In a planned monthly series of profiles about socially engaged Buddhists,
The Jizo Chronicle featured [Wisdom Quarterly's Dharma teacher]
Bhikkhu Bodhi. Having first met the venerable American Theravada scholar-monk and prolific translator when he came to the
2007 Buddhist Peace Delegation in Washington, D.C., where he gave a stirring
speech the night before we marched.
He linked the teachings of the
historical Buddha with the imperative to work for peace in the world and to end the
imperial American war in Iraq.
In 2010 our paths crossed again in San Francisco, where I joined in a walk along the Bay (photo above) along with his
colleagues from the Buddhist charity Buddhist Global Relief (BGR) and other Dharma friends
including Alan Senauke and Katie Loncke.
The honor of spending time with an accomplished
scholar with a heartfelt commitment to alleviating suffering is a joy. It is hoped that readers will also enjoy getting to know Ven. Bodhi better through this interview. Make sure to check out the annual
Walk to Feed the Hungry happenings around the country organized by BGR to meet him in person. There are many ways to be involved.
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Jizo Chronicle: Where do you call home?
Bhikkhu Bodhi: Technically, a monk is a “homeless
person” so, in compliance with this tradition, I would have to say that
I have no home. But as a matter of practical convenience, for the past
four years I have been residing at Chuang Yen Monastery (
BAUS.org) in Carmel, New
York, a woodlands area in the beautiful and quiet Hudson River Valley.
At the monastery, I live in Tai Hsu Hall (named after the famous Chinese
Buddhist monastic reformer of the early 20th century), which is
separate from the other monastic residences and thus serves me virtually
as a hermitage on the premises of the monastery.
JC: What are you reading right now?
BB: I read simultaneously along several
tracks. For my Buddhist reading, I have been reading, in Chinese, the
Mahasam-Nipata Sutra, a collection of Mahayana sutras preserved in the
Chinese Tripitaka. I’ve also been looking at the Pali commentary to the
Sutta Nipata, though hardly reading it in a sustained way.
JC: Who inspires you – Buddhist teachers, activists, writers, artists…
BB: [The] greatest inspiration in my life as
a Buddhist monk has been the person who served as my mentor during my [30]
years in Sri Lanka, the German elder Ven. Nyanaponika Thera (1901-1994).
It was his clear comprehension of the intersection between the ancient
Buddhist teachings of the Pali canon and the compelling needs of our
time that gave me the perspective and sense of direction that has guided
my own development as a Buddhist monk and teacher.
Over the past ten years, since my return to the U.S. and my
affiliation with Chinese [Mahayana] Buddhists, I have been greatly inspired by
three modern Chinese Buddhist masters who are hardly among American
Buddhists (hardly surprising when their works are virtually
untranslated).
One is Ven. Tai Hsu, mentioned above; the second is his
student, Ven. Yin Shun (1906-2005), widely regarded as the foremost
Chinese scholar-monk of the past century; and the third is Ven. Jen Chun
(1919-2011), a senior student of Ven. Yin Shun and the founder of
Bodhi Monastery in New Jersey, where I lived for four years.
All three of
these teachers emphasized what Yin Shun called “Buddhism for the human
realm,” an approach that advocates a fusion of the “world-transcending”
aspect of the Dharma with its capacity for world transformation and the
ennoblement of human life in our concrete existential situation.
Incidentally, I recently read an essay in which
Thich Nhat Hanh is cited
as calling Yin Shun “the Buddhist teacher whom I most revere.” I cannot
testify to its accuracy, but [Ven.] Nhat Hanh’s “
Engaged Buddhism” seems to be
a free rendering of Yin Shun’s
renjian fojiao refracted through French existentialism.
Apart from Buddhist thinkers, the persons I have come in recent years
to admire most are those engaged in the struggle for a more just and
compassionate world. [Dr.] Martin Luther King’s speeches and writings have
impressed me with their powerful currents of deep spiritual faith and
social conscience; King has acquired accelerating a relevance,
especially as the militarism and social injustices that he decried long
ago have become so badly exacerbated over the past decade.
I also
greatly admire Bill McKibben for his courage in leading the campaign
against the ravages of climate change.
Perhaps it was through my practice of the meditations on
loving-kindness and compassion that I felt “a call of conscience,” a
sense that our Buddhist practice should enable us to share the
sufferings of those weighed down by grinding poverty…
JC: What social issue is close to your heart right now?
BB: There are two issues, intimately
interwoven, that are close to my heart right now. The one with which I
am most directly involved is global hunger and chronic malnutrition,
which afflicts close to a billion people around the world and claims 10
million lives a year, 60% of them children.
It was to tackle this
problem that, together with some of my friends and students, I
established
Buddhist Global Relief [in 2008]. In these three years
we have already launched over 20 projects that provide food relief
and educational aid to people in poor communities in countries ranging
from Vietnam and Cambodia to Mali, Niger, and Haiti, and also in the
U.S.
But food availability is closely connected with climate change.
If the Earth’s climate changes at its current rate, the consequences
will include a drastic reduction in the world’s resources of food and
water. The result will be mass starvation, political chaos, terrifying
violence, and regional wars. Hence my concern with alleviating global
hunger also spills over into a concern with preventing runaway climate
change.
JC: How does your Dharma practice inform your involvement on that issue?
BB: During my early years as a monk, I
hardly paid any attention to social issues. My focus was almost entirely
on my Dharma studies and personal spiritual development. In recent
years, however, I came to feel increasingly a sense of responsibility
for the fate of the world.
The conviction came to me that a
predominantly personal and private approach to spiritual development is
sadly inadequate as a response to the crushing misery that afflicts
billions of ordinary nameless people around the world.
Perhaps it was
through my practice of the meditations on loving-kindness and compassion
[metta and karuna bhavana] that I felt “a call of conscience,” a sense that our Buddhist practice
should enable us to share the sufferings of those weighed down by
grinding poverty, compelled by an unjust system to endure constant
hunger, fear, and the threat of disabling illnesses without adequate
medical services.
As this conviction gained momentum in my mind, and I
met people with similar sentiments, this led to the creation of Buddhist
Global Relief in mid-2008.
JC: If you could invite people to join you in taking one action on that issue, what would it be?
BB:
It is hard to limit my invitation to one issue. I should mention,
though, that Buddhist Global Relief will be holding its second annual
“Walk to Feed the Hungry”
on September 10th, in at least three places: New York City (Riverside
Park), Michigan (Kensington Park), and the Bay Area of California.
For details, please check our website:
buddhistglobalrelief.org.
I invite those who live in these areas to join us on this walk. (I will
be walking in Michigan); if this is not possible, please consult our
website and, through First Giving, consider sponsoring those who will be
walking. All donations go to support our [listed] projects.
JC: What else would you like people to know about you?
BB: I should mention that I also
translate Buddhist texts from Pali into English. A couple of months ago I
completed a translation of the Anguttara Nikaya [a collection of sutras called the "Numerical Discourses"], which has been
submitted to Wisdom Publications and will be published in 2012.
I
donated a substantial portion of the royalties from my earlier
publications to create, through Wisdom, a
Nikayas ["Sutra Basket Divisions"] Fund. The intention is
to donate sets of the English translations of the four
nikayas to
monasteries and libraries in the disadvantaged countries of Buddhist
Asia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere where the costs would be formidable.
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