Nam is the British-Vietnamese Buddhist interviewed in this programme. In the video he says he is Buddhist and Vietnamese. There are Christians in his family too, and he has lots of “English” friends.

Belonging is important to him, but he says being a Buddhist is much more important than that, because of the way it’s made him think about life.

Many Vietnamese people came to Britain in the 1970s as refugees from communist Vietnam, following the Vietnam War. Nam was born in Britain.

Some of Nam’s Vietnamese friends told us they wanted to get a good education so that they could go back to Vietnam and help their people, for example as doctors.

Think about and discuss

• What did Nam mean by “English”? Who do you think is British?
• Is it more important to have beliefs or to belong? Is it possible to choose?
• Do you have to believe to belong? Might people choose to be part of a community or group even if they didn’t share the beliefs of the other members? Why?
• Do you have to belong to believe? Can people live by religious or spiritual beliefs without being part of a group or community?
• Could standing up for one’s beliefs sometimes mean having to leave a group?

Buddhists might have a variety of views on this – here are a few:

• they come from a Buddhist family and culture. If your family were Buddhist, you might feel you were too, even if you didn’t know very much about what the Buddha taught.
• they attend a Buddhist temple, often or just for festivals
• they agree with Buddhist teachings, such as the precepts taught in most Buddhist traditions.
• they have committed themselves to following the Buddha’s teachings, privately or in a ceremony witnessed by other Buddhists. (see What is the Sangha? section)
• they Take Refuge in the Three Jewels/Triple Gem. They put their trust in the Buddha, who showed the way leading to Enlightenment; the Dharma – his teachings – and the Sangha.

Can you think of other reasons why someone might consider themselves
a Buddhist?

The word Sangha has several meanings. Some Buddhists use it to refer to Buddhist monks and nuns only; some use it to refer to a whole community of Buddhists, or all Buddhists everywhere, whether monastic, lay or ordained. It can also refer to all the women and men who have ever gained Enlightenment. Buddhism teaches that such people prove that it is possible for any human being to reach perfect wisdom and compassion.

Buddhism has a particular contribution to make to discussions of community cohesion and identity. Identity is something we all need. According to Buddhism, it’s also something to let go of, again and again, in every moment.

The Buddhists in the video explain the teaching of no fixed self (anatman/anatta). In the Buddhist view, everything is composite and depends on other things. Thus, everything changes constantly, including us (anitya/anicca).

The most famous scriptural exposition of anatman/anatta describes the monk Nagasena’s discussion of a chariot with the ancient king Milinda. Where does the essence of the chariot lie? The king cannot answer. “Chariot” is a concept applied to a temporary arrangement of wheels, chassis, reins, etc. So it is with our moods and thoughts, and our bodies which alter as our nails grow and stomachs fill and empty. Thus, there is no soul, no unchanging pure essence which outlives the body.

Buddhism simply observes that this is the Way Things Are – and when we behave as though things did have a fixed identity we suffer because we are not behaving in accordance with Reality.

Nurturing what is positive in tradition can provide security and help build community – up to a point. However, clutching at a sense of me, my culture, my tradition (even my Buddhism) leads to disharmony, defensiveness, warfare; polarisation with people who are “not like us”.

In the video Venerable Amaranatho says:

If we look at our identity, we can see it in terms of an onion. We’re just peeling off the layers, layer upon layer, and slowly as well, and we’re investigating each layer as it comes off. And although we reconstruct it at the end because we need to function in the world, the essence is that there is no onion.

This sounds a bit mysterious. What is he talking about?!

We see an onion as a thing and think ‘onion’. However, Buddhism says that if we take away the layers there is nothing left which we can truly call an onion.

When he talks of peeling off the layers slowly, Amaranatho is referring to the way a Buddhist may choose to reflect on the various aspects of their personality or identity. Doing this, they will see that there is nothing fixed about them: each of us is a collection of tendencies and habits developed in response to all the things which have influenced us in life.

Buddhism says everything is like that. There is no bit of Amaranatho which remains the real Amaranatho if we take away all the other bits.

So Buddhism says we have no fixed identity or personality that we need to protect. Everything is always changing. For example, while you are reading this, you are having mental responses to what you are reading and your hair and nails are growing.

Buddhism teaches that eventually, with practice, we can come to see that there are really no ‘things’ at all; just processes.

However, only a Buddha could really live like this. People who are not Enlightened yet still need a sense of self, and some healthy self- respect. That means most of us.

Everyone can change for the better
If there is nothing about us which is fixed, it follows that we can all change for the better.

Buddhism teaches that as we make an effort to act more kindly and wisely we will become happier, kinder, wiser people. (If we put energy into our unhelpful habits, we will still change, but become more and more unhappy and unpleasant to know!)

These are variously translated as the four Means of Conversion or Unification, Four Bases of Sympathy etc. Little known in the modern Buddhist world, they are ways of bringing people together in a spirit of kindness, sympathy and co- operation. The Buddha talks about them several times in Sanskrit and Pali scriptures. (Sanskrit: sangrahavastu/Pali:sangahavatthu).

Below are two examples of the first scriptural mentions of these Means of Unification. The first is a short statement by the Buddha. The second is the story of the Buddha’s meeting with a young man named Hatthaka.

It is implied that they have met a while before, though the first meeting is not recorded. We may infer that on the first occasion Hatthaka, a new follower of the Buddha, felt alone and in need of spiritual community. He asked the Buddha what he should do. It appears that, acting on his advice, within a relatively short time his actions have proved amazingly successful.

The Four Sangrahavastus are also mentioned in the Mahayana scriptures. In the Ratnamala scripture, the Indian teacher Nagarjuna includes them in his advice to a king. Elsewhere they are described as the ways in which a “Bodhisattva” draws together a group of people who want to live by the Buddha’s teachings. In Mahayana Buddhism a Bodhisattva is a heroic archetype, the ideal woman or man, helping all beings move away from suffering and towards the perfect wisdom and compassion of Enlightenment.

The first sangrahavastu is generosity. The second is kindly speech. The second two are more complicated. All four overlap considerably: benefiting others (no. 3) clearly involves generosity and kindly speech. Among its shades of meaning no. 4 includes being an example and treating others equally.

The Buddha was staying outside the town of Alavi. Hatthaka, who lived with his family in the town, came with five hundred friends and followers to see the Buddha. They were all committed Buddhists and they brought gifts to show their appreciation of the Buddha.

The Buddha said: “This following ofyours, Hatthaka, is very large. How do you stay united?

“Sir, we stay united by the four means of unification which you taught me.
When I know that I can make a connection with someone through generosity, I use generosity.
When I know that I can make a connection with someone through kind speech, I use kind speech.
When I know that I can make a connection with someone through beneficial activity, I use beneficial activity.
When I know that I can make a connection with someone through exemplification,
I use exemplification.”

“Well done, Hatthaka! This is just the way to bring people together. It always has been and it always will be.”

Then the Buddha gave a talk. Hatthaka and his friends listened, inspired and excited by his words. Then they went home.

Compiled and edited from the Hatthaka Sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya, Pali Canon.

Buddhism teaches that generosity is a fundamental practice for anyone who aspires to develop wisdom and compassion. Both Theravada and Mahayana scriptures put it at the top of their lists of great virtues to be cultivated on the path to Enlightenment: the Ten Perfections (Theravada) and the Six Perfections (Mahayana).

The early Buddhist scriptures contain numerous references to the importance of giving and various ways and motivations for being generous. Interestingly, these include common pitfalls.

Ways and reasons to give

• spontaneously
• because you are frightened
• to pay someone back because they’ve given you something
• because you want something in return
• you just believe it is good to give in life
• you want people to think you are a good person
• you want to show kindness/affection
• you’re angry
• giving is a tradition in your family
• you believe giving will lead to a good rebirth
• you believe giving will help you develop a joyful heart

For Buddhists, generosity is a simple, very important attitude everyone can develop – and it’s a great way of bringing people together.
Generosity helps others and it can also help us. Buddhism teaches that generosity can help us become happier because it links us to others and makes us less self-centred.

The Buddha was staying outside the town of Alavi. Hatthaka, who lived with his family in the town, came with five hundred friends and followers to see the Buddha. They were all committed Buddhists and they brought gifts to show their appreciation of the Buddha.

The Buddha said: “This following ofyours, Hatthaka, is very large. How do you stay united?

“Sir, we stay united by the four means of unification which you taught me.
When I know that I can make a connection with someone through generosity, I use generosity.
When I know that I can make a connection with someone through kind speech, I use kind speech.
When I know that I can make a connection with someone through beneficial activity, I use beneficial activity.
When I know that I can make a connection with someone through exemplification,
I use exemplification.”

“Well done, Hatthaka! This is just the way to bring people together. It always has been and it always will be.”

Then the Buddha gave a talk. Hatthaka and his friends listened, inspired and excited by his words. Then they went home.

Compiled and edited from the Hatthaka Sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya, Pali Canon.

Buddhist ritual varies a great deal across traditions and countries. At the start of this puja, or worship ritual, the Buddhists chant Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samasambuddhasa, or “Praise to the worthy one, the perfectly Enlightened One!” It’s in Pali, an ancient Indian language of the Buddha’s time.

It’s common in many traditions to follow this with this declaration, three times:

I go for refuge to the Buddha.
I go for refuge to the Dharma.
I go for refuge to the Sangha.

However, these Buddhists are using a different form of words, written by the ordained Buddhist leading the ritual. He describes the Buddha as “the heart of kindness” and “the heart of peace”.

I go for refuge to the heart of kindness.
I go for refuge to the heart of peace.

The Buddhists make offerings of candles and incense to the Buddha, while chanting a mantra, (a series of sacred sounds) praising the Buddha (also known as “Shakyamuni” – the sage, or wise man, of the Shakya clan). This mantra is in Sanskrit, another ancient Indian language.

om muni muni maha muni shakyamuni svaha
Praise to the wise one, the great wise one of the Shakyans!

The early Buddhist scriptures emphasise ethical communication again and again. Right Speech is part of the Noble Eightfold Path. (see below.) Avoiding ‘false speech’ is one of the Five Precepts – guidelines about behaviour which causes suffering and leads us away from Enlightenment. 

In the Buddha’s time, the teachings mainly related to the way people spoke to each other; few people could read or write. Today Buddhists apply these teachings to communication in general. Our body language and the way we use words, whether in email, texts, websites, books or magazines,can bring people together or stir them up against each other.

False speech
False speech isn’t just about telling lies. It also refers to communication which doesn’t fit with the Buddha’s description of the way things are in life.

For example, let’s take gossip. When we talk about someone, we usually talk about their faults and we often say or think that that the person is always like this. Yet, the Buddha taught that everything changes and that all human beings can make progress. We also forget that how this person seems to us has a lot to do with our own attitudes; other people may experience them quite differently.

Finally, gossip is usually unkind so it will lead to unhappiness for the person gossipping as well as the person being talked about.

Do we always have to be ‘nice’?
The Buddha taught his followers to be aware of their intention when doing anything, including speaking. Sometimes we do have to say things which are painful to hear. We need to check we genuinely want to help the other person; shaming and embarrassing people is unkind and and won’t help them change for the better.

Buddhism teaches that helping each other understand how our behaviour causes suffering – for ourselves and others – is an act of great compassion.

In everyday English, the terms feeling and emotion are often used interchangeably. In Buddhism, they refer to two experiences which are linked but crucially different.

The early scriptures use the term vedana to describe sensations we receive through our senses – including impressions received through the mind, which Buddhism regards as a sense.

The feelings that arise when our senses encounter the external world can be pleasant, painful or neutral. In response to these sensations we experience craving (trsna/tanha; literally, thirst), or its opposite: aversion.

You can see this illustrated in paintings of the Wheel of Life: feeling is represented by a man with an arrow in his eye, or a woman feeling her way forward with eyes closed; craving is shown as a person accepting a drink.

For a Buddhist, the gap between feeling and craving is crucial. If, instead of automatically reacting with craving or ill-will, we can learn to be more aware, we’ll gradually choose more creative responses with much more enjoyable consequences.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) president of the United States of America, defined democracy as
“government of the people, for the people, by the people”.

The Buddha’s 10th quality of a king/ruler is
“to rule in harmony with the will of the people and for their benefit”.

• Where do these two statements overlap?
• How are they different?
• What questions do they give rise to?

For example, what if the people want something which their ruler/government thinks is not going to benefit them? Who knows best?

In Bhutan, the king thought democracy would be best for his people, even though quite a lot of them didn’t want it. Can you have democracy against the will of the people?

Arthacariya/atthacariya is the third of the four behaviours recommended by the Buddha for drawing people together. It means beneficial action; behaviour that helps others. Obviously, generosity and kind speech are also beneficial activities. However, arthacariya refers particularly to practical activities – things we do to help others.

It can sometimes seem that nothing we do makes any difference. However, the Buddha’s teaching of karma/kamma is that acting, speaking and even thinking kindly and
generously will have enjoyable results for us and others; and when we behave selfishly the effect will be unpleasant.

Whatever we do, whoever we are and whether we live in a democracy or under another form of government, we all contribute something to the society in which we live. The only question is, What? Suffering and fear? Friendliness, kindness and generosity? Apathy? (Apathy means feeling you can’t be bothered.)

Democracy isn’t perfectly fair. When the majority get their way in a vote or an election there are always some who don’t. However, according to the Buddha’s first Noble Truth, life is just like that: imperfect.

Among Buddhists you’ll find a variety of decision-making processes. Sometimes they decide democratically, by voting.

Sometimes they agree to follow the advice of Buddhist leaders and teachers they consider wisest and most experienced.

Some find consensus decision-making a good way to make sure nobody loses out. This means that through listening and discussion, they reach a decision on which everyone agrees, even though it may be different from what anyone wanted at the start.

Bhutan is a mountainous country the size of Switzerland, in the Himalayas between Tibet and India. Buddhism is the state religion, though some Bhutanese are Hindu.

Bhutan has become well known for its policy of Gross National Happiness (GNH). (‘Gross’ means ‘overall’.)

Most countries measure their prosperity in terms of Gross National Product (GNP), which refers to how much money a country earns through selling goods and services to other people and countries.

Introduced in 1972, Gross National Happiness measures a country’s progress in terms of its people’s wellbeing, by looking at four areas:

• cultural values
• sustainable development
• conservation of the natural environment and
• good governance

All public policy is formulated with GNH in mind.

Are there other things you would have expected to find on this list?

Most Bhutanese are very poor by western standards. However, everybody has enough to eat. With universal entitlement to free primary education and healthcare, rising literacy rates and most people having access to clean drinking water, Bhutan’s people may well be some of the most prosperous people in the developing world.

In the video, here’s what the young people say about happiness:

“If we don’t have positive thinking I don’t think we’ll achieve happiness because our mind is such that the more we have, the more we want.”

“Be satisfied with what you have and don’t … be greedy for something which you cannot possess… And if you have that quality of satisfaction, being happy with what you have, I think you will be happy.”

“Happiness is related to mind. If mind is happy… satisfied, happiness will ultimately shower on us.”

They are all referring to the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths (see 4a above), which teach that unhappiness is caused by our discontentment with things and experiences as they are.
‘Positive thinking’ here doesn’t mean just ‘looking on the bright side’ all the time, pretending that nothing unpleasant is happening.

Thinking positively means noticing what we’ve got, looking out for what is enjoyable in any thing or situation. There are almost always small enjoyable things in our experience – even when things are not quite right, or even pretty bad, right now. For example, someone alone and in pain might remember all the other people around the world in pain right now and wish them well. As a result they might feel more warmhearted and less alone.

Sections 5a and 5b link the way we deal with our waste to the teaching of samanarthata/ samanatthata. This term has connotations of sameness or equality and is variously translated as practising what you preach, treating others as yourself, treating all equally, or behaving consistently. It has also been translated as exemplification, or setting an example, which is the sense in which we choose to use it here.

Buddhism teaches that all phenomena whatever – an earthquake, a meeting or a passing thought – come into existence in dependence on conditions. A simple example is the germination of a seed, which requires oxygen, moisture, light etc. In the absence of any one of those conditions, there is a different outcome. This ‘Law’ of Conditionality is just the way things are; it does not indicate a Creator. This is the fundamental teaching of the Buddha, and all other Buddhist teachings stem from it.

It follows that nothing has any fixed essence (anatman/anatta), because everything changes constantly (anitya/anicca), when its supporting conditions change. Humans find all this rather difficult (dukkha)! It also follows that all phenomena are connected in a complex network of dependence. Buddhist traditions differ in their analysis of this interdependence.

If everything changes when its supporting conditions change, it follows that everything we do, think or say has an effect in the world. The word karma/kamma simply means ‘action’. It’s shorthand for the teaching that all actions have consequences: Buddhism teaches that kind, thoughtful actions have positive consequences; selfish, unkind actions unpleasant consequences.

Buddhist traditions differ in whether they think everything which happens to us is the result of our own actions (karma), or of five types of causation (the niyamas), of which karma is just one. However, the teaching of rebirth means that we are responsible for our existence; for there being a ‘me’ for things to happen to.

We can harness the world’s inherent changeability: as we learn to behave, speak and think with greater wisdom and kindness, we will become more deeply contented and have a better and better effect on the world.

Karma means that we have power: to bring about change, in ourselves and in the world, through developing awareness and changing our own behaviour. The work of the American Buddhist and systems analyst Joanna Macy has been to help people (of all faiths and none) realise they have this positive power.

This is a modern term sometimes used by Buddhists who believe that Buddhists should be more active in looking after the earth, other people and animals. They may be involved in political activities, or in social projects such as the soup kitchen in Section 2, Generosity. Some Buddhists think that this is part of what Buddhism is about anyway, so there is no need for a special term such as Engaged Buddhism.

Sections 5a and 5b link the way we deal with our waste to the teaching of samanarthata/ samanatthata. This term has connotations of sameness or equality and is variously translated as practising what you preach, treating others as yourself, treating all equally, or behaving consistently. It has also been translated as exemplification, or setting an example, which is the sense in which we choose to use it here.

Paper Shotton Paper Mill in north Wales is the UK’s largest paper mill. It receives a hundred trucks full of waste paper every day; enough to fill a sports stadium twice a year. This saves cutting down a forest the size of Wales (or the US state of New Hampshire) every year. It can take just seven days for used paper to be recycled and used again.

Glass can be used to make new glass, or for building road foundations. In the UK we use 6 billion glass bottles and jars every year.

Cans Recycling an aluminium can may use 95% less energy than making it from scratch: enough energy to power a TV for 3 hours. If all the aluminium cans in the UK were recycled there would be 12 million fewer dustbins!

Plastic British people use over 15 million plastic bottles every day; enough to fill 100 olympic-size swimming pools every year! Plastic is made from oil, which will eventually run out.

Computers can be mended or recycled. In the UK it’s illegal to put them in a landfill. They contain reusable metals such as gold and silver. The plastic can be ground up and used again and so can the monitors.

Printer cartridges take 1000 years to rot in a landfill.

Composting at Fairfield
Plastic wrappers are removed by hand before the fruit and vegetable waste is mixed with garden waste. The mixture is stacked up in the composting units and the microbes get to work! The huge quantity produces temperatures as high as 70 degrees centigrade, which is why it takes just seven days; inyour garden bin it might take a year. The composted materials age a bit more in big brown piles for a few more weeks. The finished compost is sold to parks, garden centres and allotments, and for road-building. Unfortunately most organic waste is not posted but sent to landfill, where it may attract rats and seagulls. Some landfills use hawks to kill or scare off the seagulls.

Recycling is only the third form of dealing with waste. It’s even better if you can re-use things. However, all this wouldn’t be so necessary if we just thought more deeply before we bought new things in the first place! Food usually goes off in our refrigerators because we bought more than we needed. What if we just didn’t keep buying so much all the time?