[Buddha-l] Question for academic teachers of Buddhism

[Christopher Fynn]

Jackhat1 at aol.com wrote:

> My experience with a local Thai temple has been very interesting. Most of  
> the ethnic monks do not meditate. Meditation retreats there are led by western  
> born monks and attended only by westerners. Some of the ethnic monks have been 
>  puzzled by  westerners' interest in studying the suttas and meditating.  
> They seem to feel our interests should be supporting the monks and going 
> to the ceremonies.

Many years ago a venerable Tibetan teacher said to me that if someone 
sincerely wants to practice meditation and attain realization or to 
study the dharma then they should devote their whole life to practice or 
study - in which case, according to him, the obvious and practical thing 
to do was to become a monk or nun. He felt that only a monastic life 
would normally provide a person with the liberty to practice or study 
the dharma full time which was necessary if one wanted to succeed at 
either. He also stated that the "merit" of monastic ordination meant 
that meditation practice would be 100 times more beneficial when done by 
a monk than when done by a lay person. On the other hand, he thought 
that if a person wanted to lead a lay life they should dedicate all 
their energies to working hard and earning money for their family - and, 
to gain spiritual merit and a better rebirth they should simply use some 
of their hard earned wealth to make offerings and support the sangha.

What puzzled him was th attitude of western dharma students whom he saw 
as not being fully committed to one thing or the other. He thought this 
attitude would inevitably result in a person succeeding neither 
spiritually nor materially. I suspect this way of looking at things may 
be fairly ingrained in traditional Asian Buddhist cultures - as your 
"ethnic" monks who felt a laypersons interests should be to support the 
monks and go to the ceremonies.

Of course later generations of Tibetan lamas soon discovered that 
teaching meditation (or claiming to teach meditation) to westerners was 
a far easier and quicker way to make money than hard work.

- Chris




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