Spiritual honesty and moral integrity are essential to ensuring the perpetuation of the Buddha Way

At the request of the Buddhist Union of France (UBF), the abbot of Kanshoji, Taiun Jean-Pierre Faure, wrote this text as a contribution to the ethical reflection being conducted at national level on abuses of power by religious figures. Initially somewhat reluctant to accept this request, as he did not feel particularly qualified to address the subject, he nevertheless decided, with great humility but also with conviction, to speak about the issue and some of the safeguards against it.

Since beginningless time, human beings have lived their lives relying in part on the harmful energy of the three poisons — ignorance, greed and aversion. The history of humanity is an uninterrupted succession of lies, thefts, rapes, wars… All human beings, without exception, inherit these karmas at birth. It is under the power of selfishness that the painful history of humanity has unfolded, and continues to unfold.

Religious practitioners are supposed to teach human beings how to live without relying on these harmful energies. We Buddhists, therefore, must live by relying on the pure energy of Buddha. This is what we must realize within ourselves and teach to others.

To enter religious life is to enter a river that washes our lives at every moment and purifies our minds. Yet we have to acknowledge that this is not always the case.

Every religious practitioner among us should recognize within themselves the ways in which they fall short of their vocation.

Our status as religious practitioners gives us a power: the power to help others. If we misuse our status in order to satisfy our selfish desires, this is called an abuse of power.

Buddhism, its philosophy and its practice

The Buddha’s teachings are unsurpassable. Even when monks understand them, they do not always put them into practice in their lives. And even when they do put them partly into practice, they do not necessarily perceive their full subtlety and infinite scope.

Too often, we regard the teachings as mental objects that we take pleasure in studying — we enjoy intellectual pleasure… But the doctrine aims at realization, at living reality within reality — something we tend to forget. Buddhism invites us to live in peace, in unity and with benevolence towards others. It teaches unconditional love, Great Love — entirely free of self-interest.

The original mind is a luminous, round mind, undefiled and limitless; it is the mind without the scent of the human. It contains the seeds of wisdom and pure goodness — this is the state of Buddha. This state exists within each of us in an embryonic form. It is up to us to rediscover it deep within ourselves, to develop it, bring it to maturity and maintain it, so as to place it at the service of life and thereby fulfil our vocation as true human beings.

If we do not gain access to this original mind, if we content ourselves with applying external forms, following ideologies, or confining ourselves toconventional right thinking or political correctness, toutes sortes d’erreurs peuvent apparaître. all kinds of errors can arise. Of course, what is true of a teaching monk is not true in the same way of a lay follower, disciple or novice. In our tradition, a certified teacher expresses the teaching from a pure heart, washed clean of all illusion; they do not merely reproduce it from memory, nor merely intellectually.

True, unconditional love should be present in the teacher–student relationship. This true love springs from a heart liberated from the three poisons. If this is not the case, the relationship may turn into an intellectual undertaking, or into a political form tainted by personal interest, and will then not be free from abuses of every kind.

We know that karma is always at work. Practice keeps us vigilant in the face of selfish karmic impulses that arise at any moment. If we do not practise awakening, Buddhism becomes a form of morality and loses its religious dimension. The religious dimension is the life of an awakened person, in which the absolute comes first and the unknowable is our refuge. The patriarch Bodhidharma could say: Oh marvel ! To rush forward in faith to unite with the mystery…

Religion led astray: abuses of power

Where there is no love, power takes its place. Where love is no longer present, power takes over… And there, we must beware!

Abuses of power — psychological, sexual or financial — arise from a lack of openness of the heart. In such cases, there is a gulf between the teaching and its realization — and only practice can bridge that gulf. Religious practitioners sometimes lack precisely this realization.

If religions are losing credibility, it is because of the many scandals that tarnish them. More generally, what harms them is the abuse of power, which hides behind conventional right-thinking and whose deeper cause is the failure to realize what one nevertheless teaches..

The abuses that occur in certain Buddhist schools discredit the Buddha’s message, even though that message is entirely relevant in the face of the present crisis and those yet to come. This teaching lies beyond all human fabrication; it is of great help to human beings.

If abuses of power occur within Buddhism, we must seek their causes. First, we could examine our root practice, that of shiné [1] or zazen [2]. Second, we should reconsider our relationship with the sutras, with the written teaching. Third, we could consider the failure to put the teachings into practice. Fourth, we should become aware that religion is not a philosophy and finally, fifth, we should sometimes acknowledge our lack of faith in the practice proposed by Buddha.

1 – Our original teacher awakened in the lotus posture, in which the mind rises from the mud to blossom into the unsayable.

Our practice aims to place our feet in the footsteps of Buddha and therefore to practise the Dharma posture of as it is, free from all ego.

To reduce zazen or shiné to meditation with an object is very far removed from the lotus posture in which mental grasping is abandoned.

We should therefore remember that the virtuous circle of the mind begins with concentration (samatha) to move towards observation (vipassana) and approaches, perhaps even touches, that which lies beyond thought (Buddha). (Bouddha).

Zazen is not meditation in the ordinary sense; it is the experience of truth as it is, the experience of pure existence without an object. Without access to this liberation, which makes us “free from the me, and therefore free from everything,” we continue to follow our personal consciousness; it is then unthinkable that we could guide our fellow human beings towards the absolute.

2 – If understanding the sutras is sometimes difficult, perhaps we should:

Study them more deeply, without necessarily studying all of them: some, very complicated, they may even cause us to lose sight of practice.
Rewrite certain sutras while taking into account the scientific truths available to us today.
Recognize that if masters often prefer poetic expression, it is because poetry uses metaphors and images to evoke the inexplicable and to try to make the ineffable resonate within us.

Rather than making the sutras the object of intellectual or academic study, the disciple should contemplate and meditate on this poetic form in order to feel the meaning hidden behind the words.

3 – The third point concerns the failure to put the teachings into practice: all sutras arise from the Buddha’s awakening and all invite us to realize that awakening. If it is natural to study them, it is so that we may put them into practice every day, at every moment.

If we believe that we can dispense with the practice of awakening, we are going astray — Buddhism would then become a philosophy, one “-ism” among so many others… This is the danger we face. It is the tendency of the West to analyse, to comment, to confine oneself to the bubble of thought, whereas the Buddha’s message is to acceed to the sphere of reality. We might even end up in a jungle of opinions setting us against one another.

It is necessary to be awakened in order to manifest authentic wisdom, love and compassion. Benevolence is a naturally loving attitude directed towards the good of the other. Compassion seeks to relieve the suffering of others; love seeks to increase their happiness.

And yet, when we decide that we want to help others, we sometimes achieve the opposite result; we know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is said in Shantideva’s Path towards Awakening that compassion is truly effective, and wisdom truly authentic, only with the help of Buddha.

Our intentions to do good, however good they may be, are not sufficient. We must see the situation as it is, with an awakened mind. To awaken is to be at one with reality, immersed in it. This is the heart of our practice. We cannot dispense with awakening to reality if we wish to act with wisdom and compassion. It is in this respect that the sage differs from politicians, philosophers and moralists.

Authentic benevolence is something that is learned and practised; Buddha teaches this.

Buddhism does not reject thought, but restores it to its proper place. It places awakening first; thought follows. Indeed, thought that does not arise from awakening may fall victim to flawed reasoning and lead us to erroneous conclusions, to hidden forms of selfishness. Without our realizing it, benevolence can be led astray by our karma, taken over by the ego, which is always lying in wait. Here again we see the importance of awakening.

4 – Why should religion not be regarded simply as a philosophy ? Nietzsche said: God is dead. Since then, we have sought to live by relying on philosophy. Philosophy forms ideas about reality; it keeps us within the bubble of the intellect — which is not the sphere of reality, but something superimposed upon it.

Shakyamuni Buddha understood this clearly. He acknowledged relative truth, but he had awakened to absolute truth, beyond the grasp of words: ultimate reality.

Letting go of the ideas we form about reality opens consciousness. It is with an open consciousness that we gain access to the heart of things, to reality itself.

If we remain confined to thought, it is like giving a cat a diamond-studded collar when what it really craves is a sardine. We think about reality, but we do not see it as it is. If we are not awakened, our benevolence can often be illusory.

In summary, right practice consists in remaining present to the situation, being awake before it, seeing it as it is, with eyes cleansed of all thought, all preconceptions and all intention. This is the practice of shiné or zazen, during which we stop on nothing: we welcome what comes and let go of what leaves.

To let everything pass is the practice of Great Wisdom, which cleanses our mind of the three poisons and takes us beyond illusions. Yet our practice does not merely consist in remaining with a peaceful mind; it continues in our contact with our fellow human beings, through the power of the vow to help them liberate themselves.

5 – I would like to point to an attitude into which we may fall in perfect good faith, but which is in fact a lack of faith. It is the attitude of an engaged Buddhism in which we undertake political or charitable commitments through which we consciously seek to help, intending to change the world and defend noble causes.

This attitude can arise for several reasons:

Impatience to change the world rather than changing oneself.
The arrogance of believing oneself capable of saving the world.
A need to give oneself a good conscience.
A failure to believe that the best way to help is to efface ourselves before Buddha and give Buddha first place. In fact, we do not trust our Buddha dimension, and we lack the wisdom and strength to go to the depth of things.

If we ourselves are not liberated from the three poisons, it is difficult to help others liberate themselves. It is difficult to bring peace if we ourselves are not at peace.

Politicians do not seek to liberate us from selfishness. They try to manage the coexistence of different selfish interests and make them compatible with one another — which is already something! But the Buddha’s message goes much further: it asks us to act free from all selfishness.

On the Buddha Way, we engage in all the actions of life. This does not mean committing ourselves to a political movement or taking sides for some against others; it means helping the good as well as the wicked, the strong as well as the weak, our friends as well as our enemies.

We engage fully in life when everything is done wholeheartedly, as it should be done, without expecting any profit for ourselves. This unsurpassable attitude resonates throughout the entire universe and converts the world to benevolence.

Many people do good by giving food, comfort, care and advice, but the gift of the Dharma is the highest of all gifts. Teaching others to free themselves from the three poisons is the gift of the Dharma; it is what the world needs most; it is the practice of a true religious practitioner. We have seen worker-priests resort to violence in order to put an end to social injustices. This is an attitude belonging to samsara, the attitude of those who wage war in the name of good. Their cause is noble, but their hearts are under the sway of violence.

n summary, power can be placed either at the service of selfishness or at the service of altruism. There is the power of Buddha, but there is also the power of the ego. Who can say what is good or bad, what is right or wrong? To think that this is good and that is bad is to remain at the level of thought. To think that we must fight against evil is to remain within the realm of concepts. To fight for good, to fight against evil — it is still fighting.

Conclusion

We must be wary of decisions made by the ego. The right approach is to follow the cosmic order: to respond wholeheartedly, with a heart full of wisdom and goodness, to the situation that falls upon us. And to do so in the smallest details of reality.

All abuses of power committed in the name of spirituality arise from a superficial practice that does not go to the heart of things, that remains at the level of appearances, where we believe we are acting for others while in fact, unconsciously, we are acting for ourselves… True strength is the strength of true love, which has the power to change the world.

In every spiritual path, we are told that practising the Way requires us to free ourselves from the pursuit of profit and fame, and therefore from power.

The master must not deceive the disciple: although the master is an authority in their field, they must not act in an authoritarian manner in order to subject the disciple to their own desires. The master–disciple relationship is therefore not a relationship based on force or seduction. The master establishes a relationship of trust grounded in genuine exemplarity. It is on the basis of one’s own practice that one guides others. In every case, the master’s attitude towards the disciple is entirely free of personal interest.

We know that no external force, no police, can deeply compel us to do good and refrain from doing evil. The master cannot change the disciple through personal will. At most, with delicacy and benevolence, the master helps the disciple to awaken, to see their mistakes and to discover for themselves the meaning of life. We cannot help others purify their hearts if we have not purified our own. Only in this way can we honestly fulfil our vocation as religious practitioners.

Taiun Jean-Pierre Faure
Abbot of Kanshoji.

[1] Shiné ( :tib), samatha ( : skrit) refers to the meditation of mental calm practised in a seated posture.

[2] Zazen, objectless seated meditation practised in the various schools of the Japanese Zen tradition