On Trying To Be Buddhist

Recent Books - 1

I've been reading a good bit lately - The Buddha from Brooklyn, for one.  I've known of the book for a long time and simply preferred to avoid the issues it was rumored to raise.  Internet discussions I'd read of the people involved, the group involved, both pro and con pretty much had turned me off.  Thorny issues, very difficult to really understand for those who merely read of them.  However, the book fell into my lap, more or less, so I read it. 

I was surprised to find the book quite positive, notably in the early chapters, but even at the end as well.  The author writes as a sympathetic and interested reporter, not as someone with an ax to grind, and she writes well.  It was also disturbing to read.  I think I can tell where a lot of these people are on a different course from the one familiar to me.  But the difference is subtle.  So many of the things people say are familiar - I hear echos of things I've said - I can feel the words in my own throat.   There are the stories about teachers (told in knowing, from-the-inside tones;) the little twists of meaning given to ordinary events; over all, a sort of Dharma one-up-manship.  Makes me want to take a vow of silence - a life-long vow.  It is a bit of a cautionary tale.

What is the difference between what these disciples say of their teacher and what I've said of mine, and what I hear of other teachers?  What grounds do I have for thinking I am on course if I think there is any question of the folks in this book?  Sometimes the precious triumphalism is something I am guilty of too, but that doesn't convict my teacher of the same fault.  And in fact, it is not what her students do that convicts this teacher, Jetsunma, in my mind. It's what she does (though for that you'll have to read the book.)  Even more, it's what she doesn't do and what her students do not do as well. 

When people start out in any faith, all the beliefs they adopt are a sort of overlay - concepts that are accepted and even promoted to others - but still superficial.  Only with practice do the concepts begin to really permeate one's behavior and understanding - one's being.  Only when that happens is the faith really deep and effective.  There is a certainty that develops with real experience - not the brittle dogmatism that we see so much of these days, but something softer, and very flexible even within its certainty.  That's what I don't see here. 

I may be wrong - I may be judging what I have no knowledge or understanding of.... I don't know for sure.  But this is my reaction.

[Edited 5/5/07 to add the following:]

As luck or karma or serendipity would have it, while I was writing this entry, other folks were posting a thread on E-Sangha on the same topic.  I read them after publishing my entry.  They were very interesting posts, and rather more positive than what I wrote.  As I reflected on them, it also occurred to me that the apparent absence of real spiritual growth in Jetsunma's organization may be the result of the writer's own lack of spiritual maturity - what she does not know in herself she can not find in her subjects.  That's at least a possibility.   

In any case, there were several posts quoting teachers whom I respect (Ven. Tenzin Palmo is one) who are convinced of Jetsunma's authenticity.  There was also a substantial discussion of the necessity of training for Tulkus, or reincarnations, if they are to recover fully their prior life's accomplishment.  Without that training, their path becomes difficult and problematic.  (The crunching sound you hear is me chewing on my words.)

Another Wednesday

Wednesday again - another meeting of the Classics in Religion discussion group at the library.  So far we have read only the preface and part of chapter one of The Last Week.  But I'm already finding the book a bit difficult to take.  It does exactly what I most dislike in a work of scholarship - namely, uses loaded words in a way that tilt the discussion toward the author's conclusions. 

One small example: quoting a professor one of them had had in graduate school, the authors describe the Palm Sunday procession of Jesus into Jerusalem as looking "like a planned political demonstration."  (p4)  It is the author's view that Jesus planned it to be such.  What disturbs me about this - though it is really too early in the book for me to draw any conclusions - is that it seems to move the intention and aim of Jesus' action from something holy to something worldly.  Maybe I'm misjudging what's going on here - hard to tell at this point. 

(I should mention that for this discussion group, the leader provides handouts - it is not required that participants have copies of the texts or books being discussed.  So I don't have the source to refer to, beyond the xeroxed pages of chapter one.)

I will miss next week's session (I'll be on retreat) - and after that there will be only two more weeks.  I hope we can get far enough along for me to learn more.  I think what I am concerned about has to do ultimately with the lack of integration of the historical understanding of Jesus and current knowledge about biblical times with religious faith.

As far as I can see this is a substantial problem.  And I see it starting in Buddhism - which is another reason it interests me.  There are academic folks beginning to approach the Buddha and later Buddhist masters from a strictly objective, external perspective.  This has at least the potential to be quite destructive (as I said last week.)  I'd like to spend more time on this.

The Last Week

Today was the first Classics in Religion meeting for November.  This month we're going to be going over The Last Week, by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.  It is, in part, the authors' response to Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ.  The session looks to be interesting and a different take on things than I'm used to.  The discussion is being led by Finley Schaef, a pretty well known Methodist minister who I had encountered in Brooklyn in the early '90's - a bit of a radical with definite thoughts about politics and religion. 

At one point today, Rev. Schaef remarked that if he had to sum up all Christianity in one word, it would be "justice." My immediate reaction (and that of several other participants who were more vocal) was, "What about love?"  And Schaef admitted that that had its place - and we went on with the reading.  But I thought this an interesting statement which also gave a hint of Schaef's stance. 

I'm wondering if we are going to get into questions related to the gap between the Jesus that biblical scholars and historians see, and the person who is the center of Christian faith.  I wonder which one Borg and Crossan will be talking about.  This is something that interests me a lot because it reflects a process that is only beginning in relation to Tibetan Buddhism - but it is quite mature for the entire Judeo-Christian tradition.  It seems in many ways to be a very destructive process - and yet, how can this information be ignored? 

Reading Merton - The Inner Experience

In the past few weeks I've been reading Thomas Merton's 'last' book, The Inner Experience. It's his last because it was published in 2003, thirty-five years after his death.  Evidently the full manuscript - a re-write really, of an earlier book - was among Merton's papers, but for a number of reasons, it was awhile before it could be published. 

Well, anyhow, I got it because I read somewhere that it was the most extensive and personal thing that Merton ever wrote about his own spiritual experience and his understanding of the processes of prayer and meditation. 

It's very much old-style Merton - not entirely a good thing.  His best writing, in my opinion, is in the autobiographical material - that always has a freshness about it, even when the ideas and feelings he's describing are rather dated.  They're his feeling, his thoughts - and that is very real.  The Inner Experience, though based on his own prayer life, is more theoretical - and it is marked by Merton's usual disdain for 20th century American culture and worldly attitudes.  However, not too many people write on this topic at all - so it's valuable and interesting for that. 

For me it has the added interest that it helps me to add a few pieces to an old (to me) puzzle.  I've wondered for many years about the so-called "dark night of the soul" that one reads a great deal about in Christian writings, but of which there is almost nothing in the equivalent Buddhist material.  Why not?  Don't Buddhists experience anything like this?  Are the meditative practices and processes of development so different in the two forms of spirituality that what is a major and perhaps essential phase in one is entirely absent in the other?  It seems so at times.  In mulling over The Inner Experience I am finding some clues. 

[to be continued]

A Small Insight

A very small insight. 

The Buddhist prayers I've said most often over the years, I have, in the process, memorized.  Not deliberately - just through frequent repetition. 

In A History of God, which I was reading a few days ago, Karen Armstrong speaks of  learning something "by heart" - of course that's a very familiar expression, but I had not thought of memorization in those words in a long time.  But that's what is so potent in memorization - it goes beyond the brain and intelect - it engages the heart.

When I've learned something at this level, even something quite trivial, it reveals a richness that I hadn't guessed was there in my initial encounters.  Learning can be not just an accumulation but a transformation.  This takes time.  It means, in the long run, learning a bit less, but learning it with my heart.

Reading A History of God

I began reading A History of God quite awhile ago, didn't get far, and have now taken it up again. 

The first thing that strikes me is that the book really isn't a history of God - that's just a good title that grabs peoples attention (in part by its very absurdity.)  The book, rather, is a history of man's idea of God.  A very different and less startling thing.  Armstrong is very straight forward about this in the introduction.  She says:

This book will not be a history of the ineffable reality of God itself, which is beyond time and change, but a history of the way men and women have perceived him....The human idea of God has a history...[p. xx]

That's the real subject of the book.  But in fact, Armstrong seems unable to keep her own belief in, and, to some extent, experience of, God's absence or non-existance out of her conclusions.  And once God's non-existance becomes a basic premise, then everything shifts profoundly. 

If there is no God, then the history of the idea of God is the history of God because the idea is all there is, there is no other reality.  Again, Armstrong is quite honest about her own beliefs.  But she doesn't seem to quite recognize these beliefs actually generate a basic premise that determines a lot of her thinking.  Over and over again she draws conclusions and makes points that are valid only if in fact there really is nothing divine, nothing deeply holy; only if the "ineffable reality of God itself" is in fact no reality at all. 

So - that is one serious problem with the book. I'm out of time right now, but I intend to edit this post later and add some examples.  And then I have a good bit more to say.  Because despite what I consider serious flaws, this is a book that sparks insights and stimulates reflection.