Buddhism is not a Missionary Religion

[suspence001]

I had the idea of broadcasting a livestream of the daily evening chants at a local temple so that anyone else who normally attend the temple services, or anyone else online really, can follow along and engage with their practice. This would be automated such that no one, especially the monks and nuns, would need to touch or worry about anything - I would take sole responsibility as a lay practitioner for all operations of this and will purchase all equipment to get it running. I was told that the Abbot didn’t want it. I asked other monks from other temples and they both reminded me that Buddhism is not a “missionary” religion and that people’s kamma will bring them to the temples and therefore no outreach will be necessary. One of the monks insisted that they were not looking for followers and instead focused more on quality of teachings rather than quantity of followers.

I can comprehend this concept from a dhamma perspective - specifically at AN 10.95, Ananda clarifies that the Buddha is not concerned whether the whole world, half the world, or a third of the world is saved but rather is concerned that whoever is saved is done so by basically practicing the path as laid out by his teachings. I agree that a higher quantity of followers doesn’t necessarily mean a higher quality of teachings, and I wholeheartedly agree that our kammas have all brought us to the dhamma. However, I think these underscore how valuable technology can be to assist people with their practice. If a person’s kamma will bring them to the dhamma, then is broadcasting dhamma talks on YouTube looked down on? If not, what is the harm in broadcasting a simple chanting session for others to join? I’m struggling to see why more temples aren’t doing this. Technology can be leveraged to help people strengthen their paths, just like how this website has been an invaluable tool to introduce people to the suttas. I see this as a very low-stakes action with minimal drawbacks, but others see it as a risk.

Just about everyone I know is aware of the monks who went on the Walk for Peace from Arlington, TX to DC. I asked one of the monks I referenced earlier about them and he said that they were called “social media monks” in their circle. I can understand this perspective as I used to feel this way, but I can also appreciate that Buddhism is spreading to so many people. I can’t help but see this glass as half-full. These monks have planted seeds in so many people’s minds, and only time will tell how many will end up taking refuge in the Triple Gem. I don’t see how bad this can be if some people decide to keep the five precepts as a result of being inspired by their actions.

There are more people than you can imagine that have always felt that Buddhism “feels right” for them. I’m sure they can’t explain it in words, but I know exactly what they mean because I have felt the exact same way. I have heard of two former Christians who have said this exact phrase at our temple, that Buddhism “has always felt right to them” - how many more of these types of people are out there but afraid to speak out?

I’m grateful to have been introduced to the dhamma and reading various books from various monks from various backgrounds from various cultures and all of this could not have happened without some sort of “spreading the gospel” so to speak of the Buddha’s teachings. I’m not suggesting at all that Buddhists need to go out in public with signs with sutta references while shouting at people about dhamma, but I fail to see how broadcasted chanting sessions will affect the dhamma in a negative way. I was primarily concerned with followers of the temple who wanted to continue chanting but at the convenience and comfort of their own home, not “spreading the gospel”. But is this really that negative of an idea to entertain? What am I missing here? Why is it so rare to find other temples doing this?

Some may have questions on how the sessions will be recorded and I have answers to them:

Q: What if we attract the wrong crowd?
A: Chat can be disabled so no one can really say anything to offend the other viewers so these disrespectful people won’t have a chance to spread their wrong views.

Q: What if the people don’t want to be broadcasted?
A: I can aim the webcam to focus on the Buddha statue/shrine and leave most people out of it so no identities will be revealed.

Q: How are people going to follow along?
A: My idea was to do a split screen with the broadcast and a teleprompter-type view of the chants in Thai and English that moves as the chanting continues.

Q: What if there aren’t enough people when doing the chanting?
A: You don’t need many people to do the chanting, but I can schedule it to run on specific days when there are usually lots more people attending the chanting services. This doesn’t have to be everyday - it could be once a week.

Q: What if there’s issues with it running?
A: Then it won’t broadcast and nothing would change anyway since hardly any temples broadcast their chanting sessions to begin with.

I respect all temple’s decisions to not entertain this idea and I won’t force it on them, but I’d like to know where I’m wrong in my beliefs. We live in a digital age and I know that this can help people with their practices as much as it would help me. It seems obvious to me that this can only help others. Thank you.

[Dogen]

Hello there.

I think it’s admirable that you want to help spread Dharma and good efforts to people, but I understand completely the monks there.

@suspence001

I respect all temple’s decisions to not entertain this idea and I won’t force it on them, but I’d like to know where I’m wrong in my beliefs.

I think it boils down to - if people don’t want it broadcasted, it doesn’t need to meet any requirement. Seclusion, privacy are a big part of the culture. Everyone is entitled to their privacy. It seems to be the intention channeled here:

@suspence001

I was told that the Abbot didn’t want it.

@suspence001

One of the monks insisted that they were not looking for followers and instead focused more on quality of teachings rather than quantity of followers.

As for your remark here:

@suspence001

We live in a digital age and I know that this can help people with their practices as much as it would help me.

Just as it is a digital age, there really is no shortage of wonderful live services of monks all around the world. So, I don’t think one more or less is going to matter significantly in the long run.

If you want to promote Dharma and such services, it sounds reasonable to me that one would concentrate their efforts on helping broadcast people who were actually excited and eager to go along with such a project. Such people would most definitely appreciate the effort.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you having offered such a thing. However, I question how wise it is to persist at it after you’ve been respectfully rejected.

It’s good that there are live, online, social monasteries. It’s good that there are quiet, secluded, far-off monasteries. We can benefit from both of these inclinations. And it seems wise to respect monastics’ wishes in any case, to benefit from their services however they’re comfortable providing it.

@suspence001

Why is it so rare to find other temples doing this?

BSWA, Lokanta Live, Anukampa Project, Abhayagiri, Amaravati, Empty Cloud, Plum Village, Deer Park, Dharma Drum, Fo Guang Shan, Shasta Abbey, Zen Mountain Monastery… These are just from the top of my head. Some of them share live chanting, rest (and all) have regular Dharma services. Some are Theravadin, some are Mahayana.

There’s also quite many smaller, lesser known temples and monastics’ who are online that I can’t immediately think of right now. Live, daily chanting was a thing in some Discord rooms, but I don’t go on Discord these days, so I couldn’t say.

[BugzNZ]

I agree Buddhism is not a proselytising religion. I mean even Buddha was reluctant to begin teaching. I think that is a strength. People come to Buddhism, not the reverse. There are plenty of suttas discouraging proselytising. Live-stream chanting is probably preaching to the choir, I would suggest. People know I’m a practising Buddhist, even my flatmate sees me practise, meditate etc. I am seldom approached or asked about my practice and I certainly don’t try to sell Buddhism to anyone. As for technology and the digital age, it’s not all positives. Who is broadcasting, who is teaching. Social media is full of greed, hatred and delusion.Technology is not a panacea, it is not “better”, it is a tool. Craftsmen use tools, but so do fools. I agree that it could assist people with their practice. Metta

[prajnadeva]

In my opinion, daily chanting will not attract new people.

And the people who really want to do it usually can do it alone themselves.

In the age of social media, algorithm is the key. If you want to attract people, you need to upload videos regularly, with attractive title and relevant tag. In this case, video of sermon usually perform better.

Daily chanting online, in my limited experience, happened a lot during covid era. People can’t go to their usual local monastery, so that local monastery hold chanting session online. In this case it’s not new people. So, it depends on your goal, do you want to provide comfort for people to practice in home, or do you want to attract new people?

I disagree that Buddhism is not missionary religion. As early as the first 50 bhikkhus, Buddha told them to spread Dhamma around. This spirit of spreading Dhamma persist through Ashoka, Silk Road, China, Tibet, Japan, and so on. The modern hesitation of proselytizing came from the bad reputation of Christian Missionary, who did some bad things in many places. By saying that Buddhism is not ‘missionary religion’, they want to distance Buddhism from Christian Missionary bad behavior when proselytizing.

[Snowbird]

There are two issues in your OP.

First is how to interact with monastics. In my experience, monastics are reluctant to say something that is both a direct lie and also embarrassing. So they come up with increasingly outrageous but still plausible excuses. For example, they may be reluctant to say that when working with you in the past you were both overly insistent and at the same time kind of flaky (This is something people could easily say about me, so that’s what comes to mind first… it’s just an example). But they don’t want to say that outright. There are countless good reasons not to do this, but your attempts to convince them these are not real issues won’t work, because they may not be the real issue to them.

So they move to matters of opinion, i.e. Buddhism is not a missionary religion.

Of course this is absurd. There is no Buddhist country in the world that became so by migration alone. Speaking just of Theravada, there has been no need for internal missionizing in recent centuries because most of the population is already Buddhist.

This means that no Buddhist culture has a recent history of actively trying to convert people^[1]. And in the west, expat communities are unlikely to do much outreach as it would put them in the crosshairs of the dominant Christian tradition. This combined with a lack of recent history of missionary work leads people to easily claim that Buddhism is not a missionary Religion.

It’s true that Buddhism’s missionary motivations are quite different than Christianity. But of course Christianity doesn’t get to define terms for us.

All that to say, drop this. Or find some other group to help. Or help this group in a way they identify they need.

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1. Not withstanding modern cults of course. ↩︎