Author: Stephen Schettini

“There are no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone about him.” —Leo Tolstoy

Nothing unsettled my life more than leaving Buddhism. It was the only community I’d ever felt a part of, and although I knew with certainty that my time was up, it was years before I really understood why—there were so many contributing factors.

Today, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear. I had to get away from the groupthink. The price of belonging was to believe what everyone else believed, and it had been getting harder and harder to know my own thoughts.

The Perplexing Wisdom of Gotama

At first I’d found the community comforting—all I had to do was follow along—but everything started to change when I heard what Gotama told the people of Kesamutti, “It is fitting for you to be perplexed, it is fitting for you to be in doubt.” He went on:

“Do not go by oral traditions, by lineage of teaching, by hearsay, by a collection of scriptures, by logical reasoning, by inferential reasoning, by reflection on reasons, by the acceptance of a view after pondering it, by the seeming competence of the speaker, or because you think, ‘That wanderer is my guru.’”

Does this mean, “Don’t join a religion?” How do you follow someone who suggests you follow no one? And if we’re all deluded, as he also suggests, how are we supposed to think for ourselves? Thinking entirely for yourself leads to wrong conclusions, intellectual overload, confusion, disrespect for expertise, intellectual isolation and arrogance.

The answer lies in the next bit:

“When you know for yourselves, ‘These things are blameable; these things are censured by the wise; these things, if undertaken and practiced, lead to harm and suffering,’ then you will let go of them.”

The Importance of Direct Experience

Rather than “thinking for yourselves” he talks about “knowing for yourselves.” No matter how much you think about something and believe it to be true, knowing it is different. Even centuries-old scientific discoveries can be disproven, but when you see that the road ahead is clear or witness the mental patterns that undermine your own happiness, you act on that knowledge. It‘s not theory. This sort of direct knowledge depends on immediate experience and sensory evidence. The state of your body, how you carry tension, how you respond to daily events, what moods you project in body language, facial expression and manner—all reflect your emotional states and the thoughts they trigger. Everything else is just cogitating, guessing, projecting, imagining and made-up. The way to fully know what is “wholesome, blameless and praised by the wise,” is to live it.

That’s why it doesn’t matter how much you polish your Buddha statues, how many prayers you recite, how much philosophy you debate—if you’re not learning from your own experience, nothing’s changing. Regular body scans are soothing, but the idea that they’ll lead to awakening is magical thinking. Those scans are just practice—a reminder to keep digging, to keep connecting physical sensations to feelings and thoughts, to see causes and consequences as they play out—to know yourself deeply and immediately.

Learning Through Experience

Gotama spoke to the Kasamuttis like this for a reason. Their land had been overrun by dozens of spiritual teachers and their disciples, each one disclaiming all the others, every one of them proclaiming their own theories of life, death and what comes next.

“How to choose?” they asked him.

“Don’t,” he said.

I always imagine him smiling at this point—challenging them to drop the shiny spiritual baubles back in the box and recall their mortality.

So what is the path? What is dhamma? And what about sangha—community?

The Community Paradox

To work in a community without acknowledging the potential for groupthink means denying the fundamental human need to belong, and the mental contortions it leads to. In any organisation—business, political, social or religious—the pressure to conform is a constant threat to critical thinking and good decision-making. Everyone pulling together creates immense strength, but that sort of strength can be rigid. And as much as we love to think of Buddhism as scientific, objective and evidence-based, it too can be a cult. Even scientists are human—ambitious, competitive, envious, biased, defensive. No matter how smart you might be, being fully intelligent means also taking the time to manage your emotions and the social space they create around you.

Weighing & Letting Go

There is no absolute objectivity, but weighing our opinions, judgments, expectations and biases makes us less subjective. We take things less personally. Then, with practice, we glimpse the weight of our emotional baggage and our distorted sense of self. With those visceral insights at hand, letting go comes naturally.

---

You are invited to comment BELOW. Our gallery of blog posts is HERE.

Introduction

It’s been eight years since I last blogged as The Naked Monk. I’ve missed it!

I started The Naked Monk to talk, listen, learn and share my ideas about religion—Buddhism in particular but also Roman Catholicism, which I grew up in. I’m not a traditional believer—in fact I’m not a believer at all, even though I was a Buddhist monk for eight years and, even though forty years later I still turn to the Buddha for inspiration.

My Journey with Buddhism and Christianity

So I’m no longer a Buddhist and I don’t identify as Christian. However, I can honestly say that the two historical figures who have most affected my life choices and my thinking are the founders of these two religions—Gotama and Jesus. I still find the sermon on the mount inspired. The suttas still trigger new insights. But to get to where I’m at today, I had to get past the formulas, the dogmas and the groupthink of both religions. I had to figure things out for myself.

Gotama‘s story brought me a profound sense of purpose not because he was the omniscient superbeing presented by traditional Buddhists, but because he was not. He was just another human being like you and me. The more you study his life and times, the more you see that he was on to something much simpler and more down-to-earth than the absolute truths of mystical Buddhism.

The Importance of Personal Exploration

I‘m surprised sometimes by my own thoughts, but I get energy from comments from visitors—especially hostile ones. I have an audience to challenge me! I feel the outrage when I question sacrosanct beliefs. That’s particularly significant because Gotama did not tell people what to believe. He worked with experience, not ideas, and encouraged everyone to figure things out for themselves.

This is what sets Buddhism apart from all other religions. It’s why many of us came to Buddhism in the first place.

Gotama and Jesus: Influences on My Life

There are literally hundreds of variations on Buddhism and Christianity, most of them claiming to be absolutely true. I think that would make Gotama smile. He explained how preconceptions, biases and opinions shape our perceptions and explained that we prefer to see what we want to see—not what’s actually going on. We deliberately shut it out. Wilful ignorance, he said, is why we suffer so much.

Shoulds and shouldn’ts play no role in Gotama’s path to freedom. The world is filled with well-intentioned people who believe they should be a certain way and yet find themselves behaving otherwise. Some admit it, but most can’t—they lock in their denial with guilt and shame. The idea is to let go of that sort of emotional baggage, not to pile it on.

Challenging Beliefs and Embracing Experience

I’m not just making this up. For eight years I studied the three vehicles of Tibetan Buddhism and the scholastic commentaries known as abidhamma. After returning to lay life I narrowed down my search to the earliest literature—the Pali Canon (named after the language they’re written in).

My colleague Stephen Batchelor has identified at least six different ‘voices’ in the Pali Canon—poetic, dramatic, skeptical, pragmatic, dogmatic and mythic. Putting the last two aside helps shine a much clearer light on Gotama the man.

There’s guesswork involved—lots of trial and error. To process the story I have to explore myself. I know that to accept it as factual is to render it lifeless, but am I interpreting all the meaning out of it? That’s what true believers say.

Conclusion and Invitation

I may not be a card-carrying member of any belief system, but I’m committed. Gotama’s life and times didn’t happen in a vacuum but in a historical context. How did this affect his decisions? His teaching? Not one of my teachers ever suggested it was significant even though Gotama’s central teaching is the dependent arising of all things. I see the man and his mission in my own way. Isn’t that what commitment means?

Neatly packaged answers to existential questions are useless. The only way forward is to accept them as unanswerable. We keep exploring, and here’s the place where I’ll document my findings and musings.

Please share and comment. If you disagree, or if you’re offended by my posts—speak up! I like a good debate, and I want to hear from you all.

---

Please comment BELOW. Older blog posts HERE.