Venerable Dr. KL Dhammajoti in IBCInternational Buddhist College (IBC) Dated 14.08.2006
General Preface: Venerable Dr KL Dhammajoti is the head of the Department of Buddhist Literary Sources, University of Keleniya and Director of Compassion Buddhist Institute both in Sri Lanka, Chairman and visiting professor of the center of Buddhist studies, university of Hong Kong and Vice Rector for Academic Affairs of International Buddhist College (IBC), Thailand. In his short visit to IBC on the 14th of August 2006 just after the first International Buddhist College Buddhist studies conference held in Penang, Malaysia, he gave a simple yet invaluable lecture to the students of IBC on the aspect of ‘Practicing Buddhism while being a Buddhist Scholar’. The full version of the talk has been reproduced below. The talk includes his decision to pursuit academic studies, the reason for his involvement in the IBC project, his critical view on the Western World, his belief in the preservation of Buddhism through the academic study of Buddhism, his advice to find meaning in being a Buddhist scholar and the importance of Buddhist studies in general. Read on…
For the greater benefit of those who are keen on persuading their academic studies besides remaining firm as what the Venerable terms as ‘sincere practicing committed Buddhists’, the talk has been written, edited and distributed to a broader audience with best of Dhamma-compliments…
Yours in the Dhamma
MCU student
Thailand
Friday, September 08, 2006
“I won’t like any of you if you become totally americanized and to the extent that you are no more what you were. I would like you with your weakness, with your problems right now if you remain essentially what you truly are”
“So learning of Buddhism and practicing of Buddhism should not be totally devoid of each other”
“Buddha is only one individual but he affects the whole world” – Dhammajoti
Good evening everybody. Actually I think you and I are equally tired. We have just come from a big conference and it was a very intensive conference. I feel like sleeping another couple of days. Anyway I am also extremely happy to have another opportunity to talk to you because I don’t come here that often. I always think of you people but due to various circumstances I am not able to come often enough. So it’s my duty to say a few words of encouragement to you. This is not going to be much of a lecture and we won’t spend too much time. I just want to emphasize a couple of points which I think will be useful to you. In the opening ceremony of that conference I had said a few words that I think are very relevant to you. Those words were actually directed to you people here. But of course, you know, it was neither supposed to be a key-note address nor a general talk. I didn’t know really how much time I was given until finally I was told I could speak only for ten minutes. I think I spoke for more than nearly fifteen minutes. So it wasn’t the occasion for me to elaborate there. One thing I had said was about the studies of Buddhism or Buddhist studies. What it means to us, to you and to me myself. I said that when I was young like you people, I am becoming older and older every year now, but when I was much younger at about your age I had deep religious emotions; and at some stage I dropped all my studies thinking that ‘studies’ was a hindrance. When I got so serious about the dharma, so serious about, what we called, ‘practice’ at that time, I started forming the university meditation society, I was the founding secretary with some other students and Ven.Wei Wu (the founder of International Buddhist College) was my classmate. We were of the same batch of the same university. We were involved in things like that. Then later on we started the Buddhist society, the FWBO (Friends of Western Buddhist Order), a branch…and so on. But of course Ven.Wei Wu was a more softer person as he always has been compared to myself. I have always been a more emotional type; and I felt very deep religious emotions – that was a big turbulent for me in a way. Thus there was a big conflict in me: why should I study if I am interested in enlightenment, you know, Buddha-hood, the Dhamma and so on? So I was dropping out off all studies but later on (as I said to cut the story short, it’s a long story), I came to it. I came back partly because I realized that I could not deny my psychology, myself that basically I am also on the one hand I am strongly emotional, on the other hand, I am an intellectual type- I know it; that I can not deny my need for intellectual understanding; that studies give me tremendous encouragement, inspirations and joy which I need to continue in my own struggle. When I can figure out some complicated Buddhist doctrines I feel extremely happy. I feel great joy. I feel great inspirations and I want to share it with others - that’s how I slowly came to accept, came to term with my own self. I accepted that I am an intellectual type besides being emotional and that I need to study. Not only that I need to study but I need to study systematically. So I said, those who were there you can remember, I said that, I know that now there are so many other young ones, may be you people are going through these if you are sincere. If you are not sincere you will never feel any conflict. Any sincere person feels conflict all the times because we have so many shortcomings as human beings. Sometimes things are beyond our control because of our dispositions, our physical and emotional karmic dispositions. If you take life easily and lightly, you will never get and feel conflicts. You go on one life to another – you joke, you laugh, you become rich and you become famous – that’s all. But when you are serious, you feel the conflicts all the times. And this is one type of conflict, an important one – that is to integrate your reasons and emotions, to come to terms with the clash between your intellectual needs and your emotional needs. So I realized that as a young man at that time, that was after my ordination and so on, I needed to study, and not only to study but study systematically in the sense that to study in a way that a university system can provide me. Not only study, I said recognition also. Just studying and want to be recognized in the sense that you want to get a degree or certificate, from my point of view, there is nothing wrong. I used to think that that was very wrong and now many people think like that also. They criticize. But my point is that I see that many of you as young bhikkhus and young nuns have this need. You want to study and you want to be provided with very systematic, high level, the best possible guide that, for instance, a university or even a professor can give you and also at the same time you want to be recognized – there is nothing wrong in that provided of course you know that that is not the only thing you need as a monk. If you are completely attached in that way, of course there will be something wrong. But to recognize and realize that you need to be recognized – that is important. You need to be accepted. And in this case even your intellectual achievement; you want to get a degree saying that you have done this successfully, that you are qualified to be a teacher specially in this age when the audience are becoming more and more sophisticated, more and more learned. They probably read more books than you in libraries and know more languages than you. So you feel assured, you feel qualified and of course these are all attachments but as I said provided you don’t make all these achievements as the most important, the greatest values as a monk then there is nothing wrong about it. At least at certain phases you need them. At least some type of people need them like the type you and I. So the acknowledgement of this fact is very important. And that’s why I have decided to involve myself in this (IBC) project. Otherwise I have a lot of things to do myself. I have never had great aims in my life. I have never thought of doing big things. I don’t want that. That is not to say that all these big projects are not good. I don’t criticize them because different people feel different ways, do things in different ways and contribute in different ways. These are the ways of others but for me I want to live in a very natural way, I hope. And if I make a contribution I would perhaps make it in a simple way. But in spite of this I have decided to join this project because as I explained that night I realized that there are many young people, whether monks or lay Buddhists having the same kind of conflict. There must be a place where you can study as Buddhists, not ordinary Buddhists may be monks or lay people, but committed Buddhists where you can feel that you can be religious at the same time receiving the best possible systematic and high level type of guidance, university type of guidance, university type of recognition. There must be a place like this. And I think that IBC has the great potential for becoming a place like this. We cannot claim that it is already a place like this. But that is the ideal, that is the vision. It’s not easy to realize the vision so quickly in a short time but it is moving in the right direction. So that’s why I have decided to involve myself.
This term also I am extremely busy. I wrote my very long essay only during the last ten days or so. Whenever I found a little bit of time, sat down and did it. Now I feel that I am getting more and more pressure in Hong Kong, in the university there. They depend a lot on me for various things. At first I thought, I just went there to be a visiting professor; you know, all I will have to do is to give some lectures but now it looks like the pressure is greater and greater. I was working until the last minute and then switched off my computer, took my laptop and went to the airport then started thinking about what to write because the day or the day before I gave the summary to them. Even I was not sure whether I was going to work out properly according to my summary. And before the 25th of this month I have to give another summary to a conference in Tokyo. And before the 25 of November I will have to give the full paper. But that one is also a very worldwide international Buddhist conference. So I have accepted that, I have to do it. And then I have to edit my annual journal also. Everybody is waiting for me. I have got all the essays but I have not yet started. So there are a lot of things to do, I just cannot finish. But I have decided to stay on to give a course here because I must take part by action, not just by words.
There are very big projects in Malaysia and Singapore, Taiwan and even in Hong Kong, I don’t join them. They will offer very good conditions so I don’t want to join them. This is not the occasion to criticize them but anyway I do not feel positive enough but this (IBC) is a different project. This is something I feel worthwhile. I have known Ven. Wei Wu since our time in the university and I know his sincerity. And as I have just explained to you it is not just that factor of friendship, it is also because it’s part of my own ideal too, to want to offer a place for training where, I say again, committed Buddhists whether monks, nuns or laypeople, as committed Buddhists, as religious people, can continue to live their religious lives while receiving university training. This is extremely important. Otherwise, you know, you have only two choices, you go to the completely traditional ‘pirivena’ (traditional Buddhist learning centers), that is also good, it depends on the type…if you are that type, if you happy enough, you stay there may be for your life, three hours in the morning, three hours in the afternoon and three hours in the night meditating, chanting mantra and sweeping the floors in the temples – that is also good for certain people. That is also important but for those people who feel that ‘no, no, I want to understand Buddhist doctrine, I have great need for my intellectual quest, I have great intellectual thirst, I have to look after my psychology but at the same time I don’t want to give up being a committed Buddhist’ then you will have to find out another place. Or the other extreme is you go to an ordinary university. Then you are exposed to all kinds of new values, especially those who play with the internet; they think that that is ‘the world’ there. It is a very dangerous tendency now. Finally you will collapse. You cannot cope with all these crazy things going on in the ‘world of internet’. It is usually good of course to be exposed, to have access to what’s happening to the world but at the same time if you don’t have enough stability, if you don’t have a very definite system of values of yourself you will go crazy very soon. You will collapse. You will even be destroyed, not to speak of people losing faith in Buddhism when they go to universities. They think that they are absorbing western ideas and they try to impose those half-bit knowledge from western countries on their own fellow colleagues, on their fellow Asian Buddhists. I see that everywhere, in Sri Lanka and not only in Sri Lanka here, in any traditional Buddhist countries, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore. People think that anything new is ‘the standard’, is ‘the best’ thing. This is the way of the thinking of some of these people. They can not think for themselves, you know. Whatever that is happening in the West is ‘the standard’. If people become hippies they think that that is ‘the best’ ideal. They look up to the West. If they become very rich and live a very comfortable life – that is the best thing and they think that that is the ideal of existence. And they have all kinds of psychology, all kinds of philosophies and they are very confusing because for ten years they will advocate one type of thinking, one type of so called psychology, psychotherapy, psychoneurosis, existentialism, you know, pragmatism, all kinds of philosophies. Ten years later you find totally opposing philosophies, different psychological explanations of our feelings and so on. By that time you may be too late and you will also go crazy at the same time. So that is the nature of especially those who started as Buddhists who have feelings for their own religion. They just go out without any guidance to the outside world to an ordinary university, to the internet, where everything is allowed and permitted and you think that that is the best thing – that is not necessarily the best thing; and finally you destroy yourselves, may be others also. You might even, as I said, there are those who have acquired half-bit knowledge of so-called western psychologies, philosophies and sociology and all that and then transfer them on to the Asian situation and say ‘Oh you people are like this, you people are suffering from this, suffering from that’. Suddenly everybody thinks that he/she is suffering. They have never been suffering before but now all sufferings begin. You have imposed on them, those so-called great intellectuals who studied from the West. They are the destroyers. They dig up all the western problems and dump them onto the Eastern people, the minds of the Eastern people and make the Eastern people suffer. You are not the same as they (Western people) are. Your backgrounds are different, your psychologies are different, your traditions are different and your childhood experiences with your whole village, with your whole countries and cultures are all different. You cannot imitate them. Of course if there are things good in the Western society you shouldn’t go to the extreme of rejecting ‘everything American is bad, everything western is bad’. You don’t have to go to that extreme. But if you are not careful you will be overwhelmed by them, ‘oh they speak English, and they speak logically’. You know, they can argue and they can convince you ‘oh that is the standard. They are good. They are better than we’. Are they really better? You imitate the way they laugh, the way they joke, imitate the way they eat, the way they walk, imitate the way they watch television, you seek the way they live and without thinking you want to be just like them. Once you come to this stage you are neither them nor yourself as an Easterner. You are totally confused and you will totally collapse. And you will may be in a very harmful position for fellow Asians also because you will become teachers, leaders and you start telling them, ‘you have problems here, you have problems there’ when they did not have and they will begin to have. So these are just a few examples. There are many destructive examples; examples of those who are exposed to, especially if you are monks and nuns, or lay practicing committed Buddhist with your values of Buddhism and you are suddenly exposed to the outside world without any guidance. You know, you have to think, you have to look carefully. There are many young Westerners who are very intelligent. They were exposed to all those things that you are now being exposed to, all the temptations, drugs, money, comforts, logical arguments, trying to be smart etc. etc. but many of these young people turned into Buddhism. Suddenly they realize that they have led a very crazy existence and they want to change. We Eastern people always look too much up to the West. Anything they follow we think is the latest and modern. Human nature is human nature. Our human need transcends time and space. Our virtues, our goodness, our weakness, our defilements are always the same. It’s just that they may appear in a different form under different circumstances. There is a lot in the values preserved in the Eastern traditions, we would say, especially Buddhism. We must feel lucky that we are born into this tradition. That we have this tradition we mustn’t lose them. We should preserve the good side of it. I don’t say that you will have to behave and live just like people who lived 2500 years ago in Magadha or in any part of India. I don’t think that that is a good thing to do. We have to understand our psychological needs; we have to know we are in different time too. But if we have no mindfulness, no commitment and we have lost all our Buddhist values and just simply go out to the so-called ‘New World’ without any restraint we will get ourselves destroyed.
So we need to preserve whatever that is good in our tradition and we also need to practice these values in a new space and time, may be in new ways. So usually to get that balance it’s extremely difficult. I don’t have very concrete methods to tell you; I don’t have perfect solution to offer you but what I am telling you is to avoid destroying yourself, to avoid loosing the good things in Buddhism. I won’t like any of you if you become totally americanized and to the extent that you are no more what you were. I would like you with your weakness, with your problems right now if you remain essentially what you truly are. Not just imitating borrowings from the modern Western latest world, including the internet world.
So in short it means that there must be a place or places to cater for people like this, who are experiencing a lot of frustrations and conflicts because time is changing, because you have the intellectual need that is not looked after properly but at the same time also to help you preserve whatever that is good in Buddhism, to help you keep yourself as a Buddhist. And this is one of the main visions of IBC. But as I have said it’s not easy, especially at the beginning there will be problems. We have gone through a lot of problems. So we must be realistic. But I am happy and pleased that every time I come here I see some improvements. That is good enough. You can’t expect anybody to be perfect. You can’t expect any place to be perfect. But if you understand the visions of this place you yourself must take part in creating it and finding meaning in it.
One of the things that I have emphasized today is to find meaning as an intellectual but at the same time without losing your emotions, your spiritual commitment. It means to integrate your Buddhist studies with your life as a committed Buddhist. I used the Chinese term that night – ‘learning to be Buddhist through learning Buddhism; learning to be a true human being through learning Buddhism; learning from the Buddha through the learning of Buddhism’. It’s not learning Buddhism for the sake of learning Buddhism. Right at the moment while you are studying and getting excited about understanding some difficult doctrines and getting the joy you must feel that you are practicing Buddhism. And this is your WAY. It may not be the way of those who are having a rosary and chanting Amitabha or those who spend their lives doing Vipassana but your way is intellectual – that’s how you get dharma-joy, that’s how you strengthen your faith through intellectual understanding of Buddhism.
So learning of Buddhism and practicing of Buddhism should not be totally devoid of each other. That’s what we are trying, that’s what we hope to help you to achieve this kind of balance. Of course, as I said, it’s not easy and not only that it is not easy but that balance has to be found by yourself because it varies from individual to individual. So the specific way that you achieve that balance is actually different in that area. But there must be a training ground, there must be a focus, there must be a center for you to try to achieve this balance and IBC represents one type of center for this kind of vision.
Not only that through learning through scholarly studies you can make, as I said, that scholarly study itself practice; that very study is practice. Not only that but you must feel that ‘that is the best I can offer for the cause of Buddhism. Yeah I like to offer because when I can offer something, when I can contribute to Buddhism that’s how I find meaning in my life, I exist as a Buddhist’. Others can offer in different ways but my way, the best I can do, because I happened to be intellectual, because I happened to be may be better in the understanding and analysis of Buddhist doctrines, right at the time I am studying I am making contributions to Buddhism in many senses. I mean the lowest sense would be like you help to promote the status of Buddhism. I think that’s at least, may be, the lowest you can think of, not at all the best. But when you feel at ease with yourself that ‘yeah I have more and more faith in the dharma because I have more and more understanding of the dharma’, then you affect the whole world. Buddha is only one individual but he affects the whole world. He exemplifies the meaningfulness of understanding Buddhism through practice. That itself is a big contribution. And you also in another sense you can propagate Buddhism, as I said, in a way that others can not do but you can do as an intellectual having got this training and this recognition. You can do.
Imagine, say, a center of Buddhist studies employing a Catholic professor teaching Buddhism. He may be an authority of Buddhism but he may have all kinds of wrong ideas of Buddhism and he will impart these wrong ideas to the students; but he has the qualifications, so he is the one who is asked to teach, not you and not I. Imagine what will happen to Buddhism. And whom is he teaching? He is teaching the intelligent of the world, the university students. But on the other hand, imagine you are a monk or a nun or at least a committed practicing Buddhist, and you become a professor or a lecturer you take charge of things, you show the students the meaningfulness of Buddhist studies and that studying Buddhism you can be a real Buddhist. You inspire the students; you guide the students. You are making tremendous contributions. So there are in many senses you can contribute as a Buddhist intellectual. It’s not, you know, earning money. I am trying to earn some money also to help others who need my help. But that’s only one part of it. That is another sense, may be, the lower sense but may be sometimes in certain way important also but in many senses you can contribute as a Buddhist scholar. Not just for the pure sake of scholarship – I don’t believe in that. I also don’t go along with all those who argue for the case of studies. Well, to argue for the case of studies is good in itself. But when you say that ‘why is Buddhist study important because first you must understand intellectually then only you will get the corresponding insight’. But I think it may or may not be true. To get intellectual insight and enlightenment doesn’t necessarily require intellectual studies. For instance, it doesn’t mean that you must analyze Paticcasamuppada according to the Buddhist text books and commentaries and then this is the first step, this must be the first step, and then only one day you can have direct insight into Paticcasamuppada. To me it doesn’t mean that at all.
We know that many meditators in the forests, it is said, when they see a leaf falling down, they realize the rising and ceasing of things, impermanence of things and so on and so on and then they gain enlightenment. They get insight into Paticcasamuppada. And some of these are called so-called private Buddhas, privately enlightened ones, Paccekabuddha for instance.
So I don’t go that far with these good intention people saying that ‘the reason why you need to study is first you must have intellectual understanding and then you will get insight of it’. Not necessarily. But I would say that studying and getting insight itself is getting tremendous spiritual experience. And certainly it can sustain you throughout your life as a Buddhist.
So to make it very short then here you should understand your need as an intellectual. And you must also realize your emotions and you must try to harmonize the intellectual aspect of it with the emotional aspect of it. You must make sense out of being a Buddhist scholar. You must understand that to practice Buddhism does not mean that you will have to stop studying, it’s opposite of studying, reject studying, but to make the very study or learning of Buddhism itself a practice of Buddhism. Again that may be true only for you. It may not be true for others. But I think it’s true generally for the intellectual type. Certainly it’s true for me. I can not say that it has got to be true for others; and secondly feel that you are making the best contribution as a Buddhist, as a Buddhist scholar.
Collected by
Mangala priya
Wat suthivararam,
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand.
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