Historical Lessons for Buddhism: The Demise of Buddhism in India

Indian Buddhism was primarily oriented towards monastic life. Unlike Hinduism and Jainism, it hardly developed any lay institutions. In its early days, Buddhist householders could come to the monasteries twice a month on the day of the confession and purification ceremony for the monks and nuns. Although they were not permitted to participate in or witness this ceremony, and there were no religious services to attend, they would spend the day in devotional activities and could even take one-day vows. Monastic teachers would read and explain to them inspirational stories from the Buddha’s previous lives. In later times, laypersons were permitted to study at the monastic universities, such as Nalanda, but this was not very common. The main religious activity for householders was to offer food to the mendicant monks and nuns on their daily begging rounds and to support economically monastic life.

There were no specific Buddhist ceremonies for marriage or other rites of passage for its lay adherents. Buddhist families, like their Hindu neighbors, used Vedic rituals on these occasions. After the emergence of tantra from about the seventh or eighth centuries, non-monastic Buddhists had the option of following a mahasiddha-style path of yogic practice. But in most cases, this was not pursued concurrently with leading an ordinary family life.

When the Buddhist monasteries in the central part of northern India were destroyed, primarily in the thirteenth century, most Buddhist householders were left without any religious support. Although some of the monks and nuns who survived the onslaught disrobed and joined the lay community, many fled to the monasteries of either Nepal, eastern or southern India, or northern Myanmar. Since the focus of lay Buddhist practice had been the monasteries and not people’s own private lives, the majority of the Buddhist laity naturally turned to Hinduism, which had been providing for their family needs.

Hinduism and Jainism, on the other hand, had their own family ceremonies and offered religious structures for both monastic and lay life. Even when their temples were destroyed during this same period, the Hindus and Jains were able to maintain their religions at home.

Thus, it is important for modern Buddhism in the West to develop not only monastic structures, but also specifically Buddhist forms for family purposes and rites of passage. We need to translate Buddhism into a full family religion that can fulfill all the needs of its lay as well as its monastic community. If lay Buddhists must rely on secular institutions or those of another religion to care for its members, it will be difficult for it to take secure root. There need to be not only Buddhist birth, coming of age, marriage and funeral ceremonies, but also religious care centers and spiritual activities aimed for children and the elderly. Family-oriented Buddhist holidays in which everyone can participate are essential. Buddhism is not just for meditators, preferably monastics or singles without children, while those with a family are treated with slight scorn: they are told to sit apart from their spouses and leave the children elsewhere lest they disturb the others. Buddhism is for everybody.

If we provide for only the meditators or serious students, Buddhism will not have a broad enough basis to survive any major crisis or upheaval in the West. If it discourages family life, it will be difficult for Buddhism even to survive more than one generation within a specific family. Although Buddhism is not a proselytizing religion insisting that all family members must join, still it must not shortchange its followers by not providing for all members of society. Some developments in this direction are already being made by some Western Buddhist organizations.

Furthermore, it is important for modern Buddhists to be socially useful, otherwise there is also a danger of Buddhism being discarded in the West due to external pressures. At the time of the first Arab invasions of the Indian subcontinent in the eighth century, the warrior castes of Hindus resisted, but the Buddhists and Jains, being non-violent, did not fight back. Both agreed to pay the tax that would allow them to keep their non-Muslim religion.

The poor among them had no recourse but to convert. But many affluent Buddhists at that time also succumbed to pressure and accepted Islam, despite their ability to pay the tax. Their Jain counterparts, on the other hand, mostly held their own ground. One of the reasons for this difference was perhaps that the Jains were useful to their Muslim overlords. A large percentage of the wealthy merchants were Jain, and many of them gave economic advice to the Muslims. It was in the Arabs’ self-interest not to antagonize them as a separate religious group. The Buddhists, on the other hand, for the most part played no useful social role in the eyes of their Muslim overlords and thus were fair targets for pressure to convert.

Therefore, if modern-day Buddhists do not contribute constructively to their societies as an identifiable group with a specific service to offer, the societies they live in may not permit their separate existence when those societies come under the control of fanatic, intolerant movements such as fundamentalist religion or ultra-nationalism. They may view Buddhism as a superfluous luxury of a decadent, unproductive and unpatriotic fragment of society. We can see the tendency towards this already happening [in the 1990s] in some of the countries of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia.

Possible useful service appropriate for Buddhists and distasteful for most other groups to engage in would be caring for patients in hospices, old age homes, institutions for the mentally and physically disabled, hospitals and so on. One Buddhist center in a Ukrainian city near the site of the Chernobyl radiation disaster, for example, does not call itself Buddhist at all, but rather a spiritual center dedicated to solving environmental problems. It would be in the interest of any society to allow for the existence of such socially useful groups. Otherwise, Buddhists would be seen as useless parasites who just isolate themselves from society and meditate, and if they enter society, only do so to raise funds to perpetuate themselves. Why should they be allowed to exist, especially if resources are scarce?

Another major reason for Buddhism’s disappearance in India was its gradual absorption into Hinduism. The Kalachakra Tantra warned about situations in which one’s own customs do not appreciably differ from those of an invading or majority culture. If, in such cases, one’s cultural identity is in danger of being overwhelmed by the pressures of this other population, one’s children will easily adopt the alien culture, seeing no difference between its customs and those of their parents.

The Buddhists of thirteenth-century India suffered this fate in face of Muslim expansion and a Hindu majority. Buddha had long ago been accepted as one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu. Both Buddhism and Hinduism abounded with similar devotional practices. Thus, when the Buddhist monasteries were destroyed, one could continue chanting praises and making offerings to Buddha or any of the myriad bodhisattvas or tantric manifestations and be a perfectly good Hindu. Such devotional service was, after all, just another form of worship of Vishnu or Krishna.

The Jains, on the other hand, resisted such pressures to be assimilated. When one of the Jain founders was included as an incarnation of Vishnu, the Jains countered with their own version of the epics, in which Krishna appears as a faithful Jain. In the face of a similar Hindu assertion of Buddha as a Hindu, the Buddhists acquiesced.

It is important, therefore, to prevent Buddhism from becoming absorbed into the majority culture of the modern West and being considered just another form of Christianity or psychotherapy. This can happen with respect to the former if, for instance, Buddhism shortchanges Western needs and only stresses love and engaged social service. Without the balance of meditational practice and the instructions for developing concentration and the understanding of voidness, Buddhism might appear as merely another brand of teachings preaching to be “good” and to “love thy neighbor.” One could follow the Buddhist guidelines for treating others with love and generosity and be a perfectly good Christian practicing charity.

If, on the other hand, Buddhism over-adapts so that children are forced to attend uninspiring Buddhist Sunday schools and empty, meaningless “puja” ceremonies, these youngsters will reject Buddhism as just another lifeless denomination of Christianity. This is already happening at present among some second and third generation Asian Buddhists in Hawaii. It is necessary, therefore, to develop uniquely Buddhist approaches to responsible social activity, the spiritual education of children and religious functions that involve the entire family, and not just simply borrow Christian forms.

Also, if we borrow too much, we risk a further danger that can come with over-adapting, namely opening the door to borrowing shortcomings as well. We must find a middle path that will allow Western Buddhists to be loyal to the constructive aspects of their Christian cultural heritage and yet avoid the weaknesses that might also come as its legacy.

Western Buddhism could easily become absorbed into psychotherapy as well. Psychologists are certainly welcome to adopt Buddhist techniques for treating clients, such as focusing on the breath in order to calm down, but they must take care not to call their therapy “Buddhism.” Otherwise, if Buddhism were to become absorbed into psychotherapy in this way, people may lose sight that Buddhism is a full religion, offering a rich variety of practices and guidelines for living for persons of all levels of emotional stability, not just for those who are neurotic.

Buddhism and psychotherapy can mutually support and stimulate each other without the danger of one being absorbed into the other. There have been some very successful movements in modern therapy that have either been directly inspired from Buddhism or that were developed independently, yet resonate well with Buddhist themes. In Jungian dream analysis, for instance, clients must try to see their dreams from the point of view of each of the characters in them. Likewise, in Boszormenyi-Nagy’s contextual therapy, members of a dysfunctional family try to understand their problematic situation from each other’s point of view and within the context of inherited structures from their previous generations. With equal, multi-directional fairness to each family member, the therapist leads them all to appreciate the validity of each other’s experience. Such techniques reflect Buddha’s guidelines about relativity, non-independent existence and the equality of self and others. 

In sand play therapy, the Swiss psychologist Dora Kalff introduced the idea of the therapist creating a protective space by his or her accepting attitude. In such a safe, almost sacred space, the clients’ unconsciousness will automatically express itself in the picture they create in the sand. Buddhist tantric visualization practices employ a similar technique when one creates first a circle of protection and then imagines oneself within it in the form of a meditational figure inside a three-dimensional mandala structure. Kalff also employed the Buddhist value of advising people to be ethically responsible. Unlike some Western approaches that encourage clients to express their pent-up anger in all situations, Kalff emphasized that one must always take into consideration the effect of one’s words and actions on others.

Furthermore, we may beneficially and safely incorporate selected therapeutic techniques into the context of Buddhist practice without rendering Buddhism into another form of psychological treatment. We can avoid this danger by choosing psychotherapeutic techniques that expand upon Buddhist scriptural themes or fulfill the definitions of Buddhist terms. To do so would fit into the historical pattern of cultural adaptation through skillful means. 

One example is the use of group dynamics. In some non-residential Buddhist centers, members come together to meditate or listen to lectures, but do not have much interaction with each other. This may be for a variety of reasons. The classes may be in the evening and end too late for any informal social time, many people do not attend regularly, the classes, especially during weekend courses, may be too large and so on. One adaptation from the dynamics of group encounters is for members of a Dharma center to meditate on love and compassion by sitting in a circle with their eyes open, cultivating these attitudes while looking and directing them to each other. Such a Western-style technique might not only be more effective for people’s own development of these qualities but might also contribute to the harmony and cohesion of the group. It may also help prevent the practitioners’ positive qualities, such as love, from becoming only theoretical, directed solely at visualized beings. This type of practice is not mutually exclusive with Buddhist meditation. It easily fulfils the definition of meditation, namely a technique to build up beneficial habits of the mind and heart.

A similar method, used in Alcoholics Anonymous and other similar groups, is also done with participants sitting in a circle. This is to have open discussions in which they share their most current experiences, both successes and failures, in applying the teachings to their daily lives. This is helpful not only for learning from each other and stimulating the students to make the Dharma a vital force in their lives, but also for fostering a sense of spiritual community. 

Individual psychotherapy as an introspection technique to gain self-understanding and confidence is also not contradictory to Buddhist practice. Certain persons find it extremely painful and difficult to look within themselves at first. They cannot do this on their own in meditation but need personal guidance and the structured discipline of a therapist/client relation. For such people, therapy can serve as a useful preliminary before embarking on intensive study and practice of the Dharma. If those who are extremely emotionally disturbed and socially dysfunctional do not build up a confident, healthy sense of their conventional ego before refuting their false “I,” they are likely to experience even worse psychological disorder.

This approach is not unusual from a Buddhist perspective. In Jewel Ornament of Liberation, Gampopa explained first about Buddha-nature in order to encourage practitioners that they have the ability to succeed in spiritually developing themselves. The teachings on the absence of an inherently existing “I” follow much later in his graduated steps.

Although Buddhism and therapy can have a mutually stimulating, harmonious relation, nevertheless a Buddhist teacher is not a psychotherapist, and it is not skillful to confuse the two roles. Although both may help their disciples or clients to gain insights into themselves by interacting with them, there are many differences. Spiritual masters teach by their own example, whereas therapists never allow clients to witness their own private lives or to grow from seeing how they interact with others. 

Furthermore, traditional Asian Buddhist teachers never ask about a disciple’s personal life or history. They deal primarily with the “here and now.” Students are free to apply their insights to understanding their personal past, but a spiritual teacher would hardly ever ask them to share all the details. 

Westerners are certainly more fixated on their individuality and personal emotional problems than traditional Asians and are in general more open and verbal about them. They also demand and require more personal attention. Nevertheless, it is not helpful for Buddhist teachers to pamper the Westerners’ sense of self-importance by becoming too involved in their personal affairs.

Often when Western disciples go to a teacher with a problem and make an offering, they feel they are now entitled to the teacher’s time and attention because they have paid their fee. It is as if they had paid for a session of therapy. If teachers indulge this attitude, perhaps confusing their priorities of cultivating and pleasing a patron with helping a disciple, they merely reinforce their students’ overinflated egos. One must adapt to Westerners’ preoccupation with themselves but not over-adapt to the point that it is damaging to the basic Buddhist aim of gaining insight into selflessness.

Faithful Asians and now many Westerners may request a divination concerning difficult decisions in their personal lives, but this is still not the same as going to a psychologist with a personal problem. In any case, it is quite inappropriate for Western disciples to ask their teachers for guidance about their marital or sexual problems, especially when their teachers are monks or nuns. Even if their spiritual masters are householders, spiritual teachers are not counsellors. One must learn to apply their teachings oneself to one’s personal life. 

It might be helpful to have both a male and female psychological counsellor resident in Western Dharma centers and one of the same sex in monasteries, nunneries and unisex centers. Residents and participants in courses and retreats could then go to these professionals with their problems if they have not yet developed sufficient mindfulness and maturity with the Dharma to notice and handle their disturbing attitudes by themselves. They should not, however, regard these counsellors as gurus. In fact, such detached observers can be very useful also in warning the Buddhist teachers about psychological problems they might notice in them and about difficulties arising in their relations with their students. 

Some very odd developments have been occurring recently among Western Buddhists. Many Westerners after long periods of intensive Buddhist meditation find themselves still emotional cripples, unable to cope with their native society, or after many years of practice, feel the need to turn to psychotherapy. This indicates something wrong. 

Although therapy can serve as a useful preliminary for Dharma practice, it seems odd for people to find their Buddhist experience merely a preliminary to psychotherapy. If the main outcome of such people’s Buddhist practice is to realize that they need professional psychological help for their problems, they have not properly understood the four noble truths. There must be Buddhist techniques, as part of the noble truth of the path, that can overcome their personal problems, otherwise it would absurdly follow that the Dharma is incapable of eliminating suffering. 

The only reasonable conclusion is that these Western practitioners are not applying the teachings correctly or fully. The same conclusion must be drawn when long-time Buddhist practitioners feel the need to go to non-Buddhist teachers in India in order to gain in their presence an actual meditative experience.

There may be several reasons for such faults to arise. Dharma students may not have been sufficiently imaginative and flexible with the teachings to use them to deal with their personal issues. Or their spiritual teachers, following traditional Asian values and norms of behavior, may have discouraged any such creativity.

Another possibility is that they might have repressed certain problems and been afraid to probe with the teachings their innermost, darkest sides. As practitioners with many years of experience, they want only to see themselves as “good.” Otherwise, if they still must deal with repressed negativities, they might feel their practice has been all in vain and they are “bad.” Such an unconscious attitude may indicate a misplaced loyalty to Christian moralism.

Students may also have been exposed to only some facets of the teachings, and not their full range, or may have chosen themselves to limit their practice so that their growth has been one-sided and out of balance. Another reason could be that these people have not worked out all the implications of the teachings and have not applied them to practical life.

Several factors can help to explain this failure to implement the second of the four Dharma themes of Gampopa, namely “practicing the teachings as a path.” For instance, many people in the United States are very concerned with finding a “bargain.” When they approach Buddhism with such a mentality, especially when Dharma centers adopt the principle from psychotherapy that clients value treatment more highly the more money they must pay, such persons are intent on either amassing a vast amount of information or gaining a profound experience. Otherwise, they feel they have not received their money’s worth. They expect full service and do not want to work themselves, such as by having to apply what they receive to their personal lives. 

Other North Americans, as well as modern Japanese and members of various other competitive societies, approach Buddhist practice in an almost academic manner. It is as if they are working hard to receive a good grade. Or Russians and other former Soviet nationalities may be seeking from Buddhism a transcendent experience divorced from life. Or they may be approaching meditation as just a form of spiritual gymnastics, perhaps with the unconscious hope of winning the “Olympic gold medal” for technical perfection. In so doing, they may lose all sight of why they are practicing and what is the aim. 

Therefore, when focusing on Buddha’s teachings concerning the workings of the mind and emotions and expanding upon them as a potentially central theme for modern Buddhism, it might be helpful to fill out the descriptions of the mental factors in accordance with their definitions. We need to be more explicit in showing that these factors relate to the full range of the students’ experience. This might help people see how to apply the teachings to their personal lives.

For example, longing desire and attachment can refer not only to the compulsive drive to gain possession of another person so that they belong to oneself, but also to the obsession to be loved and belong to someone else. It may be subtle and take the form of the possessiveness to include someone else inside one’s identity, for instance when one smothers a person with overprotectiveness and is closed to his or her individuality.

Anger and hostility are not only an explicit rejection of someone or something outside oneself but can also be a burning feeling kept inside because of the fear of being rejected by someone else if it were to be expressed. It can also be directed at oneself for feeling hostile or being seemingly inadequate or no good. It may even take the form of the hostile act of putting up emotional walls around oneself so as not to consider some person or idea that is threatening.

Confusion about either behavioral cause and effect or the nature of reality may take the form of either simply not knowing about such things or apprehending them in an inverted manner. Confusion may lead to being unsure of oneself, stubborn and closed in one’s incorrect understanding and, internally, totally stressed and befuddled. Thus, one’s confusion may be about one’s own identity, about who someone else really is as a person, or about one’s relationship with that person. One may easily fool oneself or be so insecure that one tries to prove or assert one’s supposedly true identity in a foolish way. Out of confusion, for instance, one might act so obnoxiously that another person in a close relationship will reject one and thus prove one’s identity as unworthy of being loved. 

Pride is not only feeling better than others because of some real or imagined quality but can also include feeling everyone else is better than oneself. Jealousy refers not only to a lack of rejoicing when someone else has achieved or acquired something instead of oneself, but also to a lack of rejoicing when someone directs, for instance, affection or wealth to someone else instead of to oneself. Indecisive wavering is not only doubt about the truth of the Dharma or what to eat or wear, but also questioning one’s own worth as a person, whether one deserves to be loved and so on.

We need to spell out the culturally specific forms for each society as well. In modern Japanese culture, longing desire would also include the obsession to belong to an organized group; in modern overseas Chinese, to be accepted by one’s family and not to lose face; and so on. Such examples will facilitate the application of the teachings to personal life and the gaining of an insight into voidness so that people will not feel that Buddhism lacks effective techniques for eliminating their problems. 

In filling out the psychological implications of the Dharma, however, we must be careful not to make Buddhism just another form of psychotherapy. If Buddhism loses its more general role as a religion, it will never survive in countries with strong religious backgrounds such as Poland, where people seek more from Buddhism than just effective therapeutic techniques.

Certain modern societies, such as many of the former Communist Bloc countries, do not trust psychology. They see it as a set of tricks to manipulate people into conforming to a state ideology. Although it may not be appropriate or skillful to emphasize the psychological aspects of Buddha’s teachings in the cultural adaptation of the Dharma to such countries, nevertheless it would be a mistake to ignore or minimize their importance. Otherwise, people may lose sight of the essential need for deep and honest introspection. They may view certain meditational techniques as methods for transcending their suffering but may never apply meditation to identifying and eliminating the causes of their problems. In this way they will be shortchanging themselves with the teachings. This was the case with many Pure Land practitioners among the uneducated masses of East Asia who strove only to enter Amitabha’s Pure Land as some sort of Buddhist paradise, but who went no further into the Buddhist teachings.

Many Westerners today also strive for transference of their consciousness to Amitabha’s Pure Land without wishing to learn or practice any other aspects of what Buddha taught. Others see in dzogchen an almost magical method for instant salvation without need to practice or learn anything else. In approaching the Dharma exclusively with the aim of seeking the transcendent, such people often fail to apply the teachings to their daily life and personal relations. Therefore, although seeking the transcendent is a Buddhist theme that resonates well with, for example, an Eastern Orthodox heritage, a skillful adaptation of Buddhism to a culture must not focus on just one theme such as this, at the expense of omitting any of Buddhism’s essential features.

Sometimes when Buddhism has tried to accommodate beliefs or customs from other religions or systems, it has had to compromise its own basic assertions. This has caused confusion in the minds of the followers, especially when they lack a strong Buddhist education. For instance, in modern Muslim-majority Indonesia, only religions that assert a belief in God are legally permitted. The syncretic Buddhayana tradition of the overseas Chinese Buddhist community there has thus been forced to present the concept of an Adi-Buddha, or Primordial First Buddha, as its official equivalent of a creator God. With this, they run the risk of the dangers of over-adaptation.

The Buddhist masters of their community are, for the most part, uninformed about the teachings concerning the Adi-Buddha. Primordial Buddhahood refers not to a historical figure, but to what the Tibetan dzogchen system calls “rigpa,” pure awareness. This underlying substratum of mind, individual in each being, has all the qualities of a Buddha complete within it, although obscured and thus not yet functional. It is the source within each person that accounts for all appearances that they experience, but is individual and certainly not an all-mighty creator God.

If Indonesian Buddhayana followers remain ignorant of the actual Buddhist connotation of Adi-Buddha, there is the danger that their confusion might undermine their Buddhist practice in many subtle ways. They might shift the emphasis in their practice to submitting to Adi-Buddha’s will and serving him in the hope of gaining an eternal Amitabha Pure Land paradise, rather than taking responsibility to understand the four noble truths in order to liberate themselves and others.

A similar loss of the Buddhist essential aims occurred when Chinese practitioners have tried to combine Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism into one system of belief. The earliest example was the Truc Lam sect of thirteenth-century Vietnam. The leaders of the Chinese community there created this amalgam in order to unify their people for social and political service. It was not especially oriented towards helping its members follow an inner spiritual path.

Over the last several centuries, Chinese Buddhists, both on the mainland and overseas, have developed the Triyana tradition. By incorporating into their Pure Land orientation Confucian ancestor worship and Daoist divination techniques, they have created a type of folk religion that caters to popular beliefs and needs but no longer knows of or offers Buddha’s more profound techniques for taming the mind.

The modern Indonesian Tridharma tradition is likewise an amalgam of Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism. But it is hardly a Buddhist tradition at all. The Indonesian government only permits its people to follow one of five legal religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism or Buddhism, all of which must assert belief in a creator God. Thus, the overseas Chinese Confucian and Daoist communities in this country created the Tridharma Buddhist tradition as a cover to allow them to practice their own beliefs.

We must guard against this danger of losing sight of our Buddhist aims, which can happen if we incorporate too much Christianity and psychology into modern Buddhism, at the price of sacrificing basic Buddhist tenets. This can also happen if we are not careful to clarify the uniquely Buddhist paths in face of such universalist movements as Theosophy of Madame Blavatsky, Agni Yoga of Nikolai and Helena Roerich and Sarvadharma of Sathya Sai Baba, which assert that Buddhism, Hinduism, Western occultism and so on are all part of the “universal wisdom of the masters.”