Renewing Buddhism – Live New Delhi Recording (Episode #108)

The Way Out Is In - Plum Village

A live recording from New Delhi reflects on a 14-day pilgrimage retracing the Buddha’s life, emphasizing renewal of Buddhist practice through embodied experience, community, and intergenerational connection. The journey fosters deep personal and collective transformation.

Key takeaways

• Pilgrimage bridges past and present, making teachings tangible.
• Community (Sanga) is essential for healing and awakening.
• Buddhism thrives through diverse, living traditions.

Transcript preview

Hello dear friends and welcome to this latest episode of the podcast The Way Out is In. I am Johr. I am Joe Confino. And I am a sister. I am a sister Dan Moy. I am a sister Dan Moy. I am a sister Dan Moy. we normally record these in Tignatown's small modest sitting still hut in upper hamlet France but today we are in New Delhi in front of a live audience and at the end of a 14 day pilgrimage with a group of 60 pilgrims going in the footsteps of the Buddha and today we are going to focus our attention on what it means to renew Buddhism. The way out is in the same. And we have a special guest today who is Shanton Seth, who is a deep practitioner and a student of Tignat Han and he's been leading pilgrimages for the last 30 years plus and also is one of the founders of the Ahinsha Trust which has the aim of bringing Buddhism and Plum Village lineage to India and sort of rejuvenating the practice. come Shantum. But before we get into renewal in Buddhism, I think let's just spend a moment reflecting on our 14 day pilgrimage. So we have been spent 14 days, literally in the footsteps of the Buddha, and look and following his path through life and then into his transition into another realm. It's been an extraordinary journey and for me personally, I'm really, interested in the idea of proximity that sometimes we have to get very close to things in order to feel them and understand them and so I've been engaged with Tignet Han for about 20 years nearly and people talk about the life of the Buddha but I've never really felt it and they we have the knowledge that the Buddha reached enlightenment under the body tree in Bodgaya and that's just been a thought. there are many sutras which start off and the Buddha was in Jetergrove and that's been a thought but the pilgrimage has connected me to these places and to the life of the Buddha and the fact that all these events took place 2,600 years ago but are still present today and alive today and so Shantum I wanted to thank you personally because it's been a wonderful way to actually not just intellectually understand the life of the Buddha, but to really connect and to bring the past into the present moment. And I think when we connect the past and the present moment, then it changes our future. And Sister Tumoy, just give us a sense of what's been your insights from this trip? Because we had a sharing circle last night for the participants at the end. And everyone, we've been on a physical journey. but also an emotional journey and a spiritual journey where people have had sort of deep insights have recognized things they didn't recognize before and where we've travelled as a sanga and what came out most strongly was just the beautiful connections of what it means to travel with a group of like-minded people who deeply care for each other so lots of people go on tours on on sort of tourist tours and there's just small talk and there's just small talk and people might not get on, but on this trip, it's, as Chantam says, it's a retreat on wheels, where actually the practice is part of the journey, the sitting meditations, the time spent sharing. What have you, what's your insight from this journey? There were so many beautiful things and many, many insights coming up throughout the 14 days. just while you were speaking I was thinking of one that was very touching in our closing circle when many of those nearly 60 people on the tour they were all invited to write a small poem an inside poem and many of those poems that they shared as we sat in a circle in the Jeter Grove it was very lovely because I think all the monkeys thought we were having some kind of monkey parliament and so they all joined in and came and sat on the branches. They wanted to listen in like maybe like the Davis at the time of the Buddha. And many of those poems, the friends shared, we came on this pilgrimage as strangers. We didn't know each other from these 16 different countries and in fact we made a sanga. And that really is the magic of Sanga and it's something that's so important in our tradition. We know that the Buddha talked of the three jewels, the Buddha, the Dama, the Sanga. And in some traditions, Sanga's not so important, but Thai, our teacher, Dignatan, it was such an important part for him to practice as a community. We feel in in Klam Village in our monastery back in France that in this present day time community is so important. It is of huge importance in the present day when so many people are suffering from loneliness, alienation, dysfunctional families, families split across the globe where we don't get to see our family. and maybe those family relationships have broken down. So to have, as I used to say, a second chance to come together as a Sanga, as a group who practiced together, where we have deep connection. And when we have an opportunity to have deep connection, to have safety, that is where the healing can start. And so it was very beautiful to see that happening in a kind of a miniaturized. his way over two weeks among 60 people traveling on the pilgrimage. It was also happening, making a sanger. I think something else that really touched me deeply about the pilgrimage was when we went to Nelander, Nelander is this extraordinary university. I think it's the oldest university. And it was there before Oxford and Cambridge. I mean, I remembered that. And we went to that site. And it's funny because I had the great privilege to be on this pilgrimage as a lay friend in 2008 with Thai. And I remember walking around that site thinking, hmm, well, there's a lot of bricks here and I tried to imagine what it was like. as a monastic I felt oh this is my home this is a monastery this is where monastic brothers and sisters would have lived I mean many of them what is it 10,000 my goodness and a thousand teachers all living in the lander and I just felt also at home there a real homey feeling so that was very nourishing And also I think something, I mean I don't want to talk too long because there are so many wonderful things from this pilgrimage. I think the highlights for me were Jetta Grove. It's such a beautiful space, it's like a park now. But so many of our sutras as Joe Manage, as you mentioned, we start the sutra, thus have I heard one day the Buddha spoke in Jetta Grove. And of course you think... well Jetta Grove. But there we were sitting in Jetta Grove. Oh my goodness, this will never be the same again. And to be all of us sitting there, particularly when we were in a circle, when we were meditating, when we were transmitting the five mindfulness trainings, which the Buddha also transmitted those five precepts there 2,600 years ago. This is an unbroken line of... teacher and student for 2,600 years and we are all part of it. It's extraordinary. So that was very, very touching. Thank you sister and Shantum you have been leading these journeys for 30 plus years at the invitation of Thai or a direct order from Thai saying, you know, Thai would always give us orders which we then had to follow and one of yours was to bring these pilgrimages and allow people to come to India to really touch the life of the Buddha and to connect to it. So in your experience over these 30 plus years, why is it important for people? And what are people, what are the general learnings people have when they come here and they take these journeys? You're right. Thai requested me, I wouldn't say ordered me, suggested to me, at the end of his first journey in life. 1988 that he said you seem to enjoy this something which is the path of practice that the Buddha suggests himself in the Mahaparin-Lvana-Suta and why did you do this every year and invite people to take you, invite people to go with you. So he and he just finished his book Old Path White Clouds on the life story of the Buddha and he wanted to offer this book back to the Buddha in the form in the sort of form the body in the form of the body in the form the body So that's what he did. And then later he came again and he did the Hindi translation and then he offered that to the Bodhi tree. So he was always coming really partly to pay his sense of gratitude to the Buddha. But I think what happened when I started doing these journeys, I started them, I'd been into these places as a child. I'd been brought up in Patna. So my parents had taken me to these sides as a kid and I'd been sort of brought up thinking of little bit like a God. And I think what happened to me in the first journey already was that I really came home to me that the Buddha was a human being. That is very, very important to me. And so I think meeting the Buddha as a human being and going to the places where he was allowed me to touch that these teachings are relevant to me in my life. And I'm sort of, I would say, agnostic, non-theistic type of person and I also have a skeptical mind. So I felt this sort of understanding that there's somebody, a human being, who's done this, so he's given a sort of transmission to me. But I didn't realize the power of the pilgrimage till a few years later. So I started doing these journeys. And then I started finding that people were really getting a transformative type of experience. Something quite deep was happening. And I realized, and I realized, I realized, and I realized, and I realized, and I realized, and I realized, that this sort of curation of a retreat on wheels, as you mentioned, was important. And then the formation of the Sunger, not traveling as a group of individuals, but really traveling in an organism. And then when 15 of us travel together, you start seeing it with 15 pairs of eyes, 15 pairs of years, you have a different type of experience. And so you really benefit from each other. So I started seeing this sort of transformative effect people were having and going to the actual place where the Buddha's sad. say for example about your peak where he said oh let's go and watch the sunset now we go and sit and watch the sunset of about the peak and he's realized that you can see the sunset with Buddha eyes we have our flesh eyes but we can also see with a different type of eye and that sort of store transformations are taking place in each one of us and then meeting the people he met you know we know the stories about the Buddha's life whether this great merchant's the great merchant and donor and after pindica the rice and milk pudding. But when you go there like this time you meet Sujahtha she's still the 13 year old girl in the village and we eat Kieh in the village and realize that this sort of telescoping of time bringing it into the present is very important because the Buddha was only the Buddha in the present moment. We think of him as this historical character so that's important but what he said was that the dama the teaching is what I offer you as a continuation and that teaching has continued for 2,600 years ago. Thankfully to the lineage of teachers including who came to Nalanda, this whole lineage of teachers, we have to be really, really grateful to them. And I think when we sit at the place where he sat in the cave, you realize you're breathing with the Buddha, you're meeting the friends, and then those sort of sites that the Buddha saw, the old person, the sick person, the dead person and the monk. We see them now. They were wake up calls to him. They sometimes aren't for us, we just, but you know, it does bring up those sort of existential questions, you know. And like on this pilgrimage, you know, we had a brother-fup whose father passed away. You know, it brings up to us what is, what is the loss of a loved one, what is death? And I think for me, journeys in that way is to allow people to come up with those as sort of deep questions. And I call this a path of awakening. But that's just, lots of causing conditions. We sit under the Bodhi tree and you know, that's not up to me. But we try and provide the conditions that people can have little moments of insight, awakening, and that allows them to touch a deeper sense of what our own reality is as human beings. And I think. And I think why I do do these journeys because I really feel I see the transformation and this is not just a tour it's something which is an inner journey at the same time as the outer journey so we go to his outer spaces into this what I think of as a sacred geography where the Buddha was born died he forgave his first teachings awakened and then other places where he spent 24 and rain retreats in Shravasti and other places where he spent 24 and rain retreats in Shravasti and other places where shawl where Shavati and other places where places where shawlai and other places where shawlai and other places where shawlai and other places where shawlai and other places where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawlai were where shawl nuns were ordained, a couple of us to where he spent his childhood. But the transformation that takes place in friends who come is very palpable. And I get letters 20 years later, 30 years later, 10 years later, saying something happened on the journey, and I can see now the effect of it. In many cases, like we said in the closing circle, you could already see it now. So I think this journey continues, and for me it's of great benefit. I'm so lazy sometimes. I'm going to do it. so I always say I start by saying I'm so grateful you've come and I really feel a sense of gratitude that people are coming on these journeys and they're transforming me too they're helping me in my path. Thank you gentlemen and you bring up that idea of in Buddhism about ripening so I had the sense on the journey that the real benefit of the journey will not be on the journey but will be after the journey that sometimes it takes time for things to sink in and I'll still consciousness to work through it and to reach deeper understandings. So I love that idea that these things can, like the teachings, they go in but they can deepen and deepen and ripen and a lot of that takes place below our conscious level. It's like that journey is now in my system and will work its way through my system. And, and it's, one of the things about the journey especially at Jetta Grove and Bodgaya, is seeing all these lineages of Buddhism coming together. So especially at Bodgaya you go in and they're all these different chants. There's the Tibetans and then there's the Koreans and the Vietnamese and Plum Village and all these groups coming together with their pink robes and their brown robes and their saffron robes and there mustard coloured robes, which doesn't really happen very much. in the world. And I just wonder what it was like for you to experience that. Where, you know, one of the things about the Buddha was he was very appreciative that and foresaw that there would be different streams of Buddhism and that actually one of the benefits of that is not that there's one teaching only in one form and you either like it or you don't like it. But actually within Buddhism there's so many different streams that actually whatever is comfortable you can find a refuge. So what was it like to experience all that different energies and different colors and textures of Buddhism in one place? As we walk mindfully onto the site of Bodgaya, I was walking next to Taifah Hu and he said to me, oh, this is the United Nations of Buddhism. wonderful way of summing it up. And it makes me think of a story that Ty used to tell exactly along the lines you were saying. You said there's not one way to practice. And often friends would ask Ty, but I try and do the walking meditation. I find that difficult. But I love the sitting. And so Ty would say, well then sit, do the practice that you enjoy. It's so important to touch joy in what? whatever practice we do. It shouldn't be hard work and creating more battles on your cushion. And so Tyver give a beautiful analogy of he would say that all the different lineages that we have, he said it's like many different restaurants, you know, you can go to the Chinese restaurant, you can go to the Indian restaurant, you can go to the French restaurant. We all get hungry, we need to eat, and we can go to can choose which is the type of food that we like the best. It's important to be nourished. And so in Bodgaya, while there were a lot of different foods on offering, and people find the lineage that they're comfortable with, that they feel nourished by, that suits them. And something that really struck me that I enjoyed a lot. It's a very noisy place, Bodgaya. So that has its own challenge because as I'm sure many of you really appreciate when we sit and meditate, you imagine sitting under the body