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Is Buddhism Surviving America?
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
...WIE: Well, you made some fascinating observations. In it you seem to suggest that Buddhism's adaptation to American culture is qualitatively different from any adaptation it has previously had to make. Because in attempting to take root in America, Buddhism has encountered and has had to adapt itself to a society that, as you say, "fails to recognize or validate the enlightenment experience." Could you explain what you mean by that and what you've observed?
HT: Do you want to talk about it specifically in terms of enlightenment?
WIE: Yes.
HT: Well, when we started off practicing, we didn't know what enlightenment was, and we still don't—we have no idea. But the way we think about it has shifted. If you go back to before the sixties, you find that Zen practice was the first, most extensive kind of Buddhism that was picked up by the new Buddhists in this country. D.T. Suzuki had a tremendous amount to do with developing and creating a climate for Zen practice in America, and he had a great deal to say about enlightenment. He talked about satori and kensho [enlightenment experiences]. What happened in this country is that we developed all these ideas about enlightenment, about emptiness and about what Zen practice was all about. And then we got tremendously disappointed in our teachers. That happened after about twenty years of practice in the Zen centers. In that time, we also went from being in our twenties to being in our forties. We became middle-aged, many people had children, and then there was a need to figure out how we were going to live in this society of ours with our conventional needs. One of the biggest differences we've seen in America is that there's been no great interest in monasticism.
WIE: You're describing what has happened in the Zen community in America, but would you say the same kinds of things have occurred in the other Buddhist schools in America as well?
HT: Yes. Except that the Zen tradition has always been more affiliated with monasticism.
WIE: You've made some interesting observations about American culture and how what you call "secular materialism" in America is influencing the way the Buddhist community is interpreting ideas like enlightenment and what it means to live an enlightened life. Today, for example, in the most popular schools of contemporary Western Buddhism, teachers and practitioners speak about bringing enlightenment into everyday life. The term "everyday Zen" perhaps best epitomizes this school of thought, even though this concept is not limited to Zen. Some popular Vipassana schools similarly refer to "mindful awareness in everyday life"—mindful awareness while you're getting into a relationship, child-rearing and making money. My question is: Is America reshaping Buddhism according to its own secular and materialistic agenda? Are practitioners in the American Buddhist community trying to add enlightenment to their lives just as they are without changing anything?
HT: Yes, I think they are. Of course, that's the danger that any dharma tradition is going to have here. We want the dharma to accommodate itself to us; we don't want to accommodate ourselves to the dharma. That's the American way.
There were lifestyles that evolved in Buddhist countries that required you to accommodate yourself to it, whatever that "it" was. There was value in just having to say, "I have to take off this set of clothes and wear that set of clothes. I have to get up at 4:45 a.m. whether I want to or I don't want to." But in this country, our daily life is made up of endless decisions that are all totally inconsequential. Do you want to buy a Chevrolet or a Ford? All day long we're being asked to say, "What do I want?" Sure, you can unhook your own ego and your own personal little selfish self in the midst of this everyday life. But you have to be a spiritual genius because you're being assaulted all day long with a decision-making process that reinforces and reifies the small self. So yes, you can do it, but—
WIE: The culture doesn't support it.
HT: No, not in the least, no...
...WIE: I agree with you about the kind of influence Buddhism can have on a relative level, but you made some pretty provocative statements in your Afterword to Zen in America. You made very clear the distinction between effecting change on a relative level—raising the standard of ethics or morality, for example—and interpreting one's experience from an enlightened point of view or having one's actions be an expression of a truly enlightened perspective. You said that replacing the goal of enlightenment with a goal of ethical behavior uninformed by an awakened mind "both feeds on and fuels the human resistance to the unknown and the unknowable, which lies at the heart of all religious pursuit."
HT: That's right. But it all has to go on at the same time, because the effect of any one person's enlightenment is only going to be as far-reaching as the rest of the society is prepared to go.
WIE: Can you explain what you mean?
HT: Well, you can have a great saint in your midst, but how fertile is the ground to receive what they have to offer? Very few people want to get enlightened. Maybe that's something that happens in the evolutionary process of humanity—I have no idea. I don't know whether people these days want to be more or less enlightened than they did two thousand years ago. But it's absolutely true that we want to know about things. And we don't want to know about not knowing. Very few people want to know about that...
...WIE: I mean in terms of one's basic understanding of one's own relationship to the path. One could know, for instance, that one wants to be a good samaritan, wants to be generous, wants to be compassionate—but doesn't want to be enlightened.
HT: Yes, and I think that one of the things that's happening now is that people have grown up and found out that maybe they don't want what they thought they wanted. You're on the path for twenty years and you've taken all these vows of renunciation and then you find out that you don't want to renounce anything. I described a conversation in the Afterword I'd had with a Buddhist teacher, who said, "I don't give a shit about enlightenment." Now that's a very silly attitude for any Buddhist to take, be it a Zen Buddhist or anybody else.
But what we're seeing is that now we have a group of people who are disappointed with their practice. You could sit for twenty years and not get enlightened. So you say, "Hey, what happened? To hell with this tradition. I didn't get enlightened, so screw it." You get disappointed and then you start changing your view about it. This change in view is going to secularize the teachings. The secularization is coming from people who have had a big falling out with their teacher. They discover that they don't like their teacher or that their teacher is not who they thought he or she was. Then their views change through anger, through bitterness and through disappointment—it doesn't really matter why. Still, the secularization of these teachings is inevitable. There are very few people who want to go the distance with living a truly mature, authentic, nondualistic or autonomous life.
WIE: Right, that's true.
HT: But that doesn't mean you can dismiss the rest of it, because the rest of it has tremendous—...
WIE: Relative value.
HT: Yes.
http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j14/tworkov.asp?page=1
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Comments
We're nothing special. You think we're more materialistic than the Chinese or Japanese or Vietnamese? You think they don't desperately dream of a nice house and more money? We have more, usually, unless we're talking about the upper class. Oh, there are rich and poor in every culture. So in what way are we unique? How are we twisting the Dharma into something it wasn't meant to be? By insisting the entire Dharma must be available to the lay Buddhist, not just the monks sitting around worshipping the latest in a string of Masters? By telling you that enlightenment is just as rare and just as accessable to both monk and householder?
I would say instead of reducing the role of enlightenment, we have extended it to all Buddhists, not just the lucky few in the robes. We have revived Buddhism as a religion of the people, not the temple. But that's nothing new, and nothing to fear. It's just people doing what people do everywhere.
'We' in the West are special because we have embraced the way America controls everyone and everything - not necessarily through 'force of arms, but through 'force of media'. The ideology of the world is shaped by the US from the White House though the enormous power of media with the object of shaping everything to the wants and desires of the the Foreign Policy Bureau.
The result is that 'we' are so immersed in this planned corruption that we are like goldfish in a in a pond - regularly fed on a diet of 'disinformation' that we can barely tell the difference between truth and reality.
The above post, which has as it ideological base the concepts of 'human rights', is indicative of this current malaise.
'We' are no longer critical of what we are being fed but continue to demand that we get 'fed' because it is our 'right' - all in the name of the glorious democratic revolution where everyone is the same as everyone else - there can be no difference. We have swallowed this mantra without critically evaluating what it is we are being fed.
Buddism must have its base anchored in some institution beyond the reach of the US Foreign Policy Bureau. I know this challenges the sensibilities of those bought up on the continual diet of 'disinformation' - where the individual is the measure of everything - but it is necessary for that very reason - 'we' are too easily corrupted.
I'm curious as to how a secular Buddhist defines enlightenment?
Zen Master Seung Sahn had this to say about enlightenment:
...When you see the sky, only blue. You can see the tree, only green. Your mind is like a clear mirror. Red comes, the mirror is red; white comes the mirror is white. A hungry person comes, you can give him food; a thirsty person comes, you can give her something to drink. There is no desire for myself, only for all beings. That mind is already enlightenment, what we call Great Love, Great Compassion, the Great Bodhisattva Way. It’s very simple, not difficult!
I have also met people who had that inner peace and clear mind we call enlightenment. Every single one of them tried to tell people they were nothing special. Their followers would nod their heads and say, "Well, of course he'd say that. He's enlightened. That's him showing his lack of ego. Of course he's special. He's enlightened."
Maybe he was just telling us the simple truth and we refuse to believe it. But all this is not a "Western" approach to enlightenment. Chan started the ball rolling a thousand years ago in China. And Western Tibet Buddhists certainly don't stray from the tantric practice.