Buddhist Foundation (Vic), Australia

by Kathleen Gregory

The Buddhist Foundation (Vic) Australia is one of the more recently formed Buddhist organisations. Their spiritual adviser and teacher, Venerable Bhikku Bodhi, is from the Forest Hermitage, Kandy, Sri Lanka and their advisers in practice include an impressive list of local and interstate Sangha. I met with Dr Ranjith Hettiarachi, one of the founding members of the Foundation, in his home. At our time of meeting, Dr Hettiarachi was busy with the organisation of the Australasian Buddhist Convention Week, including a two-day Conference, to be held in late June.

Kathleen Gregory: Can you say a little about how the Foundation came about?

Dr Ranjith Hettiarachi: The initial group interested in Buddhist practice came together and realised the value of practice and how difficult it is for us to access good teachers and good teachings. This gave us the stimulus to group ourselves together, to set up a foundation, which had its teaching objectives and practice objectives joined together. These six objectives are really about establishing a charitable teaching foundation, affiliating with other associations and organisations and finally, serving those in need: the aged, ailing and disadvantaged.

KG: You have a principal spiritual adviser and teacher in Sri Lanka, does he come here often?

Dr RH: Bhikku Bodhi has never come to Australia. In fact, to answer this question leads on to how the Convention came about. We had our teacher who had had some training with Bhikku Bodhi in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Bhikku Bodhi is one of the most accomplished meditators, practice teachers and one of the finest of people who, perhaps, you could think of as a Buddhist monk. I was trying to get him down to Australia. He was initially reluctant to come here, but he later consented to come and spend a retreat season here. While I was organising for him to come, it struck me that it was perhaps a better idea if I were to bring in a few others with him, and maybe we could have some form of meeting. Of course it grew, and when I rang around the world asking people to come here, something like ten or twelve out of fifteen consented to come, even though we are so far away. Then this gave me the stimulus, of course, that we go ahead and have a convention. So, having asked Bhikku Bodhi to come, we got the ball rolling towards a convention. Of course, it was not all that easy, but that is how it started.

KG: You said that you do not have premises yet. How and where have you been meeting and practicing together?

Dr RH: We have one of these neighbourhood houses where we meet and do sutta reading evenings together. Some of those meetings are also held here. Then we use some of my offices for the Foundation very successfully. It was easy in the sense that we did not have the problems that other people have in finding premises and setting things up. At this stage, doing this convention is basically management work. In due course, of course, we may need practice premises.

KG: Do you gather as a group to do sutta readings on a regular basis?

Dr RH: Every Tuesday we have sutta reading and on those nights we have had as many as twenty-five people attending. Some days, of course, we are down to about fifteen, but generally there is a set crowd who always attend. We also hold what we call 'daily retreats' every two or three months and not less than forty or so people attend those. That is quite a large group. We invite various other Buddhist centres and we have a couple of well-versed, reputable monks to lead us. Again, these full-day retreats are based on the sutta text.

KG: Where do you meet for those one-day retreats with that many people?

Dr RH: We had a very spacious place in a centre called Dhammasaramaya in Keysborough, just off Springvale Road, past the Springvale area. It is a new place with a good hall and with all parking facilities.

KG: Can you say a bit more, then, about that connection to the suttas? It seems very important from where you are coming from as a group to really connect to the words of the Buddha.

Dr RH: Correct. When you read the suttas, it is as though Buddha is speaking to you, so it is the Buddha's word that you are trying to grasp and understand and this is sometimes not easy. This is where we need a learned, very versatile monk, perhaps, to assist us. Monks like the Venerable Bodhi - who did the translations and editions of these sutta texts - are masters at this. They are the finest, most well-versed monks you could ever think of. By listening to the suttas, especially in a medium of meditation, we are benefited immensely, because we are receiving these teachings, not in our normal wakefulness but in a different plane of contemplation. The teacher, of course, gives an exposition of the teaching in his own way, following the commentary and whatever other things are available in the texts attached to the teaching - he gives an exposition so that we will get an all-round knowledge of what the Buddha was trying to say. Sometimes the language of the time and the way he has put it across, is not easy to grasp in a modern sense.

We did this initially in Melbourne, mind you. When the monk left for Brisbane, we connected him up for two hours by telephone-conferencing to Melbourne, and then we also connected him up to Tasmania, New Zealand, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth - to many, many centres in those two hours. Thereby, we fulfilled one of our other functions by making the Dharma available to whoever is interested. It is a difficult thing, because the telephone connections are limited; the technology is not developed to the extent that we can connect far and wide. It is one of the best functions we have served so far, the sutta reading, presenting it to other Buddhist centres and all the discussions thereof.

KG: This is not a very traditional approach, especially for lay people?

Dr RH: It is not. In fact, it is not at all. After having been a Buddhist all my life, it is only in the last three or four years that I got exposed to that actual sutta reading. The reason is that the suttas are in Pali and not until now have we had a reasonably accurate and reasonably well-presented translation. As you may know, the English translation of many of the Pali words does not have the same meaning. For example, dukkha and unsatisfactoriness - they do not mean the same thing, so we have a difficulty there. Some of these monks - like Bhikku Bodhi who carries a Ph.D. from the United States - have such a good knowledge of English that they are able to go into the depths of the Pali texts and come out with the right terminology. In answer to your question, that is the way to go: to read both the Pali and the English versions. No doubt it is an unusual method of learning, but I found it is the method of learning. One can listen to other people's talks and lectures, but you are far away from practice. Actual practice is in the text, as the Buddha has put it.

KG: What future do you hold for the Foundation?

Dr RH: As regards the future, I have a vision, which is: because we cannot access monks easily, I thought we must utilise modern technology to access monks, no matter where they are - whether they are in the UK or the United States or Dharamsala, in India, or Kandy, in Sri Lanka. I consulted the most technologically accomplished monk on Australian soil, the Venerable Pannyavaro of the BuddhaNet. He says I am two years ahead of time, but it will come. The best examples of this sort of technology is through the television, but it costs too much. To do it at our level, perhaps by computer, is not that much of a cost, but certainly tens of thousands of dollars is nothing for a job like this. It is one of my visions for the future that we will, here in Melbourne, access teachings on a particular day, a particular time in the evening from a faraway location and with a top, first class monk talking to us. And then, perhaps, we will interact. That is what we would want to do.

KG: Well, I like your ambitions. I am also curious in terms of the sixth objective that you have, to be of service to those who are aged and ailing and disadvantaged. Can you speak a little about that?

Dr RH: It is extremely sad that when we get to that level, when we are aged and ailing and disadvantaged, by these or other factors such as disability, we get left alone like a log of wood. This is the time that you need access to Dhamma the most, because you seek comfort, not only the emotional comfort of listening; you ultimately develop a physical comfort out of the Dhamma. These people are deprived of that. And I thought about it, I thought of myself some day when I cannot move around and drive to a temple or whatever and listen to teachings - these people must have some facility to do so. Maybe they have a book but how much can you read? It is not like listening to somebody's voice in the form of a pre-recorded teaching. That is comforting - there is nothing like Buddhist teachings to bring about that ease, that peaceful mind. So that was the purpose of that objective and it is a very important one. Ian Gawler (from the Gawler Foundation), who went through the objectives, told me this is a very, very good objective to conclude with. He is, I think, fully behind that.

KG: What connections do you have with other Buddhist centres and organisations?

Dr RH: Yes, that is the whole purpose - there is no point of being just 'all closed up' - we must interact with all people, all groups. Buddhism has no boundaries so therefore, the teachings have no boundaries either. It is common to humanity. The whole purpose of Buddhism is to serve humanity - that is what it is. To do that you must go and reach out to everybody. Unfortunately, we see a lot of seclusion: Sri Lankans keep to the Sri Lankan teachers, Sri Lankan practice and their rituals. Likewise, the Malaysians will go to the Malaysian teacher and the Vietnamese will go to the Vietnamese. Now, this is not right truly. I think it is something terribly wrong with the Buddhist infrastructure. Those are my perspectives - we have got to open out. I am so glad a centre like yours has come and seen me. I think very highly of you for that, because we have now interacted and we have made inroads into each other, purely with a view to Buddhist teachings and in learning that and furthering that and passing it on to the others who want it.

KG: Are you looking to establish a temple and have a resident teacher?

Dr RH: This will come about this way. It is not so much that I want to go ahead and set up a temple as such, but I certainly want to have access to teachers. I do not mind getting property to set them up. It will turn out to be a temple of some form or other but the whole idea is not so much a temple in its temple form. I want it in its practise form, so that monks are there in practise, not caught up in administration or writing books. By doing that, I will be able to practise with them and then I will give that gift to all who require it. That is the ultimate aim. Why I named it the 'Foundation' is that we will serve as an umbrella for whoever wishes to be affiliated with us. We already have about, I think, twelve, fourteen associations, here and overseas. But I want to set up a network - not a power base - that is the wrong perspective. As it says here in the objectives, 'To affiliate with associations and organisations with similar teachings and practices within Australia and world-wide, seeking and providing mutual co-operation in the fulfilment of the said functions of the Foundation.' That is what it means.

KG: Thank you, Dr Hettiarachi.