Awake in This Life

Barbara O’Brien at About.com writes a blog titled, Japanese Buddhism: Going Out of Business? Based on my travels over the last decade, I’d have to say that I agree with her observations. I’d also say that the idea that we should return to the fundamental approaches of the past will only make Buddhism more irrelevant to 21st Century citizens of the world.

Some suggest Japanese Buddhism needs to re-embrace the Vinaya-pitaka, the rules for monks given by the historical Buddha that are still, for the most part, observed in the rest of Asia. Celibacy is high on the list of rules. Others call for Japanese Buddhism to diversify — branch out into teaching the dharma and providing social services other than funerals. However it’s done, Japanese Buddhism seems in dire need of a revival.

So what should the revival look like? It will be interesting, whatever happens. But the East would do well to steal a few pages out of the West’s playbook on this one.  If Buddhism is to survive, it must do a Western thing and become a dynamic, living expression of relevance. When the stillness of the East, meets this dynamism of the West, we’ll have something far more accessible to people. Done correctly, the core of the teaching might avoid becoming diluted thus avoiding a New Buddhist circus of “feel good” evangelism.

In a a recent post over at Intent Blog, Deepak Chopra writes about taking a vow of non-violence in his thinking, speaking and his actions in front of an audience of 500 people at a plenary session of The Alliance for a New Humanity.

I told them if they were ready to take this vow, they should stand up.

People stood up, one by one at first, then in groups of twos and threes, and finally in tidal waves, until more than 450 people had stood up and taken the vow.

Following this, everybody agreed to have at least two people in their lives take the vow. The two in turn, would have two others join them in taking the vow. Our immediate goal now is to get 100 Million people across the world to take this vow. In the meantime, we will be setting up ways to measure and support the dramatic effects this tidal wave of shift in consciousness is going to create.

While I have tremendous respect for Dr. Chopra and the work he does, I think he is walking a dangerous line here. Based on his words, he’s conflating his “vow” with “attachment”. And to make matters potentially disastrous, he’s collectivizing the attachment by asking others to stand and publicly make the same vow with him. This tactic usually leads to deeper suffering since the purity of its intention can so easily mask an attachment to an outcome. Of course the goal is a good one. Yet in situations like this, well-meaning but confused practitioners begin to cling to their vows and then turn them in to instruments of what may very well end up looking like Spiritual McCarthyism.

There is a way around this trap. Instead of encouraging people to metaphorically sign a loyalty oath, Dr. Chopra and the rest of us who teach should encourage our students to become deeply intimate with the violence in each and every aspect of life. We should encourage all beings to look carefully at the impulses that lead to violence in our speech, our thoughts, and our actions. Doing so allows us to make vows for peace rather than making vows against violence. Making a vow against anything gives birth to both fundamentalism and war.

This election process has taken a toll on so many around the world. In our sangha, the choices have been at the forefront of several discussions and has ultimately proven itself to be a dharma door for many of Infinite Smile’s members.

It’s also a dharma door for me. Listening to Obama’s acceptance speech broke something wide open in me. I hadn’t realized how much I’d become hooked by the whole process; by the last eight years; by war and economic catastrophe. So often I can hide in my role as teacher, or on my cushion as a meditator. As Obama spoke, I simply held my daughter and wept.

But I worry about the egoic projection of “savior” onto this man we’ve elected. Doing so only distracts us from our journey along the Path. Successful navigation of the Path involves a committment and a practice of no longer clinging to the activity of the mind. The conscious expression of this non-clinging into our day-to-day lives is Awakening.

So when I see comments from people like French intellectual and America-watcher, Bernard-Henri Levi, I worry a little:

“Junk politics and immorality have come to an end.”

Let’s hope. But let’s not get caught by our hope. What kind of attachment must be going on in the hearts and minds of people around the world? Getting hooked by our elation, just like getting hooked by our disappointment, douses the flames of insight. Meeting our elation, or our disappointment, with our full heart and mind, in each moment burns up what we no longer need.

A reader forwarded me a letter sent out by Gangaji to her followers recently.

Dear Sangha,
In 1947 India was in extreme crisis. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were
killing each other. Enforced mass migration was causing anger, fear,
and despair. The country was in chaos.
At the same time, Papaji sat in bliss at Ramana’s feet and at the feet
of the holy mountain Arunachala. One day, after reading in the
newspaper of the horror, Ramana asked Papaji about his family and the
dangers they were in as they were being forced to leave the Punjab and
relocate to Hindu governed Lucknow. Papaji responded, “That is all an
empty dream. I am here in the bliss of your grace.”
Ramana looked deeply at Papaji and said, “If it is all a dream, where
is the problem of taking care of your family? Go and help them.”
Papaji left that night for the Punjab. He was able to help get all his
family out in time. Just in time. He was on the last train allowed
out.
It is my view that politically our country is at an essential
crossroads. In my lifetime, there has never been an election as
important as the upcoming one.
I strongly invite you all to look deeply into your hearts and using
what you value most in your self and in all your relationships, choose
a candidate for President and vote. You may also be called to work for
Voter Registration or to help with voter turnout. I support you fully
in support of our precious democratic process.
Finally one discovers there is no difference between inside and
outside. Between form and emptiness. To cling to either is to miss the
whole.
In deep love and respect,
gangaji

Nice one.

May each of us let our votes reflect the expanse of our heart’s deepest longing.

Bill Maher speaks of his newly released film, Religulous:

I don’t use the word “atheist” about myself, because I think it mirrors the certitude I’m so opposed to in religion. What I say in the film is that I don’t know. I don’t know what happens when you die, and all the religious people who claim they do know are being ridiculous. I know that they don’t know any more than I do. They do not have special powers that I don’t possess. When they speak about the afterlife with such certainty and so many specifics, it just makes me laugh.

I’ve written and spoken at length about this over some time. Again and again I’ve argued that I’m pretty certain that certitude leads to war. Or in spiritual terms, that attachment generates suffering. The problem is that Maher’s certitude makes him sound like a fundamentalist in rationalist’s clothing:

People can tell you, “Oh yes, when you get to Paradise there are 72 virgins, not 70, not 75.” Or they say, “Jesus will be there sitting at the right hand of the Father, wearing a white robe with red piping. There will be three angels playing trumpets.” Well, how do you know this? It’s just so preposterous. So, yes, I would like to say to the atheists and agnostics, the people who I call rationalists, let’s stop ceding the moral high ground to the people who believe in the talking snake. Let’s have our voices heard and be in the debate. Let’s stand up and say we’re not ready to let the country be given over to the Sarah Palins of the world.

To be fair, I agree with much of what he is saying, and, let it be known that have not seen the film yet so feel free to discount my premature commentary. Our baby daughter came down with a slight bug so my wife and I have been home-bound, which has forced us to watch a selection of Tivoed mediocrity instead of getting to the theater. That said, reviews and Maher’s own comments seem to center around his clinging to his version of what is false. We call this “fundamentalism.”

More to come.

Barbara O’Brien, over at About.com takes on an interesting practice that is summarily given a pass by many Western practitioners:

Buddhist temple in Thailand is offering instant rebirth, for a fee. People line up every day to climb into big, pink coffins. Monks chant over them, and they climb out, reborn. The rebirth costs $5 and change.

This selling of indulgences doesn’t reflect the core of any nondual spiritual teaching and yet it can be found anywhere that claims its heritage as holy.

In a recent blog post by Andrew Cohen, he rightly asserts a point so often misappropriated in alternative spiritual circles:

Consciousness doesn’t exist or work in mysterious ways outside of or away from the innermost depths of our individual and collective selves.

In other words, while consciousness is mysterious in the way it unfolds past the mind, it shouldn’t be conflated with pre-rational fairy tales. It’s all right here in front of us.

At the same time, all of us, especially teachers, can unwittingly set up structures that allow the mind to cling, thus blocking the natural expression of enlightenment. This is especially true when an adherence to sins of the past, or salvation in the future, colors spiritual teaching since it puts the ego into the driver’s seat of the process of awakening. Consider his final line:

The more we not only awaken to that fact but take responsibility for it, the more quickly this world will become the paradise that we all long for in our most inspired moments.

Here, here. But let us all co-create the future by loosening the grip we keep on the fairy tails of the past as well as those fairy tails of times yet to come. When teaching people to “become” without first teaching them to just “be” a massive impediment is created thus blocking an authentic approach to what the mind can only refer to as “paradise”.

Deepak Chopra compares Sarah Palin to the shadow of Barak Obama in a recent commentary:

Palin’s pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.” For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind.

His essay is worth a read since doing so reminds us of how sticky politics can be for any of us. Then again, anyone on the Path can let the attachments, both gross and trivial, point them in the direction of Awakening. Watching our clinging, in other words, offers us disidentification from whatever our attachments might be.

Making an interesting observation, Andrew Sullivan links to the final two paragraphs in Michael Miller’s Newsweek article,  Sad Brain, Happy Brain.

Earlier this year the Annals of Neurology published an article by Sam Harris and colleagues exploring what happens in the brain when people are in the act of either believing or disbelieving. In an accompanying editorial, Oliver Sachs and Joy Hirsch underscored the significance of what the researchers found. Belief and disbelief activated different regions of the brain. But in the brain, all belief reactions looked the same, whether the stimulus was relatively neutral: an equation like 2 6 8=16, or emotionally charged: “A Personal God exists, just as the Bible describes.”

By putting a big religious idea next to a small math equation, some readers might think the researchers intend to glibly dismiss it. But a discovery about brain function does not imply a value judgment. And understanding the reality of the natural world—how the brain works—shouldn’t muddle the big questions about human experience.

Miller’s points are great except that he begins his piece with a misplaced Cartesian axiom, suggesting that the brain and the mind are in fact one in the same. Are they?

Perhaps we should be asking researchers different questions. What is mind? Where is mind? What is aware of mind?

It’s good to be back after weeks of being still.