My Eight Main Teachers — part 1
Tonight I’m going to talk about my own teachers, and I’m going to talk about them mainly by way of personal reminiscences — I’m not trying to give short, potted, systematic biographies. And of course in the course of my life I think I can say I have had very many teachers indeed. Not only Buddhist teachers, but in the earlier phase of my career in India, Hindu teachers, and before that of course there were secular teachers. And according to Buddhist tradition, your very first teachers are of course your parents — they’re called the old or original teachers, and they are also to be included in the list of one’s teachers. In fact one can even go so far as to say one learns from every single person whom one meets in the course of one’s life. One learns something or other. But obviously limits have to be imposed. I certainly can’t want to talk about all my teachers: tonight I’m just going to reminisce about my eight most important Buddhist teachers, and obviously I’m not going to able to say very much about any of them, but I hope that in the course of the next hour-and-a-half I shall be able to give you a glimpse of what they were like. Give you a glimpse of what they meant to me, and perhaps what they might come to mean to some of you.
I’m going to start off at the beginning, chronologically speaking: I’m going to start off with Bhikkhu Jagdish Kasyap. I don’t know how many of you have heard his name before, so I’ll just repeat it: Bhikkhu Jagdish Kasyap. Kasyap-ji as he was usually called (‘ji’ being an honorific suffix), was Indian, he was in fact a Bihari; Bihar being that province or that state in India in which Bodhgaya, where the Buddha was enlightened, is situated. He used to talk to me a bit about his earlier life, his ancestry. He came of respectable, peasant or small landholding stock and seems to have been a rather religious-minded youth. Of course, he was born as a Hindu. And while he was still in his teens, he joined a Hindu organization, a sort of Hindu reform organization, called the Aryasamaj, founded by Swami Dayananda Sarasvati in the last century. This particular Samaj, this organization, was opposed to image worship, not very much in favour of the caste system, and strongly emphasized Vedic Hinduism. Kasyap joined the Aryasamaj, became a Hindu Sannyasin, and embarked upon the study of the Vedas, the most sacred scriptures of the Hindus. He embarked on their study because these were the texts which the Aryasamaj so strongly emphasized, and all Hindus believed that the Vedas were the foundation of their faith, of their practice, contained all possible mysteries — and often Hindus believe that the formula for the manufacture of the atom bomb is to be found in the Vedas — so Kasyap was very excited and very thrilled to be able to embark on the study of the Vedas. And of course he had to learn Sanskrit, including Vedic Sanskrit which is rather different to classical Sanskrit. But he was very disillusioned. He didn’t find any wisdom, he told me, he didn’t find any philosophy. He found hymns to this god, that god, especially hymns to Indra, a sort of thunder god, rather quarrelsome, rather fond of fighting, often getting drunk — a rather edifying sort of god; he found all sorts of rituals described, all sorts of chants, he found all sorts of magic spells to destroy your enemies and attract love — and he felt, Well, where is the sublime philosophy that I was promised?
He used to say to me subsequently that the best way of weaning a Hindu away from Hinduism is to get them to study the Vedas. Because normally they’re not studied, you very, very rarely find even a Brahmin who possesses a copy of the Vedas, they’re very rare indeed. You used to find the Vedas in the libraries of the scholars in the West; you don’t find them in India.
Anyway, to cut a rather long story short, he did become very disillusioned with the Vedas, with the Aryasamaj, with Hindusim — so he started exploring other faiths: for example, Sikkhism and Buddhism. And when he came upon Buddhism, which don’t forget had been actually dead in India for hundreds upon hundreds of years, he decided that this was the faith, this was the religion for him. He went to Sri Lanka, he became a bhikku there, he studied Pali, and became in fact a Tipitaka-Acarya, that is to say he studied the whole of the Pali canon in the original Pali language — in the royal Thai edition this is some 45 volumes. Kasyap had studied them all, and was therefore eventually granted this title. But though he had studied the Tipitaka in Pali in Sri Lanka, though he’d become a bhikku there, he did not in fact have a very high opinion of the Sri Lankan Bhikku Sangha. He used to tell me some rather amusing stories which rather illustrated their approach to the Dharma, even their formalism. I remember him telling me once that — well, I should explain that in Sri Lanka, among the bhikkus, there are various sects. There are three main sects, so how do you tell them apart? They dress a little differently. Monks belonging to two of them, when they go out, out of the monastery, they cover both shoulders with their robes. Monks belonging to the other one do not: they leave the right shoulder bare. And there’s a difference of umbrellas, I might add while I’m on the subject. One sect carry a black umbrella, one carry a Burmese-style, parasol-type umbrella because they originate from Burma, the other are very strict, they make do with a big plantain leaf. In this way you can tell them apart. So it’s very important, apparently, in Sri Lanka, to know which Nikaya, or sect of the sangha, a bikkhu belongs to; and bikkhus I suppose like to know which Nikaya another bikkhu who they happen to meet belongs to. Kasyap was always being asked this question when he travelled around in Sri Lanka — which Nikaya do you belong to?
So Kasyap, who had after all come into Buddhism from the outside, was not a Sri Lankan, used to say Nikaya? I belong to Buddhanikaya
. So that didn’t satisfy them at all, so they used to probe a little, and they used to ask him, he told me, Well, when you go out, when you leave the monastery, do you cover one shoulder, or do you cover two?
Kashyap used to say, Well, when it’s hot I cover two shoulders, when it’s very hot, I cover only one, when it’s very,very hot I don’t cover either
. So he could not be caught; and he used to tell me other stories too. He told me that one day he was giving a lecture, and he was invited to give a lecture on the anatta doctrine, the doctrine of no-self as it’s usually translated; and he started off by saying that you couldn’t understand what was meant by anatta, or non-self or no-self, unless you first of all understood what was meant by atta, or self. So at that moment, as soon as he’d said that, various Sri Lankan bikkhus got to their feet and shouted We don’t want any of that Hindu philosphy here
. Kasyap tried to explain that he wasn’t preaching Hindu philosophy, he was only trying to clarify the concept of anatta. But they would not accept it, they actually shouted him down, they forced him to resume his seat. So he used to tell me stories like this; and at the end, as I believe I’ve related in The Rainbow Road, he said to me — because as you know the Pali Tipitaka, the Pali scriptures, were admittedly preserved in Sri lanka by the Sri Lankan bikkhus — but he said, Sangharakshita
— this is how he used to talk — Sangharakshita, those Sinhalese bikkhus, they are a set of monkeys, sitting on a treasure, the value of which they do not understand.
This is what he said.
He also told me one or two little stories about the laity to illustrate their attitude, and he said one day that he was going for alms, he was begging with his begging bowl, and he was quite a new monk, a new bikkhu, and couldn’t keep his robe up; it kept slipping down. But in some sort of miraculous way, when you’ve been in the robes for five or six years, the robe just stays up. And believe it or not, this is my own experience: if you are a monk of some experience, of some standing, you can actually do a prostration and your robe won’t fall off. But anyway, Kasyap found his robes slipping down. So what did he do? He had his begging bowl in his hand, so he just put it to one side on the ground while he adjusted his robe. An old woman saw him doing this, and at once started screaming What sort of a bikkhu is this here, who doesn’t even know how to respect his bowl, he’s ignorant of the Vinaya
— because there is an obscure Vinaya rule which says bikkhus mustn’t put their begging bowl on the ground. So the old woman knew that somehow, and she was screaming at him and abusing him for being a bad bikkhu. Anyway, this was Kasyap’s experience, or some of his experience, of Sri Lanka. Anyway he left Sri Lanka and for a while he was in Penang, with Chinese bikkhus, staying in a Chinese Buddhist temple; and he was of course a Theravadin, not a narrow-minded one, quite a liberal-minded one, but nonetheless at this time — which was about 15 years before I met him — he wasn’t quite so liberal-minded as he afterwards became. And what happened with this? And this is a story he related to me personally. He used to visit Chinese Buddhist temples, that is to say, Mahayana Buddhist temples with his Chinese friends, and they used to bow down to the Buddha image, bow down to Kuan Yin that is to say Avalokitesvara, bow down to all the other Bodhisattvas. Kashyap however, being a good Theravadin, he only bowed down to the Buddha, and not the Bodhisattvas. So his friend, who accompanied him to the temples, didn’t say anything. But that day, when they got back to the house, and lunch was served, Kashyap found he’d only been given rice. So he didn’t really like to say anything, but nonetheless he looked to his friend and after a while he said &Where is the curry?
so the friend said Well, the rice is the main course.
He said it’s just like that with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Admittedly, yes the Buddha is the main thing, but the Bodhisattvas are also necessary. So, yes rice is the main thing, but curries are also necessary. So Kashyap said he learnt his lesson because he was someone who could take a point. Whenever he went to the Mahayana temples thereafter he bowed down to the Bodhisattvas too.
Thereafter he came back to India, and when I came to know him, which was in 1949, he was professor of Pali and Buddhist philosophy at the Benares Hindu University — I’ve written about this in The Rainbow Road. He’d been professor of Pali and Buddhist philosophy for 12 years, but he was feeling very frustrated because he had very few students, I think only four or five. And why was this? Benares Hindu University had been founded mainly by orthodox Hindus, and they were very keen on Sanskrit, they weren’t very keen on Pali. The only reason why they had the department of Pali was that one of their very great benefactors, whom they didn’t wish to offend, had insisted on there being a department of Pali and had offered to pay all the expenses of that department. He happened to be a patron of Kashyap’s. But what they did was this — I don’t know how many of you are familiar with academic goings on — but they made, the university made a rule that yes, you could study Pali if you wanted to, but you couldn’t take Pali unless you also took Sanskrit. So very few people were so eager to learn Pali that they were willing to learn Sanskrit, which is much more difficult, at the same time. So in this way, Kashyap came to have very few students; and when I met him, and started staying with him and studying with him, he was always very frustrated for that reason. I personally found him to be an excellent teacher — again I’ve written about this in The Rainbow Road. He was not only extremely well-versed in the subjects that I studied with him, that is to say logic, both Buddhist and western, Abhidhamma, and Pali; he often knew the texts by heart. And I stayed with him probably nearly a year. After that he wanted a bit of change, he took me on pilgrimage in Bihar to places like Nalanda and Rajgir and he took me up to Kalimpong which I’d never heard of before; and to cut a long story short he left me there with the parting injunction Stay here and work for the good of Buddhism
— which I tried to do. I was then 24. Subsequently Kashyap left the Benares Hindu University, and he founded the Nalanda Pali Institute in the vincinity of the ancient Nalanda Mahavihara or monastic university. And the NPI I believe has been raised to university status by the government of Bihar. He also edited in Devanagari characters the entire Tipitaka, writing prefaces in English to every volume and summaries of all the suttas.
I remember that while I was with him in Benares at the university, he told me he’d gone through the entire Tipitika so many times in Pali that he felt that he had it right here in the palm of his hands. And it was then his intention to write a book in Pali — because he spoke as well as wrote Pali and sanskrit and I heard him give Sanskrit lectures — a work in Pali of the essence of the Tipitaka, which would just give you the essence of the Buddha’s teaching as recorded in the Pali scriptures. I’m afraid he never actually got around to it, but that was his original intention. Thereafter I did see him from time to time. The last time I saw him was in 1966 at Nalanda, at the Nalanda Pali Institute which was then flourishing, and I took some pictures of him — I had a picture of him feeding his peacocks; he was very fond of these peacocks. He used to come out of his residence every morning with some grain, and these peacocks would come flying through the air and he’d feed them. So that’s my last memory of Kashyap. He died some years ago. But his work, I’m delighted to say, his work for the Pali language and literature is being continued by his nephew, who is also a scholar in Pali and Buddhism. And I was very interested to learn that Saramati had been one of his students. The nephew is now retired, living in India in Sarnath: he was formerly teaching in the States and has founded an institute of Pali and Buddhist studies in memory of his uncle Jagdish Kasyap, and has invited the cooperation of the Thank you Bhante
, he’d close his eye... so that was what he was like. That was Jagdish Kasyap, and obviously I have very fond memories of him indeed. Perhaps I should also add that I very much regarded him as my teacher — well, he was — though he always used to say that I was his friend. And he said he learnt a lot from me, which I very much appreciated (though I didn’t really agree about that).