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Clarification Regarding Superstition/Ritual/Practices
Many people have told me there is somewhat of a division between western and eastern Buddhism. From what I have read, and been told, the eastern Buddhists still practice many forms of ritual, worship, praying, superstition, etc. I am not saying this is wrong or right; there is simply no appeal in it for myself (I do not believe in ritual, superstition, deities etc.) The western Buddhism has seemed to be more of a philosophy, non-theistic, and grounded in spiritual practice, which appeals more to the westerners. The "western" Buddhism is the one which I would associate my interest with. Is there many core differences, or butchering, or changes that make it significantly different? Or is it just a vast diversity between cultures, traditions, etc? Sometimes I get this vibe that things are toned down for the westerners, and it isn't in its pure form. Hopefully someone should have some insight on my concern.
On a side note, there seem to be so many Buddhist traditions that I have no idea where to go. I'm lost.
On a side note, there seem to be so many Buddhist traditions that I have no idea where to go. I'm lost.
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I take my teachings from a Tibetan Buddhist monk, a monk from age 12 in the Dalai Lama's monastery. Oh, this is a MOST superstitious branch of Buddhism! But it was the first sangha I found that had a full-time, in-town, fully-qualified teacher.
I am in not position to judge what is Truth and what is Not-Truth. Fortunately, the Buddha said not to accept anything until you have proven it true. And oddly, my teacher says the same thing.
So I don't. I note what is taught, regardless of whether or not I like it, whether or not it sounds logical to my science-trained Western mind. And I do my practice as I am taught to do it ... THAT proves itself over time and the rest ... well, it doesn't seem to matter all that much. Because it all falls into the believe/don't-believe, logical/non-logical areas that are not where enlightenment lies anyway. I think what DOES matter is whether or not your practice "works" for you ... if it does, then this school of Buddhism is a good one for you.
As to where to go, I would recommend ANY sangha group in your area. If you have a choice of more than one, toss a coin, and attend one for a year, practicing as your learn from them, and at the end of the year evaluate what it is doing for you. Change if you're disappointed with results. If there are no local sanghas, pick one school and read/learn within that tradition.
This is what I think about Buddhism ... it has many of the elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy. It involves a learning and a re-directing.
This is what I think about ritual ... it is an extremely effective form of learning. Why? According to educational theory, there are three styles of learning: (1) Visual, (2) Auditory, and (3) Kinesthetic (learning by carrying out the physical activity). Most people learn better using one of the styles, but the BEST learning occurs when all three styles are used.
And how does this relate to ritual? In ritual, you have statues/images (visual) and you do visualizations (visual). You chant and ring bells (auditory). And you prostrate and may use hand motions and/or hand positions/mudras (kinesthetic). Now, educational theory doesn't talk about olfactory learning (maybe this would work with a dog) ... but scent is a very primitive trigger, and I suspect somehow the incense might work subliminally. Anyway, there you go ... an enhanced learning program.
Some people love ritual. I'm not one of them! But after I saw a possible connection between learning theory and ritual, I've become amazingly tolerant of it.
It's the opposite actually. Western Buddhism is far from watered down. I think the Western Buddhism expresses the true empirical nature of Buddha's original teachings. Buddha did not engage in any of the superstitious activities that you see of the majority of Buddhist sects. He actually listed all of the ancient superstitious activities of India at the time, and requested that people abstain from these "lowly arts."
Perhaps you'll find this article by Sam Harris helpful. He describes how mainline Buddhism is misrepresenting Buddha's teachings.
http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=2903Itemid=247
I would suggest Zen Buddhism if you want to get away from superstition. There is no dogma, no rituals, no gods, no prayers, not even doctrine.
According to one of the greatest Zen Masters, D.T. Suzuki: "When all these deep things are searched out there is after all no "self" where you can descend, there is no "spirit", no "God" whose depths are to be fathomed. Why? Because Zen is a bottomless abyss. Zen declares, though in somewhat different manner: "Nothing really exists throughout the triple world; where do you wish to see the mind? The four elements are all empty in their ultimate nature."
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Buddhism has been tremendously influenced by cultures and politics over the millennium, as have all things.
It is important to rember that the egoand the notnow are not the only illusions relevant to Dharma.
There are the illusions of ritual and dogma and this-way and that-way, his belief, her belief and my belief; all are empty, there is only Dharma, and that is all there is.
So nobody can answer your question for you...
Only you can, by asking: is this or that practice in accord with The Noble Eightfold Path?
namaste
I've come across many westerners who are "anti" ritual, or they question rituals usefulness etc. This had been added to our society, not by science, but by the many reformations of christianity, in which the esoteric and arcane rituals of catholisism were abolished.
But what is a ritual? At it's most basic, a ritual is a set of practices/forms/actions/words performed on a regular or repititous bases, usually to produce an outcome. We use rituals in our day to day life but don't call them as such; like brushing our teeth, or showing, or checking all the doors and windows are locked before leaving the house etc.
A ritual in a religious sense is very similar, however, the reasons and desired outcome can vary greatly. Some rituals are not esoteric or archane in the slightest, like chanting sutras. This practice comes to us from the very begining of Buddhism, when the words of the Buddha were memorized rather than written. So the desired outcome for this ritual is to memorize. However, as Thickpaper has suggested, cultural superstition is usually added to the practice, sometimes hiding the original reason for doing the ritual.
Some rituals are esoteric and can appear superstitious to our much modernised western scientific society. For these rituals, all I can say is, try it for yourself and decide for yourself.
The same principle applies to praying and "worship" etc.
Just know that Buddhism is an open forum of investigation. The many paths of Buddhism have many different practices (hence the confusion in most beginners). We are lucky in the west that most of these are readily available to us.
Nios.
Sure, but these rituals have a clear purpose, whereas some don't.
Exactly. Chanting has a clear purpose, one that's demonstrable; you can see and experience why it can be a part of Dharma practice.
namaste
I did say in my post;
I also added;
Which again was re-iterating what you had stated.
Nios.
Ya, nor was I disagreeing:) I was saying I agree!xx
Ah
As regards temples or sangha groups in my area, the search is not too good. From what I have seen, most places charge money for an introductory course, or charge a membership fee. This does not sound very spiritual to me. (This is just for regular sittings mind you -- not courses or retreats.) Perhaps study and practice on my own is a viable route for now, until I am more in a position to attend a local sangha group. Is independent study and practice still okay?
Spiritual organizations need a means to make money to support the people who take the time to teach and to pay the bills etc. and spiritual people have to eat just like the rest of us. :P Most places take donations rather than setting prices from what I've seen anyway.
Of course.
You might like to also consider them not being burdens, even the stuff that you might rationalise as "mumbo-jumbo."
I follow a few rituals in my practice that I could easily pull to bits as being not relevant to Dharma; just cultural leftovers from thousands of years and miles away. But that doesn't mean they don't have a value aesthetically or in some other abstracted sense.
One of the most spiritual things I can do is to walk around the Bhodi tree splashing water from a beaker as some "offering". It has zero connection to Dharma to me, yet it is wonderful and special.
I guess I am saying, be as hard nose and reductive as you want about such things, but nothing is to be gained by being destructive and negative about them.
namaste
<CENTER>
BODY RITUAL AMONG THE NACIREMA
Horace Miner</CENTER>
Most cultures exhibit a particular configuration or style. A single value or pat-
tern of perceiving the world often leaves its stamp on several institutions in the
society. Examples are "machismo" in Spanish-influenced cultures, "face" in
Japanese culture, and "pollution by females" in some highland New Guinea
cultures. Here Horace Miner demonstrates that "attitudes about the body"
have a pervasive influence on many institutions in Nacireman society.</CENTER>
The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different peoples behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all of the logically possible combinations of behavior have not been found somewhere in the world, he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some yet undescribed tribe. This point has, in fact, been expressed with respect to clan organization by Murdock. In this light, the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go.
Professor Linton first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the attention of anthropologists twenty years ago, but the culture
of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Creel the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east....
Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which as evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people's time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion
of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.
The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is
to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of the
powerful influences of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more
powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to
in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls. While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and
secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. I was able, however, to establish sufficient rapport with the natives to examine these shrines and to have the rituals described to me.
The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. However, the medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their clients, but decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm.
The charm is not disposed of after it has served its purpose, but is placed in the charmbox of the household shrine. As these
magical materials are specific for certain ills, and the real or imagined maladies of the people are many, the charm-box is usually full to overflowing. The magical packets are so numerous that people forget what their purposes were and fear to use them again. While the natives are very vague on this point, we can only assume that the idea in retaining all the old magical materials is that their presence in the charm-box, before which the body rituals are conducted, will in some way protect the worshipper.
Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows
his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution.
The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to
make the liquid ritually pure.
In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated "holy-mouth-men." The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the
mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers
reject them. They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.
The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.
In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners
have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these objects in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man open the clients mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there age no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied. In the client's view, the purpose of these ministrations is to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the holy--mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decay.
It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the Nacirema is made, there will be careful inquiry into the personality structure of these people. One has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy- mouth-man, as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism is involved. If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite involves scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument. Special women's rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The theoretically interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists.
The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat very sick patients can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies involve not only the thaumaturge but a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and head- dress.
The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple The concept of culture ever recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because "that is where you go to die." Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so. No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after one has gained admission and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.
The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of all his or her clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his body and its natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only in the secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never seen him in an excretory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel. This sort of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client's sickness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men.
Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do anything but lie on their hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of the holy-mouth-men, involve discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the supplicant's mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh. The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people's faith in the medicine men.
There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the "listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirerna in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of their own birth.
In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women's breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mamrnary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.
Reference has already been made to the fact that excretory functions are ritualized, routinized, and relegated to secrecy. Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted. Intercourse is taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act. Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy by the use of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon. Conception is actually very infrequent. When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants.
Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has certainly shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is hard to un- derstand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski when he wrote: "Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization."
From my limited studies as someone new to Buddhism, I've found that Theravada Buddhism is the oldest school that I can think of that has very little superstition attached. I'm not completely sure about this, though, as there may be things about it that I simply haven't discovered yet. I will know soon, however, since I will be attending a Theravada group in my area.
I just finished reading the book Buddha or Bust by Perry Garfinkel. I recommend it if you want an overview of Buddhist traditions. It also talks about how the Western "non-superstitious" Buddhism is being received by traditional Eastern Buddhists.