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Religion East & West

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      

 ,  

      

Institute for World Religions

Religion East & West

 ,  

Socially Engaged Buddhism

Institute for World Religions Mission Statement

About the Institute for World Religions

With the understanding that spiritual values are central to the human experience, the Institute for World Religions exists to promote mutual understanding among the world’s spiritual traditions. The Institute for World Religions facilitates shared inquiry into the founding visions of the world’s faiths so that all might learn from the others’ strengths while preserving the integrity of their own.

The Institute for World Religions is also committed to providing an open forum where clergy, theologians, philosophers, scientists, educators and individuals from a wide variety of disciplines can examine the role of religion in a modern world.

All of the institute’s activities take place in an atmosphere of mutual respect and promote the universal human capacity for goodness and wisdom.

The Institute for World Religions was established as a direct result of the inspiration and planning of the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua and Paul Cardinal Yü Bin. Both of these distinguished international leaders in religion and education believed that harmony among the world’s religions is an indispensable prerequisite for a just and peaceful world. Both shared the conviction that every religion should affirm humanity’s common bonds and rise above narrow sectarian differences.

When they established the Institute for World Religions in 1976, Cardinal Yü Bin enthusiastically agreed to serve as the Institute’s first director. In 1994 the Institute moved to the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery. Its proximity to the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, the Graduate Theological Union, and to the rich academic, religious and cultural environment of the San Francisco Bay Area provides an ideal environment for the Institute’s programs.

In keeping with its mission, the Institute offers programs designed to bring the major religious traditions together in discourse with each other and with the contemporary world. The Institute also participates in local and global interfaith initiatives as a way to bring the principles of interfaith vision and the spiritual needs of the modern world into constructive engagement. Religion East & West, as the Institute’s annual journal, is one forum for this discourse and this engagement.

Religion East & West Journal of the Institute for World Religions ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

Socially Engaged Buddhism

Š 2009 Institute for World Religions 2245 McKinley Avenue, Suite B Berkeley, California, 94703 USA (510) 848-9788 www.drbu.org/rew/ Editor: David Rounds Design & Production: Dennis Crean Subscriptions: kp@drbu.org Submissions: sdrounds@saber.net Religion East & West is the annual journal of the Institute for World Religions, which is affiliated with and supported by Dharma Realm Buddhist University and by the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association.

ISSN: 1539-2430

Contents Religion East & West Editorial Board ........................................................................iv Contributors to This Issue................................................................................................ v Socially Engaged Buddhism and the Trajectory of Buddhist Ethical Consciousness Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi ................................................................................................. 1 In Search of an Authentic Engaged Buddhism Raoul Birnbaum...................................................................................................... 25 Buddhas behind the Razor Wire Hozan Alan Senauke .............................................................................................. 41 Borges, Buddhism, and Cognitive Science Amelia Barili............................................................................................................ 47 Peace Practices among the Iroquois Douglas George-Kanentiio. ................................................................................... 59 A Hindu Monk's Appreciation of Eastern Orthodoxy's Jesus Prayer Joseph Molleur......................................................................................................... 67 Creating Religious Identity Karma Lekshe Tsomo............................................................................................. 77 The Diagram of the Supreme Pole and the Kabbalistic Tree Martin Zwick ........................................................................................................... 89 A Portrait of the Venerable Master Hs端an Hua ........................................................ 110 About This Journal .......................................................................................................... 112 Past Contributors to Religion East & West ................................................ 114 About the Institute for World Religions ................................................ inside back cover

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Religion East & West Editorial Board Rev. Heng Sure holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley. He serves as director of the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery and lectures worldwide on Buddhism, Buddhist texts, meditation, comparative religion, and interfaith dialogue. He was ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1976.

Bhikshuni Heng Hsien holds a Ph.D. in South and Southeast Asian studies from the University of California at Berkeley. A Sanskrit specialist and translator, she has been a Buddhist nun for more than thirty years.

Henry Rosemont Jr. holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Washington. A Distinguished Professor emeritus at St. Mary’s College in Maryland, he is currently visiting professor of religious studies at Brown University. He has published widely in the areas of Confucian studies and comparative religion.

Snjezana Akpinar holds a Ph.D. in Turkish studies from the University of Istanbul. She is president of Dharma Realm Buddhist University and lectures on Central Asian influences on Islam and comparative studies.

Martin J. Verhoeven received his M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin and is a resident scholar at Dharma Realm Buddhist University. His area of specialty is the European and American encounter with Buddhism.

Ron Epstein holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies from the University of California at Berkeley. He recently retired from teaching Buddhist studies and world religions at San Francisco State University.

Douglas Powers holds an M.A. in theology and philosophy from Graduate Theological Union and a B.A. and M.A. from the University of the Redlands.

He currently teaches Western philosophy.

David Rounds, editor of this journal, holds a B.A. from Harvard and an M.A. in Buddhist studies and translation from Dharma Realm Buddhist University. .

- ngama He recently participated in a new translation of the Sura S´ura Sutra.

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Contributors to This Issue Bhikkhu Bodhi, a native of New York City, was ordained in Sri Lanka after completing his doctoral studies in philosophy at Claremont Graduate University. He spent thirty years in Sri Lanka and became a leader in the translation of Pali texts. His many translations include The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya (with Bhikkhu Nanamoli), Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: An Anthology of Suttas from the Anguttara Nikaya (with Nyanaponika Thera), and The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya. He currently lives and teaches at Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, New York, and at Bodhi Monastery in Lafayette, New Jersey.

Raoul Birnbaum is professor of Buddhist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he also holds the Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in History of Art and Visual Culture. His early works include The Healing Buddha, Studies on the Mysteries of Mañjuśrī, and a group of articles about the great mountain pilgrimage center Wutaishan. More recently, he has been writing about issues in modern Chinese Buddhist history, including a series of essays about the remarkable twentieth-century monk Hongyi. Professor Birnbaum’s work is considerably influenced by many years of study within Chinese Buddhist communities.

Hozan Alan Senauke is vice-abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, a Soto Zen temple in the tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. He is also founder of the Clear View Project, which develops Buddhist-based resources for social change and support around the world. As an activist, thinker, and writer, Senauke has been at the center of engaged Buddhist circles for twenty years. He also performs widely as an interpreter of American folk and traditional music.

Amelia Barili is a senior lecturer in the Spanish and Portuguese department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her current research and writing focus on the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges’s lifelong interest in Buddhism and his writings and conversations concerning Buddhism.

Douglas George-Kanentiio is an award-winning Mohawk author and film consultant. He has served as editor of Akwesasne Notes, an international journal about indigenous people, and of Indian Time, a newspaper serving the Mohawk Nation. His books include Skywoman, Iroquois on Fire, and Iroquois Culture and Commentary, and he was a contributor to Treaty ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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of Canandaigua, A Seat at the Table, and Sovereignty, Colonialism, and the Indigenous Nations. He lectures widely and has long been active in Iroquois affairs, most recently in the founding of Onehtah'kowa-Haudenosaunee University.

Joseph Molleur is associate professor of religion at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, where he teaches courses on Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. He is the author of Divergent Traditions, Converging Faiths: Troeltsch, Comparative Theology, and the Conversation with Hinduism.

He is a member of both Trinity Episcopal Church in Iowa City and the Vedanta Society of Iowa.

Karma Lekshe Tsomo is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego, where she teaches Buddhism, world religions, and comparative religious ethics. She studied Buddhism in Dharamsala, India, for fifteen years and received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Hawai'i, with research on death and identity in China and Tibet. She is president of Sakyadhita: The International Association of Buddhist Women and director of Jamyang Foundation, an innovative education project for women in developing countries. Her most recent book is Into the Jaws of Yama, Lord of Death: Buddhism, Bioethics, and Death.

Martin Zwick, professor of systems science at Portland State University, was awarded his Ph.D. in biophysics at M.I.T. in 1968 and joined the biophysics department faculty of the University of Chicago in 1969. His interests shifted from biophysics to systems theory, the field now known as the study of chaos, complexity, and complex adaptive systems. Since 1976 he has been teaching and doing research in the Systems Science Graduate Program at PSU, and from 1984–1989 he was director of the program. His main research areas are information theory, theoretical biology, and systems philosophy. He has been on the faculty committee for the Judaic Studies Program at PSU since its inception. His online publications that bear on religion include: “A Conversation on Theodicy,” “Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge from Science to Religion,” and “Personal Knowledge and the Inner Sciences.”

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Socially Engaged Buddhism and the Trajectory of Buddhist Ethical Consciousness Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi Abstract: Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, a senior American Buddhist monk and distinguished scholar and translator, explores the nature of the social activism that has become a more visible aspect of Buddhist practice in recent decades. The author argues that while social engagement is deeply rooted in classical Buddhism, the scope and manner of social engagement have undergone a shift. The author reviews the history of Buddhist thinking on this topic and relates this history to gradual changes in society in general.

This article was presented as the Eighth Annual Hsüan Hua (Xuanhua) Memorial Lecture in Berkeley, California, in April 2009. (A companion lecture given by Dr. Raoul Birnbaum follows Bhikkhu Bodhi’s article.)

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1. Introduction

hen I lived in Sri Lanka, I noticed that different shrine rooms in Buddhist temples depict the Buddha in different ways depending on the era from which they spring. Almost all shrine rooms, from any period, converge upon a central Buddha figure sitting in the dhyānamudrā, the posture of meditation—the eyes closed, the legs crossed, and the hands resting one over the other on the lap. But apart from this common feature, interesting differences can be observed. In temples that date back roughly to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the wall behind the Buddha statue is often covered by a mural depicting groups of monks and lay devotees in gestures of reverence, while above, filling the sky row upon row, deities look adoringly at the Enlightened One. In contemporary meditation monasteries, the shrine room is usually spare and utterly simple, containing only a single Buddha figure, again sitting in meditation. However, in many temples from the early- and midtwentieth century, the shrine room evokes a different atmosphere. The ISSUE

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central figure is still the Buddha seated in deep meditation, but the side walls may be lined with panels showing key events in the Buddha’s life.

Some pictures are familiar: the birth, the enlightenment, the first sermon, the parinirvāna. But others are without precedent in earlier temple art.

In one, the Buddha teaches Kisāgotamī, a grief-stricken mother holding her dead child. In another, he is taming the serial killer Angulimāla. In another, he makes peace between the Koliyans and the Sakyans, two neighboring peoples about to go to war over access to water. And in still another, he cares for a sick monk neglected by his fellow monks.

These different depictions of the Buddha can be read as representing different perspectives on the significance of Buddhism itself. The traditional image, with the Buddha surrounded by monks and deities, emphasizes a cosmic conception of the Dharma. The solitary Buddha in the modern meditation monastery symbolizes Buddhism as a personal path to inner peace. The third scenario captures a subtle creative tension pervasive throughout Buddhist history: the seated Buddha plunged in deep meditation shows the Dharma as a path to transcendence, to the overcoming of the world; the side panels show that transcendence finds completeness in engagement with the world—by comforting those stricken by grief, taming the unruly, bringing peace to those at war, and aiding the helpless ones forsaken by others.

This last scenario can be seen as foreshadowing the rise of socially engaged Buddhism. In certain ways, Buddhism has been engaged with society from its very inception, and even the monk meditating deep in the forest exercises an uplifting influence on the society that supports him and that gains inspiration from his guidance and example. However, I will be using the expression socially engaged Buddhism in a particular sense. By this expression I mean the application of Buddhist principles and practices to the task of instigating systemic changes in social, political, and economic institutions and policies so as to further the well-being of the people (and other beings) affected by them. Socially engaged Buddhism differs in an important respect from classical Buddhism, which also aims, in part, at changing society. Classical Buddhism works by directly altering the views, attitudes, and values of individuals in the expectation that such “micro-changes” will result cumulatively in positive large-scale changes in society. Contemporary engaged Buddhism, in contrast, operates at a more systemic level, seeking to change the systems and structures responsible for communal suffering, not merely the persons who create and control them.

Socially engaged Buddhism is not a single, uniform phenomenon but assumes diverse manifestations among different people living in

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different lands. One thing, however, that these diverse manifestations appear to have in common is a reevaluation of Buddhist priorities. With the rise of engaged Buddhism, the focus of Buddhist practice turns away from a liberation transcending the world toward a readiness to plunge into the heart of the world’s suffering in order to liberate people from the most morally repugnant The guiding aspiration forms of political and economic bondage. The guiding aspiration turns from inner peace to the achievement turns from inner peace of world peace through reconciliation, disarmament, and social justice. Knowledge about economics, to world peace. environment, and politics is no longer considered a mundane distraction but a prerequisite for using the Dharma to uplift the lives of others. The weight of authority in the new Buddhist movements also tends to shift, from the monastic Sangha to charismatic lay Buddhists who inspire others with new visions of a social order governed by ethical principles.

These observations naturally raise intriguing questions: Why did such a dramatic change occur in the outward face of Buddhism, and what are the deep forces that lie behind it? How can we evaluate this phenomenon in terms of classical Buddhist categories of understanding?

And most important: is this engaged Buddhism a genuine expression of the Dharma, continuous with the tradition, or does it mark a reorientation so radical that its credentials as an authentic form of Buddhism are questionable?

The last question highlights the issue of justification: How do we justify socially engaged Buddhism? Or must we reject it as lacking justification? I will set forth my own view right at the outset. I see the Dharma as inescapably embodied in human history and, as such, inevitably caught between two forces that pull it in different directions.

One is a centripetal force, pulling inwards and back to its origins in the Buddha’s enlightenment and the most archaic principles of the teachings.

The other force is centrifugal, pushing outward into the ever-changing, unpredictable field of human history, which always discloses new horizons of understanding and throws out new concerns to which the Dharma must respond, or risk becoming quaint and irrelevant.

We might compare these two forces acting upon Buddhism to the two forces that keep the Earth in motion around the sun. One is the gravitational pull of the sun, drawing the Earth toward itself, toward death by fire. The other is the momentum of the Earth’s motion, which propels the Earth out into space toward a frozen death. Each force taken on its own is destructive, but when the two are balanced, the Earth ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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revolves around the sun, and all the teeming, multitudinous forms of life spring forth in abundance. Similarly, if we cling tenaciously to old traditions without taking account of changing historical circumstances, we may be left with a lifeless Dharma lacking relevance. If we adapt too freely to make the Dharma dance to the tune of the times, we might wind up with an attractive mishmash that wins a following but bears little resemblance to real Buddhism. What we require are sensitive and intelligent formulations of the Dharma that strike a healthy balance between faithfulness to the past and relevance to the present. Such expressions should be strongly rooted in the classical teaching, guided by its radical intuitions and cherished values, but at the same time they must address the critical problems of our age, doing so with insight and a compassionate practicality.

In terms of this tension between the two forces pulling in opposite directions, I would hold that socially engaged Buddhism at its best is a serious and worthy attempt to bring the ideals and values of Buddhism to bear on the great existential problems that confront humanity today. I would even go so far as to say that socially engaged Buddhism may be taking us a step beyond mere adaptation and actually be drawing out ethical dimensions of the Dharma that had never before been made explicit, at least not to the same degree. I must add, however, a qualification: if we aren’t careful, there is a risk that socially engaged Buddhism could turn the Dharma into little more than a spiritual inspiration for a social and political agenda at variance with its proper purpose.

To lay the foundation for understanding socially engaged Buddhism, I first want to set up a broad conceptual framework, in the light of which I will attempt to explore its significance in relation to Buddhism as a whole. The framework I will use situates socially engaged Buddhism in relation to a two-track process of evolution. One track is the evolution of human consciousness, as objectified in different cultures; the other is the evolution of the Buddhist ethical consciousness through the ages.

These two tracks, I believe, ultimately converge, which suggests that the evolution of human culture and the development of Buddhist ethical consciousness may be different manifestations of a single process of human spiritual evolution.

2. The Stages of Human Cultural Evolution First I will discuss the evolution of human consciousness as it is objectified in different cultures. Cultures and civilizations evolve through distinct stages, each representing a complex configuration of values, ideals, and

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intuitions that give it a unique defining characteristic. We might say that each historical stage is governed by a dominant paradigm, a unifying vision with many components. The boundaries between the stages are not fixed. Almost invariably, different stages will be found coexisting within the borders of the same country. Different sectors of the population will embody different stages, but the general trend within a country can still be determined with reference to the dominant stage. Often a culture will be in a stage of transition, retaining features of an earlier stage while displaying signs of a more mature stage still taking shape and not yet well defined. There is also the possibility of regression, as seen for example in contemporary forms of religious fundamentalism.

The model I propose to use for understanding socially engaged Buddhism proceeds through three major cultural stages: the traditional, the modern, and the postmodern. Each stage is enormously complex, and any description of them is bound to risk broad generalizations and oversimplification. Nevertheless, this framework, however imperfect, can still help us understand the place of socially engaged Buddhism in the history of Buddhist sensibility. Given the wide variety we find among the different cultural representations of each stage, I have to be selective.

The Traditional Stage In a traditional culture, society is generally organized hierarchically. The social order is divided into a number of classes, to which its members usually belong by reason of birth. Each class has its prescribed duties, which each individual is obliged to fulfill in order to maintain social order. In a traditional society, the individual is locked into a complex web of relationships. One belongs first to one’s immediate family; then to the extended family; then to the village, the guild, or estate; then to one’s social class; and finally to the country. These relationships sustain the individual and contribute to a strong sense of social cohesion, but usually they are involuntarily.

Traditional cultures are maintained by a refined ethical sense. The word virtue, originally meaning “power” or “strength,” is the key to understanding the role of ethics in a traditional culture. The virtues confer strength, both on the person who exemplifies them and on the whole society constituted by virtuous persons. The characteristic virtues in traditional culture include honor, dignity, faithfulness, rectitude, courage, temperance, self-restraint, respect for authority, reverence for traditions, service, loyalty, magnanimity, patience, and modesty.

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The Modern Stage Modern culture, as we know it, was born in Europe beginning in the late medieval period and continuing through the industrial and technological revolutions. The underlying dynamic of modern culture is the intensified sense of individuality. Whereas the individual in traditional culture is immersed in the community, with the shift to modernity, the sense of self bursts all socially imposed constraints, severing one’s identification with the group. Hence modern culture begins with the appearance of self-conscious individuals who step out from their social roles and set about reshaping the world in accordance with their will. Perhaps the chief philosophical expression of the modern consciousness is Descartes, who arrived at the conception of the separate ego as the basis for all certainty of knowledge: an interior point of focus standing in relation to a world perceived as totally other, a spiritual self suspended in the midst of a mechanistic, lifeless universe.

In modern culture, the rich network of relationships typical of traditional culture is torn asunder. Individuals relate most directly to their nuclear family, which becomes increasingly atomized as individual members of the family pursue their private interests. The extended family almost vanishes as a point of reference. Beyond the immediate family, the individual belongs to the company or business, and then to the nationstate. But, as these are often vast systems of domination and control governed by impersonal rules and chains of command, the individual often feels overwhelmed or estranged. Hence, in modern society people experience the pain of isolation and alienation. Alienated from others, alienated from the natural world, and most sadly, alienated from the depths of their own being, they struggle to find a core of objective meaning, but any solution they devise perpetually taunts them with its sheer subjectivity.

The virtues endorsed by modern culture run a wide range. There are virtues that contribute towards scientific and technological progress: rigorous inquiry, bold experimentation, exact observation. There are virtues characteristic of the business mentality: frugality, prudence, diligence, persistence; or ambition, foresight, energy, the entrepreneurial spirit. There are virtues that contribute to the uniformity needed in the workplace or army: obedience, loyalty, punctuality, courage.

At the same time, the visionaries of the modern era extol other virtues, glimpses of a higher dimension, which they articulate in writing marked by extraordinary rigor and clarity. Equality, democracy, justice, peace, human rights for all, and the rule of law—these become the stars in the sky of the modern era, the most abiding contributions modern

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thought has made to the emergence of a harmonious global community.

Even today, imbued with a deep spiritual significance, these ideals stand before us guiding humanity’s hopes and dreams.

The Postmodern Stage A full-fledged postmodern society does not yet exist, and it is therefore impossible to describe any pure form of postmodern culture. We can, however, discern the seeds of a postmodern culture germinating in the field of modern societies. For the most part it is present only as a bundle of tendencies rather than as established fact.

The drift towards a postmodern culture occurs primarily as a reaction against the morbid excesses of modernity. The reaction occurs on several fronts. Intellectually, it is a reaction against the reductionism and materialism typical of modernity; it entails a turn toward a more holistic and spiritual way of understanding. Socially, postmodernism is a reaction against modernity’s exaltation of unchecked individualism.

It marks a turn towards a richer, more fulfilling sense of community which unites while respecting individual differences. Politically, it moves away from militarism toward peace and reconciliation, as seen in the burgeoning peace movements; it challenges state domination with calls for a more participatory democracy. Psychologically, postmodern culture seeks to heal the mental fragmentation and alienation of the modern mind by promoting methods that lead to inner wholeness and a sense of cosmic oneness.

A postmodern social order would aim to recover the tightly knit integration of the person in a web of social relationships, as is typical of traditional culture. The person would be connected by loving bonds to family, community, workplace, and nation, and then to humanity, the biosphere of the Earth, and even beyond—to the solar system, the galaxy, and the cosmos. But social relationships would be voluntary rather than imposed, and their dominant tone would be mutuality and equality rather than hierarchal stratification.

Postmodern culture, like its predecessors, pays special heed to a constellation of virtues that give it a distinct flavor. The virtues that are most characteristic of postmodern culture stem from its fresh perspective on the world, which highlights the relational structure of reality. Hence, cognitively, postmodernism affirms connectedness, interdependence, and mutuality. Whereas modernism stresses the role of the subject in defining value, and thus is perpetually haunted by the suspicion that all meaning reflects an arbitrary subjectivity, the postmodern thinker holds that virtually all domains of meaning arise from intersubjective ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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connections. It is our shared perspectives that determine our reality and give meaning to our experience. This restores an authentic status to values without returning to the naïve realism of premodern cultures.

The values of postmodern culture flow quite naturally from this point of view. Postmodern culture endorses the great ideals of the modern era—liberty, peace, equality, and justice—but seeks to realize them in all domains of human life, from the top levels of government down to the local community. It assigns prime value to sharing, care for others, peacemaking, cooperation, compassion, respect for all, and service. It does not merely tolerate different opinions, as the modernist tries to do, but it endorses and celebrates diversity in almost every sphere of human life, from spirituality to sexual orientation to lifestyles to political preferences, so long as these choices don’t trample upon the rights of others.

At a more philosophical level, the postmodernist believes that truth is to be arrived at not through a rigorous quest for pure objectivity (the approach of modernism) but through a multiperspectival synthesis that can admit different perspectives on truth as determined by background, subjective orientation, and context. The quest for truth is always set within frames of reference, invites personal participation, and generates domains of intersubjective meaning. Indeed, the postmodernist often sees the very conception of a single, universal, objective truth to be part of the legacy of modernism—a project subtly aimed at domination.

Attitudes towards religious faith undergo a corresponding shift.

In traditional cultures, religions tend to be tied to particular ethnic groups and communities, as we can see with Judaism, Hinduism, and Confucianism—even with most traditionalist forms of Buddhism. In the modern era, religion displays In the postmodern era, a tendency toward aggressive universalism, as well as toward tolerance, agnosticism, and atheism. In faith will be more inward, postmodern culture, people can be intensely spiritual yet reject the idea that there is a unique, objective more contemplative, religious truth valid for everyone. Their faith will be more inward, more contemplative, more personal. more personal.

They will see religious truth as an emergent reality, arisen creatively through inward personal exploration and experience; yet at the same time, they recognize that religion is shaped by the collective understanding and the quest for community.

Thus there is a move towards a synthesis of inward spiritual depth with communal embrace. Many with a postmodern bent of mind are disenchanted with the imposing religious structures of traditional and modern cultures and thus prefer to avoid formal religious affiliation. But

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they still may follow a spiritual path, distinguishing between religion and spirituality. Others may formally enter the fold of the great religions, like Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, or Islam, but reinterpret them in accordance with the fresh perspectives of the postmodern mind.

3. The Evolution of Buddhist Ethical Consciousness As with my discussion of cultural evolution, my discussion of the historical evolution of Buddhist ethical consciousness is bound to be superficial and prone to generalizations. For the sake of concision, I will have to omit the many variations both in theory and historical exemplification. I have to restrict my attention to broad trends, focusing on those aspects most relevant to my attempt to contextualize socially engaged Buddhism.

In my understanding, the most significant event in the history of Buddhism was the Buddha’s decision, after his enlightenment, to go out into the world to teach. This decision became the starting point for the Dharma to assume a historical dimension. But once the Dharma enters the platform of history, it has to be expressed in the language, categories, and conceptual frameworks of the people to whom it is addressed. In my reading of Buddhist history, the play of historical events across the centuries drew out from the Dharma different layers of significance embedded in the original teaching as Buddhists attempted to interpret and apply the Dharma in the light of changing cultural, intellectual, and social horizons. Therefore, if we look for an explicit program of socially engaged Buddhism in the early discourses of the Buddha, we may come away disappointed, and the reason is simple: the historical conditions were simply not yet suitable for the Dharma to be given a socially engaged application in the way we know it today.

The dominant note of the Buddha’s teaching, as preserved in the most archaic records, is the quest for release from bondage to the round of repeated birth and death. The Buddha’s discourses speak constantly about such themes as impermanence and the all-pervasive truth of suffering; they recommend renunciation, seclusion, intensive meditation, and personal insight as the path to liberation. Because of this emphasis, some scholars, like Max Weber, describe early Buddhism as a movement completely oblivious to social and political concerns. However, it would be a grave misunderstanding of early Buddhism to regard its monastic and contemplative dimensions as exhaustive. If we carefully look through the Nikāyas, we find that the Buddha often instructed householders on issues relevant to their daily lives. He taught precepts that offered moral guidance; he explained the principles of karmic causation that determine ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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future happiness and suffering; he spoke about family relationships, social harmony, right livelihood, the household budget, the state economy, and even the governance of a country.

All such instruction manifests the ethical consciousness of early Buddhism, which has two principal strands. One is an ethic of restraint (vāritta), the other an ethic of virtue (cāritta). The ethic of restraint enjoins the observance of precepts, especially abstinence from actions harmful to others. It includes specifically monastic observances like the vinaya rules, restraint of the senses, and contentment with simple material requisites; but for all, it enjoins nonviolence, harmlessness, and patience. The ethic of virtue involves the active cultivation of worthy qualities of character like generosity, honesty, truthfulness, gentleness, kindness, and respect.

At the same time, we also can discern in the early teachings the nucleus of an altruistic ethic. There are, for example, the four “sublime qualities”: loving-kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and impartiality.

Though originally intended as meditative exercises, these qualities inevitably shape behavior and social attitudes. The Buddhist community is held together by the loving mutual support between the monastic and lay sectors: laypeople provide the monks and nuns with their simple requisites, and the monastics teach laypeople how to live by wholesome principles. The Buddha also enjoins the monks to travel throughout the land to teach the Dharma to all who would listen, thus promoting the good of the world through instruction that reveals the way to both material welfare and spiritual happiness.

Several of the Buddha’s discourses address the need to establish a just and harmonious political order, which early Buddhism sees as a foundation for moral and spiritual progress. A message that emerges from such texts is the government’s obligation to ensure for all its citizens a satisfactory standard of living. Poverty is the fundamental symptom of bad governance and the root of social disorder. Any government entitled to rule must remedy this condition or lose its claim to legitimacy.

In the early centuries following the Buddha’s demise, the figure that won the reverence of the Buddhist community was the Arahant, the fully liberated sage who has reached the goal of world-transcendence through self-discipline and contemplative insight. Such was the model established by the early Buddhist teachings, which still prevails in lands following Theravada Buddhism. In time, however, a paradigm shift in spiritual ideals occurred in some sections of the Buddhist community.

The exact process by which this shift occurred cannot be traced with precision, but at some point, attention turned from the Buddha’s explicit teachings to the figure of the Buddha himself, and an intense inquiry was

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launched into the long-term cosmic background behind his attainment of Buddhahood. These investigations culminated in an expanded conception of the Buddha and a new vision of the Buddhist path. The new formulation of the teaching emphasized not personal release from the cycle of rebirths but the career of the Bodhisattva, the aspirant for Buddhahood, as it extended over innumerable eons in the round of birth and death. This development brought into being a new expression of Buddhism that its followers called the “Great Vehicle,” or Mahayana.

The rise of the Mahayana transformed the Buddhist ethical consciousness, allowing values, ideals, and aspirations implicit in the Buddha’s mission to play a more determinative role in the Buddhist moral life. The driving force of the Bodhisattva career is great compassion, which motivates the The Mahayana Bodhisattva to make vast vows and pass innumerable lives preparing himself to attain Buddhahood. The transformed Buddhist Bodhisattva ideal gave the sense of empathy for the world, already evident in the early teachings, more ethical consciousness. precise conceptual endorsement and more diverse applications. The tension apparent in early Buddhism between the quest for the unconditioned and meritorious action within the world was resolved by conceiving the Bodhisattva path as a synthesis of profound cognitive realization and inexhaustible beneficent activity inspired by love and compassion for living beings.

The Bodhisattva’s aspiration to benefit others seeks concrete expression in various ways directed to fulfilling their mundane wishes, even their need for material resources. Whereas early Buddhism emphasized the lay Buddhist’s obligation to make offerings to the monastic order as an expression of reverence and a source of merit, the Mahayana sutras extended the range of generosity to include gifts to those afflicted by need and poverty. To do justice to such a concept, the Mahayana treatises found it necessary to add a new category to Buddhist ethics, supplementing the earlier ethic of restraint and the cultivation of positive virtues with “the ethic of benefiting sentient beings.” A good example is Samantabhadra’s vow from the fortieth chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra: “I would be good medicine for the sick, a guide for those who are lost, a light for those in darkness, and a store of treasures for those afflicted by poverty.”

We can already see that the values which underpin the Bodhisattva ideal anticipate in important respects the agenda of socially engaged Buddhism. While seeking the lofty goal of Buddhahood, the Bodhisattva assumes responsibility for actively promoting the material well-being ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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of others, even when doing so entails taking up mundane duties. As Buddhism evolved in India and Sri Lanka, the Bodhisattva ideal did not remain confined to Mahayana communities but was also absorbed into the schools of mainstream Buddhism, including the Theravada. Within these schools it acted as a catalyst on the ethical consciousness, evoking and intensifying the altruistic strain already present in early Buddhist ethics. In the Theravada countries of southern Asia, the conviction spread that a king should be a follower of the Bodhisattva path, and the ethical prescriptions laid down for a Bodhisattva came to be considered obligatory for a rightful Buddhist monarch. Perhaps it is because the Theravada, too, came to stress the active ethic of altruistic deeds that some of the most influential, visionary, and pragmatic expressions of engaged Buddhism arose in the south Asian Theravada countries.

Even in the Mahayana texts, however, the ethical implications of boundless love and compassion are highly idealized. The lofty heights of altruism are expressed in vows and aspirations, celebrated in poems and legends, embodied in ceremony and ritual. In terms of actual practice, however, for the Mahayana as it was lived, altruism generally took such traditional forms as teaching the Dharma, cultivating the meditations on love and compassion, dedicating merits, and helping the poor and destitute through individual acts of charity. In other words, the practice of the Mahayana Bodhisattva path may not have been very different from mainstream Buddhist practice.

The next phase in the evolution of Indian Buddhism occurred with the emergence of Vajrayana Buddhism. However, because Vajrayana practices are esoteric, and because theoretically Vajrayana builds upon the Bodhisattva ideal of the Mahayana, I will not give it separate attention.

4. The Rise of Socially Engaged Buddhism in Asia At this point, I want to connect the rise of socially engaged Buddhism to the two evolutionary trends that I have just sketched: the evolution of human culture and the evolution of the Buddhist ethical consciousness.

Since socially engaged Buddhism first arose in Asia in the middle years of the twentieth century, I will begin there.

In Asia, social activism inspired by Buddhist principles certainly goes back to the days of the Buddha, whose ethical guidelines for rulers and ordinary people had major social ramifications. Nevertheless, I would contend that socially engaged Buddhism in Asia, as we know it today, arose as a response to a particular problem, namely, the process

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of modernization with its trail of negative consequences: foreign domination, widening inequalities in wealth and social status, market capitalism, materialism, and the ordeal of fratricidal wars. Viewed in relation to the process of cultural evolution that I sketched above, it seems to me that socially engaged Buddhism was born from the need felt by Buddhist leaders to help Buddhism make the transition from a traditional culture to a modern one.

However, when thoughtful Buddhists took up this task in earnest, they recognized soon enough that Western modernism did not comfortably fit their spiritual heritage. As they looked more deeply into Buddhist texts and teachings, as well as into their customary social norms, they found in Buddhism ideals and values that could be used to create an attractive alternative to the Western version of modernity. These principles, they realized, could help their countries and communities deal with the problems posed by modernization in ways more compatible with their historical background than Western models.

Although Buddhist activists initially intended to create a modernized form of Buddhism, what emerged over time among the most insightful leaders was a version of the Dharma that more closely fits the paradigm of postmodern culture as I sketched it above. Buddhist modernism prevailed in the early phase and still dominates among mainstream reformers, but progressive Buddhist thinkers have moved ahead in constructing a form of engaged Buddhism that better exemplifies postmodern values. Though few of these leaders may even have heard the word postmodernism, the postmodern character of Asian engaged Buddhism can be seen in the following: • its preference for decentralized modes of organization (e.g., Sarvodaya, the International Network of Engaged Buddhists); • its attempt to broaden traditional values by conferring on them a universal dimension (e.g., the Dalai Lama’s emphasis on “universal responsibility”); • the merging of contemplation with social activism (exemplified by Sarvodaya, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and Thich Nhan Hanh); • the emphasis on interdependence and interconnectedness (especially seen in the works of Thich Nhat Hanh); • ecological awareness and appreciation of diversity (seen in virtually all the engaged Buddhist leaders); • a “deconstruction” of the sense of Buddhist identity, based on the conception of the Dharma as a path to be practiced—“a raft to cross to the far shore”—and not a religion to be promoted with competitive intent (e.g., Sulak Sivaraksa’s advocacy of “buddhism with a small b”).

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These values differ from those of mainstream Buddhist modernists, who seek to adapt Buddhism to conventional models of technological and economic development. These latter are far more conscious of their sense of Buddhist identity and consequently less open to such ideas as religious pluralism and acceptance of diversity.

The specific approach the progressive Buddhist leaders in Asian countries took in response to the harsh challenges that the modern world thrust upon their lands was to adopt the more positive values of modernity, insofar as they were compatible with the Dharma, and use them as a template for applying Buddhism to the solution of social problems. And what were these values? They were largely the values that had been advanced by the great thinkers of the European Enlightenment: social justice, political freedom, economic equality, democracy, and the unity of mankind. The Asian founders of socially engaged Buddhism, who were largely educated in English, found that such ideals resonated with the Buddha’s teachings, and thus they had little difficulty in consolidating them into the agenda for a new expression of Buddhism that promised to heal the damage inflicted by decades of colonialism, rapid modernization, and the new cult of greed and selfishness ushered in by free-market economics. The result was the simultaneous emergence clear across Buddhist Asia (including India) of movements that responded to the destructive influence of modernity by a three-step process: • seek out the positive values of modernity, the values advocated by progressive thinkers and activists in the West; • find their counterparts in classical Buddhism; and then • use the Buddhist principles as guideposts for changing society.

These Buddhist activists, for the most part, did not think they were creating something called “socially engaged Buddhism.” Almost all thought of themselves as revivalists whose task was to recover the original intent of the Buddha. They saw themselves simply as expressing that intent in ways they considered most relevant to the contemporary situation. Their Buddhism would be realistic, democratic, and egalitarian; it would be committed to social justice; it could address the problems posed by corporate and collectivist economics; it would be respectful of modern science but would not subscribe to science-based materialism; it would insist on the peaceful, nonviolent resolution of conflicts; it would be capable of healing the dislocations, social alienation, and destructive behavior springing from the unenlightened modernist consciousness.

Contrary to the revivalist intention, however, socially engaged Buddhism in Asia does propose in certain respects a reorientation of

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priorities within the Buddhist tradition. The engaged Buddhist thinkers certainly draw upon such Buddhist principles as interconnectedness, selflessness, the four noble truths, and mindfulness, but they also deploy these concepts in quite different ways from classical Buddhism. Thus, in terms of goals, a decisive shift in emphasis occurs, away from the attainment of transcendent liberation or a heavenly rebirth through the practice of conventional meritorious deeds such as supporting monks, undertaking precepts, and performing devotional rituals. Instead, the focus turns to the task of transforming the oppressive systemic structures that cause grave suffering for people in this present world of concrete experience. Accordingly, engaged Buddhists give the doctrine of karma a broader, more socially germane interpretation than traditional Buddhism, balancing the stress on individual responsibility for one’s deeds with a recognition of the complex cause-and-effect patterns that flow between social structures, and between social structures and personal agents. Engaged Buddhist thinkers promote meditation, but their meditative practices are not so much aimed at release from the cycle of rebirths as at developing a loving heart, healing anger and resentment, obtaining deeper insights into the relational nature of social processes, and building the inner calm one needs to engage in socially ameliorative action. Leadership roles also shift away from spiritually accomplished monks to educated, creative, charismatic lay teachers who bring their sophistication in mundane matters to their interpretations of the Dharma.

Thus we find such prominent leaders of engaged Buddhism in Asia as Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne, founder of the Sri Lankan Sarvodaya movement; Sulak Sivaraksa, prolific Thai social critic and peace activist; and the Indian pioneer of the Dalit Buddhist conversions, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.

In short, the founders of Asian socially engaged Buddhism are not drawing upon a version of the Dharma that fits into a traditionalist mold, nor have they simply returned to an archaic original Buddhism. Rather, they have fashioned a version of the Dharma that best fits a postmodernist cultural perspective.

5. Socially Engaged Buddhism in America In the United States, engaged Buddhism took a different route. Because Buddhism gained a following among Caucasian Americans disenchanted with the materialistic excesses of modern culture, American Buddhism was from the start largely a postmodern phenomenon. Most of its early practitioners were university educated but had “dropped out” from the daily grind of middle-class life—the “air-conditioned nightmare”— ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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to explore alternative lifestyles and altered states of consciousness. Not infrequently, such adventures into the farthest reaches of the mind were accomplished with pharmaceutical aids. Many early American Buddhists came of age during the years of the Vietnam War and had walked in marches chanting “Make love, not war.” While their minds had been illuminated by reading Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki, their emotions had been stirred by the songs of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. They believed in sharing, caring, and nonviolence and dreamt beautiful dreams about a bright and peaceful future.

Yet, while a commitment to social transformation is characteristic of the postmodern consciousness, it took until the late 1970s for a socially engaged manifestation of American Buddhism to appear. This does not mean that the early American Buddhists were indifferent to the wellbeing of society. Perhaps the reason it took so long for socially engaged Buddhism to arise in the United The idea of a Buddhist States is that the pioneering generations of American peace movement imme- Buddhists did not consciously connect their desire for social change with their commitment to Buddhist practice. During this early period, Buddhism was usually diately resonated with seen not as a catalyst for social transformation but as a retreat or escape from the pressures of modern life.

American Buddhists.

Thus, such early American Buddhists may have ordered their lives along two tracks: social activism during periods of “ordinary time” and Buddhist meditation as a balancing act, a way of “returning to stillness” or “recharging one’s mental batteries” before reentering the fray of action.

It was only with the establishment of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship in 1977 that anything like a self-conscious American form of engaged Buddhism took shape. The idea of a Buddhist peace movement immediately resonated with large numbers of American Buddhists, and before long practitioners from almost all the major Buddhist traditions in North America united under the banner of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

Buddhists in many other communities as well have become involved with diverse projects aimed at relief and social transformation. These exhibit a broad range: protesting the war in Iraq, promoting ecological awareness, assisting poor children in the inner cities, caring for people with AIDS, providing meditation instructions to prisoners, campaigning against nuclear energy, and supporting human rights in Tibet, Burma, and Vietnam.

Those who came to the Dharma because it offered methods to calm the mind soon found that its various schools preserved a rich legacy of

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social ethics inspired by compassion and rooted in profound philosophical insights into the nature of the self and the cosmos. Buddhist ethics seemed to endorse many of the same ideals as the progressive social and political movements in the West but offered a peaceful, nonaggressive, and nonconfrontational methodology for pursuing these ideals. Thus, a fortuitous convergence occurred between American Buddhists with progressive social sympathies and those outside the fold of Buddhism who saw the need for radical changes in U.S. institutions and policies relating to peace, social justice, and environmental sustainability. Today, the ideals and values that Americans bring to Buddhism are precisely those characteristic of our own postmodern culture, which Buddhism supports with a deep philosophical foundation and concrete practices that can transform these ideals into living experience. But there are also points of tension between American social idealism and classical forms of Buddhism, which can lead both to divergences and to fresh resolutions in an embracing higher synthesis.

6. Reflections on Socially Engaged Buddhism Up to this point, I have been trying to connect the rise of socially engaged Buddhism with the evolution of human culture through the traditional, modernist, and postmodernist stages. In this movement of Buddhist ethics through the successive stages of human culture, we might see another process at work, which I would describe as the historical unfolding of an inner dynamics inherent to Buddhism itself. The ethics of early Buddhism has a predominantly twofold character—vāritta and cāritta, an ethic of restraint and an ethic of positive virtues. Alongside these, indeed as their core, we also see an altruistic ethic animating the Buddha’s mission. We can discern this in the Buddha’s injunction to his disciples to wander forth and teach the Dharma for the good of the multitude, in the emphasis on generosity as the first virtue of the moral life, in the four divine abodes (brahmavihāras), in the mutual support of Sangha and laity, and in his own selfless deeds in teaching and transforming others.

The rise of Mahayana Buddhism placed greater stress on the altruistic side of Buddhist ethics, expressed in the Bodhisattva vow to work for countless eons in order to liberate beings from suffering. Thus the Mahayana might be seen as ushering in a second stage in the development of the Buddhist ethical consciousness. The Bodhisattva vow, as we saw, involves a determination to promote the material well-being and physical security of beings as well as their moral and spiritual welfare. But while Mahayana Buddhism encouraged a readiness to promote the welfare of beings in ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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any way required, it appears that most Mahayana Buddhists throughout history acted on their vows in quite traditional ways. To the extent that any form of Buddhism ventured into the wider social arena, it did so mainly by influencing those individuals who played the most decisive roles in formulating social policy, namely, the king and regional governors.

Socially engaged Buddhism might be seen as a third stage in the unfolding of Buddhist ethics, a stage at which the altruistic intent expressed in the Bodhisattva vow seeks to be translated into socially and politically transformative action on a scale only made possible through the ascendancy of postmodern values and perspectives. Interestingly, the conviction that compassion must be demonstrated by social action has also gained wide acceptance among Theravadins, who can claim as their own some of the boldest and most creative pioneers of engaged Buddhism, such as A. T. Ariyaratne in Sri Lanka; Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Sulak Sivaraksa, and the monk-philosopher Phra Payutto in Thailand; and the late Cambodian prelate, Maha Ghosananda.

Socially engaged Buddhism has many faces, ranging from the doctrinally conservative to the freely experimental, but those who make social engagement the main expression of their Buddhist commitment offer, in certain respects, a different perspective on the Dharma from classical Buddhism. Classical Buddhism, in various ways, accommodates socially beneficent activity into its framework through traditional categories. For mainstream Theravada it might be seen as a type of meritorious deed, as wholesome karma leading to a happy rebirth, or as a practice of the pāramitās, the virtues needed for enlightenment. For mainstream Mahayana Buddhism, socially engaged action would be seen as a way of practicing the Bodhisattva path, particularly the perfection of giving (dāna-pāramitā) and skillful means (upāya).

Despite certain differences, it seems that all forms of classical Buddhism locate the final goal of compassionate action in a transcendent dimension that lies beyond the flux and turmoil of the phenomenal world. For the Mahayana, the transcendent is not absolutely other than phenomenal reality but exists as its unifying principle or inner core.

However, just about all classical formulations of the Mahayana, like the Theravada, begin with a devaluation of phenomenal reality in favor of a transcendent state in which spiritual endeavor culminates.

It is for this reason that classical Buddhism confers an essentially instrumental value on socially beneficent activity. Such activity can be a contributing cause for a happy rebirth, the attainment of nibbāna, or the realization of Buddhahood. It can be valued because it helps create better conditions for the moral and meditative life, or because it helps to lead

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others to the Dharma; but ultimate value, the overriding good, is located in the sphere of transcendent realization. Since socially engaged action pertains to a relatively elementary stage of the path, to the practice of giving or the accumulation of merits, in classical Buddhism it tends to play a secondary role in the spiritual life. The primary place belongs to the inner discipline of meditation through which the ultimate good is achieved. And this discipline, to be effective, normally requires a high degree of social disengagement.

This does not mean that classical Buddhism lacks a component of altruistic engagement during and after the contemplative quest for enlightenment. However, its conception of engagement differs from that of socially engaged Buddhism. Altruistic action in a classical framework would consist primarily in sharing with others personally transformative practices, such as observing precepts, cultivating the ten ways of wholesome action, or pursuing the three trainings in morality, concentration, and wisdom. Such procedures will indeed have significant social repercussions, but that is not their primary intent. Their primary intent is to promote the spiritual development of the practitioner and thereby contribute to his or her enlightenment and liberation.

Many involved with socially engaged Buddhism look at socially transformative action in a different light. Compared with classical Buddhism, they place much more weight, at least explicitly, on remedial action within the world, seeking to remove oppressive social conditions, redress poverty, resist tyranny, combat environmental destruction, and protest tyrannical regimes. The In classical Buddhism leading figures in socially engaged Buddhism may be practicing in different traditions, whether Theravada, the primary intent of Zen, Pure Land, Tibetan, or vipassana, but whatever their affiliation as practitioners, just about all socially social engagement is the engaged Buddhists see engaged activity within the world not merely as part of the path to liberation, spiritual development of not merely as a practice with instrumental value—a meritorious deed or a pāramitā whose value derives the practitioner. from the transcendent aim towards which it aspires— but as a project endowed with intrinsic and ultimate value. To alleviate the suffering of beings, and to do so by altering the political, economic, and social structures that cause this suffering: such a task requires no justification external to itself but is seen as inherently worthy. The goal, moreover, is not, as in classical Buddhism, to attain liberation from the world—whether through nirvanic peace or a Buddha’s perfect enlightenment—but to actualize a liberation within ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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the world, namely, the liberation of people from oppressive social and political conditions, which is to be pursued and realized through socially transformative action.

To some degree, engaged Buddhism shares certain attitudes with Mahayana Buddhism, which depicts the advanced Bodhisattva as choosing to aid beings within the world of pain and suffering rather than to step out of samsara and realize nirvana. Nevertheless, there still seems to me a significant difference between classical Mahayana Buddhism and contemporary engaged Buddhism. Classical Mahayana sees the Bodhisattva as intent on leading others from ignorance to enlightenment, from samsara to nirvana, a mission that prioritizes transcendence. The aim may be facilitated and prepared for by “mundane” deeds motivated by compassion, such as generosity or helpful actions, but these good deeds are expedients; they are “skillful means” to lead others to the Dharma. The goal is still transcendent realization, and social engagement is a means to “cross over” to others, to lead them to this goal. Engaged Buddhism, in contrast, sees the path of compassion, of active commitment to the wellbeing of others in the secular sphere of human life, as an intrinsic good, not as a stepping-stone towards some higher good. Actions for the sake of peace, human rights, economic justice, and an end to discrimination are taken as worthy ends in themselves, not merely because they make it easier for others to practice the Dharma or because such advocacy attracts others to Buddhism. Even when social action does not particularly aim to lead others to the Dharma, it can still fit comfortably into the program of socially engaged Buddhism.

Despite lines of continuity with the past history of Buddhism, it therefore seems to me that socially engaged Buddhism also involves to some degree a reorientation of priorities. By making social transformation not merely an aspiration of Dharma practice but an overriding concern, certain socially engaged Buddhists seem to be introducing a new dimension to the Dharma never entertained before, at least not on such a scale. Their innovations may well mark a commendable step forward in the ethical evolution of Buddhism. They certainly correspond with contemporary suppositions that altruistic action should be adopted on the ground that it benefits others, and not because it contributes to the fulfillment of one’s own ends, however laudable they might be. However, between classical Buddhism and certain expressions of socially engaged Buddhism a tension remains, a contest of ideals and attitudes.

I can best characterize this tension with a series of questions, which are especially pertinent to myself as a Buddhist monk:

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• Didn’t the Buddha emphasize renunciation, withdrawal, and detachment, and if so, what happens to these imperatives when we are asked to work for the social uplift of the world?

• Should an inwardly disciplined monk or nun leave the quietude of the monastery to study economics, sociology, and political science in order to be better equipped to deal with issues pertinent to these disciplines? Wouldn’t lay people be able to address these problems more effectively than monks and nuns?

• Don’t monastics and contemplatives also perform a social service just by being who they are, without actively working for social change, and if so, why should they be encouraged to work for social change in more tangible, mundane ways?

• If the task of responding to the great global problems of humanity falls to the lay Buddhists, what happens to the monastic Sangha as the authoritative Buddhist institution established by the Buddha himself?

Doesn’t such an agenda run the risk of driving the monastics to the sidelines of Buddhism’s mission for the world?

• If socially transformative activity is an intrinsic good, what becomes of Buddhist philosophy, scriptural study, and meditation? Will they be ultimately subordinated to social and political action in the world?

• Won’t this lead to new conceptions of enlightenment and liberation that make the older, time-honored ideals of Buddhism appear dated and irrelevant? And would this mark the progress of the Dharma in today’s world or a deviation from its original mission? Or is there some middle ground that can reconcile the two trends?

I do not claim to have the answers to these questions. But I do believe they need to be explored in depth, with full seriousness of intent. Perhaps a key to formulating answers lies in the simile which I introduced at the beginning of this lecture, that of the Earth held in place through the balancing of the centripetal force of gravity with the centrifugal force of its own momentum. To retain its status as a form of Buddhism, socially engaged Buddhism must constantly look back for guidance to the Buddha’s enlightenment, the fundamental teachings, and the classical scriptures of the various Buddhist schools. To engage with society, it must look outward, seeking ways to apply the teachings to the healing of social ills. Excessive focus on the first tendency could result in a religious or contemplative Buddhism that lacks a clearly articulated social conscience, a Buddhism aimed at securing inner peace at the expense of compassionate action in the world. Excessive focus on the latter tendency could result in a social and political agenda with ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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minimal claims to be Buddhist, which takes from Buddhism merely vague ideas of interconnectedness and altruistic intentionality supported by the practice of mindfulness.

In my reflection, however, I also recognize that the task of trying to justify engaged Buddhism by appeal to Buddhist scriptures, doctrines, and ancient precedent may be misguided. Buddhism has always evolved, from epoch to epoch, and has enriched its legacy by giving birth to diverse schools, systems, and forms of practice that preserve the spirit of the Dharma even while varying in the way they embody that spirit.

Sometimes one new incarnation of the Dharma turns quite dramatically against its predecessors, in which its proponents believe the spirit has become vapid and ossified. Sometimes the new incarnation comfortably merges with its predecessor, or fertilizes it so that the older form unfolds potentials dormant within itself.

In the present era, I think, there is a need for a creative revitalization of the Dharma in order that it might expand its range of resources for healing human suffering. I especially believe it is urgently necessary for Buddhists to contribute their voice to the global conversation taking place among many religious and spiritual people intent on creating a healthy and secure future for humanity. If we do not speak out, I ask myself, what is the use of our lofty rhetoric about compassion, peace, and loving-kindness? If we do not work with others to forge viable solutions to the great problems that threaten human beings today, won’t we be failing humanity at the very time that it most needs our help, and the help of the Dharma?

There are ruthless, unscrupulous forces at work today causing immense misery for humans and animals alike all across the planet: those at the helm of oppressive political systems, those who promote racial and ethnic discrimination, who rape our natural environment, who pursue quick profits without regard for long-term consequences, who foment violence and war, who profit from trade in deadly weapons, who exploit and murder millions of animals. The intent to liberate beings from suffering requires not only changes in attitudes among individuals intent on harming others but also changes in the systems that permit this to happen—changes at increasingly higher levels, even challenges to the basic assumptions that gird our political and social reality. Clearly, as Buddhists we have a solemn duty to redress the suffering of the world and to do so by seeking to alter the structures that produce and sustain it.

I strongly believe that the emergence of a compelling sense of social conscience among Buddhists is a critical need of our time. This I take to be a new stage in the unfolding of the Buddhist ethical consciousness but

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a stage that is both deeply rooted in ancient tradition and thrust upon us by the critical conditions of our era. Too often we Buddhists have been either complacent or naïve about the way the world works. To fulfill our obligation to sentient beings, we have to examine, understand, and address the immense global problems that confront humanity today.

The four noble truths provide the ideal template for a program of transformative action: first, diagnose the forms of suffering; second, seek their underlying causes; third, assess the possibility of removing the causes; and fourth, apply the method to remove them. But merely theoretical models are not enough. When it comes to alleviating systemic suffering, we have to move forward by applying the method.

In the face of our collective crisis, we should not turn our backs on the countless beings who depend on us for help, including future generations.

In my own thinking, I always return to the canonical statement that a Buddha arises out of compassion for the world—for the good, welfare, and happiness of many. In our own time, when destructive social institutions and policies cause such immense harm, and even threaten the survival of human life on Earth, it should become our mission, in carrying out the Buddha’s intent, to offer Buddhist alternatives to the policies and institutions that cause so much misery and damage. Of course, such a program requires major changes in people’s views, attitudes, and conduct, and thus inevitably involves personal transformation. But it also requires that we work for the transformation of systemic forces, doing so in the light of the special insights of the Dharma.

I would say that the crucial mission imposed on us by the conditions of our time is to embody a Buddhist conscience in response to the world’s suffering. This means that we have to adopt a sense of personal responsibility arising from our recognition that the task of liberating other sentient beings from suffering is ultimately our own task and, that by working in harmony with other people seeking a better world, we have the capacity to change things. If we can apply the wisdom of the Dharma to save humanity from a plunge into reckless self-destruction, this is certainly enough of a justification for the effort to create a socially engaged Buddhism. Ultimately we may have no other choice. 

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In Search of an Authentic Engaged Buddhism Voices from Ancient Texts, Calls from the Modern World Raoul Birnbaum Abstract: Raoul Birnbaum, a leading scholar of the Chinese traditions of Mahayana Buddhism, explores the roots of Buddhist engagement as described in the sutras. In particular, he points to the bodhisattva’s vows to dedicate the merit of his or her practice to the benefit and liberation of all beings. Professor Birnbaum’s talk was paired with the previous article by Bhikkhu Bodhi as part of the Eighth Annual Hsüan Hua (Xuanhua) Memorial Lecture in April 2009.

I

Introduction

am very happy to be here with you this evening, where I have the opportunity to speak on the topic of Buddhist engagement. Bhikkhu Bodhi has addressed this topic from a historical perspective, and I will speak based on readings of Mahayana texts, most especially some works that have been important in the Chinese traditions.

I have long wanted to meet Bhikkhu Bodhi, whose work I admire, so I have to thank the kind organizers of this event for somehow responding to this unspoken wish and creating the circumstances by which he and I have met to think together about this topic. Our intent has been to think very carefully and positively about what it might mean for a Buddhist to be engaged, or an engaged person to be at the same time a Buddhist.

Here of course we are not speaking of matrimony but of a particular kind of attentive relation to other people, other creatures, and events in the world. This matter, I believe, goes to the very heart of Mahayana practice. I am hopeful that the topic we have chosen and our attempt at a constructive approach form an appropriate way to honor the memory of Ven. Master Hua, in whose name this lecture series has been endowed.

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Indeed, it is my hope that this kind of event continues the fundamental work to which he dedicated so many years of his life here in California —the application of Buddhist principles, based especially on attentive study of Buddhist sutras.

What then does it mean to be “in search of an authentic engaged Buddhism”? For me to be “in search” of something means that I do not intend to presume to dictate or specifically define that something in a restrictive way. To say that this particular something is “authentic” may intrude into problematic territory, as if I as an individual have assumed the authority to make pronouncements and assertions about the acts of others, but that certainly is not my intention. I think of “authentic” in the same way it is suggested in the last line of the quatrain that some Chinese Buddhists chant when they begin to study a sutra. That verse states: The incomparably profound, subtle, and marvelous Teaching— Difficult to encounter even in hundreds, thousands, ten thousands of aeons.

I now have the opportunity to hear it and hold it in my grasp, And I vow to comprehend the Tathāgata’s genuine meaning.

It is that sense of “genuine meaning,” or “authentic meaning,” whatever that might be, that I would like to search for in thinking about Buddhist engagement.

The Vimalakīrti Sutra urges that one ought to “[r]ely on the Dharma and not rely on a person,”1 and so I take that seriously and look specifically at verbal storehouses of the Dharma—the Mahayana sutras—as the source-realm within which authenticity may be found. Of course, the Mahayana sutras constitute a vast territory, one that encompasses a wide range of views and practices,2 so to be reasonable and actually have something coherent to say, I will focus on a core set of sutras that long have been fundamental to Chinese Buddhist traditions.

As to the word Buddhism, I find it awkward to speak about some reified entity—some independent and firmly bounded thing—that bears this name. It is a comfortable and familiar concept for which a specific reality is difficult to find. When my students use this dreaded word, I often say to them, “Who?” Sometimes people declare that “Buddhism says this or that,” or they may assert that “in Buddhism there is such-and-such a view.”

But of course in this regard one can only speak of Buddhists of particular times and places, or one can speak of Buddhist texts, or perhaps of specified Buddhist traditions and their material, intellectual, and social productions.

From my point of view, there is no Buddhism that speaks on its own, no capacious “Buddhism” entity that contains things within itself. Still, in

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In Search of an Authentic Engaged Buddhism

creating a title for the lecture, we could not very well presume to be “in search of an authentic engaged Buddhist”! That would be too rude. It suggests that I assume myself qualified to determine who is or is not “authentic” and that I somehow seek to assert some kind of disciplinary role.

Beyond authenticity, the matter of engagement is the key issue here.

There is the familiar contemporary term engaged Buddhism, which is a social and political movement that can be traced back to the Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and his cohorts,3 who themselves were influenced by a modernist movement in early twentieth-century China made most visible through publications by the monk Taixu and his circle. All of this now has developed in various contemporary forms in South and Southeast Asia, China and Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and the West. The term suggests political and social engagement—a concern for social justice, a concern for helping the economically disadvantaged, a concern for aiding the unfortunate, a concern for the environment. This is part of what we want to focus on—this concern, set into practical action—but also we want to think about the broadest dimensions of what it might mean to be “engaged.”

And in this lecture, as the title states, we promise to heed calls from the modern world by bringing forth articulate voices from ancient texts.

In this context, since I have proposed that a Buddhist engagement that has some authenticity is rooted in the principles expressed in Buddhist sutras, that is where I now will turn, and I will try to construct an argument, step by step.

Questions and Motivations The titles of Mahayana sutras, especially the alternate or secondary titles, can give a good sense of what each text is about. But the pivot points of the text often are framed as questions.4 If you look for the questions, then in many Mahayana texts, you will have a sharp view of what is critical to that particular text. In some texts these moments are highlighted and unmistakable, while in others they appear at first glance as minor diversions or byways from the main discourse. But they are these questions that often haunt a reader long after the text has been put aside. These questions work again and again as provocateurs, as agents that chip away at long-held assumptions and firmly established constructions about the nature of reality.

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some kind of reality beyond the conventionally fictive. That is the mode I will take here in order to approach the larger topic of engaged Buddhism from viewpoints suggested by Mahayana sutras.)

These questions usually are posed to Śākyamuni Buddha, but sometimes it is Śākyamuni himself who directs them to his students, or they arise from one of the interlocutors and just hang in the air. In a unique instance found in the last section of the Avataṁsaka Sutra, the young hero Sudhana takes his basic question—How should a bodhisattva practice in order to achieve complete awakening?—and carries it with him for many years on a pilgrimage across India, posing it to teacher after teacher. Whether the heroic figures in the texts produce the questions or are the recipients, the targets, of what sometimes appears to be an interrogatory assault, these questions animate them as individuals. It is worth bearing in mind that most often it is the greatest disciples who ask the simplest questions.

Indeed, the questions—and the role they play in the unfolding of the texts—seem so significant that a person immersed in the world of Mahayana sutras may soon come to think that simple, basic questions are fundamental to progress. By extension, one might also suppose that without questions, nothing much will happen for you. Put another way, if we take the sutras as reliable guides, engagement on the Mahayana Buddhist path is sparked by questions that are deeply felt and profoundly thought through. If we follow the lead of Mahayana sutras, then we might reasonably conclude that questions (good questions!) are the sign of a deeply engaged practitioner. From this point of view, a person who is passively still as a rock may be very calm but also may be in deep trouble.

Texts of the prajñā-paramitā (perfection of wisdom) class, likely among the earliest of the Mahayana sutras, present a maze of questions. In these works, teachings mainly are set out in the form of complex dialogues propelled by sharply focused probes. (It may be that this rhetorical mode springs from contemporaneous Indian debate traditions amongst learned thinkers, including Buddhists.) One of the shorter and most popular works among these texts, the Diamond Sutra, presents a cascade of questions and responses, mainly between Śākyamuni and one of his chief monastic disciples, Subhūti. The pivotal set is found directly after the opening scene is established, when Subhūti asks: “World-Honored One, as to good men and good women who have given rise to the thought of complete and perfect awakening, how should they abide, and how should they tame their minds?”5 Here we should understand that these “good men and good women” have entered the bodhisattva path and that they seek the particular goal

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of that path, anuttara samyaksaṁbodhi (complete and perfect awakening).

“How should they abide?” has multiple implications, and Chinese readings also can be understood equally as “Where should that person dwell?” or “What is the appropriate standpoint of that person?” Śākyamuni responds directly to the second part of the question, but his answer spills back over to the first part as well. He says (here I paraphrase) that bodhisattva-mahasattvas should tame their minds with this thought: “I will cause all living beings to enter into complete nirvana; I will rescue all of them How should I abide, completely. In this way I will liberate numberless, limitless beings of every conceivable type. And yet I and how should I tame will maintain the awareness that there are no living beings that obtain liberation.” Śākyamuni goes on to my mind? explain (and here I translate according to the way a Chinese reader without recourse to Sanskrit would understand this sentence): “Subhūti, if a bodhisattva holds in mind the concept of self, or person, or living beings, or lifespan, then that being is not truly a bodhisattva.”

Let me boil this down further. “You bodhisattvas should tame your minds by holding the following thought: I will rescue completely all the limitless number of beings in the universe and enable them to attain complete liberation, without producing the notion of an ‘I’ that does the saving or a ‘you’ that is being saved.”

This really is where our investigation of Mahayana engagement begins: in this pair of questions that are articulated and then continuously held in mind (“How do I abide?” and “How do I tame my mind?”); in the resolution of these questions in a solemn pledge to rescue all beings; and in the recognition of the fundamental emptiness of inherent individuated existence both of the rescuer and all these beings who are to be rescued. We will return to the issue of emptiness in a moment.

First, we can think more about this matter of rescuing all beings from suffering. After all, this particular commitment is the starting point of the bodhisattva path, the point from which everything proceeds. From the Diamond Sutra point of view, it is the lodging place, the standpoint or site at which a bodhisattva dwells.

Articulated Motivation In evaluating or in carefully examining activities of Buddhists, according to some eminent masters of the tradition, the place to look is motivation. For example, for an approach to this matter one may read the first ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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chapter of an early meditation manual written by the deeply learned Chinese teacher Zhiyi (538–597). This text, the Shi chan boluomi cidi famen (A sequential explanation of the Dharma-gate of the perfection of meditation), begins by clarifying the various motivations for practicing meditation, and it explains the likely fruit of accomplishment that is produced through assiduous application of the methods, in the context of these motivations.

Zhiyi writes of ten different possibilities—one meditates to gain health, to gain respect and a good reputation, to gain power, and so forth.

With these motivations, one can gain those particular results. But if one establishes from the start that one seeks to meditate in order to save all beings, an entirely different consequence is the result. Zhiyi makes clear that one does not start with “practice”; one starts by clarifying one’s motivations.6 Thus, practice is informed by views (ordinarily gained through sutra study, which is to say the study of Śākyamuni’s teachings). Zhiyi’s opening chapter thus poses a highly confrontational question by implication: Kind friend, you seek greater knowledge of meditative technique through study of this handbook, but what are your motivations?

The principle of compassion highlighted by Zhiyi and highlighted by the Diamond Sutra is engrained in traditional Chinese monastic training, at least the training that adheres to a well-established standard model.

One element of the early training of novice monks and nuns in Chinese Buddhist monasteries requires memorization of fifty-one mindfulness verses that are recited in the mind through the day. These verses are sutra-based; they are directly derived from chapter eleven of the Avataṁsaka Sutra.7 The mindfulness verses focus attention on the daily task or event at hand—washing the face, donning clothes, sitting down, hearing a bell, etc.—and many of them add a characteristic element, a wish for the well-being of all creatures.

The third of these verses concerns the sound of bells, a basic element of the soundscape of monastic life in China. When one hears a bell, one recalls that this sound can lighten obstructive faults and enable wisdom to increase and awakening to arise. It may enable beings to be rescued from the fires of the hell-realms. Mindful of this, as one hears this sound of the bell one vows to become a buddha and rescue all living beings.

The twelfth verse, to give another example, is recited when one washes one’s face: As I wash my face with this water, I wish that all beings May gain a pure method of practice And ever be unstained.

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In this basic training, intended for beginners but of course not restricted to them, we can see an attempt to direct the mind again and again toward the benefit of others, through all ordinary and usual activities, until this approach becomes a habitual state of mind and this way of thinking pervades all actions throughout the day and night. As with the constantly renewed articulation of a beneficial motivation for meditation practice, this repetitive assertion of vows and wishes to aid others becomes a mental foundation from which all activities spring.

The assumption is that dwelling in that particular mental standpoint will produce a trajectory, a certain arc, that makes possible the fruition of this wish.

One of the key issues here most certainly is articulated motivation.

From this point of view, two individuals may engage in the very same actions, but if they have different motivations for these actions, then the result that reverberates in the end will be different. Suppose, for example, that one founds a hospital or gives food to 10,000 starving people: if one’s motivation is social approbation, or if one’s motivation is to gain merit for a deceased relative, or if one seeks to assuage the guilt provoked by the very ways in which the wealth originally was amassed, or if one seeks to gain merit for one’s future lives, then from this point of view the ultimate result will be very different from the result of having performed these same acts simply motivated by the wish to rescue all beings from suffering. One might further extend this motivation to include the intention of aiding these suffering beings to gain complete awakening. In all cases suffering beings are given assistance, but the motivation will produce different results over the long term. The results will have an impact on the donor, and it may also have an impact on the recipients.

Let us explore this further by considering the role of vows and pledges in Mahayana sutras, because it is there that such motivations and aspirations are transformed from generalized notions into formally articulated statements.

The Power of Vows and Its Application While many of the Mahayana texts that highlight specific bodhisattvas and buddhas provide wide-ranging information about these figures of the pantheon, the titles of some of these texts point to an especially important matter: the power of vows. There is a clear sense that it is the vow, or set of vows, that has enabled a young bodhisattva to remain focused on the path. According to these texts, such vows carry over from life to life and ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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form a principal factor of continuity. If one maintains these vows, they generate an engine-like power that makes many things possible.

When we look to past-life tales of accomplished bodhisattvas and buddhas in Mahayana sutras, one of the steady indicators of success is the sincere formation of vows. Amitabha, for example, made forty-eight individualized vows, Bhaiṣajyaguru made twelve, and other buddhas also did this same thing, all long ago when they were early-stage bodhisattvas setting out on the path. The ten vows of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, found in the Avataṁsaka Sutra, are well-known to Chinese Buddhists because they are an important element of the Chinese monastic tradition’s morning liturgy. These vows to save all beings—using various specific methods—are presented as foundational causes for the present high status of these individuals. It is crucial to recognize that such tales are not restricted just to the most famous figures of the Mahayana pantheon; they are seen throughout Mahayana literature. The Lotus Sutra is especially animated by such passages.

“The bodhisattva dedicates all his or her merits for the benefit of all beings.” This assertion and pledge appears in a wide range of Mahayana sutras, ritual texts, and the daily monastic liturgy. While it may be seen as a kind of extravagant rhetorical filler by scholars habituated to the contents of such texts, who look for something new in each work that they read, I would like to suggest that the commonplace nature of this statement—even if extreme—points to its fundamental importance. This type of pledge lies at the heart of Mahayana practice.

What could it mean to dedicate all your merits to the benefit of sentient beings? In a trivial sense, perhaps, it is an imaginary donation, which may come at no particular cost to oneself. But more specifically, if we consider our “merits” to be all the wholesome fruits of past and present life activities—defined within Buddhist contexts as such matters as intelligence, physical strength and vitality, special talents, economic resources, and so forth—then this notion of dedicating one’s merits becomes less abstract, and it moves us toward the real possibility of sustained engagement.

Because no one person’s merits are the same as another’s, a wide range of types of constructive engagement become possible. Put simply, a person with a strong back but weak mind may be able to do things that are amazing from the point of view of a person with a weak back and strong mind. (And of course a person with a weak back and a weak mind may have his own particular talents that may be identified, his own particular way of contributing to the good of others.) Each may apply her or his talents and abilities for the common good of all beings. From this point

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of view, there are limitless modes of engagement. The issue, once again, is motivation, here coupled with ability. Thus, the notion that “engaged Buddhism” necessarily must be understood as very particular types of activities—helping the sick, the impoverished, the imprisoned, etc.—is unnecessarily limited (and in this sense, the authority of the concept is somewhat delusional).

In the end, I think we can see that authentic practice of the Mahayana way, if one takes the core sutras as the basic guide, absolutely requires “engagement” of many sorts. That indeed is the Mahayana complaint—put forward rightfully in those texts or not—against the arhat or pratyekabuddha paths: those two paths to awakening are described as fundamentally incomplete because there is no explicit articulation of compassion, and thus there is no expectation of compassionate activity.

Parenthetically speaking, I would like to interject that I am not convinced that compassion is in any way overlooked in the great assembly of early Buddhist texts, even if it may be overlooked by some practitioners of those traditions (and even as it may be overlooked, while perhaps given lip service, by some Mahayana practitioners). Thus, to be very clear, I am not setting up a kind of response or rebuttal to Bhikkhu Bodhi’s presentation or to the Pali text tradition as a whole. That would be absurd and inappropriate. But what I am doing is making an attempt to present this view of engagement from a distinctively Mahayana point of view, which may be expressed in a polemical or contentious manner in some texts as a way to highlight beyond any shadow of doubt the fundamental importance of compassion as an intrinsic component of any “authentic” awakening.

We should think briefly about some basic features of Mahayana vows.

They can be astonishingly wide-ranging in their scope. In addition to the clearly “spiritual” vows, there are many that address resolutely practical forms of aid, such as the provision of food, clothing, and medicine to those in need; emotional comfort in times of trouble; protection from thieves, attackers, wild animals, snakes, and noxious insects; and rescue at sea or from mountain precipices. These types of vows may be understood both in literal and symbolic ways. Very importantly—and this is a crucial point—these vows are often coupled with an ultimate intention of leading suffering beings to complete liberation, to complete awakening. For example, here is the seventh of Bhaiṣajyaguru’s twelve vows: I vow that when I attain awakening in a future age, if there are any sentient beings who are ill and oppressed; who have no one from whom they might seek aid and nowhere to return to; who have neither doctor ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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nor medicine, neither parents nor family; who are destitute and whose sufferings are acute—as soon as my name passes through their ears, they will be cured of all their diseases, with body and mind set at ease.

Their families and property will be plentiful, and they themselves will experience the supreme awakening.8 The point here is that bodhisattva vows do not focus simply on helping others to get on with life and be more comfortable with things. After all, that getting comfortable with things in a sense may be principally a skillful adaptation to circumstances that are fundamentally flawed; and so this adaptation then may strengthen delusional notions about the nature of samsaric life. The vows focus again and again on the aspect of liberation. It is precisely there, I think, that we have to see a significant element in the authenticity of a Mahayana engagement.

The Vow to Construct a Pure Land One way in which a bodhisattva seeks to fulfill a set of vows is by creating a “pure land,” a marvelous place where beings may be reborn to concentrate specifically on their inner cultivation. The pure land may be thought of conventionally as some place “out there” in the far reaches of our universe, a place that takes form when the bodhisattva finally becomes a buddha. So of course there are the famous pure lands of Amitabha Buddha (the Land of Peace and Happiness, also known as the Land of Bliss), or Bhaiṣajyaguru Buddha (the Lapis Lazuli Realm), or Akṣobhya Buddha (the Land of Wondrous Joy). There is also, as discussed in the tenth chapter of the Vimalakīrti Sutra, a certain land made of fragrance, where all teachings are communicated through perfumed scent (this is the land known as Host of Fragrances, presided over by the Buddha Accumulation of Fragrances). While pure lands may be thought of as exotic, distant, and rarified places, they also may be thought of as a place right here, as close as one’s own mind. These are two points that I want to explore further.

To create a pure land—an entire realm suitable as a dwelling place for those who seek liberation—is not a small matter. One could say that the mere production of this simple aspiration might be an accurate diagnostic for megalomania. But another characteristic of Mahayana thinking is that a bodhisattva does not restrict her or his plans or notions to the limits of a single lifetime. (This is stated clearly again and again in the version of the Diamond Sutra most widely read in China: “the bodhisattva who maintains concepts of self, person, living being, or lifespan cannot be called a bodhisattva.”) Instead, the bodhisattva sets out a grand aim

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and then works and strategizes to realize it some time in the future. The bodhisattva may have some well-developed skills that would be useful in creating and maintaining a pure land while other skills appear to elude her, and so she may practice again and again at some matter for which she appears manifestly ill-suited. The intent is to lay the groundwork for the future, to begin building a new pattern that will come to fruition in future lives.

The bodhisattva may start in a small way and then gradually attempt to manifest this vision on a larger scale. A teacher may attempt to construct a kind of pure land on a small scale, within a limited time frame, in a seminar room or lecture hall; or a business owner may do the same thing within her place of work. In the Chinese tradition, a Buddhist monastery may ideally recreate a pure land, beginning with a classic bounded physical environment, guided by codified rules of restrained behavior, and extending to a certain atmosphere that may pervade that space. Much, of course, depends on the leaders of the monastery, who set the tone and establish a living example. On a grander scheme, there are intentional communities that include both monastics and laypeople that should be seen within this specific context, such as the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in California founded by Master Hsüan Hua (Xuanhua), or Dharma Drum Mountain in Taiwan founded by Master Shengyan.

Yet for all this considerable talk in Mahayana sutras about creating and maintaining a discrete space that may be labeled as “pure,” there are other views about this matter that also are fundamental to our topic at hand. The question that animates the Vimalakīrti Sutra, introduced in the first chapter by a sophisticated lay practitioner as representative of a group of 500 lay bodhisattvas, is this request to Śākyamuni: “We wish to hear of the purity of the buddha-lands. Would the World-Honored One please explain the practices by which bodhisattvas purify these lands?” And the answer, within which the entire discourse of the sutra should be considered, is framed as a two-fold response: buddha lands (that is, pure lands) are found in sentient beings, and the pure land is one’s own mind.9 Thus, to create a pure land requires that one enter into the worlds of sentient beings, understand their mentalities and needs and conditions, and then act accordingly. But the pure land first depends on one’s own pure mind. Without establishing a pure mind as a first cause, how could it be possible to be effective in establishing a pure land for sentient beings?

One begins with the wish to be helpful, perhaps in a profound way, and then one learns that the effective application of this helpfulness must begin with transformation of one’s own mind. And then one must enter the worlds of sentient beings in order to truly express that compassion.

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Emptiness But what is the subject of that compassion? Now we have to return to a particular Mahayana element of this engagement, and to do so we can rely on the Diamond Sutra. One of the recurring themes of the Diamond Sutra centers on notions of giving or charity. But the giving is directed to whom? And the act is accomplished by whom? Śākyamuni teaches Subhūti from a variety of angles that the notion of an abiding self, one that is stable and eternal, is dubious, and the construction of reifying concepts about others is just as problematic. As soon as one rests in fixed notions about self or others, or even about the Buddha, one has fallen into delusion. From this awakened point of view, any acts entwined with such notions are deeply problematic.

Without this clear and unflinching view that all beings and all concepts are empty of self-nature, compassionate and charitable activities otherwise are structured around concepts of self and other: I do this for you, you do this for me. While such generous activities are wonderful things to accomplish and—according to basic Buddhist views—they cannot go unnoticed in the universe, they most certainly are not liberated acts. In a sense, then, they cannot constitute “authentic engagement.” So what we might speak of as “authentic engagement” is actually something profound and difficult to accomplish. In this sense, a serious Mahayana practitioner will constantly be in search of this authentic engagement as the hallmark of her or his practice. It is an ideal, one that may only rarely be accomplished but still may be constantly held in mind.

Coda: A Multiplicity of Engagements Underlying all of this discussion, at least in my mind, is the problem of delusion. What I am thinking about are some of the pitfalls in Buddhist engagement. One obvious pitfall may be experienced by the politically or socially engaged person who learns a bit about Buddhist matters and declares that his or her work is “engaged Buddhism,” and that these activities constitute “Buddhist practice.” Yet when one investigates, it appears that there is no particular change from the past to the present: the external activities remain the same and the internal approach remains the same, although now labeled differently. In what ways, then, might these activities and attitudes properly be thought of as “engaged Buddhism”? Or more to the point, what changes are needed to transform this engagement into something reasonably labeled as “Buddhist engagement,” other than the fact that a self-described Buddhist has engaged in

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these acts? It is true that these activities may produce realizations that lead to a deepened awareness, but the situation remains precarious if the individual’s motivations are not thoroughly examined and clarified.

Another kind of delusion resides in a righteous assertion or assumption of a fixed sense of the form in which Buddhist engagement must take.

There is a standard bit of Buddhist rhetoric that asserts there are 84,000 teachings, each of them suitable to particular beings at particular places and times. Every reasonably competent schoolteacher learns quickly that one size does not fit all, that different strategies and even profoundly different approaches must be taken to reach all the varied personalities in the classroom. And they learn that students come to maturity on their own timetable and in their own individualistic ways. How much more might this be so when the matter is as profound as “liberation”?

Some Mahayana sutras provide individual testimony from heroic individuals regarding how they personally attained to some degree of realization. In the Śūraṅgama Sutra, twenty-five individual practice methods are set forth by twenty-five accomplished beings, while in the Vimalakīrti Sutra the testimony of thirty-two bodhisattvas, plus Vimalakīrti himself present testimony regarding their individual methods of attaining nonduality. The Lotus Sutra presents a very wide range of practice methods in its twenty-eight chapters, thus giving a good sense of the extraordinarily broad set of approaches that a bodhisattva may take, in accordance with personality type, individual challenges and talents, and situational concerns. By extension, one can see the myriad possibilities through which Buddhist engagement may be expressed.

Another pitfall lies at the other end of the spectrum—a Buddhist practitioner who resists the very notion of engagement with the view that it is contrary to some fixed notion of “Buddhist practice.” Bear in mind the dramatic scene in second chapter of the Lotus Sutra: a large group in the assembly walks out when Śākyamuni Buddha begins to teach about the compassionate way of the bodhisattva. These are not drifting idlers in the back of the hall; it is a substantial group of 5,000 monks, nuns, and laypersons who walk out. They have, according to the text, a sense of knowledge and accomplishment that was not matched by actual achievement. While the scene may be treated as a rhetorical device in a literary work and it may be understood simply as a polemical statement about non-Mahayanists, this textual moment—in which senior students assert that they have learned quite enough—points to an important principle, I think, that is worth pondering over in a personal way.

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sympathy is aroused, but then if one dwells on the passage and takes it seriously, it may also send a chill through one’s own blood and bones.

Early on in the text, in chapter three, Śākyamuni’s great senior disciple Śāriputra, a major figure in this text, is chided by his teacher. Śākyamuni speaks with him about the bodhisattva path, the path that is characterized by compassionate engagement for the sake of all beings: In the past, in the presence of twenty thousand millions of buddhas, for the sake of the Unexcelled Path, I constantly taught and transformed you. And through the long night of time, you have followed me and received my instruction. Because I led you by expedient means, you have been born [once again] into my Dharma. Śāriputra, long ago I taught you to aspire to the Buddha Path [understood in the Lotus Sutra as achieved via the bodhisattva route]. But you now have completely forgotten. Instead, you say to yourself that you already have gained extinction. Now once again, because I seek to cause you to recall the path you walked in keeping with your vows made in the past, for all the voice-hearers’ sake I preach this scripture of the Great Vehicle named the Lotus Blossom of the Marvelous Law, a Dharma taught to bodhisattvas, one that the buddhas protect and hold in mind.10 Śāriputra easily forgets the most important thing of all, and he is fortunate that he has a kind and patient teacher who comes back to instruct him once again. And indeed Śākyamuni has sufficient confidence in him that he predicts Śāriputra’s future attainment of complete awakening and his realization of a pure buddha-land. Śāriputra’s situation brings this talk to a conclusion, one that is distilled to a few questions. Having spoken this evening from a Mahayana point of view about engagement as an accomplished bodhisattva’s natural state of being—as the standpoint or dwelling place of a bodhisattva—let me conclude by raising these few questions: Why did Śāriputra forget? Or more to the point, if the great Śāriputra who is nurtured by countless buddhas and taught directly by Śākyamuni could forget again and again about the principle of compassionate engagement, what kind of effort is required of the rest of us? What kind of engagement, what quality of engagement is required that permits no forgetting, that produces continuity of attention and application without a single interruption? It is precisely that kind of engagement, I think, that in a Mahayana Buddhist context deserves to be labeled “authentic.” 

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Notes 1. There are three important Chinese translations of the Vimalakīrti; I rely here on the version that found widest acceptance in China, Kumārajīva’s early fifthcentury rendition. Weimojie soshuo jing, T. no. 1775, 38: 556c.

2. On the diversity of Mahayana, see for example Paul Williams, Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), 103.

3. See for example Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire: A Buddhist Proposal for Peace (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967). For an overview of the international movement and its principles, see most recently Sallie B. King, Socially Engaged Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009). The bibliography on this topic is enormous.

4. There also are titles of some relatively early Mahayana sutras that highlight this point, such as “The Questions of Mañjuśrī“ and “The Questions of Rāśtrapāla.”

A good many early Mahayana texts collected under the rubric Mahāratnakūta Sutra bear titles framed in this way.

5. I rely on Kumārajīva’s translation, which is the version most commonly memorized and recited in the Chinese tradition. Jin’gang bore boluomi jing, T. no. 235, 8: 748c749a. I provide readings here directly from the Chinese without recourse to Sanskrit versions in order to represent the text from an indigenous Chinese Buddhist viewpoint.

6. For this passage, see Zhiyi, Shi chan boluomi cidi famen, T. no. 1916, 46: 475c. The text is based on lectures given by Zhiyi in 571.

7. The verses are collected in the Pini riyong, credited to the Ming master Xingshi (d. early seventeenth century), Xu zangjing 106: 105b-128a; the most commonly used edition is the text plus commentary entitled Pini riyong qieyao, by the renowned late Ming-early Qing Vinaya master Jianyue Duti, Xu zangjing 106: 129a-137b. For the Huayanjing source, see Siksananda’s 8080-juan version, T. no. 279, 10: 69b-72a.

8. Yaoshi liuliguang rulai benyuan gongde jing, T. no. 450, 14: 405ab.

9. See Weimojie soshuo jing, T. no. 1775, 38: 538a.

10. Miaofa lianhua jing, T. no. 262, 9:11b.

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Buddhas behind the Razor Wire Hozan Alan Senauke Abstract: The author, who has been among the leaders in Buddhist social action and social services in the United States, recounts his work with Buddhist practitioners who are inmates in a women’s prison

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ocially engaged Buddhism, as I see it, is really not different from the Buddha Śākyamūni’s core teaching. He said, “I teach about suffering and the end of suffering.” But in this age of globalization and interdependence, socially engaged Buddhism widens the view of suffering and liberation beyond the focus on an individual or a small sangha (or practice community) to social systems and structures. These systems—cities, nations, races, genders, ecological regions, and so on—are of course made up of individuals. But an “individual,” in Buddhist terms, is itself an impermanent collection of causes and conditions. In Western countries we tend to think that the individual, the “I and mine,” exists within one particular bag of skin. The wider and deeper view is that we actually co-construct reality and identity. Taking a leap, I might say that the individual is created by the systems and interactions of all the infinite selves that constitute a system.

The practice of engaged Buddhism entails insight and action exactly where self and social structures come together, as one moves freely between them as appropriate. This effort—manifesting in areas of social change and protest, social service, environmental activism, hospice work, justice and democracy, civil rights, and more—is beyond charity or wellintentioned service. It has the potential to transform self and others alike.

What follows is my experience and understanding in just one of these realms of engagement.

At least once a month for the past eleven years, I’ve been driving out to FCI-Dublin, a federal women’s prison and prison camp twenty miles from my home in Berkeley. Having found a spot in the parking lot, I always take a few minutes to collect myself, reflecting that anything can happen ISSUE

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when I walk through the gates. I’m not thinking about outright violence by inmates or personal danger, although these are remote possibilities.

Rather I’m wondering whether I’ll find that the facility has been locked down and that I will have to turn around and go home, or whether there will be anyone in the chaplain’s office to escort me, or whether someone has misplaced my paperwork, or whether a gate officer will be rude, officious, or difficult. All these things happen from time to time. So I sit in the car and remember I am there for the women and for the Dharma. I find a smile and walk to the gatehouse.

The meditation group at FCI-Dublin was established by Maylie Scott in affiliation with Buddhist Peace Fellowship when she was visiting imprisoned antinuclear activists in the 1990s. I took a regular visitor’s slot in 1998 and soon after became the program’s coordinator. I gathered a team of teachers with backgrounds in several different Buddhist traditions. All these years we have been fortunate to have the support and friendship of our supervisor, Protestant chaplain Hans Hoch.

The program began as “meditation and stress reduction,” which at first was seen as belonging to the prison’s medical and psychological resources. But in time it evolved more properly as a religious service.

By the time I joined, the weekly teachers were all Buddhists. We do not specifically teach Zen or vipassana or any particular brand or school of Buddhism. We simply offer meditation and associated activities as tools for an awakened life. I am open about my Zen Buddhist background as the source of teachings I have to share, but since the group is diverse and self-selected—Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, as well as Buddhists —we are more accurately presenting Buddhism with a small b, without proselytizing. I see it as a kind of interfaith ministry.

FCI Dublin is one of the few federal centers for immigration violations, so many of the prisoners are Hispanic. (We usually count on the women to translate for each other.) Among the inmates are a few women with previous experience in meditation, and several have a strong yoga practice. Many practice daily in their cells. Each teacher has his or her own approach. My emphasis has always been on zazen; another teacher is a skilled qigong instructor, and he regularly shares this practice with the inmates. Another, a professional writer, does an in-the-moment writing practice. Although each of us works from his or her tradition, we have agreed not to present only one methodology or practice. From time to time we meet to check in about how things are going and to renew our consensus concerning our general direction of study and inquiry.

Bowing and chanting are optional, since not all the women are comfortable with elements of Buddhist liturgy. But most are curious

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about Buddhism and like having some ritual. Some see meditation as prayer. Over the years, when there has been illness or death affecting someone in the group, we have done simple well-being and memorial ceremonies. On my days at the prison, we offer incense and do three full bows toward the altar, then three bows to each other, facing into the circle. I demonstrate how to bow and explain that we are bowing to the Buddha not as an external deity but as a way of honoring the reality of our own true nature. We chant Maylie Scott’s “Metta Prayer” simultaneously in English and Spanish.

May I be well, loving, and peaceful. May all beings be well, loving, and peaceful.

May I be at ease in my body, feeling the ground beneath my seat and feet, letting my back be long and straight straight, enjoying breath as it rises and falls and rises.

May I know and be intimate with body mind, whatever its feeling or mood, calm or agitated, tired or energetic, irritated or friendly.

Breathing in and out, in and out, aware, moment by moment, of the risings and passings.

May I be attentive and gentle towards my own discomfort and suffering.

May I be attentive and grateful for my own joy and well-being.

May I move towards others freely and with openness.

May I receive others with sympathy and understanding.

May I move towards the suffering of others with peaceful and attentive confidence.

May I recall the Bodhisattva of compassion; her thousand hands, her instant readiness for action. Each hand with an eye in it, the instinctive knowing what to do.

May I continually cultivate the ground of peace for myself and others and persist, mindful and dedicated to this work, independent of results.

May I know that my peace and the world’s peace are not separate; that our peace in the world is a result of our work for justice.

May all beings be well, happy, and peaceful.

We meditate for about half an hour, starting with five or ten minutes of basic instruction on sitting and mindfulness. In the prison atmosphere of social control, I tend to be loose about the form of meditation, not emphasizing formal posture as I might at home in Berkeley Zen Center.

There is enough formality in these women’s lives. The important thing here is for prisoners to feel safe, to have a chance to sit quietly and meet themselves. This in itself is a rare and precious thing in prison. (As natural as it is, this kind of gathering, sangha, is rare in the wider world as well.) After meditation I take time for questions and check-in, or for a brief teaching. Over time, we have studied the Four Noble Truths, the ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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precepts, the five hindrances, and other points of basic Buddhism. But our discussions always proceed from the women’s experience and from the wisdom of their root cultures and religions.

We don’t need a special place to practice. It is wonderful to be able to come to a dedicated meditation hall, but I find that one can meditate anywhere—in a temple, a railway station, a prison. Silence is deep in the chapel. Meanwhile, people walk by, talking in the hall. A work crew sets up near our windows. Birds sing freely in the trees, and then gunfire chatters in the nearby pistol range. All of this is part of one’s moment-by-moment awareness. Again, prison is all about social control; there’s a surveillance camera in the chapel. Authorities can and do invoke rules at will. The federal system seems to be constantly cutting down prisoners’ opportunities and rights. Women live together in large dormitories or “pods” with four people to a room. There is ethnic and racial tension. There is unexpected harmony, too. One can feel it; it’s like a cool breeze.

Working in prisons, I encounter a particular challenge, one which often confronts engaged Buddhists. Some people feel that meditation is sufficient. The Buddha taught three great principles: śīla, samādhi, and prajñā (ethical conduct, meditation, and wisdom). As Dharma, these three are inseparable and interdependent. In our modern world, though, meditation can become merely a kind of technique which is no longer connected to ethics and wisdom. But when I hear about mindfulness being used in corporations and even taught to soldiers going into combat, I worry about the larger ethical context. Mindfulness, relaxation, even communication skills can create a process that may appear to be or may even be ethical within an environment whose purpose is essentially unethical. Historically, Japanese samurai warriors cultivated Zen, and one can see where that led in the complicity of Buddhist sects with Japan’s aggressive and imperialist war-making in the middle of the twentieth century. So when we go to the prisons, are we teaching in a way that encourages a prisoner to examine his or her life and mind in the context of the prison system and society itself? Or are we imparting a technique that offers a kind of spiritual pacification, making it easier for guards and prison authorities to maintain social control? I worry about that.

When I visit FCI Dublin we come together for meditation. We also study and talk about our lives. There is a lot of trust in the room. A sense of sangha comes from meeting weekly year after year. Along with that trust (and because of it), I feel an obligation to tell the women that I see the U.S. prison system, based on principles of retribution and punishment, as an expression of structural violence and structural suffering unlikely to lead to spiritual and psychological rehabilitation of individual prisoners

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or to restoration to their victims and society as a whole. My vision of engaged Buddhism is that social service and advocacy necessarily go hand in hand. Offering meditation is the service component; studying the societal basis of our prison system and possible alternative responses to poverty, racism, and crime is what I think of as advocacy.

My objective is not at all to relieve women of responsibility or to free them from the unfolding karma of their particular crimes. We rarely know anything about a prisoner’s conviction or even the length of her sentence, unless such details come out in our discussions. Rehabilitation is work each prisoner has to do herself by looking closely at her life and considering how she will choose to live in the future. We have all spent many intimate hours at FCI Dublin talking about recovery and rehabilitation in moving and sometimes disturbing ways. But we also need to investigate broader causes and conditions that lead to the U.S. having the largest single prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to the government’s own National Institute of Corrections. We have five percent of the world’s population but twentythree percent of the world’s prisoners, with more than 2.4 million people incarcerated and millions more in the parole and probation systems.

It would take volumes to explain why this is so. In Dharma terms, people and systems are driven by greed, hatred, and delusion. Greed motivates America’s vast hidden prison industries, which employ hundreds of thousands of imprisoned men and women, and greed also lies behind the privatization of state prisons, which, as corporations, are even more distant from accountability than their government counterparts.

Anger, hatred, and fear generate draconian measure like “three-strikes” and the barbaric death penalty, and they are the basis for a racist criminal justice system that locks up poor black and brown men and women far out of proportion to their numbers in the population. Delusion is the only word I can find that accounts for a social logic which argues that the way to reduce violence in society is to do violence to those one fears.

When has this ever worked?

Inside the prison, I am measured in my words and views. What I have expressed in the sentiments above is certainly not the perspective of the United States Bureau of Prisons, nor is it what we are taught in the annual retraining sessions. But if the Dharma of freedom is about relationship—to oneself, to others, to the world—then I feel obligated to help these women cultivate a wider view. Without such a view, bitterness and despair are likely to arise.

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favors, no exchange of personal information, no use of first names, and so on. Prison authorities worry about security. This is the shadow dimension of social control. The more tightly the prisoners are controlled, the more resistance and pushback arises. Prison authorities are also concerned about the natural sympathy volunteers might have for prisoners, and we are warned about how prisoners can take advantage of that. (As the saying goes: “They don’t call them ‘cons’ for nothing.”) If one ignores these rules, sooner or later one’s ability to work inside will become compromised.

The Dharma itself offers rules for life, and some of these seem to me to conflict with the rigidity of institutional thinking. Treating all life as part of oneself implies a manner that is familiar and yet respectful. So within the confines of our meditation group, we are on a first-name basis.

It would not be appropriate for me to touch the women, so I can’t adjust their meditation posture as I might in the zendo. According to regulations, hugs are out of bounds, but from time to time one-armed hugs happen spontaneously. A natural and respectful intimacy is essential.

Despite rules, we have a steady and growing group of twenty to twenty-five women sitting together. Several have been with us from the beginning, one of them a political prisoner who is serving an eightyyear sentence. Over time I have seen many women change, settle into their lives, put aside reactivity, and acknowledge their difficulties, shortcomings, and past harmful actions. This is a wonderful thing to witness; it is testimony to the ever-present possibility of change. It encourages us to keep our practice going.

At FCI-Dublin, I witness how deep people’s faith can go. I see women who have committed crimes and made serious mistakes, who are far from home and family, yet have a clear sense that there’s something larger than themselves, beyond the prison walls. They may be justly or unjustly convicted, but they come to see that they can make use of their months and years in prison. Old Zen master Joshu told his disciple, “You are used by the twenty-four hours; I use the twenty-four hours.” Even behind bars one can learn to use the twenty-four hours.

My sense is that many of these women should not be in prison. They are there because they got tangled up in someone’s bad drug deal or because they were implicated in a boyfriend’s illegal activity. But once inside, one can either make imprisonment an opportunity, or one can nurture bitterness. I’m lucky to spend time with the women who want to work, whose resolve to seek the Way leads them to meditation and study. So each time that we sit down together, behind the fences and walls, with guards and countless rules, bad food, and long days—even with all that—liberation is rising. 

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Borges, Buddhism, and Cognitive Science Amelia Barili Abstract: The author argues that recent discoveries in cognitive science and neurobiology concerning how people learn show that the time has come to integrate contemplative methodology into academic disciplines. The author offers as a model a course she created and taught entitled “Borges, Buddhism, and Cognitive Science.� The course investigates the Argentine writer’s lifelong study of Buddhism and incorporates a laboratory element in which students learned and practiced principles of meditation.

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Foundational Theory

n recent years, in my professorial work in the Spanish department of the University of California at Berkeley, I have sensed more and more that our times demand that we integrate into our teaching a contemplative methodology that fosters insight.1 We are in the midst of a content explosion that quickly outdates any instruction based on content alone. Further, students are increasingly anguished, and it is important that they find ways to more deeply understand this vast amount of information, to sort out what matters to them and to their communities, and to create new meaning from what is presented to them.

It is our task to prepare students for a world of rapid change and a future filled with uncertainties. Students in this new millennium will have to be able to think for themselves and be self-initiating, self-modifying, and self-directing. They will require skills that cannot be gained by learning content alone.

We need a paradigm shift in education. Universities need to be sources of creative solutions and of engaged citizens. They should be centers of transformation, not just repositories of information. As Einstein said, we cannot overcome problems by looking at them with the same mentality that created these problems in the first place. E. F. Schumacher made ISSUE

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a similar point when he said that education can only help us prevent ecological catastrophe if it is education of a different kind: an education that takes us into the depth of things.

As I became more and more aware of all this, I began researching ways to foster creative thinking and autonomous learning in the classroom. My initial research question was, “What are the conditions that best foster creative thinking?” Reflecting on the classic works on creativity by Rollo May, Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,2 and others, I realized that the same principles that apply to fostering creativity lie at the root of mindful autonomous learning. I discovered a consensus among these authors that the two main characteristics of creative thinking are inner motivation, which leads to greater commitment to and absorption in a task, and inter-intra intelligence, which Gardner defines as the journey from the world to the self and back again. For deep learning to occur, there needs to be reflection about intra- and inter-subjectivity. Students must be encouraged to reflect deeply on their own experience and their relations to others, and to connect these with what they are learning. In short, each student needs to learn to extrapolate on what is being taught and to relate it to his or her own world.3 One of my sources of inspiration was the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, who suggests that instead of seeing ourselves as faculty dedicated to teaching disciplinary content, we become more involved in assisting students in learning to learn, or what she calls “mindful learning.”4 In what reminded me of Buddhist psychology, she recommends teaching conditionally, by making it clear that facts depend on context and that context is temporary, since we are always adding to it or modifying it, and teaching relationally, enabling students to link new information to prior knowledge and then to use it in some new way. Langer’s recommendations gave me the idea of creating a course that would combine different fields of study and that would use contemplative practices as methods of open enquiry. The course would be a concrete example of embodied learning. It would incorporate these principles established by cognitive scientists:5 1) The mind/body split is artificial. Descartes was wrong. Body and mind are not two independent and separated realms. Mind is not a “thinking thing” (res cogitans) separated from matter (res extensa). We cannot call them “phenomena” either. As Humberto Maturana points out in his recent book The Origins of Humanness in the Biology of Love, even the use of the word phenomena is problematic and indicative of an older way of thinking.6 In short, mind is not an entity but an embodied process. Mind in this sense is the process of cognition involved in the process of life.

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2) Life and cognition are inseparably connected. Cognition involves the entire process of life, including perception, emotion, and behavior.

The interactions of a living organism with its environment are cognitive interactions.

3) Cognition is not the representation of an independently existing world but rather a continual bringing forth of a world through the entire interactive process of living. According to the Santiago Theory of Cognition developed by neuroscientists Maturana and Francisco Varela, “To live is to know.�

4) Communication is not a transmission of information but a coordination of behavior between living organisms. Learning is a self-reflecting experience. Both the teacher and the student are cognitive organisms in process.

These cognitive principles are complemented by the following principles based on the most recent discoveries in neurobiology:7 1) The Principle of Neuroplasticity. Experience changes the function of the brain itself. New pathways are continually being carved out among the 100 billion neurons in the brain, and these can support ongoing learning and enrich our mental health well into our nineties. How we think and feel affects our brain and our capacity for further thinking and feeling.

Therefore, it is clearly important to actively shape the nature of our experiences in ways that keep the mind thriving and that foster habits of lifelong learning. This principle is also present in the Buddhist teaching that our future is wide open and that we should take care to be mindful of our actions because we are actively creating pathways and tendencies and shaping our capacity for further development. Moreover, Buddhism acknowledges not only that experience alters consciousness but that consciousness alters experience in a continuous loop.

2) Reflective Coherence. Neuroplasticity requires internal attunement.

In practice this means attuning our attention to our intention. Optimal learning happens when these two dimensions are attuned. This is not just an alignment of traditional dichotomies such as heart and brain, emotion and intellect, or desire and reason but an actual total resonance of all functions, demonstrating that we need to look at this phenomenon as dynamic interactions of these different capacities feeding into one another in resonant patterning. This resonance, or the lack of it, shapes our perceptions and our capacity to understand and learn.

3) Awareness of Self and Other. The internal attunement that fosters neuroplasticity is mediated by the social resonance circuits of the brain, including the mirror-neuron system and related areas of the prefrontal cortex that map the self as observed and observing self. In other words, ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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learners learn best when heart and brain are not at odds but resonating together and when they can meaningfully connect their intra- and interpersonal selves. Learning is indeed an embodied and social experience.

Put otherwise, learning happens best when the heart is involved.

This integrated approach to learning, involving the principles of cognitive science and neurobiology, struck me as very Buddhist.8 I decided to design a course that would present both cognitive science and neurobiology and would involve as well principles and practice of Buddhism. The result was my course entitled “Borges, Buddhism, and Cognitive Science.”

Borges and Buddhism I had the good fortune to be a friend of Jorge Luis Borges in Argentina during the last decade of his life, when I was the literary editor of La Prensa, a major Argentine newspaper. From our conversations I knew of Borges’s interest in Buddhism. The subject has been overlooked by most scholars who have studied his work.9 Nevertheless there are many signs of it, beginning with such early essays as “The Nothingness of Personality,” written in 1922, when he was just twenty-two. His interest in Buddhism continued to be expressed in an explicit or implicit manner in other essays, such as “Personality and the Buddha” (1950), and in poems, short stories, dialogues, lectures, and, of course, in his book ¿Qué es el Budismo?

He wrote this book in 1976, when he was already blind, with his friend and fellow member of the Argentine Academy of Letters Alicia Jurado.

Borges kept researching this subject all his life. In one of his talks on Buddhism, he refers to it as “a doctrine to which I have dedicated many years,” adding, with modesty, “and which I have, actually, understood little.”10 This little-known aspect of Borges’s work allowed me to introduce the course in the U.C. Berkeley Spanish department. The connection between Borges and Buddhism and between Buddhism and cognitive science made possible a course that would explore all three topics, employing a methodology that would include self-reflection and meditation. Despite the presence of a contemplative element, the course passed through the invisible barrier that normally excludes contemplative studies from the college classroom.

According to his own account, Borges’s interest in Buddhism began at age seven, when he discovered in his father’s library a copy of Sir Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia, the well-known idealized portrait of the Buddha’s early life. Borges particularly remembered the lines that appear near the

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end of Arnold’s poem: “The dew is on the Lotus! Rise, great sun!” and “The dew-drop slips into the shining sea.” Borges commented, “Those lines, which I read towards 1906, have accompanied me since then.”11 Borges encountered Buddhism again in his adolescence during World War I. Borges’s father, accompanied by his family, had gone to Europe in 1914 to be operated on by an eye specialist in Geneva. (Male members of Borges’ family for five generations had suffered from blindness, and that would be the writer’s destiny as well.) The war forced Borges and his family to remain in Switzerland for four years. During this time the young Borges studied French and German at the Collège Calvin, and there he discovered Schopenhauer, who had been greatly influenced by the Upaniṣads and by Buddhist thought. In reading Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, Borges heard echoes of the verses of The Light of Asia. In An Autobiographical Essay, he recalls: “At some point in Switzerland I began reading Schopenhauer. Today, were I to choose a single philosopher, I think I would choose him. If the riddle of the universe can be stated in words, I think these words would be in his writings. I have read him many times over, both in German and, with my father, . . . in translation.”12 After reading Schopenhauer, Borges pursued his interest in Asian religions by reading Max Müller’s Six Systems of Hindu Philosophy and the History of Philosophy by Paul Deussen, who was a disciple of Schopenhauer’s.

He also read Zhuangzi, Nagarjuna, Laozi, and others. Borges arrived at the conclusion, as he told me once and as he repeated in similar words in a dialogue on Buddhism with Osvaldo Ferrari, that everything was thought first in India and China. “All the possible philosophies, from materialism to the most extreme forms of ideal- “Everything has been ism—everything has been thought by the Indians and the Chinese first, but in a different manner, and from thought by the Indians then on we have dedicated ourselves to rethink what has already been thought in India and China.” Borges and the Chinese first.” added: “If I have been able to recognize so much studying these philosophies, and that is just what I have noted with just some knowledge of Western philosophy, it means that, no doubt, there is much more that I have not recognized because it has not yet been thought in the West, but it will happen in time. . . . For the Oriental philosophies are, in fact, inexhaustible.”13 Borges was fascinated by the richness of perspectives that found in these philosophies. For example, stepping aside from the categories of fixed space and time, which are cornerstones of the Western view of the world, Borges conceived the possibility of a circular time, and of multiple ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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dimensions of perception and manifestation of our world, anticipating and illustrating in his very intuitive rendering of reality what is today revealed to us also by quantum physics, fractals, and complexity theory.

His interest in metaphysical dimensions mapped by Asian philosophies surfaces in his work in concepts about the creation of our inner universe, the unity of all beings, the ending of the wheel of suffering by surrendering the ego to a more encompassing experience of being, a space-time tapestry in which all the threads and generating lines of the universe are knit together, and the ways we interweave karma and interdependently bring forth the universes we inhabit.

A characteristic that Borges greatly valued in Buddhism is that its core teachings are more a process of critical inquiry than an assertion of certitude. Borges found this uncertainty very liberating and stimulating, since it frees us to create our own meaning. He appreciated that in Buddhism each individual is called to find meaning within and through herself or himself, by discerning in practice and according to her or his circumstances the right action to take. For the same reason, Borges considered disputes about interpretation Buddhism teaches to be irrelevant, as he shows in his short story “The Theocritical inquiry rather logians,” in which he offers this beautiful thought: “Every man is an organ put forth by the divinity in order to perceive the world.”14 The story ends with these provoking than assertions of lines: “It is more correct to say that in Paradise, Aurelian learned that, for the unfathomable divinity, he and John of certitude.

Pannonia (the orthodox believer and the heretic, the abhorrer and the abhorred, the accuser and the accused) formed one single person.”15 Borges believed that orthodoxy and heresy can coexist because they represent the possibility of expanding knowledge through deeper questioning, allowing the possibility of many interpretations, sometimes even contradicting ones. He admired “the extraordinary tolerance of Buddhism,” pointing out that “it has never resorted to iron or to fire; it has never believed that iron or fire could be persuasive.” Borges cites the example of Ashoka, emperor of India who, when he became Buddhist, “did not try to impose his new religion on anyone.”16 Borges attributed the durability of Buddhism over the centuries to this characteristic of tolerance, which is naturally related to an emphasis on personal inquiry and verification. Tolerance, as he noted, has been applied within Buddhism as well as to other religions. This intra-religious tolerance has fostered a richness of perspectives. Borges wrote that Buddhism, “besides being a religion, [is] a mythology, a cosmology, a metaphysical system—more exactly a series of metaphysical

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systems which do not recognize each other and which dispute among themselves.”17 For Borges the need for critical inquiry is born from the impermanence not only of our physical world but also of the prevalent interpretations about it. In his short story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Borges includes this reflection about the innate caducity of paradigms: “There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe, with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter—if not a paragraph or a name—in the history of philosophy.”18 Borges expressed a similar thought in one of our conversations. We were discussing Lessing’s remark that if God were to declare that in his right hand he held the truth and in his left hand he held the investigation of the truth, he (Lessing) would ask God to open his left hand and give him the investigation of the truth, not the truth itself. Borges commented, “Of course he would want that, because investigation permits infinite hypothesis, while the truth is only one and does not suit the intellect, because the intellect needs curiosity.”19 Methodology of the Course Since Borges was such a strong proponent of discernment and learning from personal experience, and since he had said that Buddhism is not something to be speculated about but to be deeply felt, I included in my course “Borges, Buddhism, and Cognitive Science” a lab component of critical inquiry and meditation. We practiced brief meditations at the beginning of every class, and students were encouraged to observe the results when they practiced meditation at home before reading and writing in their journals, as well as in class before exploring topics and possible approaches for their research papers. In this way students were not only extending and deepening the range of how they learn but were also observing their own minds in the process of creating meaning. At the same time they were exploring more deeply the content of the course.

I proposed to my students that if, as cognitive science, Buddhism, and neuroscience all point out, the mind is not separate from the body—if it is not a thing but the process itself of knowing—then the cultivation of the mind, which is the chief function of the university, really means to cultivate ourselves, to sharpen that process of cognition that comes from living experience. To understand more deeply these principles, I suggested that the class should test the premise that we learn through direct experience and that embodied learning awakens intuitive knowing.

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I asked my students to observe that process of experiencing and learning as it was happening. The instructions were for them to watch the worlds they were bringing into being and to see how they were contributing their part by co-creating meaning, both in class and in their relational life.

The students were especially inspired by a guest lecture given by Professor Martin Verhoeven of the Institute for World Religions. His topic was the East Asian “quietist” tradition, of “learning by subtraction” instead of “learning by addition.” He emphasized the absolute need to get to know the tools with which we study—that is, our mind and our perspectives—instead of assuming that learning means adding more content to previous content. Professor Verhoeven quoted from a Daoist classic, the Kuanzi: What a person desires to know is that [i.e., the external world].

But our means of knowing is this [i.e., oneself, one’s mind].

How can one know that?

—Only by perfecting this.

This verse made a great impression on the students. They saw how it succinctly encapsulates much of what I was presenting about the need to know all we can about ourselves as observers if we want understand what is being observed.

“Borges, Buddhism, and Cognitive Science” had three modalities: 1) an intellectual mode of critical inquiry and self-reflection, 2) a psycho-physical-spiritual mode of breathing practices and meditation, and 3) a social and cognitive mode of inter-subjectivity.

These three modalities of hands-on research offer complementary aspects of a contemplative methodology aimed at understanding more deeply the knower and the known. They can erase the artificial boundary between inner and outer, subject and object of study.

Critical inquiry, the first of these modalities, involved testing through personal experience the ideas and principles we were studying to see if they could be verified in light of each student’s subjective experience.

Self-reflection involved examining more closely our assumptions, values and ways of acting, and the distance between who we think we are and what we do.

The purpose of practicing meditation as one of the course modalities was for students to learn techniques that foster calm and focus what we usually call the “mind.” Mastery involved the attempt to access thought and intuitive knowing through the body through specific breathing exercises to calm the mind first and then to focus it into stillness. The

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students familiarized themselves with these simple techniques and were able to cultivate them at home, before reading and writing, and in their academic or personal life whenever needed (e.g., before exams).

As for the modality of inter-subjectivity, it was present in the course in many ways: in the open dialogues and discussions among the students and with me, and with the colleagues I invited to be part of our learning and teaching community.

The course readings included such classics of cognitive science as Varela, Thompson and Rosch’s The Embodied Mind; Lakoff and Johnson’s Philosophy in the Flesh and The Meaning of the Body; a more integrative perspective in Alan Wallace’s Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge and other classics such as Gethin’s The Foundations of Buddhism. Writings by Borges included ¿Qué es el Budismo?, Ficciones, and other works.

Students kept a journal of the insights that arose from their reflection on the readings and from their observation of how any of these teachings or discussions contributed new perspectives to their own process of living. They were invited but not required to share their reflections with the class as they felt appropriate.

I had a very diverse class. Although the course was taught mainly in Spanish, it attracted students from other academic departments besides the Spanish department, such as engineering, biology, social science, and philosophy. Our conversations were enriched by their different perspectives, and it was beautiful to see how the students moved forward together in their development during the semester and how the group listened attentively and caringly to each of its members. I was amazed at the rate of intellectual and emotional growth both among the students who were new to my classes and among those whom I had taught before. I attribute the depth of the change I observed in them to the course’s contemplative methodology, especially to the regular practice of meditation as a form of calming the mind and accessing intuitive thought. I sense that the counterpoint of experience and reflection in an environment of open dialogue provided the context for personal transformation.

Addendum: Meditation in the Classroom For teachers who may be interested in the methods of meditation I have found useful in the classroom, I append here a summary of how I proceeded. First, at the very beginning of each class, I would invite students to either close their eyes or to lower their gaze and to focus their attention on their breathing, noticing it and accepting it without judging. Second, ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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after a minute or so, I would lead them in one of four techniques for calming the mind through breathing. Third, we would practice one of the four kinds of meditation that I would introduce during the semester.

Finally, students would bring their attention for a minute or so back to their usual state of mind and their normal breathing. I instructed students to pay attention to their sitting posture: the head, neck, and spine should be in a straight line, with the chin slightly tucked in, while the breath is slow, deep, and gentle, without force or strain.

Calming the Mind Through Breathing 1. From the Daoist tradition I taught a technique usually referred to as “expelling the old, drawing in the new.” One expels the out-breath slowly, gently, and completely through the mouth; then in the same manner one draws the in-breath in through the nose. One should breathe in a relaxed rhythm, as if one is sighing. I asked the students to let go of any tensions or concerns while exhaling and to breathe in a sensation of peace and replenishing while inhaling.

2. Another kind of breathing practice comes from yoga, particularly from the practice of pratyahara, or “withdrawing the mind from sense perceptions.”20 In our course I taught a particular kind of breathing with abdomen-retention that I find very effective and which was selected by Baba Hari Dass. The pratyahara practices we used as methods of calming the mind were three simple breathing techniques (kriyas) done in sequence. These are the first of eight that ideally should be practiced together for the purification of the nerve channels. I presented only the first three to my students to give them a brief introduction. The first kriya involves inhaling into the chest slowly, gently, and deeply seven times through both nostrils, then exhaling in the same manner. The chest should expand fully in inhalation while the abdomen presses in slightly.

For the second kriya, one inhales in the same manner as in the first, but the exhalation is made through slightly parted lips. For the third kriya, one inhales through the mouth, with the lips slightly extended, breathing into the belly and letting it push outwards. The exhalation is through both nostrils, with the abdomen slightly pulled in.

3. Another breathing practice from the yoga tradition alternately stimulates the right and the left side of the brain. This breathing, known as nadi sodana, or alternate breathing, is excellent for calming body and mind. The practice begins with a gentle and complete exhalation. One then closes the right nostril with the thumb of the right hand and inhales slowly and deeply through the left nostril. Next the left nostril is closed with the ring finger, releasing the thumb, while exhaling through the

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right nostril slowly and deeply. Then one inhales deeply through the right nostril, closes it with the thumb, releases the ring finger and exhales through the left nostril. The procedure is repeated ten times.

4. From the Buddhist tradition we practiced the technique of counting breaths. For this technique one breathes with the diaphragm, letting it rise and fall naturally. One in-breath and one out-breath are counted as one breath. Upon reaching ten, one repeats the process.

Focusing the Mind Through Meditation These practices attempt to focus the attention after the mind has been calmed by breathing. One can attempt to bind the attention to the lower dantian, just below the navel. Or one can continue to attend to the breath.

A third method involves a naming practice, in which one observes the contents of one’s mind and names them as they arise. They can be bodily energies such as “hot,” “cold,” or “tired”; they can be feelings that one names “fear,” “worry,” “delight,” or “sadness.” The practice can be extended to include sounds and thoughts, such as “planning” and “remembering.” All the while one stays focused on the breathing. In naming, one does not judge but simply acknowledges what is arising in the present and lets it pass. Finally, the method of meditation on loving-kindness directs positive thoughts and wishes first to oneself and then to family, friends, strangers, and even enemies, sending thoughts of kindness progressively to all beings in all directions.  Notes 1. In their article on “The origins of insight in resting-state brain activity” in Neuropshyschologia 46 (281–91), cited in the New Yorker article “The Eureka Hunt”

by Jonah Lehrer (July 28, 2008), cognitive neuroscientists Mark Jung-Beeman, John Kounious, et al., point out the influence of initial resting brain-state on sudden insight, with abrupt emergence of the solution into consciousness.

2. Rollo May, The Courage to Create (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975); Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: Harper Collins, 1996); and Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1983), Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seeing Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi (New York: Basic Books, 1993), and Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice (New York: Basic Books, 2006).

3. William James deftly pointed out the essential role of experience in knowing: “To attain perfect clearness in our thought of an object, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve—what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our conception about the object. . . . The pragmatic method . . . is to try to interpret

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

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each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true?” Pragmatism (New York: Dover Publications, 1995 [1907]), 18.

Ellen J. Langer, The Power of Mindful Learning (Cambridge, MA: Lifelong Books, 1997).

Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding (Boston: Shambala, 1992); Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991); Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens (New York & London: Harcourt, 1999); George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Jeremy W. Hayward and Francisco Varela, Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind (Boston-London: Shambala, 2001); and Fritjof Capra, “Mind and Consciousness” in Hidden Connections (New York & London: Doubleday, 2002).

Humberto Maturana (one of the fathers of cognitive science together with Francisco Varela) points out that objective knowledge is an oxymoron, and he invites us to rely openly in our experience: “We speak in daily life, or we speak as scientists, explicitly or implicitly saying that we explain phenomena, and that these phenomena are processes that take place independent of our doing in a domain external to us as observers—even if we somehow participate in them.

However we do not explain processes that occur external to us and take place independent of our doings. We are always operating as observers, so that in fact what we are explaining is our experience, that which we as observers distinguish directly or indirectly happening to us or in us. So from now on we shall speak of experiences, rather than phenomena, and if we speak of phenomena, we shall mean experiences” (The Origins of Humanness in the Biology of Love [Exeter UK: Imprint Academia, 2008], 15).

See for example Daniel J. Siegel, The Mindful Brain (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007); Joseph Chilton Pearce, Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2004); and Andrew Armour and Jeffrey L. Ardell, eds., Neurocardiology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Later I found this relationship excellently researched and developed in The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, et al., and Contemplative Science by Alan Wallace (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

I am currently engaged in writing a book on this topic.

Jorge Luis Borges, Siete Noches (Mexico D. F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1980), 97.

Jorge Luis Borges and Osvaldo Ferrari, Libro de diálogos (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1986), 217.

Jorge Luis Borges, “An Autobiographical Essay” in The Aleph and Other Stories 1933–1969 (New York: Dutton, 1970), 216–7.

Borges, Libro de diálogos, 220.

Borges, “The Theologians”, in Labyrinths (New York: New Directions, 1962), 124.

Ibid., 126.

Borges, Siete Noches, 78.

Ibid., 80.

Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” in Labyrinths, 43.

See Amelia Barili, “Borges on Life and Death”, New York Times, July 13, 1986.

Pratyahara is the fifth in the eight-limbed yoga described in the classic text The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

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Peace Practices among the Iroquois Douglas George-Kanentiio Abstract: The author, a Mohawk scholar and roiiane, or representative, describes the founding of the Six-Nation Iroquois Confederacy according to the “Great Law of Peace“ and the associated rituals of atonement, condolence, and other peacemaintaining practices.

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The Bringing of Peace and the Establishment of the Iroquois Nation

laborate rituals to insure that peace and harmony are restored after the ebb of conflict constitute a critical part of Haudenosaunee culture—the culture of the Six-Nation Iroquois of northeastern North America. These acts and ceremonies, songs and customs can be traced to the formation of the confederacy in the twelfth century, when a prophet called Skennerahowi, “the Peacemaker” entered the homeland of the Iroquois. Skennerahowi was able to bring an end to war by creating an alliance system of nation-states based upon a common set of rules called Kaiienerekowa, or “the Great Law of Peace.”

Where chaos, violence, and warlords had reigned, Skennerahowi established procedures for resolving disputes. Working in concert with his principal disciples, Aiionwatha (Hiawatha of the Onondagas) and Jikonsawseh (Seneca), Skennerahowi persuaded the Iroquois to cease fighting among themselves and cede partial authority to a Grand Council of all the Iroquois nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, with the Tuscaroras joining after they fled North Carolina in 1715. This “league of the Iroquois” became the most formidable native organization in North America, with its influences felt far into the continental interior.

The confederacy was, and is, a democratic entity in which each representative to its Grand Council must be selected by his or her respective citizens in a series of public forums open to all regardless ISSUE

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of age or gender. These representatives are called roiiane in Mohawk, meaning “nice people.” Referred to as “chiefs,” they are held to strict codes of behavior and may be recalled for breach of duty. Each candidate is selected by a female leader called a kontiianehson, or clanmother. Her duties stem directly from Jikonsawseh, the first human being to embrace the teachings of Skennenrahowi and subsequently the first clanmother.

No male may assume a position of leadership without first securing the nomination of the clanmother and the endorsement of his clan.

Skennenrahowi instructed the Iroquois in the rituals they were to preserve in order to live in a state of peace. He created a system of fifty roiiane and an equal number of kontiianehson. To each of these he assigned an assistant, or sub-chief, called raterontanonha (“one who takes care of the tree”). He also appointed a female faithkeeper, called iakoterihonton, and a male faithkeeper, called roterihonton. These two were to advise the roiiane and kontiianehson on spiritual matters, in part by ensuring that the ceremonial activities were conducted at an appropriate time and in an appropriate manner. The result was that the governing council of the Mohawks, for example, consisted of forty-five individuals (roiiane, kontiianehson, iakoterihonton, and roterihonton). Each of the three Mohawk clans had three roiiane as titled male leaders.

There are, in general, nine clans within Iroquois society, which are divided into ecological realms: hawk, snipe, and heron from the sky; bear, wolf, and deer from the earth; and turtle, eel, and beaver from the water.

(The Mohawks and Oneidas have only three: bear, wolf ,and turtle.) Clans are essential to Iroquois life. Disputes, property disbursement, ceremonies, marriages, and political stature all are rooted in clan affiliation. Each citizen of the confederacy must have membership within a clan, which follows a maternal line. However, by a process of naturalization or adoption called rotishennakehte (“they carry the name”), a person born of another nation may be accorded all the rights and duties of all other Iroquois.

Adoptees are given a clan name, and they are free to take part in the activities of their respective communities, except that they may not hold elective office. In many instances in the past, the adoptions were made to replace someone who had died in warfare. The adoptee assumed the dead person’s identity, social standing, name, occupation, and family obligations. The adoptee’s former self was entirely obliterated. After decades of inclusion beginning in the seventeenth century, the Iroquois had become a complex mixture of dozens of native peoples such as Huron, Tutelo, Susquehanna, Mohican, and many others. Added to this in later years were captured Europeans and a few Africans who escaped slavery to find refuge within the confederacy.

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The Practice of Atonement In this tradition, when an offense has occurred, the clan leaders—the roiiane and kontiianeshon—serve as arbitrators and judges. The Iroquois justice system is based on reconciliation and atonement, as opposed to the Western system of adversaries and punishment. All efforts are made to have the offending party acknowledge his or her wrong and make amends to the injured person in order to make things whole and complete.

Removing the offender from the community is not an option except when a serious crime such as rape or murder has been committed. In such cases, capital punishment may be imposed. Under traditional law, a sentence of death is also considered when children are sexually abused. A person found guilty of a lesser crime must make amends through the issuing of a formal apology before a public assembly. The offender is then assigned a series of tasks designed to reinforce good behavior while satisfying the person who has been wronged. All victims have a right to determine the degree of punishment, but they must not remove the offender from his or her normal duties, and they are required to restore them to good standing.

Compensation is also ordered; the offender either gives wampum to the victims, restores stolen goods, or renders physical labor until the victim can return to his or her former condition. In all instances, the Iroquois strive to return to a state of mental, emotional, and spiritual clarity called kanikenriio (the good mind). This can only occur when a person is free of guilt and the compulsions of hatred and revenge.

At the time of Skennenrahowi, the Iroquois were consumed by wars, which were particularly harsh given the Iroquois’ common heritage. After great effort, Skennerahowi convinced many Iroquois that there was an alternative to conflict using the principles of the Great Law of Peace, but he had yet to find a way to alleviate the personal anguish felt by those who had suffered the loss of family and friends. It was Aiionwatha who came up with a solution in which atonement without revenge and forgiveness without sacrifice were possible.

Aiionwatha became, along with Jikonsawseh, the most effective advocate for the establishment of the confederacy. But he was confronted by the Onondaga warlord and sorcerer Atotaho, who was said to have the power to command the winds. Atotaho was thoroughly evil, his appearance marked by snakes entangled in his hair and seven crooks in his twisted body. Deformed and suspicious, he was given to the consumption of human flesh. He responded to Skennenrahowi’s peacemaking and Aiionwatha’s advocacy by keeping the Onondagas in a state of terror by threatening to murder anyone who embraced the ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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Great Law. His rage against his kinsman Aiionwatha was so great as to cause him to kill all seven of Aiionwatha’s daughters.

Aiionwatha went insane with grief, stumbling about for many days until he reached a small lake south of the main Onondaga towns. There he sat, with the intensity of his sadness so great as to cause the water birds to flee from his presence, taking the lake’s waters with them. Aiionwatha had sufficient awareness to notice this strange event. He saw clusters of snail shells on the lake bottom. He gathered the snail shells into a string and held them in his hand, uncertain if his suffering would ever be relieved.

At that time Skennenrahowi approached, singing a chant that restored Aiionwatha’s reason and brought him to kanikenriio.

The words of healing, first spoken by Skennerahowi 800 years ago, were used when the Iroquois as a group approached the evil sorcerer Atotaho, who used every tactic and power he had to defeat them, only to be subdued by the power of Skennenrahowi’s songs. He was the last to accept the Great Law of Peace, and in recognition of his conversion, he was given the role of chairperson of the new confederacy. Atotaho had to acknowledge his past before his mind and body were healed. He grasped the string of shells brought by Aiionwatha and accepted his fate. Rather than have the sorcerer executed, Skennenrahowi converted his power from evil into a force which propelled the confederacy into being.

The Condolence Ritual and the Transfer of Power All roiiane had to have a title name that was decided upon at the time of the formation of the confederacy. The names are permanent and clanspecific. They are transferred to a roiiane at the time of his installation in a ceremony called a “condolence,” which commemorates the death of the roiiane whom the new roiiane is to replace.

Skennenrahowi created the procedures by which a condolence takes place. Upon the death of a roiiane, the mourning nation will send out strings of wampum to each of the other nations. The person carrying the strings, known as a “runner,” calls the nations to gather to replace the former roiiane with another. Once the confederate representatives have assembled, the words of Skennenrahowi are spoken in a long chant in a sort of eulogy. The singers begin, symbolically, at “the edge of the woods,” just as Skennenrahowi emerged from the forest to the clearing before Atotaho. These songs cite the grief felt by all the people at the loss of a clan leader and then cite the formation of the confederacy. These “Hai Hai” songs may take hours to complete. They express not only sadness but also the joy at the knowledge that the Great Law of Peace endures.

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For this event the confederacy divides into two sections: the “younger brothers (or nephews),” meaning the Oneidas, Cayugas, and Tuscaroras, who speak and sing the words of condolence to the “elder brothers (or uncles),” the Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecas. A restoration of the mind is called for, along with an alleviation of sorrow. If the older brothers have suffered the death of a roiiane, then the younger ones will conduct the grieving rituals, a situation which is reversed if the younger ones have experienced a death.

The speakers in a condolence ceremony will make use of symbols, such as the skin of a fawn, which is used to wipe the eyes clear of tears; a feather, to open the ear channels; and pure spring water, to remove the blockage in the throat. The speakers recite how the confederacy came to be and call off the title names of each of the fifty roiiane. Tobacco is placed into an open fire as part of the ritual as an offering meant to carry the words of the people to the universe.

Some Examples of Ritual Symbology The purple and white colors of beads drilled from quahog clam shells were deemed sacred by the Iroquois, and these beads would in time replace the shells. The colors represented the transition from the blood, which pools beneath the surface of the skin (purple), to the clarity of healing (white). Called anonkoha in Mohawk, the beads would be woven in belts and strands, the alignment and patterns having specific meaning. These wampum beads were vital to the culture of the Iroquois and would, during the American colonial period, be used as currency, a practice quite distinct from its original intent.

Besides the strings and belts of shells, Skennenrahowi used universal symbols to represent the events of the day. He said the eastern white pine, the tallest of the northeastern trees, would represent the confederacy, with its roots deep into the ground and its top touching the clouds, connecting earth and sky while visible to all human beings. The four roots of the great tree of peace were white and gleamed in the sun, extending in the four sacred directions. They were meant to be followed to the tree itself. All nations and individuals were free to walk alongside the roots and secure physical, spiritual, and moral shelter beneath the branches of the tree. On top of the tree Skennenrahowi placed an eagle to watch for anyone approaching and to call to the people below to be alert to possible dangers. Before the confederacy was formally established, Skennenrahowi caused the tree to be uprooted from the ground, and in the resulting large cavity he pointed out a fast-flowing underground ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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stream. He had all the former warlords and warriors throw their weapons into the hole, where the waters carried the weapons away. He replanted the tree and said that the casting away of the weapons meant warfare was forever outlawed among the nations of the confederacy and their allies.

Besides being thrown onto a fire during the condolence process, tobacco is smoked by the roiiane from white clay pipes during the installation of ceremonies. It is said that the tobacco plant was brought to earth from the sky-world and is the means by which human prayers are most effectively carried, not only to the world of humans but also to the spiritual beings that monitor human activity. When tobacco is placed into fire and becomes smoke, words become power and thoughts have physical substance. It is considered evil to misuse this power, and there are severe repercussions for those who employ it for purposes other than prayer, thanksgiving, or clarity of mind. Due to its close association with humans, tobacco is called oionkwa'onwe, a word that has the same root as the word for “human beings.”

Peace-Seeking during the Colonial Period The removal of sorrow and anger is a necessary function of all Iroquois social, ceremonial, and political activities. No important session can begin without the recitation of the ohenten kariwahtekwen, the “words which come before all else.” This recitation speaks directly to the different elements of the planet, beginning with the earth and proceeding to water, fishes, insect, plants, animals, birds, winds, thunder, moon, stars, spiritual beings, and the creator. Gratitude is expressed to all of these entities and then is carried over to the actual communal function. The recitation is also meant to remove any feelings of hostility by placing the human experience within a broader natural and spiritual cycle. Once the emotions of the moment are swept away and clarity of mind is restored, the matters at hand may be addressed free from the encumbrance of spite.

The Iroquois have used these methods of peace-thinking and peace-acting for generations. The historical record lists hundreds of events marked by the “cleansing of the mind” and the “raising of the tree” between the Iroquois and their European neighbors. Beginning with the encounter with the French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1534, the Iroquois have used the power of imagery, ritual, and music to effect peace. Wampum diplomacy was initiated with the Dutch in the second decade of the seventeenth century, followed by the use of the “silver covenant chain” between England and the confederacy in 1677. Earlier, in

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1653, a formal treaty of peace and friendship was made with the French; it was marked by the planting of a “maypole tree” in Quebec. Although this compact was not to last, a permanent treaty guaranteeing peace with the French was signed in 1701. That agreement is still held to be in effect by the confederacy.

As part of the formal negotiations with the European nations, the confederacy performed acts of atonement prior to discussions of what the terms of a given treaty would be. Speakers would rise, express their sorrow, appeal for healing, and then give belts of wampum as compensation for any losses. The European delegation would reciprocate. The language and rituals of Native-European treatymaking took root with the Iroquois. The employment of phrases such as “as long as the grass grows” began in the northeast, as was the smoking of tobacco in “peace pipes.” The requirement that no Native lands could be transferred without the consent of national governments stemmed from the Iroquois complaining to the British concerning avaricious land speculators trespassing on Native territory, entering into fraudulent sales agreements with individuals, and then using force to remove the natives.

This insistence on a formal set of rules led to the enactment of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, outlawing intrusions into Indian lands west of the Allegheny Mountains. This agreement proved to be one of the primary causes of the American Revolution.

The Revolutionary War and Its Aftermath The Revolutionary War, which the confederacy perceived as a family fight among the Europeans, drove a deep wedge among the Iroquois as factions within the league elected to fight for or against the rebellious Americans.

As brutal as the conflict was on the frontier, it was equally destructive to the Iroquois. Dozens of Iroquois towns were destroyed, hundreds died of starvation, and entire populations were relocated to Upper Canada (now Ontario). Yet the Haudenosaunee Confederacy endured, and a sufficient number of representatives were summoned to meet with the Americans in western New York in the fall of 1794. The result, after the rituals of condolence, was the one and only treaty between the Iroquois as a collective and the United States.

In subsequent years, the Iroquois lost most of their lands. The greater part of the population moved into Canada, north of the Great Lakes, or even further west to Wisconsin. A group of Senecas and Cayugas settled in northeastern Oklahoma, while a small band of Mohawks secured land in north-central Alberta. Under this stress of displacement and reduced ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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political influence, the Iroquois degenerated into a period of chaos marked by widespread alcohol abuse. This destructive behavior was brought under control as a result of the religious teachings of Skaniateriio (Handsome Lake), a Seneca prophet. He had a series of visions beginning in 1799, in which he was shown how the Iroquois might survive in a distinctly different world.

Skaniateriio stressed the need for the public admission of transgressions. He introduced the practice of holding a string of sacred wampum while making a confession during one of the thirteen ceremonies that mark the Iroquois lunar year. He taught that without a purging of guilt there would be severe repercussions in the spirit-world.

Prior to this, the Iroquois perception of the afterlife was one of release and awareness: the spirit was liberated from the body to return along a star path to a place of living light, an actual planet in the Pleiades cluster.

While on this journey, the spirit would come to know the mysteries of the universe and would be thereby enlightened. Punishment for acts of evil beyond the clan sanctions was meted out at the time of death; the offending spirit was denied enlightenment. Skaniateriio expanded upon this, describing in vivid detail a version of hellfire and damnation radical enough to counter the moral anarchy threatening to overwhelm ancestral customs.

Skaniateriio succeeded in part because he did not try to suppress Skennenrahowi’s principles but to strengthen them by emphasizing the need to maintain the traditional rituals. The result was a body of ethics called “The Code of Handsome Lake.” It is recited entirely by memory each year among the Iroquois, with each community sponsoring the recital on a rotating basis.

The fundamental elements of Iroquois society have endured into the twenty-first century. Clan affiliation is stable even as the Iroquois language endures great stress. The ceremonial cycle is followed in most territories, but as for the ancient practices of atonement as witnessed by the community, these are only a whisper of what once was, and they are no longer central to resolving disputes. An Iroquois citizen who breaches the law is more likely to be imprisoned than reconciled. Compensation is made difficult because crimes against property have become commonplace. The roiiane and kontiianehson no longer serve as arbitrators. As in many other areas of life, Canadian and American justice methods have supplanted the ancient customs. 

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A Hindu Monk’s Appreciation of Eastern Orthodoxy’s Jesus Prayer The “Inner Senses” of Hearing, Seeing, and Feeling in Comparative Perspective Joseph Molleur Abstract: One of the most influential monks of the (Hindu) Ramakrishna Order to have come to the West is Swami Prabhavananda, who led the Vedanta Society of Southern California from 1923 until his death in 1976. In three of his published commentaries, Prabhavananda quotes extensively from The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way, Russian Orthodoxy’s classic texts on the practice of the frequent (ideally, unceasing) repetition of the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” The aim of this article is to analyze Prabhavananda’s treatment of Eastern Orthodoxy’s Jesus Prayer tradition, with special attention to the issue of the “inner senses” of spiritual hearing, seeing, and feeling.

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ord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This prayer formula, sometimes with slight variations (such as the omission of either “Son of God” or “a sinner” or both), is referred to in Eastern Orthodox Christianity as the “Jesus Prayer” or the “Prayer of the Heart.” Two of Eastern Orthodoxy’s most prominent commentators on the Jesus Prayer tradition, Kallistos Ware1 and Lev Gillet,2 have rightly pointed out that the appeal of the Jesus Prayer in recent decades has spread beyond the confines of Eastern Orthodoxy, with many Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians now repeating the prayer as a regular component of their spiritual practice. Appreciation of the Jesus Prayer has spread even beyond the borders of Christianity. For example, in an article called “Jesus Prayer and the Nembutsu,” Taitetsu Unno, a Shin Buddhist of the Pure Land tradition, explores with great appreciation the affinities between the Orthodox practice of repeating the Jesus Prayer and ISSUE

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the Japanese Pure Land Buddhist practice of repeating as its normative prayer Namo Amida Butsu, “I take refuge in Amitabha, the Buddha of Immeasurable Light and Life.”3 Another example is Swami Prabhavananda, the main subject of this article. Prabhavananda, who led the Vedanta Society of Southern California from 1923 until his death in 1976, is one of the most influential monks of the (Hindu) Ramakrishna Order to have “come to the West.” In three of his published commentaries (two on Hindu sacred texts and one on the Sermon on the Mount), Prabhavananda quotes extensively from The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way, Russian Orthodoxy’s anonymously authored classic texts on the practice of the Jesus Prayer. The aim of this article is to analyze Prabhavananda’s treatment of Eastern Orthodoxy’s Jesus Prayer tradition, with special attention to the issue of the “inner senses” of “spiritual hearing,” “spiritual seeing,” and “spiritual feeling.”

While the events described in The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way probably took place sometime between 1853 and 1861, the first Russian edition of the texts was not published until 1884.4 It is unknown how long they may have existed in manuscript form prior to their initial publication. The books have since become enormously important, because they have popularized the spiritual approach of another—and considerably less accessible—classic of Eastern Orthodox spirituality, The Philokalia.5 Indeed, it is largely due to the widespread popularity and appeal of The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way that the Jesus Prayer tradition is no longer limited to Eastern Orthodox Christians but has come to make a strong impression on nonChristians such as Swami Prabhavananda.

Together with the novelist Christopher Isherwood, one of his most famous Western disciples, Prabhavananda coauthored a translation of and commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali—Hinduism’s premier how-to guide for the practice of meditation. (How to Know God is the rather unconventional title of their Yoga Sutras translation and commentary.)

In their translation, verses 27–29 of part one of the Yoga Sutras read as follows: The word which expresses Him [Ishwara/God] is OM. This word must be repeated with meditation upon its meaning. Hence comes knowledge of the Atman [indwelling divinity] and destruction of the obstacles to that knowledge.6 In commenting on these verses, Prabhavananda and Isherwood emphasize the power of the word in the spiritual life and how the constant repetition (a practice known as japa in the Hindu tradition) of a spiritu-

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ally charged word or phrase (called a mantra) can greatly conduce to spiritual progress. In the course of their commentary, the authors quote at length three paragraphs—all of which will subsequently come under consideration in this article—from The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way.7 Prabhavananda also draws directly on the two books in his commentary on Narada’s Bhakti Sutras, titled Narada’s Way of Divine Love. One of the Hindu tradition’s most important sacred texts on the “path of devotion,” Narada’s Bhakti Sutras articulates the various ways by which a spiritual aspirant can experience the love of God. According to verses 36 and 37 of Prabhavananda’s translation of the Bhakti Sutras, “Supreme love is attained by uninterrupted and constant worship of God, by hearing of and singing the glory of the Lord, even while engaged in the ordinary activities of life.”8 In his explication of these verses, Prabhavananda—with the help of The Way of a Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way—urges the devotee to keep heart and mind in God unceasingly, by means of mantra repetition and meditation.9 Finally, in his boundary-crossing commentary titled The Sermon on the Mount according to Recitation of God’s Vedanta, Prabhavananda once again quotes at length from The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His name can be viewed as a Way, this time in the process of analyzing the phase “hallowed be thy name” from the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. mantra practice.

6:9). Prabhavananda argues that God’s name can be viewed as a mantra mantra, the repetition of which both confers spiritual power and purifies the aspirant’s heart and mind. By means of this practice, God’s “name is experienced as living and conscious, as one with God—and illumination is attained.”10 Prabhavananda quotes the same two paragraphs—one from The Way of a Pilgrim and the other from its sequel, The Pilgrim Continues His Way—in all three of his books just mentioned. (Prabhavananda makes use of R. M. French’s translation, in which The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way are included together in a single volume.11) The first quotation is taken from a point early on in The Way of a Pilgrim, when the anonymous pilgrim who authored the book receives instruction from a starets, a monk who acted as the pilgrim’s spiritual director. The instructions Prabhavananda quotes were as follows: The continuous interior Prayer of Jesus is a constant uninterrupted calling upon the divine Name of Jesus with the lips, in the spirit, in the heart, while forming a mental picture of his constant presence, and imploring his grace, during every occupation, at all times, in all places, ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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even during sleep. The appeal is couched in these terms, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”12 One who accustoms himself to this appeal experiences as a result so deep a consolation and so great a need to offer the prayer always, that he can no longer live without it, and it will continue to voice itself within him of its own accord.13 The spiritual senses of “inner hearing” and “inner seeing” seem to feature prominently here. Concerning inner hearing, the practitioner voices, first “with the lips” and then “in the spirit” and “in the heart,” the words of the Jesus Prayer until eventually, after long practice, the prayer voices itself within the heart and mind. Prabhavananda comments: “You can make japam [repeat the divine name] aloud if you are alone, or silently if you are among other people.”14 And on the prayer’s voicing itself within us of its own accord, Prabhavananda notes: “Through constant practice, the repetition becomes automatic. It no longer has to be consciously willed.”15 In other words, eventually we reach the stage where we hear the Jesus Prayer repeating itself within us, nearly all the time.

As for the spiritual sense of “inner seeing,” this concerns the instruction to form and maintain a clear mental picture of Jesus while meditating on the words of the prayer. Very significantly, Prabhavananda does not launch into a discussion of a practice that is common in Hindu spirituality, the meditative practice of visualizing every aspect of the appearance of one’s beloved deity, from head to toe. Instead, he makes comments such as the following: “If we persevere in our repetition, it will inevitably lead us . . . to think about the reality which it represents.”16 And, “You then live always in the awareness of the presence of God.”17 Also, “The aspirant must feel the presence of God within himself as he chants the name.”18 This approach shows that Prabhavananda has an appreciative insight into Orthodoxy’s nervousness about attempting to picture Jesus’ physical appearance in one’s imagination. In contrast to the teaching in The Way of a Pilgrim concerning the practice of “forming a mental picture of [Jesus’] constant presence,” a hermit whom our pilgrim encounters in the sequel, The Pilgrim Continues His Way, warns against “using the imagination and . . . accepting any sort of vision [spiritual seeing] during contemplation,” including visions of Christ.19 On this subject, Eastern Orthodox theologian Kallistos Ware writes: “As we invoke the Name, we should not deliberately shape in our minds any visual image of the Savior.” Preferable to “forming pictures of the Savior” is “simply feeling his presence.”20 Ware cites many examples of Orthodox authors who have strongly expressed this preference.21 So what seems at first glance in The Way of a Pilgrim to be encouragement to exercise one’s spiritual sense of “inner seeing” is really under-

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stood in the Orthodox teaching on the Jesus Prayer to concern “inner feeling,” and Prabhavananda understood this. His comments emphasize “feeling” the beloved deity’s presence during japa rather than seeing the deity’s physical form in the mind’s eye. (Picturing Jesus in one’s imagination must not be confused, however, with a practice highly prized in Eastern Orthodox spirituality, the practice of viewing actual icons of Jesus with one’s physical eyes.)

The second passage that Prabhavananda reproduces in all three of his books under discussion was taken from The Pilgrim Continues His Way. The speaker is a skhimnik, a monk who has attained the highest of the three grades of Russian Orthodox monasticism.22 This skhimnik is portrayed as conveying the teaching of an unidentified “spiritual writer,” as follows: Many so-called enlightened people regard this frequent offering of one and the same prayer as useless and even trifling, calling it mechanical and a thoughtless occupation of simple people. But unfortunately they do not know the secret which is revealed as a result of this mechanical exercise; they do not know how this frequent service of the lips imperceptibly becomes a genuine appeal of the heart, sinks down into the inward life, becomes a delight, becomes, as it were, natural to the soul, bringing it light and nourishment and leading it on to union with God.23 On the notion that repetition of the Jesus Prayer can bring the soul light, we read earlier on in The Way of a Pilgrim an even stronger assertion: Everyone who . . . sink[s] down in silence into the depths of one’s heart and call[s] more and more upon the radiant name of Jesus . . . feels at once the inward light, everything becomes understandable to him, he even catches sight in this light of some of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.24 Swami Prabhavananda has much to say on this topic of seeing an inner light during japa and on the process of illumination more generally. For example, he writes: “Through repetition of the mantra, mind and heart are purified. Eventually the name is experienced as living and conscious, as one with God—and illumination is attained.”25 And commenting on Jesus’ teaching that “The light of the body is the eye: if, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matt.

6:22, KJV), Prabhavananda says: “Concentration of the mind on the chosen ideal of God is the way to uncover . . . the divine light within.”26 Further, commenting on the teaching of the Yoga Sutras that “concentration may ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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also be attained by fixing the mind upon the Inner Light, which is beyond sorrow” (I:36), Prabhavananda writes: The ancient yogis believed that there was an actual center of spiritual consciousness, called “the lotus of the heart,” . . . which could be revealed in deep meditation . . . and that it shone with an inner light. . . . [T]hose who saw it were filled with an extraordinary sense of peace and joy.27 It is worth noting that, both here and in the passage from The Way of a Pilgrim referred just above, the locus of this inner light is said to be the heart.28 We may well ask: Is this process of illumination, of perceiving light within oneself, properly understood as an inner feeling? Or as inner seeing? Or merely as intellectual illumination? Eastern Orthodox theologian Lev Gillet offers the following interpretation: “[T]he invocation of the Name . . . is very often accompanied by an inner feeling of joy, warmth, and light. One has an impression of moving and walking in the light.29 Elsewhere Gillet greatly expands and deepens his analysis: Concerning the luminous vision to which the Jesus Prayer leads, let us distinguish four possibilities. There is in the first place the perception, by the natural organs, of a light produced supernaturally; this has happened to both saints and sinners. Next, far above the first as a limiting case, there is the supernatural perception of a supernatural light, a perception that is not sensible or physical, and that consequently transcends normal psychology.

Gillet likens this experience of “supernatural perception of a supernatural light” to Christ’s transfiguration. He continues: At the bottom of the ladder, there is the purely symbolic use of the word light, when the name of Jesus is regarded in a figurative sense as the sun of the soul. Between this case and the first one considered, there is room for an intermediate possibility: the constant or frequent practice of the Jesus Prayer can place the one who prays in an habitual inner state of “luminosity.” Even if he closes his eyes, he has the impression of being penetrated by radiance and of moving in light. This is more than a symbol; it is less than a sensible perception, and is certainly not an ecstasy; but it is something real, although indescribable.30 I have referred to Gillet’s analysis of the experience of inner light at some length here because he goes into greater detail about the possible meaning of the experience than does Prabhavananda. What is important to note about the Swami’s analysis is that he agrees with the author(s)

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of both The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way that the practice of repeating the divine name leads to a real and palpable sense of “seeing an inner light.”

In addition to the two passages discussed thus far, quoted by Prabhavananda in all three of his books under discussion, there is a further quotation from The Pilgrim Continues His Way that appears only in Prabhavananda’s work on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Here, the same skhimnik who was previously mentioned is drawing on the writings of the early church father John Chrysostom: St. John Chrysostom, in his teaching about prayer, speaks as follows: “No one should give the answer that it is impossible for a man occupied with worldly cares, and who is unable to go to church, to pray always.

Everywhere, wherever you may find yourself, you can set up an altar to God in your mind by means of prayer. And so it is fitting to pray at your trade, on a journey, standing at the counter or sitting at your handicraft. . . . In such an order of life all his actions, by the power of the invocation of the Name of God, would be signalized by success, and finally he would train himself to the uninterrupted prayerful invocation of the Name of Jesus Christ. He would come to know from experience that frequency of prayer, this sole means of salvation, is a possibility for the will of man, that it is possible to pray at all times, in all circumstances, and in every place, and easily to rise from frequent vocal prayer to prayer of the mind and from that to prayer of the heart, which opens up the Kingdom of God within us.”31 Commenting specifically on the notion of the “power of the invocation of the name of God,” Prabhavananda writes: “The power of the Word, for good and for evil, has been recognized by mankind since the dawn of history.”32 A bit further along in his analysis, he adds: [W]e should appreciate the power of the Word in our spiritual life; and this appreciation can only come through practical experience. People who have never tried the practice of repeating the name of God are apt to scoff at it: it seems to them so empty, so mechanical.33 Here Prabhavananda is also answering those who have criticized the practice of repeating the same prayer over and over again. The Swami comments further, in what I hold to be a very significant statement: Try saying “war,” or “cancer,” or “money” ten thousand times, and you will find that your whole mood has been changed and colored by the associations connected with that word. Similarly, the name of God will change the climate of your mind. It cannot do otherwise.34 ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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Often in Asian thought, the mind is considered to be a sixth senseorgan in addition to the usual five. Viewed in this way, “changing the climate of your mind” through the practice of japa (repetition of one’s mantra) is yet another example of “inner sense experience.”

It is understandable why Swami Prabhavananda would want to draw on the Jesus Prayer tradition, as articulated in The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way, in his commentary on a Christian sacred text, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. But why cite these Eastern Orthodox texts, and their underlying tradition, in his commentaries on two Hindu sacred texts—Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and Narada’s Bhakti Sutras—as well? One can only speculate; my own response begins with the recognition that the Hindu practice of japa (that is, repeating one’s mantra mantra, which contains the name of one’s beloved deity) and the Eastern Orthodox practice of repeating the Jesus Prayer are phenomenologically very similar. That is to say, in both cases the actual practice involves repeating, many hundreds or even thousands of times a day, a short prayer formula that includes the name of one’s beloved deity, resulting in the descent of the prayer into the heart, the eventual automaticity of the prayer, and the experience of inner light. This phenomenological similarity has been recognized not only by Prabhavananda but by the author of The Way of a Pilgrim and by Kallistos Ware as well. We read in The Way of a Pilgrim (unbeknownst to these nineteenth-century Russians, the Hindu practice clearly predated the Christian one): It was from [the great and very holy men of olden times . . . such as Anthony the Great, Macarius the Great, Mark the spiritual athlete, John Chrysostom] that the monks of India . . . took over the “heart method” of interior prayer, only they quite spoiled and garbled it in doing so, as my starets explained to me.”35 And according to Kallistos Ware, The frame of the Jesus Prayer certainly resembles various non-Christian frames [he mentions Sufi as well as Hindu parallels], but this should not make us insensitive to the uniqueness of the picture within, to the distinctively Christian content of the Prayer.36 In other words, as religious phenomena, the Orthodox Jesus Prayer tradition and the Hindu practice of japa japa, or mantra repetition, are very similar, but when it comes to the specific divine name invoked by the practitioners of the two traditions, for Ware (and, one suspects, for the great majority of Christians) it makes all the difference in the world that the name is Jesus, rather than Vishnu, or Krishna, or Shiva, or Kali, or

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Durga, or whatever name a Hindu may use to address the presence of the divine. And the reverse is undoubtedly true as well: most Hindus would not feel right reciting the name of Jesus.

Returning to the possible reasons for Prabhavananda’s repeated references to an Eastern Orthodox practice, first, it is clear from the tone of his discussions of the Jesus Prayer that he held the prayer in great respect and considered it to be a valid spiritual practice. This is not surprising when we recall that the Ramakrishna Order, of which Prabhavananda was a member, views Jesus as a bona fide avatara, or divine incarnation, and has therefore always shown great respect and reverence for Jesus. Second, the sort of spiritual path that is advocated in The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way is familiar to many Hindus and can perhaps be viewed as giving evidence that the practice of mantra recitation may be universal. A third possible reason is that Prabhavananda might have felt that Western readers would understand what he had to say about prayer more easily if he referred to a Christian prayer practice that was in many ways similar to his own. And finally, having shown knowledge of and respect and sympathy for a Christian practice, Prabhavananda undoubtedly hoped that this would inspire Westerners to view his religion with the same generosity and understanding.  Notes

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

An earlier version of this study was presented on November 3, 2008, at a joint session of the Mysticism Group and Eastern Orthodox Studies Group at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago, Illinois. The session was on the theme of “Eastern Orthodoxy and the Spiritual Senses.” I wish to express my gratitude to the attendees of the session, whose questions and comments led to the strengthening of this article. I also wish to thank David Rounds for invaluable editorial assistance in preparing the final draft.

“The Power of the Name: The Function of the Jesus Prayer,” Cross Currents 24:2–3 (Summer–Fall, 1974): 187.

On the Invocation of the Name of Jesus (Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1985), 7; The Jesus Prayer (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 86–7.

Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002): 93.

R. M. French, in his “Translator’s Note” to The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1965), xi–xii. Hereafter cited as WP&PCW. Published in five volumes as The Philokalia: The Complete Text, trans. and ed. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1979–2007).

For a very useful abridgement, see Allyne Smith, ed., Philokalia: The Eastern Christian Spiritual Texts (Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Paths, 2006).

How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali (Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1953), 56. Hereafter cited as HKG.

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8. Narada’s Way of Divine Love: The Bhakti Sutras (Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1971), 85.

Hereafter cited as NWDL. 9. NWDL, 85–90.

10. The Sermon on the Mount according to Vedanta (Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1963), 87–91. Hereafter cited as SMV. 11. Some scholars contend that The Pilgrim Continues His Way has a different author than The Way of a Pilgrim, but that debate lies outside the scope of the present study. See, e.g., Gillet, Jesus Prayer, 83.

12. In the Russian original, the Jesus prayer reads as follows: “Господи, Иисусе Христе, помилуй мя!”

13. WP&PCW, 9–10; HKG, 62–3; NWDL, 89; SMV, 89.

14. HKG, 61–62.

15. HKG, 60.

16. HKG, 61.

17. NWDL, 85.

18. NWDL, 87.

19. WP&PCW, 196.

20. “Power of the Name,” 194.

21. In his introduction to Igumen Chariton’s The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology, trans. E. Kadloubovsky and E. M. Palmer (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 24–6, 33, 100–1.

22. WP&PCW, 209.

23. WP&PCW, 178–9; HKG, 63; NWDL, 89; SMV, 89–90.

24. WP&PCW, 78.

25. SMV, 90.

26. SMV, 104.

27. HKG, 71; cf. Chandogya Upanishad 8.1.1: “Within the city of Brahman, which is the body, there is the heart, and within the heart there is a little house. This house has the shape of a lotus, and within it dwells that which is to be sought after, inquired about, and realized” (quoted in HKG, 72).

28. It is interesting to note that in Buddhism, also, practitioners are commonly instructed to focus their meditation within the heart chakra.

29. Invocation of the Name of Jesus, 24.

30. Jesus Prayer, 109; cf. a similar but less complex analysis by Ware, Art of Prayer, 26.

31. WP&PCW, 174–5; HKG, 63–4.

32. HKG, 57.

33. HKG, 58.

34. HKG 59–60.

35. WP&PCW, 55.

36. “Power of the Name,” 199.

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Creating Religious Identity Karma Lekshe Tsomo Abstract: The author, a Buddhist monastic and scholar, explores the varieties of religious identity, their sources, and their effects on society. She discusses the fluidity of religious identities in the modern world and, in particular, the various challenges to women in confronting the stubborn persistence of gender-based exclusionary practices in religious traditions.

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eligion is a major source of world conflict today, despite the fact that peace is a fundamental aim of most religious traditions.

From a Buddhist perspective, the problem is not religion per se but attachment to religious identities. Many core religious beliefs and values are strikingly similar across traditions, although it must be said that people are not always well enough educated in their own and other religious traditions to be aware of these similarities. Yet, the fact remains that some individuals identify so closely with their chosen faith that they are willing to die for it. Given that religion is a key component in cultural and personal identify, the primary question I would like to explore here is what it means to assume a religious identity. What does it mean to be a Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jew, Muslim, and so on? More particularly, what does it mean to be a woman who follows one of these faiths?

People will surely answer this question differently depending on their different religious traditions and on the diverse individual perspectives.

The authorities of religious traditions codify criteria by which it may be determined what it means to be a follower of their religion. Scholars of the tradition may formulate one set of criteria, religious authorities may hold to another set, and adherents’ criteria may be vastly different. For example, at the Roman Catholic university where I teach, the terms cradle Catholic, practicing Catholic, lapsed Catholic, and recovering Catholic are frequently heard. The university requires that the dean of arts and sciences be a “knowledgeable and committed Catholic,� which has given rise to many discussions about how a candidate can demonstrate this required knowledge and commitment in ways that can be verified by the search committee, faculty, and administration.

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The traditional criteria for assuming a Buddhist identity is to go for refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. However, the manner in which this refuge is accomplished varies. In the Tibetan tradition, a person may go for refuge in a formal ceremony. The refuge procedure entails a request to a qualified master, prostrations, symbolic offerings, recitation of the refuge formula, and dedication of merit. The procedure may involve a single individual or a group. The refuge prayer is a standard component of most Tibetan Buddhist activities, whether performed individually or in groups as large as a quarter of a million participants, as in the case of public teachings by H. H. the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

In other Buddhist traditions, such as the Theravada traditions of Thailand and Sri Lanka, the refuge formula is recited frequently by adherents, both in their personal practice and in public religious activities.

The standard refuge formula is: Buddham saranam gacchami I go to the Buddha for refuge.

Dhammam saranam gacchami I go to the Dhamma for refuge.

Sangham saranam gacchami I go to the Sangha for refuge.

This three-part formula is repeated three times, introduced by “For the second time . . .” and “For the third time . . .” upon the second and third repetitions.

In all Buddhist traditions, the meaning of going for refuge is commonly taught, with an explanation of the qualities of the objects of refuge. However, there may be no perceived need for a distinct ceremony of going for refuge, especially for those who are born Buddhist. The identity of a “cradle Buddhist” may be simply assumed, with no formal recognition needed.

Sources of Religious Identity These examples of diverse criteria for becoming a Buddhist show that establishing religious identity is an elusive and multifaceted process, both for those who claim these identities and for those who attempt to categorize adherents according to their religious affiliation. The inquiry into religious identities becomes complex in view of the enormous variety among adherents of each faith and their varied definitions and perceptions of what it means to be a follower of that faith. Sometimes it seems

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that people of different faiths who are politically or religiously liberal have more in common with liberals of other faiths than they do with conservatives in their own faith. Compounding the complexity is the fact that adherents of any given tradition may be more conservative on some points and more liberal on others. For example, adherents of two different faiths may agree in supporting gay marriage but may hold different views on immigration and other issues. A further layer of complexity is that religious identifications are mutable. A Catholic may become a Buddhist, then a Sufi, and later return to her Catholic faith.

To delve into these issues a bit farther, it may be helpful to begin at the beginning and discuss the sources of religious identity in general. One such source has already been mentioned: a person assumes a religious identity by virtue of being born into a family with that specific identity.

With all its splendors and deficiencies, the religious identity of one’s family becomes one’s own. This is not necessarily unhealthy, unless a person fails to recognize that each human being has multiple identity markers—religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, kinship, profession, and so on—that operate simultaneously or consecutively. A person who fails to recognize the multiple aspects of identity may become so strongly attached to a specific identity as to fall into exclusionary thinking, which is a common source of conflict.1 Birth by itself, however, is not sufficient to determine religious identity or to determine whether one will be religious at all. In homogeneous societies, one’s religious “birthright” may subsequently be reinforced by religious education and the religious culture of one’s community.

Amin Maalouf contends that this cultural reinforcement is paramount: “What determines a person’s affiliation to a given group is essentially the influence of others: the influence of those about him [sic]—relatives, fellow-countrymen, co-religionists—who try to make him one of them; together with the influence of those on the other side, who do their best to exclude him.”2 The reinforcement of religious identity can occur even in religious enclaves within pluralist societies. For example, a student from New York once told me that she did not know anyone who was not an Orthodox Jew until she was seventeen years old. Evangelical mega-churches are creating intentional communities in the United States that are equivalent to small towns, where congregants can work out, study, eat, shop, pray, and even go rock climbing among like-minded believers in a controlled, full-service environment that insulates them from the larger culture.3

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Shifting Religious Identities Religious identity may also be established by conversion, by shifting one’s affiliation from one religious tradition to another, or from a nonreligious identity to a religious one. In many periods of history in certain cultures, religious identities have tended to remain relatively stable throughout a person’s lifetime, as is the case even today in many cultures. A person might be more religious as a youth than in middle age, or vice versa, but a person’s affiliation rarely shifted from one religion to another. Today, however, changing religions is commonplace. According to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, about half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lives.4 To lapse from Catholic belief is so common (an estimated 30 to 40 percent) that a blog, a website, a song (by Future of the Left), and a surfer film are titled “Lapsed Catholic.” The lapsed Mormon phenomenon has given its name to a rock group (Jerry Joseph & the Jackmormons) and to Jack Mormon Coffee Co. (“Heavenly Coffee Beans”).

A variety of factors converge to ensure lasting religious identifications, including social expectations, cultural homogeneity, lack of awareness of other religious possibilities, a preference for social uniformity in the name of cohesion, and fears of social exclusion. To Religious founders would be the “other,” especially religiously, has rarely been a comfortable identity. At the same time, as Amin Maalouf and Amartya Sen emphasize, although hube surprised to see their man beings have multiple identities, these identities take on greater importance in different teachings, once creative naturally situations. From early childhood, most human beings become adept at assuming different identities or highand flexible, become part lighting different aspects of their identity according to circumstances. Situational shifts of identity may be of an ossified orthodoxy. unconscious, a matter of convenience, or even a matter of survival. In 1984 in northern India, many Sikh men cut their hair in an attempt to conceal their religious identity to avoid being killed in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Even in the course of a normal day, a person may identify as a student and a teacher, a parent and a child, a lover and a friend, or a nonreligious person and a devout person. Becoming adept at these shifts is often considered a mark of maturity as well as practicality.

Another kind of identity shift is the conscious selection of an alternative religious identity. The reasons for such a shift may be personal, social, philosophical, or circumstantial. One may change one’s religious

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affiliation due to changing family circumstances, such as a new parent or spouse. In cases of intermarriage, a conscious decision to change affiliations may be justified as necessary for the sake of children, for example.

One may change one’s denominational affiliation simply out of convenience, due to a shift in residence. The decision to change affiliations may involve a formal conversion procedure, involving baptism or even circumcision, or one may simply slide into another religious affiliation or denomination of the same religious tradition.

One may also change one’s religious affiliation due to dissatisfaction with particular aspects of one’s religious experience. Critiques related to perceived hypocrisy, overzealous fundraising efforts, pastoral incompetence or incompatibility, unpleasant personalities in the congregation, politics in the pulpit, dogmatism, or even comments overheard, may induce a shift to another tradition or place of worship.

One may also change religious affiliations due to attraction to another tradition or to fill a gap that is not being addressed in one’s accustomed place of worship. Some people may be attracted by a more contemplative approach or to a more scholarly approach. Some may move away from a more doctrinaire to a more relaxed style of religious practice, or vice versa. Or it may be a particular person, whether in the pulpit or in the congregation, who causes one to explore and eventually to adopt another religious tradition.

Although religion is just one of many identities that a person may adopt, the act of shifting from one religious identification to another will inevitably involve shifts in one’s identity as a whole. A religious shift will not only influence how one is seen by others and how one sees oneself but will also set off changes in one’s surroundings and one’s group of associates. More generally, because religious identity is fundamental to how one perceives reality, this perception too must change with a change in one’s religious identity.

Syncretic Identities: Crossing Religious Boundaries The contemporary trend towards selectively borrowing from different religious traditions extends the boundaries of religious belief and complicates fixed notions of religious identity. In today’s religious landscape, especially in the United States, Catholic nuns practice Zen meditation, Buddhist nuns organize prayer vigils, and Sufis chant Tibetan mantras with no fear of eternal damnation or apostasy. Some openhearted souls in my acquaintance attend gatherings of a different tradition almost every night of the week. In Honolulu, many make the rounds: Monday evenings ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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at the Siddha Yoga Center, Tuesday evenings at the Sufi Universal Dance of Peace, Wednesday evenings at Star of the Sea Catholic Parish, Thursday evenings for Tara Puja at the Tibetan Buddhist center, and so on. Not all of these are curiosity seekers or religious dilettantes in what Chögyam Trungpa called the “spiritual supermarket”; some have been practicing multiple traditions for years and claim to derive even greater benefit by not limiting themselves to simply one tradition.

Borrowing from other religious traditions is not new and does not necessarily represent a degradation of traditional forms. Hindu saints have borrowed wisdom from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim saints for centuries. In Nepal, the fusion of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and rituals is so thorough that delinkThe present religious ing the elements would constitute a breach of tradition.

Religious syncretism may impart richness and vitality landscape is a buyer’s to a tradition or compensate for gaps and deficiencies. It seems likely that elements of Hindu ritual incorporated market. into Buddhist practice speak to a human need for devotional practices. Homilies spoken in Christian churches in North America today not infrequently borrow from the writings of Buddhist leaders, the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hahn. The borrowing may or may not be consciously intended, but it is clear that teachings on loving-kindness and compassion have a universal appeal.

In some religious landscapes, any deviation from orthodox belief and practice is regarded as unjustified and inauthentic. In others, deviations are not questioned or analyzed as long as objections are not raised by practitioners operating under a group-sanctioned identity label. It is well recognized that religious narratives develop through a process of selecting, interpreting, and reformulating specific aspects of the founder’s teachings. It is also well recognized that the beliefs and ideas of most religious founders were departures or even deviant in their day. These founders would no doubt be very surprised to see that their teachings, which were once creative and flexible, have become part of an ossified orthodoxy.

Despite attempts to hark back to a golden era of religious orthodoxy, and despite attempts to enforce uniformity, change ensures that religious traditions survive and remain relevant. The current tendency to mix and match is fundamental to the melting pot of the West and a natural result of the confluence of numerous salient factors, including uncensored access to knowledge, visible corruption of religious institutions, changing values, and cultural diversity. In a socially fluid global society, people do not need religion or authority figures to find community and meaning in life. The present religious landscape is a buyer’s market.

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Religion today is being marketed in many forms, some more authentic than others. A common formulation is an amalgam of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Western psychology. Opinions vary on whether or not this amalgam is a good thing. On the one hand, mixing the most attractive elements of various spiritual paths may be very appealing to a generation of seekers. Proponents argue that these formulations at least guide people toward the spiritual path and away from harmful pursuits. They make available the most useful elements of traditional religions while steering people away from doctrines and other aspects of religion which may be unattractive or even unsavory. On the other hand, syncretic formulations may become very confusing. Opponents of syncretism argue that mixing many elements together may cause people to fail to make genuine spiritual progress. Syncretic religious paths lack structure and quality control, such that anything can be relabeled and marketed for profit by charlatans. In any case, in free societies, these kinds of religious movements are bound to proliferate. Only time will tell the results.

Religious Identity from a Buddhist Perspective The next step in this discussion is to examine the question of religious identity using a Buddhist theoretical framework. In traditional Buddhist theories of identity, human beings are comprised of five aggregates: form, feeling, discrimination, karmic formations, and consciousness. The traditional teaching is that the nature of people is fluid and contingent upon these five aggregates, all of which are momentary. Within the cycle of repeated births, deaths, and rebirths, sentient beings take on different identities, whether as gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, or hellbeings, until they achieve liberation from cyclic existence (samsara). Although beings are infinite in number and despite their many differences, they are the same by nature, in that they are composites of transient, interrelated parts. Ignorant of their true nature, they cling to the things of this world, especially to a false concept of themselves. According to the classical Indian Madhyamika philosophy, personal identities are merely convenient labels, and the five aggregates are the basis for imputing the existence of an ephemeral, conventional notion of self.

Sociologists speak of socially constructed identities: ethnic identities, gender identities, national identities, personal identities, and so on.

Whether the process of identity construction is conscious remains an open question, but the notion of identity as a social construct is compatible with the Buddhist notion of identity as a merely conventional reality.

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healthy and balanced sense of oneself in the world in contradistinction to a self-absorbed, pathological, or nihilistic approach to being in the world.

Identities can also be problematic, however, if they give rise to attachments, fixations, or dependencies. Clinging to a fixed sense of identity can be a cause of great unhappiness. For example, clinging to an image of oneself as young and attractive even though one’s body has aged can cause great frustration and misery. Similarly, clinging to one’s ethnic identity in an increasingly pluralistic world or to a religious identity that one has outgrown can become a source of frustration or inner conflict. The habitual tendency to grasp at distorted or unrealistic images of oneself is akin to a case of mistaken identity and can have many ramifications, often adverse.

From a Buddhist perspective, religious affiliation is a personal choice and indicates a path for everyday living. Liberation or enlightenment is not achieved through adherence to beliefs or labels but through actions of body, speech, and mind. The central admonition of Sakyamuni Buddha was: “Engage in wholesome actions. Avoid unwholesome actions. Purify mental defilements. This is the teaching of all the Buddhas.” The first two principles are the foundation for ethical conduct and human well-being.

In South Asian religious traditions, these principles are expressed as the universal law of cause and effect; in the Abrahamic traditions, they are expressed in the biblical injunction, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” These principles imply a standard for moral conduct that is more fundamental than specific religious affiliations.

Religious Identity from a Feminist Perspective I would like to conclude this discussion of religious identities by considering them from a feminist perspective. What does it mean to be a woman who is a follower of a religious tradition? If feminism is the radical concept that women are fully human, then a feminist inquiry into religious identity would ask whether women are full participants in their religious traditions. Such an inquiry might begin by asking, with regard to a particular tradition: (1) Are women fully eligible to be followers of that tradition? (2) Are the ideals of the tradition framed in gender-equal terms? (3) Do women have equal access to the goals of the tradition?

(4) Are women included as full participants of the tradition? (5) Do women have equal access to thorough knowledge of the tradition? (6) Do women have equal access to leadership roles, and are they fairly represented in the tradition’s institutions? (7) Do women feel nurtured by their chosen tradition, or do they feel neglected?

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We may take the Buddhist tradition as the focus of a sample inquiry.

First, are women fully eligible to be Buddhist? Since people of any age and of either gender are eligible to take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, women are clearly eligible to be Buddhist. The second question, whether the ideals of the tradition are framed in gender-equal terms, can also be answered in the affirmative. The ideal of all Buddhist traditions is to purify the mind and achieve awakening, which is theoretically possible for all sentient beings.

The third question, as to whether women have equal access to the goals of the tradition, requires a more complex answer. The Buddha is said to have affirmed that women have equal potential to achieve the goal of the path, namely, liberation, or enlightenment. The Buddha’s statement is the theoretical basis for considering women equal to men in spirituality. Whether women have equal access to the means for realizing their spiritual potential remains is an open question, however.

The answer to the fourth question regarding women as full participants in their respective traditions will depend on which Buddhist tradition we consider. In Buddhist countries where women have access to full ordination (for example, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam), it can be argued that women are full participants in their traditions. In Buddhist traditions where women do not have access to full ordination (for example, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Tibet), it can be argued that women are not full participants in those traditions.

The answer to the fifth question, whether women have equal access to thorough knowledge of their chosen traditions, also depends on which Buddhist tradition we consider. In those Buddhist traditions where women have full access to institutions of higher Buddhist learning (again, in Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam), it can be argued that women have equal access to thorough knowledge of their traditions. In traditions where women do not have full access to institutions of higher Buddhist learning, it can be argued that they do not have equal access to thorough knowledge of their traditions—and therefore do not have equal access to the means for spiritual development. Nor do they have equal access to the highest goals of those traditions.

When we consider the sixth question—whether women have equitable access to leadership roles and are equitably represented in religious institutions—we find that the Buddhist situation is mixed.

In some countries, especially Western countries, women are free to participate in the decision-making processes of Buddhist institutions.

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forums and conferences and are often selected as presenters on the basis of merit. In other countries, especially Buddhist countries, women are frequently unrepresented or under-represented in Buddhist academic forums and conferences and in the decision-making processes of Buddhist institutions. Although Buddhist women often do much to organize, support, and ensure the smooth functioning of these institutions, they are rarely in positions of authority in these institutions, especially in the higher ranks. Even though women actively support the organization of Buddhist conferences and Dharma events, when the lights go on, only men are generally present center stage. Women’s voices and concerns are rarely heard—a glaring omission in a tradition that promises equal opportunity.

These questions and concerns are not unique to the Buddhist tradition, of course. Although women are eligible to be followers of most religious traditions, the ideals of these traditions are rarely framed in gender-equal terms. The religious founders, leaders, and examples of supreme attainment are most often male, leaving women to wonder whether they can hope to realize the benefits of the religious traditions they follow. Women often are unequal participants and often have limited access to the knowledge and goals of their traditions, leaving them to wonder how they can expect to achieve those goals. Even nuns who have dedicated their lives to religious practice are often unrepresented or under-represented in their religious traditions and are absent from positions of religious authority. Women may legitimately question whether they have made the right choice in investing time, effort, and devotion in their religious traditions. If women identify closely with their chosen religious traditions, yet find themselves excluded, ignored, or marginalized, they may find their aspirations unfulfilled, and they become disillusioned.

The traditions that deny women equal access to knowledge, participation, and leadership risk becoming irrelevant and anachronistic in a world where women and men are widely recognized as equal participants in global society. In particular, religious traditions that espouse egalitarian ideals, such as Buddhism, have a special responsibility to live up to their own ideals.

Like other identities, religious identity has the potential to be helpful to human development, for example in developing a sense of community, a sense of belonging, and the security of a set of values that may safely guide one’s life. From a Buddhist point of view, however, it may be harmful to cling to a religious identity if one’s identity becomes mixed with afflictive emotions such as attachment, aversion, and ignorance—the

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three kleśas. Attachment to particular identities can cause adherents to abandon their capacity for rational thought or their capacity for empathy. When religious identities and identifications lead to aversion toward adherents of different religious traditions, they may become the source of violent conflict. Identities in general lack substantial reality, but when they are seen as intrinsically existent and essential, they can be the cause of myriad delusions and unskillful actions.  Notes 1. Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 18–39.

2. Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 25.

3.. Patricia Leigh Brown, “Megachurches as Minitowns,” New York Times, May 9, 2002.

4. “Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.,” quoted by Jacqueline L. Salmon in her article “Study Examines Choice of Religion,” Washington Post, April 28, 2009.

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The Diagram of the Supreme Pole and the Kabbalistic Tree On the Similarity of Two Symbolic Structures Martin Zwick Abstract: This paper discusses similarities in both form and meaning between two symbolic structures: the Diagram of the Supreme Pole of Song dynasty NeoConfucianism and the Kabbalistic Tree of medieval Jewish mysticism. These similarities are remarkable in light of the many differences that exist between Chinese and Judaic thought, and that also manifest in the two symbols. Intercultural influence might account for the similarities, but there is no historical evidence for such influence. An alternative explanation would attribute the similarities to the ubiquitousness of religious-philosophical ideas about hierarchy, polarity, and macrocosm-microcosm parallelism, but this does not adequately account for the similar overall structure of the symbols. The question of how to understand these similarities remains open.

T

Introduction

his paper calls attention to similarities between two religiousphilosophical symbols: the Kabbalistic Tree of the medieval Jewish mystical tradition and the Diagram of the Supreme Pole1 (Taiji tu) of the Neo-Confucian School of the Chinese Song period (eleventh and twelfth centuries). If the components of the Kabbalistic Tree (referred to henceforth as “the Tree”) and their internal relations are mapped out onto to the Diagram of the Supreme Pole (referred to hereafter as “the Diagram”) and its internal relations, many correspondences are revealed.

While components that correspond differ in specific meaning due to differences between Chinese and Jewish thought, their roles within their respective structures are often similar.

Since the most plausible null hypothesis about a cosmological symbol from Neo-Confucianism and a theosophical symbol from Kabbalah is ISSUE

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Diagram of the Supreme Pole

Kabbalistic Tree

The Ultimateless yet also the Supreme Ultimate

Keter (1)

I

II

Yin Quiescence

Yang Movement

Fire

Water

Binah (3)

Hokhmah (2)

Din (5)

Hesed (4)

Earth

III Wood

Tifereth (6) Metal

Hod (8)

IV

V

Kun (becomes the female)

Qian (becomes the male)

Production and Evolution of all things

Netsah (7)

Yesod (9)

Malkhuth (10)

Figure 1. Diagram of the Supreme Pole (left) and the Kabbalistic Tree (right).2 The numerals I窶天 label Diagram substructures, not individual components, e.g., circle II includes the Two Forces (yang and yin) and III includes the Five Agents (Fire, Water, Earth, Wood, Metal).

The structures correspond if either one is left-right reversed.

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difference, similarities are noteworthy but differences are no less important. One prominent difference between these two symbols is their status within their individual traditions. The Diagram had Daoist precursors, and its importance to Neo-Confucianism was evident at the inception of this movement. By contrast, the origins of the Tree are shrouded in mystery. As a canonical structure, it appears late in the Kabbalist tradition, more as a visual mnemonic than as a symbolic centerpiece. Such differences notwithstanding, the similarities that exist between the two are extensive, as the analysis that follows will show.

Chronology, Overview, and Sources The symbols differ greatly in the precision with which their first appearances can be dated and in the degree to which a few seminal writings gave them definitive interpretations. The two principal commentaries on the Diagram were written in 1060 by Zhou Dunyi, who recast an earlier Daoist symbol into Neo-Confucian form, and in 1175 by Zhu Xi, the most prominent philosopher of the Song Neo-Confucian school.3 The emergence of this school is described by Fung as follows: By the beginning of the Song dynasty, i.e., around the year 1000, the major existing schools of thought (Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism) had all reached roughly comparable stages of development in the course of which a considerable intermingling of ideas had occurred.

All that was lacking was the series of great men who were presently to appear, and were to organize and unify all that had gone before into one great system.4 Zhou Dunyi and Zhu Xi, among others, accomplished this unification. Driven by the desire for a coherent cosmology and by the syncretic motive of linking Confucianism to the other Chinese traditions, the Song scholars produced a Neo-Confucian metaphysics influenced by Daoism and Buddhism.5 The Diagram of the Zhou Dunyi was the symbolic centerpiece of the Song Neo-Confucian synthesis.

By contrast, the Tree appears late and its origin is obscure. There is no definitive treatment of the symbol that is analogous to the two commentaries on the Diagram. The Zohar (Moshe de LÊon of Guadalajara, Spain, 1286) was the central book of the Kabbalah, but Kabbalist doctrine had roots in many earlier works, including the Sefer Yetsirah (third to sixth centuries) and Sefer Bahir (1150–1200) of Provence, France.6 The Tree did not appear in these books. It emerged as a canonical structure only in the fourteenth century.7 It was not a central symbol for the ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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Kabbalists. The prominence it later gained is partially due to its importance in occult and Christian Kabbalah. It was the doctrine of the Sefirot (literally, “enumerations”)—the ten components of the Tree—that was central to the medieval Jewish mystical tradition. The Sefirot were religious concepts long before they were integrated and visually represented in the Tree. Similarly, the Chinese doctrines of the Two Forces and Five Agents predated their use in the Diagram.

The subjects of these symbols are not the same, but they play similar roles in their respective cultural contexts: for the neo-Confucians, the fundamental metaphysical principle, the Supreme Pole, with its forces, agents, and other manifestations; for the Kabbalists, God, with the Sefirot representing divine attributes or instruments.8 To the Western mind, the Diagram is philosophical, or cosmological, while the Tree is religious, or theosophical. One could say also that the Diagram is religious as well, but not in the Western Both symbols declare sense of implying a personal, law-giving, creator God. Conversely, given that for the Kabbalists the structure that by perfecting of God was mirrored in His creation, Kabbalah also offers a cosmology.9 This emphasizes its Neoplatonic oneself, one harmonizes aspects, but in Kabbalah, mythological and Biblical aspects predominate, and these have no Chinese parallel. the macrocosm.

Nothing in the Diagram corresponds to applications of the Sefirotic doctrine to Biblical persons, passages, and events or to the mystical aspects of the Hebrew language. The differences between Neo-Confucianism and Kabbalah and between Chinese and Jewish thought are substantial. Given these differences, the similarities of the symbols are striking.

These symbols were not only cosmological or theosophical. Both NeoConfucianism and Kabbalah asserted the parallelism of macrocosm and microcosm. For the Neo-Confucians, this is illustrated by Zhou Dunyi’s use of cosmological ideas for moral discourse. His statement that “it is man alone who receives the finest [substance]” is a dramatic application of cosmology to anthropology. The Confucian centrality of human action is reaffirmed, deepened by a new metaphysical foundation. A human focus also characterized the Daoist precursor of the Diagram, which referred to the “subtle body” of man, which was the instrument and object of meditation. Similarly, as Moshe Idel notes, Kabbalah was both theosophical and “ecstatic.”10 The Sefirot applied to the human body, psyche, and behavior and to meditative and mystical practice. In the doctrines of Shi’ur Komah, the measurement of the “bodily parts” as it were, of God, and Adam Kadmon, the primordial man or cosmic anthropos, the Kabbalists

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gave symbolic human physical form to God. The Diagram and Tree thus depict not only cosmos and God, respectively, but also human physical, moral, psychological, and spiritual structures. Both symbols were used to declare that by perfecting oneself, one harmonized the macrocosm.

The literatures relevant to these symbols are large and diverse. The Diagram was Confucian but had Daoist origins and showed Buddhist influence; the focus here is on the Confucian and Daoist sources. In addition to the original Jewish Kabbalah, there were Christian and occult offshoots, and Jewish Kabbalah gave much less emphasis to the Tree than these later derivatives. Even within Jewish Kabbalah there were various doctrines; this paper focuses on early (pre-Lurianic) Kabbalah.

The scholarly literatures on Neo-Confucianism and Kabbalah also differ in the extent to which they are dominated by a single investigator. For Neo-Confucianism and the Diagram, this paper relies heavily on Needham and Fung, especially Needham, whose translations11 of Zhou Dunyi’s and Zhu Xi’s commentaries are used in this paper. Unless otherwise footnoted, all references to these authors are to Needham’s translations. But there is no intention here to suggest that Needham’s views are more authoritative than other interpretations. By contrast, Kabbalah as a subject for scholarly research is due to the monumental work of Gershom Scholem. He is thus the major source for the discussion of the Tree,12 though this essay also draws on the work of Moshe Idel and other Kabbalah scholars. Relying on these prominent sources must suffice since, as both Idel and Daniel Abrams13 note, there is yet no definitive treatment of the history of the doctrine of the Sefirot and their use in Kabbalistic structures.

Meaning and Sequence The Diagram and the Tree are quite similar in their first three components.

In their middle portions, differences are apparent, though similarities also exist. In the final two components similarities are again salient.

The First Three Components At the top of each symbol is a neutral component representing the highest reality: Taiji (the “Supreme Pole) in the Diagram and Keter (Crown) in the Tree. Yet the identity of this first component is not free of ambiguity.

Zhou Dunyi and Zhu Xi both note that “the Supreme Pole is essentially [identical with] that which has no Pole.” There are two concepts here: the Supreme Pole (taiji) from the Confucian (and Daoist) classic the Yi Jing, and “that which has no Pole,” the “Ultimateless” (wuji), from the ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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Daodejing.14 The identity of these “positive” and “negative” (“full” and “empty”) concepts is asserted in the commentaries, but these concepts were not completely synonymous. As Henderson points out,15 the identification of taiji and wuji is a syncretic statement uniting notions from different Chinese traditions.

A parallel union of positive and negative concepts existed in the Kabbalah in the relationship between Keter and—not included in the symbol—Ein-sof.16 In some Kabbalist writings, Ein-sof, “that which has no end,” is more fundamental than Keter and beyond description. In other writings, Keter is the external aspect of Ein-sof, indicating a closer relationship. Keter is also referred to as Ayin, “nothingness,” a negative concept like Ein-sof, whose polar opposite is Yesh, “existence,” literally “there is.”17 There is a relationship between Keter—that which is manifested—and Ein-sof, or Ayin—that which is unmanifest. Yesh arises from Ayin, Being from Nothingness. In both traditions, beyond what can be stated as the highest is that which has no name, no end, no pole. Both traditions wrestled with the problem of whether the unmanifested is prior to and distinct from the manifested, or whether the two are in some sense equivalent. Neither the solution of difference nor the solution of identity was completely satisfactory, and so different positions inevitably arose on this matter.

It is not being asserted here that the concept of wuji is identical with the concept of Ein-sof or of Ayin (although wuji means “no extreme,” quite close to Ein-sof, which means “no end”). Virtually every mystical tradition has some notion of Nothingness, as doctrine and as meditative or mystical experience. While notions of Nothingness in different cultures are not the same, it is equally implausible to believe they are completely different. Both Neo-Confucians and Kabbalists faced the question of the relationship between Nothingness and Plenitude. Corresponding terms do not mean the same thing—Ein-sof and Keter are theistic concepts while wuji and taiji are not—but the relation between wuji and taiji and the relation between Ein-sof and Keter are similar.

In both symbols, the first component gives rise to a dyad representing the fundamental polarity that emanates from the fundamental unity: for the Diagram, the Two Forces yang and yin; for the Tree, Hokhmah (wisdom) and Binah (understanding or intelligence). In this dyad, the male component is first and the female component second. Zhou Dunyi writes, “The Supreme Pole moves and produces the yang. When the movement has reached its limit, rest (ensues). Resting, the Supreme Pole produces the yin.” Correspondingly, Wisdom and Understanding are second and third in the canonical order of the Sefirot. But one should not make too

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much of this ordering. The placement of yang and yin and wisdom and understanding implies symmetry for the two components; for the Diagram, this symmetry also inheres in the fact that yang generates yin and yin generates yang. There is a tension here between asserting symmetry and breaking symmetry (sequencing the components); both are required.

The first three components in each structure constitute a primary triad from which the rest of the symbol follows. In Daoist thought, the union in the Dao of yin and yang was an explicit triad, and this was incorporated into Neo-Confucian philosophy. This triad is also recognized in Kabbalist writings as an explicit unit and as the generative source from which creation proceeds.18 Both triads represent the differentiation of unity into duality with a resulting symbolism of one, two, and three, rooted in an ineffable zero, empty yet also full.

The yin character of Understanding was prominent in Kabbalist thought. While Malkhut (Kingdom), the tenth Sefirah (Sefirah is the singular form of Sefirot), was taken to represent the Shekhinah, the “Divine Presence” and female aspect of God, there was a doctrine of a higher and a lower shekhinah, of which the higher was Understanding and the lower was Kingdom. Scholem writes, As the upper Shekhinah of the Sefirah of Binah, [the principle of] femininity is the full expression of ceaseless creative power—it is receptive, to be sure, but is spontaneously and incessantly transformed into a component that gives birth, as the stream of eternally flowing divine life enters into it.19 In both symbols, the first three components encompass the distinction between information and matter-energy, but in different ways. Zhu Xi linked the Supreme Pole itself with li, principle, and linked yin and yang (circle II) with qi (energy), which accords with the inherent generativity of the Two Forces. In the Tree, this distinction is not in Crown (Keter) vs.

Wisdom-Understanding, but rather in Wisdom vs. Understanding.

The Five Agents and the Central Sefirot The middle portion of the Diagram consist of the Five Agents.20 Zhou Dunyi writes, “The yang is transformed (by) reacting with the yin and so Water, Fire, Wood, Metal, and Earth are produced.” For Zhu Xi, the order is Water-Wood-Fire-Earth-Metal. The Five Agents are functional and abstract; their names are not intended literally. Agents are major and minor yang (Fire and Wood), major and minor yin (Water and Metal), or neutral (Earth). They are ordered by several sequences, including what Needham calls the cosmogenic order, the mutual production ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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order, and the mutual conquest order. The middle portion of the Tree consists of the five Sefirot, given here in their canonical order: Hesed, Benevolence (or love, mercy; or gedulah, greatness); Din, Judgment (or law, rigor; or gevurah, power);21 Tiferet, Beauty (or splendor; or rahamim, compassion); Netsah, Eternity; and Hod, Glory (or majesty). Benevolence (4) and Eternity (7) are primary and secondary male Sefirot. Judgment (5) and Glory (8) are primary and secondary female Sefirot. And Beauty (6) is neutral. Here a major difference exists between the symbols: the substructure of the Five Agents is plain in the Diagram, but an explicit pentadic grouping of Benevolence to Glory is not found in the Tree or in Kabbalist literature. While the symbolism of five was salient in Chinese philosophy, it was largely absent in Jewish thought,22 though it existed in occult Kabbalah.23 If one considers the correspondences of Fire-Benevolence, WaterJudgment, Earth-Beauty, Metal-Eternity, and Wood-Glory, this being the conventional order of the Sefirot, the Five Agents then have the sequence Fire-Water-Earth-Wood-Metal, which is a mutual conquest order. A more compelling parallelism, however, is obtained by aligning the Chinese pentad of Five Virtues, correlated with the Five Agents, with the central Sefirot (see figure 2). This mirror reflects the Five Agents, putting minor yang and yin above major yang and yin.

Virtues

Sefirot

Yin

Yang

Female

Male

Yi Righteousness

Ren Benevolence

Judgment

Benevolence

Metal

Wood

Din

Ḥesed

Earth

Water

Xin Sincerity

Zhi Wisdom

Tifereth

Fire Li Reverence

Figure 2. The Five Virtues and Sefirot (4–8).

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Beauty

Hod

Netsaḥ

Glory

Eternity

The Diagram of the Supreme Pole and the Kabbalistic Tree

The Five Virtues are ren (benevolence, humanity, love); yi (righteousness, rightness); li (reverence propriety—not the same character as li, principle); zhi (wisdom); and xin (sincerity, honesty, good faith, trustworthiness). These Five Virtues are associated with Wood, Metal, Fire, Water, and Earth, respectively. Ren and yi are the major virtues, although they are assigned to the minor yang and yin components, Wood and Metal.

The pentad of virtues was central to the transformation of the Daoist precursor of the Diagram to its Neo-Confucian form. In the earlier Daoist version, the Five Agents referred to aspects of meditation, but for Zhou Dunyi—and Zhu Xi agreed24—their primary relevance was to the virtues and the achieving of sagehood: The sages ordered their lives by the Correct, by Love and Righteousness.

They adopted ataraxy as their dominant attitude and set up the highest standards for mankind. Thus it was that the ‘virtue of the sages was in harmony with that of heaven and earth.’ . . . The good fortune of the noble man lies in cultivating these virtues; the bad fortune of the ignoble man lies in proceeding contrary to them.

For the Neo-Confucians, the Diagram was a metaphysical basis for ethics.25 Human conduct remained their central concern. While meditation (“quiet-sitting”) provided a means of self-cultivation, it was not viewed as an end in itself. Shu-Hsien Liu notes that “the Buddhists’ ultimate commitment is . . . śūnya or Emptiness,” but the “ultimate commitment for the Confucianists [remained] Ren (Humanity).”26 In this pentad of virtues, ren and yi form the principal dyad, the former yang and the latter yin. Benevolence was primary, and all other virtues, especially righteousness, flowed from it. Likewise in the Tree, Hesed (Benevolence) is prior to and the source of Din (Judgment), the first being masculine, the second feminine. Fung notes that righteousness was “the goodness that comes from hardness” and included “decisiveness, strictness, firmness, determination, and steadfastness;”27 these are also the qualities of Din. The predominance of ren and yi matches the predominance of Hesed and Din, but it is not being asserted here that ren and Hesed are identical, despite the appropriateness of the translation “benevolence” for both, or that yi and Din are identical. Ren is rooted in—but transcends—the specific obligations belonging to the various human relationships (e.g., between father and son) as emphasized in Confucianism. Ren was the subject of extensive scholarly discourse in Confucianism, and the concept of Hesed was similarly complex. What is clear, however, is that with respect to the polarity of softness and hardness, ren and yi parallel Hesed and Din. Contrary to popular Western ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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gender correlations, both Jewish and Chinese medieval philosophy assigned mercy to the masculine and severity to the feminine.28 Both Jewish and Chinese thinkers also regarded imbalance within these dyads as a source of evil.29 Aligning the Chinese pentad of virtues with the central Sefirot has an intriguing consequence. At the bottom of the Five Agents in the Diagram, there is a small circle that is not a component in its own right. About it Zhu Xi writes, “The small circle below, connected by the four lines with the Five Agents above, indicates that which has no Pole, in which all are mysteriously unified.”

If Wood and Metal are placed at the top of the five agents as displayed in the table above, the small circle is above them, precisely at the site of the “supplementary” Sefirah of Da’at (Knowledge), which is not numbered among the canonical Sefirot.30 Da’at is not shown in the Tree as reproduced here, but it is sometimes interposed between WisdomUnderstanding and Benevolence-Judgment.

The Last Two Components The last two components of both symbols are neutral in gender. In circle IV of the Diagram, the two are qian and kun, and in circle V, there are the “myriad things”; in the Tree, Yesod (Foundation) and Malkhut (Kingdom).

In both, the next-to-last component is the sexual generative power and the funnel through which all components above merge and flow into the final component. The last component is the multiplicity of all things, which results from this influx via the union of sexual powers.

The sexually generative character of the last two circles of the Diagram is asserted by both Zhou Dunyi and Zhu Xi. The two qi (of maleness and femaleness), reacting with and influencing each other, change and bring the myriad things into being. Generation follows generation, and there is no end to their changes and transformations. (Zhou Dunyi) The fourth figure represents (the operations of the qi of yin and yang exhibited in) the principles of (heavenly) maleness and of (earthly) femaleness which pervade the universe. . . . The fifth figure represents the birth and transformation of the myriad things in their sensible forms, each of which has its own nature. (Zhu Xi) Qian and kun, the male and female aspects of circle IV, are the primary yang and yin trigrams and hexagrams in the Yijing; they consist exclusively of yang and yin lines, respectively.31 This circle thus links the

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Diagram to this Confucian classic, which Zhou Dunyi says “is the most perfect.” While yin and yang are not generally sexual, in circle IV they are.

Needham states that Zhou Dunyi’s commentary on circle IV is “undoubtedly chemical, cf. the sexual symbolism of the alchemists.”32 In the Daoist antecedent of the Diagram, used to guide meditation, the commentary on circle IV is explicitly alchemical; Zhou Dunyi retained this association.

About the Tree, Scholem writes, The ninth Sefirah, Yesod, is the male potency, described with clearly phallic symbolism, the ‘foundation’ of all life, which guarantees and consummates the hieros gamos, the holy union of male and female powers.33 Foundation has a masculine character in relation to Kingdom, but it is not exclusively masculine, as its placement on the central column attests. The phallic symbolism comes from using the male figure to associate Sefirot with bodily parts, but genital symbolism is really intended.

Scholem notes, The ninth Sefirah, Yesod, “the foundation,” is correlated with the male and female sex organs . . . out of which all the higher Sefirot—welded together in the image of the King—flow into the Shekhinah [and] is interpreted as the procreative life force dynamically active in the universe.34 Sexual rites and meditations were associated with Foundation.

Scholem quotes a Friday evening hymn of Isaac Luria, the great Safed Kabbalist, which speaks of the union of husband and wife and makes this quite explicit.35 The argument here is not that there was a sexual alchemy within Kabbalah but that the sexual symbolism of Foundation resembles the sexual aspect of Chinese alchemy.

A moral dimension of circle IV augments its sexual aspect. Zhou Dunyi writes, It is man alone, however, who receives the finest (substance) and is the most spiritual of beings. After his (bodily) form has been produced, his spirit develops consciousness; (when) his five agents are stimulated and move, (there develops the) distinction between good and evil, and the myriad phenomena of conduct appear.

The distinction between good and evil is circle IV; the “myriad phenomena of conduct” which flow from this distinction is circle V. Similarly, Foundation is also called Zaddik, “the righteous one.” Righteousness is the foundation of the world36 and is associated with moral distinctions ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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and harmonious equilibrium, with setting things in their proper places.

(The righteousness of the Sefirah Judgment is a more general concept, meaning also rigor and power; the righteousness of Foundation refers to specific behavior.) There is also a moral connection to the sexual aspect of Foundation. This Sefirah was associated with the Biblical figure of Joseph, who resisted sexual temptation.

The symbolism of the last component is also similar. Circle V, the “myriad things,”37 is the multiplicity finally engendered by the Supreme Pole.38 This circle is not considered to be yin either by Zhou Dunyi or by Zhu Xi, but in the Daoist precursor of the Diagram it is called the “Doorway of the Mysterious Female” or “The Gate of the Dark Femininity.”39 Circle V corresponds to Kingdom, which unites the Sefirot and represents the attribute of God linked most closely with the material world. Kingdom is distinctively female, corresponding to the lower Shekhinah, the female aspect of God, the divine immanence within the multiplicity of existence.

It is “in everything” (ba-kol), the “form that embraces all forms” and renders to each form its specific individuality.40 Plurality is also reflected in the interpretation of this last Sefirah as representing “Knesseth Israel,” the mystical archetype of the community of Israel.41 The last component is farthest from the first and is a terminus, yet like the other components it remains connected to its source. There is resemblance between the words of the Sefer Yetsirah at 1:7—“Ten Sefirot of Nothingness: Their end is imbedded in their beginning and their beginning in their end”42—and Zhu Xi’s commentary on circle V—“But all the myriad things go back to the one Supreme Pole.”

The point is weakened by the fact that Zhu Xi says the same thing about circle IV, but he means that all the components of the Diagram are united in their source (as was also held by the Kabbalists about the Sefirot). Circularity in the Diagram is also suggested by its mirror-symmetry: circle V mirrors circle I and circle IV mirrors circle II (yang and yin are inside circle II). In the Tree, circularity is suggested by Kingdom being related in meaning to the first Sefirah, Crown. Kingdom is also called Atarah, another word for crown.43 The Tree, however, is visually less symmetric because Wisdom and Understanding are structurally separate, unlike yang and yin in circle II of the Diagram.

Overall Architecture If we step back from the components and their relationships and look at the overall architecture of the symbols, we can see that their global structures—the hierarchical sequence of levels and the spatial arrangement

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of male, female, and neutral components—are very similar. The vertical hierarchy in each symbol articulates levels of differentiation from the primal unity to the multiplicity of existence, but this progression does not imply a simple directionality. Like the tension between symmetry and asymmetry (sequence) for components at the same level, there is tension also between hierarchy (directionality) and nonhierarchy in the relations between levels. The circularity of the symbols counters directionality.

Also, although the levels reflect a progression, they are nevertheless not fundamentally different from one another. Zhu Xi writes, The Supreme Pole . . . should be regarded neither as separate from, nor as identical with, the Two Forces. . . . The Five Agents all come from the Yin and Yang (Forces). The five different things (fit into) the two realities without the slightest excess or deficiency. And the Yin and the Yang (go back to) the Supreme Pole (perfectly), neither one of them being more or less elaborate than the other, nor more or less fundamental than the other.

However, Zhu Xi affirms that the Five Agents and the myriad things all have their “specific natures,” which he does not say about taiji or the Two Forces. This points to the differences that still distinguish the components. The Kabbalists did not stress the equality of all parts of the Tree but suggested a kind of homogeneity in the multiple polar dyads of the neutral column: Crown-Kingdom, Beauty-Kingdom, and FoundationKingdom. There are no vertical polar dyads in the Diagram.

The components of both symbols can be assigned to male, female, and neutral vertical columns. In the Diagram, the columns are not explicit, but the principle is clear. Yang, associated with expansion,44 encompasses Fire (major yang) and Wood (minor yang). Yin, associated with concentration, encompasses Water (major yin) and Metal (minor yin). The central neutral column includes circles I, IV, and V, and Earth, which is a synthesis of yin and yang. For the Tree (left-right assignments are reversed relative to the Diagram), the columns are quite explicit: the right column includes Wisdom, Benevolence, and Eternity; the left column Understanding, Judgment, and Glory; and the central column includes Crown, Beauty, Foundation, and Kingdom. The right and left columns are of Mercy and Judgment, respectively, representing male and “expansive” versus female and “concentrative” attributes of God.45 The central column is neutral but includes the vertical gender polarities mentioned above.

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component representing either the origin of the dyadic terms or a synthesis that reconciles their opposition. Symbolic triads were widely prevalent in both East and West, so it is not surprising to see such triadic schemes in these Chinese and Jewish symbols. What is remarkable is that the union of hierarchical and polar organizing principles produces an identical spatial distribution of components: proceeding downward, both symbols begin with a neutral component, which splits into a male-female dyad, from which are derived a dyad, a neutral component, and another dyad, after which the symbol is completed by two neutral components.

The Diagram and Tree have the same or nearly the same number of components. The Tree is explicitly constructed from the ten Sefirot. The number ten had great symbolic resonance in Jewish thought, and the Sefer Yetsirah explicitly insisted upon this precise number: “Ten and not nine; ten and not eleven.”47 The Diagram is also composed of Both symbols were ten components if one counts yang and yin (the parts of circle II) as two components, which is suggested by read upward to guide the Two Forces being visually distinct. In circle IV, which symbolizes the sexual potency, two-foldedness meditation and downis not visually indicated, so this circle can be counted as one component. But it is unnecessary to insist that ward to represent divine the Chinese structure has precisely ten components.

It is the similarity of this structure to the structure of the Tree, not its number of components, which is unfolding. interesting. While the symbolism of two and three is found in both traditions, the symbolism of ten is a Western one, being present in Jewish, Pythagorean, Gnostic, and early Christian writings, and is not indigenous to Chinese thought.

The Tree was sometimes also conceptualized as a triad—CrownWisdom-Understanding—followed by a heptad of the remaining seven “Sefirot of Construction,” or as three triads—Crown-Wisdom-Understanding pointing up, and Benevolence-Judgment-Beauty and Eternity-GloryFoundation pointing down—leading to and summarized in Kingdom,48 or as a monad (Crown), followed by an octad (Wisdom to Foundation), completed by a monad (Kingdom).49 Other spatial configurations appear in the history of the symbol, and there are different representations of the channels connecting the Sefirot.

The Diagram, by comparison, is simpler. It consists of the monad of taiji followed by the yin-yang dyad, then the grouping of the Five Agents, and finally the two single components. Chinese philosophy did not utilize a symbolism of seven, although the union of the Two Forces and Five Agents was conceptualized early in Chinese thought, and the

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seven components are referred to as a unit by Zhu Xi.50 (Note that this heptad does not parallel the Sefirot of Construction, nor does it parallel the seven vertical levels of the Tree.) To this heptad, circles I, IV, and V were added, and these additions were already present in the Daoist precursors of the Diagram. It is precisely the addition of these circles that establishes its close similarity to the Tree.

Because of its symbolism of ten and multiple organizing principles and because the Sefirot constitute a homogeneous set of components, the Tree is more integrated than the Diagram. The channels between the Sefirot, associated with the Hebrew letters, were often a significant part of the symbolism. In contrast, explicit relations between components of the Diagram show up only within the Five Agents. There are no links between an individual force and an individual agent or between a Force or agent and circle IV or V, nothing analogous to the direct relations between Wisdom and Benevolence or between Beauty and Foundation.

The Diagram looks like a set of unconnected substructures. Nonetheless, relations of this sort are implicit in it. Zhou Dunyi writes, The true (principle) of that which has no Pole, and the essences of the Two (Forces) and the Five (Agents) unite (react) with one another in marvelous ways, and consolidations ensue.

Uses for Meditation The Diagram can be traced back to a Daoist symbol that was used to guide meditation. For this purpose it was read from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Needham suggests that “it originated with Chen Tuan (d. 969), the famous Wu Dai expositor of the Yijing.”51 The Diagram commentaries reflect Daoist influence in the alchemical reference of circle IV, in the Five Forces, and in the reference to the “Ultimateless” of circle I. Zhou Dunyi reinterpreted this symbol cosmologically and morally. Although meditation was practiced by Neo-Confucians52 as part of self-cultivation, the Diagram does not seem to have been linked to this practice.

The Sefirot were also used for meditation,53 and a bottom-up reading of the Tree sometimes characterized such uses.54 So both Chinese and Jewish symbols were read upward to guide meditative practice and downward to represent cosmological or divine unfolding. Both symbols offered a hierarchical scheme for the soul (spirit, mind). Both characterized the bottom component as female, but not in the abstract and straightforward sense of yin and Understanding. The femaleness of circle V is “mysterious” and a “doorway,” just as “the last Sefirah is for man ISSUE 9, OCTOBER 2009

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the door or gate through which he can begin the ascent up the ladder of perception to the Divine Mystery.”55 As for meditative practice itself, the two traditions were quite different. Generally, the personal experiences of the Kabbalists were not made public, but their meditation practices that we know of were centered in the names and attributes of God and focused on words and letters, which were conceptualized, visualized, or vocalized. In contrast, Daoist meditation employed the circulation of vital energies strongly coupled to breath, sensation, and awareness. The Kabbalist Abulafia, however, did also make use of breathing exercises.56 On the Possibility of Influence Since the “null hypothesis” in comparing a Chinese and a Jewish symbol must be difference, it is similarity that requires explanation. It would be simplest to assume that the symbols developed independently and commonalities reflect religious or philosophical universals of thought and experience. But the possibility of intercultural contact should also be examined, especially since diagrams travel light. To consider the possibility of influence, some relevant dates are worth reviewing. The essay of Zhou Dunyi and the commentary of Zhu Xi were written in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, respectively. The similar symbol of Chen Tuan dates from the tenth century. Needham writes that a similar structure occurs even earlier in an eighth-century Daoist book.57 However, while Chen Tuan’s symbol58 was the same as Zhou Dunyi’s Diagram, the eighthcentury structure59 differed from it.

The doctrine of Sefirot goes back at least to the pre-Kabbalistic Sefer Yetsirah (third century to sixth century), and the decad as central to creation derives from still older Jewish and Gnostic sources.60 The Sefer Yetsirah referred to ten Sefirot, but a full metaphysical theory of the Sefirot was not explicitly developed. In the Sefer Bahir of Provence (and other texts of the thirteenth century), Foundation was assigned to the seventh place. It was moved to the ninth position in writings of the later Kabbalist school in Gerona, Spain.61 As for the Tree itself, Scholem indicates that it dates at least to the fourteenth century. At the latest, it appears as the frontispiece of the Latin translation by Paul Ricci published in 1516 of the Shaarey Orah of Joseph Gikatila (1248–1323), a translation which contributed to the development of Christian and occult Kabbalah.

Thus the doctrine of the Sefirot and the symbolism of ten appear to be earlier than the Diagram and its Daoist precursors, but the canonical

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structure of the Tree appears to be later. Since it is not known when Sefirotic diagrams first came into being, there is no solid chronological basis on which to build hypotheses of contact or influence from one culture to another. The known dates of appearance of the symbols would argue for a Chinese to Jewish direction, and this might be supported by the fact that a permanent Jewish settlement was established in Kaifeng in the eleventh century, which was then the capital city in the Song dynasty and China’s principal cultural and commercial center.62 On the other hand, the appearance of the structures themselves might suggest a Jewish-to-Chinese direction. The Tree is highly integrated, while in the Diagram the addition of circles I, IV, and V to the canonical Two Forces and Five Agents seems ad hoc. But as there is no historical evidence for influence in either direction, one might turn to the alternative hypothesis of independent convergent development, since the symbolisms of number and form and the macrocosm-microcosm analogy are ubiquitous in traditional religions and philosophies. However, this hypothesis does not seem satisfactory either, since it is hard to believe that these commonalities adequately account for the extent of resemblance between the symbols.

Summary To recapitulate: structurally, the two symbols are very similar, having the same distribution of polar dyads and hierarchical levels. In both, neutral components harmonize these polarities or are their source or terminus.

If, in the Diagram, yang and yin (circle II) are counted as two components and circle IV as one, there is a one-to-one mapping between the ten components of the two symbols. The hierarchy of each structure closes upon itself, with the first and last components, primal unity and unfolded multiplicity, being circularly linked. Both symbols declare a macrocosmmicrocosm isomorphism: they are read downwards as cosmological or theosophical diagrams but upwards as guides to spiritual practice. In both symbols, two ideas, positive and negative—the manifest and the unmanifest—are associated with the first component, and the dualism is resolved in different ways. The meanings of the first three and last two components are similar, with sexual generativity implied in components two and three and component nine. The central portions of both symbols exhibit two dyads and a neutral harmonizing component. They present benevolence and righteousness as the primary virtues, and as male and female, respectively. Moral action is referred in both to component nine.

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generativity (or moral discrimination) of component nine, namely the material (or behavioral) multiplicity of the world.

Given the differences between Chinese and Judaic thought in general, and between Neo-Confucianism and Kabbalah in particular, these similarities are striking.  Notes

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

106

The author is indebted to Anthony Blake for stimulating discussions on religious symbolism, to Joseph Adler and Anne Birdwhistell for their valuable comments on Neo-Confucianism and the Diagram, to Joseph Dan for his observations on the peripheral status of the Tree in Kabbalist thought, and to Irene Eber for helpful assistance with Chinese terms and philosophical ideas. Anonymous reviewers of past drafts of this paper have also made useful useful comments, and the author is also grateful for the valuable suggestions of David Rounds, the editor of this journal. The assertions made in this paper are, of course, the responsibility only of the author.

The major alternative translation is “Supreme Ultimate.” Needham’s translation of the word as “Pole” is used in this paper, despite the fact that “Ultimate” is the more common translation (Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 2, History of Scientific Thought [Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1956]).

The Kabbalist Tree is from Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), originally published as Von der mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag AG, 1962), 44; the Diagram of the Supreme Pole is from Yu-Lan Fung, A History of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 2, trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 436.

Needham, 605.

Fung, 433.

This is a paraphrase of the account of John B. Henderson, The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 125.

The dates of these works are uncertain and in dispute. Dates given here are from Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: New American Library (Meridian), 1974), 57 (for the Zohar), 27 (for Sefer Yetsirah), 42 (for Sefer Bahir).

Scholem, Godhead, 106.

Idel distinguishes between this common view: (1) the Sefirot as the components of the “divine essence” and its variations, (2) the Sefirot as “nondivine in essence” but as “instruments” or “vessels for the divine influx,” and (3) the Sefirot as “divine emanations within created reality,” i.e., as “the immanent element of divinity” (Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988], 137).

Scholem explicitly rejects the view of Franck that the Kabbalah was pantheist (96), but it is not necessary to go this far to see a cosmology in Kabbalah.

The dichotomy of theosophical (theoretical) and ecstatic (experiential) Kabbalah corresponds to a predominant focus on macrocosm and microcosm, respectively, but there is a continuum from theosophy to prayer to meditation. Where to place the “mystical” along this continuum is not always clear. The psychological interpretation of the Sefirot—which merges with the meditational and mystical—

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The Diagram of the Supreme Pole and the Kabbalistic Tree is more identified with ecstatic Kabbalah (e.g., Abulafia); it was deemphasized in Lurianic Kabbalah but was later extensively taken up in Hasidism (Idel, 148–50).

11. Needham, 460–64. For other translations, see, e.g., J. Percy Bruce, Chu Hsi [Zhu Xi] and His Masters (London: Probsthain & Company, 1923), 128–33; Fung, 435–38 (for Zhou Dunyi’s commentary).

12. Other Scholem works that have been consulted are Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1941; New York: Schocken Books, 1946); On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), originally published as Zur Kabbala und ihrer Symbolik (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag AG, 1960); and Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton: Jewish Publication Society & Princeton University Press, 1987), originally published as Ursprung und Anfänge der Kabbala (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1962).

13. Idel writes, “There is as yet no comprehensive study of the history of the Kabbalistic doctrines of the Sefirot” (Kabbalah, 136). Daniel Abrams concurs in his “New Study Tools from the Kabbalists of Today: Toward an Appreciation of the History and Role of Collectanea, Paraphrases and Graphic Representations in Kabbalistic Literature,” Journal des Études de la Cabale 1 (1997).

14. Needham, 464.

15. Henderson, Chinese Cosmology, 125.

16. Scholem, Kabbalah, 88–92; Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, vol. 1, trans.

David Goldstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 235ff.

17. Daniel C. Matt, “The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism,” in Robert K. C. Forman, ed., The Problem of Pure Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), reprinted in Lawrence Fine, Essential Papers on Kabbalah (New York: NYU Press, 201), 67–108.

18. Scholem, Kabbalah, 108; Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 103.

19. Scholem, Godhead, 174.

20. Needham’s translation of “Five Elements” is replaced here by the more common “Five Agents.”

21. Din is given prominence here, although Gevurah is more common for this Sefirah, because the Tree uses Din, and because the meaning of Din is clearer.

22. Needham, 297. In Kabbalistic ideas about the hierarchy of the soul (Nefesh, Ruach, and Neshamah), one can find Ruach sometimes identified with the six Sefirot, Benevolence through Foundation, roughly analogous to five agents in the Diagram.

23. Occult Kabbalah had a developed symbolism of five, and Regardie associated Ruach with Hesed through Hod (Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates: An Outline of the Qabalah [St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1970]).

24. For Zhu Xi, see Chiu Hansheng, “Zhu Xi’s Doctrine of Principle,” in Wing-tsit Chan, Chu Hsi and Neo-Confucianism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986), 129–35.

25. Teng Aimin, “Chu Hsi’s [Zhu Xi’s] Theory of the Great Ultimate,” in Wing-tsit Chan, 110. Welch expressed this idea more directly: “This Neo-Confucianism . . . developed because Confucius had never formulated a metaphysics, and the lack of it put his later followers at a disadvantage in their rivalry with the complete philosophical systems of Taoism and Buddhism” (Holmes Welch, Taoism: The Parting of the Ways [Boston: Beacon Press, 1971], 158).

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27. Fung, 447.

28. However, in his commentary, Zhou Dunyi reverses the usual Chinese correlation by writing: “Therefore it is said, ‘In representing the Tao of Heaven one uses the terms Yin and Yang, and in representing the Tao of Earth one uses the terms Soft and Hard; while in representing the Tao of Man, one uses the terms Love and Righteousness.” Perhaps this reflects an admission that this traditional correlation is in some respects counterintuitive.

29. See Scholem, Godhead, “Good and Evil in the Kabbalah,” and Fung, 446–7, discussing Zhou Dunyi’s commentary.

30. Scholem, Kabbalah, 107.

31. Fung, 454–6.

32. Needham, 461; Fung , at 441, concurs.

33. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 104.

34. Ibid., 143 and 227.

35. Ibid., 143.

36. Scholem, Kabbalah, chap. 3.

37. Also translated literally as “the ten thousand things” (Fung, 445), a concept that dates at least back to the Daodejing and that is used in Chinese thought to indicate the multiplicity of existence. There is a possible Jewish parallel. Joseph Dan, in his The Ancient Jewish Mysticism (Tel-Aviv: MOD Books, 1993) writes, “Ancient Hebrew, as modern-day Hebrew, does not have a word for any number larger than 10,000. . . . The Hebrew horizon did not extend beyond 10,000” (74).

38. This multiplicity is different from the multiplicity generated by the binary exponentiation of the Yijing. The Diagram treats this multiplicity as a unity by its referring to the Yijing with the simple circle IV. 39. Fung, 441; Chung-yuan Chang, Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Poetry (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 166. The concept comes from Laozi.

40. Scholem, Godhead, 171, 179.

41. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 167–9.

42. Kaplan, notes that “beginning” refers to Crown and “end” to Kingdom, and explicitly offers a circular visualization of their connection (Sefir Yeszira: The Book of Creation [New York: Samuel Weiser, 1990], 57).

43. Gershom Scholem, On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time & Other Essays (Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1997), 143.

44. Needham, 471.

45. Adolph Frank, The Kabbalah (New York: Kabbalah Publishing Company, 1926), trans. I. Sossnitz, 106.

46. Needham, 297.

47. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 144.

48. Scholem, Kabbalah, 107–9.

49. Idel, 55.

50. Fung (547) gives the Zhu Xi quote. The linkage of the Two Forces and the Five Agents was an ancient one, not an innovation of Zhu Xi. Berling notes that “yin and yang and the five agents had first been united in a primitive cosmology by one Tsou Yen, two hundred years before the Han” (Judith Berling, The Syncretic Religion

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The Diagram of the Supreme Pole and the Kabbalistic Tree

51.

52.

53.

54.

55.

56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

61.

62.

of Lin Chao-en [New York: Columbia University Press, 1980], 21). This heptadic grouping notwithstanding, an explicit symbolism of seven was generally absent from Chinese thought. By contrast, seven is ubiquitous in Western symbolism.

Needham, 467.

Meditation as “self-cultivation” was practiced by both Zhou Dunyi and Zhu Xi (Julia Ching in Wing-tsit Chan, 282).

Kaplan asserts that the Sefer Yetsirah is a meditation manual (Sefir Yeszira, xi), but a clearer example is the Shaarey Orah of Joseph Gikatila (1248–1323), translated into Latin by Paul Ricci in 1516 and printed in Hebrew forty-five years later (Aryeh Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah [New York: Samuel Weiser, 1982], 127).

Kaplan (Meditation and Kabbalah, 118, 121, 125, 132) asserts this, referring to the Kabbalist books of The Gate of Kavanah of the Early Kabbalists (Shaar HaKavanah LeMekubalim HaRishonim; late 1100s), probably authored by Rabbi Azriel of Gerona, and Shaarey Orah of Rabbi Joseph Gikatila. See also Scholem, Kabbalah, 126. Abulafia also hinted at the ascent through the “ladder of the Sefirot” (Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah, 78–9).

Scholem, Kabbalah, 112.

Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah, 79.

Needham (467) gives the title as Shang Fang Ta Tung-Chen Yuan Miao Ching Tu (Diagrams of the Mysterious Cosmogenic Classic of the Tung-Chen Scriptures).

Fung (441) gives only the commentary but not the structure. Chang (164ff.) gives both; these are reproduced in Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, The Shambhala Dictionary of Taoism, trans. Werner Winsche (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1996), 15.

Fung (439) also provides the structure and gives its title as “Diagram of the Truly First and Mysterious Classic of the Transcendent Great Cave.”

Idel, 112–22.

Scholem indicates that Foundation in the Bahir preceded Eternity and Glory (Kabbalah, 107). A different order is given by Aryeh Kaplan in his translation and commentary (Bahir Bahir [York Beach, MN: Samuel Weiser, 1979], 117): Glory (6), Foundation (7), Beauty (8), Eternity (9), Kingdom (10).

Michael Pollak Pollak, Mandarins, Jews, and Missionaries: The Jewish Experience in the Chinese Empire (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980), chap. 13. Pollak sees evidence that the Kaifeng community maintained contact with extra-Chinese Jewish centers for at least several generations in the familiarity of this community with Maimonidean doctrine.

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A Portrait of the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua, Founder of the Institute for World Religions

T

he late Venerable Master Hsüan Hua (Xuanhua) was born in 1918 into a peasant family in a small village on the Manchurian plain.

He attended school for only two years, during which he studied the Chinese classics and committed much of them to memory. As a young teenager, he opened a free school for both children and adults. He also began one of his lifelong spiritual practices: reverential bowing. Outdoors, in all weather, he would make over eight hundred prostrations daily as a profound gesture of his respect for all that is good and sacred in the universe.

He was nineteen when his mother died, and for three years he honored her memory by sitting in meditation in a hut beside her grave. It was during this time that he made a resolve to go to America to teach the principles of wisdom. As a first step, at the end of the period of mourning, he entered San Yuan Monastery, took as his teacher Master Chang Chih, and subsequently received the full ordination of a Buddhist monk at Pu To Mountain. For ten years he devoted himself to study of the Buddhist scriptural tradition and to mastery of both the Esoteric and the Chan schools of Chinese Buddhism. He had also read and contemplated the scriptures of Christianity, Daoism and Islam. Thus, by the age of thirty, he had already established through his own experience the four major imperatives of his later ministry in America: the primacy of the monastic tradition; the essential role of moral education; the need for Buddhists to ground themselves in traditional spiritual practice and authentic scripture; and, just as essential, the importance and the power of ecumenical respect and understanding.

In 1948, Master Hua traveled south to meet the Venerable Hsü Yun, who was then already 108 years old and China’s most distinguished spiritual teacher. From him Master Hua received the patriarchal transmission in the Wei Yang lineage of the Chan school. Master Hua subsequently left China for Hong Kong. He spent a dozen years there, first in seclusion, then later as a teacher at three monasteries which he founded.

Finally, in 1962, he went to the United States, and by 1968, he had established the Buddhist Lecture Hall in a loft in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

There he began giving nightly lectures in Chinese to an audience of young Americans. His texts were the major scriptures of the Mahayana. In 1969, he astonished the monastic community of Taiwan by sending there for final ordination two American women and three American men, all five

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fully trained as novices, conversant with Buddhist scripture, and fluent in Chinese. During subsequent years, the Master trained and oversaw the ordination of hundreds of monks and nuns who came to California from every part of the world to study with him. These monastic disciples now teach in the twenty-eight temples, monasteries and convents that the Master founded in the United States, Canada and several Asian countries.

They are also active, together with many volunteers from the laity, in the work of the Buddhist Text Translation Society, which to date has issued over 130 volumes of translation of the major Mahayana sutras and instructions in practice given by the Master.

As an educator, Master Hua was tireless. From 1968 to the mid-1980s he gave as many as a dozen lectures a week, and he traveled extensively on speaking tours. At the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, California, he established formal training programs for monastics and for laity; elementary and secondary schools for boys and girls; and Dharma Realm Buddhist University, together with its branch, the Institute for World Religions, in Berkeley. In forming the vision for all of these institutions, the Master stressed that moral education must be the foundation for academic learning, just as moral practice must be the basis for spiritual growth.

The Venerable Master insisted on ecumenical respect, and he delighted in interfaith dialogue. He stressed commonalities in religious traditions—above all their emphasis on proper conduct, compassion and wisdom. He was also a pioneer in building bridges between different Buddhist national traditions. He often brought monks from Theravada countries to California to share the duties of transmitting the precepts of ordination. He invited Catholic priests to celebrate the Mass in the Buddha Hall at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, and he developed a late-in-life friendship with Paul Cardinal Yü Bin, the exiled leader of the Catholic Church in China and Taiwan. He once told the cardinal: “You can be a Buddhist among the Catholics, and I’ll be a Catholic among Buddhists.” To the Master, the essential teachings of all religions could be summed up in a single word: wisdom.

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About This Journal Mission Religion East & West, the journal of the Institute for World Religions, is published every October. Its authors approach religion from a wide variety of perspectives, including doctrine, practice, ethics, history, biography and the relation of religion to other aspects of life. By welcoming voices from many spiritual traditions, the journal furthers the Institute for World Religions’ mission of promoting interfaith understanding and trust.

Religion East & West champions the ideal of scholar-practitioner. Its editorial board seeks to publish articles by authors who are scholars grounded in practice or who are practitioners informed by study and reflection. The journal’s premise is that when scholarship and practice are combined, both are deepened, and that together they will inspire respect and appreciation for the manifold variety of human religiosity.

Editorial Submissions.

Religion East & West welcomes submissions from authors of all nations and all spiritual traditions. Articles are generally between 2,500 and 7,000 words in length. References are in the form of endnotes rather than footnotes or embedded citations. Queries or finished articles are accepted for consideration, as are articles based on papers delivered at conferences and similar gatherings.

Queries and submissions are welcome year-round and may be sent to the Editor via email to sdrounds@saber.net or by mail to Religion East & West, Institute for World Religions, 2245 McKinley Avenue, Suite B, Berkeley, California, 94703 U.S.A. The deadline for finished pieces is May 1.

Subscribing to Religion East & West Annual subscription rates for Religion East & West are $12 for individuals, $18 for institutions, and $20 outside North America. Those wishing to subscribe may do so by email to kp@drbu.org or by mail to the Institute for World Religions, 2245 McKinley Avenue, Suite B, Berkeley, CA 94703, U.S.A. Subscribers may enclose their check or request an invoice.

Back issues of Religion East & West may be purchased at $12 each from the Institute for World Religions at its Berkeley address.

Supporting Religion East & West The Institute for World Religions, publisher of Religion East & West, is an affiliate of Dharma Realm Buddhist University and the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, a nonprofit religious and education organization,

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which generously underwrites the Institute and the journal. Subscribers and other readers of the journal who wish to support the journal or the other work of the Institute may make a tax-deductible donation by mail to the Institute at 2245 McKinley Avenue, Suite B, Berkeley, CA 94703, U.S.A. Online Access This periodical is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, published by the American Theological Library Association, 300 S. Wacker Drive, Ste. 2100, Chicago, IL 60606 U.S.A. Email: atla@atla.com. Online: http://www.atla.com Religion East & West is accessible, beginning with Issue #4, on EBSCO databases, which are available online in academic libraries as well as in larger circulation libraries.

Back issues are also available in PDF format at www.drbu.org/rew/

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Past Contributors to Religion East & West Issue 8, 2008: Contemplative Studies, Contemplative Practices Harold D. Roth, B. Alan Wallace, Ven. Master Hsüan Hua, William Jackson, Fausto Gianfreda, S.J., Mark E. Hanshaw, Lauren Bausch, Thomas Cattoi Issue 7, 2007: Interreligious Dialogue and Spiritual Hospitality Fr. Pierre-François de Béthune, Snjezana Akpinar, Robert Henrey, Rev. Myo Denis Lahey, Rev. Larry Ballenger, Maggie Norton, David Rounds, Robert Hale, OS.B.Cam., Mary Bockover Issue 6, 2006: Self and Other, Emptiness and Plenitude Rob Cook, Muhammed Kamal, Martin Verhoeven, Fr. Robert Hale, O.S.B., Taigen Dan Leighton, Mary Ann Donovan, S.C., Hozan Alan Senauke, Joseph Loizzo Issue 5, 2005: The Universal Grammar of Religion Huston Smith, Henry Rosemont Jr., Raimon Pannikar, Fr. Pierre-François de Béthune, Wilson Van Dusen, Rev. Charles Gibbs, Rev. Canon Francis V. Tiso, Rev. Bhikshu Heng Sure, Fr. Joseph Wong, Leena Taneja, Steven Tainer, Ronald B. Epstein Issue 4, 2004: Contemporary Crises, Ancient Truths Michael Nagler, Lewis S. Mudge, Douglas K. Mikkelson, Giv Nassiri, Karma Lekshe Tsome, Muhammad Kamal, Asoke Basu, Ven. Master Hsüan Hua, Ven. K. Sri Dhammananda Issue 3, 2003: Resonances, Adaptations, and Misunderstandings Anthony C. Yu, Henry Rosemont Jr., Martin J. Verhoeven, John M. Thompson, Michael Nagler, Kenan Osborne, O.F.M., M. Blouke Carus Issue 2, 2002: Ecology and Ethics in Religious Traditions Mary Evelyn Tucker, Judith A. Berling, Thomas F. Macmillan, Ven. Master Hsüan Hua, Snjezana Akpinar, Swami Prabuddhananda, Zhuohao Yu, Sr. Marianne Farina, C.S.C., Mary I. Bockover Issue 1, 2001: Inaugural Issue Henry Rosemont Jr., Huston Smith, Snjezana Akpinar, Ronald B. Epstein, Bhikshuni Heng Hsien, Bhikshuni Heng Yi, Bhikshuni Heng Liang, Rev. Bhikshu Heng Sure, Douglas Powers, Martin J. Verhoeven

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Institute for World Religions Mission Statement

About the Institute for World Religions

With the understanding that spiritual values are central to the human experience, the Institute for World Religions exists to promote mutual understanding among the world’s spiritual traditions. The Institute for World Religions facilitates shared inquiry into the founding visions of the world’s faiths so that all might learn from the others’ strengths while preserving the integrity of their own.

The Institute for World Religions is also committed to providing an open forum where clergy, theologians, philosophers, scientists, educators and individuals from a wide variety of disciplines can examine the role of religion in a modern world.

All of the institute’s activities take place in an atmosphere of mutual respect and promote the universal human capacity for goodness and wisdom.

The Institute for World Religions was established as a direct result of the inspiration and planning of the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua and Paul Cardinal Yü Bin. Both of these distinguished international leaders in religion and education believed that harmony among the world’s religions is an indispensable prerequisite for a just and peaceful world. Both shared the conviction that every religion should affirm humanity’s common bonds and rise above narrow sectarian differences.

When they established the Institute for World Religions in 1976, Cardinal Yü Bin enthusiastically agreed to serve as the Institute’s first director. In 1994 the Institute moved to the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery. Its proximity to the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, the Graduate Theological Union, and to the rich academic, religious and cultural environment of the San Francisco Bay Area provides an ideal environment for the Institute’s programs.

In keeping with its mission, the Institute offers programs designed to bring the major religious traditions together in discourse with each other and with the contemporary world. The Institute also participates in local and global interfaith initiatives as a way to bring the principles of interfaith vision and the spiritual needs of the modern world into constructive engagement. Religion East & West, as the Institute’s annual journal, is one forum for this discourse and this engagement.

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