Buddhism for a Violent World

Elizabeth J. Harris

Description

Explores what Buddhism has to say about the human condition and in particular about living in a violent world. Drawing on the realities of the violent ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka, this book shows that there are no easy answers but Buddhism has much to offer to those who want to understand better the dynamics of conflict.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 16 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334053576
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Buddhism for a Violent World

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Epworth Press.
Copyright © Elizabeth J. Harris 2010
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978 0 7162 0652 1
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to use ‘Will you come and follow me?’, from Heaven Shall Not Wait (Wild Goose Publications, 1987). Words by John L. Bell and Graham Maule. Copyright © 1987 WGRG, Iona Community, Glasgow, G2 3DH, Scotland. www.wgrg.co.uk .
Permission is requested to reproduce Thich Nhat Hanh, ‘Call Me by My True Names’, The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh , Parallax Press, Califonia. www.parallax.org .
First published in 2010 by Epworth Press Methodist Church House 25 Marylebone Road London NW1 5JR
Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by Lightning Source UK
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 The Journey
2 The Human Condition
3 The Path
4 Mind and Meditation
5 Buddhism and Violence
6 Inter Faith Relations
Epilogue
Glossary
Further Reading
Index
Dedicated with thanks to all my Sri Lankan teachers. Most particularly those who are no longer with us The Venerable Ayya Khema Sr Nyanasiri Dr Michael Rodrigo OMI Godwin Samararatne The Venerable Sumedha
Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted in writing this book to all my Sri Lankan teachers and mentors, both Christians and Buddhists. The enrichment I gained through my journey into Buddhism could not have happened without them. Of the faculty members at the Postgraduate Institute of P li and Buddhist Studies, I am particularly grateful to the inspirational teaching of Venerable Professor Dhammavihari (then Professor Jotiya Dhirasekera) and Professor Y. Karunadasa. I also remember with gratitude the teachers who helped me to see why I needed to meditate, Venerable Ayya Khema and Godwin Samararatne. I shall never forget the Buddhist women who did so much to introduce me to Buddhist spirituality, Hema Shah, Agnes Abeyesekera, Ratna Dias, Chitra Pieris, Princie Rajakaruna, Lorna Devaraja and Ranjani de Silva. I am also indebted to the robust conversations about Buddhism that I enjoyed with a group of western Buddhist renouncers who made Sri Lanka their home, Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, Venerable Sumedha, Sr Nyanasiri and Venerable Miao Kwang Sudharma. I thank all of those mentioned in this paragraph for their patience with me and their acceptance of me.
Of the Christians who helped me on my journey, I am indebted particularly to the group of pioneers who, in the middle of the twentieth century, sought to re-build trust with Buddhist and Hindu communities. I thank Aloysius Pieris SJ for his wise counsel when I felt most vulnerable and Michael Rodrigo OMI for his humour, his energy and his example. I am grateful to Yohan Devananda for helping me to envisage a meeting between Jesus and the Buddha, and his wife Malini for her support of Buddhist nuns. I have learnt at the feet of all of these and also Paul Caspaerz SJ, Audrey Rebera with her total commitment to solidarity between women, Pauline Hensman, Nelun Gunasekera, and Chitra and Kenneth Fernando. I am also grateful to Barbara Praesoody for her friendship and hospitality.
My journey into Buddhism would also not have been possible without the support of people in Britain. I am grateful to my parents. They were wary when I first went to Sri Lanka but came to support me wholeheartedly. The Methodist Church gave me pastoral and some financial support during my time in Sri Lanka and I am particularly thankful to the Revd Swaminathan Jacob, David Cruise and Graeme Jackson. I have deep thanks also for David Temple of Christians Abroad, Kenneth Cracknell at the British Council of Churches and Paul Hunt of CMS (Church Mission Society) for their moral support and their help when I needed extra funding. To the World Council of Churches I also owe a debt for making my initial years in Sri Lanka possible.
Lastly, I thank the Epworth Press for their help in bringing this publication to birth.
Introduction
In the main room of a Christian action and research centre in Sri Lanka called Tulana is a large mural relief in baked clay. It is by a Buddhist artist, Kingsley Gunatilleke, and shows Jesus in the temple at Jerusalem (Luke 2.41–52). But he is not only questioning the Jewish elders. Ranged around him are the great religious teachers of the world: Moses, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Buddha, Mahavira (Jain), LaoTse, Confucius and unnamed women teachers. He is looking towards them all and behind him are his parents, trying to restrain him. It is a stunning piece that changes with the different lights of the day.
The work was the fruit of two and a half years of dialogue with Dr Aloysius Pieris SJ, Director of the Centre, and it expresses beautifully one of the principles that lies behind the mission of Tulana: that the Word of life in the world is formed through exchanges between holy people from many faiths and philosophies. 1 To put it another way, its message is that the world today needs wisdom from more than one spiritual source.
This is the message that also lies behind this book. It rests on the premise that we can be enriched and challenged by encounter with faiths other than our own and uses as a case study my own 25 years of encounter with Buddhism. It is not an easy message for some Christians. Before I took up the post of Secretary for Inter Faith Relations for the Methodist Church in 1996, a post I held for 11 years, I was interviewed for the Methodist Recorder , a weekly Methodist newspaper. The interviewer chose to make much of my study of Buddhism. She called it ‘a magnificent obsession’, a term I had not used myself when speaking to her. A letter sent to the paper in response said this:


To me as a reader of her profile, Dr Harris’s Christian faith comes over as a luke-warm ‘also ran’. I hope for all our sakes, that I have been given the wrong impression . . . Apart from any personal rewards we receive, many of us are being made aware that many of the ‘riches’ which people enthuse about from other faiths are to be found deep within the Christian tradition. If we hold on to that view and set about educating ourselves, the temptation to be lured by other faiths is less likely to occur – and we are in a better position to help those who are so enticed. 2
The writer’s evident conviction was that Christianity possessed a spiritual heritage that could match every other faith and that this made exploration of what other religions could give to humanity, superfluous.
I disagreed with her profoundly then and I continue to do so. We are at a point in world history when we need wisdom from many sources, if the human family is to survive and prosper. The religions of the world – not just one, but all – are one of these sources. To explore a religion not one’s own, therefore, need have nothing to do with being enticed or allured, or of not knowing one’s own tradition well enough. Rather, it takes the plural world we live in seriously. It recognizes the time-worn wisdom that the person who knows only one religion knows none.
My journey into Buddhism began in 1984, when I visited Sri Lanka for the first time and had what I now call an encounter with the Buddha. It developed during a period of residence in Sri Lanka during 1986–93 and continues to this day. I now teach Buddhist Studies, along with other topics in religious studies, at Liverpool Hope University. Throughout my years of encounter, I have remained a Christian. However, I have brought into my spiritual journey insights from Buddhism that have helped me profoundly and which I believe have a message for all, Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Buddhism, in short, has become part of my life, personally and professionally.
This book aims to steer a middle path between the academic and the personal. In my academic writings on Buddhism, I have aspired to scholarly objectivity, while recognizing that true objectivity is rarely possible. 3 In my more autobiographical writings, I have struggled with what encountering ‘the other’ at depth has meant for me, finding that the process has been disturbing, complex and multi-faceted. 4 This book ploughs a furrow between the two.
Chapter 1 reflects on the personal side of my journey into Buddhism, giving an outline of my encounter and the context in which it took place. It aims to signpost what happened and to communicate some of the joys and anguish I experienced as I journeyed into a new way of seeing the world in a country that was moving towards full-blown internal war. The chapters that follow describe aspects of Buddhism that I have found particularly challenging or useful. Chapter 2 explores the Buddhist view of the world, concentrating on the presence of greed and hatred. Chapter 3 examines the Buddhist path and addresses particularly the western stereotype that it concerns withdrawal from rather than engagement with the world. Chapter 4 takes one aspect of the path, meditation, and argues, for instance, that the Buddhist practice of ‘bare attention’ or mindfulness contains something within it that is essential for human wholeness. Chapter 5 moves into how Buddhists understand one of the most intractable characteristics of our world: the existence of violence and conflict.
These chapters are less personal and giv