Dhamma Q&A with Students from Puget Sound University
Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives C00901
“There seems often to be a conflict between the beliefs of popular Buddhism and what the Buddha actually taught. Are these popular forms of belief a form of upaya (skillful means), or how are they justified in light of what the Buddha actually taught?”
~ Response by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
This is very ordinary. The Buddhism of the man in the street is mixed with the local culture, with customs, traditions, and superstitions. This is ordinary. However the Buddhism of the Buddha is pure, it’s clean, it isn’t adulterated with any of these things.
We’ve talked about this thing quite a few times, this situation of people studying Sri Lankan Buddhism, Burmese Buddhism, Thai Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, and so on. This leads to some confusion about what Buddhism actually is. The difference between, say, Burmese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism, is one of the covering, of the wrapping. It’s necessary that whenever Buddhism enters a culture, it will be ‘wrapped’ in a package suitable to that culture. If it doesn’t start that way, it will eventually get wrapped up by the way that particular culture does things. So there’s a difference in the wrapping, which is not really a difference in Buddhism, but just in the wrapping. And this of course is totally ordinary. The essence of Buddhism, or Buddhism itself, is the way of investigation in life that eliminates attā (self) and attaniya (related to self or of self). The rest is the wrapping. If Buddhism is to be taught or explained somewhere, it’s necessary to do so in a way that responds to the needs and the tastes of the people who are being taught. In the Buddha’s time, the teachings were probably pure, but in later times they picked up more and more cultural accretions, more wrapping. This is just an ordinary human thing, to respond to the needs, the wants, and the tastes of each particular culture. In the modern world, science is now coming in. Our culture which is so caught up in science and technology now requires that Buddhism respond in a way appropriate to scientific and technological cultures. This is ordinary as well. But the Buddhism itself is not these various wrappings. Buddhism is the way that eliminates self and of self, that eliminates ‘me’ and ‘mine.’
It’s your own responsibility to discriminate the true Buddhism from the wrappings. This is the responsibility of each person to not get too dependent on or lost in the wrapping. All the additions to Buddhism are necessary in order to help people understand Buddhism or the Dhamma. It’s necessary to speak in a way that responds to their needs and tastes. There are adjustments made. Additions are made in order to do so. For example the Buddhism one would teach in America would necessarily be different from the Buddhism one would teach in Africa. The situations are different, the cultures are different, so the way of speaking and teaching must be different. Or the way one teaches an adult must be different than the way one would teach a child. This is just natural. There will be new additions, there will be a blending of Buddhism with other things in order to respond to the needs, wishes, and tastes of different people.
Another example is if one is teaching Buddhism to people who like art, then one must teach it as kind of an art. One must reveal the artistic side of Buddhism. However if we teach it to people who like to read books, novels, poetry, then Buddhism must be presented in a literary way. For those who think in terms of science, for the people who are fans of science, believers in science, then Buddhism must be taught in a scientific way. These different approaches are the kind of skid – the package – of Buddhism. It’s not Buddhism itself. It’s not so important what the package is, how it’s wrapped. What matters is that it can end dukkha, that there is the essence of Buddhism. The true essence of Buddhism is there beneath the wrapping, and then that essence will be able to end dukkha. This is what is important.
Buddhism can express itself through all these different forms and styles. No matter how many dozens or hundreds of styles and forms are needed, Buddhism can express itself through them all in order to reach all the different kinds of people with their different tastes and backgrounds. But what matters is that there is the kernel of Dhamma that ends dukkha in each form or style. Whatever the style is, there is still always the same element of truth, which will quench dukkha.
So one must be ready to speak with farmers, with fishermen, and even with soldiers who must shoot guns so that there will be some benefit for them that the dukkha – the pain in their hearts – can be quenched.
(From Dhamma Questions & Answers with students from Puget Sound University, State of Washington, USA as translated from the Thai by Santikaro)
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Dhamma Questions & Responses sessions were offered by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu in 1990-1991 to foreign meditators attending Suan Mokkh International Dharma Hermitage courses.
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