The Acclimatisation of Buddhism in the West

By Christmas Humphreys

The eminent author of this article has not so much studied the question of the acclimatisation of Buddhism in the West as lived with it. As Founder-President of the London Buddhist Society, he has had his hand on the rudder of Buddhist development in England for forty years past. His two books, Buddhism and Zen Buddhism, both of which have become paperbacks and best-sellers, have added as much as any to the process that has been going on this century of bringing Buddhism out of the encyclopaedias into the purview of ordinary well read people in the West. Apart from his work for the Buddhist Society, Mr. Humphreys has an exacting professional life and we are grateful to him for taking time off to write this article for us.

Gautama the Buddha gave his message to mankind in India, and 'Buddhism' a Western term for the doctrines and practices built up about that teaching in the last 2,500 years, was also developed in the East. But in the last hundred years or so Buddhism has come West.

It came to Europe in the form in which, two thousand years earlier, it went further East, that is to say, school by school, each school bringing its own observance and form of organisation as the shrine for its essential teaching. In considering the influx of Buddhism into the West - and I am including the USA in this generic term - we must therefore look to the heart of any school and what I am pleased to call its apparatus. The terms are not synonymous for the one may well be found without the other.

The essential spirit of any school of Buddhism may be gleaned from books, whether its Scriptures or text-books based upon them, and from talks, whether formal lectures or conversation in class or otherwise. The student, whether college youth or retired businessman, natural recluse or housewife, may have no inclination to look further. There are many in the West - how many we can never know - who, having acquired an understanding of basic principles which appeal to them, set to work to study them, in theory and practice, buying perhaps an occasional new book or borrowing it from a friend or library. They feel no need to join any society and, save for the look of their bookshelves, may remain unknown as 'Buddhists' to all but their closest friends.

They may belong to any school or none. Of the schools of Buddhism it is enough here to say that the oldest to survive as such is the Theravada, the Doctrine of the Elders, to be found today in Ceylon, Burma, Siam and Cambodia. But the Mahayana, taking this as a general movement, was founded early in the history of Buddhism, and its various schools moved, seriatim, East, along the old trade routes into China, Korea and Japan; North into Tibet and Mongolia, and West into North-west India.

In the same way Buddhism became known the West school by school, first by sporadic translations of isolated scriptures and later by the planned translations of Max Mueller, Rhys Davids and the like who rapidly gave Western scholars a working knowledge of many of their doctrines. But the first organised attempt to make Buddhism known to Western minds as a moral philosophy to be lived, as distinct from being merely 'studied', was that of the Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland, which was founded in London in November 1907 to prepare the way for Ananda Metteyya, an Englishman who had taken the Robe by that name in Burma and wished to 'proclaim the Dhamma' to his fellow-countrymen. His Buddhism was that of the Theravada. Not until twenty years later, when Dr. D. T. Suzuki's Essays in Zen Buddhism appeared in London did we know anything, save from an occasional article, about the Zen school of China and Japan, and only in the last ten years have we begun to learn anything practical about Tibetan Buddhism.

Each of these schools found their specialists, as scholars and practitioners and books have appeared to tell the West more about each school. Some writers were professional scholars; some just wrote of the teaching as it appealed to them; a few, for whom I have dared to coin the phrase 'schollowers', attempt to study and at the same time apply such principles as we glean from the translations of others, though more and more of us find the means to study the subject at first hand in the country of our predilection.

But 'authority' is a word unknown in Buddhism, and the Buddha himself is quoted in the Pali Canon as saying that we should not believe the words of even the wisest sage unless, when applied, they accorded with all that we had so far found to be true. The value, therefore, of any scripture or famous teacher depends on the student; only he can assess its value to him, at that time, in his then state of development.

In the Theravada stress has been laid in England, in my view wrongly, on the Abhidhamma, the third division of the Pali Canon, with its elaborate systems of meditation most of which are quite unsuited, in my experience, to the Western mind, to the detriment of the dozen basic principles of the Theravada which some think unrivalled as a practical moral philosophy applicable to all men in all places. In the Zen school of Japan initial training, which means training in 'sitting', a combination of mind-awareness and physical posture, is given by a chief monk. Only when the pupil has shown himself able to 'sit' does the Roshi consider him for acceptance, the Roshi being a Zen master who has not only achieved a high degree of enlightenment, but has received the inka or seal of his master as being competent to teach. In England there is as yet no resident Roshi, and therefore, so far as I have control of the Zen class of the Buddhist Society, no organised use of the koan, which I consider a most dangerous practice without the constant supervision of a master. All that is done in the Zen Class, therefore, is to learn to control the thinking mind, in meditation and at all times, and to develop the intuition for the first kensho, or breakthrough to awareness of non-duality. Results are encouraging. The rest must wait. The Tibetan school uses ritual more than either of the other two, but as yet there is no Tibetan Vihara where services may be held. Only Lamas, in the sense of monks of rank equivalent to a fully ordained Bhikkhu, may conduct group practices.

This brings one to the Sangha in the West, and its many problems. The Sangha of the Theravada is the oldest religious Order extant, being founded by the Buddha, who himself laid down at least a large proportion of the 227 Rules which today bind the actions of each member. In 1908 the Sangha, in the form of the Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya came West, and the problem of obeying the Rules in London appeared at once. They include, in general terms, the possession of but five objects including the Robes. No money may be handled, and the Bhikkhu may not sleep more than three consecutive nights in the same house as a woman. More private, and therefore a little more easy to observe, the Bhikkhu must sleep on a low bed, have no meal after noon and be at all times celibate. More difficult, and no serious attempt is made to practise them in London, are Rules about dignity of position in public, none sitting higher than the Order, and one which caused acute embarrassment in London in 1908, to the effect that no member of the Order may ride behind a horse. And of course no member may eat save that which is offered to him, and for that he should beg in the village with a begging bowl. Begging in this form in London is a crime.

From these Rules there was, of course, progressive deviation. During the war the Venerable U Thittila of Burma, resident in London, removed his Robes to do voluntary work of compassion in the 'blitz', assuming them again to lecture or attend a Buddhist meeting. This raises at once the overall problem; if one of the Rules is modified for Western usage where does the modification stop, and who is to sanction the slightest deviation? In Buddhism there is no Pope to give orders to all Buddhists, and not even a national equivalent. The nearest is the Sangharaja in Thailand, who is backed by statutory authority. Even in Tibet before 1959, the Dalai Lama's authority over other than the Geluppa sect was only that of respect. It is a fact that no one, and no body of men, can unfrock a Bhikkhu for even the grossest misbehaviour, not even the monastery which gave him the Robe. What, then, is a Bhikkhu in England to do? The answer until recently was to make such variation as he deemed right and proper, but with the creation in 1964 of the Sabha Sangha, a standing Council of members of the Order then resident in London, his problem is solved. He will relax the Rules as agreed by that body and not otherwise.

These relaxations include the possession of books, a typewriter and the like; the handling of money for travel given for the purpose; the wearing of warm underclothing and socks and shoes in addition to his Robes, and less stringent interpretation of sleeping in the same house as a woman, as at the Summer School of the Buddhist Society.

As no begging is allowed, arrangements are made by those who run the building where the Bhikkhu lives - usually a lay committee - for the rent and other expenses to be paid from funds collected by the committee. Of Viharas, residences for Bhikkhus, there have been three in the history of Buddhism in England, but the oldest in Europe is the Buddhistiches Haus at Frohnau, near Berlin, founded by the late Dr. Paul Dahlke. In London, the Anagarika Dharmapala when founding in 1926 a British branch of the Maha Bodhi Society, bought a house near Regent's Park where Bhikkhus stayed from time to time, but this was closed in 1939. The two at present functioning are that at Chiswick, which used to be in Knightsbridge, and is organised from Ceylon, and the English Sangha, of which the present head is the English Sthavira Sangharakshita, in Hampstead. Both are controlled by the Sangha Sabha above mentioned. The value of the Vihara system is obvious, and more are planned. The respect paid to the Robe by English Buddhists is a middle way between that of the chela to his guru in India and that to a schoolmaster by pupils at an English school. An audience will rise when the Bhikkhu enters for a class or lecture, but off the record the respect paid will accord with his personal stature as a Buddhist teacher.

In the Mahayana Sangha most of these difficulties do not arise, for many of the Theravada Rules have been modified to the point of disappearance. Robes in China and Tibet, for example, are of wool and plentiful; and a 'medicine meal' or light supper, is often taken in the evening. Some monks in Japan are even married, whereas the rule of chastity in the Theravada is absolute. Among the Tibetans now coming to the West the need for a Vihara is urgent, for they need a temple or something similar for the services. A Tibetan Vihara will, we understand, be opened in England in the near future. The Japanese have no Buddhist unit in London, and there are as yet no resident Zen monks who need a monastic residence.

In all these three main schools, Theravada, Zen and Tibetan, there is much meditation, both in classes - and in private. But the 'apparatus' needed is minimal. At the most a Shrine, cushions on the floor for the increasing number of those learning to sit cross-legged in either the half or full 'lotus posture', and chairs for the remainder; these are easy to assemble.

The tendency is all for simplification and the reduction of accessories of every kind. The West is concerned with ideas, Buddhist or any other, which prove attractive. History, tradition, 'authority' of any kind, are matters of retreating interest. Even Scriptures are regarded as many merely as the source of ideas. The emphasis now, is on actual experience, which may or may not be referred to as religious or spiritual. Distinctions between the teaching and practice of the various schools are of less and less interest to the 'schollower', who blandly chooses from the books he reads those principles which seem to him to be basic Buddhism, and help him to satisfy his spiritual needs. There are in the field of scholarship, as in practice, specialists. There will always, I believe, be the pure - his friends might call him the rabid - Theravadin, equating with the Puritan streak in the English character, and there will always be the man of Zen, developing the intuitive, irrational, merrily mystical, even happily nonsensical factor in our mind. The vast majority of Buddhists, however, are quite unconcerned with the subject of this essay. They read and listen, study and meditate, argue and apply Buddhism as it appeals to them. And their number is increasing rapidly. But what will happen to "Buddhism' in the process, and what a 'Buddhist' will be in the West in twenty or fifty years I would not like to say. It is enough for some of us that we have striven to 'proclaim the Dhamma' to those 'whose eyes are scarcely covered with dust (of illusion)'; it is for those who have ears to hear to apply it as they will.