Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte and#8220;Come and See for Yourselfand#8221; is a selected Dharmabyte from the talk and#8220;Introducing Buddhismand#8221; delivered to teacher-training students in 1966. In this excerpt, Sangharakshita explores tolerance and the freedom to grow and shows that there is no place for God in Buddhism. The full talk serves as an excellent general introduction to Buddhism.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Come and See for Yourself
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. But at the same time, in Buddhism we see there's no compulsion. Buddhism always says, "Come and see for your self." It's rather remarkable that in Pali, the Thama, that's to say the Buddha's teaching, is called, "Ahi Pasikotam." The teaching which says, "Ahi" which means "Come, Pasikot" which means "Seek." "Come and see for yourself." Don't accept on trust. Don't believe just because the Buddha tells you, "Don't believe because I tell you." Believe because you understand, experience and verify for your self. Only for that reason. In one of the most remarkable passages in the scriptures, the Buddha says to his followers, "O monks, don't accept anything out of respect for me." He says, "Just as gold is tested in the fire, so test my words in the fire of your own spiritual experience." This is one of the reasons why at least we find in Buddhism a complete and a perfect tolerance. Buddhism says, "Everybody must find out the truth for himself or herself." Everybody must find their own path. You can't force anybody else to follow your own path. You must allow others the same freedom that you claim for yourself. Freedom to grow, freedom to develop, spiritually, in their own way. So therefore we find when Buddhists are in a majority in any country, they don't try to compel the followers of the minority religion to become Buddhists. They provide them with all facilities for the falling of their own path. Some of you might know that Thailand is a Buddhist country. When Thailand, of course the majority of people are Buddhists, but the king has the title of "Protector of all religions." In this country, of course, the queen has the title "Defender of the Faith." This goes back to Henry VIII, but when he was given that title by the Pope, the faith meant the Catholic faith. They cross changed the faith from Catholic to all his Roman Catholic to Anglican, but the king or the queen still has that same title. But they're the defendant only of one faith. A lot of the others. But in Thailand, a Buddhist country is different. The king is the protector of all faiths. So in any public occasion, when the king makes presence through the Buddhist monks, they must get the lion's share, but go through more of them. But presence and offerings are also made to Christians, to the Hindus, and the followers of the other faith. Not that the king believes in them all or follows them all, he's a Buddhist. But he recognizes that he's king of the whole people. So the same respect that he shows through the Buddhists, through the Buddhist monks, he shows also through the represented of other religions on public occasions. This is the sort of spirit of Buddhists everywhere. That's why we find in Buddhism, no religious wars, no persecution, no crusade, no inquisition. These things are not found in Buddhist history at all. Not even criticism. Much less to an abuse of other religions. I remember when I was in Kalimpong, in north of eastern India. I came to know a lot of Tibetan Buddhists, especially many refugees, coming freshly down from Tibet. And some of them, after coming down, will go to the bazaar. And here, Christian missionaries preach. So when they used to hear them preach, they'd be very, very shocked. Some of them used to come to be and say, "What do you think we have?" "We couldn't believe our ears." There was a missionary, Christian missionary in the bazaar in the marketplace, and he was abusing Buddhists. He's a religious person. He's supposed to be a partridge, a priest, but he's actually abusing another religion. For then, this is something unthinkable. It was a rather humorous story in this connection, which I told in the meeting the other day. One of my Tibetan students came to me one afternoon and said, "I've made a great discovery." So I asked him, "What is that discovery?" He said, "You know, I didn't realize it before, but Christianity and communism are the same thing." So I said, "What?" "The same thing. How do you make that out?" He said, "Well, I've just been along to the bazaar. I've heard one of the Christian missionaries." And he was abusing the attacking Buddhism, saying that what is this worship of images and buying down to wood and stone and brass and all that sort of thing, and do they think that the image can help them? And when they pray to it, what can it do for them is just wood, it's just stone, and the monks are all parasites living on the fat of the man, and they should be made to work, so on and so forth. He said, "When I was in Lhasa, he said, I usually go to communist meetings. They said exactly the same thing." Look, very words for the same. He said, "So it's quite clear, Christianity and communism are the same." So this should give one much fruitful thought. When one goes about trying to proselytize in this way, when I came back to this country, I was happy to discover, among other things, that that sort of attitude is becoming very, very rare. And some clergy, especially Anglican clergy, to whom I related these incidents were very, very sorry to think that there could be, even now, in the middle of the 20th century, some Christian missionaries were trying to recommend their faith by running down the faith of other people. This seems to be quite hard to date, but unfortunately, here and there in the world, in places like India, you do get missionaries still adopting this sort of attitude, and speaking in this way. And one really can't imagine, and this one has had contact with Sebastian Buddhist, how much it shocks them to hear the follow-up of one religion running down another. It isn't that they're Buddhist and they don't like to be run down by a Christian missionary, if they had even a Buddhist, speaking in the same way about some other religion, they'd feel it equally deep. So this is something which the Tibetan Buddhist mind, in fact, the Buddhist mind in general, can't understand. You may disagree with someone. You may think he completely wrong, but you should, at the same time, treat his ideas with respect. If you argue, argue courteously without heat, and politely cooling, just try to convince him of your point of view. But don't abuse, don't criticize in a bad spirit. So this is the sort of attitude of Buddhism. And that's why, as I've said, in Buddhism, we have had no religious wars, no persecution, no Spanish inquisition, no index, or anything of that sort. Always perfect freedom of religion, perfect tolerance, and always an effort to understand the point of view of the followers about the religion. That's, of course, brings us back to the point that we started from. So we've come as it were full circle. As I've already made clear, I think, Buddhism originated in India. It died out there for various reasons I want to enjoy now, after 1,500 years of history. But it's now extant all over the east, and is very quickly, it seems spreading to the west. There are Buddhist movements in most of the European countries, in Germany and France, Hungary, Holland, Finland, Austria, and perhaps biggest movement of law so far, here in this country. Here, of course, the movement is sent in more or less upon London, where we have not only this place, the Amsterdam Buddhist Vihara, and its Sumga Trust and Sumga Association, but also the Buddhist society, the Eccleston Square, which is the oldest and probably the best known Buddhist organization in the west as a whole. Since my return to this country, I have been very much impressed by the interest which is being shown in Buddhism. I get invitations from all over the place, one week I may be lettering up in Glasgow, another week, of course a crystal in there, a few days later for Oxford or Cambridge, and it was all the time regularly here in London. So it's very encouraging to see this sort of awakening of interest. Not that we expect everybody to become Buddhists, but at least we do expect or we do hope. But as this world gets smaller and smaller, even those who are Christians, we'll take interest in Buddhism and Hinduism, just as we hope those who are Buddhists will take interest in Christianity and in other faiths also. In this way, we come to appreciate different points of view, and to broaden our own minds. In other words, really to educate ourselves in the true sense, not to be frogs in the well, but to be people with broad and liberal, truly Catholic, arts looks and attitudes. So this is, I believe, the spirit in which you will come along this afternoon, and I hope that this visit to a Buddhist will be harder, and this experience of listening to a talk on Buddhism has been of some use and some help and some value. I think we probably have a few minutes left. If there are any questions you'd like to ask anything not quite clear, and perhaps we could deal with things for a little while. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. 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