Wisdom Humanities Master Hua’s Vision for Education in the Buddhist Tradition Rev. Heng Sure Abstract: Education in the Buddhist tradition must find a middle ground between the disengaged academic programs of Buddhist studies departments and the traditional Buddhist training academies for monastics. The author, a senior disciple of the late Master Hsüan Hua, outlines some of the goals set out by his teacher concerning Buddhist education in the modern world. This paper was prepared for the third convocation of the World Buddhist Conference, held in Hong Kong in April 2012.
I
Introduction
recently visited Buddhist institutions of higher education in Asia and I thought to share my personal interpretation of the late Venerable Master Hsüan Hua’s vision for “Education in the Buddhist Tradition.” The name is chosen carefully because in the West at present there are multiple Buddhist traditions––Mahayana, Theravada, Vajrayana, and others—each attempting to set down roots and adapt to the contemporary Western cultural environment. No single school or tradition can authentically speak for all of Buddhist education. When Master Hua formulated “Education in the Buddhist Tradition,” however, he spoke from a more inclusive perspective. It allows for freedom to reflect current innovations in education and changing cultural trends while remaining rooted in the foundations of the Dharma. I will point out what makes Master Hua’s vision for education in the Buddhist tradition, in general, and Dharma Realm Buddhist University’s (DRBU) implementation of that vision, in particular, different and significant in the world at this time. We have a specific example of Master Hua’s vision for Buddhist Education because in 1976, when the Master Hua founded Dharma Realm Buddhist University, it was his intent that the new university would
30
Religion East & West
Wisdom Humanities
draw upon the timeless Buddhist tradition to meet the challenges of the modern world. Master Hua made clear that the key to this goal was not to engage in sectarian rivalries, not to recruit and train more Buddhists, but rather to educate students in the principles of goodness and virtue, regardless of their religion. He believed that the highest goal of education must be the liberation of human potential through the cultivation of virtue, contemplation, and insight. I use the term wisdom humanities to identify some of the unique elements of Master Hua’s perspective on education for the twenty-first century, particularly in the West. Goals of Education in the Buddhist Tradition (Wisdom Humanities) The first goal of education in the Buddhist tradition is to cultivate better people, because developing better people has the immediate result of creating a better world and the long-term result of these good people reducing the world’s ignorance, disasters, and warfare. The goal of wisdom humanities is not to make more Buddhists per se but rather to educate good people. If education can make good and virtuous people then by so doing it will create the potential for more Buddhists to emerge and eventually, more Buddhas. Another way to characterize these goals is to through the principle of the Bodhi Resolve (菩提心) the summum bonum of the Bodhisattva Path, applied to the classroom. The Bodhi Resolve traditionally has been defined in two parts: “One’s ultimate end is to realize Buddhahood, but the immediate means to that goal is to end the suffering of sentient beings” (上成佛道，下化眾生). The highest aspiration of an education is to create wise individuals whose humane and altruistic actions bring benefit and well-being to their society and to the world. That noble goal begins in the classroom. When one sees propagating the Buddha’s Dharma as an educational ministry, then the Bodhi Resolve is the initial expression of the Bodhisattva Path, and education becomes a primary upaya, or skillful means, for accomplishing wisdom humanities’ vision of education. Another characterization of this vision echoes Confucius’ fundamental educational formula of “embodying virtue” (the Great Learning 大學, one of Confucianism's key texts). The Great Learning begins, “The path to the great learning consists of embodying virtue, staying close to the people, and acting without acting.” That is to say, by educating young people, one plants the seeds for future righteous, unselfish human beings and good citizens for the world. One sets out in the classroom the foundation Issue 11, October 2012
31
Rev. Heng Sure
for the perfection of the students’ humanity. One also nurtures their spiritual development, the ultimate expression of which is the Buddha’s wisdom and compassion. By activating student’s inherent wisdom, one gives the child the means for choosing a life of spiritual and material satisfaction. Young people educated in this way have the potential to make a better world. Why Emphasize Education As the Primary Means to Teach Buddhism in the West? Why did Master Hsüan Hua emphasize education as the way to propagate the Dharma in the West? In particular Master Hua believed that education would be the most effective way to bring the Buddhist teachings to a religiously dynamic society like the United States, with its crowded field of sectarian denominations. Buddhist views are new in the West, a land noted for its clear sectarian demarcations between denominations and sects inside those denominations. If one propagates yet another religion in America, one risks being labeled a competing faith; lines will be drawn and doors and minds will be closed. To enter the culture without conflict, Buddhism must not be presented at the outset as yet another competing school of thought. If instead one presents the Dharma as a system of humanities, of wisdom’s inquiry, of universal principles touching on the sciences, the arts, psychology, and ethics, then people will have a better chance to judge the teachings on their own merits. For this reason Master Hua instructed Buddhist educators not to use the name Buddhism, but instead to call it “the teachings of wisdom,” “the teachings of the mind,” “the teaching of sentient beings,” or “the deepest psychological investigation.” Schools that teach wisdom humanities are neutral and unthreatening; young people can enter and learn lessons of basic humanity in the traditional academic context; after they hear the various principles, they can make up their own minds about religious faith. If Buddhists were instead to set up a temple with a distinctly Asian flavor and start teaching traditional monastic forms and ceremonies, the only people who will draw near would be Chinese and Vietnamese disciples, ethnic Buddhists who hear the sounds familiar to monasteries in Asia. Their demographic will shrink numerically with each generation, and in this way, the Buddhist community in the West will not grow but will serve instead only the diminishing population of Chinese-speaking Buddhists in America.
32
Religion East & West
Wisdom Humanities
Comparing Wisdom Humanities with Existing Models of Buddhist Education Now we will look at what the system of wisdom humanities is not and note that Master Hua’s vision included a critique of education for profit and utilitarian training. He strongly supported the traditional maxim that “the exemplary person’s education should not be one-sided or utilitarian” (君子不器). He reminded us that instead of learning for the purpose of discerning principles and truth (明理), the purpose of education has been confused and diminished by training for fame and profit (名利). Beyond the Buddhist Studies Academy If we visualize a spectrum of Buddhist-inspired education covering an area from traditional monastic models of academy for the formation of monks and nuns to a model of a Buddhist studies department of a modern research institution, the wisdom humanities model falls somewhere in between. Master Hua’s description of education in the Buddhist tradition extends the parameters of the monastic Sangha’s traditional seminary, known in China as the Buddhist Studies Academy (佛學院). The role of this institution is to inculcate a catechism of doctrines that have been passed on unchanged for centuries. The curriculum includes liturgy, deportment, Vinaya studies, and information on China’s eight schools and their subsidiary sects. Knowledge of the sutras is embedded in commentaries; knowledge of the Vinaya is transmitted in images and examples from generations that are centuries removed from the students’ time and culture. Preserving the tradition intact is valuable, even essential, for making monks and nuns and sustaining the Sangha order. Keeping the standard received knowledge of the Mahayana teachings maintains the forms and the methods for identity of the Chinese tradition of Buddhism. Seminary education is essential for keeping the shell, the church, the skin of the institution intact. This model has limited relevance to contemporary minds seeking to integrate the Dharma into daily life and does not encourage training minds to understand principles and their applications. For opening the limitless, boundless, liberated mind, with its infinite functions, for waking up students’ wisdom and compassion requires another hermeneutical process. After all, only after rejecting all that was familiar, traditional, and secure did Prince Siddhartha create the possibility for his great awakening. Issue 11, October 2012
33
Rev. Heng Sure
An Alternative to the Western Research University’s Buddhist Studies Program On another side of the Buddhist studies spectrum is the Western research university’s Buddhist studies program. Master Hua did not want education in the Buddhist tradition to meekly seek acceptance around the fringes of methodologies, categories, and ideologies typically found in the Western research university. He did not want wisdom humanities to apologetically offer a Buddhist-branded Oriental perspective framed by Western dualistic categories. He advised against shoehorning Buddhist thinking and wisdom into an Eastern version of psychology or philosophy. He certainly did not want Buddhist wisdom to be pruned down or compromised to fit categories of history, philosophy, or comparative religion, or to be reduced to New Age therapeutic techniques. Even calling the Dharma a religion puts it at a disadvantage alongside theistic faiths, as the framing is not apt for Buddhism’s orthopraxic system of inner realization. Nor did he expect us to set up Buddhism as a competing school of thought in the marketplace of ideas. Wisdom Humanities’ Alternative Approach Neither traditional nor innovative, Master Hua wanted students to return to the roots of Buddhist wisdom, to engage the Buddha’s voice found in the sutras, and to translate, integrate, and present the profound insights of the Buddhist scriptures that have been guiding sages and wise people for two and a half millennia. He sought to train scholar-practitioners who can effectively engage the issues confronting and confounding twentyfirst century thinkers and who can apply the Buddha’s expedient, nondual wisdom to real world problems. In this way the Dharma can stand on its own without apology to reform stale paradigms of thought and culture caught in dualities that are rooted in theocentric, anthropocentric, and Eurocentric (Orientalist) views. In this model, students pursue a balanced course of study and practice aimed at integrating the ethical, analytical, and contemplative dimensions of learning—time-honored hallmarks of a truly educated person. Master Hua believed education in the Buddhist tradition should aim to activate an inherent wisdom possessed by everybody and that wisdom must be dialogical, interactive, probing, and deeply self-transformative. There are historical reasons why the West has yet to recognize the value of a core curriculum based on the sutras: until recently the sutras have not been available in English or any other Western languages. The Chinese did not make it a priority to translate the sutras out of the Chinese language into the languages of the world. In fact, hearing the Buddha’s voice unmediated by commentaries was difficult even in Asia,
34
Religion East & West
Wisdom Humanities
despite the presence of the scriptures, because the custom in monastic and lay practitioner communities was to read commentaries instead of sutras. The Mahayana sutras and their supporting literature have served as sacred literature in Asia for two and a half thousand years, but they are new and unfamiliar outside of Asia. The Buddha’s Three Jewels are now taking root on Western soil, and one of the hallmarks of that advent is the presence of complete, accurate translations of the Buddhist texts. Master Hua insisted that students meet the Buddha’s wisdom intact, unmediated by exclusive reliance on commentaries as the interpretive hermeneutic. Venerable Master Hua made it a priority to bring the Dharma to the West3 and expound them daily, in line by line exegesis, so that a new generation of scholar-practitioners would be able to meet the treasures of the Mahayana tradition and apply their wisdom to other academic disciplines. Bringing the Buddha’s voice forward as the keynote of wisdom humanities’ curriculum creates a unique avenue of approach that is at once both traditional, as in the Buddhist Studies Academy, and innovative, as in the evidence-based approach of the university. Having identified the unique aspects of wisdom humanities, let us consider their influence on a wisdom humanities curriculum. Aspects of the Wisdom Humanities Curriculum Buddhist Education Is Science-Friendly Buddhist education is science-friendly. Among major religions, Buddhism is one of the least antagonistic to science’s spirit of inquiry. Without stretching the analogy, the Buddha’s experience of practice in the forest for six years fits the paradigm of proper scientific investigation. He worked from a theoretical hypothesis: that suffering can end; he employed a variety of methodologies in his research, discarding those that lead to extremes. He left a paper trail in the sutras, and he bequeathed the fruits of his research for testing to anyone who might seek answers on their own. His model has been tested by subjects East and West for two and a half millennia. Popular awareness of the conversation between Buddhism and post-Newtonian physics started with two works: Fritof Capra’s The Tao of Physics1 and Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wuli Masters.2 This conversation is now starting to work back into the life sciences: psychology, health, genetics, and biological engineering are looking into Buddhist models of interdependence and conditioned arising. At the same time, the encounter with Buddhism is reinvigorating the ethical dialog between technology and society by introducing new insights and new vocabulary Issue 11, October 2012
35
Rev. Heng Sure
for discussion that is distinct from Judeo-Christian perspectives that split away from the Church after the Renaissance. The vision of Indra’s net from the Avatamsaka Sutra’s contemplation of the Dharma Realm gives us an alternative view of interdependence that models a world set back on its foundation of pre-modern, humanistic values, set on a foundation of ethics and human kindness. Buddhist Depth Psychology Education in the Buddhist tradition challenges the notion that the only valid and significant version of the life of the mind began in Greece, was recast by the Church in Latin, and now rests in European languages. It further questions the notion that Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and others in the twentieth century were the inventors of depth psychology. Among the fields of study that encounter Buddhist perspectives, perhaps psychology has been the most profoundly influenced. One can make the case that the Buddha’s sutras are laboratory reports of his own explorations into the function of the human mind at its most sublime and healthy. Students of psychology, originally drawn by a wish to understand the mind and its states, often report Sutras are laboratory their disappointment that to advance in their field rereports of the Buddha's quired training in statistics, demographic studies, and experimentation with rats and lab animals, but rarely on the healthy human mind. The Western analytical explorations. psychiatric model, which has only a century of history, takes mental illness as its starting point and focuses on pathology and chemical therapies for neuroses, psychoses, paranoia, schizophrenia, depression, and other complexes. This model assumes ego, superego, id, libido, and the subconscious as structures of the mind. Buddhist wisdom psychology for twenty-five hundred years has posed eight consciousnesses as the basic structure and gives practical methods of bringing affliction into healthy balance through meditation. Further, the Buddha considered the mind another sense organ not unlike eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and the body, each with their related sense objects and consciousness. The Buddha explored methodologies for observing the healthy human mind in vivo; in his sutras he mapped indices for measurement and self-healing modalities that have proven accurate and effective in creating healthy changes for thousands of years. The Buddhist methods are testable between subjects, taking balance, stillness, purity, and concentration as the starting points rather than neurosis. One of the most fruitful forums for exchange between Buddhism and Western psychology is the on-going research into neural plasticity
36
Religion East & West
Wisdom Humanities
and the healthy human mind’s capacity for empathy, happiness, and compassion. Major universities have funded research in brain function in states of deep meditation and contemplation. The “stress reduction” programs introduced into chronic pain clinics, hospitals, prisons, and shelters around the country have brought well-documented results of meditation’s usefulness in healing illness for two decades in the United States. Clearly, the Buddhist contribution to psychology will have a marked impact on our understanding of the mind and its potential for awakening. Buddhism’s Humanistic Economics The Buddha, from the beginning of his teaching career, named greed as a poison, an affliction, and the main source of suffering. As an antidote to the affliction of greed, he gave his community rules that began with reducing desire and feeling sufficient. This system prescribed not a grim, harsh poverty, but encouraged instead a joyous sense of sufficiency, a gratitude to the earth and sky for providing bounty that made life possible. Radical simplicity combined with gratitude to lay donors is the foundation of the Sangha Order, the Buddha’s community of monastics who have thrived for thousands of years. The Sangha continues to flourish, knowing sufficiency through letting go of all but the necessities for life: clothes, food, bedding, and medicine. This vision of striving to become worthy of offerings and harboring few desires when applied to society at large has the potential to create a radical change in humanity’s appetites, for that is necessary now to save the planet from disasters. The study of economics too often begins with the assumption that greed is fundamental to commerce and that humanity naturally wants to compete and struggle in the market place. Dog-eat-dog capitalism and the globalized free market must now be measured against the reality of a finite quantity of resources on the planet. The conundrum of eternally expanding markets encountering limited amounts of natural resources leads to a zero-sum endgame. Buddhist economics, on the other hand, with its founding principle of absolute interdependence and mutual wellbeing as the standard, proceeds with the notion that people and animals matter equally; in fact, their interests are vital to the survival of each. Economics as if people and animals mattered does not accept greed as the best motivation for commerce and the successful functioning of markets. Instead, an economy based on giving and behavior with the well-being of all in view could revolutionize economics and make sustainable the continued presence of human beings on the planet. Issue 11, October 2012
37
Rev. Heng Sure
Virtue’s Primary Importance in Wisdom Humanities In introducing Western-educated youth to wisdom humanities, Master Hsuan Hua taught Confucian classics by day in the classroom and then explained the Buddha’s sutras by night to the monastics in the Buddha Hall. This emphasis on the basics of virtue might seem anachronistic to Asian Buddhists over-familiar with the teachings of Confucius. The standard Asian pedagogy would say that one finished with Confucius in grade school; having come to a Buddhist community, why not learn the profound teachings on samadhi and prajña? The answer lies in the keyword virtue and its traditional emphasis on human relationships as the first lesson in educating wholesome human beings. One learns to become a good person beginning with filial respect (孝道). Virtue-Based Elementary School Pedagogy Buddhist education for young people begins with showing children the value of repaying parents’ kindness. Filial respect (not filial “piety”) gives elementary students experience with the joyful connection that naturally exists between parents and children. An educated person’s first lesson to learn is the awareness of the rightness of repaying parents’ kindness. Wanting to repay kindness, opening the heart to filial respect is a natural response when children sees how much they have received from the adults in their lives. Once the wish to repay begins to flow through the heart of the child, it expresses for a lifetime through the other fundamental virtues. From this comes the awareness of relationship to siblings, neighbors, and society at large, and ultimately the experience of identity in substance with all living creatures. This is the foundation of virtue at the heart of wisdom humanities. Master Hua integrated education in virtue and cultivation of the Way. The exemplary person attends to the roots; when the roots are set, the Tao comes forth (君子務本。本立而道生). Master Hua then brought young people into education in the Buddhist tradition with the maxim: “Learn from the Buddha while becoming a good person” (學佛，作人). He emphasized that “when people reach perfection, they become Buddhas” (人道盡，佛道成). Thus, by instilling goodness and cultivating virtue in children and young adults, Master Hua integrated the arc of cultivation from filial respect to great wisdom and compassion, using personal virtue as the road from start to finish.
38
Religion East & West
Wisdom Humanities
Respecting Ancient Technologies Wisdom humanities values ancient technologies; mantras, meditation, moderation, and prayer are ancient technologies that humanity traditionally applied to affect wholesome changes on the world and to find inner peace and harmony amid change and uncertainty. Wisdom humanities values these technologies that have been used since the dawn of consciousness. Wisdom humanities preserves these disciplines and investigates them from the Buddha’s own descriptions found in the sutras. In wisdom technology, the methods of meditation, prayer, and stillness are based on interdependence and take as the benchmark the vow to do no harm. With this perspective as the standard, one can evaluate technological advances. It gives an opportunity to question new tools rather than accept them without question. This fundamental compassionate perspectives, based on “identity in makeup,” allows us to clarify means from ends in creating and using technology’s latest weapons and gadgets and gives us a place from which to discuss clones, nanobots, drone weapons, robots, and cyber-warfare. In this regard I offer a prayer written and recited on October 3, 2003, at the dedication of the new Technology Center at the library of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Let us first invoke Indra’s Net, the interlacing net of pearls which in the Buddhist Pantheon is said to adorn the heavenly palace of Shakra Devanam Indra, lord of the “Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods.” The net contains an infinite number of perfectly transparent pearls, each one of which perfectly reflects the totality of pearls. In each pearl one can see all the pearls and the totality of pearls is gathered back by a single perfect pearl. May the electronic tools we use in the library reflect the totality of the spirit in the same way. May every micro-circuit that sustains our cyber-reality mirror the interdependence of the Internet. May each node, each module, each chip carry us faithfully into contact with the totality of the entire Net. May each monitor and tube reflect accurately, reliably, without bias, the data that can become information, the information that can become knowledge, the knowledge that with grace and compassion, can become wisdom. May we never forget, as we use our electronic shovels and digital chisels, that the tools are means to an end, that wisdom and compassion are the ends of those means; may we use our electronic servants to clarify our human values and enhance our basic human kindness instead of leading us to serve the hardware and software tools that too Issue 11, October 2012
39
Rev. Heng Sure
often are designed to serve marketing, marketing that is in turn the servant of greed. In this way may we make each keystroke a blessing, each printout a prayer, each slideshow a sacrament for the earth and sky. Buddhism offers a potential ethics-based solution to a current crisis created, however inadvertently, by advances in technology. The Berkeley Monastery is situated at top end of Silicon Valley, and many of our community work in the high-tech industry. Buddhism suggests that humans have a duty as stewards for the planet to think on behalf of all beings who share the natural environment as well as the unborn of generations to come. In a world where the average child spends five times more accumulated time daily with computer, television, cell phone, game consoles, and MP3 players than interacting with his human relationships, Buddhism’s emphasis on virtue and compassion, on giving and ethical integrity can reshape our priorities as a society. Wisdom Humanities’ Perspective On Environmental Studies One side effect of progress in technology is a loss of connection with both the natural world and the invisible world of spiritual presence. Just as the industrial revolution replaced horses with motor vehicles and took workers from the farm to the factory, so has the digital revolution taken people from actual reality to virtual reality. The biochemical revolution has provided mood-altering medications to mask the symptoms of mental and emotional imbalance. With every step further into manmade interventions, Western culture increases the distance between our minds and our natures. Another aspect of wisdom humanities that will help plant the Dharma in Western soil is its ability to revive our appreciation of humanity’s proper place in the natural world. The Buddha Dharma that came from Asia in the sutras is full of dragons, ghosts, gods, tree spirits, wheelturning Cakravartin sage kings, and countless sentient beings. The sutras describe worlds within worlds, where Buddhas turn the Dharma Wheel inside motes of dust and the six paths of rebirth constantly revolve. The Buddhist world is animated, alive with presence; further, it is connected inextricably with the human realm. This vision shared by the Buddha and indigenous, earth-based peoples worldwide is not simplistic and quaint; it is imbued with ancient wisdom. This vision is in some ways a pre-modern worldview, in that it recalls a time before electricity turned night to day. In that world nightfall brings fears and terrors, and sunrise reveals the return of nature’s splendor.
40
Religion East & West
Wisdom Humanities
This attitude of respect for and connection with the Earth is mirrored by native and indigenous peoples the world around, who find the Pachamama, our Mother Earth, a miraculous place of mixed wonder and terror. In this view, humanity is part of a larger web, we are knit into and inextricably related to all other species. Humanity’s proper attitude is gratitude, our proper role is remain humble and reverent, to not waste, to be wise in our sharing and stewardship of resources, and to show compassion to the other neighboring species and tribes of creatures who inhabit this planet with us. Putting the principles of the Dharma into practice allows us to awaken to the living, animated reality of the Earth and our minds. This awakening brings us one step closer to the land that we usually only exploit. Living wisely, we do not dominate, we refuse to mindlessly kill and consume other species. This timely vision can heal our current sense of broken relationships, of Earth as a victim, vulnerable to exploitation, to misuse and reckless waste. Regarding the environment, the Buddha’s describes all things in the universe as arising dependent on conditions. We are interrelated, interdependent, and ultimately responsible for the well-being of the whole. From this perspective, the Earth is seen as a community to be lived in righteously and wisely, not as a commodity to be consumed and exploited by the strongest and the Great compassion is most unethical. This principle of interdependence is primary in understanding the Buddha’s prescription the knowledge that all for global healing. As American environmentalist Al Gore points out in his Nobel Prize–winning docu- beings are one. mentary film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” the human potential for greed is the cause of our current critical situation on the planet with climate change.4 The Buddha in naming greed a poison of the mind said essentially that the destruction and the healing of the world is done in a thought; a thought of greed can poison the universe and lead to indescribable suffering for all its inhabitants. A thought from a mind purged of greed puts our feet on the road to healing and ultimately to Buddhahood. The Buddha’s vision of things as they really are, beyond political agenda, beyond dogma or dialectic, can contribute to a global environmental ethic. The Buddha’s teaching on the ultimate relatedness of all things reanimates the world and places humanity squarely within it. The name of the teaching that heals our current brokenness is “great compassion,” the knowledge that all beings are one. Great compassion begins with relationships; humans must treat all beings as they would family, as Issue 11, October 2012
41
Rev. Heng Sure
kinfolk. It is as close to us, as real and nontheoretical as our flesh, blood, warmth, and breath. From our nuclear families and neighborhoods we expand the circle of relatedness outwards and inwards at once, to include all beings who, like us, aspire to well-being and freedom from suffering. This notion does not advocate a retreat to a mythical pre-modern golden age of blissful ignorance. There is no retreat once we have seen the pictures of Earthrise taken from an orbiting spacecraft, of our tiny blue marble of a planet, with its precious, finite oceans set in a vast, black, infinite universe. There is no turning back to isolated, tribal self-interest and struggle for survival. Rather, the Buddha’s wisdom and compassion asks us to step up to a pre-modern awe and appreciation of the natural world while stepping forward into a global concern for all beings. To heal the world we need two things: a pre-modern wonder and respect combined with a post-Earthrise global ethic, a relatedness and a responsibility for the entire Earth community in our vision and in our hearts. Expanding the Anthropocentric Bias Further, education in the Buddhist tradition seeks to reform the anthropocentric view that humans and our needs are of paramount concern on the planet. This view teaches that humanity has the God-given right to consume all other species and resources on the planet without regard for the well-being of any other living tribe, including future generations of humans. Humanity’s dominion is sanctioned in the Hebrew scriptures.5 This view sanctions humanity’s subjugation of all other species, which were supposedly put here for our benefit. This view is responsible for much of the suffering of the other species and our own future progeny. This view is embedded and reinforced in many parts of the university. Students are taught this Biblical view of humans in the middle; all else in creation is here for the benefit and use of men. In those corners of the campus, to think otherwise is considered “fuzzy and romantic.” Wisdom humanities places the human in the middle of a web that includes and connects all other species; we are a part of and not separate from all sentient creatures. The Buddha’s cosmology describes the Ten Dharma Realms, six mortal and four beyond rebirth, as all arising from the mind. This is a radical recasting of ecological connections; interdependence from this perspective is not a theory; it is the substance of the conditioned links of dependent co-arising, the fabric of the universe from the Buddha’s enlightened vision. As these Buddhist principles come into conversation with emerging Western disciplines devoted to solving problems of the environment, people can appreciate for the first time how the Buddha’s wisdom offers
42
Religion East & West
Wisdom Humanities
a balanced, integrated vision of a cosmos where subject and object are one and where interdependence can lead to great compassion. Here is an environmental view for the twenty-first century that has potential to correct our course towards disaster. Conclusion Education in the Buddhist tradition need not compromise and distort the Dharma to attract students and to justify our engagement with the world. We need not apologize nor adapt to the existing Western paradigms of education for our legitimacy. The principle of great compassion implies total engagement with all beings. “All beings have the Buddha-nature and all can become Buddhas” was the Buddha’s first statement for education in the Buddhist tradition. Wisdom humanities goes beyond the seminary of the Buddhist studies academy, where monastics pass on without questions the form and the liturgy. In seminary it is too easy to merely turn off the mind and parrot tradition. Wisdom humanities is an alternative as well to the Western analytical model of the Buddhist studies department of the research university that worships objectivity and apologizes to science for being insufficiently rigorous and measurable. Buddhist Education aims to create scholar-practitioners whose wisdom is based on ethical guidelines for being human, who act from knowledge of cause and effect, who employ wisdom’s ancient technologies for transforming the mind of greed and the false self, and who act from a vision of interconnected great compassion to bring forth a new humanity, wise, inspired to serve, and employing their education to benefit others and change the world. Notes 1. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (25th anniversary ed.) (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2000). 2. Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1979). 3. When I say “the West,” I use the term in a nongeographical, nonethnic sense. By this I mean that scientific, empirical education that began in Europe during the Renaissance has become a worldwide de facto standard wherever evidencebased pedagogy has prevailed. It has replaced traditional education based on memorization of a body of classics of literature. In this sense “the West” includes modern India as well as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and more rapidly, China. Although some might object to the inclusion of East Asia in a discussion of the West, surely Asian exchange students who went to
Issue 11, October 2012
43
Rev. Heng Sure American or Australian universities and then returned home to Asia, creating the “reverse brain drain,“ have made a unified and networked intellectual culture of our planet. The Internet and information technology has rapidly brought the world into a global village where eyes the world around watch the same news, entertainment, and sports and buy the same brand of products. 4. Recently ninety-eight percent of scientists across the disciplines have come together to warn about anthropogenic climate change; in recent years people are beginning to revise early assumptions of humanity’s role amid myriad creatures with whom we share this planet. 5. From the Bible, Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
44
Religion East & West