New age buddhism; fundamentalist buddhism

By the time I'd attended Shambhala Level 1, I'd already had some acquaintance with the sangha via buddhist programs over the course of several years. That weekend, I asked my MI (meditation instructor) about something which I'd been noticing and which had begun to concern me: why were too many (it seemed) people in the community just ... not all that kind, in fact rather mean-spirited? Her reply surprised me. She agreed, and said that she didn't often socialize with buddhists for this reason.

A couple of years after this I attended a program given by Khandro Rinpoche, and she spent a good deal of time in one talk urging community members to pay attention to how they were treating each other. And she gave a reason for a lot of the harshness and judgmentalism she said she regularly came across: too many people felt they needed to speak on an ultimate level all the time, and to monitor the failings of others in that regard, to catch people out for using the "wrong" word, or demonstrating a momentary lack of mindfulness or awareness. I remember her saying that conversation was too often pretentious, that you couldn't just say, "this is a nice cup of tea," but had to bring in the dharmakaya somehow, or whatever it might be.

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the buddhist path really is very very subtle, so tricky. It's like a toboggan course in the middle of a vast field that one must navigate, and even if you are fortunate enough to locate the course in the first place, and set off on it, you frequently find yourself sliding over the right bank, then the left bank, then the right again. You have to keep on reorienting yourself, over and over.

I often see this dilemma in terms of the "two truths." They are supposed to be seen as inseparable. The human mind is sophisticated enough to contact the ultimately non-dual nature of reality. At the same time (leaving aside fairly accomplished beings) we also fall into dualistic seeing all the time. In fact, most of us spend more or less all, or nearly all, of our lives there, and the society we share is fully enmeshed in it. The left and right banks of that toboggan track represent forgetting one or the other of the two truths, either the relative, or (enormously more typically) the ultimate. Buddhists, however, often do seem to forget the relative as well. By this I mean that we fail to see others where they are. We think all we need to do is impart our wisdom in any situation, and it is bound to be helpful.

But of course this isn't so. There are all kinds of ways of being unhelpful, or even worse, in the act of self-consciously, and often unconsciously, trying to "teach" others. What works for us, or person A, might very well not work for person B. I think we all know this full well on some level, but in buddhist circles, in my experience, it is often forgotten. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that when we have spent a great deal of time, and money, studying a subject, there is a natural desire to feel we've reached some level of accomplishment, and one of the ways we assure ourselves of this is by demonstrating it to other people. And Shambhala, in particular, is organized via an extensive hierarchy of levels. This program or practice follows that one; this sort of instructor has more authority than the previous one (MI, program director, shastri, acharya); there are various ranks within the kasung; and a new pin for everything. So it seems some people might like to show off, say, their "outrageousness" or "inscrutability." And to make sure the more lowly person currently in front of them doesn't get away with saying something more profound than they have thus far contributed to that conversation.

Chögyam Trungpa addressed this tendency (some would say he didn't always practice it himself -- I never met him, but I can definitely say that various teachers in his community, and many ordinary vajrayana practitioners, didn't). For example, from the talk "Conquering Fear" (The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume Eight): "We don't want to become tricky warriors, with all kinds of tricks up our sleeves and ways to cut people's logic down when we don't agree with them. Then there is no cultivation of either ourselves or others. When that occurs, we destroy any possibilities of enlightened society."

It seems to me that when this practice becomes pretty all-encompassing, we end up with what I would call fundamentalist buddhism. Probably some would object to the term, given that buddhism is not a belief system. But I think there's one real sense in which a buddhist can resemble a fundamentalist Christian. In the latter religion, the stakes couldn't be higher: eternal bliss or torment, with one's conduct in this one life the battleground. From that standpoint, how paltry earthly pleasure is, even just bare comfort. Practically any form of treatment can be justified if you think it will aid in the other person's salvation. Children can be brutalized in countless ways, supposed witches can be made to drown to demonstrate that they are not demonic, ordinary enjoyment of the senses can be reviled -- music banned and so on -- as unholy, because bodily, temptation. Murdering infidels might come with a promise of paradise. 

Buddhists don't tend to go that far (although we wouldn't want to look at all closely at the reigning ideology of Japan during the second world war). But vajrayana buddhism in particular shares the same sort of urgency. Khandro Rinpoche, in fact, mentioned above, likes to update a traditional example of the proper state of mind of the practitioner. The rarity of achieving a favorable human birth, she has said, can be thought of like this: imagine you are floating in the Pacific Ocean, and once a year a plane comes along -- somewhere, randomly, within that body of water -- and drops a pea. Each of those occasions represents a birth, and the frequency with which you are able to catch the pea represents how often you will be blessed with said favorable human birth. Unless (and this is the point) you practice "as if your hair is on fire." Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but this example, instead of inspiring me, as is its intent, has always rather filled me with despair.

Leaving the metaphor aside, I have found many ordinary vajrayana practitioners don't have an interest in really trying to understand another person's life, their individual path, and simply apply a one-size-fits-all approach to relating to others. They often seem to forget that upāya means "compassionate skillful means," the word "skillful" being non-negotiable there. Just as the act of beating a child into godliness is typically justified as an ultimate kindness, so all sorts of other harsh or cold or cruel actions are justified by the buddhist as helping to turn the other person towards the path of liberation. What's even a horribly painful life compared to -- it is believed -- shortening the number of lives needed to reach buddhahood? I think many people within Shambhala, and other communities, have been treated very badly along these lines.

What happens the other way round, when it is the ultimate view which is pretty much always occluded? Then, I think, we end up with some sort of new-age buddhism. A buddhism that can mean almost anything, but which is primarily focused on a greater enjoyment of life. There's absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying life to the full -- we should! -- but if that is pursued in the absence of buddhist view and buddhist practice, then it's simply not buddhism, that's all. There's no problem there, it's only that buddhism is a real and definite path that can't be made into whatever we like. 

There's a lot of new-age buddhism about, I think. A buddha statue in the corner, next to symbols of other traditions or implements used in contemporary rituals, might just symbolize kindness. Well, that's fantastic; I always like to see statues of the Buddha, and if they help any of us to be even slightly kinder one day in ten, then they are of benefit. It's only that we don't want to lose a tremendously precious, specific path which works towards the dissolution of confusion and suffering. So ultimate view -- eg as encapsulated in the four seals -- needs to be present, for buddhism itself to be present.

Avoiding both extremes dovetails with that famous pith meditation instruction: "not too tight, not too loose." A guitar string wound too laxly produces no music. Wound too tightly and it snaps off. But finding that groove, that's the course of the toboggan flowing through life.

It isn't so straightforward... One thing I've learned over time is that I don't think we can reason our way through that instruction. I think an awful lot of the path is establishing better habitual patterns through discipline, so that less and less actual effort needs to be exerted. But this is a whole other, and big, matter.

I'm inspired by a message that was once given Tim Olmsted, who lived for a dozen years in Nepal, in the company of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and other great lamas. (He has been teaching for some time within Tergar International, the sangha of Mingyur Rinpoche.) In Nepal he and others received regular teachings, more or less daily, and at one point, finding it difficult to assimilate all that he had heard, he asked Tulku Urgyen: "Could you just tell me what the main point is?"  

He received this reply: "Compassion for those who haven’t realized their nature, devotion for those who have, a genuine affection for all beings. And the common denominator is love."