? How are my physical movements and gestures affecting other people? Am I aware of the other people in my surroundings and how my actions affect them?”

I read a story in the news that’s a good example of how mindfulness and introspective awareness work together in the practice of ethical conduct. A football player who was 6’5” and weighed 300 pounds was working out in a park. He heard a woman screaming and went to investigate. She was being attacked by a man in broad daylight. As the football player ran over to help, he realized that he was a very big person and that people could get scared by him, especially if he’s coming at them quickly. He ran with that awareness because he didn’t want to freak everybody out, and he dragged the man away from the woman and sat him down. Another man came along who kept the man there until the cops arrived. The football player then led the woman some distance away and helped her calm down because she was quite distressed. All this time, he was mindful of his size and the effect that it had on others. We say he was mindful, which is true, but he also had introspective awareness. He was mindful of not wanting to scare anybody and he had the introspective awareness to be aware of how he was moving, so that on his way to help nobody got frightened except the attacker. That’s a good example of mindfulness of how he wanted to behave and introspective awareness checking that he was acting that way. The police department declared the football player and the other man heroes, but the football player said, “I’m not a hero. I was just doing what any person should do when somebody needs help.” Mindfulness in developing concentration In the context of developing the single-pointed mind of serenity (shamatha), mindfulness focuses on the object you are using to cultivate concentration. This should be an object that you are familiar with. If you’re using the Buddha as your meditation object, you look at a statue, painting, or an image of the Buddha to remember how he looks, the expression on his face, his hand gestures, and so on.

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Then you lower your eyes and bring that image to mind in your mental consciousness. Serenity is cultivated by the mental consciousness and the object of serenity is a mental object. Serenity is not attained by a visual consciousness staring at a candle or a flower. Mindfulness remembers the object of concentration and functions to keep the attention on it, so you’re not remembering the movie you saw yesterday or what somebody did last week that bugged you. You’re not drowsy or falling asleep, but are focused on the object of meditation. In meditation, introspective awareness checks up to see if your mindfulness is still on the meditation object, if the mind is restless and distracted to an object of attachment, or if the mind is dull, lethargic, or lax. One corner of the mind from time to time observes, “Am I still on the image of the Buddha?” If you’re not, then it activates the appropriate antidote that enables you to renew mindfulness on the object of meditation.

This is how these two, mindfulness and introspective awareness, function in tandem in most situations. They are two mental factors we should put effort into developing, not only in our meditation practice, but also in our daily life. Benefits of developing mindfulness and introspective awareness

In the Buddhist path, we follow the three higher trainings of ethical conduct, concentration, and wisdom. The order of these three begins with the easiest and progressively becomes more difficult. By practicing ethical conduct, our mindfulness and introspective awareness automatically improve. We practice mindfulness of our precepts regarding verbal and physical activities and cultivate introspective awareness that guides us to live according to them. Our relationship with others improves and we have less guilt and regret—two factors that impede the cultivation of concentration. Since our mindfulness and introspective awareness are already somewhat developed, cultivating serenity on the object of meditation is easier. In our daily life, in addition to cultivating mindfulness

and introspective awareness on what we’re saying and doing, we also monitor the mind because our physical and verbal actions originate in the mind. We make sure our minds are directed toward virtuous objects. It’s helpful during the day to check, “Is my mind in La-La Land imagining something beautiful that I want? Or am I in Regret Land thinking of something in the past that I did that I don’t feel good about? Or am I strolling down Memory Lane thinking of all these people I knew in high school and wondering what they are doing now?” When introspective awareness notices those kinds of thoughts, stop and ask yourself, “Is this a good object to focus on right now? Does thinking about this have any benefit for myself or others?” We’ll notice that many times what we’re thinking about is a total waste of time. Buddhist mindfulness and secular mindfulness Mindfulness is now the latest and biggest fad, like yoga was years ago, and it’s important to distinguish secular mindfulness and Buddhist mindfulness: they are not the same. Secular mindfulness grew out of the vipassana meditation taught in Theravada Buddhism. In the ‘60s and ‘70s young people such as Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzburg, Joseph Goldstein and others went to Burma and Thailand where they learned vipassana (insight) meditation, which included the practice of mindfulness, and the Buddhadharma. But when they returned to the US, they taught mindfulness and vipassana simply as a meditation technique that would help people be calmer and more aware. Not wanting to teach a religion, they did not teach mindfulness and vipassana in the context of Buddhist teachings such as the four noble truths, the eightfold noble path, or the three higher trainings. As far as I understand, the secular mindfulness movement came out of that. While secular mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism, it differs from the mindfulness that is practiced in Buddhism. For example, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn started a program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Years ago, when I first met Dr. Kabat-Zinn, MBSR was something new, and it was exciting to see the results. Now there’s a training program and people can be certified as teachers and offer courses and retreats. For people who have chronic pain, MBSR works very well. It is a secular training open to people from all

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religions or no religion; it is not the practice of Buddhist mindfulness, which involves practicing a specific form of ethical conduct, learning about rebirth, and understanding what to practice and abandon on the path to liberation and full awakening. Secular mindfulness and Buddhist mindfulness differ in several regards: the motivation, context, technique, result, and overall approach. How one applies mindfulness is different as well. Some of the differences are in the following areas. 1.Motivation In Buddhist practice, our motivation is either to

obtain liberation from samsara (i.e., to attain nirvana) or to attain full Buddhahood. Our motivation is to purify our mind completely and overcome all the mental afflictions and ignorance. Those who aim for arhatship strive to become a liberated being who is no longer trapped in samsara. Those who aim to become Buddhas will develop bodhicitta—the aspiration to become fully awakened in order to best benefit all living beings and guide them to full awakening. They will exert effort to overcome all traces of the self-centered attitude and replace it with a sincerely altruistic intention to be of benefit to sentient beings. In other words, the practice of Buddhist mindfulness is done with a compassionate motivation, and this motivation permeates all aspects of our lives as Buddhist practitioners. The motivation for doing secular mindfulness is basically to be calmer, feel better, and have fewer problems in life. The motivation is entirely about this life—to calm stress in this life, to become more peaceful with less psychological turmoil in this life. There is no talk of future lives, liberation, or full awakening.

2. Context In Buddhism, mindfulness practice is explained in the context of the four noble truths: we are beings who have duhkha, or unsatisfactory experiences; these experiences come from circling in samsara due to ignorance; there exists a path to practice to purify the mind and overcome these causes; and this path leads to nirvana, a state of final peace and fulfillment. Buddhist mindfulness is combined with wisdom that investigates and penetrates the ultimate nature of

persons and phenomena. It is practiced in addition to other meditations and methods that together develop different aspects of our mind. It is supported by ethical conduct and compassion, qualities that manifest in our daily lives.

Secular mindfulness is practiced in the context of becoming a more productive employee or a better parent and partner. There is no talk of ethical conduct or compassion; there is no guidance on how to discern a virtuous mental state or a non-virtuous one. That could lead to someone thinking, “I’m mindful of anger arising toward this person who insulted me; I’m mindful of wanting to retaliate; I’m mindful of opening my mouth and insulting the other person; I’m mindful of feeling satisfied because I put that person in their place so they won’t insult me again.” Certainly such “mindfulness” of our anger and craving and the actions we do motivated by them won’t lead to happiness.

3. Technique The meditation technique is also different. In Buddhist mindfulness practice, we meditate on the four establishments of mindfulness: mindfulness of the body, the feelings, the mind, and phenomena. Here mindfulness is not bare attention that observes whatever arises in

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the mind without judgment as in secular mindfulness. Rather, the Buddhist practice of the four establishments of mindfulness involves developing a penetrative, probing mind that seeks to understand exactly what this body is, what pleasant and unpleasant feelings are, and how craving pleasant feelings and aversion to unpleasant ones operate in our lives. We are mindful of how happy feelings produce attachment, unhappy feelings produce anger, and neutral feelings produce ignorance or confusion. The four establishments of mindfulness is a penetrative study of the body and mind and the person who is designated in dependence on the body and mind. Its ultimate purpose is to generate the wisdom that overcomes ignorance and craving. Buddhist mindfulness isn’t just watching one’s mind. It involves studying the relationship between body, mind, external influences, and karmic tendencies

implanted on the mindstream during previous lives. It makes us aware of internal and external conditions that influence our lives, which enables us to see these conditions with wisdom and question our assumptions and preconceptions. Buddhist mindfulness leads us to examine whether the way things appear is actually how they exist. Furthermore, in Buddhist practice, mindfulness just is one part of our spiritual practice. There are many other practices we do because our mind is complex: one practice alone is not going to bring liberation. Our meditation practice is based on studying and reflecting on the teachings of the Buddha.

None of this is present in secular mindfulness. Although the various instructors of secular mindfulness have slightly different techniques, most of them center on

observing the breath, experiencing any sensations and feelings that arise, and observing any thoughts that arise without judgement. Nowadays, secular mindfulness is inclining toward entertainment. When a journalist from a wellness magazine asked me to write about mindfulness as practiced by Buddhists, she told me about the techniques of several of the leading instructors of secular mindfulness. These included listening to soothing music while watching the breath, looking at beautiful landscapes on your computer screen, and watching pretty shapes and calming images displayed on the screen. This is directed at lessening stress and relaxing the mind, which certainly helps people, but is not in itself spiritual practice.

Can learning secular mindfulness lead to an interest in Buddhism? For some people, perhaps it will. However, my experience is that the great majority of people who come to Buddhist teachings were not led there by practicing secular mindfulness.

4. Result Secular mindfulness does help people. It’s taught in banks, to sports teams, to real estate agents, and other areas of endeavor to help people relax and alleviate stress. It makes people more productive and better at their jobs. However, it doesn’t spur them to examine their motivation, live ethically, or be compassionate toward others. In some cases, secular mindfulness may make people better cogs in the wheel of capitalism. But this is not Buddhist mindfulness, nor is it spiritual practice. In short, both types of mindfulness have value. Secular mindfulness helps mitigate daily stresses and calm

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the body and mind. Buddhist mindfulness transforms the mind so as to eliminate attachment, anger, and confusion and develop impartial love, compassion, and wisdom. Buddhist mindfulness, when conjoined with other practice, leads to liberation and full awakening.

5. Overall approach Another difference between the two types of mindfulness that is worth highlighting is that Buddhist mindfulness and Buddhist teachings in general are offered free of charge. Some Buddhist centers in the West charge, but in most Buddhist organizations, especially in Asia, teachings and meditation instruction are freely offered. This creates an economy of generosity where people want to give back because

they’ve received benefit from the Dharma teachings and teachers. They know the monastics need to eat and the temple must pay for electricity and other expenses. Participants give from their heart and according to their ability, there are no charges, and nobody is excluded or prevented from receiving Buddhist teachings because they don’t have money.

Practitioners of secular mindfulness often buy an app. Prices vary and discounts are advertised. That adds a very different dimension to secular mindfulness: it is a money-making endeavor and a business activity. Practitioners become customers paying for a service and in that way they have leverage over what is taught. The money clients pay is a motivating factor for the instructors, who may alter their meditation technique or add a particular slant in order to interest more people.

Buddhist teachers, on the other hand, are part of a lineage that goes back over 2,500 years to the Buddha. Although certain external factors may be altered depending on climate, culture, or other external circumstances, the teachings themselves are not changed. Both Buddhist mindfulness and secular mindfulness benefit their respective audiences. Knowing their similarities and differences enables us to seek the type of practice that will meet our present needs. EH

Are you searching for a spiritually challenging work? Do you enjoy meeting fellow Dharma practitioners, Buddhist leaders, and Dharma masters? Would you like to introduce the latest Buddhist book you read recently? How about researching into the latest web-sites on Buddhist activities around the world? And of course, what about telling us how you first came in contact with the dharma and what the dharma means to you today. Well, if you find all of these interesting, we can make it spiritually challenging for you too!

In every issue of EASTERN HORIZON, we publish special chat sessions with leading Buddhist personalities, essays on all aspects of Buddhism, book reviews, and news and activities that are of interest to the Buddhist community. We need someone to help us in all these projects. If you are keen to be part of this exciting magazine, please e-mail to the editor at Bennyliow@gmail.com, and we will put you in touch with what’s challenging for the next issue!

Let us share the dharma for the benefit of all sentient beings!

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Faith in the Triple Gem By Venerable Ajahn Anan Akiñcano

Venerable Ajahn Anan Akiñcano was born in Saraburi, Central Thailand, on March 31, 1954. Though he worked as an accountant, he was increasingly drawn to Buddhist practice and began living at a nearby monastery. m work. The insight resulting from his practice eventually led him to enter the monastic order. On July 3, 1975, he took full ordination under his preceptor and teacher, the Venerable Ajahn Chah, and stayed at Wat Nong Pah Pong, and associated branches, developing a close relationship as Ajahn Chah's personal attendant.

In 1984, Ajahn Anan founded a monastery known as Wat Marp Jan, or “Monastery of the Moonlit Mountain”. Over thirty years later, Ajahn Anan’s reputation as an accomplished meditation teacher has grown, along with the number of monks coming to live under him. While his teachings stress the fundamentals of day-to-day meditation and mindfulness practice, Ajahn Anan is also known for his ability to articulate the Buddhist path in terms that practitioners of varied backgrounds can understand. His instruction has attracted a large following of foreigners, with monks from Australia, Brazil, Sri Lanka and elsewhere residing at Wat Marp Jan and its branches. Today, Ajahn Anan attends to his duties as abbot and teacher, looking after a growing number of branch monasteries in Thailand and overseas, teaching visiting laity, and instructing the monks who practice under his guidance.

When we practise Dhamma, at times we may test out ourselves dealing with sense objects. Like monks may go to practise Dhamma, putting up their umbrellas and mosquito nets in the deep forest, or in a secluded place. And after meditating, they may have fear arise. The fear of things they can’t see. The fear that there will be things coming to harm their mind and harm their body. Or some monks are scared and terrified of snakes, elephants and tigers, which just comes down to being scared of death. And when they go to stay in places which have these types of dangers, they are determined to practise Dhamma. They think of the kammaṭṭhāna, meditation objects, that the great teachers taught them to meditate on, and the Buddha said that if we have fear and dread arise, then we should recollect him, the Tathāgata. So may we think of the Buddha, and then we will have rapture and bliss arise easily. The fear will diminish if we are determined to meditate and have mindfulness with the word such as ‘Buddho’.

If we have faith and confidence in the Triple Gem, that is Budho, Dhammo, Sangho, then we will truly enter into the Triple Gem. And even being an unattained human being, we have to practise properly as well. When we have solidity in the Triple Gem without doubt and wavering, then we are not put off by some of the Sangha members who don’t bring up faith and confidence in us, because they aren’t included in the Triple Gem, as they are the conventional Sangha. So the deep rooted faith we have in the Triple Gem, we should make it to be full in our hearts, because the Buddha was one with the mind of purity and radiance. The Dhamma is the teaching of the Buddha that he has taught well. There is no one who can dispute and argue against the Buddha’s teachings. The Sangha that is included in the Triple Gem is the Ariya—Noble Sangha, those who have perfect and complete faith and confidence in the Triple Gem. Ones who are beyond worries and concern. The Buddha said that

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whoever has this supreme refuge, this highest refuge, by this refuge, one will make an end of all Dukkha, suffering. It is that which reduces the renewed births and deaths, cycling around in Samsara. And it also makes suffering cease in the present as well. That is why the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha is the supreme and highest refuge. And the Triple Gem isn’t something to be taken playfully. The one who truly enters into it must be someone who understands clearly. They have wisdom and can see into Aniccam, Dukkham, Anatta, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and not-self. One who has faith like this, is someone who is determined to listen to Dhamma or discussing Dhamma. We recite the verses of chanting and Dhamma, and investigate into Dhamma. And we practise Samatha, tranquillity, and Vipassana, insight meditation, like you do here. This is called making the mind peaceful. We have mindfulness with the in- and out-breath, according to time and opportunity. But those who have faith may do it more continually. They are able to make their minds peaceful and this leads to the arising of wisdom, which can overcome the mental defilements. But if our place isn’t appropriate, this may make us disrupted and agitated. If we may be able to find one quiet spot in the house, and then we may be able to have peace and calm come up. So when we have this supreme refuge like this, then this is the building up of our wisdom. If there may be fear of wild or other animals, fear of spirits or for some people, they are of the level of having homage for other things ‘greater’ than the Triple Gem. There may be many who worship tree spirits or deities as their refuge. But when venerable Ajahn Chah first built Wat Nong Pah Pong, the villagers mainly worshiped spirits as their refuge. But after listening to Ajahn Chah’s teachings, they gained faith, and so they determined to practise the five precepts and they took refuge in the Triple Gem. They had made the certain decision that if they had to die, then so be it. But let me die with faith in the Triple Gem. There were many experiences, many

Disciples pay respects to Ajahn Anan on his birthday.

The monastery's Bodhi Tree can be traced back to a clipping of the original from Bodh Gaya, India.

Long-time supporters of the monastery share a moment with Ajahn Anan before the meal.

things that happened, like stones falling, hitting this lay person’s roof. And it made a loud racket. But this one layman decided right there and then to take firm refuge in the Triple Gem, and there was nothing that could harm or endanger him. And he was someone who kept the five precepts from that day onwards.

EASTERN HORIZON | TEACHINGS

So when we practise staying in the forest, or in the wilderness, there may be fear coming up. Then we may think of the Buddha. The Buddha had trained himself already before becoming the Buddha. When the Bodhisattva had fear come up, in whatever posture he was in, he would stay in that posture. If he had fear when he was walking, the Bodhisattva would not stand, sit or lie down. He would walk until the fear disappeared. If he had fear when he was standing, then he would stand until the fear disappeared. If he had fear when he was sitting, then he would sit until the fear disappeared. In the same way, when fear came up when he was lying down, then he would not sit, stand or walk. But would stay lying down until the fear disappeared. So we can see the Buddha had trained and practised himself in the best way, and this sutta was given by the Buddha when he was in Jetavana monastery, where the Buddha retold when he was practising as a Bodhisattva before becoming awakened. He stayed in the forest, in the wilderness. And the Bodhisattva had his body, speech and mind that was clean and pure. The raga, sensual craving, and the five hindrances that obstruct samadhi, concentration, was stilled and calmed. So the Bodhisattva likely had no fear from staying in the forest.

What we people are afraid of most, is death. This is because we have liking and pleasure in this world. We have pleasure in forms, sounds, odours, tastes, touches and mental objects. So whoever has pleasure, be it a monk or a lay person, then they will have fear come up as normal, because they don’t want to be separated or be parted from the things they love and possess. And especially in this era, there is fear. It may not be the fear of tree spirits and deities like in the past, but it is fear of the harmful virus infecting us, and we don’t even know when it entered our bodies. No matter how careful they are, there are still people who get infected with the virus, Covid-19. And many people have lost their lives from it. So may we establish our mindfulness well. Firstly, it is related to kamma. If we have the kamma, then how much ever we try to avoid it, we may still die from it.

I want to share with you a story of one family of five people, who got infected with Covid-19. The wife liked to go outside of the home, and no matter how much they told her not to go out, she wouldn’t listen. Ultimately, she got Covid-19 and spread it to the people in the home. Later, this wife died in that house. The husband was also infected, all the in-laws caught it as well. Many people were infected by it. The ones remaining had to move to get treated in the hospital. It ended up that many people did recover from it, only having minor flu symptoms, and got better. But there was one person, one of the workers, who was very good at his work and was skilled, he also recovered and went back home. That night, he bathed and no one had noticed until the next morning, when they found him lying on the floor, dead in the bathroom. He had slipped in the bathroom. So we can see that he had come back, recovered from Covid-19, but slipped over in the bathroom and died for whatever reason, we don’t know. Maybe he had slipped, or maybe he had taken a cold shower and made the illness come back up. So life is uncertain. They are infected with Covid-19, they think they would die from it, but they can recover, yet slip in the bathroom and die. So being scared of dying too much damages the mind. There is excessive stress on the mind and too much anxiety arises in the mind. This is not good. So may we establish our mindfulness well. If we have fear coming up, then may we chant and meditate a lot. Establish our mindfulness and contemplate that this is natural and normal in life. When we are born, we must have ageing, sickness and death. We know that it is like this, but this knowledge hasn’t entered the mind deeply. This knowledge is still just on the surface, on the outside, so we need to train and develop our minds to have this supreme refuge, the highest refuge. If we go for refuge in the jewel of the Buddha, the jewel of the Dhamma, the jewel of the Sangha, we will be able to be free from all suffering. So may you be determined to truly enter the Triple Gem in our meditation and in our Dhamma practice. May you all grow in blessings. EH

TEACHINGS | EASTERN HORIZON

Meditation in Everyday Life By Venerable Dharma Master Cheng Yen

Cheng Yen (born 1937) is a Taiwanese Buddhist nun, teacher, and philanthropist. She is the founder of the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, ordinarily referred to as Tzu Chi, a Buddhist humanitarian organization based in Taiwan but with operations globally. Master Cheng Yen leads by example, and firmly believes that true compassion is more than passive sympathy for another’s plight: It is concrete action aimed at relieving suffering directly. In founding Tzu Chi, her wish was to give ordinary people the chance to actualize their compassion, and find inner peace and joy while saving the world. She is often called the “Mother Teresa of Asia”, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and honored on TIME 100: The Most Influential People in the World list. But worldly accolades cannot encompass the full impact of the immense and tangible relief Master Cheng Yen and Tzu Chi bring to those in need and distress around the globe.

The state of “samadhi” that I often speak of isn’t about sitting in meditation without hearing any sounds. Rather, it’s about remaining in a state undisturbed by the environment. This is true samadhi.

The practice of meditation is central to the Buddhist path. There are many methods and forms of practice, yet they’re all associated with bhāvanā, a Sanskrit term that can be translated as “mental development,” “cultivation,” “nurturing,” “making become” or “calling into existence.”

Bhāvanā often appears in a compound phrase, signifying the development of a specific mental state or quality: Maitrī- bhāvanā for instance, which is a meditation practice focused on loving-kindness, one of the Four Infinite Minds. On its own, bhāvanā refers to

“contemplation” and “spiritual cultivation” in general.

Another Sanskrit term connected to meditation in Buddhism is dhyāna, which relates to “mind training” and involves efforts to lessen sensuality, unwholesome qualities and discursive thought; while developing concentration, absorption, tranquility, equanimity, mindfulness and alertness. Progressively, as mental defilements decrease and insight and awareness grow, sublime states of meditative consciousness can be attained. Samadhi (Sanskrit), which is single-pointed concentration to the point of complete absorption, is also connected to the practice of meditation. It is one of the Six Perfections that one strives to cultivate, and the mental discipline it demands comprises Right Effort,

Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration, which are part of the Noble Eightfold Path towards enlightenment and ultimate liberation from suffering.

In the short-term, meditation brings tranquility through the calming of our naturally turbulent minds, which in turn brings mental happiness and peace. Practice that focuses on pacifying the mind is called “calm-abiding” (Sanskrit: śamatha) meditation. As the mind becomes tranquil, it also becomes more lucid, and “insight” (Sanskrit: vipaśyanā) meditation focuses on that. In the long-term, meditation brings full awakening. While the majority of practices pertain to seated meditation, the goal is to extend “formal practice” into our daily life, so that each moment “post-meditation” is also

EASTERN HORIZON | TEACHINGS

Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan

Tzu Chi HQ, Hualien, Taiwan

Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital is situated at Xindian, New Taipei City, Taiwan

a part of our spiritual cultivation. And, in fact, I view “meditation in everyday life” as the best form of cultivation.

In cultivation, we need to understand what it means to keep our mind in meditation. This doesn’t only mean sitting meditation. Actually, when we sit down and quiet our minds to do meditation, that’s often when the most afflictions and baseless thoughts and feelings come up in the mind. That’s because at that time, we’re disconnected from outer reality. [On the other hand], when we’re working, we’re in direct contact with the environment and we can have genuine encounters with the world around us. But, when meditating, we’re cut off from it, and our mind will conjure up many, many things.

Tzu Chi International School, Bukit Jalil, Malaysia

When the afflictions, fantasies, illusions and delusions keep coming up and fill our mind more and more, how are we to discipline the mind and overcome these afflictions? That can be a very dangerous position to be in. Sometimes, in the effort to tame our mind, the more anxious we are for control, the more we lose a handle on it. Some people have lost their mind this way. You really have to watch out for this. That’s why I encourage you to practice meditation in the midst of everyday life instead. Meditation in everyday life is about training the mind in the midst of normal, daily life activities – in the course of real life and living. You can achieve this while doing anything. But some people will think, “Is this spiritual practice? This is just doing normal, everyday things.”

The truth is: what kind of spiritual practice is there apart from living? Spiritual practice is right here in these normal daily life activities – these are the opportunities for cultivation. Some people don’t realize this, so instead of seeing everything from the perspective of cultivation and developing wisdom-life, their minds are caught up in their disagreements with others and other “people issues.” Thus, we should recognize that we can meditate in every moment of our lives, and that challenges are but opportunities for mind training and inner purification. I present the work of weeding a vegetable garden as an analogy for spiritual practice and cultivation in everyday life, in that the goal is to remove our

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inner weeds without destroying the wholesome seeds.

If you don’t know the right method for doing it, you may pull out the grassy part but not all of the roots. Sometimes you accidentally damage the crop you’re supposed to be protecting. Cultivation is like this. We need to continually nurture our good thoughts and nourish our wisdom-life so it can grow. Our afflictions and wrong thoughts are like those weeds, and we need to be diligent in pulling them out. When do we do this? When we’re around other people or working together, that’s our chance to

How Do We Learn the Dharma? By Lama Jampa Thaye

do our weeding. Every encounter with people or matters is our opportunity to nurture goodness, develop our wholesome thoughts, and eliminate our inner weeds. It’s in the midst of this involvement with people and matters that we nourish our wisdom-life and enable it to grow. And, just as with the vegetable garden, we need to take care of our wholesome thoughts and protect them – they’re the basis of our wisdom-life. The section in italics consists of material written by the Jing Si Abode English Editorial Team, based on Dharma Master Cheng Yen’s conversations with visitors in Chinese. EH

Lama Jampa Thaye is a scholar and meditation master trained in the Sakya and Karma Kagyu traditions of Buddhism. He has been authorized as a Lama and Vajrayana master since 1988 by his two main teachers Karma Thinley Rinpoche and His Holiness Sakya Trichen (41st Sakya Trizin). Lama Jampa Thaye is the author of various works including Garland of Gold (1990), Way of Tibetan Buddhism (2001), Rain of Clarity (2006) and Wisdom in Exile (2017). His books and essays have been translated into French, German, Polish, Spanish, Portugese and Bulgarian. He holds a doctorate from the University of Manchester for his work on Tibetan religious history and lectured for over twenty years at the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. He edited and wrote the introduction for Karma Thinley Rinpoche’s The History of the Sixteen Karmapas of Tibet (1980) and composed the entries on Tibetan religions for The Dictionary of Religions (1980).

Eastern Horizon would like to thank Lama Jampa Thaye for allowing us to reprint the following article for the benefit of our readers. As 4th-century Indian master Vasubandhu counseled, “practice hearing, reflecting, and meditating”

EASTERN HORIZON | TEACHINGS

These days those who aren’t born into it seem to arrive at the dharma from many different directions. Some are forced to enter dharma after an overwhelming experience shatters their world and leaves them no other choice. Others arrive more gently, perhaps through disillusionment with the shallowness of contemporary culture. Encountering the dharma, they find meaning and purpose. Others come because they are wounded in some way, whether by love or hatred or just by the bitter dance of loneliness. In dharma they discover a salve for their ills. Then there are those who come looking for answers— answers they couldn’t get from science or philosophy. For them, Buddha’s teaching speaks compellingly of mysteries to be solved and truths to be unveiled.

Yet for dharma to fulfill any of these promises, we need to know how to learn it. While this point may at first seem unnecessary, we are regularly unprepared for the actual task of discovering that which the dharma offers. First, we must have a readiness to learn. It’s unlikely an arrogant and closed mind could gain anything from

the dharma. What’s more, we need to acknowledge that the process of learning will take a lifetime. At its heart, this process will form the triad of hearing, reflecting, and meditating.

HEARING “Hearing” indicates that dharma has always been received from others. It is others who connect us to the chain of transmission that stretches back to the garden in Sarnath where the Buddha instructed his first disciples. To disregard this and forage instead for information on Buddhism in books or the Internet can only help so much. If we adopt this method of “consuming” the dharma, we are all too likely to select those fragments that appear congenial and unthreatening to our already entrenched opinions and more subtle emotional and cognitive imprints. This is surely one of the principal reasons that there are so many distorted versions of the dharma in the spiritual marketplace right now.

It’s best to listen to the dharma from educated masters who can share the buddhadharma with us. However, care must be taken in choosing one’s teachers, since there have always been those who would attempt to sell us a dharma of their own fabrication, passing it off as something genuine. Back in the 13th century, Sakya Pandita characterized such behavior aptly enough:

“After showing the tail of a deer, the shameless one sells donkey meat.” After all these years, the Shameless One is still in business. Since those who invent their own dharma have only their own opinions upon which to draw, we need to rely on those masters who are anchored in a tradition. Whether that tradition be Theravada, one of the many schools of East Asia, or Tibetan - Sakya, Kagyu, Gelug, or Nyingma—the point is that there is a fundamental sanity to the dharma carried in these traditions, borne out of their presence in the lives of men and women generation after generation. Such a grounding in accumulated experience and tested knowledge contrasts the deracinated and weightless prescriptions of the self-appointed.

In any case, one may well wonder whether there’s anything truly innovative or daringly revolutionary about the so-called “new Buddhism” taught by so many new teachers. One could easily see it as the marketing of the same old conventional set of secular opinions under the guise of Buddhism by people who either disagree with fundamental aspects of the dharma or feel the need to supplement it with withered versions of reheated existentialism or the “Oprahfied” psychotherapy peddled by those not half as sharp as Freud or Jung. Such a toothless Buddhism can’t transform us. Rather than coming to resemble what is set forth in Buddha’s teachings, this Buddhism only grows to resemble us. In this respect, attempts to render Buddhism more accessible can steal its power. The medicine becomes diluted. Are we so smart today that we need less teaching and practice?

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REFLECTING We need to approach the undiluted teaching in a spirit of openness and humility and let it speak to us. Subsequently, in the second stage of relating to the dharma, that of reflecting, a real connection between the student’s innate intelligence and the actual unmodified dharma can take place.

Through the magic of reflecting on the teachings, their force—sometimes clear, sometimes obscure—will cause ferment in our minds from which we can gradually distil the wisdom of reflection. This requires discipline, but also bravery—the bravery to dig deep down to uncover our confusion. Here we cannot progress unless we shun the easy evasion of blind faith. For when did blind faith ever lead to wisdom? Instead we can arrive at certainty of the truth of dharma only though inferential reasoning and direct experience. At this point, some may ask whether such stress on certainty leaves Buddhism in the category of religion or philosophy. Actually, this question is misplaced, since the great divorce between religion and philosophy that occurred in the West in the 17th century never happened in Asia, where everything from theism to materialism to nontheistic dharma coexisted as views of the nature of reality.

MEDITATING Resolving hesitations and uncertainties through intelligent and repeated reflection on the teachings that we’ve heard leads us to meditation, the final part of the threefold path to wisdom. Here, “to meditate” is to cultivate a direct experience of the truth, heard and examined in the prior two stages. In the final analysis, the truth revealed in meditation is the selfcognizing wisdom through which the mind knows its own nature without intermediaries of concept or language. The ultimate truth that is realized through meditation is not the generic or mental image of reality accessible through hearing and reflecting but the definitive nondual realization to which we give the name “primordial wisdom.” This becomes a

decisive knowledge, since it is now firsthand. Yet such wisdom could not arise without the use of language and analytical thinking in the two preceding stages of hearing and reflecting. It is for this reason that those who eschew the work of hearing and reflection and attempt to rely upon meditation alone will only further entangle themselves in the fabrications of ignorant mind. As Mipham Rinpoche says, “If you do not know the nature of phenomena, however much you meditate, you are still meditating on ordinary concepts.” As has already been made clear, to embark upon this process of hearing, reflection and meditation, we need to rely upon suitably qualified masters. In some

sense, however, our teachers should be transparent so that we may see through them to the teachings of the Buddha. Teachers themselves are there to assist us in hearing, reflecting, and meditating on the dharma, just as a skilled master craftsman trains his apprentices in mastery of a given craft. In this way, the authentic master distinguishes him or herself from the snake oil salesman, Asian or Westerner, who points only to him or herself and not to the Buddha and his teaching. It might seem that there’s a great distance between us and the days when the traditions of dharma held uncontested sway over the culture of much of Asia. However, although external circumstances may change, the way in which realization into the nature of mind develops is still essentially the same. Even today there are great masters and people who want to engage with the dharma through the threefold method of hearing, reflecting, and meditating. And as the hour is getting late, maybe it’s time to make a start. EH

EASTERN HORIZON | FEATURE

Even in the daily insanity of parenthood, your Buddhist practice can thrive. Sumi Loundon Kim explains: it’s all about how you see it.

Most of us with Buddhist backgrounds assume that the dharma will help us become better parents. Mindfulness, for example, restrains reactivity in favor of a more well-considered response. But perhaps we’ve got it backwards: parenting radically changes our dharma – and, if we let it, much for the better.

The author with her family. Photo by Sunshine Scoville.

How Practice Can Actually Get Better after Having Children By Sumi Loundon Kim | February 27 2018

Sumi Loundon Kim is the Buddhist chaplain at Yale University and founder of the Mindful Families of Durham. She is editor of the anthologies Blue Jean Buddha and The Buddha’s Apprentices, from Wisdom Publications, and the author of Sitting Together: A Family-Centered Curriculum on Mindfulness, Meditation, and Buddhist Teachings.

For Buddhists, the most immediate effect of motherhood or fatherhood is on our cherished quiet, dedicated time for practice. Whether we meditate, chant, or study texts, between the sheer lack of time and profound levels of exhaustion, it’s nearly impossible to sustain whatever daily practice time we had before. And retreats? Forget about it! As one Zen teacher mom shared, you can be away from your child one day for every grade they’re in. This means it could be 5-10 years before you’re on silent retreat again.

For non-parents, the idea of giving up daily practice and retreat time is horrifying – enough to dissuade some from even considering child-rearing. But this perceived loss forces us to rethink what we consider core Buddhist practice and — perhaps — diversify our practice portfolio. In the early years of caregiving, I had to develop a much more integrated form of meditation. I practiced during nursing. I practiced while putting the kids to sleep. I practiced while showering. I practiced when I took the baby for a walk. Everyday applied mindfulness became much more important. Instead of half-assed “mindfully” chopping vegetables, it became really mindfully chopping vegetables. Folding laundry was not a time for lazy mindfulness. Really tune in, girl. As parenting and practice develop over the years, that hard distinction between practice time and everything else blurs. As someone who’d prioritized sitting meditation as “real” meditation, this shift toward intentional, applied mindfulness built a critical bridge between formal sitting and performing in a way that had been theoretical before. As parenting and practice develop

FEATURE | EASTERN HORIZON

over the years, that hard distinction between practice time and everything else blurs and, in time, dissolves. We end up going where our teachers were pointing us all along: to the understanding that there’s no distinction between practice time and every moment. Every moment is practice.

And, that scarcity of time and energy makes the opportunity to formally practice all the more valued – dare I say, sacred. I remember, a few years after childbirth, the first time I was able to attend 40-minute meditation at a nearby temple. The silence, the chance to sit quietly, the occasion to practice with other adults, and the opportunity to listen to a full dharma talk all felt like warm water flowing from the heavens and washing through me. Knowing that ten different arrangements must be made in order to create that window of practice spurs us to use our time wisely and more seriously than when we had more leisure. And knowing that the personal transformation that happens in formal practice has a direct impact on the quality of our parenting can motivate and focus us to use the time more fully than when less was at stake. But, more significantly, family life may force us to expand our ideas of practice. Sometimes, the body becomes so exhausted from the labor of childcare – the early years require immense physical exertion – that certain forms, such as sitting still, are almost impossible. It may be that bowing or hatha yoga are more appropriate on a particular day. At other times, the mind is exhausted: try formal practice after dealing with a child’s temper tantrum. For that, chanting may help collect the scattered mind and move frustrated energy through the system. There may be other days in which one’s mind receives precious little stimulation. Childcare can be mind-numbingly boring, particularly before the children are able to speak. On those days, reading or study can provide helpful perspective and rejuvenation. Over time, we can bring balance and richness to our path by incorporating more of these different forms. Anything that turns a competent adult to a puddle of tears and snot tends to be good for awakening. As our children develop into their own little people

who can exert their will and communicate with us, our notion of practice expands yet again. We are now interacting with another being much more intensively than anyone else, except perhaps our partner, than ever before. We find a need to understand the relational nature of practice and awakening. In essence, we make that critical shift from me to we. As our children push us to engage with our community in new ways, that “we” expands further, and the “we” of a family unit becomes the “we” of a community. This opening of relationship leads to a felt sense of interconnectedness. We might find ourselves reflecting on how that toy we purchased at Target created air pollution around the factory outside Beijing that someone else’s equally beloved child now breathes. I found that the teachings that spoke most to me shifted from ones addressing individual, personal suffering to ones on interconnectedness and compassion.

In addition, the intimacy of this relationship often reveals our most vulnerable, immature, and wounded places. With a partner, we can negotiate, explicitly or silently, what gets touched and what we let lie. That simply doesn’t happen with a child. We get exposed whether we like it or not. This is especially true if we’ve been using the dharma to bypass the stuff that scares us. No longer. Many parents remark that their children are inadvertent Zen masters, reducing them to heaps of humiliation as they fumble their way forward. Anything that turns a competent adult to a puddle of tears and snot tends to be good for awakening.

As the kids grow and begin making their own choices, our path takes a new turn. Now, teachings on ethics and character formation become highly relevant. Whatever we have concluded is the best way to proceed for ourselves, we now have to articulate that for our children. Why is it harmful to take stuff that isn’t ours? How is speaking honestly and kindly good for relationships? Why is generosity important? Having to verbalize – to teach – these points to our children forces us to become clearer and more articulate. We also find we can’t be hypocritical; whatever rationalization we had before for being naughty, now we’ve got someone watching us. In sum, parenthood turns up the heat, baking our ethics into us. And, in explaining all this to

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our children, we essentially become their first spiritual teachers.

Through teaching our children, in direct and indirect ways, we find ourselves becoming deeper and more intentional in our practice. Which brings us to the final point. Someone told me that Chogyam Trungpa said that, at some point, a student’s path plateaus: to deepen further, the student must then begin to teach. That has certainly been true for me. I became a much better student of the dharma once I began teaching, about eight years ago. The same holds true when we serve as our children’s first spiritual friend and guide. Through teaching our children, in direct and indirect ways, we find ourselves becoming deeper and more intentional in our practice.

Parenthood can radically transform the path, revealing our limited preconceptions about proceeding as a Buddhist, and opening up new possibilities. In the end, we may find we have a more dynamic, engaged, and complex understanding of our own Buddhist life as we nurture the lives of our children.

Learning to Live with Uncertainty By Venerable Ayyā Adhimuttī

Ayyā Adhimuttī was first ordained as a mae chee at Wat Ram Poeng, Thailand 2005. She then went forth as a samaneri in 2008 at Santi Forest Monastery, Australia with Ayyā Tathālokā as preceptor and Bhante Sujato as her achariya, and had her bhikkhunī upasampada in 2010 at Aranya Bodhi Hermitage in California with Ayyā Tathālokā as pavattini and Bhante Henepola Gunaratana as Ovadakacariya. She has spent about five years practicing in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Ayyā Adhimutti has returned to Aotearoa New Zealand to establish a centre in Hamilton and will be the first resident bhikkhunī.

Reprinted with kind permission of the author and Lion’s Roar, https://www. lionsroar.com EH

L-R: Ayya Tathaaloka, Ayya Sobhana, Ayya Adhimutti, & Ayya Suvijjana at Aranya Bodhi Hermitage, California, USA.

FACE TO FACE | EASTERN HORIZON

Benny: How did you become interested in Buddhism and then decide to ordain? Ayya Adhimutti: When I was in my twenties, I lived in India for a while. I had gone there to improve my Sanskrit before continuing with my studies. Every six months I needed to renew my visa for India in Sri Lanka. I stayed at a meditation center there and also went on my first meditation retreat. When I learned about meditation, I felt that I had found what I had been looking for all of my life. Up until that time I had felt so restless, even though I had lived a privileged life, with a loving and supportive family and good friends, and had been successful with my studies. During my first retreat I decided I needed to take a few years away from my studies and to develop my

Mt Ruapehu, Tongariro National Park. Near to where Ayya Tathaaloka and I stayed for about 3 weeks early 2012 to research on the Bhikkhuni Patimokkha

meditation. Then, after a while, I realized that to really develop the practice and to free my mind would require a life-long commitment. So it seemed that if I really wanted to dedicate my life to the Dhamma, I should ordain. Can you tell us more about where you had your ordination?

In 2006 I had the opportunity to attend the Sakyadhita Conference in Malaysia. There I saw Theravāda female monastics (bhikkhunīs) for the first time. I felt inspired when I heard about Bhante Sujato in Australia who supported bhikkhunī ordination. I then went to Santi Forest Monastery, where Bhante Sujato was the abbot in 2007. At that time Ajahn Brahm was our spiritual director and the community was involved in reestablishing bhikkhunī ordination in the West. We organized a seminar on bhikkhunī ordination in 2008 and bhikkhunīs from round the world attended (https://www.youtube.com/ playlist?list=PLZYauDhkMUC_rMZfXssayH0c206fvCf02).

At that time, I ordained as a samaṇērī with my senior bhikkhunī mentor Ayyā Tathālokā as a preceptor. Two years later I went to stay with my preceptor Ayya Tathālokā at Aranya Bodhi, a new hermitage for bhikkhunīs that she was founding with the Dhammadharini community in Northern California. She invited me to participate in the bhikkhunī ordination

Lovely photo of Raglan, North Island, in summer during Ayya Tathaaloka's visit, 2012.

that she was organizing, the first all-Therāvada Dual Sangha Bhikkhuni Ordination in North America. ((https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ordination-ofbhikkhunis-_b_702921 https://www.lionsroar.com/

another-step-forward/). So, I was lucky in that the path to bhikkhunī upasampadā was fairly straightforward for me, despite the rarity of bhikkhunī upasampadā at the time. A few years later I invited Ayyā Tathālokā to New Zealand, which led to the foundation of the NZ Bhikkhuni Sangha Trust. Were there challenges to ordain as a female monastic?

I was lucky growing up in New Zealand, in that my gender was never an obstacle in my way, and so it was a tremendous shock when I ordained as a mae chee to encounter the systemic oppression of monastic women. And then I was told that being born as a woman was a result of my bad karma! I don’t accept this, and don’t believe that the Buddha taught this.

EASTERN HORIZON | FACE TO FACE

I also witnessed how monastic women are treated with little respect, received minimal support, and had few opportunities to dedicate themselves fully to meditation practice. As a result, there are not many places for either female monastics or lay women who want to devote their lives to the Dhamma and awaken in this very life. This was therefore heart breaking and disillusioning for me. However, I also see the brilliance in many female monastics and their dedication to their meditation practice and study. This is when I realized that when the right conditions are provided to them, they have the potential to be just as accomplished as the male monastics. So I believe female monastics should also be considered worthy of support and respect.

The Buddha set up his Saṅgha to allow both men and women to dedicate themselves full time to monastic life and he praised the diverse accomplishments of many of his female disciples. He opened his Saṅgha to everyone, male or female, rich or poor, high or low caste. In the spiritual life we are supposed to go beyond worldly distinctions. The mind is not male or female, after all! The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major effect on our lives. Both adults and children are facing challenges that are stressful, overwhelming, and cause strong emotions. What can we learn from Buddhism to remain calm and resilient during such uncertain times? The Buddha taught that mindfulness functions as a guardian of the mind. When things feel overwhelming, as much as possible, we need to train ourselves to stay in the present moment and to take one thing at a time.

The ability to keep our minds in a calm and responsive mode is a skill that we need to continually practice, so that we can respond to challenging circumstances with an inner sense of calm strength. Keeping a daily meditation practice helps stabilize our minds and gives us the ability to put aside our worries, at least for a little while, and come to an inner peace not dependent on our external circumstances. When we find ourselves feeling stressed and

With fellow monastics at Aranya Bodhi Hermitage, California, USA, 2011

Kihikihi Meditation Centre, Waikato, New Zealand, 2017 with Ayya Tathaaloka, and two lay advisors (ex-nuns) Willa and Eliza. http:// kihikihi-meditation-yoga.org

overwhelmed, we can relax our body and tune into our physical sensations, perhaps sensing into the sensations of the hands and the feet and lengthening our exhale. If we can keep ourselves grounded in our experience, we will not be so caught up in the difficult and overwhelming emotions.

Also, we can notice that it is possible to maintain a sense of inner balance and calm while we are still aware and alert and address possible issues and threats that need responding to. Also, we can learn to be aware of negative emotions and stress as they arise. We can just accept them and be curious about their causes, but not to feed them.

Furthermore, in Buddhism there is a great emphasis on being wise with where we place our attention. In Dvedhāvitakka Sutta, MN 19, the Buddha said: ”Bhikkhus, whatever a bhikkhu frequently thinks and ponders upon, that will become the inclination of his mind.” In modern terminology, our minds take the shape of what we rest them on. So we need to be very careful with where we rest our attention, and with what we

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Sunday School activities at Waikato.

Giving a talk after lunch dana in the Sunday School with Bhante Metteyya, chief monk of Waikato Compassion Meditation Centre, a local Sri Lankan Temple. https://www.hamiltonbuddhistmeditation.org.nz/about

allow to occupy our minds. One example of this would be to be careful with what we consume in terms of the media. Although it is good to be informed citizens so that we can respond to events wisely, we also need to carefully observe the effects that media consumption has on our minds.

If there are things we need to think through, then we should do so accordingly. However, if we do not have enough information to think things through clearly, then we need to be careful to stay in the present moment and give our attention to one thing at a time. We should not let our minds get swept away in loops of anxiety and worry that might arise in response to the uncertainties we are facing. Also, we can be aware of the first darts of experience, the inevitable impact that difficulties and challenges will have on us physically and emotionally, and try not to add too many second darts in terms of rumination, worry, resistance to painful experience (Sallatha Sutta, SN 36.6). When we accept our negative emotions, the pain of resistance to them tends to decrease.

We can also train ourselves to maximize experiences that are wholesome and uplifting, even in the midst of the challenging situation we find ourselves in. When we experience a sense of peace, even if fleeting, we can let this experience permeate our awareness, and stay with it. If we see something beautiful, we can then pause for a while, and let that experience of beauty and inspiration inspire and uplift us. Taking even just 30 seconds or a minute to pause, slow down and appreciate what is beautiful and wholesome, can help our minds become more bright. By doing this, even just for short periods many times, we will be able to strengthen the qualities of inspiration, gratitude, and peacefulness within. By strengthening these qualities within us, we are able to cultivate a greater degree of resilience inside, and lessen the impact of the challenges in which we find ourselves. Also at the core of Buddhist teachings is the truth of unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). Saṃsāra is uncertain, unsatisfactory and painful. The pandemic brings us face to face with this aspect of reality. When we can accept the reality of suffering and don’t resist it, it will bring a greater sense of peace in the midst of difficulties.

When our normal external supports drop away, we must rely much more on the internal strengths and resources that we have developed. As Buddhists we are at an advantage here, as we have so many contemplations on the painful and unsatisfactory nature of existence, techniques for developing equanimity, and contemplations on impermanence. Developing compassion and wisdom are the main learnings, for knowing that if we cannot change outside circumstances, we can change our mind. As a result of the pandemic, it is now not possible to meet up with friends for a chat, go shopping, have dinners, or even attend Dharma retreats and talks. As friendship is crucial for humans, including spiritual friendship, how should we navigate in this pandemic as Buddhists?

Quite correct, good friends are the whole path. We could still connect with them through phone, mail or online, such as Zoom, though. If not, we can maintain their

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presence in our mind by memory and for some, perhaps through telepathy. But for sure, concrete and direct relationship is fundamental. Remembering that we are all in the same boat makes it easier. During stressful times, help and care from friends is very important. Feelings of friendliness and kindness are an antidote to all our defilements. When we feel cared for and feel love (mettā) in our hearts, we are not so afraid, and we feel more contented. In the midst of difficult challenges and uncertainty, warming our heart with kindness and caring for others, and connecting with others can be a good antidote to anxiety. It is true that a lack of connection from each other and

isolation for a long period of time is difficult for us. So it is important to have compassion and understanding for ourselves and others in this difficult situation. Kindness and compassion are two key qualities taught by the Buddha. How do we express these qualities during the pandemic to ourselves, our loved ones, and others in society?

It is important to remember that loving kindness nurtures our own hearts as well as benefitting others. We should always try to help others, especially those who are less fortunate than us. Our mettā is extended not only to humans, but pets and animals can also be objects of our kindness and our care. Our kindness and care for other beings will also nourish us.

Having kindness towards ourselves during difficult times is important. Kindness and compassion towards ourselves helps us maintain more wholesome states of mind, and to be kind to others. During very difficult times when we are faced with many pressures and uncertainties, we may not always be at our best and may be more likely to make mistakes in our actions than normal times. But, if we can be kind and understanding to ourselves, we will realize that we are all in this together, and will then resolve to do better in the future. In this way, we are not adding extra layers of stress (second darts) to an already stressful situation. In difficult situations we need the nourishing balm of love for both ourselves and to others.

By accepting our own suffering with understanding, we will be able to express it in a calm manner when meeting others.

We are all in this difficult situation facing Covid-19 together, although there will be some in a more vulnerable situation and thus more badly affected. This is where we express our kindness and care for others by taking actions such as practicing social isolation when we are asked to, wearing masks, and being vaccinated. We may be strong and healthy, but there are others in society who are vulnerable, and through our actions we can take care of them and help to keep them safe. The situation during this difficult time challenges us to think beyond ourselves as individuals and to consider the wider community.

Could you share with us the purpose and major activities of the New Zealand Bhikkhuni Sangha Trust. The fundamental purpose of the New Zealand Bhikkhuni Sangha Trust is to establish the bhikkhunī Saṅgha in Aotearoa/New Zealand thus fulfilling the Buddha’s vision of the four-fold community, and to create an environment for bhikkhunīs and lay-people to develop their meditation practice to a profound level.

The NZBST believes that the Dhamma and full access to monastic life should be open to everyone regardless of gender, sexual orientation, wealth, social status and ethnicity. Thus, the plan is to create favorable conditions for those who are often overlooked and neglected within traditional forms of Buddhism for them to study and practice the Dhamma in New Zealand. Currently, the NZBST has put a deposit on a residence in Hamilton for the purpose of establishing a city center for bhikkhunīs to stay, teach, practice and study. This will enable a reaching out to the local and national community by providing Dhamma and meditation classes, a reference library for reading and research and hold Dhamma gatherings and discussion groups. At the moment, since I am the only Theravāda trained bhikkhunī in Hamilton, have begun offering Sundayschool classes for the local Sri Lankan community, Dhamma teachings, with meditation classes and day

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long retreats anticipated in the near future for the wider community. The NZBST hopes, when it is possible, to bring in more bhikkhunī teachers to New Zealand for the benefit and inspiration of the whole community.

The NZBST also wishes to preserve and encourage a depth and breadth of the concentration and wisdom practices available in the Theravāda tradition. A guiding principle is to preserve a tradition that is wide as the sky, as deep as the ocean and as finely grained as the sand on the sea-shore.

Higher ordination at Aranya Bodhi Hermitage, California.

If anyone would like to know more about our project and how to support, please visit the website: https://bhikkhuni-sangha.org.nz or email nz.bhikkhunitrust@gmail.com My personal vision of the future of the bhikkhunī Saṅgha in New Zealand.

My own personal vision for the future of the Theravāda bhikkhunī Saṅgha in New Zealand, is to create the conditions where the bhikkhunī Saṅgha and the knowledge and practice of the Dhamma can be preserved for as long as possible in in light of this time of environmental degradation. For this purpose, I have the intermediate term vision (5-7 years) to bring together a group of interested Dhamma friends and to purchase a piece of land large enough to establish a meditation hermitage, especially to give bhikkhunīs the opportunity, so often denied them, to dedicate themselves to meditation in solitude, as well as having kutis for serious lay practitioners, a comprehensive reference library for Buddhist texts from all traditions and from contemporary disciplines such as psychology and an associated lay-village. The plan includes the possibility to be self-sufficient in terms of food and medicinal herbs if necessary.

New Zealand is an island nation which has enough land and water and not so many people, and is also relatively isolated from the rest of the world. Thus I feel that we have the possibility and the responsibility to preserve the Dhamma here into the future, when the difficulties of life in other countries might make this very challenging. EH

Higher Ordination, Aranya Bodhi Hermitage, California, with Ayya Tathaaloka as preceptor.

With my mother (the one in blue) and three of our NZBST trustees, August 2021.

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Geshe Tenzin Namdak, born in 1970 in The Netherlands, met the Dharma in 1993. After his graduation (B.Sc. in Hydrology) he lived for one year at Maitreya Institute where he received Lam Rim teachings from Geshe Sonam Gyaltsen. On the advice of Lama Zopa Rinpoche he moved to Dharamsala in 1994 to learn Tibetan language and to take Getsul (1995) and Gelong ordination (1996) from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In 1997 he entered the Geshe Study Program of Sera Jey Monastery in South India. On May 8, 2017, Ven. Tenzin Namdak was formally awarded the geshe degree by Sera Je Monastic University in recognition of his completion of the advanced Buddhist studies and practice program. Completing the geshe studies program is a remarkable achievement in itself. As a Westerner, Geshe Namdak’s completion of the program speaks to his exemplary dedication to the study and practice of Dharma. We rejoice in his outstanding accomplishment. In 2018 Geshe Namdak was appointed the Resident Teacher of Jamyang Buddhist Centre, London, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Despite his extremely busy schedule teaching the Dharma, Geshe Namdak was able to have a zoom interview with Benny Liow where he explained the basis of mind training and its importance and relevance for modern people today. Eastern Horizon wishes to thank Geshe-la for his kindness and compassion in giving us his teaching on lojong in the following interview.

What is Mind Training? By Geshe Tenzin Namdak

Benny: We hear the word lojong or mind training. Can you briefly explain what it lojong, and its purpose?

Geshe Namdak: The word lojong comes from the Tibetan word, “lo” meaning the “mind”, and “jong” mean to “train” or “transform”. So “lojong” means “mind training”. It is therefore a practice that involves refining and purifying one’s motivations and attitudes. There are different levels of lojong practice.

One is on a universal or secular level and is concerned with how we deal with problems in life. We learn to accept problems in life by seeing that nothing is fixed, and things are changeable. This means that problems come and go. By knowing that things come into being through causes and conditions, sometimes beyond our control, we learn to accept them. We also see that they will not be there forever, and this will then help us when we are going through a difficult time. We can also analyze the causes and if we can do something about it, we should, so we do not need to worry. When we cannot do anything about it, then there is also no point in worrying about it as well. Like with the difficulties that come with old age, it just happens to us, we cannot do anything about it, so there is no point in worrying about this either. Worrying will only add more mental suffering.

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With lojong from a Buddhist perspective we analyze the different types of problems that we face and understand from the teachings that they are due to the law of karma or cause and effect. When we face problems in life and understand the law of karma then it is easier for us to accept them and know how to deal with them. We ourselves have created the main causes and now particular external conditions cause this karma to ripen. We also train in purifying the mind, so that negative karma created in the past gets purified, while we prevent suffering in the future by not engaging in negative acts. With the accumulation of positive karma, we create causes for happiness.

Another aspect of lojong is related to the Bodhisattva ideal, or the wish to become an enlightened being for the benefit of all sentient beings. It also means the cultivation of altruistic thoughts, or the mind of Bodhicitta based on loving-kindness and compassion. In this practice of lojong we enhance these positive states of mind, and when we face problems, we take the suffering of others upon ourselves. We imagine that by experiencing suffering, may all sentient beings’ suffering ripen upon me. This can be a very powerful method. It counteracts the self-cherishing attitude, which is the cause for our problems, and with the thought of taking other’s suffering upon oneself, one purifies negative karma. So, we can practice lojong on different levels. Buddhism is synonymous with meditation. Is lojong another form of meditation such as samatha and vipassana which are taught in many Buddhist traditions?

As lojong is about mind training or how we transform our mind, it is a form of meditation. In the case of Samatha meditation, it is more about developing concentration while Vipassana is about attaining insight. Lojong is more like Vipassana because lojong uses an analytical approach to analyze phenomena. For instance, we can contemplate on the Buddha’s teachings of the Four Noble Truths, 12 Links of Dependent Origination, the Four Close Placements of Mindfulness, or the Noble Eight-fold Path. Likewise, in lojong with the Bodhisattva ideal, we analyze why every sentient being wants happiness and not suffering and we realize

Geshe Tenzin Namdak with Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Main shrine hall, Jamyang Buddhist Center

Library, Jamyang Buddhist Centre

that everyone is the same and aspires happiness in life. Taking this into account, we wish others to be free of suffering and imagine we take their suffering upon ourselves. From the Buddha’s teachings, we understand that we are all inter-connected to one another. We have responsibilities towards every other sentient being. Knowing that every sentient being wants happiness, we contemplate on the wish to help others find happiness and avoid suffering. We train our mind therefore to become a Buddha, an enlightened being, by generating a wish to help other sentient beings to get out of samsara. Does this wish to help sentient beings find happiness start with a thought of loving kindness and compassion?

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Yes, it does. There are different levels of loving kindness. The first level is the thought of “How wonderful it will be if all beings abide in happiness”. The second level is the wish of “May all sentient beings abide in happiness”. The third level of loving kindness is when we generate the wish “May I cause sentient beings to abide in happiness.” In lojong our mind builds up gradually, initially seeing the need for others to be free from suffering and abide in happiness. Then based on the understanding that all beings experience suffering in samsara, we take the responsibility to help sentient beings attain nirvana. It is the same with compassion which has different levels of practice. We begin by generating the wish for others to be free from suffering, “How wonderful it will be if all beings are free from suffering”. Then, we proceed to “May all sentient beings be free from suffering”. And finally, “May I cause sentient beings to be free from suffering”. First, we try to generate a close feeling toward all sentient beings through equanimity, seeing all beings as equal. Then we generate loving-kindness and compassion and we take responsibility to act in the way we intended. After this we reflect to see if we have the capacity to really help sentient beings right now. We soon will understand that we need to have certain capacities to help, like a realized being or a Buddha. We contemplate on the qualities of a Buddha, especially his boundless wisdom and compassion for all beings. We generate the wish to become a Buddha, and cultivate Bodhicitta, a wish for all sentient beings to be free from suffering and would like to attain the state of full enlightenment for this purpose. In some Buddhist traditions, the wish to become a Buddha may not always be present. And that is fine as well when striving for nirvana only. But in the tradition of the Boddhisattva Yana, the wish to become a Buddha is very strong and therefore, we contemplate deeply on the sublime qualities of Buddhahood and cultivate the motivation to become a Buddha to help others. Are there preliminary practices to follow before we embark on lojong training?

As mentioned earlier lojong can be practiced at various levels. The secular or universal aspect of it can help believers or non-believers, to deal with problems of life. We do not need a particular preliminary to this form of practice. We train our mind to understand that nothing is permanent in our human existence. Nobody is in control, and change is a universal characteristic. As a result of recognizing the impermanent nature of existence, we learn to cultivate a balance of mind whereby we do not cling to things that we like, nor hate those we do not like. Our ability to solve problems begin with the recognition that life itself is impermanent and uncertain, and because of that there is no satisfaction. Therefore, we train our mind to identify the causes of our problems and learn to solve them with a calm mental attitude. For those who are Buddhists, to practice lojong from the point of view of seeing that all our problems originated in karma, the preliminaries will involve understanding the fundamental teachings on karma, the Four Noble Truths, dependent origination, and the Eight-fold Path. With this basic knowledge of the Buddhist path, and understanding the need to help others through the trainings in loving-kindness and compassion, as a preliminary, we go a step further by training our minds to become an enlightened being. Then whatever obstacles we may face, we will take these problems into the path by contemplating, “May I, by experiencing these problems, take the suffering of others upon myself.” We know that in the current pandemic, we need to stay strong and positive mentally. How can lojong help us in this aspect?

For someone who understands the Buddha’s teachings and has some experience in lojong, they will be able to face the current difficult situation of the Covid pandemic. But even if one has not started to practice lojong, it can still be of benefit, even on a secular or universal level. If one has fear, anxiety and worry, one can reflect that the world is impermanent and uncertain. We do not have the world under our control. Previously we could fly anywhere we like, do the things we want, to a certain extent, and even governments thought they have things under control, but now with Covid 19 we see that we

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Tara Room, Jamyang Buddhist Centre

try to alleviate the suffering of other sentient beings. For instance, in the current Covid-19 pandemic, there are many poor people in India and the Himalayan areas and other parts of the world. We can try to assist them physically by giving material things like medical equipment, medicines, and vaccines, or mentally by sharing our methods of mind training so that they can experience peace and calmness instead of anxiety, fear and worries.

One example of mind training is to transform negative emotions to positive emotions. What do we mean by that and how do we do it?

Jamyang Buddhist Center

We talk about universal aspects of eliminating destructive emotions and generating constructive ones. In modern society there are many problems, but not everybody is interested in studying Buddhism to find out what techniques the Buddha has taught us to solve our problems in life. We need an approach that is universal or secular on how to train the mind to overcome destructive emotions and generate positive ones. The first step is to recognize that destructive emotions such as fear, anxiety, strong desire, and anger exist, and to see that these emotions disturb our mental peace.

Café at Jamyang Buddhist Centre

cannot do the things we want, and we are not in control. For example, we are now beginning to realize that we have no control of the climate as well. Our external world also depends on many causes and conditions. We now realize the need to do something about saving our planet from a climate disaster. In this way we have learned from the pandemic. When we learn about the difficulties in life and realized that we are not in control, acceptance sets in. If we can accept things as they are, then there is less mental suffering. And as I mentioned before, worry does not help when we are in a situation we cannot directly change. While it is true that many things are beyond our control, yet out of kindness and compassion, we should always

However, when we consider emotions such as generosity, loving kindness, and compassion, they make us peaceful and happy. They are known as constructive emotions. And with developments in mind science, especially in the field of neuroplasticity, we now understand that it is possible to transform our destructive emotions to positive ones. The first step to recognize our negative states of mind is through self-awareness. With mindfulness and awareness meditations on the breath we learn to become more aware of our inner world. And with concentration meditation we learn to direct our mind toward a particular object which give us more awareness and more control. Through self-awareness, we know when our negative mental states such as anger, jealousy, fear, and other similar mental factors arise. From self-awareness, we move to self-discipline. It is with self-discipline that we prevent negative

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mental states from becoming stronger and taking over. By contemplating the faults of the afflictions, like anger, and the benefits of the constructive emotions, like patience, we teach our mind not to follow anger but generate patience instead. Likewise, we cultivate positive emotions such as generosity, kindness, and compassion, and once these positive mental states have arisen, we train our mind to maintain them as long as we can. We can take the techniques of mind training from the Buddhist tradition to benefit others. Even though these mind training techniques originate from Buddhism, we can use them without calling it Buddhism. When mind training is presented in a secular and universal approach, it will reach many more people and benefit them, even if they are not Buddhists.

Tonglen or the practice of exchanging self with others is mentioned as Relative Bodhicitta in lojong practice. Can you explain the relationship between practicing tonglen and practicing mind training? As mentioned before, we practice mind training by developing loving-kindness and compassion at three levels. Firstly, we think how wonderful it would be if beings abide in happiness or be free of suffering. Secondly, we wish that they abide in happiness, or may they be free of suffering. Then, we take the responsibility to create conditions for them to be free of suffering and abide in happiness. Based on this attitude, we think that other sentient beings are more important than ourselves. We realize that everybody has the wish to be happy just like us. Then we reflect that they all want happiness and do not want suffering, exactly like us. So, it is more beneficial to benefit others instead of just benefitting ourselves. If we only think of ourselves, we become selfish, and cherishing only ourselves is a

cause for suffering. We realize the benefit of cherishing others, versus the drawback of just thinking of ourselves. Through mind training, we practice how to cherish others more than ourselves and this is based on the preliminary practice of love and compassion. As our mind training progresses, we move closer towards cherishing others more than ourselves. This means we exchange our self for others.

Tonglen therefore means we take the suffering of others and give our own happiness to others. We can do that while breathing as well. We breathe in the suffering of others and when we breathe out, we give our happiness and loving-kindness to others. So is Tonglen both a meditation practice and physical compassion for others?

There are two aspects here. As an aspect of meditation, we practice breathing in the suffering of others, and then when breathing out, we give happiness to others. But throughout the day we can also be motivated to engage in helping others through being kind, generous, and compassionate. Whatever we do physically or verbally is preceded by our mental intention or motivation. The stronger our motivation, the more we want to help others.

Can you recommend some basic texts where one can practice lojong in our everyday life? Books by His Holiness the Dalai Lama are always a good starting point for these kinds of practices and the following book gives a nice presentation about lojong: Transforming the Mind, Eight Verses on Generating Compassion and Transforming your Life, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. EH

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Learning from Ehi Passiko By Zulhaqem bin Zulkifli

Zulhaqem bin Zulkifli is a 28-year-old Singaporean student. He is currently doing his MPhil in Buddhist Studies at Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford on a Government of Singapore scholarship. He specializes in Buddhist philosophy at Oxford. Zulhaqem completed his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Zhi Yi, a fellow post graduate student at Oxford, interviewed Zulhaqem on April 30, 2021 on why he chose to study Buddhist philosophy for Eastern Horizon. Zhi Yi: What motivates you to choose Buddhist studies for your MPhil? Zulhaqem: First of all, the curriculum of my philosophy degree at NTU was very diverse. During the Buddhist philosophy module, there was a visiting scholar Professor Brook Ziporyn from University of Chicago who came and taught us about Chan and Zen traditions from China and Japan, as well as Tiantai and Huayan Buddhism. Prior to this, I have always been a very curious person. I do not just go by traditions or where I am from. That was the first time I considered Buddhist philosophy and Buddhism as a tradition. This has also reminded me of my childhood memory. I came from an underprivileged

family. Back then, the Singapore Buddhist Lodge had been giving financial aids to everyone in need regardless of their religious background, which was very striking to me. I was very curious because you would normally see church helping Christians and mosque helping Muslims. When I was 13 years old, the monks from the Buddhist Lodge visited my house and assessed our situation. It was my first time meeting Buddhist monks in my own house. I remember asking my parents why they were bald and wearing robes. In fact, I was surprised by the questions they asked. At that point, we were very used to people asking us about our state of living and problem we faced, but the monks cared about how we were doing, what we needed and what was the best for us.

A lot of my friends are Buddhist, they always seem to be very pleasant. While I was at NTU, I was invited to the event organised by the Buddhist association, which was non-sectarian like YBAM. There was also a panel discussion about the similarities and differences between Islam and Buddhism. Naturally, I sat with my Buddhist friends, but many Muslims gave me a strange look. I did not agree with the religious allegiance. Unconsciously, I started taking courses in Buddhism during my undergraduate as electives. I was beginning to relate Buddhist thoughts and philosophy to the things I was doing. Personally, I found a lot of the Buddhist teachings are very applicable. For example, I really cherish the teaching of ‘ehipassiko’ and go find it out yourself as a philosopher. Looking back, I did not think I would be interested in Buddhism or even do a master in Buddhist studies. It took a lot of courage to face the societal perception and the relatives who were worried about my career after completing a degree in philosophy. I wanted to spend two years (doing this MPhil) learning and satisfying my thirst for knowledge. Thankfully, my family has been very supportive especially my dad. I was not sure what I was doing then. I applied for different universities including University of Edinburgh which had a very strong Buddhist background. Many of them

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gave me an offer but I chose Oxford because they offered language training, so that I could understand better the teachings of the Buddha. I think language is the bridge between us and the truth. What key lessons did you learn from the course or Buddhism as a whole?

The first lesson is shaped by my experiences as a Muslim who studies Buddhism. I think understanding each other is important in promoting peace. In southeast Asia, Buddhism and Islam have co-existed for many years. Yet, there was not a Muslim scholar who studies Buddhism and vice versa. I want to be the bridge between Buddhists and Muslims. I really think there is a lot of misconceptions from both ends. I am sure that what happened in Myanmar and Sri Lanka is not what the Buddha or Prophet Muhammad would have wanted. It is tragic and I feel there are many similarities between Islam and Buddhism that people do not want to talk about or do not know. Muslims and Buddhists need to interact and engage with each other in a more critical and sustained way.

Secondly, the concept of pratītyasamutpāda or dependent origination is very fascinating to me. Every cause has an effect, and every effect has a cause and this matrix is infinite. I have been trying to apply that in social work. We are all connected to each other, and what we do also affect each other on a very fundamental level. If we

are more aware of this fact, a lot of the sufferings that we see today would be avoidable. Whatever your tradition is or whether you believe in a God or not, I think you should spend time learning what the Buddha taught because there is value in it. It is something that I cannot give to you, you have to go and see for yourself. I have certainly found it rewarding. Thirdly, I have learnt to be brave in challenging my ideas and assumptions. For example, there is no creator god or self in Buddhism, which is something I could not comprehend due to my ignorance. We need to accept that there are uncertainties in life and there is not always a definite answer. How do you see Buddhism compared to the religion you believe in and practise?

I do not actively compare the two religions. There are many differences in doctrines and ideologies, but the underlying principles are similar. One of the common questions I get asked is how I reconcile my faith and my study of Buddhism. I would not answer this question because I do not like the term reconciliation because it gives the notion that there is a problem that I need to fix. I do not think there is major problem between Islam and Buddhism. In this case, comparing is not constructive. How do you find the course relevant for your life?

It makes me richer in terms of knowledge and spirituality. Learning Buddhism has made me a better and more compassionate person. I have been applying Dharma in my life. It helps me to develop empathy and understand better people’s suffering. I do not get angry as easily as it used to be. I am also humbler as a person.

I really encourage everyone to learn about Buddhism, especially the nonBuddhist as it will bring you new perspective. In fact, I have started to think more about suffering. In terms of your career, where do you see yourself in 5-10 years’ time? I will be returning to Singapore and work as a public servant. I would like to serve the community. Buddhism is definitely going to help because to be a good worker, you need critical thinking and there are comprehensive analytical systems in Buddhism which teach about the analysis and examination of the Dharma. I think it is very important for any kind of work that you have the ability to analyse and understand root causes and how phenomenon works. Buddhism is very transferrable. A lot of people misunderstood that studying Buddhism is just about learning to meditate or shaving your head. Either of us can die any time after this interview and what drives us forward should be about how have we made this world a better place. In this case, Buddhism has a lot to offer, for example advocating the qualities of compassion.

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Zhi Yi, who is from Kuala Kangsar, Perak, is on the editorial team of Eastern Horizon. He graduated and qualified as a pharmacist. Currently, he is pursuing my PhD in Molecular and Cellular Medicine at University of Oxford, UK. EH

What is Pure Land Practice? By Jiawen

Jiawen (Dharma name) is a Pure Land Buddhist practitioner who practices in the lineage of authentic traditional Chinese Pure Land Buddhism. She studies under the guidance of Master Renshan, a renowned Pure Land Dharma Master in China. She shares the Pure Land Dharma in English via her Youtube Channel and social media platforms: https://youtube.com/c/PureLandBuddhism; Facebook: https://www. facebook.com/buddhamitabha/; Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pure.land. buddhism. Benny Liow was in contact with Jiawen about her interest in Pure Land Buddhism which she has very kindly shared with the readers of Eastern Horizon.

Benny: Can you share with us how you became a practitioner of Pure Land Buddhism, and why you chose this particular Buddhist tradition? Jiawen: My father passed away when I was 20 years old and this made me realize the impermanence of life at a relatively young age. My near-death experience at the age of 22 also taught me that death is not the end of life, but simply the beginning of another journey. I began walking the spiritual path when I was 25, having first studied yoga, then explored a wide range of spiritual paths, but in the end I found none could really help me liberate all my suffering in life, or to transcend the cycle of reincarnation. It was “by chance” that I read the Diamond Sutra when I knew Buddhism could provide me the answer that I have been seeking for a long time. By accident, I also heard a great Dharma master expound the Pure Land teachings online which really piqued my interest in the Pure Land Dharma – having heard that one can exit the

cycle of reincarnation without the need to first realize enlightenment. This brought great comfort to my mind as I had tried to realize enlightenment by relying on self-effort, and this of course failed. It was extremely difficult. However, through my own Nianfo practice I was able to experience deep connection with Amitabha Buddha and had no doubt therefore that this Dharma is indeed true. It is a genuine teaching by the Buddha and given that there have been many successful rebirth cases in China and many eye-witnesses of Amituofo since ancient time until now, I had no doubt that Amitabha Buddha exists and so does His Pure Land.

I also encountered my own teacher, a great Pure Land Dharma Master - Master Renshan in China and my study with him again deepened my faith in the Dharma and help me grow on the Pure Land path. (Relevant videos: My Journey: From Many Paths to Buddhism https://youtu.be/UEkK6A1Se7A)

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Why I Choose to Practice Pure Land Buddhism https://youtu.be/OjQoGsnbslo)

Why is it called Pure Land Buddhism? Is the term Pure Land or Sukhavati the same as Nirvana which is often mentioned in other Buddhist traditions? Although Pure Land dharma originated in India, it really started to form as a proper branch of Buddhism in China about 1600 years ago with the first Patriarch Master Huiyuan. It is called Pure Land Buddhism because Pure Land practitioners practice Nianfo, which literally means to chant the name of Buddha (Amitabha Buddha) with faith and vow to seek rebirth in Amitabha Buddha’s Pure Land or Sukhavati in Sanskrit.

The Pure Land exists in another dimension in the Dharma realm, and it is created by Amitabha Buddha’s perfect enlightened mind and his great vows (48 great vows of Amitabha Buddha as seen in the Infinite Life Sutra). Nirvana means enlightenment which refers to a state of mind. The phrase Pure Land can also refer to a perfectly enlightened mind, but this is not to deny phenomena and the existence of Pure Land as an actual place in another dimension (actually the Pure Land exists in the entire Dharma Realm). The essence of the Pure Land is not an illusion as it is generated from the perfectly enlightened mind (the unconditioned Mind). The essence of the Pure Land lasts forever - Infinite Light & Life – as it is also not separate from our Buddha nature.

When one attains rebirth in the Pure Land, one can transcend the cycle of reincarnation and obtain Infinite Light & Life, which means one will obtain enlightenment and realize Buddhahood. (Relevant video: Is Amitabha Buddha real or mind-only? https://youtu.be/dUBwUSbDAt8) What is the significance of chanting Amitabha Buddha’s name?

In the Amitabha Sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha told us

that to the west of this world, over a hundred thousand millions of Buddhalands away, there is a Land called Ultimate Bliss and a Buddha called Amitabha. It is a land with no suffering and all bliss. If we take belief in this and chant Amitabha Buddha’s name single-mindedly without confusion at the time of death, we can attain rebirth in Amitabha Buddha’s Pure Land.

This is also in accordance with Amitabha Buddha’s 48 great vows, particularly in the 18th vow as seen in the Infinite Life Sutra, where Amitabha Buddha promised to deliver sentient beings to his Pure Land if we can recite his name even up to ten times at the time of death. That’s why we practice Nianfo - chanting the name of Amitabha Buddha. Also by chanting his name in our daily life, it can help us transform our negative thoughts into Infinite Light & Life, to be free from afflictions, and to live a happy and peaceful life. How is chanting Amitabha’s name different from praying to a God for help as found in many theistic religions?

First, Buddhas are not God, no Buddha claims they are God as in the absolute external creator who creates everything. In Buddhism, we do not believe there is an external creator or absolute God. If there is an external creator or absolute who creates everything and who is all loving and compassion, why did he create all the sufferings in the world?

The essence of Buddhism is not really a religion, but a path of awakening. Buddha told us that our Mind (Heart) actually creates everything. What we think we create; it is our mind through our thoughts that generate our karma, which creates this very life we live in. Even the cycle of reincarnation is created by the mind due to ignorance and attachment to delusions.

Amitabha Buddha only creates the Pure Land but not our Saha world which is full of suffering. The Saha world is the result of all our collected karma.

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By chanting Amitabha Buddha’s name we can seek rebirth in Amitabha Buddha’s Pure Land due to his great vow. This is very different from praying to God.

(Relevant video: Christianity vs Pure Land Buddhism https://youtu.be/BdRSkTbxXJo)

Besides chanting Amitabha’s name, does Pure Land Buddhism also teach us how to meditate since meditation is a core practice in all schools of Buddhism? Yes, Nianfo is the best form of meditation. Meditation can help us to purify our mind so that we stay in the present and not be disturbed by what happened in the past or what may happen in the future. With meditation, we will not be trapped by our illusions, but instead activate our Buddha (awakened) nature. Through Nianfo, repeatedly reciting the name of Amitabha Buddha (like a mantra), it will help us to purify our thoughts, and transform them to the name of Amitabha Buddha. When our thoughts are transformed, our speech and actions will all be transformed. We will then have a positive mental attitude. Nianfo can also help us activate our own Buddha nature, as the very name of Amitabha Buddha resonates with our Buddha nature. Our true essence (Buddha nature/True Nature of the Mind) is indeed Infinite Light & Life (the meaning of Amitabha Buddha). (Relevant video: Nianfo: the Easiest Meditation https:// youtu.be/E0teRUXh_co ) What other practices are important in Pure Land Buddhism that we should cultivate on a daily basis?

In Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, there is also an emphasis in observing the precepts and generating bodhicitta. Pure Land Dharma belongs to Mahayana Buddhism - the Great Vehicle. As this is a bodhisattva path, one generates the heart for perfect enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. To attain rebirth in the Pure Land is not an escape, but rather to help us realize Buddhahood so that we can be better equipped to

help save all sentient beings. Therefore, to generate bodhicitta is also important for Pure Land practitioners. Cultivating the precepts is also important as it helps us reduce our karmic obstacles by making it easier for us to obtain a good rebirth. The law of karma explains that those who perform good actions such as observing the precepts will experience favorable rebirths compared to those who perform negative or bad actions. However, even those who have committed the worst deeds can obtain a favorable rebirth (perhaps of a lower grade), if at the time of dying they sincerely repent their negative actions and recite the name of Amitabha Buddha. Nevertheless, it is still much easier for people who practice good deeds to obtain good rebirth.

If one can generate bodhicitta and also observe the precepts, one can obtain a higher grade of rebirth. If one observes the eight precepts even for just 24 hours, one can obtain the middle grade of favorable rebirth. In Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, people also practice bowing to the Buddha and to repent for one’s karmic obstacles (through Nianfo). One can also study the Pure Land sutras (5 sutras and one treatise) to deepen one’s understanding in the Dharma. Since we create our own karma, can relying on chanting Amitabha’s name help us to overcome our problems? Yes, the Pure Land Dharma is also called the “easy path” as we are really relying on the help of a great enlightened being like Amitabha Buddha, due to Amitabha Buddha’s great vows.

Pure Land is also called the “other power” method in that we rely on Amitabha Buddha’s great vows to deliver us to the Pure Land as without Amitabha Buddha’s help, it will not be possible. However, we also need to have a deep and sincere belief in Amitabha Buddha, and vow to seek rebirth in his Pure Land. Hence, Pure Land is sometimes called the two-power method. Faith, vow, and practice (Nianfo) are the three criteria that will guarantee us rebirth in the Pure Land.

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Because we are not enlightened, we will bring our karma with us to the Pure Land. However, in Pure Land we will have the best teachers (Buddhas & Bodhisattvas) and because the environment there is so pure, we can overcome our karmic obstacles really quickly and obtain enlightenment really soon.

(Relevant video: self-power vs other-power https://youtu.be/_nffpiJC31Y) Finally, can you share what you experience as the most beneficial aspects of practicing Pure Land Buddhism in daily life?

The more I practice Nianfo, the less afflictions I have in my daily life, as all negative thoughts have been transformed to the name of Amitabha Buddha (the Buddha of Infinite Light & Life). I really feel this is indeed the other power as I recite Amitabha Buddha’s name. I also feel the great light and assistance of Amitabha Buddha in helping me to be more aware of the Buddha nature that is within all beings, and to be free from all afflictions and illusions in life. Other Nianfo practitioners also share similar experiences with their Nianfo practice as we have weekly online sharing circles on each Wednesday evening. We have an online 24 hours Nianfo Zoom with four daily guided sessions. This really helps people to be more mindful of Amituofo for when we are more mindful of the name of Amituofo, the less will be our attachments. But this does not mean we do nothing or become negative/passive. We continue to function but more effectively with a non-attached attitude, always living in the present, and more positive towards life. Eventually, we will experience more peace and bliss in our everyday life. That is the benefit of nianfo practice. EH

Women and Buddhism in Modern Society By Dr Caroline Starkey

Dr Caroline Starkey is Associate Professor of Religion and Society in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds UK. Her research interests lie in the sociological study of Buddhism in Britain, particularly in issues relating to gender, secularisation, and the adaption of the built environment for minority religions. She is currently working on a British Sociological Association (Sociology of Religion Study Group) funded project, examining the contours of the sacred and secular in British Buddhism. She took time to respond to several questions that were posed to her on-line for Eastern Horizon by Benny Liow, both about her recent book Women in British Buddhism as well as her thoughts on Buddhism and women.

Benny: I understand you were exposed to Buddhism at a young age through your parents. Could you tell us what you remembered best about Buddhist practices then? Caroline: I was born in the Philippines in the late 1970s. My father and mother had migrated there for work (he worked for an insurance company). It was the second move my parents had made out of the UK, as they initially migrated to Thailand in the early 1970s, before being posted to Manila. I don’t think

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my mother had ever left England prior to her move to Bangkok. She was in her early 20s and it must have been an incredible culture shock. Neither of my parents had any idea what to expect, but both fell in love with Thailand (and Southeast Asia in general) and both tell fascinating stories of expat life at a turbulent political time. They both also loved Buddhist temples and Buddhist art and iconography, and I was brought up surrounded by these at home. I also spent many hours in Buddhist temples as a child, and this undoubtedly had a significant formative effect. In particular, and although I don’t ever remember making links between Buddhism and meditation (this didn’t happen until adulthood), my most formative memories involve observing and participating in ritual practices in temples such as prostration to the Buddha rupa, and offerings to monastics, and these remain a profound influence on my religious life today. My memories are very visceral - the strong smell of the incense in darkened temple shrine rooms, and the feeling of the cool marble floors on my bare feet. My memories of Buddha images are also very powerful, particularly seeing the Buddha in Bhumisparsha mudra, touching the earth to witness his enlightenment. We continued to move around a great deal throughout my childhood, living in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, as well as time back in the UK. I am hugely grateful to my parents for giving me the opportunity to live in cultures other than my own, although the net effect has been that I don’t feel fully ‘British’, nor do I feel that I belong anywhere in particular, and the cultural affiliations I hold always feel rather loose and fluid. I am a typical ‘Third Culture Kid’ in that respect, and this has directly shaped my interest in investigating experiences of belonging and community in my scholarly work.

some form of Buddhist ordination and all of whom had spent formative time in Britain, but what I found was such a deep level of diversity in experience and attitude. One of the aims of the book was to give a voice to this diversity, to examine it and to explore it, and to try to give a more rounded picture of those people who are deeply committed to making Buddhist practice work on British shores. Having said that, despite the diversity, one common theme amongst women was a deep level of commitment to Buddhism and to Buddhist practice as it was articulated by the group they were connected to.

Jizo at Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey, Northumberland, UK

You wrote the book Women in British Buddhism where you featured 25 British Buddhist women. What was the common theme that arose from your interviews with them?

I think one of the common themes in my book is the diversity between women. I started my research thinking that perhaps there would be many similarities between a group of women, all of whom had taken

Harewood House stupa, Leeds

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Many of the women I spent time with had been involved with Buddhist groups, teachers and organizations for decades and they felt such a strong connection to really living out Buddhist teachings as authentically as they could. The subtitle of my book is ‘commitment, connection and community’ and through the book I show how these three interrelated themes dominate women’s practices and the choices that they make, particularly the relationships that they had with local Buddhist communities. Although Buddhism is clearly an effective transnational religion (and many women had important connections with teachers and groups outside of the UK), what was very important to them was their local groups and supporters, and maintaining communities that surrounded them as well as connections with fellow travelers in the dharma, and their teachers. In the book, I draw on stories of women who physically built Buddhist centers in Britain, including laying bricks and floors and doing their best (despite often very challenging circumstances) to keep communities functioning. This is a difficult task, and requires vision and dedication, which the women I spent time with displayed frequently. Women’s pioneering stories have often been missed out of our historical narratives about the development of Buddhism in Britain, and I wanted to use my book to highlight and preserve them. I hope that when my book is read, the stories of pioneer women who worked very hard to establish Buddhism on alien British shores are inspirational. As a Buddhist scholar, do you find that the Buddha was particularly bias against women, for instance, the nuns, or was he responding more to social norms of his time?

I find this a difficult question to answer, and in many ways my first response is as a practitioner rather than a Buddhist scholar (although those identities are clearly intertwined). As a practitioner (I am part of a lay Theravada tradition), I believe that the Buddhadhamma offers liberatory potential for all regardless of gender, but of course, social norms shape the roles that people are allowed to take and how they have been treated throughout history as well as their experiences. Buddhist traditions are multifaceted and complex, and they house within them a huge range of practices, rituals,

norms and textual resources as well as complicated social and political histories that have been passed down to us in different ways. Furthermore, they can also be contradictory, as many other large and complex religious traditions are. Drawing on the reading that I have done as a scholar, there are contained in Buddhist text and practice ideas that are both challenging for me as a woman or for women wishing to ordain, but also those that are ripe with soteriological possibility. In this regard, I have been strongly influenced by superb textual scholars such as Amy Paris Langenberg in her 2017 book, ‘Birth in Buddhism: The Suffering Foetus and Female Freedom’ where she argues that what we might perceive as negative within certain Buddhist texts (for example, the connections made between women’s bodies and suffering) actually can offer liberatory potential. I tend towards seeing the development of Buddhist traditions as being shaped by dominant social norms of the time, but my role as a researcher of contemporary Buddhism isn’t to say what is ‘true’ in Buddhist history, but is to highlight the experiences of people in different groups and contexts today. Some of the Buddhist women you interviewed have been practicing Buddhism for many decades. Do they feel that Buddhism in UK is now a mainstream religion compared to when they first started to practice Buddhism?

What I chart in the book are some of the profound changes that have occurred in British Buddhist communities over the past few decades, and I specifically focus my research on groups which are predominantly made up of Buddhist converts (those who didn’t grow up with Buddhism as their natal religion). One of my participants who became interested in Buddhism as a young person in the 1950s, reported how little information she had access to about Buddhist teachings in the early days, and she had to resort to one or two library books that mentioned Buddhism in her local, rural library. Other participants mentioned that if they wanted to be part of a Buddhist group in their local area, they had to set one up and run it themselves. This is most certainly not the case for those interested in Buddhism now, where there is a wealth of information available online (including online meditation classes

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and dharma talks, which have blossomed during the pandemic) and any number of Buddhist groups and communities that have a presence in Britain’s towns and cities. Of course, there remain access issues for those who live in more rural areas, but it is safe to say that Buddhism is now firmly established on British shores. However, although there are many hundreds of Buddhist groups in Britain, and numerically Buddhism has significantly increased in the UK (there was about a 100,000 person increase between our two census dates of 2001 and 2011), it still remains a minority religion and some of my participants discussed with me the strange looks that they still might receive when going out and about wearing Buddhist robes or after tonsure, and some lack of understanding about their religious affiliations and what support they might need to survive, particularly if they are monastics who do not handle money. Although this might be more difficult to ascertain, one of the wider social changes that I feel has occurred is that Buddhism has developed significant cultural capital and acceptance in a British context.

Buddhism is typically perceived as not a religion but a philosophy, as peaceful, as in line with modern ideas of rationality and science, and you can buy Buddhist icons and images in almost every supermarket or garden center. It has also attracted a large number of British converts, and these are the focus of my book. Whilst Buddhism is still a minority religion in the British context, it has assimilated in various ways into the mainstream, including in popular and aesthetic culture, which is fascinating to analyze. Many of the women you interviewed are monastics from various Buddhist traditions. Do you think Buddhist monasticism has a place today, especially in the West?

I certainly think it does, and the successful establishment of many Buddhist monastic communities across different countries outside of Asia will attest to this. In terms of Britain, we have a particular relationship with monasticism, forged in the sixteenth-century English Reformation, and more than once my participants referenced this period of religious change, raising concerns that English people might not have sufficient

cultural respect for the monastic lifestyle. Whilst, as a nation, we certainly have a long and complicated history with monasticism, we have a number of highly successful Buddhist monastic orders that are very well established in Britain, and that attract a large lay following.

Since the early 20th century, Buddhists have been trying to establish monastic communities in Britain, and after the 1950s/1960s, these became more common and they are now growing in number and diversity. Although much of the writing about Buddhism in the West suggests that Western converts to Buddhism want to democratize the lay/monastic hierarchy, providing new roles for lay Buddhists, it is clear that Buddhist monasticism is still a vital part of establishing Buddhism in Britain, and there remains a strong desire to support and engage with monastic practitioners, both from Asia and those that are ‘home-grown’. There is a gender imbalance in some Buddhist traditions in Britain, however, and there are more monasteries for male monks than for women. This affects some women’s likelihood of being able to ‘go forth into homelessness’, in practical terms. In the book, I discuss some of the very real difficulties that ordained women have when trying to survive in a culture which perhaps isn’t always hospitable to Buddhist monasticism (especially for women), and where there were not established monastic environments ready to support them. It can be a different story for traditions with strong connections to Asian monastic organizations and lineages (for example, there is a small but thriving Fo Guang Shan community of nuns in England), and so yet again, the experience of monasticism is diverse in this context. For those without strong institutional support, it is quite a difficult thing to be a monastic without a monastery (which some are) and still have to survive financially whilst upholding your vows and living alone. In the book I discuss the various clever ways, borne of necessity, that women make this work in practical terms, but also the very real hardships that some have faced. What aspects of Buddhism do you find relevant for modern day people today, especially for those with a career, family commitments and other social responsibilities?

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The relevance and applicability of Buddhist practices and teachings have very much shown themselves to me in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. I know that for me, when we were in strict national lockdowns, watching the horrifying death toll rise, that attention to our interconnectedness, as well as sending lovingkindness to all beings who are suffering has been helpful. I think I would have found the pandemic more challenging without a regular meditation practice, too, helping me to cope with external stresses and the stories that the mind throws at you throughout the day.

As I show in my book, my participants echo this appreciation for Buddhist practice and teaching. Many felt that Buddhism was the perfect antidote to feelings of anxiety and depression, as well as a concern about the meaning of life (or, the meaningless of life as they felt at the time). Some of my participants explained to me that they had done all the things they were supposed to do, as envisioned in our society - they had been educated, married, got a good job, nice car, took holidays, but then it still didn’t feel like enough, and that something was missing. Part of what was missing was Buddhist teachings about dukkha, for example, but the other part that was missing was a community. It was clear that several of my participants felt that in their busy modern lives, they lacked a sense of community belonging, and they found this in the Buddhist groups they came into contact with. A strong sense of spiritual friendship was forged for many in local Buddhist communities, and this was the antidote to their feelings of stress and pressure. However, it was also clear from my participants that Buddhism also provided something beyond the rational. Many described feeling karmically connected to teachers, places, and individuals, and it was the spiritual and ritual aspect of Buddhist practice that was (and continues to be) attractive to them. As a sociologist of religion, in what ways would you say Buddhism needs to adapt in order to survive in the new millennium among the young and educated in society? In terms of Britain or perhaps the West more broadly, I actually think that many lineages and traditions of

Buddhism have done a very clever job of adapting to new cultural environments. This can be seen in the numerous Buddhist groups and communities that are increasingly a feature of our religious landscape in Britain, but also in the ways that Buddhist-inspired practices (for example, mindfulness) are now a common feature of British public life. Mindfulness is highly prevalent in Britain - in schools, hospitals, prisons, and even in very popular apps (such as Headspace, where although the meditation is secular, the links made to Buddhist origins are made explicit). My current research project (funded by the British Sociological Association), looks at how British Buddhist groups and teachers are engaging with the mindfulness/ secular meditation phenomena and the impact that this is having on their own popularity. I believe, from the evidence that I have seen so far, that an increasing number of Buddhist groups and teachers in Britain are also offering ‘secular’ meditation classes alongside more traditional Buddhist rituals and teachings, and this is allowing them to reach a larger section of the population that they might not have been able to reach before. However, although this has been one highly successful aspect, more needs to be done to offer inclusive teachings and practices at British Buddhist centers. Young people’s needs require greater attention (and, in scholarly terms, Andrew Yip and Sarah-Jane Page wrote an excellent book in 2017 on this issue), especially young people with families. It is still not that easy to be a parent/carer and attend Buddhist activities in Britain, there are fewer ‘family’ retreats and programs that there might be in other Western locales. I have rarely seen children at Buddhist centers that typically cater to convert audiences. Being more inclusive of younger people with families and other responsibilities will ensure greater accessibility and engagement (akin to what Sarah Jacoby has argued here in relation to the US context). Similar might be said for Buddhist groups in Britain being more attuned to issues of equality and diversity, and considering race, gender, sexuality, and considering the best ways to navigate the social mores of wider society even when they might conflict with ‘traditional’ teachings. EH

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Adaptation and Change – Lessons from Young American Buddhists By Chenxing Han

Chenxing Han is the author of Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (North Atlantic Books, 2021). She holds a BA from Stanford University, an MA in Buddhist Studies from the Graduate Theological Union, and a certificate in Buddhist chaplaincy from the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California. She co-organized May We Gather: A National Buddhist Memorial for Asian American Ancestors, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. www. chenxinghan.com. Following a request from Eastern Horizon for an on-line interview, Chenxing has kindly shared her thoughts with Benny Liow about lessons from young Asian Buddhists in the United States.

Benny: Can you share how you became interested in Buddhism when you were raised in an atheistic Chinese family? Chenxing: It’s hard to pinpoint a single moment when I became interested in Buddhism, but I can think of many factors that brought me to the religion. Growing up, I had many questions about life and death, meaning and ethics, pain and suffering. My atheist upbringing couldn’t satisfy these questions, and I never felt a strong affinity for the religion that was most accessible in the dominant culture— Christianity—so I sought out other avenues for spiritual inquiry. During a gap year between high school and college, I encountered Buddhism in many forms in China, Thailand, Nepal, and Tibet. The power of

Buddhist devotion and the beauty of Buddhist architecture moved me to learn more about the religion. Back in the United States for college, I was fortunate to join a nonsectarian Buddhist group on campus and to have access to a diverse range of temples and sanghas throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of the first Buddhist communities I visited were, unexpectedly, in South Africa, where I studied abroad and conducted research for my undergraduate thesis. My parents inculcated in me a suspicion of religion—understandable given their experiences during the Chinese Cultural Revolution—and overcoming this suspicion took many years, though South Africa was a turning point. Interviewing

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NGO workers in Cape Town, many of whom were committed Christians, helped me appreciate how faith can sustain social justice work. This inspired me to embrace my own curiosity about, and affinity for, Buddhism. American society is basically Christian or secular. Growing up as an Asian, did you as a Buddhist have to adapt in order to be accepted in society? Growing up Asian American in majority-white cities and suburbs, I felt more self-conscious about my ethnicity and race than I did about my religious background. I was, however, aware that my atheist upbringing represented yet another failure to assimilate to dominant (white Christian) culture. Sadly, it’s not hard to find stories of Asian American Buddhists who have faced discrimination and bullying as religious and racial minorities. If I had been Buddhist by upbringing, I might have felt a strong pressure to alter or even reject my faith—the desire to fit in to the mainstream can be so hard to shake, especially in adolescence. I interviewed 89 young adults (most of whom were in their 20s and 30s) for my master’s thesis on Asian American Buddhists (which developed into my book, Be the Refuge). I was struck by how some of my interviewees, despite feeling pressured to hide or dismiss the faith they grew up with, eventually reclaimed Buddhism on their own terms. I’m indebted to the people I interviewed, and to Buddhist

friends and teachers from a wide range of backgrounds, for helping me appreciate the value of being open about my relationship to Buddhism rather than concealing it for fear of not fitting in.

To return to your question, Buddhism has encouraged me to embrace adaptation as a necessity of life—everything is always changing. However, I wouldn’t say the purpose of adaptation is to be accepted in society. If anything, Buddhism has taught me how to resist being motivated solely by societal acceptance. The worldly winds of praise and blame, success and failure, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute are fickle compasses. Buddhism offers an alternative set of values by which to conduct our lives ethically, compassionately, and beautifully. Is Buddhism still perceived as a strange Eastern religion or a cult or has it reached the stage of being recognized as a mainstream religion in the US?

It depends on who you’re talking to. Buddhists are very much a minority in America. According to a 2012 Pew Forum estimate, only about 1% of the U.S. population identify as Buddhist. Of this 1%, however, over two-thirds are of Asian heritage. Many people I’ve spoken to are surprised to hear this, especially when the Englishlanguage Buddhist mediascape disproportionately features white convert Buddhists. Perhaps not surprisingly, when I asked

interviewees to name famous Buddhists living in America, they mentioned Richard Gere, Robert Thurman, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and the like. When I asked interviewees to name famous Asian American Buddhists, most people struggled to think of a single one.

Asian American Buddhists have been in the US since the mid- to late-1800s. As Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams compellingly argues in his book American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War, race and religion have long been intertwined in the perception that Asian Americans are “perpetual foreigners”—consider the 19th-century slur “heathen Chinee,” for instance. We can extend this argument more broadly to understand that perceptions of Buddhism cannot be divorced from stereotypes about race. Buddhism and “Eastern spirituality” more generally have had an outsize influence on American popular culture relative to the number of actual adherents. Dr. Jane Iwamura has written brilliantly about some of the implications of this in her book Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture. Tools, products, and catchphrases derived from Buddhism seem to be growing in popularity. Companies that sell meditation and mindfulness apps have seen their revenues skyrocket during the pandemic. Zen and the Art of [Just About Anything] proliferates. A friend just texted me a raft of images showing chocolates in the shape of the Buddha’s head.

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I’m reminded of a phenomenon Dr. Iwamura writes about: “Asian religions without Asians.” Circling back to the original question: perhaps the most concise answer is “both, and…”

Many Buddhist organizations in Asia attract only older members rather than millennials or younger adults. In your experience writing the book Be Your Refuge, what attracts young Buddhists to Buddhism? Seeing other young people engaged with Buddhism! Opportunities to spend time with peers, whether at regular groups or summer camps or special retreats. Accessibility to Buddhist monastics/ministers/ lay teachers who can help us apply the Dharma to everyday life. Ways to give back to the Buddhist community through service and leadership. For all of the above in film form, I highly recommend Wanwan Lu’s documentary Youth Group, about a Buddhist youth group in Southern California (the trailer is available at https://vimeo. com/225493071).

Whenever I spend time at Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temples in America, I’m impressed by the warm intergenerational connections that have been forged by a community whose roots in this country date back well over a century. Young people have spaces where they can build lifelong friendships with their peers. They can turn to their elders for support and inspiration. They can mentor younger members of the community.

Wanwan Lu’s documentary Youth Group, about a Buddhist youth group in Southern California (the trailer is available at https://vimeo.com/225493071)

I see this happening in other Asian American Buddhist communities as well. Wat Khmer Kampuchea Krom in San Jose, California has a vibrant group of “second-gen” American Buddhists (their parents being the first generation to immigrate to the US and raise them Buddhist in this country). This group of young adults gathers on a regular basis to learn the Khmer language and deepen their understanding of Buddhism. The Khmer Krom are the primary indigenous group of the Mekong Delta region, an area now governed by Vietnam but home to Khmer (or Cambodian) speakers for at least 1,500 years, if not longer. Significant numbers of Khmer Krom have settled in the US, particularly after the end of the war in 1975. At a Buddha statue consecration ceremony at Wat Khmer Kampuchea Krom earlier this year, I marveled at how the temple sparkled—the youth had repainted the walls and cleaned every corner of the main hall. Sharing a dinner of vegan curry with one of the group members, Priscilla Kim Ong, I was inspired by the creative ways she was weaving

her cultural and religious heritages with her passion for environmental justice and indigenous rights. We can ask what attracts young people to Buddhism, and we can also ask: how are young people already drawing on Buddhism to make meaning and create change in the world? What concerns do these Asian Buddhists have about integrating Buddhism in their daily life, especially as young adults with a career, family, and other household responsibilities? Finding the time to integrate Buddhism when juggling so many other demands is often a challenge, though I suspect this is true for all young adults who want to carve out time for religious practice and community. As members of a minority religion, it can be even more difficult for young Buddhists to find sanghas where they feel a sense of belonging. If one lives in a more remote area, the nearest Buddhist temple might be several hours’ drive away. For Asian Americans who were raised

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Buddhist, a lack of fluency in various Asian languages can be an obstacle to comprehending their parents’ and grandparents’ faith. Those of us who weren’t raised Buddhist may wish we had family members to guide us in setting up a home altar or maintaining a daily chanting practice. Young adults who are becoming parents themselves wonder how to incorporate Buddhism into their children’s lives. While monasticism has always played a key role in Buddhism, how do you see its future in the West today, especially its relevance among the younger generation of Americans, both Asian Buddhists and white convert Buddhists?

This is a complex, multistranded question. Monasticism was not a primary focus of Be the Refuge, so I’m not well qualified to speculate on the future of monasticism in the West. I would love to read a book that centers the voices of Asian American Buddhist monastics. As writer An Tran remind us in a recent talk (https://www.makingvisible.org/events/api-3), monastics are a powerful field of merit in the Buddhist tradition. Much has been said about the laicization of Buddhism as the religion puts down roots in the West, but I hope we don’t neglect the importance of monasticism. Just because it’s not a trending topic doesn’t mean it isn’t playing a vital role in the transmission of the Dharma in Western countries. A quick note on the last part of this

question. The younger generation of American Buddhists moves us beyond a “two Buddhisms” binary of Asian immigrant / white convert. Gen Z and millennials includes Asian convert Buddhists, white Buddhists whose parents and/ or grandparents raised them in the faith, as well as Black, Latinx, Native American, and mixedrace practitioners. To lift just one example: Bhante Sanathavihari is a 35-year-old Mexican American Theravada monk who lives at a Sri Lanka Buddhist temple in Los Angeles, California. He delivered a Dharma message in Spanish for the May 4, 2021, “May We Gather” national Buddhist memorial for Asian American ancestors (www. maywegather.org).

Christian evangelists frequently targeted Buddhists at campuses in many Asian cities, and you mentioned in Be the Refuge that it is no different in the US. How do Buddhist groups respond to this overt evangelization? Be the Refuge focuses on individuals rather than Buddhist groups, so I can’t speak for how different sanghas respond to evangelization. I would say that relationships between Asian (American) Buddhists and Asian (American) Christians are multifaceted—Brian, Dolma, and a number of other people in Be the Refuge highlight some of these complexities. Personally, I find the Buddhist tradition offers guidance and grounding for meeting moments of evangelization—moments that can be quite charged—in skillful

ways that respect others who hold very different beliefs than I do. As someone trained in interfaith chaplaincy (spiritual care), I find that deep listening and healthy boundaries serve me well in these encounters.

What is the biggest takeaway from your book Be the Refuge following your interviews with so many Asian Buddhists? I’ve had the honor of talking about Be the Refuge at over fifty virtual book events at temples, meditation centers, universities, high schools, bookstores, and other communities. Many people have shared their experiences of reading the book; since each person comes from different circumstances, each grasps different takeaways. What I learned in the writing of the book may not be what most sparks your interest. I do hope Be the Refuge can inspire us to continue grappling with issues of race, culture, power, representation, and privilege in our Buddhist communities. I hope it helps us appreciate the vast diversity of Asian American Buddhists, which like any identity group is not a monolithic entity. There are many ways to be Buddhist. I hope Be the Refuge will connect those of us who want to see culturally engaged, intersectional forms of Buddhism manifest in the world. I hope the book helps create communities where sincerely asking questions together—perhaps even more than finding all the answers—lessens our isolation and deepens our bond of spiritual friendship. EH

FACE TO FACE | EASTERN HORIZON

Yasodhara as a Model for Modern Women By Prof Vanessa R. Sasson

Vanessa R. Sasson is a professor of Religious Studies at Marianopolis College in Montreal, Canada, where she has been teaching since 1999. She is also a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, and a Research Member for CERIAS at UQAM. She is the author and/or editor of a number of books. Yasodhara and the Buddha is her first novel. Benny Liow had an on-line interview with Vanessa about her latest book especially how she sees Yasodhara as a model for modern day women. You can reach Vanessa through her website: www.vanessarsasson.com.

Benny: You have been a scholar of Buddhism for over 20 years. What made you write a book about Yasodhara, the wife of Siddhartha, as a novel? Vanessa: I have indeed been a scholar for a long time. But after almost twenty years of expressing my ideas using a traditional academic style, I found myself wondering if there were not other ways to engage my research. Academic writing can be quite formulaic. There is a particular method and rhythm to academic writing, and I could not help but wonder if I was capable of trying something new. What if I expressed my scholarship differently? What if I took a different approach, climbed into the story, created characters, lived the narrative from inside instead of always standing outside and trying to look in?

The moment those questions reached me, there was no turning back. And although I was admittedly quite worried that I would be condemned by academic elders for breaking protocol (thankfully, my fear proved ungrounded), I could not stop writing once I had begun. I was building a story out of my research in a whole new way and it was genuinely exhilarating! I discovered that I loved living inside the stories, engaging the narratives and giving them life. I was participating in a 2500-yearold tradition of Buddhist storytelling, adding my own

voice to the library of storytellers before me.

In the process, I learned something that I had not appreciated until then: good scholarship needs creativity. The best scholars in the field are praised as such not just for their language skills or the complexity of their analysis. What makes them great is the way they see the material. I worried for a long time that, by writing creatively, I was breaking rank, but I eventually realized how wrong I was. Creativity is part of scholarship. Creativity helps us ask new questions, see the world from a different angle. It stimulates our curiosity and helps us remain open to new answers. There is no split between creativity and scholarship. At least, none that I can see anymore. So writing a novel no longer seems like a departure from my academic life. On the contrary, I would now say that it flows directly out of it.

What were your sources on the life of Yasodhara? Do you find more similarities or differences in her life story from these various sources? Once I decided that I would try to participate in the storytelling process and create the story myself, I was faced with this question you have asked here: what sources do I use?

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I wrestled with this question for some time, but eventually found the answer by looking at what others have done before me. I wondered what sources other storytellers used when they crafted a Buddhist story, and I quickly realized that the answer to my question was, that every teller (and writer and artist) uses everything they have at their disposal. Ashvaghosa used the narratives he had, just as Hridaya Chittadhar used the ones he had. I would therefore humbly follow in their giant footsteps and use whatever I had within reach.

Of course, this created a fascinating problem. In the 21st century, we have a tremendous collection of Buddhist texts and traditions at our disposal – from every corner of the Buddhist world. So, I scratched my head, laughed a little, and then jumped right into all of it. Whatever I could find, whatever was available, I read. I moved between early Sanskrit poetry to medieval Sinhalese material, to contemporary ex-Dalit poetry and Newari songs. I was drawn towards South Asian sources because that is my field of expertise, but I read everything from everywhere that I could find.

Despite the great variety of sources available, the skeleton of the story remains largely the same. The differences are in the details, but I would never dismiss the details just because they are slight. When you pay attention to the details, you realize how much variety the storytellers shared with us. Small scenes are added here and removed from there. Yasodhara is fiery in one account, and quieter in another. The storytellers allowed themselves their own interpretation, each and every time. So, while there is a shared pattern across the board, there is also a rich tapestry of difference. Each teller gave Yasodhara a distinctive voice, which is what gave me permission to give Yasodhara a voice of my own. The idea of Siddhartha leaving his wife Yasodhara and a new born child in the middle of the night was painful for many people but it has been argued that it happened at a different time and place. As a modern scholar how do you explain this in the context of what Siddhartha did?

It did happen in a different time and place, but I am not convinced that this makes his departure any less painful for Yasodhara. Indeed, few Buddhist hagiographies

avoid her suffering. On the contrary, they actually seek to highlight her suffering instead. Yasodhara does not celebrate her husband’s departure, but is devastated in almost every account. So I don’t think we can point to the past and shrug with a bland statement of historical inevitability. Even then, in the ancient past, the prince’s departure was devastating. And indeed, it had to be devastating. If the prince left and everyone applauded and said, “well done!” his departure would have little narrative impact. It is precisely because everyone is devastated that the story works.

Yasodhara is, moreover, not the only one who is devastated by his departure. A close reading of the sources reveals that everyone in his life is heart-broken by the loss. His stepmother Gotami cries so much, according to one Sanskrit text, that scales cover her eyes from all the tears. The horse Kanthaka that carried him off dies of heartbreak when the prince walks away. Channa, the chariot-driver, is utterly miserable when he is forced to return to the palace without his master. Everyone is upset by the future Buddha’s Great Departure. And they must be – not just because a good story needs a dramatic turning point, but because suffering is the engine that pushes us toward freedom. If none of these characters suffered, they would never be inspired to seek freedom from suffering. And would you say that Yasodhara was already prepared for Siddhartha leaving his family behind, or it came as a shock to her? Or do you see her as a partner in her husband’s quest for the truth?

This is a wonderful question – one that I spent a long time wondering about. In the end, I came to the conclusion that she must have been a partner to him as he prepared for this quest. The literature often describes the two of them as having been married for lifetimes – one jataka after another places them together as husband and wife. Yasodhara was not just a backstage wife, filling a narrative role. She was beside him for lifetimes, and therefore I must assume that she was with him also as he prepared himself for this quest. This does not mean that she was not devastated by the loss. As I noted with the previous question, Yasodhara is repeatedly described as having suffered terribly after his departure. But I don’t think she was surprised

FACE TO FACE | EASTERN HORIZON

by it. She must have known that it was coming, she must have watched him wrestle with these questions as he prepared himself to pull away. This is, at least, the picture I developed in my book. Yasodhara is his partner, but she is also his beloved. She understands him, she sees him wrestling with the question of suffering, but she paradoxically also hopes he will never go. And when he does, he breaks her heart. When the Order of Nuns was established, did she have any significant role in the monastic order after she became ordained as one of the nuns?

Unfortunately, Yasodhara does not take up much of a role in the early bhikkhuni sangha. The sources do place her among the early Buddhist nuns, but little more is said. She does not have a poem in the Therigatha, although she does have verses in the Apadana, where she is described as having become an important teacher in the community. The Apadana, is however, more of the exception than the rule. In most cases, her role as a nun is restrained. She has a much more prominent role in the literature as the Bodhisatta’s wife. While he is a householder, Yasodhara is pivotal, but once they have renounced, she takes a back seat in the story – probably because it would have been too complicated to have the one who was once his wife take a leading role in a community of renunciants. It would have seemed as though they were still operating publicly as husband and wife. In the Jatakas we read that Siddhartha and Yasodhara had been together as husband and wife for many lifetimes, and in their final birth they were again married. Do you see this spiritual companionship life after life as a form of a modern day romantic story?

I certainly do! I think there is something wonderfully romantic about the two of them finding each other as husband and wife for so many lifetimes. We don’t have anything nearly so romantic in the West, with couples reaching across time to find each other this way. Indeed, I have often wondered why Buddhism gets so little credit where romance is concerned.

Of course, the answer to that question is partly because of the emphasis placed on renunciation, but renunciation is not the only Buddhist story. There is so much more to Buddhist storytelling than just renunciation. Buddhist stories also include romantic love, community life, family. When we reduce Buddhism to one simple attribute, we do the tradition a terrible injustice. Buddhism has so much more to offer than just one version of one story. What do you find in Yasodhara that we can consider as a good role model for the modern woman today?

What I admire most about Yasodhara is her humanity. The way I see her, she lives the full spectrum of human emotions. She is engaged in her experiences, reflects on them and reacts to them, loving her husband and her son and adapting to her environment with all of herself. Yasodhara is no wallflower. She is not silent and demure. Indeed, according to some versions of their story together, she is the one to choose Siddhattha as a husband. She pulls him into their relationship and gives him an experience of worldly life – precisely the experience he needed before he could let it all go. And after he leaves her, she cries with all of her heart. She experiences life in all of its fullness and complexity. And tragedy. And then, when the time is right, she finds a way to free herself too. She represents the full spectrum of the human experience and I love her for that. She does not hide from any part of her potential. She lives it all.

I understand you are writing to sequel to your first book on Yasodhara. Could you share what would be the focus or additional stories you will include in the book? I am finishing up my next book, and I am very excited about it. In the next book, I pick up the story where Yasodhara and the Buddha left off – with the women leaving the palace together and walking towards the Buddha to ask him for permission to join the order.

It is a complicated story for many reasons. I hope that I do the story justice. EH

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Can Anger be a Positive Emotion? Anger is one of the great obstacles in Buddhist practice as mentioned in many texts. It is also regarded as contagious and dangerous. In the Dhammapada verse 233, the Buddha said, “Conquer anger by non-anger. Conquer evil by good. Conquer miserliness by liberality. Conquer a liar by truthfulness.” Likewise, in Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, the first verse in the chapter on Patience reads:

Whatever wholesome deeds, Such as venerating the buddhas and [practicing] generosity, That have been amassed over a thousand aeons, Will all be destroyed in one moment of anger. Yet modern psychology seems to think that anger, which is a very human emotion, has a positive side, especially when confronting injustice as they arise in the world, or when we want to send a strong message to another person not to take advantage of someone’s weakness. We ask our three Buddhist teachers their views from their respective traditions if there is any spiritual value to anger. In Buddhist teachings, anger (dosa) together with greed (lobha) and delusion (moha), are called the three poisons. What are the characteristics of anger, and why does it arise? Ayasma Aggacitta: In the

Theravāda tradition they are called the three unwholesome roots. Dosa is the easiest to identify because it is always accompanied by mental displeasure whereas the other two are not. It is characterised by nonacceptance or rejection of its object of attention or hitting at it and can range from slight disappointment to fury.

The root cause of dosa is ignorance while its proximate cause is lobha. Lobha arises because one is ignorant of the fact that nothing is worth desiring or clinging to in the ultimate sense. It is also ignorance of the second Noble Truth that lobha (which is a superset of craving) is the cause of suffering. Dosa arises because one cannot get what lobha wants. For this reason, dosa is one type of suffering defined in the first Noble Truth.

Ven Min Wei: In Buddhism, we learn that anger arises mainly from our desires, greed, and ignorance. We should be aware that it is our anger that is causing us to suffer, not another person. Our problems come from our selfishness and little understanding of how anger and other defilements arise in our minds. The arising of anger is generally a response to something that we wanted but could not get. When we are angry, we usually blame someone else as the source of our suffering. Thus, we become angry with this person and think that he is out to destroy me! In fact, it

is our anger that will destroys us. Therefore, the cause of anger is nothing but our selfish desire. It is only loving kindness that can take care of our anger. Love is the only source that can heal us.

Geshe Dadul: I prefer calling the three poisons, hatred (Skt: doșa or dveșa), attachment (Skt: rāga or lobha), and ignorance or delusion (Skt: avidya or moha). “Anger” can be included here. The reason for this is in the Buddhist sources (from Abhidharma to the Prajnāpāramitayāna to that of the Vajrayāna scriptures), as far as I am aware, the doșa or dveșa, on the one hand, and pratigha (usually rendered as “anger” in English), on the other, are two different terms for the same affliction. However, I doubt the modern psychologists consider hatred and anger, as they relate to them, as one and the same emotion.

That said, this mental affliction of doșa has the character of a deep biased resentment and repugnance towards its object with the potential to grow into a harmful intention and, further down the line, trigger harmful action, depending on intensity and degree of indulgence in it.

On the surface, it arises from of a sense of dissatisfaction, disapproval, or hurt, but as with all the afflictive mental states, underneath that is an exaggeration of the reality at hand, here in the case of doșa, that results in the experience of an overblown displeasure embedded in a misinterpretation. When anger arises, what did the Buddha suggest we do? Suppress it or transform it from a negative

FORUM energy into something more positive? Ayasma Aggacitta: The Buddha gave several options to deal with anger, each of which can be used according to one’s disposition and capability. I am not sure whether one can say that these options are transformations from negative to positive energy. Perhaps you can decide for yourself after you’ve read them in the next answer. Suppression seems to be a last resort as we shall see.

Ven Min Wei: The Buddha taught that hatred cannot be overcome by hatred but by loving kindness and compassion. In the same way, darkness cannot be dispelled by darkness but by brightness. So, we have to face our anger and learn to be aware of it, rather than suppress or avoid it. We are simply to observe our anger when it arises. Our education system does not really teach us how to cope with our emotions. Thus, anger is easily misunderstood, especially in our family and community, causing us to suppress it and making ourselves unhappy, uneasy and off balance. If we prematurely suppress anger because we think it is unworthy to understand it, then we will fail to transform it. Science says that all emotions are natural, and that emotions become destructive only when they are expressed in an inappropriate way. Therapy is aimed more at changing the external expression of the emotions than the internal experience of them. Geshe Dadul: Across philosophical schools or practice vehicles (yānas) within Buddhism, the general stand on afflictive mental states (kleśa)

including hatred is that they are to be ultimately eliminated, not just weakened, in one’s quest for personal liberation from sufferings or for full enlightenment to fully serve others. In chapter 8 of his Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Nagarjuna says:

“Through elimination of karma and afflictions there is liberation. Karma and afflictions come from [misconstrued] conceptual thoughts. These come from mental fabrication. Fabrication ceases through emptiness.”

The question is how to bring about that elimination and what are the steps involved in achieving that capacity. One thing for sure is that suppression is not the best option, but at times that might be the only means available or known to the person in keeping the afflictions from being outwardly expressed, in which case that is a welcome temporary solution. However, suppression is surely not a sustainable method in dealing with kleśas. A better option is defusing the pent-up negative energy or channelling it into something neutral or, better still, into something positive. However, this is easier said than done. One must train in these methods on a regular basis to gain familiarity and gradually ease into it. What are the common antidotes for anger taught by the Buddha? Ayasma Aggacitta: The rule of thumb is to apply what is mentioned in Dhp 233: conquer anger with non-anger or mettā.

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However, this is easier said than done and requires much training and proficiency in the cultivation of mettā. For instance, how many people can abide by this exhortation of the Buddha (in Kakacūpama Sutta, MN 21) to a bhikkhu: to infuse with mettā, the bandits sawing his limbs apart? Fortunately, the Buddha gave more doable options elsewhere.

Paṭhamaāghātapaṭivinaya Sutta (AN 5.161) mentions five ways of subduing anger towards a person: develop (1) mettā, (2) karuṇā, or (3) upekkhā towards him, (4) don’t remember or think about him, (5) resolve on kamma as his own property, heir, etc. I interpret (3) as equanimity derived from reflecting that his behaviour is a product of present circumstances and past conditioning which may be beyond his control and (5) as surrender by reflecting on the moral consequences of his presumably bad behaviour. One could also direct the reflection on kamma inwards, e.g. I could have done something like this or even worse to her in a past life for me to deserve this. Now I must repay my kammic debt wisely and patiently without creating more unwholesome kammic links with her to be repaid again in future. Vitakkasaṇṭṭhāna Sutta gives 5 sequential methods, in the following order, of overcoming unwholesome thoughts in general, including angry ones: (1) replace them with wholesome ones (2) reflect on their drawbacks (3) don’t remember or think about them (4) slow down those thought formations, and finally (5) forcefully suppress them. Ven Min Wei: As the Buddha had

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taught, only love and compassion are the antidotes for anger. Holding on to anger is like keeping the wound fresh and open; you never give it the chance to heal. In order to get rid of anger, we should start cultivating compassion and understanding, and stop watering the seeds of anger, hatred, and aversion.

When you compose a letter or email with a mind of compassion and forgiveness, you will feel a sense of freedom, even if the person you’re sending the message hasn’t read them yet. And when the person gets to read your letter or email, he too will feel your kindness and compassion. Similarly, if you speak harshly and with anger to another person, both you and that person will experience a feeling of unhappiness and a suffering mind. Geshe Dadul: Initially, one can train in redirecting one’s attention from the object of anger to something else, such as the breath, a calming image, or external object, etc. Having a practice in one-pointed concentration will greatly aid this ability. So, training in this skill can come handy. Next is training in the positive opposite of anger, i.e. lovingkindness, compassion, or patience and apply that to the object of one’s anger. Unlike the previous method, where the emphasis was on placing the mind single pointedly on a chosen object of focus, here the process involves mental reasoning and contemplation in garnering an anti-anger perspective towards the object and internalizing that. Regular contemplation of the disadvantages of anger, on the one hand, and the benefits of patience,

loving-kindness and compassion is the process for this strategy in combating anger and its ill effects.

Then, there are the attempts at digging deeper into the inner mechanism of anger. This involves training in a natural outlook of impermanence of compounded phenomena and applying it to situations leading to anger. Further still, training in the view of how conditions governed by afflictions are ultimately dissatisfactory in nature and again applying it to the situation at hand. Then there are the incrementally subtle mistaken notions of “self” or “identity” ingrained in our continuum that needs to be tackled and their corresponding notions of “no-self” cultivated and familiarized with. The rationale for applying these successive trainings is that all these misperceptions have a role to play in fundamentally sustaining the misinformed image we have of the object of one’s anger, and until one trains in these correct perspectives and applies them, all other efforts may only manage to weaken or undermine the afflictions, but will not uproot them.

If anger has already arisen, how do we at least reduce its intensity so that it remains as a mental thought that does not lead to aggression or violence? Ayasma Aggacitta: As a prelude to answering this question, I would like to suggest taking preventive measures to reduce the chances of its arising first. For example, (a) avoid the circumstances that could bring about anger, (b) prepare one’s non-angry response in anticipation of an unavoidable situation that could lead to anger, and (c) cultivate

mettā habitually to rewire one’s neural connections for empathy, acceptance and patience until they become one’s second nature. These preventive measures should help to reduce the frequency and intensity of angry outbursts.

Nonetheless, despite doing so, anger can still arise and this is when one should use any of the methods listed above to deal with it. To facilitate (4) in AN 5.161 and (3) in MN 20, one could engage oneself in a hobby or challenging physical activity (e.g. rock/wall climbing, stream hiking, vigorous workout in the gym). Activities that force one to pay attention to the 5 senses or the so-called present moment will help extract the mind from ruminating about past events that evoke anger. This will temporarily give some space for the mind to become composed so that when it reviews the events later it can do so with greater clarity and objectivity. However, when an immediate or urgent response is required, the best thing to do is to remain silent and wait for the emotions to settle by following any of the methods mentioned above. Silence is golden because anything said or done in anger would be harmful somehow. If it is difficult to contain the anger just by remaining silent, excuse oneself and walk away politely.

Ven Min Wei: When anger arises, we must be aware of it, and acknowledge its arising. Observe the anger as a mental state, without directing it to the object that causes the anger. We must train ourselves to observe and analyse our emotions when we are angry. By constantly practising self-analysis,

FORUM we will gain greater confidence in being able to control ourselves and not act foolishly or irrationally, or to just blame others. The Buddha has shown that anger is very counter-productive. He said getting angry with another person is like lighting a fire that burns within oneself, and it harms oneself more than the other person.

Geshe Dadul: Except in the case of extremely strong anger, when the mind has become fully overwhelmed and blinded, it is still possible to exercise some restraint and intervene. Using a corner of your mind, notice the anger in you and recognize it for what it is. Try to not identify with it. This results in creating a distance between oneself and the anger, that will right away deflate it to some extent. Then one can apply other interventions and bring about a positive transition. For this, it is helpful to build the habit of checking the state of one’s mind every now and then and make conscious choice over them. Is it possible to observe and experience anger without being overwhelmed by it, or be mindful that we are angry? If so, is it still considered unwholesome (akusala)? Ayasma Aggacitta: Of course it is possible for well-trained practitioners of mindfulness. For instance, one who has successfully incorporated right mindfulness in daily life and is able to personally and experientially understand that whatever happens is a product of present causes and past conditions, should have no problem identifying the anger as “not mine, not me, not my self”, but a product of

causes and conditions. Then this observation with such a right view would certainly be wholesome.

Otherwise, without such a right view, the observation would still be unwholesome, although the Abhidhamma maintains that mindfulness is always associated with wholesome states. For instance, most people, even though they may be mindful of the anger within, still identify it as “mine, me, my self”. Now, isn’t it obvious that this observation made with mindfulness accompanied by wrong view is unwholesome?

Ven Min Wei: Indeed, if we can be mindfully aware or recognize anger whenever it arises, we will definitely not be controlled or overwhelmed by our anger. Thus, we need not ignore anger but convert it into a positive energy without being imprisoned in negativities. Therefore, practicing mindfulness is crucially important. Mindfulness is not to suppress or fight against anger, but to recognize and take care of it. So, the energy of anger is recognized and embraced tenderly by the energy of mindfulness. It’s like we are helping each other. Both mindfulness and anger are ourselves. Recently, many therapeutic traditions in the West have integrated the contemplative approach to therapy focusing on mindfulness. This is itself a wholesome act. Geshe Dadul: It is possible to train from having to redirect attention from the kleśas every time they emerge – the initial practice level of restraint against kleśas — to slowly befriending kleśas and recruiting them to

TEACHINGS FORUM | EASTERN HORIZON

mitigate kleśas— the middling practice level of neutralizing and co-opting kleśas by using them as aids on the path— to eventually even embracing and integrating kleśas on the path of effectively eliminating them— the advanced practice level of using them as keys to enhancing the path and transmuting them. This succession of skills reflects an individual’s progression on the path. Through persistent training, one can become increasingly less overwhelmed and consumed by kleśas, and increasingly skilled in turning the unique quality of kleśas into assets to combating the kleśas thoroughly, to their very subtle stains over and above the manifest afflictions and their roots. At any given level, the basic nature of hatred remains unwholesome (akusala). Through progressive practice, its unique destructive potential is increasingly overwhelmed and even leveraged to bring its own destruction by a skilful practitioner Are there any occasions when anger is justified, or when anger becomes a skilful action? Ayasma Aggacitta: From the perspective of the Pāli scriptures, no. After all, dosa is classified as one of the three roots of unwholesomeness.

However, from the worldly perspective, one could say that there may be justifiable occasions to express anger. For example, parents and teachers sometimes resort to karuṇā-dosa to train their children and students respectively for their own future good which they may be unable to envisage at that time. Unfortunately, this can be quite subjective and may well do more

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harm than good if the perceived “future good” may not actually be so for the child or student. Ven Min Wei: Can anger be justified or skilful? Traditionally, Buddhists feel a sense of shame when expressing anger, while from a psychological point of view, getting in touch with our anger is vital. Scientifically, anger as a healthy response to injustice has a different quality. Anger is also traditionally thought to be close to wisdom. When not projected outward onto others or inward towards one self, it is a necessary energy but we need to be skilful in managing it when it arises.

So a better question is whether it is possible to use one’s own anger skilfully as a method to lead others to find release from suffering. The energy of anger that we can cultivate should be used for a purpose that is ultimately compassionate and not based on hatred for others. For example, anger over injustice or of an adult abusing a child would not be considered as negative if it is done out of love and compassion. So we are angry over the injustice or harm done to another person or an animal, but we have no hatred in our mind for the perpetrator, but compassion for the victims. Geshe Dadul: Anger, as opposed to hatred, may be justified on certain occasions. Particularly, if we think of anger, in its least destructive mode, as a disturbed sense of being annoyed or wronged based on reasonable assessment of the situation. That may be justified and even required to rouse us to act against an injustice or oppression that we witness. Such a sentiment can even go hand in hand with

compassion and might give rise to what we sometimes call fierce compassion, with no ill-feeling towards anyone while remaining equally concerned about the situation.

Some people can seem very cool, calm, and collected, yet they may be seething inside with anger. Is it better to release our anger and then forget about it, or let it stay inside us? Ayasma Aggacitta: Neither is better than the other for both are bad. Instead one should use any of the methods prescribed above to dispel the anger.

Ven Min Wei: Anger is an emotion found in all human beings. It is not a simple on-off switch where if you want it, you just switch it on, but when you don’t like it, you can turn it off. It doesn’t work that way in a human being as far as anger is concerned.

What we really need to understand is what causes our anger. For instance, the causes of our anger could be due to our expectations, jealousy, feeling belittled, selfdesire, and so forth. We cannot totally eliminate our anger, no matter how we mastered our practices, because anger is part of our human emotion. Anger is a natural part of our emotional make up. It arises when our expectations and wishes are not fulfilled or satisfied. Thus, anger itself is not an issue; the problem is how we are able to deal with it. Geshe Dadul: Yes, for sure there are some people who can hide their actual feeling of anger and put up a facade of cool and calm. Taking

refuge in that skill, they do not try to address their anger. They let their wound fester from within and that ruins their own mental and physical health. Although forgetting the situation that led to anger may not be that easy or even necessary, it is possible to let go of anger and the ill feelings associated with it and cultivate forgiveness for one’s own benefit, if not also for the inflictor. Anger as an affliction can be damaging at times. One may find it more reasonable and healthier for all concerned to develop compassion, compassion for oneself in a moment of affliction and for those in one’s environment, sparing them the harm that anger often brings. Written by Geshe Dadul Namgyal with editorial assistance from Martha Leslie Baker.

Venerable Āyasmā Aggacitta is the founder of the Sāsanārakkha Buddhist Sanctuary (SBS) in Taiping, Perak, a Pāli scholar and a meditation teacher. Geshe Dadul Namgyal is a Geshe Lharampa and senior resident teacher at Drepung Loseling Monastery in Atlanta, Georgia, USA Ven. Min Wei is a teacher of e-learning at the International Buddhist College (IBC) and an independent translator of Buddhism. EH

BOOKS IN BRIEF | EASTERN HORIZON

BOOKS IN BRIEF From Shambhala Publications, Boulder, Colorado, USA. www.shambhala.com

Holly Gayley, Voices from Larung Gar. Shaping Tibetan Buddhism for the Twenty-First Century, 2021. pp 292. US$ 24.95. This is a collection of 10 talks and writings by the leading voices of Larung Gar, the largest Buddhist institution on the Tibetan plateau. The book offers a compelling vision for Buddhism in the twenty-first century by some of the most erudite, creative, and influential Tibetan Buddhist luminaries today. In everyday language, these leaders delve into an array of contemporary issues, including science, ethics, gender equity, and animal welfare.

This collection features contributions from a range of prominent figures who are forging dynamic, modern paths forward for an ancient tradition. Included are the internationally renowned Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, founder of Larung Gar, his distinguished successors Khenpos Sodargye and Tsultrim Lodro, and erudite nuns holding the scholarly title Khenmo, who are becoming known for their impressive publishing projects. Larung Gar is thus one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most vital communities, actively balancing cultural preservation and innovation. This volume by Holly illustrates vividly the remarkable ways in which Larung Gar monks and nuns are engaging modern social issues while remaining deeply grounded in their beloved Buddhist traditions. EH

Charles B. Jones. Pure Land. History, Tradition, and Practice.2021. pp 246. US$16.95.

This is a brief introduction to the history and practices of Pure Land Buddhism, which centers on Amitābha Buddha, rebirth in his Western Pure Land, and the guaranteed attainment of Buddhahood. It constitutes the dominant tradition of most Buddhists in East Asia and is the most common form of practice within immigrant Buddhist communities in the West. However, it is less well-known than Tibetan, Zen or Theravada. This brief introduction summarizes the core teachings of this tradition and charts its growth throughout the world.

Pure Land covers the spiritual tenets behind the tradition before describing how prayer and devotion to Amitābha allow for rebirth in a realm free from suffering and ideal for progress on the path to enlightenment. It then outlines specific Pure Land practices, all the while providing historical context to account for its widespread popularity throughout East Asia. The author also covers contemporary Pure Land traditions, providing a useful touch point for modern readers. Pure Land practitioners and readers now have a concise guide to the ideas, practices, and origins of this widely popular spiritual tradition. EH

EASTERN HORIZON | BOOKS IN BRIEF

BOOKS IN BRIEF

Shantideva. Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva. A New Translation and Contemporary Guide. Translated with commentary by Khenpo David Karma Choephel. 2021. pp289. US$21.95. This is a fresh translation of, and commentary on, Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva, perhaps the most renowned and thorough articulation of the bodhisattva path. Written by the eighth-century Indian monk Shantideva, it is a guide to becoming a bodhisattva, someone who is dedicated to achieving enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. The text is here translated by Khenpo David Karma Choephel who expertly communicates the power of Shantideva’s insights through careful attention to both the meaning and the rhythmic pulse of each stanza, all the while providing necessary context and practical advice for modern readers.

After presenting the full translation, Khenpo David introduces the text, explaining the key points of each chapter with clarity and wisdom. Combining a uniquely poetic translation with detailed analysis, this book is a comprehensive guide to becoming a Bodhisattva. Teachings that have been at the heart of Mahayana practice for centuries are given new life, and the supporting commentary makes the text accessible and applicable to practitioners. Readers interested in the bodhisattva path will find this a comprehensive resource filled with captivating verse and incisive interpretations. EH

Sarah Shaw, The Art of Listening. A Guide to the Early Teachings of Buddhism. 2021. pp 291. US$18.95.

The Art of Listening gives an introduction to the Dīghanikāya and demonstrates the historical, cultural, and spiritual insights that emerge when we view the Buddhist suttas (in Sanskrit, sutras) as oral literature. The Dīghanikāya or Long Discourses of the Buddha is one of the four major collections of teachings from the early period of Buddhism. Its thirty-four suttas demonstrate remarkable breadth in both content and style, forming a comprehensive collection.

Each sutta of the Dīghanikāya is a paced, rhythmic composition that evolved and passed intergenerationally through chanting. For hundreds of years, these timeless teachings were never written down. Examining twelve suttas of the Dīghanikāya, scholar Sarah Shaw combines a literary approach and a personal one, based on her experiences carefully studying, hearing, and chanting the texts.

At once sophisticated and companionable, The Art of Listening will introduce you to the diversity and beauty of the early Buddhist suttas. The author also shows us that the Buddha’s discourses are also Buddhist practices, and that listening can be a form of meditation. EH

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EASTERN HORIZON | BOOK REVIEW

Book Review By Benny Liow Woon Khin

Caroline Starkey, Women in British Buddhism. Routledge: London, 2021. pp 222. Paperback £36.99. www.routledge.com

This book, which is based on the author’s doctoral thesis, discusses the personal stories of 25 women who converted to Buddhism. They are from seven different Buddhist traditions, and groups, based in England, Scotland, and Wales. Each of these women had taken ‘ordination’, which implies a formal and life-long commitment to Buddhism. Author Caroline Starkey explores, individually, each woman’s initial contact with Buddhist teachings, their decision to take ordination, and their dynamic engagement with Buddhist disciplinary practices. The 25 participants in this study come from various Buddhist groups, namely, the Triratna Buddhist Order (from which the largest number of participants emerged); Amida; the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives; Theravāda/Thai Forest Sangha; and various Tibetan traditions. Starkey makes a comparison between the different groups, with particular focus on gender equality.

As Starkey mentioned in her interview with me for this issue of Eastern Horizon, she started her research thinking that perhaps there would be many similarities between a group of women, all of whom had taken some form of Buddhist ordination and all of whom had spent formative time in Britain, but then what she found was such a deep level of diversity in experience and attitude. One of the aims of the book then is to give a voice to this diversity, to examine it and to explore it, and to try to give a more rounded picture of those women who are deeply committed to making Buddhist practice work in Britain. As the book reveals, despite the diversity, one common theme amongst the women was a deep level of

commitment to Buddhism and to Buddhist practice as it was articulated by the lineages they are connected to. Starkey provides an analysis of their motivations, concerns, and inspirations as Buddhists practitioners in eight chapters. She also explores their significant contributions to Buddhism in the UK, including their paths to deeper commitment, their perspectives on religious discipline (particularly on changes to attire), and how they talk about gender equality and feminism. In Chapter One, Starkey introduces the concepts and methods of her research for this book. She explores the positions of the 25 female monastics in relation to Buddhist hierarchies and power dynamics, their perception of gender inequality, and how their spiritual practice is understood within the British context even though they may be from different lineages within the broad Buddhist traditions. In Chapter Two, Starkey explains how Buddhism grew in the UK, and its changes and adaptations over time. She highlights the differences, as well as the commonalities, of the Buddhist traditions in the country, among them are mind training practices and the active participation of women. In terms of differences, for example, there is a stark contrast between the homegrown, non-sectarian Triratana Buddhist Order, founded by the late Sangharakshita, which is gender-equal in its ordination; and the more conservative Thai Theravada Buddhist tradition which only accepts males for ordination and not females. This conservatism in ordination in the Theravada tradition has been challenged by the English-born

BOOK REVIEW | EASTERN HORIZON

Australia-based monk Ajahn Brahmavamso who was “excommunicated” from the Thai Forest Sangha because of his support for ordination of female monastics. Chapter Three delves into the stories of why the 25 Buddhist women chose to become Buddhist nuns and to undertake a life-long commitment to the religion. According to Starkey, all of them were well educated, successful professional women. Many women in their position would have been content and fulfilled, but they chose to be ordained in search of a deeper meaning in life. In Chapter Four, entitled “Deepening Commitment: The Path to Ordination,”, Starkey discusses in great depth how each of the 25 women chose their particular Buddhist tradition, unlike their Asian counterparts, who could only be ordained to the tradition they were born into. Chapter Five offers an interesting topic about the attire of female Buddhist monastics, an area that has never been well explored by other scholars. Their change in appearance after ordination – with their shaved heads as required by both the main Theravada and Mahayana traditions, and changing into monastic robes – signified a new identity and life for them as ordained women.

In Chapter Six, “Loaded Words: Attitudes to Feminism and Gender Equality,” Starkey explains that while the female monastics all believe strongly in gender equality and are committed to it, they are less keen to embark on any overt feminist activities in the name of Buddhism. However, she does mention that although some female monastics who are openly championing gender equality, there are those who are more discreet, or silent on this rather contentious issue.

Chapter Seven, “Pioneers and Volunteers: Women Building British Buddhism,” is about how the female monastics are involved in constructing their monasteries. They had to learn plastering, plumbing, brick-laying and fixing electric lights from scratch. She quoted examples of an abbey in Northumberland, northern England, where a nun learnt to do bricklaying in the monastery, and of dharmacharinis from the Triratna Order putting in underfloor heating in rural Wales. In this chapter, Starkey also gave examples of female monastics performing blessing rituals by chanting for the local community. This reflects the close and deeply rooted relationships that the female monastics have with their immediate local communities of practice. The other area she explores in this chapter is the financial constraints the female monastics face as well as thework they do to support themselves amidst the demands of monastic responsibilities. The final chapter brings together the key themes of the study—these being commitment, connection, and community. The female monastics all made a strong commitment to study and practice according to their ordination vows. Connections were forged with particular material objects, especially their robes, dharma names, and shaved heads.

Finally, just as the Buddha emphasised on the importance of a four-fold community for the dispensation (sasana) to thrive, the female monastics realize the importance of being part of a community where they can receive alms and support from the laity, and in return, they provide spiritual teachings and share their experience with the devotees. EH

EASTERN HORIZON | BOOK REVIEW

Book Review By Benny Liow Woon Khin

Chenxing Han, Be the Refuge. North Atlantic: Berkeley, 2021.pp 325. US$17.95 www.northatlanticbooks.com

The popular idea is that “American Buddhism” is predominantly practiced by white or Caucasian Americans. This is probably due to several factors. The editors and writers of popular American Buddhist journals such as Tricycle, Buddhadharma, or Lion’s Roar are all white Americans. Famous Americans who are Buddhists or are associated with Buddhism such as Dr Jon Kabat Zinn, Dr Daniel Goleman, Dr Robert Wright (“Why Buddhism is True”), Steve Jobs, and Richard Gere are all whites. And the followers of the two best-known Asian Buddhists, HH the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, are also all predominantly White Caucasians.

But the 2013 Pew Research Center survey shows that more than two-thirds of Americans who claim they are Buddhists are Asian Americans. And not White Caucasians. Hence, this has led to what Chenxing calls the dichotomy of Two Buddhisms in her book: “White American Buddhists” are those who practice meditation, are tertiary educated, and have a modern and rational perspective of the religion, while “Asian American Buddhists” are those who are less educated, primarily engaged in chanting, ceremony and rituals, and do not meditate. So the perception, or rather misconception, is that the real Buddhists are the White Americans! Chenxing Han’s book, Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists challenges this incorrect perception of American Buddhism. The result of her interviews with 89 young Asian American Buddhists reveal that they do not fall into either of the Two Buddhisms typology – they are young, educated, and practice meditation, but are not White or Caucasian. The author divides her 89 interviewees into four main

categories: Trailblazers, Bridge Builders, Integrators, and Refuge Makers.

The Trailblazers are mainly the Japanese who have been practicing Jōdō Shinshū Buddhism in the United States for over four generations. Likewise, included in this category are the Chinese, many of whom are Buddhists, who came to the US during the Gold Rush in California during the 19th century and stayed on as American citizens. Their families were the first people who brought Buddhism to America.

Among the 89 interviewees, 36 of them are secondgeneration Asian Americans where English is their main language of communication. They are familiar with the Buddhism practiced by their parents, and have been exposed to Buddhism written by Western Buddhists, and of Buddhist lineages different from that practiced by their families. Chenxing calls them the Bridge-Builders.

The Integrators, a third category mentioned in this book, comprises those like Chenxing herself. Many of them are second or third generation Asian Americans whose parents are not Buddhists or may even be atheists (as the author describes her parents). Some (13 of them interviewed by Chenxing) are of mixed heritage. A notable Integrator is Aaron Lee a.k.a. arunlikhati, and known throughout the book as the “Angry Asian Buddhist”, and also the main inspiration to the author for this book. Many of the Integrators discovered Buddhism on their own but do not necessarily consider themselves converts as many do not feel the need to renounce the tradition in which they were raised and their affiliation with Buddhism was not a sudden

BOOK REVIEW | EASTERN HORIZON

transition. They have adopted Buddhist practices or identified themselves as Buddhists for some time. These young Asian American Buddhists do not easily fit into the two Buddhisms’ typology. What these young Asian American Buddhists have in common is neither ethnicity nor a specific Buddhist lineage. Their practices cannot be neatly filed into the meditation vs. ritualistic/ devotional practices typology, and their understanding of Buddhism varies from each other’s (and from their parents’). They are by no means “a unified, harmonious bloc”. In fact, they are incredibly diverse, as appendix five on ethnicity shows. Chenxing’s interviewees reveal the inadequacy of the two Buddhisms’ typology. For instance, Asian Buddhists are generally classified as “cultural Buddhists”. As the author explains on page 247, “the young Asian Americans are not so much cultural Buddhists as they are culturally engaged Buddhists. They understand that the many manifestations of culture - race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, among others - are not a grime to be wiped off or a dross to be transcended, but phenomena that we must thoroughly explore and fully engage with if we are to realize a truly inclusive American Buddhism.” So whether they are “trailblazers,” “bridge-builders,” or “integrators,” the young Asian American Buddhists interviewed do not fit into either side of the binary. In the final section regarding Refuge Makers, Chenxing shows that the two Buddhisms’ dichotomy (or any dichotomy) fails to capture the reality of the huge

diversity within American Buddhism and American Buddhists. On page 125, Shubha, one of Chenxing’s interviewees, talks about feeling out of place during a meditation retreat where most of the participants were white. She was one of three participants who were not white in the retreat. But she also realizes that Buddhism should be available to all people regardless of racial background. She gives a beautiful simile: It’s easy to feel out of place when you’re one grape in a bowl of apples, but a grape in a bowl of mixed fruits feels welcoming! The title of this book comes from Aaron Lee’s letter of December 17, 2016 where he wrote, “Be the refuge you wish to see in this world (mentioned on page 204) and build American Buddhist community together. Much of Chenxing’s book is a tribute to Aaron Lee, who died of lymphoma in 2017 but remains an inspiration to many of the young Asian American Buddhists in the book, including the author herself.

As Chenxing is not just a young Buddhist scholar, but also a practitioner, her book provides an overview of the importance of seeing all sentient beings as experiencing dukkha and so we should care for them irrespective of whether they are white or yellow or brown. As a practitioner our role is to study the teachings, practice it, and share the wisdom of the Buddha’s teachings with whomever is ready to accept the Dharma medicine that will relieve them of their suffering. Buddhism in America, or anywhere, should not be seen along racial lines. EH

EASTERN HORIZON | BOOK REVIEW

Book Review By Benny Liow Woon Khin

Vanessa R Sasson, Yasodhara and the Buddha. Bloomsbury: London, 2021. pp 294. £15.29 www.bloomsbury.com

This is a novel by Vanessa Sasson about Siddhattha and Yasodhara. Vanessa Sasson highlights the story of Siddhattha Gotama from the perspective of Yasodhara, who became his wife and bore him a child. Buddhist sources, including the Jatakas, mention that both Siddhattha and Yasodhara were born on the same day and same time in their final rebirth as humans. Siddhattha who was heir to the Sakya kingdom, later became the Buddha; and Yasodhara was the beautiful girl who became his loving wife, and later renounced to become a nun. Theirs is a love story which has been replayed over many lifetimes.

In Sasson’s novel, Yasodhara is portrayed as someone who is independent, strong-willed, and resilient. In chapter 3, Sasson tells the story of how Yasodhara questions why she is not allowed to eat the fried bread before the king officially begins the evening meal while the same restrictions are not placed on the boys who are already busy eating some of it. Her mother explains that Siddhattha can eat the bread before the official dinner starts because he is the prince; and Devadatta because he is a boy, even though he is not the heir to the throne! Sensing that Yasodhara is not too pleased with the explanation, her mother advises Yasodhara to be patient.

Yasodhara’s strong character and pride is also mentioned in chapter 7, entitled Choosing. In the story mentioned in the Mahāvastu, an early Buddhist text, Prince Siddhattha has reached the age of 16 and his father and the ministers are all encouraging him to choose a bride so that he can have an heir of his own. This is because the King and his ministers are well aware that Siddhattha is not particularly keen on affairs of the state, not forgetting the prediction that he could either be a universal monarch or a great spiritual leader. Hence, there is an urgency for Siddhattha to be married to anchor him to the seat he will take as heir apparent. To this end, the ministers arrange a ceremony where Siddhattha will meet the maidens of high birth in the

Sakya kingdom for him to choose his bride.

Going against the tradition of the time, Siddhattha decrees that he will present gifts to the maidens during the ceremony instead of receiving gifts from them. When Yasodhara’s parents hear about this ceremony, they are keen for Yasodhara to meet Siddhattha. But Yasodhara is not as enthusiastic as her parents and is reluctant to attend the ceremony because she finds it humiliating to present herself to Siddhattha.

It would seem that Yasodhara is too modern for her age! Eventually, she relents. When the day of the ceremony arrives, Siddhattha presents each maiden with a gift. Then his gaze falls on Yasodhara and he is smitten. He presents her with the necklace that he is wearing. Yasodhara responds rather audaciously, “is that all I’m worth?”? Siddhattha laughs and gives her his ring too. And from there love blossoms and soon Siddhattha and Yasodhara are married. In the novel, Sasson also takes us through Yasodhara’s journey of her joys and sorrows, and expectations and frustrations. In a way, the novel can be regarded as a fairy-tale wedding for Yasodhara who not only marries the heir to the throne but also bears him a male child. But she is also not spared the sadness that ensues when Siddhattha stealthily leaves her just as their son Rahula was born.

While Yasodhara is the main focus of this novel, Sasson also depicts the life of Siddhattha. Though very much seen through the eyes of Yasodhara, Sasson conveys the slow transformation of Prince Siddhattha from a sheltered prince to a deeply sensitive young man. On the way, we also learn about how the gods in the heavens

BOOK REVIEW | EASTERN HORIZON

watch over the future Buddha, how the King and his ministers try to keep the suffering of the world from Siddhattha without much success as he eventually witnesses the Four Sights, and finally how Siddhattha renounces the throne, his wife, and newly-born son to seek enlightenment.

When the great renunciation of Prince Siddhatta takes place, he leaves the palace in the middle of the night without informing Yasodhara. She is obviously devastated the next morning by his departure. But Sasson highlights in the novel that Yasodhara is not the only person who is overcome with great sadness. Based on the sources provided, many others are also heartbroken by his departure. His stepmother Gotami cries so much that, according to one Sanskrit text, scales covered her eyes from all her tears. The horse Kanthaka that Siddhattha rides on the night of his renunciation dies of a broken heart after the prince dismounts and says he will walk the rest of his journey. Channa, the chariot-driver, is utterly miserable when he is forced to return to the palace without his master. Everyone is upset by the future Buddha’s Great Renunciation.

And in Chapter 22, quoting a Newari text, Sasson relates how, when the King’s ministers bring back news that Siddhattha is living in the forest alone as an ascetic (samaṇa) and has refused to return to the kingdom, this becomes the turning point for Yasodhara. She then decides that the time has come for her to live out her life as an ascetic, discarding her royal garments and ornaments for white clothes just like her renunciate ex-husband. However, Sasson does wonder whether Yasodhara knew all along that Siddhattha would eventually renounce his kingdom and even his family in his search for enlightenment. Sasson surmises that Yasodhara is not shocked by Siddhattha’s departure because they had been together for 13 years, from the age of 16 when they got married till the age of 29 when he renounced. Surely she understands him better than anyone else and his inner quest for an answer to man’s suffering in this world.

Siddhattha would have shared with Yasodhara the Four Sights and even asked her what she thought about them. So Yasodhara must have known that it would be

just a matter of time before her prince would embark on his great spiritual quest. However, when Siddhattha eventually leaves her on the night their only son is born, it would not be unusual for Yasodhara to feel the pangs of a broken heart, knowing the separation is final. In Chapter 18, Yasodhara’s pain when Siddhattha leaves home is mentioned in several scriptural sources.

Sasson’s story also includes a biography of the members of Siddhattha’s family. In Chapter 3, Sasson describes both Ananda and Devadatta, two key protagonists in the life of the Buddha. While Ananda becomes the Buddha’s main attendant and the key spokesman for all his teachings in the scriptures after his final passing away, Devadatta is the Buddha’s main antagonist who tries to cause a schism in the monastic community. In Chapter 4, Sasson mentions Siddhattha’s step-brother, Nanda. In the story Nanada is described as a vain monk who likes to wear ironed robes, paints his eyes, and uses a fanciful begging bowl. But he is enlightened after listening to the Buddha’s skillful teachings. In conclusion, I find this an excellent novel because of the way Yasodhara is depicted, and there is much that modern women today can learn from her. As such, I would like to quote what Sasson said in an interview I had with her (and published in this issue of Eastern Horizon) about Yasodhara being a role model for women today:

“What I admire most about Yasodhara is her humanity. The way I see her, she lives the full spectrum of human emotions. She is engaged in her experiences, reflects on them and reacts to them, loving her husband and her son and adapting to her environment with all of herself. Yasodhara is no wallflower. She is not silent and demure. Indeed, according to some versions of their story together, she is the one who chose Siddhattha. She pulls him into their relationship and gives him an experience of worldly life – precisely the experience he needed before he could let it all go. And after he leaves her, she cries with all of her heart. She experiences life in all of its fullness and complexity. And tragedy. And then, when the time is right, she finds a way to free herself too. She represents the full spectrum of the human experience and I love her for that. She does not hide from any part of her potential. She lives it all.” EH

EASTERN HORIZON | DHARMA THOUGHTS

Dharma Thoughts Vijaya Samarawickrama is an accomplished Dharma educator, teacher, and author. He retired after 60 years of teaching in schools, colleges and universities. However, he continues to give Dharma talks throughout the country, participates in inter-faith dialogues, speaks at various international seminars, and writes for Buddhist books and journals.

The Practice of Dana By Vijaya Samarawickrama

“Of a Truth, Misers do not go to heaven Fools do not praise liberality The wise man however rejoices in giving And thereby becomes happy hereafter” (Dhammapada 177)

Perhaps the best known of all Buddhist practices is the devotional act of giving dana which can be translated as liberality, generosity or charity. Very early on in the history of Buddhism, the practice of giving generously, especially to the Sangha, (the community of monks and nuns) and to the poor became associated with the teaching on cause and effect, or Karma. Pious devotees came to believe that if they gave generously of their possessions they could ensure a prosperous life for themselves and their departed ones in the next rebirth. Even today followers from each of the three divisions of Buddhism practice dana at every opportunity. In Malaysia we can see how generously Buddhists give in cash and kind to help the poor and needy all over the world. They not only support Buddhist causes but are equally generous when it comes to giving donations for projects organized by the leaders of non-Buddhist groups as well.

All this is very praiseworthy and it makes us proud to call themselves Buddhists. However, there is much more to dana than just ensuring a more comfortable existence in the next life. It is certainly a very important aspect

of Buddhist practice because it is the most basic of the 10 Paramis or perfections which the future Buddha practiced as a Bodhisattva. Stories of his previous lives relate how the Bodhisattva gave freely of everything that he possessed – his wealth, his eyes, his time, his family and even his life when the occasion demanded it. However, the reason he practiced dana was far more noble and spiritually praiseworthy than for mere material rewards. His ultimate goal was the Supreme Perfection of Buddhahood. He practiced dana in order to realise the Emptiness of such concepts as “I” and “my”.

“Sons have I, wealth have I” Thus is the fool assured But when Self is not one’s own Wherefore sons, wherefore wealth? (Dhammapada 62)

The true aim of dana is to end self-ishness and craving by realizing that there is no real personality to own anything as much as there is nothing to be owned. In our ignorance of this fact we are consumed by greed and craving which is the cause of all our suffering.

When we are freed from the belief in the false existence of an “I”, we are freed from suffering. Dana is the first step to step to help us get rid of this delusion regarding our true nature.

Dharma Thoughts

When we give, we perform what is called Karma, literally an action which produces a result, which can be good or bad. There are two types of good kamma. The first is called puñña kamma where we give in expectation of some kind of reward (either here or in heaven) and this type of giving is based on our belief that there is an “I” which does the action. The second, higher type of giving results in kusala kamma whereby we perform the action of giving without expecting a reward, but rather in order to help us gain the wisdom and insight to realise that there is no giver or receiver involved in the action. This insight leads to Nibbāna, ultimate bliss.

Many of us seem to think that dāna simply means giving food to monks either at home or in the temple to benefit our dead relatives. This type of dāna belongs to a category called Amisa dāna because it involves the giving of material things. When given to monks and nuns, it is praiseworthy because with it we give four benefits, namely ayu, vanna, sukham, balan – long life, good physical appearance, happiness and strength. Another type of dana is called Abhaya dāna – the giving of fearlessness. Here we practice compassion and give whatever we can to reduce the fear which comes from loneliness, ignorance, want and hopelessness. We remove fear by visiting the sick in hospitals, the old and destitute and by befriending social outcastes like AIDS victims and so on. The last and highest type of dāna is what we call Dhamma dāna – the sharing of the Truth. Here Truth refers to the Teaching of the Buddha which helps one to understand the nature of human existence and how to eradicate suffering not only for oneself but for all creatures which share this planet with us. Basically it means making the effort and sacrificing the time and energy to study the Teachings and helping to spread it to others. The aim is not to seek converts, but to help ease human suffering particularly at the mental level. A unique aspect of the Buddha’s Teachings on dāna is that one is encouraged to freely share the benefits

accrued by doing good deeds with others. When we do something which is beneficial to ourselves and to others we gain a positive state which is termed ‘merit’ which increases our store of good kamma. The Buddha teaches us that this merit can be shared with powerful beings called devas who will in turn protect us from harm. There is another form of merit sharing which we call the ‘transference of merit’. In Buddhist cosmology, besides devas who inhabit the higher realms (the heavens) there are other classes of beings not normally visible to us. Of these there is a group of unhappy beings who may have been connected with us as relatives or friends in the past. These beings did not accumulate enough good or bad merits when they were alive so they are neither enjoying themselves as devas nor suffering in the worst hells. When we have done some good dāna in any of the ways mentioned earlier we gain merit which we can TRANSFER to them. We do this by mentally recalling them and wishing that they share the merits we have accrued. When they realise that they have been thus remembered they experience some happiness which helps to relieve their misery. This is one reason we perform dāna in memory of departed relatives and friends. Now, of course we can never know for sure where our departed ones are reborn, so what happens if we transfer merits and they are not in position to receive it? Is it a wasted effort? We do not lose anything because in sharing we have already practiced more dāna and this is accumulated by us as good kamma. Giving increases our store of good karma. Finally, dāna must not be simply thought of as Charity, which is giving to the poor. When we practice dana we must be sure that we do not in any way feel superior to the receiver of what we give. In a sense we should be grateful for the opportunity to give, but it is even better if we are so spiritually advanced that we are not aware of the presence of a giver, a recipient or even an object that changes hands. It is at that level that we gain complete equanimity, or peace of mind which is the ultimate aim of all Buddhist practice. EH

YBAM e-Wesak Activity Series 08 May 2021 – 07 Jun 2021

Zoom Meeting

Venerable Dr Dhammapala speaks on the observance of Five & Eight Precepts and the practice of the Bodhisattva Ideal in Theravada Buddhism.

Reteng Rinpoche speaks on ‘The Dharma Wheel of The Four Noble Truths’ and ‘The Three Scopes of the Stages on the Path to Awakening’.

Tan Ajahn Kalyano gives a Dharma talk on ‘The Buddha’s Path to Awakening’.

On Wesak Eve, seven Buddhist organizations, including YBAM, jointly organize an online blessing event. Over 6,000 participants watched this blessing event through Zoom and Facebook of YBAM and Malaysian Buddhist Association.

Liu Zhi Long tells a story as part of the ‘Buddhist Storytelling Marathon 2.0’.

YBAM sets up a e-platform on its website for the public to make on-line light offerings and to bathe the Buddha at home as part of the Wesak celebrations. Up till 7 June 2021, the lamp was lighted by a total of 6,597 devotees, while 12,033 devotees participated in e-bathing the Buddha.

Young Buddhist Association of Malaysia www.ybam.org.my

Y B A M

Unites more than 270 Buddhist organisations representing both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions throughout Malaysia Provides guidance to students to establish Buddhist societies in schools, colleges and universities Conducts regular training courses on Buddhist teachings, missionary techniques and leadership building Arranges lectures on Buddhism by both local and visiting foreign Buddhist scholars and teachers Assists in conducting the annual Malaysian Buddhist Examination

Organises various welfare, cultural and education activities for the benefit of the Buddhist community at local, state and national levels Publishes Eastern Horizon, Buddhist Digest, Berita YBAM and other Buddhist books and pamphlets in English, Chinese and Bahasa Malaysia Makes representation to the authorities on matters related to the Buddhist Community

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