Category: buddhism

critical essays on buddhism in the modern world

Doubt & Certainty

“Expose yourself to doubt,” it used to say on the masthead above (Caroline later came up with “question life’s big answers.”) Periodically, I’m asked, Why? After all, the Buddha said, “There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt.” Actually, He was talking about mistrust.

When it comes to belief in things that are simply beyond our ken, he wholeheartedly encouraged doubt and questioning. If we don’t know something we should just say so, and not make up an answer. I always loved the honesty of that approach. Scepticism is a fundamental tenet of what the Buddha taught.

Since Caroline entered my life, however, it’s become less of a philosophical point of view and more of a daily reality check.

I love Caroline for who she is; that needs no saying. I also love life with Caroline, and that sometimes mystifies people who don’t know us. My siblings were horrified when they learned I’d teamed up with a woman with an incurable neurodegenerative disease. What sort of future was I signing up for? Even Caroline herself, as she felt us growing close back in those early days, urged me, “Run! Save yourself.”

I laughed.

She frowned. “I mean it.”

“I know you do,” I said, “but I mean to stick around — as long as you want me to, anyway.”

She’d lived with multiple sclerosis for eight years at that point, and was as accustomed to it as she’d ever get, I suppose. She took it one day at a time. This was far more of a challenge than I’d ever had to deal with, but I’d lived long enough to know that I might avoid one problem only to end up with a bigger one.

“if you’re not afraid of death from time to time,
you’re not human.”

The important thing was that life with Caroline was unmistakably good in so many ways that I didn’t want to miss it. But suppose the future turned out to be horrible? Well, the future’s always horrible sooner or later, isn’t it? It’s never stopped the human race. No one knows what awaits them — except for certain death, of course. Compared to that, everything else is chicken feed.

Close to the end of my monkhood, I was taken for lunch by a benefactor. It was quite common for sponsored monks. We were expected to repay their material aid with our spiritual support. Once we’d looked over the menu and ordered, she leaned forward with an intense gaze and asked, “Aren’t you afraid of death?”

I shook my head nonchalantly. I think I truly believed I’d taken the Buddha’s words about impermanence to heart, and was at peace with my mortality. On the other hand, as I look back I can’t help thinking that I was still youthfully stupid enough to believe in my own ultimate immortality. I saw reincarnation as a hedge against extinction (which is about as opposite to the Buddha’s thinking as you could get). “No,” I said. I’m not afraid of death.”

She maintained her gaze. Clearly, she was afraid. I never did find out what prompted her intensity — a medical diagnosis or the loss of a loved one, perhaps. Looking back, I’m humbled by her vulnerability and ashamed of my pretence, even though it was well-intentioned and at least self-consciously sincere. But really — if you’re not afraid of death from time to time, you’re not human.

Nevertheless, sickness and death are grist for the mill — hardly a reason to not stick around someone you love. With that triviality out of the way, we can turn to the good side of living with someone in Caroline’s condition — the constant reminder that we don’t know what to expect, that we can’t be sure of anything — of being exposed to doubt.

Caroline’s recent veinoplasty has given her a new lease on life. It doesn’t seem to be a cure and no one’s adequately explained how it works — but that it works is beyond doubt. She has energy I haven’t seen in years, is exercising and growing stronger, and is regaining some of the balance and mental clarity she’s lost in recent years.

What’s the drawback? We don’t know how long it’ll last.

Well, isn’t that funny? We can’t be certain of anything. And so Caroline takes it one day at a time, and I, by sharing her life, get to share in that attitude in which every moment is unique, contingent and unrepeatable. Circumstances have forced our attention, and attention is always a good thing. It’s the key to the Buddha’s way:
Attention is living; inattention is dying.
The attentive never stop; the inattentive are dead already.
—Siddhattha Gotama, the Buddha  [Dhammapada 21, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu]

I think that by avoiding doubt, we’re evading reality. Life’s uncertain — so discomfortingly so that we make up certainty — but that’s just the human spin on life. Doubt is healthy; it keeps your mind, your attitude and your options open.

The Good Life

Caroline and I enjoy a bit of TV — or at least, we try. With so many channels these days, audience share is fragmented; quality suffers. The new wildlife documentaries seem to be more about the daredevil production crew than the animals; history programs are more re-enactment dramas than historical fact … and then there are the sitcoms and crime shows. Gore is cool; so is cynicism; there’s even a new twist on that old staple, sex — the new normal is to have lots of sex with lots of people in lots of places, especially at work, especially if you’re a lawyer or doctor. Everyone knows that long-term monogamous relationships are doomed; ‘love’ is whatever you can grab from those heady first days and (if you’re lucky) weeks of newfound passion.

And then there’s me, sitting quietly, reading about Aristotle and ‘the good life.’ No, he wasn’t talking about la dolce vita but about a life worth living — an enriching, satisfying path to dignity and integrity. Gosh, just using words like that makes me feel like a dinosaur. But then I remind myself, I’m not suddenly losing touch — I always was old-fashioned. I was skeptical as a teenager, and I’m still skeptical about those things that strike me as contemptible — mindless popular trends and the age-old myths of progress and success.

Progress? It’s mostly technology; what’s it accomplished? Our ability to stress ourselves beyond reason, for one. It’s also morphed war into the new form of world-wide terrorism — no distinction between combatants and civilians, no front lines, no end in sight.

Success? We have more millionaires than ever, but do we have happier people? MSN News reports that 55% of Americans under 45 hate their jobs; where’s the success in that? And with all that short-term sex, who still experiences the exquisite rewards of well-worn intimacy and deep companionship?

The Good Life meant something quite different to Aristotle. Unfortunately, my college professors left me thinking that philosophers had too much time on their hands and a genetic predisposition to long-windedness. Now at last, a whole new generation of Western philosophers is revisiting that dreary approach to the Classics. It turns out that those dead old Greeks weren’t just trying to be clever; they were working with their thoughts and feelings to become less reactive, more in tune. They were in search of mental and emotional wellbeing — which is why I can relate to them; that’s why I abandoned everything and went off to India.

What Aristotle called ‘the good life,’ the Buddha called ‘awakening.’ It just goes to show that people are people, no matter which corner of the planet they come from. Both these men recognized stress as a response to life and tried to find a way to change that response. Did either of them succeed? That’s for you to figure out.

What so many of us can’t stomach any more is the way religions have hijacked ethics and turned them into totalitarian rules to be believed whether you understand or not. There’s more to ethics than thou shalt not. Ethics are a skill that grows from self-discipline — something profoundly out of sync with today’s do-what-feels-good attitude.

I’ve always thought of myself as an arch-rebel, but when I look back on what I was rebelling against, I see that it was and is against a society in moral decline. Who cares for the values of fuddy-duddy, finger-wagging old school marms? We want leaders who respect our opinions, and teachers who encourage exploration and curiosity. But look at these questions that, incredibly, only philosophers care to ask: Why is it wrong to harm others? What’s wrong with having as much sex as possible with as many people as you can? What are the consequences of hiring strangers to raise our children and care for our aged parents? Does guilt cause disease?

Today’s a sunny fall Sunday and I sit inside my house, unable to enjoy my garden because my neighbours are filling the neighbourhood with noise and air pollution from leaf-blowers, pneumatic log-splitters and powerful garden vacuums that suck up bugs and dirt along with fallen leaves and grass cuttings. When I ask them to take a break, they insist they have to do this on weekends, that their machines are really quiet and that they don’t really cause any air pollution. They seem to think they’re fooling me. What are the consequence of such absurd denial? How does it affect their own well-being, never mind my own?

These aren’t trivial questions, even though the circumstances may be. By seeking to answer them in ways we can understand, we approach the good life. Life is never free of irritation, even tragedy, but by understanding the way we deal with it, we can change our experience. People have been trying to improve the world for centuries by making money and enacting laws; true, the richer nations have made advances in civil rights, but only because people fought for them; who’s fighting for the good life? It’s about personal self-discipline, not the law; it’s not the struggle to work harder and make more stuff, but the dignity to stop this infernal vicious circle, take a breath, look at those around you and enjoy — and share — the fruits of a life well-spent.

Spirituality

This word drives me nuts. Like ‘God,’ it’s acquired so many shades of meaning—some of them perfectly contradictory—that there’s no way of knowing what goes through someone’s mind when you say it. Nevertheless, it’s used a lot: in the yoga and meditation communities, among natural health enthusiasts—osteopaths, naturopaths, energy workers, vegans, new-agers, there’s a motley crew of people who use ‘the universe’ as a spiritual channel. It needs to be somehow clarified.

Being traditionally spiritual means reaching for something extra-worldly outside oneself to connect with. Call it God, the Universe, the One, the Infinite…. It’s always capitalized; it’s inconceivable, unfathomable, sublime. It’s often called ineffable, meaning it can’t be expressed in language. This doesn’t stop people trying to describe God, sometimes as a white-bearded grandfather in the sky.

This childish image has become an easy target for today’s radical atheists—by which I mean institutional atheists like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris; these men are understandably furious at the abuses of organized religion, but about as dogmatic as the religious establishment in their intolerance of anyone contemplating the ineffable. See how stupid believers are, they point out, to fall for such nonsense. That’s quite a logical jump. Those who don’t think of God as a person but more like the underlying logos of the universe are lumped into the same category as fairy-tale believers. What these atheists throw out with the bathwater is awe. Their attacks on religion are partly rational, but they’re often as emotionally charged as the believers they’re attacking. It takes two to argue; the more they have in common, the more fervently they’ll fight.

For those of us not satisfied by reason alone, the problem is the idea of God as a person, because then (s)he has to have a gender and personality and—most complicated of all—ends up with judgement, preferences and a temperament. Enter the God of Abraham who used to incite atrocities and morphed into a loving father. The question of whether God is to be feared or loved has led countless generations of believers into agonized doubt. They used to ‘keep their religion’ for politically correct reasons which apply less and less as faith becomes increasingly divorced from state. Today they’re free to drift, but freedom doesn’t always make life easier. By default and from frustration, many become half-baked, angry ‘atheists.’ Others turn to Hatha Yoga, Buddhism, Taoism or other systems that emphasize personal experience over faith, and demand a fair bit of soul-searching.

Spiritual seekers were always a funny lot. Siddhattha and Jesus, Milarepa and Saint Teresa of Avila were all breakers of tradition and taboo. When everyone in my Mindful Reflection workshops has their eyes closed, I look at the faces of my students and feel at home; I like to think they do too. When I tell them that most people aren’t like us and that we’re the weirdos, they giggle nervously.

I’m more of an agnostic than an atheist. I don’t believe in God, but neither do I disbelieve. This drives some people nuts, but what am I supposed to do—make an arbitrary decision? I have no evidence either way. Much more to the point, I don’t need a superbeing to know that I want to put my every breath to the best possible use, and to recognize that non-violence is the key ethic. No Buddhist institution would accept me as a bona-fide Buddhist any more, but I’m still an avid student of the Buddha; he makes so much sense. I have other sources, too—the Tao Te Ching provides the closest I get to answers, and I still find myself amazed when I open the Bible and find inspiration.

And then there’s a whole other category of ‘spiritual’ people who practice what used to be called the ‘dark arts’ but which have been revived these days as healing, tarot, astrology, dowsing, new-age enlightenment—there’s a veritable crowd of fashionable beliefs. Thinking their lives are led by unseen forces, practitioners say things like, “The universe guided me,” when other people might say, “My, what a coincidence.” What makes them seem spiritual is their belief in the immaterial. In their urgency to explain things they maintain an unorthodox use of reasoning, but it’s still reasoning, and it’s rooted in the very material urge to have right answers. Scientists may not see them as rational, but they have their own form of logic that enables them to explain things, no matter who considers them right or wrong. I used to dabble in it myself; I understand it, and am sometimes sympathetic, but what I today call ‘spiritual’ is quite different.

For me, a spiritual path is one that changes the way we are. It’s proactive and transformational. Simply coming up with an alternative rationale doesn’t actually change anything, whether it makes sense or not. The bigger trouble is that these rationales are so open-ended that they can explain away pretty well anything. I see them most often used as convenient ways to avoid confrontation with reality at its most unpleasant—which is the most effective (perhaps the only) way to fundamentally change your outlook. The practices of Buddhism are designed to put your illusions face to face with reality; only then can you watch them dissolve. For the Buddha, the problem isn’t unpleasantness; it’s our desire to hide it away—whether in plain denial or in obfuscating rationalizations.

The spiritual quest isn’t about finding answers; it’s about letting go of grasping; in particular, grasping at the need to explain everything, as if explanations will make everything better. In order to really let go, you have to be open—to other people and to what they have to say, but most importantly to experience. Reason may be the great human tool, but it’s also the great weaver of illusion. Is your spirituality just another system of rationalization, or is it a practice?

Disappointment — or Insight?

My friend Stephen Batchelor’s latest book was released just two weeks ago, and it’s already in its second printing. I tip my hat to him. He’s best known for Buddhism without Beliefs (1997), which once and for all branded him a renegade. In it, he called into question the two ‘key’ Buddhist teachings of karma and reincarnation, suggesting they weren’t key at all but cultural artifacts of the Buddha’s time and place.

It’s well worth taking the trouble to question beliefs — particularly Buddhist ones. I’ve always counted them as secondary to the practices anyway, but if Stephen’s ideas have pried open the eyes of one staunch believer, he’s done well. Buddhism’s often described as a belief system or a philosophy, but I think of it as a mode of inquiry; this blog is subtitled (above) to reflect that interpretation. I’m convinced that the Buddha was a hard-core empiricist, sanctified after his death mostly by men who never met him.

Anyway, Stephen’s done it again. In Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist he’s making committed Buddhists question the way they believe in Buddhism. We spent several years together back when we were monks in Switzerland, and exchanged lots of correspondence when we went our own ways; I suspect his book will chronicle similar disappointments to those I described in The Novice. Only today, I don’t count them as disappointment any more, but realizations. That’s a catchy word in Buddhism — especially for those who, naïve as I once was, think of realization as a mystical encounter with a blissfully hidden reality. Now, I’d describe it more as waking up to the facts of life, usually with a shudder. That might sound brutal, but if that’s what it takes to break down your illusions, it’s worth it. All you’re shedding is unnecessary baggage; it settles you down a little closer to the simple fact of being, and that beats anything.

So what’s wrong with the way people believe? Well, for example, as cool and sweet as the Dalai Lama might be, choosing him as your guru doesn’t increase your chances of enlightenment one iota. And yet people crowd around him as if he might put in a good word — but with whom? Buddhists don’t believe in God. And remember, the Buddha didn’t start out with the truth of bliss, but the truth of suffering. I don’t idealise him any more, but I do think he knew what he was doing.

Which brings me back to Stephen’s book. Why Buddhist Atheist? Buddhists are already atheists, aren’t they? Well, I’ll be getting a copy shortly, and will review it right here. I’m especially looking forward to his biography of the Buddha, which is one whole part of the book. I know that Stephen’s been carefully researching his life and times for years, and I’m hoping at long last to read a critical, humanistic account of Siddhartha Gotama — the great man who first snared my attention forty years ago, and who still has it. I may not call myself a Buddhist any more, but that’s no reflection on him.

Stay posted.