His Holiness the Dalai Lama Gives a Public Talk at Souji Temple

Tokyo, Japan, 11 April 2015 - After two restful days with the Busshokai group in Kanazawa, His Holiness the Dalai Lama left this morning for Tokyo. He travelled by Kagayaki Shinkansen one of Japan’s newest, and most up-to-date bullet train services, which was only inaugurated last month. Passing through Nagano, the approximately 500 kms journey was completed in two and a half hours.

The drive from Tokyo station to Souji Temple in Yokahama on Tokyo’s congested roads was considerably slower. His Holiness was received by the Chief Priests of the temple and escorted into the main Buddha hall where he paid his respects before joining them for a traditional Japanese lunch. At their meeting afterwards, they explained that the temple is observing a memorial year to commemorate their founder, Taiso Josai Daishi. His Holiness inscribed two messages for the temple as a memento of his visit and gifts were exchanged. “All 7 billion people alive today want happiness,” His Holiness went on, “and yet because of anger and resentment we tend to see people in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’. This is the kind of attitude that encourages conflict and even the killing of other people. It’s especially sad when such conflict revolves around religion.”

His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaking at Souji Temple's assembly hall in Tokyo, Japan on April 11, 2015.
Photo/Tenzin JigmeyHe clarified that all religious traditions teach love and compassion, so when their followers give in to anger and hatred, it is because they are not sincere in their practice. It is said that 1 billion people today claim not follow any religion, but as human beings they share our common need for love and affection. Our mothers give birth to us and nurture us with love and affection and even when we grow up we need friends and affection to survive. If we regularly give into anger and suspicion, not only will we have no friends, but it will undermine our health. Whether we believe in religion or not, the need for affection is part of human nature.

“Historically Japan has been a Buddhist country. Buddhism includes the Pali tradition, which finds authority in scriptural citations and the Sanskrit tradition which depends on reasoning. Within the Sanskrit tradition, Japanese monks and lay people regularly recite the Heart Sutra. We can also distinguish between religious traditions that believe in a creator god and those that don’t. Among these non-theistic traditions, it is only Buddhism that asserts the lack of an independently existent self. Rather than a partless, permanent and independently existent self, existing from its own side, the self is said to be merely designated on the basis of the body and mind. If the body changes, the self changes. We say for example, as the body ages, ‘I have got older’.”

Holiness remarked that, like other Indian traditions, Buddhism aims to achieve liberation, which is to have overcome our disturbing emotions. When our minds are subject to disturbing emotions we continue to be caught in cyclic existence.

Members of the audience reacting to His Holiness the Dalai Lama's talk at Souji Temple's assembly hall in Tokyo, Japan on April 11, 2015. Photo/Tenzin Jigmey
“Therefore,” he said, “if we want to be genuinely happy, we need to train our minds, even if we live somewhere as busy as Japan. In many advanced countries there has been great material development, and yet people are not necessarily happy. I’ve met billionaires who have all they could wish for, but who are still not happy. On the other hand, at Montserrat in Spain, I met a Catholic monk who had spent five years living as a hermit in the mountains, living on little more than bread and water. When I asked him what he’d been meditating on, he replied, ‘Love’, and his eyes sparkled with happiness. With almost no physical comfort, he was happy.”

His Holiness explained that if we are mentally disturbed, physical comfort alone will not set us at ease, but when we are in physical pain, we can cope if our minds are at peace. What this shows is the importance of developing a peaceful mind. While all religious traditions try to help us find happiness, most do so on the basis of faith, whereas Buddhism stresses the importance of reasoning. It teaches the perfection of wisdom, not the perfection of faith. The key to the three higher trainings - the discipline of ethics, the stability of concentration and the wisdom understanding reality is that because they are qualified by wisdom they lead to liberation.

He added that Tibetans were strongly influenced by the writings of the Indian masters Dignaga and Dharmakirti on logic and reasoning and he had heard that at one time Japan too had followed such an approach. If there was such a tradition, he urged them to revive it.

He teased the audience telling them that although some of them returned his smile, many of them remained grave faced. He told them that a Japanese scientist who is an old friend was only the other day telling him about the positive power of laughter; how it does us good physically and mentally.

His Holiness the Dalai lama answering a question from the audience during his talk at Souji Temple's assembly hall in Tokyo, Japan on April 11, 2015. Photo/Tenzin Jigmey
The audience were invited to ask questions and the first man to come forward mentioned how impressive it is to see His Holiness always dressed in his monk’s robes wherever he goes. He asked how he copes with whatever difficulties he faces. His Holiness replied that it helps to see things in the broader context of the experience of all sentient beings. As another way of extending experience, he again encouraged young Japanese to learn English and volunteer overseas.    

He told a man who wanted to know how to help his mother, who has fallen ill with leukaemia, to laugh again, that he would give him Tibetan medicine that could help and would that he would pray for her. When a woman who practises Zazen daily asked if doing so would be effective in spreading Buddhism, His Holiness said that spreading Buddhism is not his intention. He is more interested is making people aware of secular ethics on the basis of common sense, our common experience and scientific findings.

Someone whose work is to help people build and restore their confidence asked about the link between altruism and self-esteem. His Holiness said that if you only dwell on your own problems it will get you down, you have to think more broadly. He remarked that Japanese who travel abroad as volunteers are in a better position to appreciate how well developed Japan is.

A member of the audience asking His Holiness the Dalai Lama a question during his talk at Souji Temple in Tokyo, Japan on April 11, 2015. Photo/Tenzin Jigmey
Asked about the most important problem the world has to deal with, His Holiness mentioned the declaration of Nobel Peace Laureates in Rome last December that a timetable should be set and pursued for the elimination of nuclear weapons. He recalled that Japan, as the victim of two nuclear explosions, has been at the forefront of such a movement and urged them to keep it up.

A woman asked how to help a friend with cancer who has declined treatment and only has a year to live. His Holiness replied that if she is a Buddhist her friends could encourage her to develop a sense of love and compassion, along with the awakening mind of bodhichitta. He also recommended introducing her to the verse from Shantideva’s ‘Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life’ that says:

Why be unhappy about something
If it can be remedied?
And what is the use of being unhappy about something
If it cannot be remedied?

Another woman who spoke of how tiring today’s information overload can be was advised instead to learn about the workings of the mind. Similarly a woman, who said she worked as an artist, asked for advice to feel happy from day to day. His Holiness recommended that if the ‘Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life’ was available in Japanese, she should read it, paying particular attention to chapters 6 and 8, which deal with patience and meditation. Then, although it is tough, he advised her to tackle chapter 9, which deals with wisdom. He said:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama shaking hands with members of the audience as he leaves the main assembly hall of Souji Souji Temple at the conclusion of his talk in Tokyo, Japan on April 11, 2015. Photo/Tenzin Jigmey
“You’re young; you can take the time to study. Do so steadily and it will have an effect. And as for your painting and drawing, I remember a Japanese man who came to see me after visiting Tibet who told me how frightening he found all the fierce images. Try and create peaceful images, figures that induce a feeling of peace.”

As His Holiness left the temple, walking down the middle of the audience, many pressed forward to catch his attention and shake his hand. When he reached his hotel, representatives of several of the groups who have come from faraway places, among them Russians, Chinese and Mongolians, to attend tomorrow’s teachings on the Heart Sutra, Nagarjuna’s Commentary on Bodhichitta & The Middle Volume of the Stages of Meditation, were there to greet him.

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Singapore Buddhist Lodge gives out over S$345,000 in bursaries

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SINGAPORE -- The Singapore Buddhist Lodge Education Foundation gave out over S$345,000 in bursaries on Saturday.

<< A student receives the bursary from Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin (R)

The bursaries are for some 300 students from various tertiary-level institutes who have excelled in their studies despite financial difficulties.

They received their bursaries from Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin.

Deserving students get the bursaries regardless of their race or religion.

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Buddhist gives all for monks’ ritual

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Woman spends life savings on text ceremony

NEW YORK, USA -- Dayangji Sherpa lives with her 25-year-old daughter, Nima, in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens, where they sleep in the same bed to save money. But Sunday, they stood on a dais before an altar of glittering gold Buddhas while some of the highest-ranked Buddhist monks from the region bowed their heads to the women and showered them with benedictions.

<< Nima Sherpa, right, bows with Buddhist monk Sangay Tenzin after a ceremonial reading of the Kangyur, the Tibetan language version of the sacred Buddhists texts, in a monastery in New York, last week. (BRIAN HARKIN / The New York Times)

It was the culmination of a rare ceremony where every single text of their Buddhist canon is read from morning until night by monks, who are fed, housed and paid by a sponsor until all 108 books are read.

It took more than a month. And it cost more than $50,000 - the elder Sherpa’s life savings.

Completing the Kangyur, the Tibetan-language version of the sacred Buddhist texts, is done as a form of prayer for peace for all sentient beings, several monks explained. For nearly 40 days, ending last week, about a dozen monks called from around the region read eight hours a day, aloud and simultaneously, seated cross-legged in a converted brick church.

There had never been such a reading in New York, according to Urgen Sherpa, 41, a former general secretary of Sherpa Kyidug, which represents Sherpas in the United States, including an estimated 2,000 to 2,500 in New York. (Urgen Sherpa is not related to Dayangji Sherpa. Many Sherpas, who are an ethnic group from high in the Himalayas in eastern Nepal, use the surname.) Kangyur readings are rarely commissioned even in Nepal, Urgen Sherpa said, because of the cost.

Dayangji Sherpa, 54, a home health aide, estimates she paid about $111 per monk per day. It included twice-daily meals of Nepalese and Tibetan comfort food at a restaurant and an attendant to provide an endless supply of traditional salted butter tea. Other members of the community also made donations.

“People can do this, but nobody does it,” she said. “I’m not rich. I wanted a do a good thing.”

In a fur hat, her long braid laced with pink thread, Dayangji Sherpa doled out envelopes of money to each monk Sunday, her daughter following behind her. As trumpets sounded and cymbals clashed, she limped across the dais on her artificial leg: When she was eight, her leg was amputated after it was crushed by an avalanche while she tended yaks near Kunde, her village. At 22, her family disowned her when she eloped with a man from a lower caste. When she was five months pregnant with Nima, the couple split up; Dayangji Sherpa raised her daughter alone, eventually moving to the United States about a decade ago.

Even in a religion that rejects materialism, her modest means made the ceremony noteworthy, said Sherry Ortner, an anthropology professor at the University of California Los Angeles and an author on Sherpa culture.

Dayangji Sherpa’s father and grandfather, who owned a successful teahouse near the Mount Everest base camp, each sponsored such a reading in the past. Ortner said that in Tibet and Nepal, such events are typically paid for by the wealthy. That a person of lesser means is sponsoring the Kangyur in the United States suggests that in the diaspora those old hierarchies are shifting.

“The status system is changed,” she said.

Spending her savings was an act of faith, said Urgen Sherpa of the community association. Buddhism rejects materialism as one of the Three Poisons that lead to suffering.

“She is giving away some materials,” he said. “That means a destroying of one of the poisons: greed, attachment.”

Pema Sherpa, a nanny, makes $700 a week and has supported one of the monks for the past two years and will continue to do so indefinitely, providing him a room in her house and $600 a month.

She explained Dayangji Sherpa’s generosity: “What do you need in life? You have food, shelter, what else do you want? This is karma.”

As the final ceremony wrapped up, Nima wearily removed her hat. She had quit her job at a bus company to tend to the monks, brewing vats of butter tea in the basement and even cleaning the toilets. Her devotion was to her mother as much as the faith, she said, explaining that her Nepalese peers felt similar commitment to their parents: “We feel like we owe them our life, because they’ve done so much for us in our life.”

After nearly 40 days bound to the monks, the moment was bittersweet, she said. Not that there was time for nostalgia.

“First thing I’m going to do tomorrow,” she said, standing in her floor-length traditional gown, “is wake up and look for a job.”

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