How To Preserve Buddhism

If you want to proceed along the path yourself, the best thing you can do is to exert yourself in study and practice. If you can’t do this fully yourself but wish to see the Buddhadharma thrive, the next best thing you can do is offer support to others who can and are studying and practising. The next best is to sponsor texts to be printed. After that would come sponsoring statues and that sort of thing.

This makes sense when we consider that the sangha are the supports or representatives of the Buddha’s mind, texts are the representations of the Buddha’s speech, and statues are the representations of the Buddha’s body.

The strange thing is, most Buddhists are excited to contribute towards building statues, less so to the printing of texts, and very few seem motivated to support actual living people. It is people who have minds, who can assimilate and actually hold the living Dharma. Inanimate objects cannot do this.

Even on a more mundane level, we can see that people are the best place for our offerings, donations, and support. A lack of statues is not going to lead to the decline of Buddhism. A dearth of texts would be a problem but would not signal the end of Buddhism. But no people, no one studying the Dharma, no one practising the Dharma would definitely be the end of the Dharma.

It is all of our responsibility to ensure that this doesn’t happen. The most direct way we can contribute to the preservation of Buddhism is to give time to study and practise it ourselves. That is by far the best. But it is not easy to put yourself in a situation where you can dedicate yourself full-time to studying and practising. The next best, therefore, is to sponsor and support other people who can dedicate themselves to study and practice.

Drupon Khen Rinpoche
Macau 28.09.24