AboutLaurie McLauglin Expertise I can answer certain questions about the Tibetan Mahayana path as well as many questions about basic Buddhism. If I do not know the answer chances are I can find out very quickly as I live in a Buddhist retreat center.
Experience I have been practicing Buddhism for over seven years and have had teachings from many very qualified Mahayana teachers such as Jon Landaw, Tubten Pende and Venerable Robina Courtin
Publications I have written articles on Buddhism for the on line magazine, Suite 101
Education/Credentials I have a BA in theatre from The Unversity of South Florida
Question This is for a paper I am to write on Buddhism. These are questions that I am to ask someone as an interview. Any extra detail or information is greatly appreciated.
1. What are the important holidays and traditions of Buddhism?
2. How has Buddhism shaped your life?
3. What are the challenges, if any, to practicing Buddhist?
4. What does it mean to you to have reached full enlightenment?
5. Does wearing the robe represent something? What do the different colors represent?
6. Must a monk or nun always wear his or her robe?
7. How is Jodo Shin Buddhism any different from any other kind of Buddhism?
8. What is the procedure for a lay person to ordain?
9. Why do monks or nuns shave their head?
10. What does meditation do? How many times does one meditate a day?
11. What are the basic Buddhist dharmas?
12. Are there certain foods, beverages, or places Buddhism forbids?
Answer Thank you for letting me answer your questions.
Your first question is a bit difficult. The reason is because just in Christianity, there are different sects, such as Baptist, Catholic and Mormon, there are also many different kinds of Buddhism in many, many different countries. And just as the different sects of Christianity all practice it in different ways, the same is true for the different sects of Buddhism and each of them has different holidays they celebrate. There are quite a few holidays in Buddhism but each sect celebrates certain ones and does not celebrate others.
Since I practice the Mahayana Tibetan Gelugpa tradition of Buddhism, I can only speak for them and 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, the way Buddhism shaped my life mainly is that I wanted to learn how to be a better person and I 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.
Another way Buddhism shaped my life and gave me a road map to be a better person was to 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 how Buddhism has shaped me personally. From my side, it is a way to find happiness within myself and to be a better person overall.
Your third question – What are the challenges to practicing Buddhists? Again I cannot give you a universal answer. I must speak as a person practicing Mahayana Gelugpa Buddhism in a western society. So, the challenges for me are learning a religion that came from a different country. The Buddhism I study came from Tibet, so in studying Buddhism, I must also learn much vocabulary not just in Tibetan but in Sanskrit. In a way, it is like learning a new religion and another language at the same time.
The main challenge of course for me in practicing Buddhism is to learn to work with my mind in order to train it to meditate, in order to gain realizations about how the world really exists so that I can use that information in order to put these realizations into practice in order to remove the suffering from my own life and the suffering in other’s lives.
Question four. I have only been studying Buddhism for eight years so my answer to what it means for me for someone to have reached full enlightenment is based on what I have learned so far. I have much farther to go to really understand but I will do my best to answer now.
But from what I understand thus far, to reach full enlightenment means to become a Buddha. When one becomes a Buddha one has the highest amount of compassion possible in order to help all sentient beings find ultimate happiness, one has subdued ones mind so that one no longer is controlled by ones ego, one has eliminated ones negative thoughts and emotions so they are no longer controlled by them and one has developed the highest transcendental wisdom to know how best to help each sentient being in the best way for them.
There is a great roadmap that has been created with the steps outlined to reach full enlightenment and become a Buddha. Following this roadmap, one works hard to train the mind to meditate and to learn how to control ones thoughts and to achieve great concentration. One also works with ones emotions to create a never ending wish to benefit all sentient beings in any way possible. Then one works on ones wisdom to understand the true nature of reality so that one can see the nature of reality as it truly is and not how our thoughts or emotions color it. Then through meditation, one continues to refine ones perceptions and lets go of more and more subtle imprints of our negative mind. One works on removing the imprints of all our past negative actions. And finally, when one reaches the highest realizations and understanding and highest desire to help all sentient beings, one becomes a Buddha.
In your fifth question, over all , wearing robes means that one is taken various vows. Specifically, I can only answer it based on the Buddhist tradition I follow. I follow the Mahayana Gelugpa Tibetan tradition. And specifically the tradition I follow is called the FPMT; the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition.
To the best of my knowledge, in my tradition, wearing robes means that one has taken a certain set of vows and one is either in the process of becoming a fully ordained monk or nun or one is a fully ordained monk or nun. To the best of my knowledge, there are three levels of ordination. Each of them have precepts or rules they must follow. The purpose of ordination is to eventually attain Nirvana.
Different traditions wear different colors. Our tradition wear the maroon and saffron. The saffron color came into being as the monks and nuns of Buddha’s time wore robes made of discarded garments and dyed them from a popular plant, I believe. The color they turned once they were dyed was anywhere from a brownish yellow to a darkish red. They chose these colors because they were not worn by lay people.
Yes, a monk or nun must always wear their robes.
I am not an expert in all types of Buddhism, so I cannot accurately answer your question on how Jodo Shin is different from any other kind of Buddhism. But from what I understand, it is not different for any other kind of Buddhism. What I mean by that is that Jodo Shin has parts of other forms of Buddhism in it. I can only tell you how it is different from the Buddhism I practice. It is different in that they believe that once they develop true belief in Amida and begin to recite the nembutsu, they immediately are assured that they will be reborn in a pure land and become enlightened. What we believe is that we can only do this at the time of our death. So, as we die, we concentrate on taking rebirth in a Pure Land. Also from what I know, the Jodo Shin are only required to recite the nembutsu as their only practice. As a practioner of a Tibetan form of Buddhism, we are requested to do many other practices in order to reach enlightenment, such as meditation and chanting and purification and practicing good deeds and pray and attend rituals to improve our good qualities. I believe that Jodo Shin Buddhism developed because its founder believed that since we are living in a degenerate age, that any practice that we develop will naturally also be degenerate as well, and therefore will not produce true enlightenment. We do not believe that. We believe that what we practice has come to us in an unbroken lineage of teachers that can be traced back to the Buddha, himself and we try very hard to maintain that unbroken lineage. Plus there are what are called six seals that must be present in a teaching that marks it as true dharma (teachings of the Buddha) and if they are present, we then can trust the teachings, So, therefore we believe that the practice we do is not degenerate even though we are living in a degenerate age.
From what little I know about Jodo Shin, those are the three major differences between the Buddhism I follow, in the FPMT tradition and the Jodo Shin Buddhism.
Question number eight. The process for a lay person to ordain in our tradition is that they be familiar with the major tenets of Buddhism, have studied with qualified teachers and have been practicing for at least a few years. They also must have taken the refuge vows. One needs to have taken the lay vows and lived with them for at least three years. They should be familiar with what life is like in a spiritual community. One should have done at least a few retreats. One should be free of debt and free of attachment to a family, be at least twenty years old and have a great desire to serve the spiritual community.
Once the person has these, then they must seek permission from their main teacher, guru or lama. Once they receive approval, and get the appropriate paperwork turned in, then they attend classes and begin to learn the rules they are to live by for the rest of their lives. In the West, they must also be able to live in a spiritual community or dharma center and not return to a lay persons job. This of course is much easier in India and the far east as that is part of their culture. Here in the west, it is hard to do this. So someone wanting to ordain in the west must take this into consideration.
Question number nine. There are a couple reasons that I have heard as to why monks and nuns shave their head. I heard, although I do not know if this is accurate, that it was originally done for practical reasons, to keep the head free of lice, etc. Buddha, himself when he went left his home and went to pursue a spiritual life, cut his hair. I believe that the main reason however is to show renunciation from the world and from worldly desires.
Question number ten. Meditating allows one to do several things. First, it helps to calm the mind and allow one to begin to see ones own thoughts as they arise. In doing this, one can recognize negative thoughts as they are arising as thoughts before they turn into actions such as anger, jealousy and violence.
When one can recognize one’s thoughts as they form, one can choose to allow the thought to arise, if it is positive or allow the thought to pass away without manifesting as an action, if it is negative.
One can learn to control one’s mind in this manner and find peace and happiness.
Also, meditation can help one live in the moment and not in the future or the past.
These things can be done by practicing the simple mindfulness meditations taught in the early stages of Buddhist studies. These kinds of meditation are called placement meditations, whereby you are placing your mind on a single object and holding it there, such as the breath.
Once one masters this kind of mediation, one can place one’s mind on a positive quality such as compassion and hold it as long as possible. Then one stops meditating, one arises from one’s meditation and is able to carry the feeling of compassion with them through their day in all kinds of situations.
Another equally important part of meditation is to use it to understand the teachings of Buddha, such as dependent arising, emptiness and so forth. These concepts are quite important to move along the Buddhist path. By analyzing these and other concepts one can grow one’s wisdom to the point where one can understand more and more important parts of the Buddhist teachings. The more one understands, the more wise one becomes.
But it is almost impossible to understand such things, develop wisdom and to improve one’s lives by developing compassion for self and others by simply reading and going to class. One must meditate.
Furthermore, according to the Mahayana school I follow, there are five paths (actually one path, cut in five parts) that one must travel to reach enlightenment and Buddhahood and one of the requirements to get on one of the paths is called Samadhi. Wikipedia says this about Samadhi “ Once the meditator achieves a strong and powerful concentration, his mind is ready to penetrate and see into the ultimate nature of reality, eventually obtaining release from all suffering.”
So in a nutshell, that is what meditation does. It is suggested that one meditate at least once a day, but for best results, one should meditate four to six times a day.
Question number eleven: The dharma (or teachings of the Buddha) come from the sutras. The sutras are the teachings of the Buddha that were written down after his death. Buddha taught 84 thousand teachings in his life. As His Holiness, the Dalai Lama says, “My religion is simple. My religion is kindness.” I would say that basically, the dharmas are divided into two groups; teachings on kindness or compassion and teachings on wisdom, or how the world really is; not how we perceive it to be.
Question number twelve: Basically, the Buddhists live by the moral code of the Eightfold path and the Five Precepts. The five precepts are; No killing, no lying, no stealing, no sexual misconduct and no intoxicants. The Eightfold path is the fourth Noble Truth. The eight ways to behave are called Right view, Right intention, Right speech, Right action, Right Livlihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right concentration.
Of course, we are taught to refrain from killing. We believe that all beings, not just humans have a mind and do not wish to suffer. So, though it is not strictly a rule, many Buddhists will not eat meat and some become Vegan for the same reason.
As far as drinking, the most important of the five precepts is no intoxicants. That is because when one takes an intoxicant, one can then much more easily break the other four precepts. So it is important that on refrains from any intoxicant. Also, taking intoxicants impairs the mind. And training the mind so that it will be most beneficial to all other sentient beings is one of the most important things in the Buddhism which I follow.
As far as places that we can or cannot go, we must depend on the teachings of the Eightfold path, which Buddha, himself taught us in order to help us eliminate our own suffering. So, one should refrain from going somewhere where one will be tempted to act in a negative way or think in a negative way or speak in a negative way. Of course these places will be different for all people. But if gambling, for example, makes you spend all your money so that you cannot pay your bills and keep a roof over your head, then you should refrain from going there.
I hope these answers help a bit and wish you much success with your research. Don't hesitate to contact me with any further questions
