Awwhhh...

ajani_mgo

While doing an idle search on the net for something Buddhist to calm my nerves, I stumbled upon this article on the Singapore DharmaNet site. (http://www.buddha.sg/htm/general/faq.htm)

Buddhist Retreat
Why I gave up on finding my religion.
By John Horgan
Posted Wednesday, February 12, 2003, at 12:54 PM PT
Taken from the Buddhist newsgroup



For a 2,500-year-old religion, Buddhism seems remarkably compatible
with our scientifically oriented culture, which may explain its
surging popularity here in America. Over the last 15 years the number
of Buddhist centers in the United States has more than doubled, to
well over 1,000. As many as 4 million Americans now practice Buddhism,
surpassing the total of Episcopalians. Of these Buddhists, half have
post-graduate degrees, according to one survey. Recently, convergences
between science and Buddhism have been explored in a slew of
books-including Zen and the Brain and The Psychology of Awakening-and
scholarly meetings. Next fall Harvard will host a colloquium titled
"Investigating the Mind ," where
leading cognitive scientists will swap theories with the Dalai Lama.
Just the other week the New York Times hailed
the "rapprochement between modern science and ancient [Buddhist] wisdom.


Four years ago, I joined a Buddhist meditation class and began talking
to (and reading books by) intellectuals sympathetic to Buddhism.
Eventually, and regretfully, I concluded that Buddhism is not much
more rational than the Catholicism I lapsed from in my youth;

Buddhism's moral and metaphysical worldview cannot easily be
reconciled with science-or, more generally, with modern humanistic
values.


For many, a chief selling point of Buddhism is its supposed
de-emphasis of supernatural notions such as immortal souls and God.
Buddhism "rejects the theological impulse," the philosopher Owen
Flanagan declares approvingly in The Problem of the Soul. Actually,
Buddhism is functionally theistic, even if it avoids the "G" word.
Like its parent religion Hinduism, Buddhism espouses reincarnation,
which holds that after death our souls are re-instantiated in new
bodies, and karma, the law of moral cause and effect. Together, these

tenets imply the existence of some cosmic judge who, like Santa Claus,
tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before rewarding us with
rebirth as a cockroach or as a saintly lama.


Western Buddhists usually downplay these supernatural elements,
insisting that Buddhism isn't so much a religion as a practical method
for achieving happiness. They depict Buddha as a pragmatist who
eschewed metaphysical speculation and focused on reducing human
suffering. As the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman put it, Buddhism is
an "inner science," an empirical discipline for fulfilling our minds'
potential. The ultimate goal is the state of preternatural bliss,
wisdom, and moral grace sometimes called enlightenment-Buddhism's
version of heaven, except that you don't have to die to get there.


The major vehicle for achieving enlightenment is meditation, touted by
both Buddhists and alternative-medicine gurus as a potent way to calm
and comprehend our minds. The trouble is, decades of research have
shown meditation's effects to be highly unreliable, as James Austin, a
neurologist and Zen Buddhist, points out in Zen and Brain. Yes, it can
reduce stress, but, as it turns out, no more so than simply sitting
still does. Meditation can even exacerbate depression, anxiety, and
other negative emotions in certain people.


The insights imputed to meditation are questionable, too. Meditation,
the brain researcher Francisco Varela told me before he died in 2001,
confirms the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, which holds that the self is
an illusion. Varela contended that anatta has also been corroborated
by cognitive science, which has discovered that our perception of our
minds as discrete, unified entities is an illusion foisted upon us by
our clever brains. In fact, all that cognitive science has revealed is
that the mind is an emergent phenomenon, which is difficult to explain
or predict in terms of its parts; few scientists would equate the
property of emergence with non-existence, as anatta does.


Much more dubious is Buddhism's claim that perceiving yourself as in
some sense unreal will make you happier and more compassionate.
Ideally, as the British psychologist and Zen practitioner Susan
Blackmore writes in The Meme Machine, when you embrace your essential
selflessness, "guilt, shame, embarrassment, self-doubt, and fear of
failure ebb away and you become, contrary to expectation, a better
neighbor." But most people are distressed by sensations of unreality,
which are quite common and can be induced by drugs, fatigue, trauma,
and mental illness as well as by meditation.


Even if you achieve a blissful acceptance of the illusory nature of
your self, this perspective may not transform you into a saintly
bodhisattva, brimming with love and compassion for all other
creatures. Far from it-and this is where the distance between certain
humanistic values and Buddhism becomes most apparent. To someone who
sees himself and others as unreal, human suffering and death may
appear laughably trivial. This may explain why some Buddhist masters
have behaved more like nihilists than saints. Chogyam Trungpa, who
helped introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the United States in the 1970s,
was a promiscuous drunk and bully, and he died of alcohol-related
illness in 1987. Zen lore celebrates the sadistic or masochistic

behavior of sages such as Bodhidharma, who is said to have sat in
meditation for so long that his legs became gangrenous.


What's worse, Buddhism holds that enlightenment makes you morally
infallible-like the pope, but more so. Even the otherwise sensible
James Austin perpetuates this insidious notion. " 'Wrong' actions
won't arise," he writes, "when a brain continues truly to express the
self-nature intrinsic to its [transcendent] experiences." Buddhists
infected with this belief can easily excuse their teachers' abusive
acts as hallmarks of a "crazy wisdom" that the unenlightened cannot
fathom.


But what troubles me most about Buddhism is its implication that
detachment from ordinary life is the surest route to salvation.
Buddha's first step toward enlightenment was his abandonment of his
wife and child, and Buddhism (like Catholicism) still exalts male
monasticism as the epitome of spirituality. It seems legitimate to ask
whether a path that turns away from aspects of life as essential as
sexuality and parenthood is truly spiritual. From this perspective,
the very concept of enlightenment begins to look anti-spiritual: It
suggests that life is a problem that can be solved, a cul-de-sac that
can be, and should be, escaped.


Some Western Buddhists have argued that principles such as
reincarnation, anatta, and enlightenment are not essential to
Buddhism. In Buddhism Without Beliefs and The Faith To Doubt, the
British teacher Stephen Batchelor eloquently describes his practice as
a method for confronting-rather than transcending-the often painful
mystery of life. But Batchelor seems to have arrived at what he calls
an "agnostic" perspective in spite of his Buddhist training-not
because of it. When I asked him why he didn't just call himself an
agnostic, Batchelor shrugged and said he sometimes wondered himself.


All religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to
believe that the universe was created for our benefit, as a stage for
our spiritual quests. In contrast, science tells us that we are
incidental, accidental. Far from being the raison d'être of the
universe, we appeared through sheer happenstance, and we could vanish
in the same way. This is not a comforting viewpoint, but science,
unlike religion, seeks truth regardless of how it makes us feel.
Buddhism raises radical questions about our inner and outer reality,
but it is finally not radical enough to accommodate science's
disturbing perspective. The remaining question is whether any form of
spirituality can.


*Footnote: See Theory of Meditation (or The Key to Happiness), produced and promoted by Colin Hankin

Well... More than anything, I guess this shows how, under the lack of proper guidance and correction, we can possibly be mis-represented...

buddhafoot

Great article. This guy makes some valid points, I believe, about Buddhism and Western society.

-bf

Palzang

Well, the only point I see that he makes is that Western science hasn't yet caught up to Buddhism! The more science uncovers about the way the universe works, the more it correlates with Buddhism, such as the way quantum physics and string theory sound very Buddhistic when you really get down to the core of them. Now, that's a significant trend, is it not? The author claims to be scientific and logical, but his reasoning isn't either. He labels as supernatural or superstition anything that doesn't happen to coincide with his (limited) worldview. That's not the way a real scientist would look at it.

Palzang