Bangladeshi Buddhism comes to the LBC

Saumik Barua (Bodhi Mission), Dharmachari Seven, Wisdom Quarterly visits Long Beach (2)

The Buddha in a tree (NoahOz/flickr.com)

 

Vultures Peak, Rajgir, India

The Buddha lived in Magadha, in a middle kingdom ruled by a benevolent king (Bimbisara) seated in a capital ringed by seven hills (Rajagriha). He preferred a lookout from a hill called Vultures Peak, so named because the shadows of the large stones there appear from a distance to be vultures. 

  

This kingdom, or janapada (warrior caste clan territory), once included what is now Bangladesh, the eastern limits of ancient India, according to the abbot of Long Beach's Bodhi Vihara, Ven. Karunananda, Ph.D.

  

Long Beach ("the LBC") is quite short compared to Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, the world's longest sandy beach, squeezed between Burma and India. But the seaside city at the southern end of the megalopolis that is Los Angeles has attracted a sizable number of Bengali Buddhist transplants. The ancient Buddhism practiced by them traces its history to the Buddha in Magadha.

 

The "teaching (vada) of the elders (thera)" refers to the enlightened elder disciples (theras) of the Buddha, leading disciples such as the chief nuns Khema and Uppalavanna and chief monks Sariputra and Moggallana, as well as Maha Kassapa (who organized the Buddha's teachings into a "religion" at Saptaparni Cave in the first hill near the gate of the capital) and Ananda, Maha Prajapati and Sundari Nanda, the Buddha's mother and sister.

What is the teaching the missionary wing of California Bodhi Mission works to promote? Bangladeshi Buddhists, who claim as a peoples to have originated in and around Bodhgaya (where Siddhartha became the Buddha), believe that the Awakened One taught only two things -- disappointment and the end of disappointment, suffering and nirvana.

What is disappointment? It is rebirth, old age, sickness, death; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair; to be united with the unloved, to be separated from the loved; to not get what we want or wish for; in general, identifying with the Five Groups of Existence (form, feeling, perceptions, formations, and consciousness) is disappointing.

What is nirvana? It is the "unconditioned element," the falling away of all formations, bliss unutterable -- a happiness without supports. It is blameless and visible here and now.
  
How?

The Buddha taught the path and the answer by encapsulating it in a tight and often misunderstood formulation called the Four Noble Truths. "Everyone thinks they know what those are, but if they really knew," the abbot explains, "they would be enlightened."
  
Why? "It is because fully penetrating the full meaning of these truths is enlightenment. Enlightenment is not omniscience; it is fully knowing these four things -- what is the problem, what is its cause, what is the solution, what is path/not-path leading to the solution -- at the level of liberating insight-wisdom."

Well said, sir, well said! (Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu!) How can people help your mission?
  
"They can donate to our cause or participate in an upcoming ceremony, the Honey Offering Full Moon Observance (September 29, 2012), treasured by Bangladeshi Buddhists. Of course, the best way is to contact the temple and offer their supportive participation. We are here to benefit Americans, to serve the US Bangladeshi community, and to unite the Sangha as one brother-and-sisterhood of support. Everyone is welcome to visit Bodhi Vihara."