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Think Sangha in
India, March 2011
By Hozan Alan Senauke
As long as I can remember I have yearned for community. Most
living beings, human or otherwise, have the same yearning. The Buddha recognized this, creating
the fourfold sangha as a ground for liberation. Over the last twenty or
twenty-five years I have been living in the Berkeley Zen Center community, and
finding home, work, and close friendship at International Network of Engaged
Buddhists and Buddhist Peace Fellowship.
After the 2009 Chiang Mai INEB meeting some old friends
spent two days at Ouyporn Khuankaew’s Mae Rim center, talking informally about
the nature of sustainable community and socially engaged Buddhism. We began to plan an INEB “Think Sangha”
study tour of India, where we might investigate the particularities of Indian
Buddhist communities, taking time, as well, to reflect on our inner experience
and our own lives in community.
Think Sangha evolved in the mid-90s as a Buddhist social
analysis group emerging from INEB. Over the years we have met physically a
number of times in Thailand, Japan, and Hawaii, maintained friendships and
community with visits and internet banter, and published a number of
periodicals and two books. Membership is informal and diverse, with women and
men from across Asia and the West.
The challenge was to look at sustainable Buddhist community,
externally and internally. That is: community we are involved in, and diverse
communities in India including Dalit Buddhists, other expressions of a new
Buddhist “revival” in the land of Buddha’s birth, and Tibetan communities in
exile. We hoped, also, to create a kind of community among ourselves as we
worked and traveled together, embodying harmonious qualities of sangha that
live at the heart of our vision.
In March we came together for a two week study tour in India
— as we had planned at our Mae Rim meeting — with Somboon Cungprampree (Moo —
INEB’s executive secretary), Jill Jameson, Ven. Kalupahana Piyaratna Thera,
Ouyporn Khuankaew, Anchalee Kurutach, David Loy, PaPa Phyo, Poolchawee
Ruangwichatorn (Nong), Rev. Alan Senauke, Wintomo Tjandra, Ven. Paisan Visalo,
Jon Watts, with Mangesh Dahwale in Nagpur and Prashant Varma at Deer Park —
representing India, Thailand, Australia, Japan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Indonesia,
and the U.S.
***
We met up in Mumbai, a dizzying maximum city of impossible
contrasts: sprawling slums and garish wealth. On our first evening we divided
into two groups, each going to a different Biuddhist slum settlement in the
city. After driving north and a little east in nerve-wracking traffic towards
the edge of the city, we arrived at a streetside vihara in the poor community of Bhandup. The “temple” is a cement box, about 8ft by 10ft, with a
small Buddha and a larger bust of Dr. Ambedkar, the Buddhist liberator of
India’s untouchables. It seemed to be an unlikely place for a gathering, but
within minutes people streamed in.
Ven. Kalupahana and I made offerings in the vihara. The children chanted
passionately and full-voiced. It
brought me to tears. We moved
outside to offer brief dharma words and meet with the larger community. Several
hundred people had gathered, three or four generations in their fine clothes:
women in sari or salwar kameez, men in slacks and dress shirts.
After puja and
talks we went around a corner, down a four-foot wide alleyway into a warren of
houses and intersecting alleys.
Each narrow doorway opened into a family residence. The rooms were no
more than 10ft by 10 or 12ft. Some homes had a second storey as a sleeping
loft. Four to six or seven people might live in this space. The homes were immaculately clean and
supremely organized with mats for sitting, space for cooking on a single gas
burner, neatly stacked metal plates, bowls, cups, and cooking utensils. We were
welcomed from house to house for an hour. People were proud to show off their
children — all avidly pursuing education. The walls were painted bright colors
with Buddhist posters, and each home had an altar with Buddha images and family
photographs.
Many of these families came to Mumbai and Buddhism over the
last 40 years to change their social identity — hence their lives — by escaping
the rigid caste oppression and violence that still marks rural life. Buddhism
means social and spiritual liberation for them. You can see this in the joy and generosity we encountered
despite circumstances of poverty.
Poverty is one thing.
Dignity and self-respect are something else. They do not have to contradict each other.
***
From Mumbai we flew to Nagpur — India’s geographical center
— staying five days at Nagaloka, the Nagarjuna Training Institute on the city’s
outskirts. Students and staff met us at the gate with garlands and showers of
blossoms. Nagaloka is a school for sixty or seventy youth from oppressed
communities around India learning the essential teachings of Buddhism, training
in meditation and puja, studying
social work and the basics of community organizing. The school’s atmosphere is quiet, cool in the
evenings, with a sixty-foot golden striding Buddha as the focal point of the
campus.
The students are young and bright, — averaging 20 or 21,
full of fun, eager to learn and simply to connect with us. Our sessions were punctuated by songs
and play. Nagaloka emphasizes a strong sitting practice with very good
posture. Meditation is usually anapansati/mindfulness of breathing or metta bhavana/cultivating
lovingkindness. The daily liturgy
is chanted in pali — refuges, five
precepts, and several other recitations, sung or recited in strong voices. Men
and women each have separate dharma halls, coming together on special
occasions.
Over four days we led workshops, practiced, and hung out
with the Nagaloka students. On the first day we heard a presentation on the
history and condition of India’s Dalit/untouchables, as well as the development
of Ambedkarite Buddhism since the 50s and the formation of Nagaloka. Then we heard from the students
themselves.
Story after story echoed each other. The students are mostly from rural
areas all over India. Few of them
have had any previous experience of Buddhism, coming from nominally Hindu
families — although local temples back home were off limits to them. Many of the students from Tamil Nadu
and other areas with strong local culture and language came to Nagaloka with no
fluency in Hindi, the school’s operating language. On arrival they had to get up and running in a new language,
new religious practices, new food, and new companions. Those who find their way
to Nagaloka aspire to education and another kind of life, one of service to
society. They are clearly in the flow of personal transformation
On another day each of us from Think Sangha had a chance to
talk about our lives and our respective work. We included Lama Rangdral — a visiting Tibetan teacher from
the West to join the presentations.
As an African-American, he spoke from the heart about the destructive
and still-present realities of racism in the west, and what we can learn from
the groundbreaking work of Dr. Ambedkar on caste and discrimination. That afternoon we organized topical
small groups on gender justice, Buddhist economics, transforming anger, living
an engaged Buddhist life, and social mobilization — as much learning from the
students’ experiences as “teaching” them.
For support and hospitality we thank Mangesh Dahiwale, Dh.
Lokamitra, the Nagaloka staff, and the bright students of Nagaloka. Their generosity is so great and
natural .
***
We flew from Nagpur to Delhi; in the evening we boarded the
overnight Jammu Mail Express At Pathankot, close to the border with Pakistan,
four cars carried us to Deer Park in the small North Indian town of Bir. Bir is in Himachal Pradesh, Kangra
district, about two hours south and east of Dharamsala, right up against the
first towering wall of the Himalayas.
There is a Tibetan colony in Bir, one of the largest in
north India. Monasteries are
visible near and far, brilliantly painted gold or red, adorned with rainbow
ornamentation. In late afternoon,
monks of all ages fill the streets and shops. Tibetan merchants run small groceries, western clothing
stalls, internet cafes, and tea
shops. With its the dramatic landscape and prevailing winds, Bir has become a
famous spot for paragliding. Huge nylon contraptions — hybrid of kite and
parachute — prowl the skies each
afternoon.
Deer Park Institute was founded in the mid 2000s by Dzongsar
Khyentse Rinpoche, the multi-talented teacher, writer, and filmmaker. It is a
self-described center for the study of India’s wisdom traditions. Deer Park’s orientation is inclusive
and eclectic, representing Dzongsar’s wide mind and interests. There are programs on meditation,
photography, writing, textual study, the environment, and engaged Buddhism.
Our INEB friend Prashant Varma is director. He is a student of Dzongsar and a man
of great energy and capacity. At
Deer Park while we were there, Prashant seemed to be everywhere at once as
host, administrator, internet fixer, and travel agent. Prashant is 33, from a well-to-do
Bombay family, married to Jennifer Yo from Taiwan, one of those fortunate
relationships that flowered at an INEB conference.
We stayed at Deer Park for nearly a week, which included
three days of program with fifteen or twenty people from various Indian
Buddhist communities. Our dual
task was to learn about their practice and situation, and to share our
understanding of socially engaged Buddhism, considering its actual and
potential place in modern India.
This all went very well, and strong links were forged, particularly with
young Indians. We strongly
encouraged people to join us at this October’s INEB conference in Bodhgaya.
We also had a chance to visit nearby Tibetan
monasteries. The sprawling
monastery in Chauntra, a few miles from Bir, was completed in 2004, replacing the
older monastery which then became Deer Park. More than 400 monks here study and debate Tibetan Buddhist
philosophy. We went to Dongyu
Gatsal Ling, an inspiring nunnery run by the charismatic Jetsunma Tenzin
Palmo. Originally from Great
Britain, Tenzin spent thirteen years living and practicing alone in a mountain
cave, summer and winter, emerging to become a powerful teacher and a voice for
Himalayan women and nuns.
Leaving
Bir we stopped for lunch and conversation with Lama Karma Dechen at Jangchub Samten Ling, a small
training center for nuns in the Kagyu tradition.
Her monastery is now in its seventh cycle of traditional three-year
retreats. Karma Dechen and I met at a 1999 INEB conference in Sri Lanka. I
clearly recall her physical presence, her joy and blunt speaking. Twelve years later, she is much the
same… and more.
Our group began to dwindle as people left for home. But
seven or eight of us had a last night and day in Dharmasala, a fascinating
place. Narrow streets are lined
with shops selling all manner of Tibetan goods. Monks and nuns are
everywhere. The nearly vertical
town has a makeshift and temporary feeling, appropriate to the Tibetans’ guest
status in India. Western trekkers
and dharma bums are much in evidence.
It was easy to leave Dharmasala; not so easy to say goodbye to our Think
Sangha friends.
***
In the course of investigating Indian Buddhism we found
there are really many Indian Buddhisms: various Dalit/Ambedkarite Buddhists
(which includes our TBMSG friends in Maharastra), exiled Tibetans in the north
and south, other Himalayan groups practicing in the Tibetan tradition,
Goenka-based vipassana practitioners, the Young Buddhist Society in Uttar
Pradesh, the Mahabodhi Society, middle class Buddhists in Mumbai, Delhi, and
Chennai, and on and on. Such
diversity, which is the nature of Indian society, is invigorating. But the challenge is that the Buddhist
revival in the land of Buddha’s birth is factionalized and often mutually
suspicious. Of course factionalism
is not endemic to India. Still, given the marginal status of Indian Buddhists
here, greater cooperation would serve people better.
Difference here is not so much in dharma practice itself but
in beliefs and social factors: caste, gender, culture, poverty and wealth
(hence access to resources), lay/monastic, etc. In each place, one or more of these factors is
foremost. Different groups have
opinions and judgments about each other. This is not what the Buddha had in mind. His early sangha was open and egalitarian. But there is an unfortunate human
proclivity to form circles and institutions which inevitably have an inside and
an outside. India’s ancient profusion of cultures and its jarring disparities
of rich and poor are hard to bridge.
I know that what we saw are still first impressions. I don’t
expect to get my mind around “India” in this lifetime. It feels like India is wrapping itself
around my mind. So the Think Sangha
did not come to conclusions. We
do, however, wish to be allies to our Indian friends. To listen to them, advocate for them, find practice
resources they can make use of, and skillfully offer what we understand from
our own lives and practice.
But there was more to this journey than just talk. Most days we had time to take walks,
drink milk tea, hang out, laugh, and simply be friends — letting new
friendships take roots and old ones ripen. We also mourned for the people of Japan, as earthquake and
tsunami led to a nuclear crisis that remains unresolved. All of us were deeply affected by the
crisis.
This is the basis of Think Sangha — kalyanamitta. Real
friendship grounded in shared dharma, unhindered by nationality, Buddhist
tradition, or chronological age.
Although I am not always at ease with circumstances or with myself,
these two weeks of travel together have been remarkably harmonious. No visible squabbles among our group,
even in the turmoil of Old Delhi station, or the dry dust of a four-hour drive
on winding mountain roads.
Practice is revealed in how each of us takes responsibility for our own
irritability and pain. If there is
a way one of us can help, help is offered. If someone needs to step back for space and recollection, we
all understand that. Each of us
has moments like this.
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