Arizona’s Pretty Queer

So this LGBT ban in Arizona frightens me, I’ll be honest. I’m not gay. But there’s a few issues at play here. One is that the people someone decides to have sex with shouldn’t bar him/her from anywhere, assuming those people were consenting adults. That’s just obvious. People should be free to fuck and love whomever they want provided that in the case of fucking consent is given on both sides and in the case of love that the other person isn’t freaked out by you standing under his/her window at 2 in the morning blaring Peter Gabriel from your boom box.

For those of us who aren’t Christian, this should be especially scary. I carry my juzu (mala) everywhere. It’s my security blanket. So what if Arizona’s rule were to spread? And what if I were sitting at a restaurant, and my juzu falls out of my pocket or otherwise gets noticed by the wait staff? The Arizona law says that a business owner can refuse service to someone based on his deeply held religious beliefs in relation to that person. So there I’d be, clearly a heathen. Could I then be ejected from the restaurant?

This, incidentally, is why I argue so vehemently for calling Buddhism a religion. When we show our bellies and say Buddhism isn’t a religion, we risk losing the right to counter these types of claims with our own “deeply held religious beliefs.”

I don’t think this law will last. I have faith and hope that Arizona will see reason. But it’s frightening to think that in this day and age, bigotry can hide behind the banner of religion and by so doing be endorsed by the state.

Penny for Your Thoughts?

I’m always a little torn about the idea of charging for “classes.” Some Buddhists groups do, some don’t.

On one hand, charging for classes ensures (provided people actually show up) that any given Buddhist organization has a steady income flow to keep the center/temple’s lights on and pay the mortgage. The instructors give up their time to provide instruction and the student gains something in learning about the Dharma as presented.

On the other hand, one could argue there’s something seemingly disingenuous about saying you want to bring enlightenment to all beings and then only actually bringing it to those beings who open their pocket books. If spreading the Dharma is your most important mission, then shouldn’t that come before the mission of making money and building newer and better temples?

I’m really not taking one side or the other here. I mean, I lean toward the voluntary donation model where pleading and shaming are used to get people to cough up some cash for the post-meditation session coffee and the heating bill, etc. But that model can be iffy in this day and age where entertainment is expected to be free (see YouTube, Bittorrent, and HBO Go password borrowers for examples). And, often, religious instruction is filed under the entertainment category. If you didn’t have religious instruction, arguably your life would still operate without significant fault. We seek religious instruction to feel more at ease, to find a smile, to spend time with like minded individuals, all the same reasons people go to entertainment events and venues. People don’t want to pay for entertainment, and I suspect they’re willing to stand all the shaming and begging most clergy have to give in exchange for a free show.

So that gets us to charging. You can’t see the show without a ticket. And you can’t know the players without a program so hit the center’s bookstore to buy one. While you’re there, buy a CD of guided meditations and a souvenir mala. It can come off as shysterish, but it can also ensure that temples are built and that centers grow. It can ensure, too, that the people the center gets are really dedicated to being there because they’re willing to give up their hard earned cash for the chance.

I don’t know. My own priest doesn’t charge for his services. Though, he’s joked that he thinks the guys and gals who do charge might have the right idea. He spends his evenings and weekends as a Buddhist priest and his days working as a hospital chaplain. He has to work a full-time gig to support not just himself but his temple as well. He sells books but only at very close to cost. He’s not making any money off of spreading the Dharma. In fact, he’s losing money. It’s an admirable way to do it, but also means that the temple faces more threats of running out of funds at worst or at least not being able to expand and offer more programs and continue to further spread the Dharma.

There’s a River Flowing Deep and Wide

As Buddhists, I find we’re often not good at expressing the depth and breadth of Buddhist teachings. Quite often I hear people say “This is what the Buddha actually taught” or even worse just completely avoid saying that other traditions and teachings exist at all.

I’ve mentioned before that pinning down what the Buddha “actually taught” let alone whether or not there was an actual Shakyamuni Buddha is much harder than many people would have us believe. And the teachings, quite frankly, can be contradictory and incongruent between various sutras, etc.

Buddhist masters have been trying to fix that for millennia. In fact, most denominations of Buddhism came out of one school to become another not because their founder said that he wanted to create a divisive teaching, but because he said he wanted to unify all the teachings.

The truth is there is no one true Buddhism that conforms to what a one true Shakyamuni taught. And that’s important, I think, for more Buddhist groups to bring up early in the conversation with new Buddhists.

Many of the groups I’ve visited present their Buddhism as Buddhism. Little to no mention is made of the fact that Buddhism has per capita as many denominations as Christianity. Each group’s glossaries and instructional material define key terms such as enlightenment and meditation one way—as if their own definition were the definition.

That’s disingenuous to me. Enlightenment has no one meaning across all Buddhist groups. The goal, or lack thereof, isn’t universal across all those groups. Exoteric or esoteric, what we term “Buddhism” varies greatly across the spectrum of denominations.

Sometimes people try to strip it down to just meditation. Oddly enough, on a global scale, meditation is not the defining practice of Buddhism. Chanting is. The nembutsu in its various regional forms is the most widely performed Buddhist practice not counting meditation divorced from any Buddhism. Meditation exists outside of and prior to Buddhism. Shakyamuni, in fact, practiced, studied, and mastered many different forms of meditation before his enlightenment. Meditating arguably wasn’t what led the Buddha to enlightenment. The Jataka tales certainly make no mention of the Buddha sitting around for kalpas upon kalpas of lifetimes staring at his navel.

That’s not to say that meditation is bad or entirely divorced from Buddhism by any means. Or that presenting one’s own school as the best school is wrong or bad either. It’s just to say that I think Western Buddhism could do with a little more openness. Methodists don’t deny the fact that there are Catholics. Not all Christianity is created equal and neither is all Buddhism.

America the Buddha-ful

The concept that America’s a Christian country’s pretty flawed. The founding fathers certainly didn’t envision the United States as a Christian country. Look at what Thomas Jefferson believed. It was pretty far removed from Jerry Falwell. Yes, 75% of Americans self-identify as Christians. But that means that 1 in 4 people don’t. That’s the largest minority in America. Of that 25%, there are about 2.2 million that identify as Buddhists. That’s a little more than the entire population of the state of New Mexico! 

Speaking of minorities, we were barely willing to elect John Kennedy as President in the 60s because he was Catholic. One in four self-professed Christians in America considers him or herself Catholic. Think of the number of Catholic Christians you know. Does that give you an idea of what a sizable minority non-Christians are if there’s even more of them than there are Catholics? And does that mean that all the Catholics should just accept that they’re really Protestant because they live in a Protestant country? Of course not! 

So saying that one has to be Christian, not Buddhist, because he or she is American is silly. By that logic the Apostle Peter and the Buddha’s great disciple Shariputra both couldn’t have converted from Judaism and Hinduism respectively to Christianity and Buddhism, because those aren’t the religions of their countries!

The concept that Buddhism is a “philosophy not a religion” is also fairly flawed. The type of Buddhism I practice involves daily prayers, a scripture full to the brim with gods and demigods and fantastical events, and a belief in an eternal force called the Buddha. Pure Land Buddhism, which is the most popular form of Buddhism in the world, involves literally praying for a metaphysical being to bring you to his promised land after you die. How is that a philosophy? But let’s let even that go. Here’s a problem I see with this whole “It’s a philosophy/way of life not a religion” bullshit I hear all the time and not just about Buddhism but just about almost every religion except one it seems—What exactly are we leaving as a religion? If you cut Buddhism and other Dharmic or newer faith movements out as “philosophies” and then axe the remaining religions as ethnicities (Judaism, Hinduism, Islam are all often portrayed much more as ethnicities in the US), then what’s left as a religion? The only thing that fits that bill is Christianity.

No, I’m not Asian. I’m of German and Irish descent. I was born in America and I have been to a Christian church in my life. But I’ve also grown up with Buddhism in my life and been living as a Buddhist for more than 15 years and mostly had Dharmic outlooks on the Christian faith when I was going to Christian church. I’m a Buddhist. That’s what makes sense to me. It has nothing to do with wanting to be Asian. I’m certain the Buddhists who adopted the religion in China back around the time of Christ weren’t trying to be Indian. I’m American and I have a religion other than Christianity. It’s what makes sense to me.

Goeth Before You Get to the Fall

Man, I had a bad day at work the other day. Someone who’s having a tough time decided to make it my problem when it had nothing to do with me. It took every reserve of energy I had not to go ballistic back. And my adrenaline was still flowing 24 hours later.

But, I did hold myself in check. As a fellow Buddhist said to a group I was in just a week or two ago, “You can choose not to react.” I think that’s a tough thing for us to hear. Probably always has been. The Buddha had a tough time teaching it, didn’t he? The old “Why don’ t you stop, Angulimala?”

My wife sometimes references the line in Pulp Fiction—“You may feel a slight sting. That’s pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts. It never helps. You fight through that shit.” This person was yelling at me and treating me like her abused dog. Over absolutely nothing! Pride dictates that I scream at her. Fight and argue and freak out. But that never helps. It only hurts.

Couldn’t sleep, I was so shook up. Like George Costanza, my mind spent the night throwing possible comebacks I could have made up for me to replay the scene over and over and this time come out with my pride fully satiated. Of course, that wouldn’t have worked. There’s another quote that comes to mind that’s really often as true off the internet as on it, “Even if you win a fight on the internet, you’re still a loser.”

Have you ever had a perfect comeback moment? They’re few and far between outside our post traumatic fantasies. But when you do get them, they’re a bit like making good on an edgy sexual fantasy. The fantasy is often so much more satisfying than the reality because the reality is messy and complicated and involves real people and real feelings and real consequences.

So I’ve got to work today to swallow that pride back down and press ahead. The Buddha didn’t hold a grudge even against his worst enemies. I’m not the Buddha, but I’ve gotta try. Wish me luck 🙂

What If I Told You, I’m Full of Bullshit?

So, some of my Buddhist bullshit comes from The Matrix. I know, I know. It’s a stupid pop-culture trilogy of films. The films themselves, I admit, are mediocre at best. But man, the conversations they start are phenomenal.

If you’ve never dove into the Ken Wilber and Cornel West commentaries on the Ultimate Matrix Trilogy edition of the films, you’re missing out. Once you dive into those commentaries and then start talking about them with a group of people who are at least somewhat interested and engaged in the topics—boom—you’ve got a really interesting theological/philosophical conversation going.

I used to hang out on this message board—www.matrix-explained.com/php—back before it was overrun with spam bots. One of my favorite threads is here: http://www.matrix-explained.com/php/about-the-matrix-movies-585-0-asc-625.html. You can probably figure out which one is me if you read through starting on the page I linked to, which is already 26 pages into the conversation. (Hint: Check the avatars to find me.) We had some mighty Dharma battles and quite a few discussions that really, truly made me think.

How important is it to avoid using bullshit pop culture as our jumping off point for real, intense contemplation of life, the universe, and everything? Is Dharma found in a dumb sci-fi movie any less valuable than Dharma found in a 2,000 year old sutra?

I’m not all that certain on the answer. The trouble with pop culture is that it takes no responsibility. The Wachowskis (creators of the Matrix series) never promised to enlighten us or guard our spiritual welfare. Neither did George Lucas, for that matter, with the Star Wars Trilogy. But those films certainly spoke to me. In the case of Star Wars, which I grew up with, it got me interested in the Dharma and presented quite a few Buddhist concepts in a format that a 4-year-old American boy could understand. In the case of The Matrix, it propelled my already Buddhist mind further and gave me a common ground to stand on with other interested individuals to split the Dharmic hairs and test my own bullshit beliefs in the harsh sink or swim reality of online forums.

Maybe I should view popculture and its clear influence on my own mind as an expedient means. What is The Matrix if not a modern day Vajrayana tale? It’s not meant as scripture but as an entertaining story that raises issues and questions worth contemplating. Isn’t that enough to be OK with its merit?

What bullshit sources inspire you? Anybody out there got a dirty little secret of where whole swaths of their understanding of the Dharma really come from? For me, it’s The Matrix. For my dad it was Kung Fu: The TV Series. You?

Get Back to Where You Once Belonged

I read an H. G. Lamont article the other day in which he listed a possible translation of “Namu” as being “I return my life to.” I really love that translation: “I return my life to the wonderful dharma of the Lotus Flower Sutra.”

What’s “namu”? In Nichiren Buddhism, it’s the first word in the Odaimoku, the main chant of that branch of Buddhism. Quite a few Nichiren Buddhists shorten it to “nam,” but either way it’s a cousin of “namaste” and the start of the chant, “Nam[u] Myoho Renge Kyo.” It’s also used in Pure Land and other schools to start chants such as the famous nembutsu “Nam[u] Amida Buts[u].”

I like the idea of returning my life to the Buddha or the Dharma. There’s so much there to unpack in that translation of one word. If you pledge yourself to the Dharma, then you’re just saying you’ll work for it. You vow allegiance to the Buddha, same thing. You reverence the Dharma—well, you just think it’s pretty spiffy. Hell, you “give” your life to the Buddha just means you’d live or die for him. But “I return my life to” means that you know where you’re bullshit little life came from. Right now it’s a piece of TP hanging in a stall waiting to get used. But once, it was part of a mighty pine tree. And after it gets wiped and flushed, it’ll nourish the ground and grow into another tree. Once you were the Dharma, and one day you will be again. “I return my life to the Buddha.” That’s where I came from and that’s where I’m trying to get the fuck back to. How beautiful is that?

The Imperial March

I’ve heard more than one somewhat racist spiel given by Buddhists who feel themselves more learned speaking to Buddhists who feel themselves less learned or those who are just getting interested in Buddhism. The spiel usually goes something like this, “All the offerings, prayers, chants, etc., are just cultural tradition that the natives still practice out of habit or because they don’t know the real heart of Buddhism.”

There’s a few things wrong with this thinking for me. First, it’s incredibly imperialistic. The implication if not direct statement is that we as superior Westerners can see right through the façade of “Buddhism” to the true essence of it. Almost a modern theological version of the American “manifest destiny” where Westerners are claiming the pure land and cleansing it of primitive superstitions. How people don’t hear that’s what they’re saying when they say this or don’t care baffles me.

There’s also the story of Buddha asking what part of a cart is a cart. I point to a horse cart, and I say “That’s a cart.” But if the person I’m telling this to asks “What is?” How do I clarify? Imagine this person ignorant of carts walks up and touches one of the wheels and says “This part is the cart?” I’d have to say “No. Those are wheels.” What if they touch the axle rod between the wheels? “So this is a cart?” Again, “No. That’s the axle rod.” And on and on. There is no “cart.”

I think this is often true of Buddhism. When we say that we can practice Buddhism devoid of the show and ritual of Buddhism, then what are we really saying? What part of Buddhism is and isn’t Buddhism? What part of the cart is a cart independent of all the other parts of a cart? And does it get us anywhere? The engine of a car makes it go, but it’s not a car. In fact, the engine of a car is useless as a means of transportation without a car of some sort attached to it.
Yes, superstition is by and large nonsense. Throwing salt over your shoulder likely has little affect on your luck and offering oranges to a statue doesn’t mean that an invisible deity will follow you around fending off troubles like Superman. But I don’t believe that means the actions are devoid of meaning.

Buddhism can be rearranged. It has been many times. And new traditions can be welded onto the old. That’s happened many times, too. There are dozens if not hundreds of forms of Buddhism across the globe. Each with its own set of superstitions and rituals. But I’ve never met a form of Buddhism that was “pure.” I would argue such a thing wouldn’t be “Buddhism.”

Meditation is a part of Buddhism but predates it. Chanting is a part of Buddhism, but not exclusive to it—only the specific words in the chants are Buddhist. Statues of the Buddha weren’t a part of Buddhism for decades. Tantra started independent of Buddhism. Bodhisattvas are fairly distinctly Buddhist, but are usually the first thing to go. So what part of the cart is the cart without the other parts of the cart?

Chance Encouter?

Had a really weird experience the other day. I dreamt about a beagle/bulldog mix—a somewhat strange dog. I told my wife about the dream, but she wasn’t actively listening and forgot. Then a couple of days later she emails me a picture of the dog at the Humane Society. This was the exact dog from my dream. How odd is that? My wife, animal lover that she is, says we have to bring the dog home now. But my sanity couldn’t take another dog. Our one dog is one more dog than enough for me.

So what does my prescient dream mean? Is my wife right? Should I get the dog? Is it just random happenstance? The odds of dreaming of such an odd dog and then seeing it a few days later are slight, but not outside the realm of possibility.

I think the event was brought on by the fact that I’ve just finished reading through Geshe Kelsang Gyatso’s Modern Buddhism. I’ve self-identified as a Buddhist on and off for at least 16 years, as I’ve mentioned before. Most of my Buddhism has come from Japan in the forms of Zen, Shin, Shingon, and Nichiren. I’m not an exclusivist. And I’ve been trying some new groups lately to see what they have to say.

This post isn’t an endorsement of NKT, just an observation of my reaction to going a bit more esoteric with my Buddhism. I’ve mostly stuck to exoteric Buddhisms in the past. Tantra and vajra and other such practices seem a little too…metaphysical for my tastes.

But that book clearly had an effect on me. I was calmer for the 5 days or so it took me to read it. And I had prescient dreams. Maybe all that’s coincidence, but it’s interesting.

Adding to the story, on this visit to the NKT center, I met a gentleman who used to be an SGI Buddhist. Sokka Gakai International is a major movement of Japanese Buddhism widely practiced in the West. This man had been practicing NKT for the last 8 years, but was able to bring me up to speed on NKT using some Japanese comparatives that made it easy for me. As we’re talking, he mentions that he’s put a few Buddha figurines in the community room that he wants to give away because they’re from his old traditions. I took him up on the offer to take one and go in to find a Dainichi Nyorai figurine waiting for me. Dainichi is the central concept of Buddha in Shingon Buddhism, and at that very moment his Womb Realm Mandala was the background screen on my iPad. This gentleman had been holding onto this Dainichi for something like 8 years only to hand it to one of the few people in this city who even knew who this was!
So what do I do with all that? Do I take these events as signs? Do I chalk them up to cosmic coincidence? Seriously, I’m asking!

What’s in a Name?

If you asked Jerry Falwell and Pope Francis what the meaning of salvation is, I bet you’d get two very different answers. Does that mean one of them’s Christian and the other isn’t? What makes a Christian a Christian or Christianity be Christianity? Again, I bet the Pope and Jerry would give you very different answers to that question.

My own answer to what makes a given religious denomination as identifiable with the greater stream of that religion would be that it’s not the outcome of belief but the base of it that gives it a common name. As Buddhists we share a common ground of Jataka tales and the story of Shakyamuni. But springing up from that common ground is a hydra of beliefs that don’t necessarily go with each other at all.

I touched on this some yesterday and it’s on my mind still today. It’s well known that there’s a common misconception that the Dalai Lama is somewhat equivalent in Buddhism to what the Roman Catholic Pope is in Christianity. When, in fact, the Dalai Lama is closer to what President Monson of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is. That’s to say the Dalai Lama certainly is an important religious figure, but he heads up only a faction of the Buddhist faith in the world and not even a dominant or particularly catholic (in the universal sense) version of that faith.

I bring this up because I think that what Buddhism “is” often gets very muddled and misdirected in the West. Many if not a majority of the Buddhist groups I’ve visited over the years treat Buddhism and meditation as essentially synonyms. But as someone who practices forms of Buddhism not tied only to meditation, I don’t put the primary focus of practice on sitting but on chanting, study, and faith. Given that Pure Land is the dominant form of Buddhism throughout the Mahayana world, I would think on a global scale that my own thinking here is more widespread. So why is it that Westerners seem to see “the Dharma” as meaning “meditation instructions”?

I think this misidentifying of Buddhism as a fancy term for meditation leads to a great confusion about how unique each branch of Buddhism is. Why is it assumed that all Buddhism is more or less interchangeable save for the bells and whistles of culture added to each denomination? I think it’s this misidentification with meditation. Because if you look at Buddhism as being about Dharma, Sangha, and Buddha rather than about sitting, you’d find these key terms all defined in very different ways by very different sects. Trying to say that they all have the same framework covered in different walls is an injustice to the breadth of Buddha Dharma, I think.

This probably bothers me more than some Buddhists because, as I said above, meditation isn’t the primary goal of Buddhism for me. Neither is asceticism. The Buddha conquered both those practice before he became enlightened. To me, Buddhism involves moving past opulence but also past starving the body and mind and into a middle way that sees this world as Buddha’s pure land and these earthly desires as Buddha’s pure desires.

Ah, I’m babbling a bit. But I think my point stands, whatever that point might be. I don’t want to be tossed under a label of someone who has eschewed earthly ways and holed himself up away from the world to study the gloriousness of his inner spiritual badassness. I don’t want Buddhism to be seen as promoting that.

To me Buddhism promotes engaged life here and now. Trying to bring enlightenment not to myself, but to everyone I touch by letting my light so shine before men that they may see my good deeds and seek my father who dwells in Samadhi. And, deny it all you want, that is a very Buddhist desire.