11th Jan 2012
It’s been just over a week since I have posted anything on this blog. This is not by way of saying that I have been too busy to write; in fact there has been ample time. Rather it seems as though my world for the moment has become somewhat routine and I have lacked inspiration to put anything into words. In actual fact what tends to visit me during such times is a spirit of critical self questioning. This seems to constellate around the bigger questions: ‘what is it that I am doing here’ as much as it does the smaller everyday ones that face me: ‘shall I visit this person, and how will that help what Amida is doing here’. Of course both ends are connected and influenced by my thinking about what constitutes living a Buddhist life. Encountering a culture that for the large part doesn’t understand me linguistically, culturally or spiritually – by which I mean where I fit into the religious jigsaw puzzle – is a daily challenge. If I can get a handle on at least one of these three dimensions then it immediately provides the satisfaction that comes from the sense of being engaged. Yet I find that such moments are just that, fragments that nourish me for sure but not in a way that stops me from, first feeling hungry and then, sometimes empty.
Today the carpenter is here doing the window frames both those on the outside north facing walls to the front of the property, and the ones that sit above the internal doors. Prakash – this being his one day off from work this week - is just to my right engrossed in what he is doing on the computer, chatting to people around the world, from what I can make out.
Yesterday I was in Shanti Nagar, visiting Sunita and Suvidya, although as it turned out the latter left before I arrived. Suvidya has been off sick from work for over a month due to a re-emergence of typhoid symptoms, as I have mentioned elsewhere during the course of this blog. The purpose for my visit was to begin to go through the Order Rule or precepts for ordination with them both. The trouble is that Sunita has very little English so this is impossible without Suvidya present. Nonetheless I end up spending about an hour and a half there, pleased that we are able to manage some conversation and make a connection that we haven’t been able to do until now. I also cement my friendship with Jacky, the family dog.
This is unusual in India where contact between the genders in these sorts of circumstances is rare. Siddharth, Sunita’s son is present but outside when we are in the one room house and inside when we sit out in the sun. Of course I wouldn’t think twice about such things in England with someone I know but in India this is quite different and runs counter to what is culturally acceptable.
Interestingly what is in my mind is the host of injunctions contained in the pratimoksha the traditional Buddhist rules for monastic life still followed by Theravadin monks. Whilst the pratimoksha is a code of moral discipline a loose translation of the term can be rendered in English as ‘personal liberation’. I have been looking at these recently out of an interest piqued by contact with the Bhikkhu’s here and in particular a discussion we had which related to engagement with the community of Buddhist families living in the Delhi area. Notable is the difference we identify between us which centres on my need to be doing, and actively reaching out, in contradistinction to a principle they follow to essentially remain separate from the community unless expressly invited, usually to perform fairly proscribed ceremonial functions.
It was clear to me in the discussion I had with two young monks, Mangaljyoti and Dhammalankar, one evening last week that there was a considerable disjuncture dividing our frames of reference that could not easily be bridged. We were simply just coming from a completely different position.
Outwardly this manifested in a range of quizzical facial expressions when I suggested amongst other things various ways in which we might work together to offer Dharma teaching to the children of Ambedkarite Buddhist families locally.
So as I sat there with Sunita I was thinking how, in light of the pratimoksha rules, the Bhikkhu’s, at least theoretically, would most certainly be restricted from entertaining being in such a situation as this. As I reflect now I also begin to question then how this can be thought of as ‘liberating’.
Of course one does need to see this within the context of how Buddhism is unique as a religion. One key aspect of this is that, as Ambedkar points out (to cite one commentator), that Buddhism is founded on morality. This is not to say that other religions are not moral or don’t have moral rules, but rather that whatever morality there is it is a separate force sustained by social necessity and not by the injunctions of the religion. Buddhism approaches the question of morality the other way around, and thus the religion of Shakyamuni is morality. Ambedkar might say morality is Dharma.
Furthermore as Sangharakshita says in his book about Ambedkar and Buddhism (1986) ‘God is subordinated to morality, not morality to God. It means that actions are to be performed or not performed, not according to whether they are, or are not, commanded by God, but according to whether they are, or are not, right or wrong or, in Buddhist terms, skilful or unskilful’.
So whilst the written rules of the pratimoksha may seem archaic and largely irrelevant to our times, with the above in mind one can see how in the context of the era, and perhaps particularly the renunciant ideals of the Bhikkhu’s and Bhikkhuni’s, the rules become an expression of living a morally wholesome spiritual life. The problem is that the spirit in which the Buddha approached morality has sometimes been lost in reaction to the details contained in such texts that have come down to us. This is perhaps why we are left with the sense that ‘the rules’ applying to monks and nuns is restrictive rather than liberating. However this is important I think to recognise, as my teacher Dharmavidya points out, namely that morality in Buddhism is an expression of living a life in the spirit of the Dharma not a framework to follow on the basis that it will lead us to a spiritually realised life. However there is also a sense in which we have lost touch with the value of living within the influence of ethics – summarised as the codification of morals that describe the collective responsibility that we take for the benefit of others – overshadowed by the drive for personal achievement and individual liberation.
What am I saying then? Perhaps that the pratimoksha and other rules governing the spiritual life should be open to challenge – after all this is how the Buddha approached the challenges of making moral decisions throughout the forty or so years of his ministry – but not to the extent that the spirit that they express, the spirit of the liberating potential they hold is lost, since this after all is the very ground upon which Buddhism rests.
References
Sangharakshita, Y 'Ambedkar and Buddhism Windhorse' 1986
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