Bits and pieces of practice
Friday, April 24, 2009 at 5:39 pm (buddhism, practice)
Tags: academic, buddhist, education, faith, history, university
There’s sitting on the cushion, and there’s everything else. Are these really two different things? We are taught that every time we make two — every time we make a distinction between this and that — we are separating ourselves, and therefore, creating or reaffirming “self,” that problematic entity.
It’s hard to live moment-to-moment off the cushion. Well, heck, it’s hard to stay focused when I’m on the cushion!
The other day someone asked me if my practice or my “faith” had been changed at all by what I learned in a university course about Buddhism. The course covered the whole history of Buddhism, from the years just after the Buddha’s death (or parinirvana, if you prefer) to the “discovery” of Buddhism by Europeans. Although we studied the doctrine of several schools, the focus was more on history than on philosophy.
The answer is no, my practice and its foundations have not been altered by my experience of learning much, much more about the transformations (and transportation) of this tradition. I was not ignorant about the life of the Buddha and the teachings when I started the class. I can now fit these into a 2,500-year history in the Western format of historical interpretation. The five precepts remain the same. The Four Noble Truths, the same. The reason I practice — to save all sentient beings — the same.
Maybe some folks become jaded about their religious practices when they see a bigger picture, but why? There have always been corrupt priests and monks, religious orders that served the emperor or the king, religious leaders who called for blood to be spilled. Monasteries become rich, monks have girlfriends and even wives and children, and texts are written by humans, of course. Does this mean the Dharma is flawed?
Writing and interpretation are always flawed. But are they the Dharma?
Breathe.
What not to say about Buddhism in America
Sunday, April 12, 2009 at 1:13 pm (buddhism)
Tags: academic, America, american, buddhists, history, research, writing
Poking my head up out of the reading and writing (the final two weeks for completing the research paper are upon me), I must sputter two things:
(1) No one needs to write anything more about the World’s Parliament of Religions (1893) and how it brought Buddhism (for white people, that is) to North America. Yes, it’s quite fascinating, but I surely should not have to read a summary of these events in every damn academic article about Buddhism in America! (R.H. Seager edited a book about it, and you can read some chapters online, if you’re interested.)
(2) The same goes for D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966) and Paul Carus (1852-1919). Enough already. They are also quite interesting, but it’s been done!
There, I’m really happy to get that off my chest.
A few other things I’m getting tired of reading about, in article after article: Jack Kerouac and his friends, who thought Buddhism was really cool; the self-absorption of white people who have taken up Buddhism (I’m not saying they aren’t self-absorbed; I’m just sick of reading about it); and Alan Watts (1915-1973), who certainly was a key figure in the 1950s, but that time has been covered pretty well and thoroughly, so let’s move on.
The nice thing about choosing “Buddhism in America” as a research topic is that not all that much has been written about it, so you can get up to speed fairly quickly. The bad thing about this topic is the repetition. I’ve started to feel like every article contains the same old rehash, warmed over yet again. Considering that Buddhism has been in China for about 2,000 years, and I don’t get the same old story repeated to me every time I read an article about Buddhism in China, I’m pretty disgusted at all this redundancy about a country where Buddhism first stepped off a boat less than 200 years ago.
So (draws a deep breath) … I’m not rehashing any of that in my paper. That’s what citations are for.
Breathe.
What is becoming ‘Buddhist’?
Saturday, April 4, 2009 at 10:13 am (buddhism, practice, zen)
Tags: buddhist, precepts, refuge, teachings, vows
Years ago (maybe four or five years ago), I asked a Dharma teacher something about taking precepts, or becoming a Buddhist “officially.” I wasn’t aiming to do so myself; I was only curious. But he had an unexpected reply.
At first, he seemed like he didn’t even want to discuss it. So I persisted. He explained taking five precepts (this is what we do in the Kwan Um School of Zen; we don’t take refuge as an official ceremony). He explained what comes before that. The rules, as it were. But then he went on a bit of a tangent about “being Buddhist” not having any real meaning. It’s your practice that matters, that counts.
If you have a practice — if you try, try, try for ten thousand years, as Seung Sahn used to say — then you’ve got something. A ceremony or a piece of paper with your Dharma name written on it? Not important.
At the time, this struck me as odd. Why wouldn’t he want me to pursue taking precepts? Why didn’t he encourage me? I felt almost as if he were pushing me away. Almost.
What he said stuck with me, though. I’ve been thinking a lot about it as I work on my research paper for the graduate class I’m taking. My topic is Buddhism in North America, and one of the recurrent themes in the literature is that when we try to count Buddhists in the West, it’s damn hard to say who is a Buddhist. Is it correct to count people who simply say they are Buddhists, when maybe they have never practiced any form of Buddhism?
There’s a phrase, “night-stand Buddhists,” that refers to people who read Buddhist books (our Dharma teacher calls them “bookstore Buddhists”). I’m sure I’ve met many Americans who are “night-stand Christians,” who don’t attend church and don’t practice anything particularly Christian — yet if they are asked their religion on a survey form, I’m sure they would choose “Christian” instead of “none” or “don’t know.”
Now I think I understand that conversation I had with the teacher, and I’m grateful that he didn’t encourage me to follow the steps required for taking precepts. In fact, it reminds me of something else, at another time in another place, when a Zen master asked me what it means when we say the Buddha gave transmission to Mahakashyapa. The Buddha made a long speech, blah blah blah, about the wonderfulness of this “thing” he was “giving” to Mahakashyapa. “What was that all about?” the Zen master asked me.
Well, you might know the answer.
Breathe.
Film: ‘Dalai Lama Renaissance’
Friday, April 3, 2009 at 9:09 am (buddhism, practice)
Tags: Dalai Lama, documentary, DVD, film, india, movies, Tibet, video, world peace
I saw this documentary film a couple of days ago, and I would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the problems that confront the world — looking at the world as a global community, where what one part does affects the other parts, whether intentionally or not.
You might not be a big fan of documentaries (are you thinking: “Boring”?), and I think the Web site for this one doesn’t do much to make it sound very exciting, but let’s see whether I can pique your interest a bit.
What we see is a big group of very well-educated Western people, mostly white, starting out on a pretty difficult journey to Dharamsala, India, in September 1999. They’ve got this idea to sit together talking in a room and see whether all their big I.Q.’s will yield solutions to the world’s problems. This is presented in a relatively unvarnished way, so the filmmaker (Khashyar Darvich) is not cheerleading for this group, and he (mostly) refrains from making fun of them too. He gradually spins out a story where we see the well-meaning organizers trying to stop this thing from totally falling apart, and we see big egos banging against each other in small discussion circles, and we hear whiny New Age types saying they really wanted a personal audience with the Dalai Lama. When they finally get their chance to stand up and tell the Dalai Lama what they want to do, some idiot says we should have a boycott of China so that Tibet can be liberated. Doh!
But that Dalai Lama — man, he is awesome. He doesn’t laugh at them. He mildly comments that Tibet is a tiny little country, and maybe the world has bigger problems, and hey, there are a lot of people suffering in China, so why should we add to their suffering by trying to wreck their economy? He tells a hilarious anecdote about mosquitoes (the whole audience was laughing loudly). And then he says we must not think my nation, my religion, my race. First and foremost, we must think of human beings. All human beings.
Breathe.
