In the first half of the 20th Century Japan waged wars in which it committed atrocities rivaling those of the Nazis during World War II. Brian Victoria’s book “Zen At War” was published in 1998, detailing how Japanese Buddhist monks and their religious organizations actively encouraged and participated in Japan’s expansionist wars. They donated money and materials, preached a doctrine of “Imperial Way Buddhism,” and even marched and fought alongside the military.
“Zen and War” features Shodo Harada Roshi and other contemporary Zen Buddhist teachers speaking of their wartime predecessors’ collaboration for the first time on film. The impetus for this film came from Ina Buitendijk, a Dutch woman whose husband suffered severely under Japanese internment in Asia during the war. As a Zen Buddhist practitioner she wrote letters to Zen monastic centers, asking how Buddhist monks could have been involved in warfare. Leading Zen masters wrote back to her sympathetically, acknowledging the suffering at the heart of her question.
I was asked by my friend, Zen teacher Mitra Bishop and Ina Buitendijk to produce a U.S. dvd of the Dutch version from The Buddhist Broadcasting Foundation (BOS). With their permission this video is now available from Clear View Project. It is very well done by BOS, an excellent educational tool for study and discussion of how Buddhism can go astray and how we might prevent that from happening. Proceeds support Clear View’s work in Burma and India.
It can be ordered, along with other books and cds, from Clear View's new e-commerce page. Thanks for your support.
Right now I can’t read too good Don’t send me no more letters, no Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row —from “Desolation Row” by Bob Dylan
It starts with dread. In a distant city, on top of the covers in a two-star hotel, ceiling fan humming and circling slowly, mosquito net shrouding the bed. Or driving alone on the late night interstate, rolling by strip malls and chain stores. Or walking down an everyday street, feeling empty inside. Dread has a physical quality — a dead weight on my chest and shoulders, a gnawing sensation in my stomach. Nausea. A wish to jump out of my skin.
Within these sensation there is loneliness, despair, and the certainty of ceaseless separation. The dread is that my life will be like this from now on, and that it always has been like this and I have been so disconnected that I didn’t even notice. If I am far from home, I fear I might die there, alone. I imagine myself home in bed, watching television, as if that would provide the absent intimacy. I think through the necessary steps that would have me on a homebound flight within hours. I have a plan, and that provides me with the illusion of a way out. The dread can last for three or four days, or months. And even though there is nothing objectively “wrong” with the circumstances of my life — things can actually be going well — I feel as if a curtain had been pulled back on the ugly workings of my life, and it is not worth living another day. It feels like the end of the line, and the line continues.
Millions of us suffer in this way. We yearn for wholeness and accomplishment. I have had plenty of that in my life: two wonderful children, a happy marriage, many old friends, respect in the Buddhist world, writing published, music recorded, and so on. Despite repeated admonitions about “gaining mind,” the suffering of depression simultaneously suggests the dream of self-fulfillment and the impossibility of that dream.
I don’t usually talk about depression. Nor do most people who suffer this way, whether or not they are Buddhists. For Buddhist practitioners all those hours and weeks and years of meditation are supposed to lead to happiness and equanimity. Depression feels like a kind of failure. To admit depression is to suggest that Buddhist practice doesn’t always “work.” Recently someone in my community said: “You’re the last person I’d think of as depressed.” I have become skilled at keeping it hidden.
***
Consider a bright young man in his late twenties, well-educated and physically healthy. His mother died when he was an infant. For most of his life he had not left his family’s house. He had all the advantages of a privileged background — good clothes, delicious food, doting servants. He married a beautiful young woman from a similar background, and became the father of a son. But all of this seemed empty to him. He found no happiness. So he left his comfortable home, his wife and son and friends, without any particular goal beyond relieving himself of the fatalistic gloom that settled over him like a cloud. For six years he tried every meditation technology and trendy diet available. At last he sat down under a tree, determined to wake. There he encountered great sensual temptations. But he gave up, let go, and everything turned out right.
This is the early life of Shakyamuni Buddha. It is an inspiring story, but one can hear it as the description of someone suffering from chronic depression. I am not a prince, there are some parallels with my own life, growing up with privilege in a prosperous suburb. By all accounts, the Buddha’s suffering fell away when he awakened under the bodhi tree. Did he really arrive at a place where he was always happy, never anxious? That is what we are asked to believe, but I wonder?
***
As for me, after nearly thirty years of meditation, I haven’t seen cosmic light shows or transcendental visions of reality. I don’t claim enlightenment. This is not to say I do not feel changed or even free at times. Freedom is momentary. I appreciate it for what it is. I just don’t stay there, and that is okay with me. That’s a loaded word — “stay.” In terms of the law of anicca or impermanence, one does not stay anywhere. But I digress.
What I mean to say is that given my propensity towards depression — biochemical, hereditary, or karmic — the settledness of meditation, the sense of relief in simply sitting down, may be as good as it gets for me. There is a phrase I love from the 13th century Zen Master Dogen: “When Dharma fills your body and mind, you realize that something is missing.” The very incompleteness of our being, actions, aspirations is a manifestation of Buddha-nature itself. Everything is broken. No regrets.
***
Over the years I have tried various ways to “deal with” (that means get rid of) depression. I have done talk therapy and acupuncture. I’ve sampled organic remedies like St. John’s Wort, SAM-e, homeopathy, and Vitamin D. I have been on and off a modest dose of Prozac. Actually Prozac seemed to work for a while. When I began to take it, twenty years ago — on the advice of my therapist — it was as if a dark cloud that had always circled my head just disappeared. It was a great relief. But the relief seemed to be only temporary.
So, I return to what I trust, meditation — and to that other reliable remedy: friendship. Actually, the two are not unrelated. Meditation is not a cure, but if I can sit down in a quiet space and follow my breath, the weight of depression lifts while I am sitting. If sitting is not possible, I take a long walk. Either way I have bridged the internal disconnect; I am, for this time, friendly towards myself.
The power of friendship multiplies when extended beyond oneself. I recall E. M. Forster’s famous epigraph to Howard’s End: “Only connect…” In the darkest moments, when I feel least able to do so, I know this is necessary and true. So I leave my room and seek a friend. In depression, friendship is an alkahest, the alchemist’s universal solvent that brings forth light and energy. It’s the best remedy.
Depression has its own gift: the ability to identify with people in pain. Their suffering is something I understand. In my life as a Zen priest I talk to people all the time. I can’t count the number of people who have told me about depression and the pain of isolation and loneliness. I am moved by their honesty and their predicament. They suffer as I have suffered; I am like them.
***
I was about thirteen when I became aware of depression. Fifty years ago. My parents were in the midst of a difficult divorce. I had just completed my bar mitzvah, a ritual that had been drained of all meaning by five dreadful years of compulsory Hebrew school. Then my mother kept the all the cash from my bar mitzvah gifts to pay for the reception. Times could be hard even in the suburbs.
I was finishing eight grade at a WASPish private day school where I had no friends. For nearly a year I got out of school early every Friday to attend Hebrew school. After the bar mitzvah I didn’t tell the private school, and kept leaving early each week. For some months I didn’t mention this to my mother either. The school bus dropped me in the center of town, by myself. I would go to the movies alone, eat well-done French fries, and walk home. Now it sounds like a teenage adventure, but with each passing week I felt more desolate. I couldn’t stand the private school, I couldn’t go home, and I dreaded being alone. So finally I confessed. In a rare moment of mother-son intimacy (at least rare in my experience), my mother calmly explained that I was depressed, and that this was only natural after all the anxiety of divorce, the buildup and letdown of my bar mitzvah, and new vistas of puberty. She spoke to me gently, conveying a sense that she knew what she was talking about from her own experience. I am sure she did.
Now I had a name for what I was feeling, even though I had no idea what to do about it. It would be another thirteen years before I saw my first psychotherapist, and even then depression was framed as a psychological matter — a symptom of unconscious issues, mostly centering on my parents — rather than a condition as much physical or biochemical as psychological.
All these years later I continue to live with this condition and its close companion — anxiety. One of the Buddha’s unique discoveries is the Wheel of Life, or Dependent Origination. The wheel rolls, from birth through death and on to successive lives. Anxiety is its fuel. But we can also consider rebirth from moment to moment, and do our best to end the ceaseless spinning. Anxiety is linked to the fear (and certainty) of future non-existence, real doubt about my present existence/non-existence, fear of pain, sickness, debility. Such anxiety leads to a kind of self-fulfilling depression. How can I break the chain?
***
I have to live with depression as a condition of my particular being. Current medical research suggests that depression is hardwired in our brains. In evolutionary terms the sleeplessness and hyper-vigilance of depression may have some survival benefit. So maybe depression is a good thing. I might consider myself genetically selected to be a survivor…at least if I lived in the jungle.
But Buddhist practice is not directed toward a particular goal, not even survival. It is simply about being awake. The path of practice leads right through our immediate life circumstances. The pangs of depression, or any pains — physical or mental — are vividly part of that life. I’m not able to avoid unpleasant circumstances, but the question is: can I turn depression, or will I allow it to turn me? Long ago the Buddha showed us how to do this. Each event of his awakened life — including illness, injury, temptation, betrayal, loss — was occasion for him to learn, then to share his understanding. He didn’t try to change or avoid external conditions, and he wasn’t pushed around by circumstances. He lived in community with his friends and he turned towards suffering.
There is a message in depression. Things in life are roiling. Change is afoot. After years of practice I know this is true even in the hard times. If I can bear it and see through it, depression becomes the harbinger of transformation. Things are always in a state of change. Only connect. With that kind of understanding all of life seems to be a fortunate accident. I am alive, so change is always possible, however unlikely it seems… What am I doing here on the planet? Oh, I remember. I’m setting up shop in the saha realm, the world that must be endured, the land of samsara, which literally means wandering on.
The heart of Buddhist practice may be a matter of faith, in a dark night when faith is hard to find. My friends help me through the night. Night and day, depression and joy — there is really one whole, true life. Practice gets me to what is true. That’s where I want to live.
***
POSTSCRIPT
Early in 2013 I flew to India to visit and teach among Dalit Buddhist friends there. Since our children have left home for work and college, my wife Laurie and I were able to travel together for the first time in more than twenty years.
As I wrote above, when traveling I usually have to endure several days of depression at the start of a journey. This seems to be an unavoidable pathway to the present time and place. I have wondered if this phenomenon was simply a matter of loneliness, since I almost always arrive alone. But on this trip I was not alone. Laurie was with me. And the first five days were as hard as ever. I was not lonely, but in some way I was still alone to wrestle with the darkness.
I was grateful to be able to talk things over with Laurie. Far from home, among the teeming streets, she was having trouble of her own adjusting to India, quite unlike mine. The opportunity to talk about my difficulties was valuable perspective, but it did not make them go away. I felt distant from my body and mind, alienated and uncomfortable — what I take to be the meaning of the Buddha’s dukkha. In the morning it was hard to get out of bed. In the day, even the sunlight seemed to hurt. Then after about five days I woke up “normal.” The weight had lifted and I was relieved to find myself home in body and mind.
So it was not really a matter of loneliness. Depression seems to arise from a deeper displacement. This is simply what I have to live with.
— Hozan Alan Senauke
Everything Is Broken: Songs About Things As They Are
is Alan Senauke's brand new CD of "buddhistic songs." The songs here include pieces by Bob Dylan, Bernice Reagon, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, as well as traditional numbers rewritten by Alan and a song or two of his own. You can get your copy here right now by clicking on the Paypal button. In coming days there will be other ways to purchase or download this compelling and unique music.
Don't miss it if you can.
By the way, details about each song are found at Music Notes...below on this site.
You can download the album or individual tracks via CD Baby
— A Statement from the International Network of Engaged Buddhists
The statement below was written and ratified by the International Network of Engaged Buddhist at its annual Advisory and Executive Board meeting this month. We hope that it expresses the concerns of Buddhists around the world who are witness to the communal conflict and violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state. Clearly this conflict must be resolved by the Burmese people’s themselves, but this statement affirms that INEB and Buddhists everywhere care about the well-being of Burma’s emerging democracy and of all its peoples. We send our encouragement and faith in the Buddha’s great way.
— Hozan Alan Senauke, Clear View Project, Berkeley, CA
Since June 2012, violence between communities of Rohingyas and Rakhines in Rakhine State has resulted in hundreds of dead and wounded, thousands of homes and shops razed, and more than 75,000 displaced and impoverished.
The roots of this conflict are hard to untangle. They go back at least decades to the period of British colonial occupation. But current hostility also speaks to a scarcity of land and economic resources that manifests as communal hostility. Undoubtedly there has been violence and provocation on both sides. We commit ourselves to open-minded investigation of the past and present sources of this violence.
Although some Rohingyas have lived in Myanmar for generations, if not for several hundred years, the former military regime’s 1982 law excluded them from among the nation’s many recognized ethnicities, denying the Rohingyas citizenship and basic rights. As they are driven from their homes, neighboring Bangladesh prohibits the entry of them as refugees, and also denies citizenship to Rohingyas presently living within its own borders. It is not surprising that the United Nations views the Rohingyas as “one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.”
We feel for the families of all sides of this conflict, and have compassion for the people of Myanmar who are suffering and trying their best to resolve this issue.
We call for the government of Myanmar, and the leaders of the Buddhist Sangha and other religious leaders to play an active and nonviolent role in resolving the conflict in Rakhine state. Central to this is to grant humanitarian assistance and work towards tolerance and respect for all of Myanmar’s diverse inhabitants. We also call on Buddhist monks across Myanmar to set aside fear and the delusive religious discrimination; to honor the Buddha’s robe and example by being peacemakers for all people. May all beings — Buddhist, Muslim, Eastern, Western — and all peoples of Myanmar recall the Buddha’s vital message:
Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world; by non-hatred only is hatred appeased. This is an unending truth.
— Dhammapada,
Adopted and ratified at the annual INEB Executive and Advisory Board Meeting, November 8-9, 2012 at the Kodo Kyodan Buddhist Fellowship in Yokohama, Japan.
Ashin Eindaka, abbot of Maggin Monastery, Yangon
Change Is Coming...But Slowly
Maggin monastery, in Yangon’s eastern Thingangyun Township, was a refuge for hundreds of dissident Burmese monks during 2007’s “Saffron Revolution.” The Saffron Revolution began with local demonstrations against arbitrary and immediate price increases, which quickly became a national movement for democracy led by many thousands of monks.
On September 26 of 2007 the Burmese junta struck back. The military attacked many monasteries, ransacking Maggin, beating and arresting abbot U Eindaka and the other monks who had come for sanctuary. A refuge as well for local people with AIDS and HIV, these patients were simply driven from the premises, left to fend for themselves in the midst of the violent military crackdown. The monastery was trashed, wood doors and walls shattered, blood-stained robes tossed into corners, the gates padlocked and guarded by the junta’s watchmen. And that is how things remained for more than four years.
On January 13 three hundred political prisoners, including nearly forty incarcerated and disrobed monks, were released from prisons around Burma. The following day a group of monks, struck the locks from Maggin’s doors and moved in.
The prisoner release is one aspect of change taking place in Burma/Myanmar in recent months. How reliable or thoroughgoing a change we are seeing is still uncertain. The 2008 Constitutional referendum — conducted just days after Cyclone Nargis left 150,000 dead in southern Burma — reserves 25% of the assembly seats to the military, virtually guaranteeing their control of the political process. The 2010 election gave 129 of 168 elected seats to the junta’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party. Another 56 seats, as mandated, went to the military, leaving only 34 seats to be divided among a dozen other regional and ethnic parties. On the military front, there is active combat in Kachin state, Shan state, and elsewhere, with more than 60,000 Internally Displaced People (IDP) living with war and deprivation in these areas
Nonetheless, some prominent reformers are being released from prison and limited political reforms are going forward. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy is presently campaigning for seats in an April 1 by-election. Western nations, looking for signs of progress, are starting to consider diplomatic relations and a softening of long-standing economic sanctions against the regime. The real question is how to view the process of change inside Burma. And how to urge this process along.
I met with three monks at Maggin (abbot U Eindaka, senior monk U Issariya, and Saffron Revolution leader Ashin Gambira) and Ashin Sandar Thiri at another monastery in mid-February. a week earlier Gambira had been arrested and taken for questioning by authorities investigating allegations of “squatting” at Maggin without registering with the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and breaking into two other monasteries in nearby in Bahan Township.
The same day we met, February 17, U Gambira dropped out of sight. As far as I know, he has not been seen since. The following day the state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar wrote that: “The authorities concerned are taking legal steps to bring U Gambira to trial.” The New Light explained that Gambira, “…under complete political spell, has repeatedly broken Buddhist monks’ code of conduct and laws that every citizen need to abide by, in consideration of religion, Sasana (i.e. Buddhist teachings) and purity of Sasana.” Maggin’s abbot, Ashin Eindaka, said, “I do not know where he is now. But I have seen today’s newspapers reports. When he left my monastery, it was still as a monk.”
***
A friend was kind enough to set up a meeting with the four recently-released monks. At Maggin monastery three of the monks were sitting with a handful of younger monastics and lay friends on the temple’s open veranda. The monastery comprises two buildings — an older wood frame temple dating back a hundred years, and a blue two-storey structure of cast concrete that already looks old beyond its years. As we talked workmen cleared rubble and ran blue plastic piping for water and electricity.
We took some time to get acquainted, to speak of mutual friends, and to create an atmosphere of safety given that I was a westerner and a new face. When I had been in Burma last November, with a lessening of restrictions and the first release of political prisoners, there was in the cities a kind of dizzying euphoria about the possibility of change. And an understandable attitude of wait and see. Three or four months later I felt that people in all sectors of an expanding civil society were getting down to hard and particular work, settling in for the long haul. Speaking with these monks, we quickly sketched out their collective sense of present circumstances in Burma.
***
Speaking with the Monks
For the sake of confidentiality, comments below are not ascribed to individual monks.
Alan Senauke: What do you think about what’s going on in Myanmar now? Are there changes happening? Do you believe that they are real?
Monks: Laughter No, no real change. The government is talking about changes, but the changes are very small. There is so much left to do. There are still political prisoners. Many are left inside — forty-three monks in Mandalay, Insein, and other prisons. We know of others on the border who have gone to the U.N. refugee camps.
AS: Why do you think the government is releasing some prisoners?
Monks: They are afraid of the political changes. That’s why they had to release some of us. This government wants to make friends with Western countries and have the economic sanctions removed.
AS: So, does that give the monks and civil society a little power?
Monks: Outside countries may feel that this government is very polite. The new government and the old government are just taking off their uniforms and putting on civilian clothes. After a few years, they may change.
AS: What do you think would help the process of change?
Monks: As you have said, we need peace in all of Burma. No war, no deaths. That would be the path to real democracy.
AS: What about the by-elections that are happening now? Are they important?
Monks: I don’t think it very important, because the military has already taken a big piece of the assemblies for themselves. They only allow small things. They are holding onto the economy and the army. Last time there was cheating on the election results. But maybe this time there will not be cheating. Everybody is watching.
AS: Do you think a little choice and democracy is better than no choice?
Monks: Right now have only a small influence…We will all have to do politics. Longing for change is not enough.
AS: What do you mean by “do politics,” what are the politics?
Monks: As monks, we don’t work for power, like other political parties. We are standing in front of the people, protecting the people.
***
Our time was limited, and this was my last day in the country. The conversation was just beginning, but simply to meet and talk is a radical act. As I was paying my respects to the monks, preparing to leave, one said quietly: “In the last twenty years we didn’t have such opportunities. We couldn’t speak with foreigners.” The opportunity for dialogue — all kinds of dialogue — is an encouraging sign. But it is not enough. Real change in Burma, or anywhere is a matter of access to resources, mutual accountability, and the power for people to determine the course of their own lives. When war has ended in Burma, when all the prisoners are free, when there are reasonable laws that apply to everyone — then we can start to celebrate. Not yet.
Donations for the rebuilding of Maggin Monastery are much needed. If you would like to make a donation please go to www.clearviewproject.org or send a tax-deductable check to Clear View Project, 1933 Russell Street, Berkeley, CA 94703. I will make sure your gift gets to the right people. If you have questions, write me at
Ashin Gambira at Maggin
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.
________________________________________
Dr. Ambedkar, Mumbai
The Clear View Project provides Buddhist-based resources for relief and social change, promotes dialogue on issues of socially engaged Buddhism, and supports communities in need, internationally and within the United States.
Our vision reflects the Buddha's view of dependent origination, that life on this planet is contingent on the collective action and understanding of each of us. The Buddha's moral teachings can be expressed in a single great vow: not to live ones life at the expense of other life.
In line with what the Buddha called the “four requisites” — food, shelter, clothing, and medicine — we support the dispossessed — children, the poor, prisoners, and other oppressed peoples — in their quest for survival with dignity.
We will feed those who are hungry, heal those who are ill, and provide spiritual tools of transformation for self and society.
Clear View's work comes out of founder Hozan
Alan Senauke's long experience in the world of socially engaged
Buddhism in Asia and the U.S. At home and abroad there are numerous
communities that cry out for spiritual tools of transformation.
Alan's
work with teachers and leaders from every spiritual tradition takes the
form of a vast web of resources for liberation. With a clear view, a
view that is tested and shared widely, we can follow the path of
freedom and keep our eyes on the prize.
Biographical Sketch
Hozan Alan Senauke is vice-abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, where he lives with his family. Alan is founder of the Clear View Project, developing Buddhist-based resources for relief and social change. He is Senior Advisor to Buddhist Peace Fellowship. In another realm, Alan has been a student and performer of American traditional music for forty-six years.(See the "Alan's Music" link on this site.)
Clear View Project is affiliated with and fiscally sponsored by Buddhist Peace Fellowship, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. Your donations to Clear View Project are tax deductible to the full extent of the law.
