Heartland

The following is an excerpt from the talk given by Ajahn Brahm at the AUA Auditorium in Bangkok, Thailand, on 10th October 2006 entitled “The UPs and DOWNs In Life”.

… Someone once put me on the spot because of lots of articles in the newspaper about an incident where some Americans were accused of flushing the Koran down the toilet. I was giving a talk two nights later in Perth, and someone asked the question, “If someone flushed a Buddhist holy book down the toilet, as a Buddhist monk what would you do?”

What would I do? Call a plumber!

I’m very practical. I’ve made a distinction between the container and the contents. You can destroy the container, but you don’t need to destroy the contents. Please maintain the contents. By which I mean: books are containers.

It’s what the book says – peace, harmony, forgiveness, moving forward rather than remembering the bad of the past. The dhamma – the true teachings that make people peaceful and harmonious, that’s what is important. It’s the contents of the books.

In the same way, when the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan statues, they never destroyed Buddhism. Just its container, the statues. Buddhists didn’t allow themselves to get angry or seek revenge. If Buddhists sought revenge, then the Taliban would not only have destroyed the statues but also destroyed Buddhism, the contents. It’s the contents that are more important than any container. You can blow up statues and burn monasteries and kill monks, but don’t allow anyone to destroy what those monks are all about.

If we can do that, we don’t mind when people try to upset us by destroying our symbols. Symbols are secondary, it’s what they represent – peace, harmony, love between people, and freedom of the heart. That’s what’s important.

Very often we forget that Buddhism is about our way of life, not about how much we know, who we know or what special teachings or scriptures we have.

In a famous zen story, a travelling monk was resting in a monastery during a cold night. He took down a wooden Buddha statue and used it as fire wood.

When the resident monks saw what he did, they became very angry and demanded to know why he did that.

He replied “I am looking for sarrira (holy relics).”

The monks then laugh and exclaimed: “How can one find sarrira in a wooden statue?”

In reply, the travelling monk then said “Well then, can you pass me that other wooden statues also?”

This zen story illustrate how we sometimes misplace our practice by attaching to objects and forget why we walk the path sometimes. Hence the famous Zen phrase: “When you meet a Buddha, kill a Buddha!”. This, of course, does not mean literally kill a Buddha. It means that if we are attached to the Buddha and its hindering our progress, then we should cut off that attachment.

There is another reason why Buddhists may not react with anger, hatred or violence, against disrespect of the Buddhist symbols: karma. Karma tells us that we reap what we sow, if we react to situation with violent actions, than it will come back to us somehow. However, someone acts in violence and we react to that with violence, like revenge, then it will also come back to us.

This is akin to picking up other people’s shit and smearing it on our own body. If others like to smear shit on their own body, its their problem. They sting and nobody wants to get near them. But if we react to it and pick up their shit and smear it on ourselves, that we also smell and nobody wants to get near to us also.

In this way, destroying a Buddhist symbol or showing disrespect only shows the shallowness or the characters of the people and their believe system which they claim to be their truth. What is sown, will be reaped, if its not followed by remorse or regrets to reduce the effects. Thus, there is no point for Buddhists to react, except maybe protest a little, as things will run its own course in due time.