Buddhism in this present world
Lately I came across an old film called “Kundun” filmed in the 90’s. It talked about the past life of a Tibet leader “Dalai Lama”. As I was watching, many thoughts came into my mind and naturally started questioning myself and Buddhism in general. There were two parts from the film that triggered my mind: One was a part when an army guard asked why Dalai Lama decides to return to earth and the second part is when that strange old guy who whistles the future and telling some monks that they were useless.
As a Buddhist myself, I find it very hard to apply Buddhism into modern society? As this world is becoming more and more political, materialistic etc. I had come to a point that to work with society, one must become part of it. I decided to let go of many Buddhist theory and teachings. From what i've learnt, this world is driven by money and to live means to be able to generate money and to generate money, you need to know how too. When China invaded Tibet, it was meant to be, as the world is changing all the time, maybe it is a sign to provide new answers or a way to test peoples courage. I guest we need to learn to accept and to respect the moments in life. I don’t mean to put down all of Buddhist teachings but to learn to apply it into this world that we are living in rite now. Maybe to a Buddhist point of view, the world we are living now shows more bad than good but there must be a change. Like the other day I was reading a few articles about monks studying at universities to learn to concentrate on more worldly issues, which is great! I personally believe the words “action” & “practice” it is much more important, in a way I prefer to go out to apply what I’ve learnt into daily life than spend most of my time at the temple praying. In this way it will spread the teachings, help more people and to provide myself with more practical answers because we all learn in a different way through our own experiences. I remember when I red the book “Buddha” by Karen Armstrong which is a written biography of the lord Buddha. It was said that the Buddha had let go of all the luxuries he had, to wonder into the outside world to search for an answer to end human suffering which he too suffered along the way. Well what am blogging about is that China did course a lot of change and suffering in Tibet, but looking at it in this way, if it wasn’t for this, Tibet would not be opened up to the world, Its teachings would not spread so fast? It would be a shame if they had kept all its valuable teachings to them self’s than helping millions and millions people around the world?
