[Buddha-l] Question for academic teachers of Buddhism

[Richard Hayes]

On Thu, 2008-06-26 at 09:22 -0400, Jackhat1 at aol.com wrote:

> I have  been at 
> gatherings where the ethnic and non-ethnic groups get together for food  and a 
> dhamma talk. Then, all (including the ethnic organizers of the gathering)  
> leave when the meditation session starts.

The first several academic courses I took in Buddhism were taught by
Nalini Devdas, a Tamil Christian who practiced Zen with Philip Kapleau
for many years. It was through her teaching that Buddhism really came to
life for me, and it was she who dragged me kicking and screaming into
the study of Sanskrit (I was more interested in Chinese at the time) and
then sent me off to learn Pali and Tibetan.

Nalini was once invited to the Sri Lankan vihara in Ottawa on Wesak to
give a talk and lead a meditation session. She gave a short talk and
then started the meditation. She saw the Sri Lankans were very restless,
so she stopped the meditation after five minutes. Afterwards, a smiling
woman came up to her and said "Thank you for the meditation. It was
beautiful. I hope you will come again next year. Only if you do, please
don't make the meditation so long."
 
> My experience with a local Thai temple has been very interesting. Most of  
> the ethnic monks do not meditate. 

The Thai temple in my neighborhood in Albuquerque has five monks, for
Thais and a Bangladeshi. They have chanting and meditation every night
open to the public. On nights I have gone, only a couple of lay people
have been there. At that same temple a local insight meditation group
meets once a week. On a typical evening about fifty people are there,
none of them Asians.

The temple attracts Buddhists and Hindus from Southeast Asia, China,
Korea and India---Albuquerque has a pretty small Asian population. Their
usual practice is to chant and do prostrations and pin $20 and $50 bills
to the money trees prominently placed on the altar next to the statues
of the Buddha, Avalokiteshvara, Guan Yin, Krishna, Brahma and a buxom
mermaid. The non-Asian meditators put $1 and sometimes $5 bills into a
Mexican basket, completely ignore all the statues, and never chant or
even do so much as recite the three refuges. Between the Asians and the
non-Asians you could just about put together a complete Buddhist
practice at this temple.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico