Questions and answers with Bhante Urgyen Sangharakshita,
at the « Centre Bouddhiste de l’Ile de France », Paris,
on Saturday 23rd June 2007.

During the month of June 2007, Bhante Urgyen Sangharakshita came to Paris to visit the sangha of le Centre Bouddhiste de l’Ile de France.  As well as his meetings individually and in small groups, he participated in a question and answer session. The questions were prepared in advance by members of the sangha and read by Vassika. Bhante’s replies were translated from English into French by Barbara and Christian, both mitras who have asked for ordination.

You can also listen to the questions and answers.

Vassika :
« I’m having difficulties believing this is real, that it’s actually happening.  It’s a great joy and I’m feeling very moved actually that I see Bhante Sangharakshita here with us today amongst us in Paris.  So I won’t say very much because you’re here to hear him but not me, you can hear me every day every week. So firstly on a personal level it’s very important to me because I wouldn’t have lived, experienced, the things that I have lived and experienced if it hadn’t been for the Dharma. And in fact the Dharma’s given meaning and sense to my life. It begins with having enormous gratitude towards Bhante because it’s through him that I discovered the Dharma. Yeah what I particularly wanted to say is that it’s really since I’ve started teaching myself that I realise much more deeply the depth and the greatness of the gift you’ve given me and us. So it’s particularly through, well, people who come to the centre, who ask me questions, particularly if they’ve discovered the Dharma through a particular Tibetan or Zen or other teaching. It’s at that point that I realise the breadth of the vision that you’ve given us, and allows me to respond to meet them to find the Dharma in between what’s common to us and meet them and also to sometimes give them a slightly bigger vision of what the Dharma can be.  I’m very, very grateful that you’ve come and you’ve agreed to answer some of our questions and so I’ll sit down. So I’ll read the questions in English first to give you a little time to absorb while I read them in French and then you can respond ».

Question 1 :
« On your return to the UK after 20 years spent as a monk in the East, how did you experience your return to the West? And what vision did you have of our society in the light of your experience as a Buddhist? »

Bhante :
« I left England in 1944 and I returned in 1964, so I was away for 20 years. Most of that time I was in India, with some time in Sri Lanka and some time in Singapore. When I came back 20, in some ways I got a bit of a shock. The first thing that I noticed, especially when I started meeting people and particularly members of my own family, I noticed that everybody seemed more prosperous, well to do, one might even say wealthy. In India there was and is still, you know, so much poverty. But there were other things I started noticing; I noticed that often people didn’t look very happy. Sometimes I used to travel on the London underground, the metro, and I just looked at the other people in the same carriage, and very often they looked very tired and not very happy. After I started the FWBO and got to know people rather better I also noticed that quite a few people had psychological problems, whereas in India I don’t think I had encountered people with psychological problems, except one or two visiting westerners. In particular something else I noticed, as I got to know people better, was that quite often young people who were coming to the FWBO, were not on good terms, not on friendly terms with their own parents. This seemed quite strange because in India family ties are usually very close. Yes, so these are just a few of my impressions ».

Question 2 :
« I would have thought that suffering, emotional or physical, would have produced many and great Buddhas, or spiritual teachers, or people on that path. I would have thought that suffering would be a great motor for people to change, but it seems to me that not too many people are advancing on the path of wisdom, of knowing themselves, trying to see things as they are and also detaching themselves from their bonds. Why is this? Why is it that among all the people that suffer only a few succeed in seeing those bonds and the patterns they follow in automatic mode? »

Bhante :
« Suffering by itself doesn’t teach anybody anything. There has also to be the development of Insight. One of the things I found when I came back to England was that there were some misunderstandings connected with teaching meditation.

You’ve all heard about the Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths, the truth of suffering etc., but some people were teaching that if you sat in meditation a long time, and if you experienced all sorts of physical pains in your joints, and also all sorts of mental suffering, then that was the experience of the truth of suffering. But that is not the case. Suffering is one thing and the experience of the truth of suffering is quite another. If you practice seriously you can experience the truth of suffering even when you are happy, because even happiness is suffering, because happiness doesn’t last and if it doesn’t last we suffer. So in this way there is a very big difference between just suffering and understanding why you suffer.
There is a line of poetry by the English poet Matthew Arnold which goes like this :

« We want all pleasant ends but we’ll use no harsh means ».

I like these quotations from English poetry. Yes, so we’d like to do things the easy way. To come back to this question of suffering, I mean everybody suffers, but usually they go on suffering because they don’t develop any Insight into the reason why they suffer. The principal reason why people suffer is because of their attachment. If we want to get rid of our attachment we have to develop Insight, we have to develop wisdom, and that isn’t an easy thing to do. We need to come into contact with the Buddha’s teaching and practice it.

In the East you can find many people who call themselves Buddhists but they also are suffering, because their Buddhism is very often just in name only, they’re not actually practising, not trying to get rid of their attachment, not trying to develop Insight.

To come back to what I said at the very beginning, suffering by itself doesn’t teach us anything. Sometimes it makes people just miserable and selfish. If we really want to transcend suffering we have to practice the Dharma. Even when we practice the Dharma we may not be free from physical suffering, because we have a physical body and from time to time it goes wrong, or it grows old.

Even the Buddha after his enlightenment experienced some physical suffering and there is a passage in the Pali scriptures where the Buddha says :

« Sariputta, my back is aching; I think I will lie down. Will you please teach the bhikkhus? »¹

From this we can understand that the Buddha was a human being, but, he was an Enlightened human being : there was no mental suffering. His mental state was one of complete freedom from suffering, complete happiness, and of course wisdom and compassion. The Dharma is the only way, the only real way, to transcend suffering ».

¹ 1.5, Sangiti Sutta 33, Digha Nikaya III.

Question 3 :
« The world is an illusion to which I give form and which gives me form, and at the same time I sense a connection that unites all the forms in the world to life, and I sense that all form at some time or other is important in order to feel and to live this connection. So for example does a musical note exist? But maybe it doesn’t but the sound penetrates me. And do I exist? Maybe not but the love that fills me exists.

At the age of 50 I can look back on the path I have travelled so far. I’ve seen representations fall and illusions dissolve and I know there will be others. But I also see that there remains something deep, constructive, so what is it that constructs? When the representation falls it is as though it only existed in order to give form and to lead me towards something essential that does not fall but which gets stronger day by day. For me to refuse all form and all representation would be just as illusory as to attach myself to it. Emptiness is not empty; it is full of love and meaning. All form is the reflection of this. The first question I have is :

« Is this in line with Buddhist thinking? If not, what’s the difference? »

And then there are questions around the issue of :

« If I don’t exist, then what is it that’s building itself within me? What is it that can escape from the rounds of existence and attain enlightenment? And what is the being that we speak of when we talk of Bodhisattvas for example? »

Bhante :
« As I was listening to the question, I could not help thinking of a Buddhist scripture called the « Diamond Sûtra », and there is a passage in it which, as it were, strikes the key note of the whole Sûtra. And in this Sûtra the Bodhisattva is said to reflect :

« right I will lead all beings to nirvana, at the same time there are no beings being led to nirvana, and this is why the Bodhisattva is able to lead all beings to nirvana ».

This is a paradox, so, I think the question, which is a quite important one, can be answered only in terms of such paradox. The paradox is something we have to meditate on. When I say meditate on, I don’t mean thinking about it, trying to work out mentally what it means. We have just to bear the paradox in mind and, as it were, just look at it. In other words, treat it like a koan in Zen. If we do this, then gradually some glimmering of meaning will arise ».

Question 4 :
« Could you give an example of pratitya-samutpada (conditioned co-production) that is not applied to rebirth? »

Bhante :
« Well one could give lots of examples, because life itself is pratitya-samutpada, you can’t get away from it. But I’ll give an example from my own life. You all know, as I mentioned in the beginning, in 1944 I went to India. Now how was it that I went to India? Well I went there because I was then in the army. Yes and well, what sort of unit was I? I was in the signals unit, that’s why I was sent to India. How was it that I was in the signals unit? Well I was in the signals unit because I knew the Morse code. How was it that I knew the Morse code? Well when I was very young I was in an organisation for boys called the Boys Brigade and in that organisation I learned the Morse code. How did I come to be in the Boys Brigade? My mother had a friend, and this friend had a son, and he was in the Boys Brigade. So my mother’s friend one day said to my mother :

« Well maybe your son also would like to be in the Boys Brigade ».

So you see the connections, one thing after another. Our life is made up of a series of pratitya-samutpada like this. Yes, that’s my example ».

Question 5 :
« Could you explain why consciousness appears first, and even separately, from the other 4 skandhas in the Wheel of Life? »

Bhante :
« Yes this relates in a way to the Abhidharma, which is quite a complicated system. In pratitya-samutpada, first of all comes avijja or ignorance, and then second there come the samskaras, and then of course we get vijnana, consciousness.

Now this consciousness, which is the third nidana, is not consciousness in general, it has a special name in fact; it’s called in Pali, in the Abhidharma, the patisambhi-vijnana, which means re-linking consciousness. According to the Abhidharma, it is this special consciousness which links the last moment of the previous life with the first moment of this life in the womb of the mother. This is the re-linking consciousness, but when vijnana appears later on in the pratitya-samutpada chain, it is consciousness in the general sense. Though the nidanas are enumerated successively, they are not, however, mutually exclusive to one another.

So as I said the Abhidharma is quite a complex system, it’s in a way a special study by itself. I studied it with my teacher Jagdish Kashyap who wrote a textbook on the Abhidharma.

Just to give you an example of the sort of detail; every succeeding nidana is conditioned by the one preceding, but what do we mean by « conditioned »? According to the Abhidharma there are 24 kinds of condition, and the kinds of condition which condition each succeeding nidana are not always the same. So one of the things the Abhidharma does is to work out which particular conditions are active in relationship between one nidana and the other ».

Question 6 :
« On hindsight, would you say today that the practice of Buddhism in the West is a better, more effective way to happiness and peace of mind, than say, living a simple lay life or living as a Christian, etc? This based on people that you have seen around you, Sangha or not, Buddhist or not. And how would you consider the benefits of the respective practices not only for this life but towards a rebirth, fortunate or not? »

Bhante :
« Yes, I’m going to start by striking a personal note. People have got various objectives in life, and many of them are trying very actively for happiness. Speaking personally, I have never gone in pursuit of happiness. From my point of view, happiness is a by-product. When you are engaged in something in which you deeply believe, and which you feel to be completely worthwhile, you experience happiness. Even if you experience difficulties, yet at the same time you are happy. If you tried to aim directly at happiness, you would usually be disappointed. There are millions, even billions, of people in this world, I know very few of those people, so I find it difficult to generalise about happiness or unhappiness. But one thing I am certain of, if they are in pursuit of something in which they genuinely believe, and to which they are wholly devoted, whether it is in religion or art or something of that kind, they will be happy. But if they make a conscious effort to be happy, or to get happiness, in the long run they are unlikely to be successful ».

Question 7:
« When you decided to create an Order that would be neither a lay nor a monastic Order, was it only a creative answer to the specific conditions you were meeting in the West at the time, or would you rather say that it generally corresponds to a natural evolution of the practice of Buddhism? »

Bhante :
“When I started, or before I started the FWBO, I was asking myself a question. I asked myself :

« What is it that all Buddhists have in common, whether they’re Theravadins, or Zen, or Tibetan Buddhists, or whatever? »

The answer that I came up with was, what they all had in common was the fact that they all went to refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. I therefore decided to start a movement which emphasised the importance and centrality of the act of Going for Refuge. The Going for Refuge came first and everything else came second or third. What was important was not whether you were a monk or whether you were a layman, what was important was that you went for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So this is how the FWBO, and afterwards the WBO arose.

I distinguish various levels of Going for Refuge. To begin with, on the lowest level, is the Going for Refuge of those who are born in Buddhist countries and who consider themselves Buddhists, they may repeat the refuges but they don’t practice seriously. I sometimes call this « Cultural Going for Refuge » or the « Ethnic Going for Refuge ». And then there comes what I call « Provisional Going for Refuge ». That is when you are, as it were, just trying it out, sometimes you go for refuge, sometimes you don’t. You’re not too serious but you’re making some kind of effort. And then comes what I call « Effective Going for Refuge ». Effective Going for Refuge is when you are wholeheartedly going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and you’re trying to bring all the activities of your life into harmony with that. Sometimes you go forward, sometimes you fall back a little, but on the whole you’re making that effort. Fourthly and lastly there is what I call the « Real Going for Refuge », and that happens when you enter the stream, as Buddhism calls it. That means that your Going for Refuge is so strong, so definite, that you can’t possibly fall back.  This is how we see, you know, Going for Refuge, in the FWBO and the WBO. And this is the criterion by which we judge everything ».

Question 8 :
« One of the specific aspects of the WBO, the Western Buddhist Order, is that is neither a lay nor a monastic order. It makes this tension between mundane life and spiritual life even more present and alive in our practice. You said that the optimum conditions for spiritual development are living in communities and working in right livelihood businesses. Would you have any specific advice for the French Sangha on how to work creatively with this tension, given the fact that neither communities nor businesses exist in France yet, and given the fact they seem particularly difficult to establish here? »

Bhante :
« You just have to do the best you can. However, you have one very big advantage, that is that you’ve got this Centre in the heart of Paris. You’ve got a place to which you can come, where you can practice the Dharma, where you can meditate, where you can discuss the Dharma with others and where you can make spiritual friends. So don’t worry too much about not having any communities, or not having any Team-Based Right Livelihood businesses. If, individually and collectively, you carry on practising the Dharma, wholeheartedly, with sincerity, sooner or later these other facilities will arise.

Maybe next time I come, if I come again, after a few years, maybe I will see communities and Team-Based Right Livelihood businesses. Things which are really valuable usually take a long time to develop. You’ve made a very good start here, so if you carry on in the same way, all sorts of further developments will definitely take place ».

Question 9 :
« We here in Paris have focused more on teaching Buddhism as a personal practice rather than as building a New Society. Do you think it’s important for us to redress this imbalance, and if so what will be the benefits? »

Bhante :
« To an extent you already have the beginnings of a New Society because you’re here together, you’re meeting together on the basis of certain ideals, and you’re relating to one another also on the basis of those ideals. Once again it is a question of development, I can’t say much more than that. If one carries on in the way that one has begun, well eventually,  all these other developments will come about.

In England, where the FWBO started, it was quite a few years before we had any Team-Based Right Livelihood business’. Usually we find that there is a definite sequence wherever the FWBO has been established. First of all there comes a Centre, and then there come communities when people who have been meeting together, at the Centre, decide that they would like to live and practice together. Then the third stage comes when some people come to the conclusion that they don’t just want to attend the Centre, that they don’t just want to live together with other Buddhists, they also want to work together with other Buddhists. To start a Centre is relatively easy, I say relatively easy. To start residential communities is more difficult, it’s a bit more radical. But most difficult of all is the Team-Based Right Livelihood business, because here you really do have to engage with the world and become part of the economic activity of society. You are then subject to all sorts of outside influences. You’ve got a Centre, so next step will be a community, then after that, yes, maybe, Team-Based Right Livelihood.

Or maybe you’ll think of some other form of practice and development which is even more radical, who knows. Don’t forget you had the French Revolution 200 years ago, so maybe there are even more revolutions to come? »

Question 10 :
« There are Centres of the FWBO in many countries, but there are many more countries that don’t yet have Centres. Are there any places in the world you would particularly like to us to start centres, and if so why? Do you see any places in the world that are particularly ripe for the Dharma? »

Bhante :
« Ideally, I would like to see the Dharma, the FWBO, established in every country in the world. I can’t say that I have any countries particularly in mind which I think may be ripe for the Dharma. All countries are ripe, and all countries are unripe. One is really referring to individuals, not to whole societies, after all it is the individual to begin with who has to practice the Dharma. I’m full of hope nonetheless, and I encourage Order members and others to start up FWBO activities wherever there is an opportunity.

Sometimes I’m surprised at the way our movement has spread. At present one of my books is being translated into Tibetan, yes who would have thought of that a few years ago? So yes I would encourage the starting of Dharma activities, or FWBO activities, in all the 190-odd countries in the world. It’s very difficult to say where it is that people need the Dharma most, because everywhere there is suffering, everywhere there is conflict, even when there is not open warfare. It is very difficult to say whether the prosperous West is a better or more suitable place for propagating the Dharma than the impoverished East.

In the course of the last 100 years we may say Buddhism has suffered many setbacks. In China there was the Cultural Revolution, during which thousands of Buddhist monasteries and temples were destroyed, and similarly in Tibet. The Chinese Red Army invaded Tibet and destroyed so much of Buddhism. There has also been warfare and the destruction of temples in Cambodia and Laos. In other eastern countries, western capitalism and industry have resulted in a westernisation and secularisation. This is true of Japan and of South Korea. If we look at the countries of the East where Buddhism has flourished, we see a rather sad picture. In the course of the last 100 years Buddhism has lost a good deal of ground.

There are, however, at least two bright spots. One is that in the course of the last 100 years Buddhism has spread very significantly to the West. It has spread to Europe and it has spread to North and South America. In most western countries you will find many different Buddhist groups. A hundred years ago there was practically nothing of Buddhism in the West. So there has been this very big change.

The other bright spot is India. Buddhism died out in India about 700 years ago, and for hundreds of years there was hardly anything of Buddhism there. Even though it was in India that Buddhism began. But in the course of the last 50 years there has been a great revival of Buddhism. As some of you know that revival, that renaissance, is associated with the name of Dr Ambedkar. Now in India there are many millions of people who call themselves Buddhists. The FWBO, or TBMSG as it is called in India, is active among them, so all is not lost.

Buddhism has suffered a lot in the course of the last 100 years, but, there have also been these two great positive developments. Probably we could say that in most countries these days there is some Buddhist presence, however small. Even in China it does seem that the government is becoming more tolerant of Buddhism. So I would definitely like to see the FWBO represented everywhere in the world ».

Question 11 :
« Turning to your own practice, that most important moment when you realised you were a Buddhist. I just wanted you to say a little about your current relationship to the Buddha, to the Sangha, to the Transcendental ».

Bhante :
« Well I can only say that all those years ago I read certain Buddhist texts and I realised I was a Buddhist. I went for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Oh after, how many years is it, more than 60 years now, I still go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. In a way there’s been no difference in my practice, I just try to go for refuge more deeply than ever before. This is what all Buddhists do, or should be doing ».

Question 12 :
« India today has many languages and dialects. The Buddha wandered widely in Northern India while he was teaching. At the end of his life, how many languages do you think he knew? »

Bhante :
« The question of the language spoken by the Buddha has been the subject of a lot of discussion by scholars. It is usually said that he spoke Magadhi. Magadhi was the language of Magad, corresponding roughly to the modern Bihar state and parts of the Uppi (Uttar Pradesh.)  Sometimes he wandered into what was then the kingdom of Kosala, it is believed that when he was in that area, he spoke Kosalese. The two languages were not so very different, they were more like different dialects of the same language, and very distantly related to Sanskrit. The Pali of the Theravada scriptures, is derived from one of those dialects. The important point here is that the Buddha spoke the language of the people. He didn’t speak Sanskrit; he probably understood it. He not only spoke the language of the people, he said on one occasion that everybody is to study the Dharma in their own language. That’s a very important principle, one’s mother tongue is very important. If people understand other languages, and can understand the Buddha’s teaching in a language which is not their own, when they hear the Dharma in their own language they get something different, something extra. Wherever the Buddhist scriptures have gone, wherever Buddhism has gone, the scriptures have been translated into the local language. That’s why we have translations of Buddhist scriptures in Chinese, in Tibetan, in Mongolian, and in all sorts of other languages.

And now that Buddhism is coming west, or has come west, it’s only natural that the Buddhist scriptures should be translated into the European languages. So that’s why in the FWBO also when we, even though we all chant the Refuges and Precepts in Pali, when it comes to studying the Dharma, we study obviously in our own language, or we have the Puja in our own language. So we have the Refuges and Precepts in Pali because that represents a unifying factor. Whether we are in England, or France, or India, or America, we have the Refuges and Precepts in Pali, but everything else in the local language. So the Pali gives us our link also with India and with the historical Buddha, as well as being a source of unity, you know, within the FWBO. So I’m very pleased to know that there’ve been some new translations of some writings of mine into French and I hope that the process will continue. If we hear the Dharma in our own language it’s much more likely to go to the heart.

Question 13 :
« Having met members of our Sangha, and having heard a bit about our situation, do you have any particular advice for us, as practitioners of the Dharma here in Paris? For example, what should be our priorities, what should we be working on, individually and collectively in order to ensure our own progress and the growth of the Sangha? »

Bhante :
« I don’t think I know the local situation well enough to really give much in the way of advice. If I have to give advice I will simply say, well carry on with the practice of the Dharma, and everything will develop from there. And yourselves will see, especially if you discuss things amongst yourselves, you yourselves will see what needs to be given priority. I don’t feel that I can say that. So sometimes I say to people in England, well just more and more of everything. Yes, more and more meditation, more and more Dharma study, more and more spiritual friendship. If one practices in that way then the future will look after itself ».

Vassika :
« Just to finish Bhante, just to thank you very much again for coming ».

© Centre Bouddhiste de l’Ile de France 2008.

[in French] [Introduction] [Buddha] [Buddhism] [Meditation] [Sangharakshita] [FWBO] [the Centre]

25 rue Condorcet 75009  Paris - 01 44 53 07 31 -

Dernière mise à jour:
20 avril, 2008.