Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Margaret McAndrew argues an unconventional thesis: Buddhism establishes itself only where pre-existing moral and intellectual foundations exist, never in societies rife with turmoil. She opens with the Sūtra of the Kalamas—Buddha’s teaching that followers should evaluate teachings through reason—to illustrate this requirement, then traces Buddhism’s historical path through India (supported by Hinduism), Tibet (where Padmasambhava overcame obstacles and Atisha clarified the complementary nature of Sūtra and Tantra), Southeast Asia, and China. McAndrew explores why Buddhism declined in India around 1200 AD while flourishing in Tibet, and reflects on Buddhism’s contemporary arrival in Western countries like Australia, now relying on Judeo-Christian and humanitarian foundations. The talk concludes with the FPMT’s role in adapting this tradition to modern Western practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 56 BH O B 1998 10 09.mp3
UUID: 340037f6-2c1f-40b4-aa2e-eff4ecbecde5
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-10-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~5,348
So Buddhism seems to have always flourished where there’s been this kind of a preceding religion. And in India itself it was Hinduism that played the role. And in Buddha’s time, there was already a society where people were peaceful, law abiding, where not always, of course, but in general, were high spiritual values already and people were intelligent, they were cultivated, they were able to listen to his teachings, they had a broad respect for all sorts of religious teachings and they were prepared to listen respectfully to different teachers. Buddha was able to, first of all find his path in this society. He was able to go off and, you could say, experiment spiritually to find his path to attain his enlightenment.
And then he was able to teach freely and be listened to respectfully by the people, in spite of his somewhat revolutionary ideas that he was teaching. You can imagine how he would have been persecuted in some societies. So India was a very special place. There’s a sūtra called the Sūtra to the Kalamas, which describes how the people of this particular group, a sort of a tribal group, you could say, or a particular area and clan, I suppose would be the word. The people, These people came along and they were prepared to listen respectfully, if somewhat sceptically, to what this new teacher had to say.
And after they listened to him a little bit, they asked Buddha, Well, how should we know who to believe? Because we have so many different teachers coming through here and they all tell us different things. Who should we believe? Buddha told them that they should only accept what seemed to them, through their own reason and experience, to be good. If it seemed to them be good when they had carefully examined it, then they should accept it.
Otherwise, they shouldn’t accept it just because it was something that had been believed by their ancestors or that was being taught by a particular person or was found in a particular book or something, that they should check it with their own wisdom and then accept it. So this is interesting because it really shows the social situation of the time, the context in which these teachings took place, that people were actually there was a freedom of religion, that people were going around preaching freely their own particular views, that people were listening respectfully, and that this was a society where this kind of thing was valued, and that there were peaceful conditions, and that there were thoughtful people in the society who were who were trying to achieve the highest spiritual values. So so there was this relationship between Buddhism and the Hindu background, but there wasn’t this there wasn’t there wasn’t a conflict. There wasn’t a persecution of Buddhism, but there was this sort of peaceful acceptance and coexistence. There was this sort of evolution of Buddhism, or the way Buddhism took social form against this background.
And then in Tibet, when Buddhism spread to Tibet, the preceding religion was the Bön religion, which had civilized the people so they could be receptive to the Buddhist teachings. But you get the impression that the Bön religion probably wasn’t quite such a strong civilizing influence as the Hindu religion was, and that the Tibetan people might have been still somewhat barbaric, and it took quite a lot of effort for the Buddhist teachings to be established there. But still, it must also have a lot of good spiritual values because in actual fact the Tibetan people did accept Buddhism and did become receptors of the Buddhist teachings and also they did retain some respect for the Bön religion and that actually did survive down to the present. But it also took some strong magic in Tibet as well as just reason. If you know the story of Tibetan Buddhism, you might know that there were apparently various demons and so on according to the story that wouldn’t let the Buddhist teachings be established, wouldn’t let the monasteries be built and so on.
And the great scholars and so on who came from India to teach weren’t able to put a stop to this. So it took Padmasambhava, who was a very great yogi and somebody with great psychic powers, siddhis, who could deal with these demons with their own weapons and overcome them with his magic powers. And so it was I think you you can place an interpretation on that of saying that Bön religion and the magic it was very much a shamanistic type of religion. The magic elements of that religion perhaps were an obstacle to the establishment of Buddhism until the Buddhist teachers who could exercise magic powers were able to actually exert their influence. So then when you come to Western countries like Australia, you can see that the Judeo Christian tradition is paving the way perhaps, and also perhaps our humanitarian tradition might have some influence as well.
And these influences, these philosophies and religions are acting as a civilizing force. We can hope that we’re reasonably civilized people and that we’re we do know that we’re fortunate to have education and to have social values and so on, which enable us to listen to and have some appreciation of the qualities of Buddhism. So, I don’t know so much about some of the other countries such as Sri Lanka and Thailand and so on, but you can think the local religions before Buddhism, were animistic religions, largely to do with fertility and so on. They seemed to have been reasonably compatible with Buddhism because some elements of them seemed to have survived to the present, and they must have had some good influence because the people in those countries certainly were very receptive to the Buddhist teachings and so they must have been responsive to the teachings of right conduct, of avoiding harm, of good heart and so on. Also, of course, if you look at China, then you have Confucianism and Taoism there.
So there were religions which had some very high aspect. So this is interesting because you don’t seem to find Buddhism becoming established where there’s a lot of social turmoil, where there’s a lot of fighting, where there’s a lot of hatred, where there’s a lot of conflict going on, where people seem to be practicing a lot of hatred and aggression and extreme sort of social attitudes which are very harmful to others, somehow it doesn’t seem to be something that can be accepted when people have these attitudes in their minds. It has to be established in a society where there’s already some good karma operating. And it requires peace and conducive conditions to be propagated effectively. And It’s actually said that the center of dharma, or the central dharma centers, you could say central countries, what are regarded as being central countries, being countries where there’s a very strong flourishing of the Dharma, don’t remain in the same place, but it goes from one country to another.
And this has been a historical fact, that the essence of Buddhism has not been something that’s tied to a particular culture. It’s been something the Buddha’s essential teachings was something which was so universal, such deep basic psychological truths, that they were accepted in all sorts of different societies and cultures. As I said before with the proviso, there were countries and cultures where the people were prepared by having some sort of good basic social influence already. And these basic teachings have taken on different cultural trappings in different societies, but the elements have always remained something that has been accepted as being very, very meaningful by people in various different societies. And we can see this process coming along right up to the present, and that we’re now taking part in this process of accepting accepting the teachings by means of transmission from teachers who come from a society that’s probably about as different from our own as it’s possible to be in this day and age, and that we’re finding the elements that work, we’re finding inspiration in the teachings, and we’re also sort of engaging in this process of transferring it into a different culture, and in the process perhaps letting go of certain aspects which were only relevant in another culture, and perhaps bringing in certain aspects that help us to put it into action in this culture.
So this is a process that’s been going on and on, and Buddhism has survived all these transplantings. It’s proved that it’s a universal teaching which isn’t just dependent on a particular culture. Yes. Yes. Yes.
It that particularly Tibetan Buddhism is to that particular tradition is mainly we’re certainly hoping that it will be permitted again in Tibet. You know that the Tibetan people are in their hearts still Buddhist and practising it as they can, And if the persecution was lifted, they would be able to do that. So we’re certainly hoping for that to come about. And you can’t imagine that the Chinese could continue doing it indefinitely. That they can continue this repression.
You have to think that if things are loosening up a bit in mainland China, it must eventually make some difference in Tibet. You can never predict how things are going to happen either. Mean, ten years ago So how long ago was it that the Iron Curtain came down? It’s only a few years, isn’t it? About ten years.
Ten years ago, you wouldn’t have believed that the Iron Curtain could have just vanished overnight. We grew up, my generation grew up with the Iron Curtain being like a solid reality. It was just sort of there like Mount Everest. And all of a sudden it was gone. The truth is universal, but there are sort of cultural adaptings of the trimmings that it comes with.
These trimmings are important. You do have to have these trimmings. You have to have a sort of a context or a matrix for the teachings and that’s something which can be adapted from one society to another. It’s a process that has to be undertaken carefully because obviously you could throw out the baby with the bath water if you weren’t careful. And I think in the FPMT we’re tending to take a fairly orthodox view.
We’re trying to retain pretty much a traditional approach to the teachings rather than rushing into being untraditional and just saying, we’re Westerners, so all this Tibetan stuff isn’t relevant for us. But rather than that, we’re trying to see how much of it is relevant for us because you can lose the whole thing if you try to modernize too much without knowing what you’re doing. So it’s really up to the holy beings to guide us in this process. And I think particularly when we start to have teachings from Holy Beings who have themselves been trained in Western education, whether having grown up in Western societies or being educated in India but in a more modern sort of a way, we’re going to perhaps see some difference. At the moment, we’re still being guided mostly by teachers who came from Tibet, and I think this is good because it’s, apart from the fact that it’s the way things are anyway, in Tibet itself, there was a continual interaction between Tibetan and ancient India for centuries.
For us, we don’t have that opportunity of going back to the old country. So The Tibetan teachers who came out of Tibet, while they still lived, were very, very precious to us. Khensur Rinpoche would be one of the there’s not that many of them left now, Khensur Rinpoche would be one of them. Also the generation of teachers who are educated in India, but who are educated directly by these Lamas who came from Tibet before too much Western influence crept in are also going to be tremendously influential. But it’s also going to be interesting.
These same teachers who, in their last life, were thoroughly Tibetan, in this life of being, you know, trained in the English language and certain, you know, modern twentieth century education subjects and so on. So it’s going to be their reincarnations, now these young tulkus. It’s going to be very interesting. I say these What did you say about the tulkus? These former great Lamas who came out of Tibet and who passed away a few years ago, and now young tulkus being educated in India.
And they’re being educated in a system that combines the old Tibetan traditions of religious education with modern education and English language and so on. So anyway, the image of this shifting center of Dharma, know, the teaching from the Precious human Rebirth, it talks about the floating golden yoke on the surface of the ocean and the tortoise has to put its head through. You know that image? The reason why it’s said to be floating around on the surface of the ocean is because that golden yoke is the image of the example of the floating center of dharma which goes about from place to place. So it’s not enough to be born in a particular country, you have to be born in at the right time while the dharma is flourishing there.
Anyway, it seems that once dharma is firmly established in minds, people’s minds in a particular area, it can survive all sorts of upheavals. But it requires very conducive conditions to be propagated most effectively in the first place. And you have this I think this is because Buddhism really demands so much of the practitioners, particularly of the teachers, who have to be very thoroughly trained in both scriptural knowledge and meditation. It relies on the monastic system, pretty much. It relies on the support the support of people who have enough to spare to be able to feed and clothe the monks and so on.
And It’s a very elaborate process really to be able to actually gain liberation or gain the higher stages of the path. Not just a question with Buddhism, it’s not just a question of believing in a particular religion. It’s not just a question of having a book which you take as your scripture, but it’s a question of gaining the experience. This has to be done through a long painstaking process. And for Buddhism to be living and flourishing, there always has to be at least a certain number of people, even if not very many, there has to be a certain number of people who have gone through this process and reached the highest level of the path.
And for that to be happening, you also have to have this whole background of monasteries, of large numbers of people who are striving at whatever level to attain the path. Also, of course, outside monasteries people can also be striving and practicing, but the monasteries are the centers where which really bear the responsibility for this process. And so if the monasteries can’t be established, or if they’re threatened, then this very much threatens the existence or the flourishing of Buddhism as a really living practice in that country. So Buddhism gradually spread out over the whole region. And, anyway, yeah, I seem to have lost it lost my track, lost my train of thought there.
So anyway, it became a very prevalent religion in a number of the neighboring countries. It spread to Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and so on. And then from about one hundred BC to about one hundred AD, the Mahāyāna movement arose in India and became very prevalent in northern India. So we’re taught we’re following the Mahāyāna tradition here, of course, and we’re taught the Buddha actually gave these Mahāyāna teachings to selected audiences, and that they had always existed since Buddha taught that the tradition was passed on, but that it was for a time passed on just among a few people, while to the general public, the more general teachings, the Hīnayāna teachings were given. Khensur Rinpoche actually mentioned this at the weekend in the context of the thought training teachings which were being given up at the summit centre at the weekend course.
He was talking about how these teachings were given by Buddha only to those people who had the intelligence, the faculties to appreciate them. And he said in general public teaching, there would be many people present including some who were not so bright and for these people the Mahāyāna teachings were not suitable and so in these public teachings only the Hīnayāna teachings would be given and then the Mahāyāna teachings would be passed on more esoterically. So some scholars actually feel that the movement didn’t so much start as a separate movement from Buddhist time, but that it was a development of ideas contained in the early texts, and particularly the descriptions of the way of bodhisattva. But anyway, whichever way it was, the Hīnayāna teachings are taught mainly the Hīnayāna teachings, the Path of the Bodhisattva is taught, but it is taught mainly to arouse faith in Buddha and his teachings. While in the Mahāyāna teachings they are presented as being our path of practice and they’re elaborated in a lot of detail as the course of practice for each individual to follow.
So, as we know, we have these graduated path teachings which are based on the Mahāyāna scriptures or based on the scriptures in general, including the Mahāyāna scriptures. And they present the path to full enlightenment through the practice of the Bodhisattva. First of all, by developing love and compassion and becoming a Bodhisattva, and then going on to practice the six perfections. Mahāyāna Buddhism became very influential in North India and then at this time it was transmitted to countries which were to the north of India, such as Nepal, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and other places. And it also spread very widely.
It spread to Afghanistan and Central Asia, to a lot of countries which are now no longer Buddhist, Islam has taken over or where it’s given way to other beliefs. So it’s quite stunning to look at how Buddhism used to be. You can go to some of these countries now and see, like, the remains of vast Buddha statues that have had their faces chopped off and so on. So in each of these countries, wherever Buddhism flourished, took on a local color while retaining the basic Mahāyāna Buddhist elements. And great Buddhist pundits of this era in India were Nāgārjuna, Candrakīrti, Asaṇga, Vasubandhu and many others.
And it was their commentaries and so on, along with the basic teachings of Buddha which were transmitted to these countries and which became the basis for the development of Buddhism in these countries. And so, this brings in the story of Buddhism in Tibet. And this is a whole history in itself, of course. It’s a vast story. There were some uncertain beginnings at first, around about five hundred AD, so we’re getting quite on in time by Buddhist terms now.
It’s over a thousand years since the time of Buddha. Buddhism didn’t take off at first. It had many obstacles, but it was finally established firmly by Shāntarakshita and Padmasambhava. And from that time on, various Indian pundits came to Tibet, and Tibetan scholars studied in India. So, for example, Marpa was one very noted Tibetan scholar who traveled to India and brought back texts and teachings and traditions which he had gained in India.
Also, a very significant influence on Tibetan Buddhism was Atisha, who was a very great Indian pundit and meditator yogi, who came from India and came to Tibet. His story is quite fantastic. I actually told his story here one night, some of you might have been present then. His main work was to have clarified many of the wrong views which were prevalent at the time, especially the wrong view which saw a contradiction between Sūtra and Tantra teachings. Atisha showed how these two ways of practice were not contradictory but were complementary and actually needed to be practiced together.
And it was on this understanding that the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet has been founded. And also, he wrote the text Lamp for the Path of Enlightenment, which was the original for the graduated path texts commentaries. About that? Atisha. And this is something which is very, very important for us because, as we know, it’s the Graduated Path teachings which have been the doorway to Buddhism for us.
And it was because he found that Tibetan people were not as well educated in the scriptures as the Indians that he found that this type of a text was needed in Tibet. And also, he founded the Kadampa School, which was a forerunner of three of the great traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. The oldest school, what’s called the old school, the Nyingma, founded by Padmasambhava. And then this Kadampa school gave rise to three great traditions, which all trace their lineages back through the Kadampa tradition. And those are the Kaju, the Sakya and the Geluk schools.
So, just in case you’re wondering, we’re actually following the Geluk or the Gelukpa tradition here. And so we trace our lineage back through these Kadam teachers. Atisha’s story is really it’s a fascinating story and it’s very moving. And he was a tremendous influence on Tibetan Buddhism. And then after some time, Buddhism died out in India around about twelve hundred.
And it seemed to have been in decline for some time before it died out by a revival of Hinduism, particularly a revival brought about by a very great teacher called Shankara, who was actually quite shrewd because incorporated many perhaps that’s not quite the right word, perhaps not a respectful term to use for a great teacher, but he incorporated some important elements of Buddhism into the Hindu system, such as Well, I don’t know exactly what I think particularly harmless avoiding harm and so on was something that he very much stressed. He was actually a very great teacher, but for Buddhism it was something that took energy from Buddhism because he actually did incorporate quite a lot of the Buddhist principles that had appealed to people into his revived Hinduism. And somehow the Indian people seemed always seemed to have this this pull back to Hinduism. But the the death blow was struck by the invading Muslims who destroyed the monasteries and persecuted the Buddhist monks and the practice of Buddhism. Hinduism did survive this.
It seems that Hinduism found it easier to survive in what you might describe as an underground way or as a practice among the laypeople, whereas Buddhism has always been very dependent on the monastic system and the transmission of the teachings through these centers of learning and so on and so forth. So, in Tibet, and in many other countries around the Indian region, Buddhism continued to flourish and it continued to be developed by great yogis and scholars. And in our tradition, Lama Tsongkhapa is particularly revered. So, this transmission of the teachings continued on in Tibet until the Chinese invasion in, I think it was nineteen fifty seven. Certainly, I was a young person myself at that time, so this is really recent history now.
And I can remember being terribly upset by hearing about the descriptions of the Tibetan refugees being shot down in the snow and all these things were happening at that time. It was really terribly painful, terribly upsetting. Of course, at that stage, had no idea that it would have any closer meaning for me. And it wasn’t So the spread of Buddhism is now going into non traditional Buddhist countries, such as our own country. So we can see this process is happening now.
You can see that there’s probably hardly a country in the world, perhaps outside the really strict Islamic countries nowadays, where there isn’t any Buddhism, because in most countries, even the Iron Curtain countries nowadays, there is a little bit of Buddhism. In fact, it’s interesting that Buddhism seems to have survived reasonably well in Mongolia under the Russians. It seems that the Russians found it easier to tolerate Buddhism than to upset the Mongolians who were living on the largely in the Chinese border regions, were very politically dicey. And so they were given a certain amount of of tolerance. And nowadays, now that there’s religious freedom again in that part of the world, then it seems to be making a strong comeback.
So the biggest setback that the Mongolian Buddhists seemed to have was that they weren’t able to educate their Geshis during the Russian regime and during the communist regime. And, of course, now they’re having to make up for that. Apart from that, they were given a fair amount of freedom to continue the practice. But the Mongolians actually it was a big setback for them not to be able to educate their Geshis because they of course, the Geshis teachers, are a very important element. The Mongolians were actually renowned for their scholars.
It’s an interesting thing that Tibetans kind of regarded the Mongolians as having particularly learned scholars. So, the spread of Buddhism is coming to our countries now, and there’s no reason, I suppose, why we can’t have good scholars either, unless the attractions of Western life take away too much of our time and energy and make too much distraction for us. But it’s certainly taking place in a number Dharma centers and with a number of different teachers. You can say that the spread of Buddhism to these non traditional Buddhist countries made a small start in the nineteenth century, and then it started to gather steam with the greater movement between countries that’s been going on in this century. But it wasn’t until the second half of the twentieth century, the last half of the twentieth century, that numbers of Buddhists really began to become large or significant in Western centers, in Western countries, and especially speaking about non ethnic Buddhists.
So, of course, in Australia nowadays, we have quite a large number of Buddhists, and some of these Buddhists are what we generally refer to as ethnic Buddhists, that is people who brought Buddhism with them as immigrants or refugees into Australia, such as the Vietnamese and also various other groups who’ve come in either as immigrants or perhaps as long term residents or whatever. We’ve got quite a number of ethnic Buddhist groups here. We also have quite a number of traditional Australians with, say, Irish ancestors or what have you, who are taking up Buddhism nowadays. And this is something that’s only been growing into considerable numbers fairly recently. And we can see that among these people there’s also a number of different Buddhist traditions, and this is happening not only in Australia, of course, but in the United States, in Europe, in the British Isles, in particular, also to some degree in other countries, and that although the traditions are coming from a number of different countries, you can largely say that most of the people who are taking up Buddhism in these countries are either going to Japanese Zen Buddhism or to Theravadan Buddhism or to Tibetan Buddhism for their teachers.
So these particular Buddhist traditions seem to have been particularly attractive to these Western students. And in particular, since the Chinese invasion forced a lot of Tibetans out of their country, and particularly the monks and nuns and the lamas out of Tibet into India and Nepal, then there’s been a lot more contact between Tibetan Buddhism and travelers who have this process of travelers also has been influential with Zen Buddhism and Theravadan Buddhism, people going to the countries where this kind of Buddhism is practiced, learning about it and then going home again. And in the case of Tibetan Buddhism, it was the Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal who were contacted by these travelers. Nowadays, the process is continuing with teachers being actually brought out to these countries. And also some Western students reaching a level where they’re becoming qualified teachers themselves.
And so this is the process that’s happening with the FPMT and its centers. And the story of the FPMT, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna Tradition, which was the name Lama Yeshe gave to the organization that his students started. And so the story of the FPMT and Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche and their students is really a very fascinating story. It’s a whole book, and the book has actually been written, so you can read it. The book I’m referring to, of course, is Reincarnation, The Boy Lama.
And so there’s actually another official biography of Lama Yeshe being written by Adele Hulse that’s not published yet, but it will be available sometime. So I’m sure there’ll be other histories being produced because it’s a jolly good story. And he’s with all of you. Yes, reincarnation of the boy Lama, and if you want a little bit of an update on that, also there’s a section on Mummy Lama in the book that she wrote more recently, which is called Reborn in the West. But that story isn’t finished yet.
It’s hardly started. So, anyway, do you have any questions? Yes. Well, I’m not sure whether Buddhism made it to Turkey. You might know better than I do.
Certainly in Afghanistan and further north Iran, and across into Central Asia. I can’t remember, know, are lots of places that are now part of China, but in those days were separate kingdoms, all these sort of oases and little fertile kingdoms in among all those deserts and the sort of vast steppes and so on. So there’s all kinds of Buddhist countries in that part of the world at one stage and the archaeologists have done quite a lot of research. They’ve actually found not only you know, things to expect and so on, but they’ve found a lot of scriptures. So they actually have a lot of scriptures in languages such as Khotanese and so on.
And the serious Buddhist scholars have to learn all these languages. When I was over in Taiwan, the chap who used to translate my talks He was a German who had been living in Taiwan for seventeen years and he actually earned his living as a lecturer at a Buddhist college in Taipei. And he, I think he spoke about, well not spoke is probably not the word, but he understood about four or five of these different languages, apart from Tibetan and Sanskrit, which are the obvious ones. Think he knew Khotanese and I’m not quite sure what the others are, but there are all these scripts that have been found since the archaeologists have been working. Possibly some of them might have been preserved in libraries and so on as well.
I’m not well up on these things, but certainly there’s quite a range of scriptures available and it’s very interesting for comparative purposes. And of course Chinese. He spoke Chinese of course obviously and studied the Chinese scriptures. The Tibetan scriptures are considered to be particularly useful because the correlation between the Tibetan and the Sanskrit is very exact. So, there’s only Tibetan and Chinese scriptures remaining of the old Sanskrit scriptures.
It’s possible to get a much more accurate idea of what the original must have been like by looking at both of them, particularly the Tibetan because the Chinese translations are apparently a little bit something was a little bit less easy to translate exactly in Chinese. And apparently it’s almost impossible to translate very exactly into English. Just because our language just doesn’t work that way. So I guess that’s about it.