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The Panchen Lama: Hijacked by Politics

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His Holiness Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama - Jeris JC Miller @dakini_3 / Flickr.com / Creative Commons License

His Holiness Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama.  Jeris JC Miller @dakini_3 / Flickr.com / Creative Commons License

The Panchen Lama is the second-highest lama in Tibetan Buddhism, second only to the Dalai Lama. Like the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama is of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. And like the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama has been tragically impacted by China’s subjugation of Tibet.The current Panchen Lama, His Holiness Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, is missing and possibly dead. In his place Beijing has enthroned a pretender, Gyaltsen Norbu, who serves as a conduit for Chinese propaganda about Tibet.

History of the Panchen Lama

The 1st Panchen Lama, Khedrup Gelek Pelzang (1385-1438), was a disciple of Tsongkhapa, the monk whose teachings formed the foundation of the Gelug school. Khedrup was one of the founders of Gelugpa, especially credited with promoting and defending Tsongkhapa’s work.After Khedrup’s death a Tibetan boy named Sonam Choklang (1438-1505) was recognized as his tulku, or rebirth. A lineage of reborn lamas was established. However, these first Panchen Lamas did not hold the title during their lifetimes.The title “Panchen Lama,” meaning “great scholar,” was given by the 5th Dalai Lama to the fourth lama in Kherup’s lineage. This lama, Lobsang Chokyi Gyalsten (1570-1662), is remembered as the 4th Panchen Lama, although he was the first lama to hold the title in his life.As well as being a spiritual descendent of Khedrup, the Panchen Lama also is considered to be an emanation of Amitabha Buddha

. Along with his role as a teacher of the dharma, the Panchen Lamas usually are responsible for the recognition of rebirths of Dalai Lamas (and vice versa).Since the time of Lobsang Chokyi Gyalsten, the Panchen Lamas have been involved in Tibet’s government and relations with powers outside Tibet. In the 18th and 19th centuries in particular the Panchen Lamas often had more real authority in Tibet than the Dalai Lama, especially through a series of Dalai Lamas who died too young to have had much influence.The two high lamas have not always been congenial co-rulers. A serious misunderstanding between the 9th Panchen Lama and 13th Dalai Lama caused the Panchen Lama to leave Tibet for China in 1923. It became clear that the 9th Panchen Lama was a closer ally to Beijing than to Lhasa and did not agree with the Dalai Lama’s opinion that Tibet was independent from China.

The 10th Panchen Lama

The 9th Panchen Lama died in 1937. His Holiness the 10th Panchen Lama, Lobsang Trinley Lhundrub Chokyi Gyaltsen (1938-1989), was embroiled in Chinese-Tibetan politics from the beginning of his tragic life. He was one of two candidates to be recognized as the reborn Panchen Lama, and not the one preferred by Lhasa.

His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama had died in 1933 and his tulku, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, was still a toddler. Lobsang Gyaltsen was the choice preferred by Beijing, which took advantage of the disorganized state of the government in Lhasa to enthrone its favorite.

In 1949 Mao Zedong became the uncontested leader of China, and in 1950 he ordered the invasion of Tibet. From the beginning the Panchen Lama — a boy of 12 at the time of the invasion — supported China’s claim to Tibet. Soon he was given important roles in the Chinese Communist Party. When the Dalai Lama and other high lamas fled Tibet in 1959, the Panchen Lama remained in Tibet.

But His Holiness apparently did not appreciate his role as a puppet. In 1962 he presented to the government a petition detailing the brutal suppression of the Tibetan people during the invasion. For his trouble, the 24-year-old lama was dismissed from his government positions, publicly humiliated, and imprisoned. He was released to house arrest in Beijing in 1977.

The Panchen Lama relinquished his role as a monk (although he was still the Panchen Lama), and in 1979 he married a Han Chinese woman named Li Jie. In 1983 the couple ha a daughter named Yabshi Pan Rinzinwangmo.

By 1982 Beijing considered Lobsang Gyaltsen to be rehabilitated and restored him to some positions of authority. At one point he was vice chairman of the National People’s Congress.

However, in 1989 Lobsang Gyaltsen returned to Tibet, and during his visit he gave a speech mildly critical of China. Five days later he died, officially of a heart attack. He was 51 years old.

The 11th Panchen Lama

On May 14, 1995, the Dalai Lama identified a six-year-old boy named Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. Two days later the boy and his family were taken into Chinese custody. They have not been seen or heard from since. Beijing named another boy, Gyaltsen Norbu — the son of a Tibetan Communist Party official — as the 11th Panchen Lama and had him enthroned in November 1995.

Raised in China, Gyaltsen Norbu for the most part was kept out of public view until 2009. Then China began to push the teenager onto the world stage, marketing him as the true public face of Tibetan Buddhism (as opposed to the Dalai Lama). Norbu’s primary function is to issue statements praising the government of China for its wise leadership of Tibet.

By many accounts the Chinese people accept this fiction; Tibetans do not.

Choosing the Next Dalai Lama

It is a certainty that when the 14th Dalai Lama dies, Gyaltsen Norbu will be trotted out to lead an elaborate charade of choosing the next Dalai Lama. This is no doubt the role he has been groomed for since his enthronement. Exactly what Beijing expects to gain from this is hard to say, since there is no question a Beijing-chosen Dalai Lama will be unacceptable to Tibetans in and out of China.

The future of the lineage of Panchen Lamas is the larger mystery. Until it can be determined if Gedhun Choekyi Nyima is living or dead, he remains the 11th Panchen Lama recognized by Tibetan Buddhism.

Tendai Buddhism in Japan

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The establishment of Tendai Buddhism in Japan would prove to be one of the most significant events in Japanese Buddhist history, but it didn’t look that promising at first.

Tendai is the Japanese form of Tiantai, a Chinese school of Mahayana Buddhism founded by Zhiyi (538-597). Tiantai was the first school of Buddhism to consider the Lotus Sutra to be the highest expression of the Buddha’s teaching.  It is also known for classifying teachings of all schools in a way that explained discrepancies and synthesized the many teachings into a coherent whole.

Saicho Brings Tendai to Japan

The Japanese monk Saicho (767-822) had a brilliant early career, if monks can be said to have careers. In 788 he built a temple on Mount Hiei, which is a few miles northeast of Kyoto. In 797 he was appointed to the imperial court, and in 802 he gave a lecture on the Lotus Sutra that earned him the attention of the Emperor Kammu. In 804, through the Emperor’s influence, he was able to travel to Mount Tiantai in China to receive Tiantai teaching.

While in China he also was initiated into Chinese esoteric Buddhism, which was not part of Tiantai.

Unfortunately for Saicho, when he returned to Japan the Emperor Kammu, his patron, was dying. Before he died, the Emperor granted Saicho permission to establish his Tendai school. But after the Emperor’s death, success eluded him. The monk Kukai returned from China with greater mastery of esoteric Buddhism, and students flocked to Kukai, ignoring Saicho.

Saicho also became embroiled in a controversy over ordinations. At that time all monks in Japan were ordained according to the Vinaya-pitaka of the Theravada school. Saicho wanted his monks of Mount Hiei to be entirely Mahayana and take the bodhisattva vows recorded in the Mahayana Brahma Net Sutra. The imperial court granted this request in 822, shortly after Saicho’s death.

Tendai Rises to Prominence

Part of Tendai’s original difficulty was that it was trying to combine esoteric practices into Tiantai that traditional Tiantai did not support. The monk Annen (d. ca. 895) solved this problem by changing the old Tiantai doctrinal classification system (see Tiantai Buddhism in China, subhead Five Periods and Eight Teachings). Annen added esoteric Buddhism as a separate category that transcended the others.

After this, Tendai became popular and powerful, patronized by the Court and the Japanese aristocracy. The temple complex on Mount Hiei became the dominant learning center for Buddhism in Japan. In time, many founders of other Japanese schools — such as Dogen, Nichiren and Shinran — would begin their spiritual paths at Mount Hiei.

This power and patronage also brought about corruption. Mount Hiei’s warrior monks attacked rival temples to drive out competition, for example.

Tendai’s dominance ended abruptly in 1571, when Mount Hiei was attacked and destroyed by the warlord Oda Nobunaga. One small out-of-the-way building survived, but most of the structures in the temple complex today date to the late 16th to early 17th century. In spite of the rebuilding, Tendai never regained its prominence and is one of the smaller schools in Japan today.

The Marathon Monks

One practice unique to Japanese Tendai is the Kaihogyo (“circulating the mountain”). This is a grueling program of aestheticism that requires running a circular course around Mount Hiei while wearing straw sandals, and sometimes while fasting..

The pinnacle of practice is the 1,000-day Kaihogyo, which is spread out over seven years. It begins by running 30 kilometers (about 18 miles) every day for 100 days straight. And then it gets harder, as the distances get longer. In the final year, the monk runs 84 kilometers (about 52 miles) every day for 100 consecutive days. And then he finishes by dropping back to 30 kilometers a day for 100 days.

Few monks have ever finished the 1,000-day Kaihogyo. More common are the 100- and 200-day Kaihogyo. A monk must complete a 100-day Kaihogyo to ever become an abbot.

In the old days, monks who were unable to finish the Kaihogyo were required to commit ritual suicide and be buried on the spot where they gave up, To this day it is traditional for monks to carry a dagger and a rope — implements of ritual suicide — on Kaihogyo. However, these days monks who can’t finish may try again next year.

The Chinese Mahayana Buddhist Canon

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Most religions have a basic set of scriptures — a “Bible,” if you will —  considered authoritative by the entire religious tradition. But this is not true of Buddhism. There are three separate canons of Buddhist scripture that are considerably different from each other.

The Pali Canon or Pali Tipitika is the scriptural canon of Theravada Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhism has two canons, called the Tibetan Canon and the Chinese Canon. The Chinese Canon is the collection of texts considered authoritative by most schools of Mahayana Buddhism other than Tibetan. It’s called the “Chinese Canon” because most of the texts were preserved in Chinese. It is the chief scriptural canon of Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese Buddhism as well as Chinese Buddhism.

There is some overlap among these three major canons, but most Buddhist scriptures are only included in one or two of them, not all three. Even within the Chinese Canon a sutra venerated by one school of Mahayana may be ignored by others.

The schools of Mahayana that do more or less acknowledge the Chinese canon usually work with only part of it, not the whole thing. Unlike the Pali and Tibetan Canons, which have been formally adopted by their traditions, the Chinese Canon is only loosely canonical.

Very basically, the Chinese Mahayana Canon primarily consists of (but is not necessarily limited to)  several collections of Mahayana sutras, the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, the Sarvastivada Abhidharma, the Agamas, and commentaries written by prominent teachers sometimes referred to as the “sastras” or “shastras.”.

Mahayana Sutras

The Mahayana sutras are a large number of scriptures mostly written between the 1st century BCE and the 5th century CE, although a few may have been written as late as the 7th century CE. Most are said to have originally been written in Sanskrit, but very often the original Sanskrit has been lost, and the oldest version we have today is a Chinese translation.

The Mahayana sutras are arguably the largest and most important part of the Chinese Canon. For more about the many sutras found in the Chinese Canon, please see “Chinese Mahayana Sutras: An Overview of Buddhist Sutras of the Chinese Canon.”

The Agamas

The Agamas might be thought of as an alternative Sutta-pitaka. The Pali Sutta-pitaka of the Pali Canon (Sutra-pitaka in Sanskrit) is the collection of the historical Buddha’s sermons that was memorized and chanted in the Pali language and finally written down in the 1st century BCE.

But while that was going on, elsewhere in Asia the sermons were being memorized and chanted in other languages, including Sanskrit. There probably were several Sanskrit chanting lineages, in fact. The Agamas are what we have of those, mostly pieced together from early Chinese translations.

Corresponding sermons from the Agamas and Pali Canon are often similar but never identical. Exactly which version is older or more accurate is a matter of opinion, although the Pali versions are far better known.

The Dharmaguptaka Vinaya

The Sutra-pitaka, Vinaya-pitaka and Abhidharma-pitaka together make up a collection called the Tripitaka, or Tipitaka in Pali. The Vinaya-pitaka contains the rules for the monastic orders established by the historical Buddha, and like the Sutra-pitaka it was was memorized and chanted. Today there are several existing versions of the Vinaya. One is the Pali Vinaya, followed in Theravada Buddhism. Two others are called the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya and the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, after the early schools of Buddhism in which they were preserved.

Tibetan Buddhism generally follows the Mulasarvastivada and the rest of Mahayana generally follows the Dharmaguptaka. There may be exceptions, however, and sometimes the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya is considered part of the Chinese Canon also. Although the Dharmaguptaka has slightly fewer rules, overall the differences between the two Mahayana Vinayas are not radically significant.

The Sarvastivada Abhidharma

The Abhidharma is a large collection of texts that analyze the Buddha’s teachings. Although attributed to the Buddha, actual composition probably began a couple of centuries after his Parinirvana. Like the Sutra-pitaka and the Vinaya-pitaka, the Abhidharma texts were preserved in separate traditions, and at one time there probably were many different versions.

There are two surviving complete Abhidharmas, which are the Pali Abhidhamma, associated with Theravada Buddhism, and the Sarvastivada Abhidharma, which is associated with Mahayana Buddhism. Fragments of other Abhidharmas also are preserved in the Chinese Canon.

Strictly speaking, the Sarvastivada Abhidharma is not precisely a Mahayana text. The Sarvastivadins, who preserved this version, were an early school of Buddhism more closely aligned with Theravada than with Mahayana Buddhism. However, in some ways it represents a transitory point in Buddhist history in which Mahayana was taking shape.

The two versions are considerably different. Both Abhidharmas discuss the natural processes that connect mental and physical phenomena. Both works analyze phenomena by breaking them down into momentary events that cease to exist as soon as they occur. Beyond that, however, the two texts presents different understandings of the nature of time and matter.

Commentaries and Other Texts

There are vast numbers of commentaries and treatises written by Mahayana scholars and sages over the centuries that also are included in the Chinese Canon. Some of these are called “sastras” or “shastras,” which in this context designates a commentary on a sutra.

Other examples of commentaries would be texts such as Nagarjuna‘s Mulamadhyamakakarika, or “Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way,” which expounds Madhyamika philosophy. Another is Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara, “Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.” There are many large collections of commentaries.

The list of what texts may be included is, shall we say, fluid. The few published editions of the canon are not identical; some have included non-Buddhist religious texts and folk tales.

This overview is barely an introduction. The Chinese Canon is a vast treasure of religious / philosophical literature.

Christian-Buddhist Tension in South Korea, Part 2

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As explained in Part 1 of “Christian-Buddhist Tension in South Korea,” South Korea is the only nation in east Asia in which the largest religion is not Asian. The population of South Korea is about 29 percent Christian and 23 percent Buddhist. About 46 percent of South Koreans claim no specific religious affiliation.

As also explained in Part 1, the number of Christians in South Korea grew rapidly after World War II ended and Korea was divided.between North and South. In 1945, approximately 2 percent of Korea’s population was Christian. But by 1991, 25 percent of South Korea’s population was Christian.

Beginning in1980 many of the newly converted Christians began to burn and vandalize Buddhist temples and art. More than 20 temple buildings were destroyed by arson; crosses were smeared on temple wall paintings; Buddha statues were smashed or decapitated.

In the 1980s the government also began to oppress Buddhism. Under Chun Doo-hwan (b. 1931) who served as President of South Korea from 1980 to 1988, monasteries were sometimes raided and monks arrested on various charges, although none were ever convicted.

1990 to 2000

Burning and vandalism of Buddhist temples continued through the 1990s. Buddhists and other non-Christians serving in the military were sometimes ordered to attend Christian services by their commanders. Some public school teachers were found teaching Bible lessons. One told the class that Buddhist children were “followers of Satan” and restricted their class activities.

In 1995 young fundamentalist Christians began a campaign of aggressive proselytizing on the campus of Dongguk University in Seoul, a Buddhist school, handing out anti-Buddhist literature in front of the school’s main Buddha statue..

An investigative report in the Korea Herald published in July 1998 quoted a Buddhist dharma teacher named Lee Chi-ran: “For them [the Christians], this is a war, Much of the mainstream media is dominated by Christians, and coverage of anti-Buddhist incidents is rare. Many people don’t understand what’s going on.”

Lee Myung-bak

After 2000, for a time, the incidents of aggression against Buddhists and Buddhist institutions became less frequent, although the over-representation of Christians in government positions sometimes posed problems for Buddhists.

The election of Lee Myung-bak as President of South Korea in 2008 began a new round of tension, however. Lee, a Presbyterian, had raised alarms as Mayor of Seoul when he said he would “consecrate” his city to God. Then, as President, he chose an almost all-Christian cabinet — out of 16 cabinet seats, there were 12 Christians and one Buddhist.

Shortly after that, the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs published a map of Seoul on its website that omitted all Buddhist temples and shrines but gave the location of every Christian church. Then police stopped and searched the car of the head of the Jogye of Soen (Zen) Buddhism, looking for members of a faction protesting the importing of beef.

About this same time, videos began to circulate showing a Protestant minister leading his congregation in shouts calling for the collapse of Buddhist temples, and another in which a prominent Protestant minister said “Buddhist monks are wasting their time. They should convert to Jesus. Is there any Buddhist country in the world that is rich?”

In August 2008 an estimated 60,000 people, including about 7000 monks, rallied in front of the Seoul city hall to protest religious discrimination. Tensions subsided, to a point, when several high-level officials who had been accused of religious favoritism to Christians visited Buddhist temples to apologize.
More recently, people of South Korea generally — not just Buddhists — appear to be growing weary of the antics of the aggressive Christian proselytizers.

See “Buddhism in Korea” for a history of Buddhism before the end of World War II.

Christian-Buddhist Tension in South Korea, Part I

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Buddhism has been practiced on the Korean peninsula for more than 16 centuries (see “Buddhism in Korea“). It survived long centuries of repression under a Confucian dynasty and also challenges to monastic rules during the Japanese occupation in the 20th century. But in recent decades it has faced its biggest challenge yet — militant Christianity.

South Korea is the only east Asian nation in which a “western” religion, Christianity, outnumbers the largest Asian religion, which is Buddhism. According to the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University, the population of South Korea is abut 29 percent Christian and 23 percent Buddhist. Most of the remaining South Koreans claim no particular religious affiliation.

Christianity in Korea: Background

Catholicism was introduced in Korea in the early 17th century but was subjected to waves of persecution — as was Buddhism — by the Confucian Joseon Dynasty. But in the late 19th century Korea began to open itself to the outside world, and religious pluralism in Korea was better tolerated. The first Protestant missionary, a Presbyterian, arrived in 1884.

By the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945, approximately 2 percent of Korea’s population was Christian. But by 1991, 25 percent of South Korea’s population was Christian. The reasons for this are complex, but ties forged between South Korea and the United States during the Korean War appear to have been a major factor.  Among other things, Christian chaplains somehow monopolized the South Korean military chaplaincy and converted many soldiers, especially young draftees.

Christian Oppression of Buddhism, 1980-1900

Chun Doo-hwan (b. 1931) was a military general and Christian who served as President of South Korea from 1980 to 1988. As President, he adopted anti-Buddhist policies. Historic temples were taken over by the government and turned into tourist attractions, for example.

When monks of the Jogye order of Soen (Zen) Buddhism, the largest Buddhist sect in Korea, criticized Chun, the government began to raid Buddhist temples, including the Jogye main temple in Seoul, and arrest monks. Fifty-five monks were sent to retention camps although none were ever convicted of anything. Other monks were subjected to torture; the abbot of one Jogye temple died as a result. Throughout Chun’s administration, Buddhist monks and nuns were kept under surveillance and frequently accused of being Communist sympathizers.

During Chun’s administration conservative Protestants began to publicly denounce Buddhism and vandalize Buddhist temples and art. For example, in February 1984 red crosses and dirt were smeared on Buddhist wall paintings in a temple near Seoul. In 1985 a Protestant minister named Kim Jingyu and a layman named Kim Songhwa separately organized meetings to denounce Buddhism. That same year some men identified as Christians drove nails into tires of cars parked outside a Zen center and poured corrosive chemicals into the engines. They played gospel songs through a loudspeaker to disrupt the Buddhist service.

Then the temple burnings began. In 1986 an ancient Jogye ceremonial hall, listed as a national treasure, was burned to the ground. A local Christian man confessed to the crime, but police did not prosecute, citing “lack of evidence.” In 1987 a fundamentalist Christian was apprehended after setting fires that destroyed two temple buildings. In 1988 a fire at a Jogye training center destroyed altar paintings considered to be national treasures.

In the next few years, through the remaining 1980s and 1990s, several other arsonists destroyed or substantially damaged approximately 20 more Buddhist temple buildings.

During this time even more Buddhist temples and art were vandalized.. Vandals often painted red crosses on art and smashed or decapitated Buddha statues.In a few cases Christians, including clergy, were caught in the act but not charged.

In 1990 two men broke into the studios of a new Buddhist radio station two days before it was to begin broadcasting. They smashed all of the station’s recording and transmission equipment, using the head of a Buddha to break into recording booths and destroy the computers and equipment. No arrests were made.

For a timeline of incidents culled from South Korean news sources, see South Korea:- A chronology of Christian attacks against Buddhism.

Next: Government interference with religious freedom.

Wonhyo: Beloved Patriarch of Korean Buddhism

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Wonhyo (617-686) was a major patriarch of Korean Buddhism. Wonhyo is credited with bringing Pure Land Buddhism to Korea, but his written commentaries made an impact on many schools of Buddhism throughout eastern Asia.

Background

Buddhism reached Korea in 372 CE, when a Chinese monk arrived bearing sutras and images of the Buddha. At that time, Korea was divided into three kingdoms, called Silla, Baekje and Goguryeo. Buddhism became the official religion of Silla during the reign of King Pophung (514-539). In time Silla came to dominate the other kingdoms, and in 668 — when Wonhyo was about 51 years old — Silla had conquered the other kingdoms and controlled most of the Korean Peninsula.

So it was that Wonhyo lived during a time of dynamic change. He was born into a simple family during the Three Kingdoms Period, in what is now the city of Gyeongsan, which was in the Kingdom of Silla. He lived to see the beginning of what was called the Unified Silla Period.

This was also a time of change within Korean Buddhism. In particular, Korean monks and scholars were questioning and assessing doctrinal coherence. For some time Korean monks had been traveling to China to study, bringing teachings of the many emerging schools of China back home. But these emerging schools didn’t always agree with each other.

Wonhyo’s Realization

When Wonhyo was a young monk, he and his friend Uisang decided to go to China to study Buddhism. On the way they were caught in a terrible rainstorm. Stumbling around in the dark, the two monks were relieved to find an abandoned shelter. Inside, the thirsty Wonhyo found a gourd filled with rainwater and drank his fill.

In the morning light, however, Wonhyo saw that the shelter was a tomb, the gourd was part of a skull, and the rainwater was rancid.  Wonhyo then had a powerful realization of how his mind created his perception of reality.

Wonhyo and Uisang

After this experience, Wonhyo chose not to continue to China. Instead, he devoted himself to living among laypeople to spread the buddha dharma. His methods — his upaya — included leading people in song and dance as an expression of harmony in everyday life.

He also chose to live as a layman and was no longer a monk. The circumstances of this decision involve a princess of Silla named Yosok. According to legend, Yosok became enamored of Wonhyo when she heard him speak, and the King of Silla compelled Wonhyo to marry her. She conceived a son who became a renowned scholar of Confucianism. However, Wonhyo did not live with his princess for very long. Instead he chose to continue his teaching mission.

Wonhyo taught Pure Land practices to laypeople. Pure Land primarily is a devotional practice of chanting homage to Amitabha Buddha in order to be reborn in the Pure Land, a place where the realization of enlightenment is more easily accomplished. Note thatt he Pure Land can be understood as a state of mind, not just a physical place. Pure Land remains the most popular form of Buddhism in eastern Asia because it can be more easily incorporated into busy family life than many other forms of Buddhism.

Wonhyo as Author and Scholar

Wonhyo was particularly interested in doctrinal coherence, and he surveyed the schools that had been transmitted to Korea, including Hyayan, Tiantai and Ch’an (Zen) as well as Pure Land. He systematically presented these diverse schools in a larger framework of Buddhist teaching to resolve their differences. The result is called Tongbulgyo or T’ong pulgyo, which means “interpenetrated Buddhism.”

Wonhyo was the author of more than 80 works, Some these became influential in China and Japan as well as Korea. Of particular note are his commentaries on the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Nirvana Sutra and the Mahayana-sraddhotpada-sastra (“Awakening of Faith”).

This was originally published at About.com, now Dotdash. Since it is no longer hosted at Dotdash, copyright reverts to me. 

Henry Steele Olcott’s Unlikely Life

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Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907) lived the first half of his life the way a respectable gentleman was expected to live in 19th century America. He served as a Union officer in the U.S. Civil War and then built a successful law practice. And in the second half of his life he traveled to Asia to promote and revive Buddhism.

Henry Steel Olcott’s unlikely life is better remembered in Sri Lanka than in his native America. Sinhalese Buddhists light candles in his memory every year on the anniversary of his death. Monks offer flowers to his golden statue in Colombo. His image has appeared on Sri Lanka postage stamps. Students of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist colleges compete in the annual Henry Steel Olcott Memorial Cricket Tournament.

Exactly how an insurance lawyer from New Jersey became the celebrated White Buddhist of Ceylon is, as you might imagine, quite a tale.

Olcott’s Early (Conventional) Life

Henry Olcott was born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1832, to a family descended from the Puritans. Henry’s father was a businessman, and the Olcotts were devout Presbyterians.

After attending the College of the City of New York Henry Olcott entered Columbia University. The failure of his father’s business caused him to withdraw from Columbia without graduating. He went to live with relatives in Ohio and developed an interest in farming.

He returned to New York and studied agriculture, founded an agricultural school, and wrote a well-received book on growing types of Chinese and African sugar cane. In 1858 he became the agriculture correspondent for the New York Tribune. In 1860 he married the daughter of the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in New Rochelle, New York.

At the beginning of the Civil War he enlisted in the Signal Corps. After some battlefield experience he was appointed a Special Commissioner for the War Department, investigating corruption in recruitment (mustering) offices. He was promoted to the rank of Colonel and assigned to the Department of the Navy, where his reputation for honesty and industriousness earned him an appointment to the special commission that investigated President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

He left the military in 1865 and returned to New York to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1868 and enjoyed a successful practice specializing in insurance, revenue, and customs law.

To that point in his life, Henry Steel Olcott was the very model of what a proper Victorian-era American gentleman was supposed to be. But that was about to change.

Spiritualism and Madame Blavatsy

Since his Ohio days Henry Olcott had harbored one unconventional interest — the paranormal. He was especially fascinated by spiritualism, or the belief that the living can communicate with the dead.

In the years after the Civil War, spiritualism, mediums and seances became a widespread passion, possibly because so many people had lost so many loved ones in the war. Around the country, but especially in New England, people formed spiritualist societies to explore the world beyond together.

Olcott was drawn into the spiritualist movement, possibly to the consternation of his wife, who sought a divorce. The divorce was granted in 1874. That same year he traveled to Vermont to visit some well-known mediums, and there he met a charismatic free spirit named Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

There was little that was conventional about Olcott’s life after that.

Madame Blavatsy (1831-1891) had already lived a life of adventure. A Russian national, she married as a teenager and then ran away from her husband. For the next 24 or so years she moved from one place to another, living for a time in Egypt, India, China, and elsewhere. She claimed also to have lived in Tibet for three years, and she may have received teachings in a tantric tradition. Some historians doubt a European woman visited Tibet before the 20th century, however.

Olcott and Blavatsky blended together a mix of Orientalism, Transcendentalism, spiritualism, and Vedanta — plus a bit of flim-flam on Blavatsky’s part — and called it Theosophy. The pair founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 and began publishing a journal, Isis Unveiled, while Olcott continued his law practice to pay the bills. In 1879 they moved the Society’s headquarters to Adyar, India.

Olcott had learned something about Buddhism from Blavatsky, and he was eager to learn more. In particular he wanted to know the Buddha’s pure and original teachings. Scholars today point out that Olcott’s ideas about “pure” and “original” Buddhism largely reflected his 19th century western liberal-transcendentalist romanticism about universal brotherhood and “manly self-reliance,” but his idealism burned brightly.

The White Buddhist

The following year Olcott and Blavatsky traveled to Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon. The Sinhalese embraced the pair with enthusiasm. They especially were thrilled when the two white foreigners knelt to a large statue of the Buddha and publicly received the Precepts.

Since the 16th century Sri Lanka had been occupied by Portuguese, then by Dutch, then by British. By 1880 the Sinhalese had been under British colonial rule for many years, and the British had been aggressively pushing a “Christian” education system for Sinhalese children while undermining Buddhist institutions.

The appearance of white westerners calling themselves Buddhists helped to begin a Buddhist resurgence that in decades to come would turn into a full-blown rebellion against colonial rule and the forced imposition of Christianity. Plus it grew into a Buddhist-Sinhalese nationalism movement that impacts the nation today. But that is getting ahead of Henry Olcott’s story, so let’s go back to the 1880s.

As he traveled Sri Lanka, Henry Olcott was dismayed at the state of Sinhalese Buddhism, which seemed superstitious and backward compared to his liberal-transcendentalist romantic vision of Buddhism. So, ever the organizer, he threw himself into re-organizing Buddhism in Sri Lanka.

The Theosophical Society built several Buddhist schools, some of which are prestigious colleges today. Olcott wrote a Buddhist Catechism for that is still in use. He traveled the country distributing pro-Buddhist, anti-Christian tracts. He agitated for Buddhist civil rights. The Sinhalese loved him and called him the White Buddhist.

By the mid-1880s Olcott and Blavatsky were drifting apart. Blavatsky could charm a drawing-room of spiritualist believers with her claims of mysterious messages from invisible mahatmas. She was not so interested in building Buddhist schools in Sri Lanka. In 1885 she left India for Europe, where she spent the rest of her days writing spiritualist books.

Although he made some return visits to the U.S., Olcott considered India and Sri Lanka his homes for the rest of his life. He died in India in 1907.

Henry Steel Olcott

(This article originally was published on About.com in 2014.)

The Cula-Saccaka Sutta: The Buddha Wins a Debate

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The Pali Tipitika, the scriptural canon of Theravada Buddhism, isn’t famous for its humor. But at least one story in the Sutta-pitaka still inspires chuckles.

The Cula-Saccaka Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 35) describes a debate between the Buddha and a character named Saccaka, who is addressed as Aggivessana, a reference to his family. Saccaka was famous for his debating skills; he was also, as we might say today, full of himself.

He bragged to his followers that anyone foolish enough to debate him was soon reduced to a quivering mess, dripping sweat from his armpits.

When Saccaka heard the Buddha was nearby, he vowed to thoroughly trounce him in debate. He would drag him, shake him, and thump him, Saccaka promised.

In particular, Saccaka wanted to debate the Buddha about the skandhas and the self. The Buddha taught that the skandhas — form, sensation, perception, discrimination/fabrication, awareness/consciousness — were not the self, and Saccaka disagreed. He believed these things were exactly the self, and he was certain he could show the world he was right and the Buddha was wrong.

So Saccaka and his followers found the Buddha, and after exchanging greetings and preliminaries Saccaka said, “Yes, Master Gotama, I’m saying that ‘Form is my self, feeling is my self, perception is my self, fabrications are my self, consciousness is my self.’ As does this great multitude.”

“What does the great multitude have to do with anything?” the Buddha replied. “Please make your own assertion.” Saccaka repeated, “Form is my self, feeling is my self, perception is my self, fabrications are my self, consciousness is my self.”

“Tell me what you think, Aggivessana. Does a king have the power in his own domain to execute those who deserve execution, to fine those who deserve to be fined, and to banish those who deserve to be banished?” the Buddha asked. And Saccaka declared stoutly that a king does have such power.

The Buddha’s next question was, “What do you think, Aggivessana? When you say, ‘Form is my self,’ do you wield power over that form: ‘May my form be thus, may my form not be thus’?”

The Buddha’s point is that the skandhas are not the self because they are not subject to the mastery of the self. You cannot will your hair to change color or your vision to improve.

What cannot be brought under one’s complete mastery or control cannot be identified as “my self.”

And at this point Saccaka realized he had just lost the debate, so he refused to answer. When he refused to answer a second time, a spirit named Vajrapani appeared in the air over Saccaka’s head. Some of you might recognize Vajrapani as the name of a transcendent or iconic bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism. He is also a dharmapala, or dharma protector, in Tibetan Buddhism. But this sutta dates to a time before Mahayana, and he is identified in Pali as a yakkha, which is a type of being that is more fortunate than a hungry ghost but not as exalted as a deva (“god”).

The name Vajrapani means “vajra in hand,” and indeed, Vajrapani carried an “iron thunderbolt,” or vajra, in this usage a weapon also associated with the Hindu deity Indra. Later, in Mahayana Buddhism, vajra would become the name of a ritual object representing the wisdom of sunyata, or emptiness.

Vajrapani threatened to split Saccaka’s head into seven pieces if he didn’t answer the question. Some western scholars have interpreted this as a literal death threat, but splitting heads into various numbers of pieces comes up occasionally in old Buddhist texts, and in context it usually refers to some kind of mental breakdown, not death. For example, in the Candima Sutta of the Pali Tipitika, a character named Rahu had seized another character named Candima but was compelled to let her go, saying, “If I had not released Candima my head would have split into seven pieces. While yet I live, I should have had no happiness.”

There is a kind of existential threat implied here, but it is not to Saccaka’s body. The “threat” is to his understanding of self — his self-identity and his ego.

The terrified Saccaka looked to the Buddha for refuge and thereby accepted his teaching on the nature of the self. Thus it was that the Buddha won the debate. He then gave Saccaka teachings so that he would better understand what had just happened. And later, the Buddha indulged in a bit of fun with Saccaka. The Buddha was not shaking, he said, and not dripping sweat from his armpits, and he opened his robe in front of the assembly so that they could see he spoke the truth.

There is a translation of the Cula-Saccaka Sutta by Thanissaro Bhikkhu online at Access to Insight. Another good translation, by Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi, is in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, published by Wisdom Publications (2005).

A Look Back at “Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen” by Alan Watts

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Alan Watts (1915-1973) possibly did more to popularize Zen Buddhism in the West than anyone else. His many books on Zen are still in print, and people still look to him for inspiration and insight. A large part of the West got its first impressions of Zen from Watts.

Western Zen regards Watts with some ambivalence today, however. Yes, he was a strong writer and a man of keen intelligence and learning, and his books and recorded lectures still bring people into Zen centers. Many of today’s western Zen teachers began their Zen journey by reading Alan Watts.

However, there were aspects of Zen that Watts misunderstood. He sometimes pulled ancient teachers’ words out of context and imposed his own ideas and interpretations on them. Most egregiously, his misreading of one old koan caused him to dismiss the importance of zazen, Zen meditation, in Zen practice.

Much of Watts’s understanding of Zen is reflected in his essay “Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen,” which was published in the spring 1958 issue of the Chicago Review.

This issue was a landmark in American Zen history. It contained nine articles on Zen Buddhism plus an excerpt from the forthcoming Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, whose On the Road had been a literary sensation of 1957. After the Chicago Review issue even Time magazine gushed (July 21, 1958) “Zen Buddhism is growing more chic by the minute.”

The Zen being gushed about was largely Beat Zen. But is chic Zen still Zen? And how does this essay stand up after more than 55 years? Here are my impressions.

What Watts Got Wrong

Watts’s first sentence threw me — “It is as difficult for Anglo-Saxons as for the Japanese to absorb anything quite so Chinese as Zen.” Brushing aside the cringe-worthy use of “Anglo-Saxon” to stand in for “westerners,” it seems to me Japan absorbed Zen pretty darn well. But this leads us into the heart of what Watts got wrong.

Reading on, one learns that the “square Zen” of the title is Japanese Zen, “with its clearly defined hierarchy, its rigid discipline, and its specific tests of satori.” He compared this to the older version, Chinese Zen, called Chan, which he imagined as being natural and effortless and more like Taoism.

However, Watts’s idealized view of Chinese Chan rather ignores the fact that Chan also had and has hierarchies, discipline and tests, and history suggests these may have been as defined, rigid and specific in Tang Dynasty China than they became in Japan. The history of Chinese Chan is full of stories about monks spending years in meditation and other disciplines to realize enlightenment. The free-wheeling Zen of Watts’s imagination never existed.

For example, Watts quotes Lin-Chi (Linji Yixuan, d. 866), a prominent Tang Dynasty Chan master, saying, “In Buddhism there is no place for using effort.” This line has been translated by others as “There isn’t so much to do,” and “The Law of Buddha has no place for elaborate activity,” and I don’t know which is more accurate.

What I do know is that, by our standards, Linji must have been a terror. He was famous for his rigorous teaching methods, which included shouts, insults and punches. So where is the “little place for using effort”? In fact, it takes most of us considerable effort before it gets effortless. For that matter, Watt’s chief inspiration was the Japanese scholar D.T.Suzuki, who learned Zen in a Rinzai monastery — about as “square” as it gets.

I’m thinking now of a line from a poem by a venerable Theravadin teacher named Phra Ajaan Mun Bhuridatta Mahathera, who described a mind purified of defilements — “The mind, unenthralled with anything, stops its struggling.” Yes; when the mind stops struggling, there is no effort. Zen literature, Japanese as well as Chinese, is full of descriptions of the effortless state of a realized being. The great paradox of practice is that most people must make great effort to stop struggling and be effortless. Buddhism is easy, yes, but we are difficult.

The essay is laced with many references to Taoism. The degree to which Chinese Buddhism, Chan included, was influenced by Taoism is being challenged by many current scholars. Some have decided there was no influence at all. I wouldn’t go that far; I came to Zen through philosophical Taoism, and it seems to me there was some influence, if only in how Chan explained things. But it does go too far to assume that Tang Dynasty Chan was as much Taoist as Buddhist, as Watts seemed to do.

What Watts Got Right

Watts also was critical of Beat Zen, which sometimes saw Zen as “undisciplined whimsy” and  “justifying sheer caprice in art, literature, and life.” Watts thought the Zen of Allen Ginsberg‘s poetry was too indirect and didactic, while Jack Kerouac‘s definition of Zen — “I don’t know. I don’t care. And it doesn’t make any difference” — bristled with self-defense and missed Zen entirely.

Yes, it’s fair to say, in hindsight, that Kerouac idealized Zen without actually understanding it, and Ginsberg’s spiritual journey would soon leave Zen behind. Other Beats — notably Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen — would come to know Zen more intimately, however, in time.

The chief thing Watts got right in this essay, I think, was his analysis of why much of postwar America became fascinated with Zen.  In Zen, said Watts, people saw an antidote to the “anti-naturalness” of both Christianity and modern life. And perhaps you had to live in the 1950s to appreciate how true that was.

The 1950s were a time in which an America still healing from World War II and the Korean War demanded loyalty and conformity. People were racked with fear of enemies abroad and nuclear annihilation. At the same time, much of the old domestic prewar social order was being challenged by desegregation and the nascent civil rights movement..

As a result, much of America retreated into hyper-conformity and a desperate clinging to traditionalism. As Betty Friedan documented in her landmark The Feminine Mystique (1964), for example, the role of women in society became narrower and more constricting after World War II than it had been before.

The Beat Generation was an organically human response to what mainstream society had become. And there was something about Zen that offered the tantalizing possibility of the reintegration of human and nature and a release from the compulsive armoring against everything that marked the 1950s.

The widespread unease breaking through the facade of 1950s conformity “arises from the suspicion that our attempt to master the world from the outside is a vicious circle in which we shall be condemned to the perpetual insomnia of controlling controls and supervising supervision ad infinitum,” Watts said. Zen offered a “refreshing sense of wholeness to a culture in which the spiritual and the material, the conscious and the unconscious, have been cataclysmically split.”

Thus it was that Zen Buddhism became chic, for a time. Fortunately, it is less so now. Yet it still offers the same path of reintegration and liberation it offered then.

What of Alan Watts? If Watts’s books “speak” to you, by all means, enjoy them. He had a lot of valuable things to say. If your chief interest is to find a book that will tell you about Zen, please see “Beginner Zen Books.”

(Originally written by me and published on buddhism/about.com. Since the parent company is no longer hosting this article, all rights revert to me.)

After the Axial Age: From Alexander to Ashoka

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(This post follows the last post, on the Axial Age. Some of this post was condensed and adapted from my book, The Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern World [Shambhala, 2019].)

Although it wasn’t his intention, Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) touched off a series of events that put Buddhism on the map, so to speak.

Alexander set out to conquer the world. Although he fell short, at its peak his empire stretched from Europe to the Indus Valley, and dipped into Egypt. The campaign stalled when he reached the Punjab in 326 BCE, however. Alexander had planned to push farther east into the Kingdom of Magadha. But his weary soldiers had heard stories of the vast army of Magadha, and they imagined the mighty Ganges lined with thousands of fresh troops and trumpeting war elephants. They refused to go on, and so Alexander’s legendary conquests ended in the Punjab, and he died three years later in Babylon.

While Alexander was stalled in the Punjab, he was accompanied by a local mercenary named Chandragupta Maurya. In 321 BCE Chandragupta succeeded where Alexander failed by seizing the throne of Magadha. The enterprising Chandragupta expanded his new Mauryan Empire to fill most of modern-day India and a portion of what is now Bangladesh.

After Alexander’s death, the conqueror’s vast territories were claimed by his Macedonian generals. One general, Seleucus I Nicator (ca. 358–281 BCE), came to rule a large part of what is now Turkey and much of today’s Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Seleucus encouraged Greek settlements in his vast territory. These settlements, combined with those left behind by Alexander, introduced considerable Greek influence into west and central Asia.

In 305 BCE, Seleucus marched on Chandragupta’s empire. This adventure did not go well for Seleucus, and the Mauryan Empire grew to include much of modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan as a result. Chandragupta abdicated to his son Bindusara in 297 BCE. and retired to be a Jain ascetic. After Bindusara came Ashoka, whose reign began about 268 BCE.

Ashoka the Great (ca. 304–232 BCE) is remembered as a brutally ruthless military conqueror—until about 260 BCE, that is, when he beheld the bloody results of his conquest of Kalinga (near today’s Orissa). In one of the great conversion stories of all time, Ashoka renounced war and conquest and declared that his rule would be guided by the Buddha’s dharma. We know this because Ashoka’s story is told in his own words on the thirteenth of fourteen major “rock edicts” inscribed on boulders and sometimes in caves throughout his empire, along with other sorts of inscriptions. Edicts also were carved on magnificent stone pillars, forty to fifty feet high, which were topped with elaborately carved animals, most often Asian lions. These also often were carved with a dharma wheel, the symbol of Buddhism, with 24 spokes.

Ashoka pillar at Vaishali, Bihar, India. Bpilgrim, Wikipedia Commons.

Ashoka’s edicts have been discovered in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh, as well as India, written in the local languages of the time. Edicts in the western Mauryan empire were in Greek, and one inscription discovered near Kandahar in 1958 was written in Greek and Aramaic.

In his edicts Ashoka proclaimed his faith in the Buddha and his dharma, but he did not attempt to teach Buddhist doctrines. In fact, all religions were welcome in his empire, he said, as long as they respected each other. The emperor was more interested in the way people manifested the dharma in their behavior. In the second pillar edict, for example, he said, “Dhamma is good, but what constitutes Dhamma? (It includes) little evil, much good, kindness, generosity, truthfulness and purity.”

Ashoka also used dharma as a diplomatic tool, sending emissaries carrying his edicts to the rulers of other states, near and far, including the Seleucid Empire, Egypt, Greece, and the island that is today’s Sri Lanka (“Tamraparni”). The mission to Sri Lanka, at least, was a rousing success.

In the fifth major rock edict, Ashoka declared he had appointed dharma mahamatras—dharma officials—to work among the Greeks and other people in his western territory. The mahamatras were charged with the promotion of dharma and the welfare and happiness of all those devoted to dharma. This is significant because, after Ashoka, Buddhism would blossom on the western territories of the Mauryan Empire—today’s Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Ashoka’s words on generosity and religious tolerance and his concern for the welfare of his people are inspiring to read even today. Yet it appears there was some pushback from the Brahmins, who may have felt put out by Ashoka’s call to end animal sacrifices. After Ashoka’s death in 232 BCE, his several heirs who hadn’t been ordained showed no interest in the dharma and instead spent the next forty-seven years squabbling over the throne, while such outer provinces as Gandhara, Kashmir, and the Punjab broke away. The last Mauryan ruler was assassinated by an ambitious general during a military review in 185 BCE.

The many rock and pillar edicts remained scattered through much of Asia. However, those written in the various Indo-Aryan languages of his time used a written script that fell out of use, and people forgot how to read it. And the memory of Ashoka himself was lost in India, although he was honored in Sri Lanka. During the Mughal reign of India, 1526-1720, some of the pillars were put to use supporting minarets. When traders of the British East India Company arrived in the 18th century, they were told the pillars were the abandoned walking sticks of a giant. But an East India Company official named James Prinsep deciphered the script in the 1830s, and the story of Ashoka the Great was heard again in the world, at long last.

And when India became an independent nation in 1947, Ashoka’s 24-spoke dharma wheel was placed in the center of the new nation’s flag.

National flag of India