Expert: Laurie McLauglin - 2/26/2009

Question
I am in an Eastern and Western thought class, and one of our assignments is to interview an expert on Buddhism and ask a few questions we had during our research. I hope you will be able to help me understand Buddhism a little more.

1. While Buddha was searching for truth and teaching, his income came from going to the cities and relying on the people in to town to give him money. Do you know anything more about this practice and how it affects the Buddhist religion today?

2.Buddha taught only those who came and listened, and did not go searching for people to share the path to enlightenment. In the present day, are practicers of Buddhism concerned with outreach? Also, if the situation arose, would Buddhists be worried if every enlightened person was close to dying and the teaching of Buddha was in danger of disappearing, or would they not be concerned with the happenings of the world and leave it to another person to find enlightenment and start over with the religion?

3.In a world or isolated community of Buddhists, would children create suffering for themselves by human nature, or would they adopt the non-worldly mindset of the adults in the community and never see or experience suffering, and therefore not need to become any more detached from the world. I know this is a purely hypothetical question, but it would tell me a lot about Buddhist beliefs.

Thank you for taking the time to help me learn more about Buddhism. In the write-up for the class, my teacher would like to know what you would say your area of expertise is, and what is your background in Buddhism. Thank you again.

Marcus


Answer
Hello, Marcus. Thank you for allowing me to answer your questions –

First however, let me just say I am not an expert, per se.  But for the purpose of this website, I am called an expert. I know do some things on basic Budddhism based on 8 years’ experience as a Mahayana Buddhist practitioner, having taken many classes from many highly qualified teachers, geshes and lamas and I will give the best answers I can based on that.

Question 1 – Yes, Buddha Shakyamuni and the early monks and nuns went on what we call alms rounds in what ever city or village they happened to be in.  I believe there are groups of monks (and perhaps nuns) in various traditions and countries that still do alms rounds today. In the Western Tibetan Mahayana practice I do, monks and nuns no longer do alms rounds. Some of our monks and nuns have patrons that support them; some get money through teaching Buddhism at or on behalf of Buddhist centers and others work for Buddhist centers.

There still is a spiritual practice called Tsog, which means a gathering.  This is a practice that is usually done twice a month which involves prayers and offerings of food to the Buddhas.  As far as I know, it is customary for monks and nuns who attend such Tsogs at a Buddhist center to receive a small amount of money from donations made to them by the spiritual community.

You may or may not know this. Originally, when Prince Siddhartha first became a monk before he became the Buddha, he practiced asceticism, which was one of the popular ways for monks to be back then.  These monks did not go on alms rounds and it was reported that during this practice Prince Siddhartha would only eat what ever fell into his alms bowl. Prince Siddhartha became so thin and weak doing this practice that he could no longer concentrate on his spiritual practice.  One day, however, a kindly woman passed by with some food and offered it to Siddhartha while he was sitting under the Bodhi tree.  He ate it and, as I recall, the very next day, after regaining his strength, he was able to reach the state of Enlightenment.

Once he became enlightened and began to teach one of the things he taught was not to do anything to the extreme.  His teachings therefore became known as the Middle Way because he preached doing all things in moderation.

Question 2 – It is considered incorrect for Buddhists to actively try to convert someone to Buddhism or push someone to come to Buddhist classes, teachings, or ceremonies. We do outreach in that we do put up posters and advertise in magazines for classes, teachings, empowerments and retreats. But we do not actively try to get people to come to them.

To the best of my knowledge, most Buddhists would be very concerned if the teachings of the Buddha were in danger of disappearing.  Actually, though, this period we are now in is considered to be the declining days of the teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni.  Buddhists believe that nothing lasts forever. Everything arises, abides for a time and then decays and dies away; so it is with the teachings of Buddhism.  After the teachings of Budddha Shakyamuni die away, then another Buddha, Buddha Maitreya will appear and will teach and the dharma (teachings of the Buddha) will be restored.

It is impossible for an Enlightened being to die, just so you know.  There have always and will always be enlightened people, from the best of my knowledge.  It is just that as we get farther and farther away from the time when the Buddha taught, we as sentient beings are not performing as many good works and are not living correctly and so our mindstreams become more and more polluted, if you will, that we are constantly less and less able to see, understand and benefit from the teachings.

Also as a clarification to your question, Mahayana Buddhists work on practicing compassion for all sentient beings we are or should be greatly concerned with the happenings of the world.  As a Mahayana Buddhist, we train to become Bodhisattva.  A Bodhisattva is one that has the continuous wish to free all sentient beings from suffering. And we often pray that we can release all beings from suffering even if we are the only one able to do it. So we would not leave it for someone else to do, but try to keep the dharma from disappearing.

Question 3 – Is a very good and interesting question.  If we are talking about a hypothetical location in this world system, then children living in an isolated place would still experience and create suffering for themselves and others. The reason this is so is because first they had the karma to be born into this world, which is a world of suffering which Buddhists call Samsara.  Then if they are like you and I, they have lived many lives before.  In each minute of those lives, including this one, they have done things that are either positive, neutral or negative.  The more negative things they have done in the past, the more negative karma (read suffering) will ripen for them in this life.  The more positive things they have done in the past, the more positive karma (read happiness) will ripen for them in this life. So no matter how remote the location, they are still victim to their own karma and they will still suffer until they learn how not to.

Also a clarification to this question – just because it is the search of the Buddhist to eliminate suffering from their world, does not mean that they detach from the world in the way one usually thinks of the word.  It means that they learn to see it differently than the way it is normally seen. We learn to see it as it really appears and that is what brings about happiness removes the suffering.

I hope these answers helped at least a little.  Do not hesitate to ask anything further if you wish.

Laurie