Expert: Laurie McLauglin - 7/7/2009

Question
I am doing research for a paper and I have compiled a list of questions that I would like to ask someone of the Buddist religion.

What are the important holidays and traditions of this religion
How has the religion shaped your life

What are the challenges, if any, to practicing this particular religion

Can anyone become a Buddhist?
  
Is the conversion from Christianity to Buddhism difficult?

What if an individual wants to study Buddhism but remain Christian is that possible?

What time and days is your worship or meditation and is it available to the general public?

Do you think that the Buddhist religion has grown here in the Dallas area over the last decade?

How many members does the temple currently have?

Should new members expect any type of rejection when coming into the temple?

What are the rules and clothing attire required if any when entering the temple?


Answer
Thank you for letting me answer your questions, Sherita.

Your first question becomes a bit difficult.  The reason this is, is that just in Christianity, there are different sects within Christianity, such as Baptist, Catholic and Mormon, all have different ways they practice the same religion, so do the different kinds of Buddhism. There are many, many different kinds of Buddhism in many, many different countries. Each of these practices Buddhism differently.  So each of them has different holidays and sometimes has the same holidays but they take place on different days because I believe all the Buddhist sects go by lunar calendars. Therefore, the days that the holidays occur are on different days each year.

Since I practice the Mahayana Tibetan Gelugpa tradition of Buddhism, I can only speak for them in which holidays we celebrate.  We have four main holidays.  One is when Buddha passed into Parinirvana, this means that Buddha passed away from this life. It is celebrated around February 15th of each year. Losar is the Tibetan New Year which is celebrated around Easter time. Then there is Buddha’s birthday, called Saka Dawa, which we celebrate around the beginning of June. This year it was June 7th. The last holiday we traditionally celebrate is the one where Buddha comes back to earth from Heaven where he went to teach his mother, after she died. That is usually celebrated, if I am correct in September or October.  There are many other Buddhist holidays, but those are the four main ones in the tradition that I follow.

As for your second question: This question of course will be answered by each different practitioner uniquely. My answer will strictly  be a personal answer not one that is necessarily true to all dharma students (dharma being the teachings of the Buddha).  Buddha himself taught 84 thousand teachings because he tailored each of his teachings to the individual group or person to whom he was speaking. Buddha likened his teachings to medicine and likened himself to a doctor.  Just as a doctor would prescribe medicines to people depending on their specific illness, so the same with Buddha’s teachings.

So, what I needed that the Buddhist teachings fulfilled was that I wanted to learn how to be a better person and needed a roadmap to figure out how to do so.  Buddhism provided me that roadmap.  First, it taught me how to meditate.  This allowed me to understand how my thoughts were formed and I could still my mind and watch how it worked. As I stilled my mind, I could watch thoughts form in my mind and recognize them as positive, neutral or negative thoughts.  Then I was able to embrace the positive thoughts and let go of the negative ones before they manifested into actions; as thought always precede actions.

So, I am now able to be happier because I have a bit more control over my mind and my mind is calmer, due to meditation and I choose now not to act on as many negative thoughts as I used to.
What else Buddhism has done to give me a road map to be a better person is teach me about how to help others and think of them first before myself.  I study what is called Mahayana Buddhism.  The people that practice this particular sect of Buddhism believe it is not enough just to reach enlightenment for ourselves but we commit ourselves to helping all sentient beings become enlightened no matter how long it takes. This is also called the Bodhisattva path. This path stresses learning how to help others and work at training our minds to put others first and find joy in doing so and not grasp at our selfishness.

Things like grasping at negative emotions like selfishness, jealousy, anger and so forth seem normal to us and are even often encouraged in our normal lives.   However, these emotions tend to produce unhappiness not only in ourselves but in others.  Buddhism teaches to learn to see all sentient beings as just the same as ourselves, no better, no worse.  After all, are we not similar all of us?  When you come down to it, all of us simply want to be happy and no one wants to suffer.  When we can learn to see ourselves as no different or worse than others then we do not need to label people as enemy and stranger but think of all as our friends and equal to us.

But often our emotions, anger, jealousy, pride and selfishness and the rest make us treat others in negative ways.  So another thing that Buddhism teaches is how to look at the world in a way that does not grasp at things and hold on to them as if they, things outside ourselves, have the power to make us happy or sad.  Buddhism teaches us to look at things and understand how nothing outside ourselves can bring us sadness or suffering.  Sadness and suffering come from our minds alone.    Once we can learn the true nature of things and how our minds work, then we will cease to suffer and cause others to suffer.

So, that is what Buddhism is to me personally.  It is a way to find happiness within myself and to be a better person overall.

As for question three, the main answer is that the biggest challenge is to learn to tame our monkey mind; to train our minds to calm our thoughts and to acquire great concentration and wisdom, to train our speech to speak honestly and with compassion and wisdom and to teach our body not to act in disrespectful or harmful ways.  This is called guarding the three doors. Then we train ourselves to learn great compassion and how to put that into practice.

So, the biggest challenge to practicing Buddhism correctly is our own selves and our egos, deluded thinking and negative habits which only bring harm to ourselves and others.

As a westerner learning a religion that came from a different country, there are a few challenges.  The Buddhism I study has many, many words in both Sanskrit and Tibetan.  It is in a way like learning a new language at the same time as learning a new religion.

As with question two, this is strictly a personal answer. Others may have trouble with other things like the concept of reincarnation or there being no God and so forth.

Question four:  The answer is yes.  Anyone can become a Buddhist.  We believe that all sentient beings have Buddha Nature; the potential to become a Buddha.  

Question five: Is the conversion from Christianity to Buddhism difficult?  Again this is a personal answer – everyone is going to find various levels of difficulty in the transition. As for myself, it was no very difficult. I believed in reincarnation ever since I was thirteen, so that was not hard for me to deal with. I also had a strong belief in karma before I became Buddhist.  I had been drawing away from the belief that there is One True God that exists apart and separate from ourselves for a few years before I encountered Buddhism.  Once I joined Buddhism, I still had a bit of clinging to the superstitious feelings that I was going to be punished for letting go of a belief in a God that ruled the universe. But that eventually faded.

Question six:  It is certainly possible to study Buddhism while remaining a Christian.  Buddhism can either be taken as a faith or religion or a philosophy. As a philosophy, there are many parts of Buddhism, such as the study of the mind and how things work and the practice of meditation that can be very useful to anyone no matter what religion they are. However, one cannot become a Buddhist in faith while remaining a Christian. This has to mainly with the fact that Buddhists do not believe in a God that rules the universe as the Christians do. To become a Buddhist, one must take Refuge Vows.  In these vows, one takes refuge in The Buddha, the Dharma (teachings of Buddha) and the Sangha (the ordained monks and nuns). These Refuge Vows imply that one must not put anything such as another God above the refuge one seeks from The Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.

Question seven:  Again, that is a bit of a difficult answer as there are so many various sects of Buddhism.  But speaking from the point of view of the western practicing Gelugpa Mahayana Buddhists, which I follow, practices are done at various times.  Meditation is often done in the morning, although some prefer to do their main meditation at night before bed. However, was originally taught that the best way to do meditation practice is to do it four times a day. The main ceremonies we do such as Pujas are usually done in the evening or afternoon and Tsogs are usually done in the evening. As we are western Buddhists, most of the practices are done when most people can attend, such as afternoons or evenings. However, the ceremony of the taking of precepts is done at dawn. There are major ceremonies such as empowerments and those are usually all day events, sometimes going on for four days.  Another large part of Buddhist events are teachings; the study of various parts of Buddhism.   These take place at all times, morning, afternoon or evening, depending of the availability of the teacher and the availability of the students attending.  The majority of the above events are open to the general public.  There are some exceptions. Many students have what is called sadhana practice.  This is a private practice that takes place between one and six times a day. And there are teachings that are more esoteric and are only open to the most advanced students. These practices have requirements that are to  be practiced in private six times a day.  

Question eight:  As I am not from Dallas, I cannot specifically state whether or not the Buddhist religion has grown there over the last decade. All I can say is that Buddhism is growing throughout the country and I would expect Dallas being such a cosmopolitan area would be no exception.

Question nine: To be honest, I do not know the amount of members that attend our specific dharma center. Our dharma center is part of a larger group of Gelugpa Mahayana Buddhists called the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition or FPMT for short. You might want to check out their website; www.fpmt.org to see how many centers there are and perhaps you can get an idea of how many attend all the centers.

Question ten:  The person coming to our dharma center should expect no rejection.  Buddhism is a fairly inclusive religion.  We do not proselytize and will not try to convert anyone to Buddhism.  One has to come to the decision to become a Buddhist on their own.  And as a major part of our religion teaches us to practice compassion and equanimity, we should treat all visitors to our dharma centers in the same manner as we would wish to be treated.  That said, of course, we are human and are constantly dealing with our own negative states of mind, so we may not always be on our best behavior.  But we do try.

Question eleven: There are no specific clothing requirements in order to come to an event at a dharma center. However, one might want to stay away from clothing that may be seen as evocative, out of respect for our Sangha (ordained monks and nuns) who have taken a vow of celibacy. One also may want to wear clothing that one can sit on the floor with comfortably, as it is suggested that you sit on the floor for teachings or for ceremonies, unless you have a medical reason why that would not be practical. Also of course, one must remove their shoes when entering the gompa (meditation/teaching hall).

I hope these answers are of use to you and wish you much success on your research paper.  Please don’t hesitate to contact me for any follow up questions or any further questions.