Cutting Through Buddhist Laziness
Over at the Tricycle Editors’ Blog, the magazine’s editor and publisher James Shaheen writes about the new Christian guide to evangelizing/converting Buddhists, Peoples of the Buddhist World: A Christian Prayer Guide, and the provocative response to it written by Bhikkhu K. Tanchangya. The bhante‘s remarks start as a criticism of the fact that Buddhists have apparently been “too lazy” to produce a book as comprehensive in scope as Peoples of the Buddhist World, but then raises the stakes. James clips out the choicest chunk, and it is worth re-pasting here:
- It is time for the progressive Buddhists to meditate on this.
Yes, these Buddhist communities are illiterate and poor. They are easy targets for evangelism. But they deserve education and material prosperity before they could think of religion. And evangelical missionaries are providing just that.
Why can’t the richest monks, richest temples and richest Buddhist organizations of the affluent world mobilize work teams to visit and look into the grievances of these forgotten fellow Buddhists? Why are we just shouting at others who are helping them when we chose not to act ourselves?
The Buddhist teachings of karma, rebirth, suffering, selflessness, and contentment have all been part and partial of a deeper level of misunderstanding of Buddhism even among the most educated and affluent civilized Buddhists, and their misunderstanding has been a boon for the greedy missionaries to take advantage of these Buddhist teachings.
Maybe somebody is born poor because of his karma. And someone else out there is suffering and dying without proper hospice care. So what? He’s got lots more rebirths coming up next. Somebody is poor but wants to have a better life. So instead of providing skills and opportunities, they are asked to “practice contentment”. This is the unfortunate mentality of Buddhists towards those who are at the bottom rung of society.
No matter how openly they deny it, sadly this has been proved to be the case over and over again. Highly spiritual monks and committed practicing lay Buddhists tend to overlook the necessity of material development.
But what these people forget to realize is that there cannot be spirituality where there is widespread hunger and poverty; and healthy spirituality cannot exist where there is widespread illiteracy, ignorance and superstitions…
And this raises the extreme Buddhist need to establish cohesive, well-financed, dedicated and inspired international Buddhist organizations to safeguard the very existence of the peoples of the Buddhist world through active participation on field.
Bhikkhu Bodhi offered his own assessments and challenges on this subject in a commentary piece for the Fall 2007 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly. Both pieces are, in my view, well worth reading in their entirety and contemplating seriously.
