I was reading The Life of the Buddha by Bhikkhu Nanamoli this morning. It's a collection of Pali Canon. The Pali Canon are the memorized memories of the monks that are passed down, from when they wrote down when writing became a thing. Writing wasn't really a thing when the Buddha was alive, so the tradition was saved by monks who memorized things by chanting together. It's really amazing that these writings survive, and that I can read a translation in English of something so long ago.
To me they are endlessly fascinating, like this morning when I read that the monks mistook Nanda, the Buddha's cousin, for the Buddha, and they were kind of irked by that, and even went so far as to make a rule about the size of his robe, so they wouldn't make that mistake again.
There's a lot of writing about how you know someone is a Buddha by looks. My daughter asked why my Buddha statue has such long earlobes. I told her that's how the iconography grew up around what an enlightened being looks like, including that bump on the top of his head. She thought it was just a bun, hair tied up into a bun.
At the end of each section, Nanamoli writes where he got the information. When you look it up in the more popular references, they are easy to find. The Majjhima Nikāya is probably the most popular big book of the Pali Canon. The Dhamapada, and the Udana are short collections. There are 4 main big books from the sutra collection. The bit about monks getting annoyed that Nanda looked like the Buddha and they got all respectful and ceremonial over the wrong guy, and got annoyed that that. That's from the Vinaya, which are the rules for the monk.
In a way I feel like they made a rule for everything. Whether you can leave your bowl of water after going to the bathroom is a big bone of contention, and the Buddha is even told to go away when they went to expel a monk for leaving the bowl of water at the latrine. People like to make rules for other and it can be used as a way to express conflict with others. So and so broke a rule, therefore they don't really want to participate in our community. Leaving a bowl unmindfully shows perhaps an unconscious wish to provoke such rule riddled communities. That they told the Buddha to go away, he didn't know enough about the community is utterly fascinating. You can reject the Buddha's advice.
There was a time in the Triratna when they had a very vibrant arts center in Croydon, but people would disappear in the night because the pressure was just too much. Sangharakshita would go down and try to counsel the leaders, but in the end they had to resign because they'd gone off the rails. Sometimes trying really hard to be good can lead you towards cultic behavior. To outsiders intense spiritual communities can seem cultic.
Some of the rules seem mistaken in the Theravada community, like a monk can't help his elderly aunt by touching her even if it's to help her out of a car or down some stairs. There is a parables about touching a woman to help them across a river on a monk's back, and a strict rule follower rebuking the rule breaker. The rule breaker jokes, I left that woman back at the river, you're still carrying her. This quip signals a tradition of brushing aide such pettifoggery. And yet it was the fusty traditionalists who preserved the writings and in a way are the center of Buddhism coming down to these times. The Mahayana and Vajrayana developments in Buddhism are perhaps contained in the early teachings and are emphasis that evolve to meet a changing world. Excessive individualism lead to a push for altruism. The loss of traditional relationships led to an emphasis on the guru.
The world we live in would be unrecognizable to the Buddha. As we round onto 8 billion people, the technology, the pollution and crowding, the amount of sources competing for our entertainment, the complex entertainment of science fiction, fantasy, drama, romance. Music has had an explosion of styles from punk to hip hop to jazz. There are a million little niches of music, folk music that develops like klezmer and zydeco, from Ska to trap music. There are stunningly unique talents like Charlie Parker to Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Philip Glass to Bill Evans. If the Buddha didn't dismiss Thomas Pynchon as a distraction, could he track down all the obscure references and read this incredibly dense and complicated novel?
It is possible that entertainment is a distraction, but I can't help but feel beauty is an important aspect of the spiritual life, and modern sophisticated aesthetic appreciation is something our overclocked mating minds need.
There also seems to be come danger in avoiding the modern world in a Neo-Luddite move. Native Americans were just steamrolled by technology and population into little ghettos in America.
People ask what you would do if you were Ukrainian and a Buddhist. Ukraine is subject to a naked aggression takeover by the larger Russia, attempting to regain it's former glory of the Soviet Union. My answer is I think a Buddhist would go out into nature and mediate. But there is an argument for fighting injustice and affirming the very existence of your society by forces seeking to destroy it. This aggression will not stand says Lebowski in his bath robe, drinking a white Russian.
The engaged Buddhism, and effective altruism movements have given a voice to using technology and public opinion for good. From hospice movement to fighting extreme poverty. There are dangers of repeating the colonial technique of colonizing people's by replacing their spirituality as well, but the kindness of helping others transcends particular religions and sects, and most people prefer help even if they have to listen to a sales pitch.
There is almost a political fight about whether we have to grow up and evolve or if we can be as selfish as we want to be. As all voices are allowed to speak, the leader's voice is also challenged, and people shop the political marketplace the find what feels right for them.
Henry David Thoreau was skeptical about large interventions in society, he though we needed to fix ourselves first. I think we can do both, but the thing we can most influence is our own self evolution, which in the end is just to overcome yourself to help others.
Focusing on whether you can distinguish a Buddha seems like a question that has passed us by. Every once in a while people ask on social media if we would be able to recognize a Buddha, but since the traditional answers with bumps on the head and long ear lobes doesn't really feel like the right way to go about things. Not over saucing and not bumping your ankles just points to a quality of mindfulness, not necessarily specific.
Society often focuses on invisible minorities, encouraging empathy and understanding for different sexuality, or even ethnicities that can blend in mainstream society. Growing up in Wisconsin the Jewish kids blended, I wouldn't even find out that people were Jewish until we started talking about these things in high school. I was so surprised this one young woman would only marry another Jewish person, I didn't even know that existed, and my stepfather was Jewish. Living in Kew Garden Hills more orthodox Jewish people wear unique clothing that clearly distinguishes them.
When I was a psychotherapist, a mother wanted help with the fact that her son had a non-Jewish girlfriend. Immigrants move to America and their ways are lost in the tide of American culture. Their grandchildren would barely know their ways. I never met my German great grandmother, though she lives fondly in my mother's memory. I've never been passed to my knowledge any German culture through my mother, though she might not even know, and I might not even know. Human life spans are too short, people are so pragmatic, but in my lifetime I've come to really value culture. I don't know what to do on Vesak day except try to be extra Buddhist. Yes, I've gathered with other Buddhist while they performed Japanese calligraphy or Sri Lankan children's passion plays. American culture might be watching a football game, drinking a beer and eating grilled foods.
I met a Iranian diplomat son who was in a punk band, opened for the Ramons and Iggy Pop. I met a Gujarati woman who would spend hours in a mulberry tree like I did in Wisconsin.
That brings up the question of what culture do we want in America, and as an American Buddhist. Essential Buddhism will have a cultural element to it, even if it's openness to culture. I could let go my sports viewing, but it was really meaningful for me to watch NYCFC win the MLS Cup with my son. There's a Buddhist movie about the monumental efforts monks made to get a TV so they could watch the World Cup final. See, that's how humans can be. I could give up BBQs, but I'm really touched when someone buys veggie burgers to care for my vegetarianism, veganism and plant based diet. I like gathering.
Every day is Vesak day, as I push myself to study, commune, meditate, vigilance with ethics and devotion. I really like candle balloons and other traditions from traditional Buddhist countries that burst on the scene. Traditional Buddhist cultures might shunt the spiritual life off into the monks, and just consult monks when they are having troubles, but Buddhism permeates society, the culture supports the specific spirituality.
Never mind the heresy trials in Burma and the Buddhist fascist nationalists who seek to purify a country, as a means to gaining power, just the way Trump held up a Bible, and seems to represent the opposite of everything in it. How are humans so easily duped?
Secular Buddhists are seen to be just extracting the good bits of Buddhism from traditional cultures, the way colonialists extract minerals from the earth and take them away. I don't have any solution for that beyond trying to be maximally aware of your motivation and hearing alternate viewpoints. The racism in American society is rather hard to listen to when it's explored in modern American Buddhism, but I'm sure it's there, and even if narratives strike me as somehow off, there's enough computer memory to save expression of people's experience.
We are exposed to different perspectives in a way my great grandfather wasn't exposed to. You could live your life without worrying too much about understanding others perspectives, or the history of the world. You just worked your job, came home and lived with your family. There was not too much diversity in the past because diversity wasn't expressed in mainstream media.
Representation became important as there were more and more channels on TV, social media, the world wide web. I'm expressing myself to the world when I publish this blog. In the past, I would write a letter to a relative or a friend, and I would never express this because all my relatives were Christian and I didn't have Buddhist friends until relatively recently, not even half my life.
People can now gather for good or ill, just as always, but it's easier to organize yourself by predilections or preferences. The people who worry about the fate of white protestant Christians can gather now and feel embattled as the world expresses it's difference.
I am often impressed by the integrity of non-Buddhists, appreciate how deliberate people structure their lives, and focus their attention. Sometimes I don't know how to talk to people who see themselves as Buddhist, there is a barrier of language, culture that are often hard to surmount, or traditional personalities which are fairly reserved.
The secular Buddhism isn't felt fervently in a way that will preserve it, I fear, traditionalism has that extra thing in it to preserve a culture against the onslaught of changing times and outside influences.
I don't know if "how do you recognize a Buddha?" is an important question, but I think when I get to know people I see their spiritual intensity, and my own flawed subjectivity could be wrong, even if it's well trained in some ways. My respect in a way doesn't really matter.
To get ordained in the Triratna Buddhist community you just have to convince a few order members, but they don't have any official guidelines because then people would just ape the things to get ordained.
There are many people who don't see Triratna as having a lineage, and there are people that don't see it as even Buddhism. That's perhaps a sectarian gatekeeping, but what if it's not? Time will tell.
People want to be recognized in the spiritual life, that feels good. I sometimes think we all want to be hyper praised like a toddler learning to walk, you hear the genuine enthusiasm of parents in a way you never hear it again. Do we try to overcome our kink for praise? Maybe some have matured past that to present as not really wanting that. There's a long list of things to overcome and evolve away from through community, meditation, ethics, devotion and study. Recognizing others is part of the spiritual life.
When the Buddha was first enlightened he ran into a fellow who thought the Buddha had something but went away muttering, "maybe so,". He met some businessmen who took refuge in the Buddha and Dharma, but there was no Sangha yet. It wasn't until he found his 5 ascetic friends that he achieved proof of concept, that Buddhism could be transmuted from one person to another. The wheel of the Dharma began to turn. Even though most people won't get Buddhism in it's depth and breadth, he tried anyway. You see teachers today, they're trying to teach, but they'll admit they aren't enlightened, or the tradition is to pretend they are because it's useful for you, not a statement of attainment.
What if you could treat others as profoundly intimate, friendly, empathetically, understanding? That is what that teaching leads me to consider.
Some friends grief at the death of the Buddha:
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