As Buddhism rises in North America, two
“solitudes” are emerging
The Vancouver
Sun BY DOUGLAS TODD, VANCOUVER SUN COLUMNIST
Westernized practice
emphasizes meditation in contrast to traditional ceremonies of Pure
Land
A-mi-tha-ba.
A-mi-tha-ba. A-mi-tha-ba.
The Buddhist faithful
repeated the sacred name like a fast-clicking metronome.
The two
dozen Chinese-Canadians at Gold Buddha monastery in East Vancouver
were gathering in the middle of the work day to chant the name of
the most well-known of what they believe is an infinite number of
celestial Buddhas: “Amithaba.”
The nuns and lay people
are among those who gather daily to recite “Amithaba” to the rapid
beat of a drum, because they believe it is the quickest way to gain
entry after they die to the blissful realm known as the “Pure
Land.”
That is why their path
is known as Pure Land Buddhism. Pure Land Buddhism,
according to specialists, is the major school of Buddhism practised
in Metro Vancouver, mostly by people with roots in China, Vietnam,
Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan. Globally, Pure Land is also arguably
the largest arm of Buddhism, accounting for roughly 200 million of
the Eastern religion’s 500 million adherents.
In Japan, the social and
economic clout of the biggest Pure Land denomination, known as Jodo
Shinshu, has been compared to that of the giant Sony and Toyota
corporations.
But, in Metro Vancouver
and throughout the West, Pure Land is not what most people think
about when they hear about Buddhism.
That’s because, as some scholars are
increasingly emphasizing, there are two broad and distinct streams
of Buddhism now being practised in North America.
One stream of Buddhism
in North America, represented by Gold Buddha monastery and the Pure
Land school, tends to fly below the radar of mainstream Canadian
media culture.
It is often called
“ethnic Buddhism.” It’s practised mostly by Asian immigrants, most
of whom cannot speak English. They generally meet in large,
extravagant-looking temples throughout the city.
Pure Land stands in
sharp contrast to Westernized Buddhism, to which many non-Asians
have in recent decades been drawn. It focuses almost entirely on
meditation as a technique to calm the mind.
Westernized Buddhism is
now followed by tens of thousands who blend “mindfulness”
meditation with the teachings of psychotherapists, like
California’s Jack Kornfeld and Jon Kabat-Zinn.
This Western Buddhism is
also associated with two immensely popular monks — Thich Nhat Hanh
and the Dalai Lama — who were born in Asia, but who have over past
decades become highly adapted to the socially liberal, secularized
ways of Europe and North America.
Most Asian immigrants
follow a more traditional Buddhist drummer. These “ethnic
Buddhists” have a more supernatural bent. They are much more likely
to bow reverentially before sacred Buddha statues in faithful
prayer for good health and fortune. They are more likely to
yearn, after they die, to escape this Earth-bound world of karmic
“suffering” through rebirth into an otherworldly realm, the Pure
Land.
These two loose Buddhist
streams — of Pure Land Buddhism and Westernized Buddhism — are not
necessarily antagonistic. But they have little to do with each
other, either as communities or as spiritual world
views.
Paul Crowe, a Simon
Fraser University professor and specialist in Chinese religions,
says many Buddhists with no Asian heritage often misunderstand Pure
Land practice “and even dismiss it as
superficial.”
As they sidestep
Buddhist teachings about karma and rebirth, most Western Buddhists
tend to highlight meditation as “true Buddhist practice,” says
Crowe, director of SFU’s David Lam Centre.
“This divide can create
two solitudes, and is unfortunate.” In other words, Buddhism
is a house divided in North America.
In that way it’s much
like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It has evolved and fragmented
since being founded by Siddhartha Gautama in sixth-century
B.C.
Here is how the two main
streams of Buddhism contrast in Metro Vancouver, where roughly
100,000 people have told the Canadian Census they are
Buddhists.
“We want, at the end of our lifetime, to go
to the Pure Land,” says Heng Jung, a shaved-headed lead nun at Gold
Buddha monastery at 248 East 11th Ave. in
Vancouver.
The Malaysian-born
ethnic Chinese woman says the people who chant “Amithaba” while
kneeling and bowing are doing so because they yearn to help
themselves — and deceased loves ones — to “crossover” from this
pain-filled world to the celestial Pure Land.
Scholars believe Pure
Land Buddhism came into existence in the 2nd-century AD as a path
for lay people. As Jung, 44, says, Pure Land Buddhism is for
non-monks — for those who are not spiritual “geniuses,” able to
reach enlightenment on their own.
Pure Land Buddhists
believe they can be spiritually transported into a perfect
celestial existence, she says, “just by reciting Amithaba.”
As long as
Pure Land practitioners chant with sincerity and behave morally,
Jung says followers can free themselves from the negative karma
they have built up in this and past lives.
Jung believes Pure Land
is more challenging than meditation alone. “Mostly the Western
person is interested in meditation. But reciting Amithaba is more
work than meditation. You must have faith. You must have belief.
And you must recite it yourself. You earn the
blessing.”
The Oxford Dictionary of
Buddhism says Pure Land is by far the largest form of the main
Buddhist branch known as Mayahana, which has about 350 million
adherents.
Accepting that “Buddha”
is the title of any enlightened person, the Dictionary of Buddhism
says, Pure Land followers believe anyone who repeats the name of
the Buddha known as Amithaba “could come into the Pure Land without
first becoming pure and enlightened themselves.”
However, the dictionary
warns the key ideas of Pure Land, known as “the easy way” to
eternal salvation because it relies on an “other” power, offend
some kinds of Buddhists.
Many Buddhists reject
the belief that a literal Pure Land realm exists outside the
practitioners’ own mind. Despite criticism, Pure
Land appears to be the dominant mode of Buddhist expression in
Metro, including for many seniors, says Crowe, a contributor to the
book, Asian Religions in B.C. (UBC Press).
Pure Land is taught,
typically in Mandarin or Cantonese, at the largest Buddhist temples
in Metro Vancouver — including the Tung Lin Kok Yuen temple on East
Broadway; the Ling Yen Mountain temple on No. 5 Road in Richmond
and the International Buddhist Society temple on Steveston
Highway.
Jung says Gold Buddha
Monastery, located in an ordinary-looking four-storey building in
East Vancouver, is one of the few Metro Vancouver Pure Land temples
where English is routinely spoken.
Gold Buddha is one of 23
large Dharma Realm Buddhist Association centres around the world;
mostly on the west Coast of North America, as well as in Taiwan,
Malaysia and China.
Gold Buddha monastery,
which opened in Vancouver in 1984, permanently houses 15 nuns, both
ethnic Chinese and Caucasian. It offers chanting rituals throughout
the week in its large sanctuary, which features five eye-catching
gold Buddha statues.
With a big smile, Jung,
who has managed the monastery for more than a decade, says she has
nothing at all against North Americans who mainly follow Buddhism
for its meditation practices.
“A lot of people have a
lot of pressure. They’re too much running around. So it’s a way to
calm down and have good energy.” But Jung says meditation
is easy compared to Gold Buddha monastery’s emphasis on hours of
chanting, on strict vegetarianism (excluding also onions and
garlic) and on adhering to a set of virtues. “Meditation is no work.
You just sit,” said the nun.
During Gold Buddha
rituals, followers are urged to free themselves of all greed,
self-aggrandizement, deceit and the desire to find fault in
others.
Pure Land Buddhists, says Jung, teach that everyone needs to “clean
up the (negative) karma from their previous lives” so that they can
be reborn in the celestial Pure Land.
Asked whether Caucasian
converts to Westernized Buddhism tend to ignore the religion’s
ancient teachings about how to avoid accruing bad karma, Jung says:
“I’m not saying they’re not interested in karma. They just don’t
understand it.”
Brian Ruhe, a former Buddhist
monk in Thailand and now a popular teacher of Buddhism in B.C., is
more blunt about the approach most Western converts take to the
religion.
Many predominantly
Caucasian Buddhist groups in Metro and the rest of North America,
says Ruhe, “teach really good meditation,” combined with
“transpersonal” psychology. “But it tends to be an
American brand of Buddhism that’s being marketed. And it’s somewhat
innocuous. Traditionally, meditation makes up just one third of
Buddhism.”
The two concepts of
rebirth and karma are just as important to Buddhism as meditation,
says Ruhe, who follows Theravadan Buddhism, the world’s second
largest branch of Buddhism.
Western Caucasian
Buddhists, he says, often don’t talk about “anything beyond this
life, because they don’t want to offend people. However, without
karma or rebirth, it’s not Buddhism.”
The author of A Short
Walk on an Ancient Path has been teaching for 15 years in B.C.,
maintains a website at www.theravada.ca and attends Birken Buddhist
Forest Monastery near Kamloops. Over the years, Ruhe has
grown concerned that Western Buddhists, following vipassana and
other forms of meditation, don’t put enough emphasis on the
tradition’s stress on virtue.
For instance, Ruhe was
present when noted Seattle Insight Meditation Society teacher
Rodney Smith came to Vancouver. When asked about
practising virtue to avoid creating negative karma,
Rue said
Smith told his large contemplative audience: “‘I don’t discuss
karma. It just makes people feel guilty. And there’s enough guilt
already in the world.’”
Vancouver physicist
Pierre Zakarauskas, who sometimes teaches at the B.C. Insight
Meditation Society, is one of those Western Buddhists who is
skeptical about so-called ethnic Buddhism. An adherent of
“scientific materialism,” Quebec-raised Zakarauskas is a friend of
Ruhe. But they disagree on many Buddhist topics.
In the 1980s,
Zakarauskas said, he was turned off Buddhism by its teaching about
rebirth, also known as reincarnation. But, many years later,
Zakarauskas was drawn to Buddhism when he heard the Dalai Lama
claim that Buddhism would still be valuable even if rebirth were
unable to be proved.
Being an atheist,
Zakarauskas does not support the Buddhist tradition’s paranormal
claims about humans having memories of previous incarnations, or
past lives. As a result, Zakarauskas
calls himself “a Buddhist with an asterisk.” Zakarauskas has
contributed to research projects at the University of B.C., which
show meditation has beneficial effects on the brain’s sensory
cortex, no matter what kind is practised.
The 53-year-old
researcher/businessman says “there’s quite a range” of beliefs
among the predominantly Caucasian Buddhists (roughly two out of
three of whom are female) who show up at a host of meditation
retreats in Metro. Some of those who follow
popular Western Buddhist teachers, such as Kornfield, are convinced
of the reality of karma and rebirth, Zakarauskas says.
But many
more are not.
For his part, Ruhe
believes Western Buddhists are much like early Protestants. They
have felt it necessary to break away from Roman Catholicism “and
basically start new churches.” There is nothing
inherently bad, Ruhe says, about creating new schools of a
religion. But people curious about Buddhism should know it exists
in dramatically different and even contradictory
forms.
Interfaith dialogue is
often necessary to bring out the surprising differences and
similarities among religious paths, Rue says.
Even though not an
adherent of Pure Land, Rue respects Chinese friends who “worship
Amithaba kind of like a god”.
“It’s a bit like
traditional Christianity, which says there is salvation in Jesus if
you have faith in him.” There are many other
parallels between Pure Land Buddhism and Biblical religions.
Liberal
Christians, such as American theologian Jay McDaniel, founder of
www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org, point out that Pure Land Buddhists
revere Amithaba as a divine reality, akin to the one embraced by
Jesus.
“Pure Land Buddhists
speak of a heavenly Amithaba – who receives and listens to prayer,
and who is filled with love,” says McDaniel. “I believe that what
Christians mean by ‘God’ is similar to what Pure Land Buddhists
mean by Amithaba.”
