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FACE TO FACE | EASTERN HORIZON 29

Benny: Can you share how you Yes, absolutely rituals are still it’s important to leave space for
became interested in Buddhism relevant in today’s world, especially people to take up dharma practice
and what attracted you the most since so many people seem to have whether they find teachings like
in the beginning? forgotten what rituals are for and reincarnation and karma plausible
why they’re valuable. We actually or not.
Claire: Well, I was raised in a small use a lot of rituals these days; we
town in North Texas, so I wasn’t just might not realize it! Graduation But the second part of this answer
really introduced to Buddhism ceremonies are a powerful ritual is that I’ve come to believe in
until I went to Rice University in marking a student’s transition from reincarnation, based partly on
Houston. It was my second year the role of learner to someone research done by a team of scientists
of college when I signed up for ready to find their place in society, at the University of Virginia and
a survey course on East Asian for example. other research institutions. And now
cultures, and one of the professors, that I can intellectually accept that
Anne Klein, assigned us a Buddhist If you harness the power of a ritual idea, I see how much of Buddhist
sutra to read – The Questions of King intentionally, it can bring a shift practice is actually oriented toward

Milinda – and I was immediately in the way you relate to the world optimizing our karma for future
hooked on the idea that when you around you. For instance, one of my lifetimes. Really, all of practice is
look for a self, you can’t find it. favorite Tibetan Buddhist rituals is like an amazing next-life-hacking
a fire offering, in which you imagine technology!
Buddhism just makes so much the fire is a wrathful deity and you
sense! Especially compared with feed it all the negativity of the past Without the idea of karma, not just
the fundamentalist Christian week or month or year. You’re using in this lifetime but across lifetimes,
church I was raised in. I find the the world around you to remember Buddhist ethics doesn’t really make
teachings on meditation and other that because of emptiness, negative sense; the practice of dedicating
forms of dharma practice very energy can be transformed or merit, for instance, doesn’t make
practical and effective, and I think released, and that’s something we sense; even the idea of awakening
the Buddhadharma offers a way to definitely need these days. (bodhi) isn’t accessible for most of
improve my future lifetimes and us if we only have one lifetime to
eventually wake up and hopefully be Many Western Buddhists have wake up. So I do think – speaking for
helpful to all living beings. put aside teachings such as myself here – that my understanding
reincarnation and karma and of the dharma has deepened

What intrigued me the most about only focus on meditation. Is immensely after I came to fully
Buddhism in the beginning was that this a correct approach to accept karma and reincarnation.
instead of offering a set of beliefs understanding the Buddha’s
that I had to accept, it’s more about teachings? How can the doctrine of
beginning to notice the assumptions reincarnation teach us about
we have about the world and the I’d like to give a two-part answer: living well?
ways those don’t match reality. It’s a First, a lot of people (like me when
path of more and deeper and better I started practicing Buddhism) The biggest difference reincarnation
questioning, not a checklist of beliefs. are skeptical about teachings like makes to what it means to live well
reincarnation and might have is that a good life here and now also
Rituals and ceremonies are turned to the dharma in the first needs to take past and future lives
important in Tibetan Buddhism. place in order to get away from into consideration. If we’ve all lived
Do you think they have any the religious traditions we were countless times, then everyone I’m
relevance in today’s modern born in that demand that you just closely connected to in this lifetime
world? believe their doctrines. So I think has also been close to me in the past