BUDDHIST LIFE STORIES.pdf

BUDDHIST LIFE STORIES

Brooke Schedneck

This article argues that contemporary Buddhist memoirs are an important source to

investigate and understand the phenomenon of modern Buddhism. Modern Buddhism is

a current development in which Buddhists consider their tradition in new ways.

The connections between life stories and modern Buddhist traits are striking. No

document can get closer to the source of this movement than a life story. In this article I

consider this in terms of the memoirs of the German Buddhist nun Ayya Khema and the

Sinhalese monk Bhante Gunaratana. Although the ﬁgures may not represent all of the

categories of modern Buddhism, the reader understands their choices in terms of their

entire lives. The reader is constantly faced with the interplay between modern and

traditional traits that make up their life stories.

Introduction

Modern Buddhism is a term scholars use to characterize a change in

Buddhism that began when Buddhists encountered Christians in Sri Lanka during

the late nineteenth century. Since that time, many scholars have theorized that

Buddhists have reﬂected on their tradition in new ways. They contemplate such

issues as a concern for gender equality, a solitary focus on the Buddha’s time,

compatibility with science, and anti-ritual and anti-hierarchy sentiments, among

others. In this article I discuss modern Buddhism in the light of two current

Buddhist memoirs. By doing this I will show how they embody some of the

categories of this development in Buddhism and the importance of the use of

memoirs as a source to investigate modern Buddhism.

Recently, there has been a rise in popularity of spiritual memoirs. A search

on the Barnes and Noble website for the keywords ‘spiritual autobiography’

returns over 2,000 hits from popular ﬁgures such as the Dalai Lama, Mahatma

Gandhi, and Mother Teresa. Just under a hundred books of this type were

published in 2006 alone. A search for ‘Buddhist spiritual autobiography’ returns

150 books. Thus, this article uses only a small sample of this pool. However, even in

one memoir, the reader can ﬁnd the interplay between traditional and modern

ideas. The number of these books published today says something about our

culture—the general public is interested in spiritual narratives. We want to read

Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 8, No. 1, May 2007

ISSN 1463-9947 print/1476-7953 online/07/010057-68

q 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14639940701295294

58 BROOKE SCHEDNECK

stories from people who claim to have found a unique path. We also seem

attracted to learning from religious teachers and reading about their spiritual

journeys.

The Buddhist memoir has become a new and interesting genre to explore

the content of modern Buddhism. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion

of modern Buddhism by analyzing the connections between modern Buddhism

and Buddhist life stories, and to show that the latter has become an important

source for contemporary Buddhist studies. I will not argue for the existence of the

scholarly term ‘modern Buddhism’, but demonstrate that some of the

characteristics ascribed to modern Buddhism can be found in Buddhist memoirs.

To this end, I will consider two questions. What do Buddhist life stories add to this

development in Buddhism? How does an author contribute to or represent new

trends in Buddhism through the subject of their personal experiences?

Modern Buddhism has not yet been investigated solely using life stories.

In his selections of writings from modern Buddhists, A Modern Buddhist Bible,

Donald Lopez (2002) includes one life story. Other scholars who comment on the

modern Buddhist trend, such as James Coleman, Kenneth Tanaka, Charles Prebish,

Paul Numrich, and Wendy Cadge, use anthropological evidence, meditation

books, lectures, and surveys, among other sources. In order to add a new

dimension to this area of Buddhist studies, I intend to show the importance of

analyzing Buddhist memoirs because no other document can get closer to the

modern Buddhists themselves.

Speciﬁcally, I will detect common themes and analyze the life stories of the

Sinhalese monk Bhante Gunaratana (1927–present), and the German Buddhist

nun Ayya Khema (1923–1997). These two memoirs were written by contemporary

international teachers whose spiritual autobiographies bear out the complications

and themes of contemporary Buddhist issues. One of these complications is that

their lives do not embody every aspect of modern Buddhism. On some issues they

present more traditional views. In the modern movement, many western teachers

are lay. Both of these ﬁgures, however, chose ordination— a traditional Buddhist

characteristic. However, within these roles, they do not act traditionally. Because

of this, it is even more striking that they are and can be modern.

Ayya Khema was born into an afﬂuent Jewish family during World War II

Germany. As a young adult she and her family moved out of Germany trying to

avoid the war. Following this, she moved to the United States with her husband

and started a family with two children. After divorcing her ﬁrst husband, she

traveled all around the world with her young son and second husband. It was

during the latter part of these travels that she discovered Buddhism, and

eventually became a nun. She also became a Buddhist teacher to many,

publishing books, teaching meditation around the world, and establishing

meditation centers in Australia, Sri Lanka and Germany.

Bhante Gunaratana was born in Sri Lanka, and in his childhood knew he

wanted to be a monk. He lived in temples for most of his life until he went to a

monastic college. After this he became a missionary in India and then Malaysia.

BUDDHIST LIFE STORIES 59

He later found his way to the United States and worked in the Sinhalese

Washington Buddhist Vihara (temple) for many years. After resigning from this

position, he founded his own meditation center called Bhavana Society. Today he

teaches around the world, and has written many books on meditation.

Modern Buddhism

There have been numerous attempts by scholars to list the main features of

modern Buddhism. These lists have commonalities but also some discrepancies,

thereby showing the complexity of this movement. The lists that I will be working

from have been created by scholars Donald Lopez (2002) in A Modern Buddhist

Bible, Christopher Queen (1999) in American Buddhism, Kenneth Tanaka (1998) in

The Faces of Buddhism in America, James Coleman (2001) in The New Buddhism,

and Don Pittman (2001) in Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism.

The most common characteristics of these ﬁve lists are: (1) emphasis on

egalitarianism in terms of hierarchical structure and women’s roles, (2) recovery of

the original teachings of the Buddha, (3) rejection of magical or ritual elements of

Buddhism, (4) compatibility with science, (5) blurring of boundaries between lay

and ordained members of the sangha (Buddhist community), (6) concern for

beneﬁting the world through Buddhism, and (7) meditation as the most important

activity of Buddhist practice.

The current Buddhist memoir genre adds clearly and uniquely to this

categorization of modern Buddhist features. The reader notices the authors’ anti-

ritual sentiments in many situations, their concern for women and helping others

throughout their lives, and how meditation became the most important part of

the Buddhist practice to them. It is important to note these characteristics because

these ﬁgures are not making arguments against ritual or hierarchy but this

preference is clearly implied within their life stories. These qualities are presented

more directly than in other genres, such as lectures or anthropological studies;

modern Buddhism shows itself in Khema and Gunaratana’s life choices and in their

responses to situations.

Original Buddhism

In her memoir entitled I Give You My Life, Khema declared that she was a

Therav¯da Buddhist because she believed this form of Buddhism contained the

Buddha’s original teachings. She wrote that ‘Therav¯da Buddhism is the

fundamental Buddhism ... It was the original quality of this teaching, straight

from the Buddha, that fascinated me from the beginning’ (Khema 1998, 155).

She also spoke of the superiority of Therav¯da in contrast to other forms of

Buddhism. She wrote ‘ ... it developed in a way that was appropriate to Chinese

and Japanese culture. Exactly the same thing happened with Tibetan Buddhism

which developed in close conjunction with Tibetan culture. The Therav¯da

Buddhism that I follow today follows the original 2,500-year-old teaching of the

60 BROOKE SCHEDNECK

Buddha’ (Khema 1998, 131). To her, the Buddha’s time was pure and free of

cultural constraints, and the Buddhisms that developed in other countries outside

India and Southeast Asia are to some extent impure.

She believed the time of the Buddha’s life contained the essence of Buddhism.

In order to get back to this, one only needs to study his teachings. She modeled her

teaching on the Buddha’s example. ‘The Buddha only had one interest: to show

every human being how he or she can become absolutely happy. He never sought

disciples and followers. This is my approach also’ (Khema 1998, 193). She also

modeled her life after him. ‘I always take the Buddha as my example—in both his life

and his death, which I hold up before me as an ideal’ (Khema 1998, 207).

Here we see a Buddhist ﬁgure holding up ancient Buddhism as the only

authentic and pure time. No teacher after the Buddha, none of his disciples, and

no recent teachers are as valid as the teachings of the Buddha himself. We would

not see this kind of thinking as clearly or in as many situations in other kinds of

documents.

Anti-ritual

Ayya Khema’s life story also falls under modern Buddhist traits as she

continually states that ritual is unnecessary in Buddhism. Whereas the Buddha’s

time is seen as the Golden Age of Buddhism, ritual is removed from this sacred

time. She continually advocates studying the teachings over performing rituals.

Throughout there are some provocative comments about the inferiority of

ritual.

Before she became a nun, Khema visited Thailand in order to receive

Buddhist teachings. She was not impressed with the Buddhist rituals she found

there. She believed this was not what the Buddha taught. ‘Religion is not conﬁned

to any set of traditional, cultural, or social customs. Such customs are sometimes

helpful to people, but they are not the essence of religion. Religion is an inner

revelation, a response to the need for perfection that we carry within us’ (Khema

1998, 193). During her earlier travels in Thailand, Ayya Khema and her family found

some monks who spoke English, and they explained the concepts of Buddhism.

‘What they explained to us was more or less just the ritual and not what really

mattered to me, which was simply how to live one’s life’ (Khema 1998, 118).

Another cultural aspect she did not accept is veneration for the Buddha and

monks by offering large amounts of food. She saw the Thai people taking large

quantities of food to the monasteries daily. Reﬂecting on her adaptations of the

practice, she wrote about her thoughts on Buddhism and food. About this she

wrote: ‘This is a custom that I did not adopt later in the monasteries I founded

myself. It was not for nothing that the Buddha declared that he did not want a

religion of food. I also did not adopt various other traditions’ (Khema 1998, 145).

All of these quotes and instances prove that Ayya Khema was biased against ritual

and cultural practices and favored only the teachings of the Buddha that she had

learned in the P ¯ li Canon.

BUDDHIST LIFE STORIES 61

Believing that customs and rituals do not belong with the Buddha’s original

teachings is a large part of modern Buddhism. From her life story we know her

opinion about rituals directly. She wrote negatively about them and showed this

in the choices she made while leading her own monasteries.

Egalitarianism

In their lives, both Ayya Khema and Bhante Gunaratana experience

problems with the institutions of Buddhism. Gunaratana has conﬂicts with the

head monks of his temples throughout his life, and Khema saw that Buddhist

women were not treated as equals in Asian society. Because of this, they both

created institutions free from the hierarchy problems that they had experienced in

their own lives.

In his memoir, Journey to Mindfulness: The Autobiography of Bhante G.,

Gunaratana stresses that he writes the truth because that is what the West values.

One of the most interesting things about this autobiography is that Gunaratana is

consistently honest about his feelings toward other monks and their power

struggles. We see this over and over again in his memoir. When Gunaratana was a

youth in Sri Lanka, he escaped twice because of the miserable way the temple

head treated him. The head monk beat him constantly for disobeying. Gunaratana

felt as if he was a servant at the temple rather than a respected young monk. Later,

when he traveled to India, he decided to leave again because the head monk

disliked his ambitions and abilities. Similarly, he disagreed with the power

struggles of the Sinhalese Washington Buddhist Vihara (SWBV). He was happy to

leave and start his own meditation center, Bhavana Society, which he has

structured toward avoiding these hierarchical problems.

Gunaratana said to the board of directors at the SWBV that he did not want

to afﬁliate his Bhavana Society with them ‘because I want it to be a monastic

center, not a cultural center. And I don’t want Sri Lankan politics to intrude. I want

this place to be totally independent’ (Gunaratana with Malmgren 2003, 233).

He believes that the politics involved in these Buddhist associations take away

from the message of Buddhism itself, and the teachings of the Buddha. If one were

to read a publication about the Bhavana Society or a lecture by Gunaratana, one

would not know of the hierarchy issues that led him to create his institution in the

modern Buddhist way that he did.

Khema disliked the gender hierarchies she witnessed in Thailand and

Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka she observed that ‘ ... nuns had been given the most

minimal consideration, treated almost as though they had no worth at all’ (Khema

1998, 157). She perceived the same treatment in Thailand. She exclaimed ‘ ...

what a subordinate position the nuns in Thailand occupy. They weren’t even

called nuns but rather “ladies in white”’ (Khema 1998, 145).

In order to change this, when she started a monastery for nuns in Sri Lanka

she begged for alms with other nuns so that the village women could see that

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