Rituals in Contemporary Buddhism

How do Buddhists live? Buddhist lifestyle!

How to live like a Buddhist? Buddhists live all over the world. They live in all kinds of ways, so there is no simple all encompassing answer to the question how Buddhists live. Still, there are a few things to take into account:

Real Buddhists have taken refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha
Many Buddhists meditate (though traditionally this was only done by a few monks)
Buddhists will often vow to take on the Five Vows – pancha sila – either on religious holidays or throughout their life.
Many Buddhists are vegetarians
Buddhists often have rituals dedicated to the Buddha: puja rituals.

I’ll explain each of these.

1) Taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha

A bit like baptism in Christianity, Buddhists have usually taken refuge in the Buddha (the teacher), Dharma (the teaching) and Sangha (the Buddhist community). This ‘triple gem‘ ritual is common to all types of Buddhism and therefore probably originated in early Buddhism. It’s basically a way of saying you believe that the Buddha was enlightened and will try to live up to his teachings (Dharma)and support those who try too (Sangha).

More about taking refuge

Refuge in the three jewels is the most important ritual in Buddhism

2) Meditation

Most people who call themselves Buddhists in the West, meditate. This is a modern development, because meditation used to be something done by the rare monk who had the time and inclination. Not even the majority of Buddhist monks meditated.

3) Pancha Sila – the Five Precepts

The five precepts are the basis of Buddhist morality. To take Pancha Sila, that is, to vow to live according to the following rules of conduct, is a set of vows a lay-person may take on, to try and live by, to the best of their understanding. So here goes: Pancha ( = five ) Sila ( = discipline ), the Five Precepts:

Do not take life
Do not take what is not given
Do not distort facts
Refrain from misuse of the senses
Refrain from self-intoxication through alcohol or drugs

The first of these is the reason many Buddhists refrain from eating meat altogether, or at least on religious holidays.

Refrain from misuse of the senses is usually interpreted as being about sex. For most Buddhists it means being faithful to your spouse, or partner. For nuns and monks it’s more strict: they’re expected not to have sexual relations at all. Some people interpret this to mean that homosexual relations should be avoided. However, I don’t think that can be traced back to the Buddha.

4) Buddhism and Vegetarianism

Most Buddhists in the West are vegetarians, but many Buddhists in Buddhist countries are not.

In case of Tibetan Buddhism there is a good reason for this: animal food was simply the easiest to produce and keep in the harsh Himalayan climate.

In general though it depends no how strictly one takes the vow to not harm any sentient beings.

5) Puja: Worshipping the Buddha?

Puja is a Hindu ritual in which the image of a God is cleaned and worshipped with candy, milk, flowers etc. There is often singing and chanting involved.

Puja in a Buddhist context surrounds Buddha images and statues, though pictures of the Dalai Lama or another spiritual teacher can get the same treatment.

The aim is not the worship of the person or the statue itself, but the spirit of Truth and Love that moved in that person. Many people believe that such rituals can help stimulate an attitude of devotion and this devotion itself can help bring about spiritual transformation.

More on the philosophy, practice, religious views and beliefs of Buddhism

Questions by readers (on a earlier version of this post)

What do Buddhists do in their daily life?

Buddhists are people, so most of their lives are just like ours: work, school, eating, sleeping, etc.

Reader comments

This opened my appetite to learn more, especially because it proves once again how similar all religions are. “Do not take life” is the exact “Do not kill” of the Bible and it goes on with “Do not steal”, “Do not lie”, etc.

Embodied Buddhism – in an on-screen world

As I sit here, I have a body. That’s perhaps self evident, but when most of our communication happens on screens, it might be easy to forget. I’m on both sides of that equation: I make a living online, which means I meet my colleagues on the online water coolers of Facebook and forums. On the other hand, when sciatica kicks in as it did last week, my body can not be ignored. Don’t worry: it seems under control, but it does reinforce the limitations of on screen living. Unless I ‘share’ those troubles, no one can see them.

In my community of online publishers Kathy McGraw recently noticed that it is hard to keep track of online friends when they go off the radar. We make these connections online, but our line to them is thin as spider silk: when they go offline for whatever reason, we have no way of knowing what happened to them and if they’re ok. Take the online world at face value and we’re all just bits and online conversations. And mostly filtered to share only the positive. When the real world interferes – when our embodiment forces itself on us – our online friends have no way of knowing what happened.

As a culture we’re coming to grips with the effects of living through screens. As concerned father Steve Almond writes in the New York Times. Will his daughter remember that actual cardinal that appeared on their porch railing in a flash of impossible red?

The fact is: kids or adults, for many of us real-life-sensory experiences are no longer our primary access to the world. And I wonder what that does to our spiritual development and emotional health.

‘Just Sit’, as a Zen Buddhist instruction is probably a great way to get people to pay attention to themselves and develop some self-awareness and self knowledge. They will experience the body through the aches and pains of trying to sit in an unfamiliar position for an hour. But will it help people reconnect with the world through the senses?

One of my Tibetan Buddhism teachers Ondy Wilson often stresses how the Buddhist path is in moving from head to heart. That is, I think, moving from cerebral to fully felt and integrated emotionally. This is relevant for us Westerners because our education stresses the cerebral a lot.

Sitting still and studying Buddhism – however valuable those practices are – will not help much towards activating the heart chakra. Meditations like the ‘Nectar Rain’ meditation (*) do work very well, however I think there is a reason many of the so called ‘preliminary practices’ are physical. Continue reading Embodied Buddhism – in an on-screen world

Buddhist practices and religious beliefs

Beliefs and practices

In the West religion is often defined by what one BELIEVES, but many other religions are more easily defined by either community or what one DOES, aka practices and rituals.

Buddhism is perhaps most easily defined as a belief in a a path towards enlightenment, with the main teacher of this path being Gautama Buddha, aka Siddhartha.
Continue reading Buddhist practices and religious beliefs

Buddhist shoes and other Buddhism do’s and don’ts

Buddhism is best known in the West for being a philosophy, perhaps a philosophy of life. However, it’s also – and perhaps primarily – a religion. And like all religions Buddhism has it’s sensitivities. There are certain things you just don’t do, and certain things that are taken for granted. This is true in any culture and Buddhist cultures are no exception.

A few things I learned in adapting myself to Tibetan Buddhism:

Don’t put your dharma books on the floor: it’s disrespectful
Do put your dharma books as high as you can manage when you’re not reading them.
Do put the image of your teacher higher than the image of the Buddha: the teacher is the one who gives you the Dharma.
Don’t put images of the Buddha in the bathroom: respect the image of the Buddha the way you would the live Buddha.
In fact, don’t put images of the Buddha in any place where you’d hesitate to put a picture of Jesus. Like on your shoes, or underwear. However stylish they may be, the above shoes are very disrespectful to Buddha and hence to Buddhists. You’re putting yourself above Buddha, literally. Not a good thing.
Walk clockwise around the mani wheel, and turn any mani wheel clockwise as well.
Don’t point your feet at the teacher or a Buddha image.
Take your shoes off in the temple (gompa)
Wear cloths to temples that don’t show too much of the body. Like you would at the Vatican, or visiting your grandmother.

Note that all of these things are about respect. That means that in practice it’s more important to act on such things in company then when alone.

Taking refuge: vows, commitments, belief and faith

Since I took refuge, I find myself explaining what that means to me to Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. Because, after all, I did not suddenly become less of a skeptic. There are aspects of the Buddhism I’m being taught that I don’t relate to much at all. The main example is, always, the enormous amounts of rituals in Tibetan Buddhism.

A practicing Buddhist friend of mine said yesterday that he hadn’t taken refuge. His reason? How could he take refuge in a Sangha consisting of some obvious fools? I told him: it’s not about promising to believe everything every monk comes up with. It’s about respect for those who practice Buddhism as a path. It’s about realizing that you don’t know which Buddhist fool is realized and which isn’t, so that respect is there as a precaution against disrespect towards an enlightened being.

Respect is a bit difficult for us Westerners, especially for Dutch people like myself. I was raised, as was my whole generation, on children’s books glorifying disrespect. I think the most famous example world wide is Pippi Longstocking(*). But let me tell you: compared to other characters in Dutch children’s books – Pippi is a veritable gold mine of good manners. Come to think of it, since my grandmother collected children’s books, I read stories from all over the world. Still, nothing beats the Dutch Annie M.G. Schmidt I think: not a bit of respect for adults in there to be found.

I’m in the mood for stories I guess. One story our Geshela (Sonam Gyaltsen) has already told several times in my hearing is about the famous Indian scholar-monk Atisha. He had studied and mastered all the Buddhist teachings available to him in India. Pondering how to gain enlightenment he walked around a stupa and had a vision of the characters in the decorations around the stupa talking to each other: ‘how can one gain enlightenment quickly? You need Bodhicitta!’. So he went to Sumatra, a perilous sea journey at the time, to study with the monk famous for that realization: Dharmarakshita. Atisha studied with Dharmarakshita for 12 years.

The point? Well, Atisha had already realized the emptiness as taught by Nagarjuna and Dharmarakshita was a Chittamatrin of the Mind Only School. So the two differed in their opinion on one of the most basic philosophical points in Buddhism. Still, Atisha was a devoted student of Dharmarakshita.

This is a very relevant story for us Westerners, because we come to Buddhism with a mind full of Western knowledge. Do we have to leave that behind to take refuge? Absolutely not. Refuge is saying: “The Buddha became enlightened by a path I trust. I trust no other spiritual path as much, so I take refuge in the Buddha, his teachings and the spiritual community he founded. I want to travel along that path as best I am able in this life”.

There are implications to the Refuge vows though and I do think some belief is necessary before taking refuge:

You have to believe in karma and rebirth to be a Buddhist
You have to believe that Buddha really existed
You have to believe the dharma he taught can lead to enlightenment. However you can choose whichever Buddhist tradition you want to get there, from devotional Nichiren to meditational Zen, traditional Theravada or contemplative Gelugpa. In practice your beliefs and practices will probably be a mix.
You have to respect the sangha of ordained monks and nuns, knowing that while individually they’re simply people just like you, collectively they are necessary to preserve the teachings. Individually monks and nuns have to be respected for taking that step of renunciation from the world: that commitment in itself is worthy of respect, even in the case of monastics who can’t manage to live up to the ideals they’re trying to embody.

What becoming a Buddhist does NOT imply:

Believing that the earth is flat, that there is a mount Meru at the center with 4 continents around it, us living in the Southern continent. The Dalai Lama has made it very clear that whatever there is in Buddhist mythology that flatly contradicts the outcome (not the speculations) of Western science should be discarded. This is an obvious example.
Believing everything in the Buddhist sutras literally: Buddhist scholars past and present have realized that the dharma Buddha taught was not always clear, nor was it always internally consistent. The conclusion was: Buddha taught what was necessary for a particular audience. Since these texts were written down a few centuries after the Buddha passed away, it’s very likely that not all of the sutras contain the words as Gautama Buddha spoke them. Notwithstanding the quality of memory of the brahmin-born monks in his retinue. Of course there is even less certainty about the Mahayana Sutras.

Personally I believe there is real wisdom in the Buddhist teachings as they come down to us after more than 2000 years. It’s obvious that the cultures of Tibet, China, Japan and even Sri Lanka influences the Buddhism as it gets taught to us today. Similarly Western culture has been influencing Buddhist practice and doctrine for over a century. This is to be expected. In fact it’s to be cherished. However, each of us gets to decide which aspects of the Buddhist traditions we are taught will work in our lives and which won’t. We get to pick and choose as long as we don’t lose sight of the essentials.

Devotion is more central than most people in the West are comfortable with. I mention devotion without mentioning what one is devoted TO. The Buddha, as a perfected being full of loving kindness to humanity, is obviously the most ideal object of devotion one can think of. You would not be reading this if you thought Christ was more ideal – if you do, do become a Christian. That devotion is the essence of taking refuge.

Universal Buddhist Refuge Prayer

In the Gelugpa Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism of the FPMT one is expected to take refuge in the three jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) twice daily (three times each), especially if one has already taken refuge formally.

For me, as a former theosophist, anything sectarian is a problem. On the other hand, I did pick Buddhism as my spiritual path of preference for a reason and I do trust my teachers when it comes to the path to enlightenment and buddha-hood. So I took formal refuge and became a Buddhist.

In order to not lose touch with the foundation of my path: universal wisdom and remind myself of my new commitment, I composed the following refuge prayer for my daily practice:

“Till my enlightenment I take refuge in Buddha, all Enlightened beings and my own Buddha Nature;
I take refuge in the Dharma, the universal truth and the path towards enlightenment;
I take refuge in the Sangha, the community of those who are ahead of me on the path.”

Refuge is a universally Buddhist ritual, practiced by Theravada, Zen and Tibetan Buddhists alike. In itself it does not yet determine which type of Buddhism one has chosen.

In the FPMT taking refuge, like other vows, is sometimes also taken as choosing a particular guru as one’s teacher. This part is definitely not mandatory: no teacher would expect you to wait with taking refuge till you are ready to choose a particular teacher as ‘your teacher’.