Japanese monks stage fashion show

Japanese Buddhists have always been like this (from the time of Nichiren or even earlier) trying to find new ways to present Buddhism. Personally I can't say it is good or bad - I will only say it depends on their genuine intensions - if Japanese monks can raise a family - it is not too surprising to know they are staging fashion show.

“YOUNG PEOPLE VALUE THIS MORE THAN ANYONE” - I don't know much about American youths , but Japanese youths usually don't do that. They are mostly very materialistic. Most young people in Asia tend to take Buddhist Teachings for granted. They have no idea how lucky they are to have such a wonderful culture. It's unlike in western countries where people randonmly choose to study Buddhism in dept and often become teachers and scholars, but in Asian coutries Buddhism have been for many centuries now. We often forget where we come from. So sometimes we have to be away to be able to see who, where and what we are. So nowadays the westerners are reminding us. So we are grateful to them. Hope this discussion will continue.

“Selling Buddhism” - good remark! In the history of Buddhist dispensation, we find that Buddhism was propagated mainly through business or commerce. Buddhism went wherever there were trade centres. Look at how China got Buddhism or how the entire southeast Asian Countries got Buddhism. It was mainly beccause of the traders at that time. They came across Buddhism and then took it with them to the other parts of the world. They even financed it. It then went to the kings, emperors, it was also politically always involved in one way or the other, because the kings were strong believers of Buddhism. In Tibet it went so far that when there was no king (becos the king was assasinated), 1st Dalai Lama was appointed as the leader of the Tibetans for temporary basis. But since then it continued upto today. If you look at Thailand, the situation is little different, because the kings were determining what monks should do and how they should behave. Monks were appointed as the heads of different provinces by the kings. The monks did not decide themselves. If we look at Sri Lanka, the monks have the whole authority. In constitution, it is written any president has to be Buddhist, taking care of Buddhism is the first priority. In Japan at one period, monks were leading the country, they even went to war, they were in the army. So what I am trying to convey is the materialistic means were never divorced from Buddhism. Therefore, it does not make me that surprising to see Japanese monks  are staging fashion show with Buddhist clothings, chanting, with Dharma rap beats. Because in history such means were adopted at a time of need . Here is another surprising news for some people: the 6th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tsangyang Gyatso, was a playboy if we call it in modern terms. He would drink sing and even go to brothel. Find out more…

Present day choices, given our present day circumstances - yeah absolutely. Hope our discussion will benefit some readers. That's my query lolz.

While I very much appreciate your sharing of the Buddha's biography, I have to say there is one objection for your following paragraph:

“Gautama inspired and fascinated Hinduism and meditation widely which turned him to realise Enlightenment ( commune with God ) through rigorous austerity, renunciation, sacrifice of luxuries, self-mortification and meditation in the forests of North-Eastern India.”

My reasons are:

1. During the time of the Buddha there was no such religion as Hinduism. This is only one and half hundred years old. What was at his time was Sramanism. These are a group of people who left their household lives, dedicated themselves to various religious philosophical practices and were strongely against the Brahminic religion, who claimed the superiority over others.

2. Buddha never fascinated any of the austeries provided by the contemporary Sramanas. However I don't disagree he never practiced their teachings. He in fact mastered all thier teachings, but finally realized that those practices could not lead him to final liberation. He discarded them finally. That's why his 5 companions, seeing he was following a easy life of taking physical foods, left him.  Siddhartha realized that to gain englishtenment, the body and mind should be sound and healthy. So, it is not by practicing those austeries he was able to gain enlightenment, but by following his own heart of deep contemplation, he came to be what regarded as Buddha (awekened one).

3. He never belived in God (Brahma). So  your saying “commune with God” is very distorting and inappropriate. In fact, he strongely denied the existence of such metaphysical notion of God (brahma/atma). He always taught Anatma (nonself). According to him, there is no such thing as Soul and because people believe in Soul, they are not free from this round of Samsara. Only by developing oneself and purifying from the notion of Soul/Self, there is liberation/perfect happiness.

Hope this is helpful.

SABBE SATTA SUKHITA HONTU
Assaji

Dear Owais:
                           Pranaam too!

Aryan and Hinduism, which you seem to identify, are totally two different things and of different periods. The term Hindu came about only in the 7th Century AD by the Persians (Muslim Invaders) to refer to those people living in the river Sindu. Aryans were of course the earliest people backed to 6th Century BC (which I am sure everybody knows), and yes Buddha was also an aryan blood himself, but that does not necessarily solves the problem.

To say that Buddha borrowed His religion from the Vedas and the pantheistic Upanishads and Kapila Sutras would be like saying that Darwin borrowed his philosophy from the Christian Bible and the Aristolilean ethics, and that Herbert Spencecr got his philosophy from the treatises of mediaeval theologians. If what Buddha had declared was only a rehash of Brahmanical dishes, it would have never become the religion of the vigorous Asoka. Buddhism is both vigorous and puritanic and as such, as effeminate people cannot maintain it, and a people addicted to sensuality cannot adhere to its virile, purifying ethics.  
 
The doctrine of Anatman enunciated by the Buddha has been a bugbear to the spiritualist, pantheist and monotheist. Do I exist? Did I exist? Shall I exist? Is the Ego different from the body or are they both identical? Do they exist in a permanent form? or do they become extinct? Such kind of speculative questions the Buddha has relegated to the limbo of oblivion. He considered all such questions to be out of court. There is no agnosticism in Buddhism. The truth absolute the Buddha has proclaimed, and that is that absolute Wisdom culminating in the blessedness and peace of Nirvana could be realized in this life in perfect consciousness, without having recourse to the foolish speculation of the whence and whither and the What, am I? Neither a belief in a Creator no the acceptance of a fatalistic determinism, nor the rejection of a future life are considered as essentials for the realization of the perfect state. The metaphysics of religion are unnecessary adjuncts. They are considered fetters, and the essencials of animistic beliefs have to be utterly abandoned. Primitive savages worshipped the wind god, the rain god, the thunder god, the sun god, the water god, and when they became enlightened and knew how to construct houses and protect themselves from ruin and wind and sun, the gods became useless. When Darwin propounded the theory of evolution, the theologians were frightened and they all shouted that Darwin had killed the Creator! The priciple now accepted by the thinking people that nothing is lost, and that cause is rational doctrine: but very few really take it seriously. The old faith is easy and no effort is made to be good and like the man given to alcoholic drink and opium, he clings to it, however pernicious they are for the moral well-being of man. Habit plays an important part in the acceptance and rejection of rational and irrational beliefs. In India, re-marriage of virgin widows is considered a crime, and any effort made to prevent infant marriages is considered an interferece of religion. In European countries countries, beef eating is a necessity, while in India, it is a crime to kill the cow. Asceticism is a form of religious vow in certain religions, but is rejected by the Budda as utterly useless. The belief in an ego (soul/atma) is a fetter that binds man into a heresy of the error. The object of the great Teacher Buddha all beings happy and the principal idea that keeps human beings seperate is the heresy of a permanent ego - personality, cliging to certain sesations and perceptions, and in the desire to have them permanently, foolish efforts are made which end in strife, creating differences between father and son, between brother and brother, between sister and sister, between sister and brother, between mother and daughter. This pernicious doctrine is called in the religon of the Buddha, tanha manaditti; another name for which is ahamkara-mamamkara. As long as this insane idea works in the mind, so long is there no emancipation for him from the fetters of craving desire. The simple question that we have to ask ourselves is, is it advantageous to give pain to another? Monotheistic faiths declare that the Creator having created animals for food, it is our duty to the Creator to give him thanks and kill and eat the animals! This absolutely savage doctrine when carried to its logical conclusions langs us in the domain of cannibalism. The god of the cannibal has declared to him that the flesh of the white man may be eater, and the tiger by the instinct implanted in its animal brain by the Creator seeks its prey in a helpless cow! But man who is the owner of a gun and who believes in a Creator would find no comfort unless he was successful in destroying the tiger! Fatalists believe that whatever happens has been pre-ordained by the Creator and to accept everything with resignation is considered faithfulness to God. Nevertheless, fatalists do make the exertion to realize the consumption of thier cherished desires. The nihilists who reject both theories yet make the exertion to enjoy the materialistic pleasures possible to obtain in this life. Exertion is therefore very material, whatever the belief one may entertain and the one who does not make the endeavour fails to acchieve the desired goal. THis righteous endeavour is called sammappadhana. Exertion to achieve that which would give no happiness to others is called micchavayamo. Delay in exerting to do te right thing is conducive to evil and dependece on others is against the law of development. Each man is the maker of his own destiny and the evil that one does continues to bring unhappiness to the world till its effects are netralised by good deeds. The Buddha by His great illuminating insight discovered this most wonderful doctrine whereby man was given the power to make the effort to realize the goal of perfect freedom.  
 
Buddhism disappears when its followers turn away from the Path of enlightenment and follow other pagan gods anda code of immoral ethics. Man is more inclined to follow the sensual path than the path of ethical purity. Buddhism insists that its followes should abstain from the destruction of life, but the heathenish diabolisms preached by brutal savages proclaim the gospel of destruction. In these days of brute force backed up by Krupp guns, and Dum Dum bullets and shrapnels, the doctrine of compassion and the gospel of renunciation can make very little headway, even in lands where it has taken root. Buddhism prohibits alcoholic drinks and drugs and in some Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka where the religion has flourished for nearly 2,000 years, since the British advent, we see all old traditions being wiped off by the introduction of Western abominations. Daily papers in that Island published by the Christians contain advertisements by the column singing the glories of Johny Walker's Whisky, and so on; and in a country whee the religion of the rulers teaches that God's flesh and blood are believe to be taken to gain admission to a mythical heaven, where angels in goose wings sing eternal hallelujahs, a pure religion suited to the purified nature of the Aryans could not exist. Consequently, we see the noble Religion of the Buddha slowly disappearing form the Island where it had so long flourished. There is no way to prevent it and as long as the religion of the pagans influences the Sinhalese Buddhists, so long will Buddhism decline and not prosper. For what is immoral in Buddhism is considered moreal in pagan relgions.  
 
In India, Buddhism flourished under kings like Asoka and Siladity and Mahipala and others, and it began to decline when the people began to turn their attention to sensual enjoyments. A virile people determined to reach the highest realms of truth and righteousness, were the ancient Indian people, and for nearly 1,500 years, they kept Buddhism as a kind of national heirloom. But when the cohorts of Mahmud of Ghazni commenced their savage vandalism, and persisted in their savage career under successive iconoclasts, extending for several centuries, Buddhism ceased to exist. Buddhism is only fit for a people that cherish righteousness, not for sages who love to live in destruction and bacchanalian reveltry. The Bactrian Buddhists deviated from the teaching of the Buddha, and the BUddhists of the mediaeval period began to make compromises with the theorsophic scholasticism of the Brahmans. The purified ethics and the uncompromising psychology of the Anatman doctrine were neglected and a degenerating ritual was introduced which helped to hypnotise the people by its glamour, but in reality helped to accentuate the destruction of the vitalising Dharma. It was like the decrease of the reverberating sound of the drum whose rim when embellished with jewels and gems results in the resonating sound being lost. The Buddha had foretold that his religion would decline with the increase of ceremonialism introduced by a luxurious priesthood, in the Kassapa Samyutta, Samyutta Nikaya.

Anupampena
Assaji

…hey it's fine if you do not wish any more discussion on the subject. It can get really heated. But let me tell you its not too surprising to see monastics engaging in philosophical debates and discussions in the monastery. It is a part of thier study and training.

Have a nice and healthy life!