What a mess!

An editorial from the Ch’an hall

A casual observer surfing the Buddhist scene in the West might well come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a mess. Indeed, some of us who feel ourselves to be serious practitioners may be beginning to feel like retiring to the hills. Yet that was not the Buddha’s way. He stood by principle and stayed in town.

Holding fast to the Dharma brings us up sharp against Samsara within the Buddhist world itself. Nothing could be more absurd than the current Shugden controversy about the value of a medieval ghost, nothing less edifying than the apparent state of the FWBO, little less informative than disputes over whether Roshi Kapleau completed more than 32 koans, and there is no enthusiasm to be found in the dereliction from duty of corruption-prone sectarian leaders. Those of us who are happy in our simple-minded attempts to follow the Way may well be distressed by these news items that read like soundbites in the gutter press.

Perhaps it is as well to be brought to earth with a thud. There is nothing special in institutionalised Dharma: reeking of ignorance it evidently perpetuates the mental suffering of disputants ego-anchored in opinion and prejudice. Where, one may ask, are the effects of following the path of wisdom and compassion to be found if not in the lives of its prime exponents? Is this all mere hypocrisy?

We need a pause for reflection. Buddhism is a growing force in the West and as it grows it picks up the prevailing trends of our culture. This is no new thing. It has happened throughout history as Buddhism, or indeed any other code of behaviour and belief, enters a world in which it is a stranger. In the late twentieth century an Eastern Way relatively unchanged since medieval times is encountering the full tide of Western capitalism and consumerism running as a cross-current through all its ancient values.

Westerners are increasingly educated to cultivate the independent self as an agent in an uncertain world in which fierce and unremitting competition sieves the talented from the less able, in which life-long employment is unlikely, in which state provision for accident and ill health is increasingly a thing of an out-dated socialist path and in which the ‘post-modern’ relativity of values means that any system of belief or behaviour is seemingly as good and as relevant as any other. In such a world any system of belief soon constitutes a ‘market’ to which ‘consumers’ come in hopes of a good ‘buy’. And the first thing a consumer wants is concordance with his or her pre-existing comforts, beliefs or prejudices. Someone coming to a Buddhist group wants to buy a sense of understanding, belonging and uplift related to the ideas they hold on entry.

Where standards are so variable that no cultural anchorage is available, the lost will grab at a straw. Strong minded, assertive individuals who appear to ‘know’ are exceptionally attractive in such a situation. A self-promoting teacher with the gift of the gab easily acquires charisma and followers and can infect a developing organisation of the ‘faithful’ with his or her own viruses. In Western Buddhism a common institutional structure is one in which a charismatic leader has full control of a blossoming, wealth-creating organisation without any form of check or balance from an evaluative membership. No one else ‘knows’ and the tin pot gods and goddesses of cults are created. This has occurred again and again on both small and larger scales. The loss of deep-rooted cultural means and standards for the evaluation of spirituality lies at the core of the problem. In so far as all of us are embedded in this world, the problem infects us all.

I was reminded of this in conversation recently with a young Californian social anthropologist engaged in Himalayan research. Kimber Haddix (of University of California, Davis) was comparing West Coast Buddhist centres with the small, home-spun village parish where her father, a Christian, ran the church. She told me that in the old time East Coast parish there was a real sense of community, people popped into each others’ houses and helped one another, telephone chats were common on a “How are you?” basis. Families cared for their neighbours and the priest was a central facilitator for his small community of parishioners. Yet in all of this there was little talk of ‘spirituality’ and certainly no debate about God or theology. By contrast, in the Buddhist institutions each individual was chasing his or her own version of ‘enlightenment‘, the key emphasis being essentially doctrinal and practice-oriented and there was remarkably little community feeling as such - more like the crew of a ship with a voyage to make and skills respected.

Similarly our own ‘Community Experiment’ for this June had to be changed into a shorter Ch’an retreat because an insufficient number of participants were prepared to spend longer time on a less intensive, community-building programme. In fact the extra two days some four of us spent together showed exactly what could be achieved: greater personal tolerance, liking for idiosyncrasy, respect for difference and a willingness to adopt a degree of discipline (spaced periods of silence) to sustain these things. Most of us are still gunning for the quick therapy of an enlightenment process - although without any real understanding of what such a process requires.

There is a paradox here because one of the reasons for forming the Western Ch’an Fellowship was because many people were asking for a greater sense of community. I put it to you that the ‘consumer’ attitudes that swamp most of our better feelings act unconsciously to prevent community developing. The reason: plain old, unconscious ego-indulgence.

There is a real danger that many beginners in Buddhism are being sucked into organisations that skilfully provide for their wants without the kind of self-confrontation that the Dharma demands. Lots of verbal ‘teachings’, visualisation practices involving creative fantasy; assertive even domineering leaders with strong sectarian partialities tend to produce uncritical dependencies in which a false, unchallenged self can flourish. When such an institutionalised view is challenged the adherents may defend it to the hilt because an assumed identity is now under threat.

And so we find seemingly rational Westerners engaged in the defence of protective visualisations involving a medieval and revengeful ghost or tolerating practices in which homosexual relationship is confused with spirituality or the value of the feminine ridiculed. The Buddha might well have been exasperated with bhikkhus who got involved in such things. And indeed there is ample evidence for this.

If we look into the Sutras we come to realise that stupidities of this sort existed even in the Buddha’s time. At first there were no rules, a group of friends constituted the early Sangha. As the teachings spread and numbers grew, so accurate understanding of the Buddha’s message was less immediate and the Buddha was repeatedly confronted by silly things his followers did. The Vinaya as a code of conduct was essentially a developing case law emerging from events in which the Buddha made a behavioural ruling to safeguard the spiritual progress of the monks.

If, therefore, we are faced merely by a modern version of innate stupidity what can we do about it ?

The first thing is to remind ourselves of compassion, of Avalokitesvara weeping over the innate stupidity of the world. Tara was born from his tears. True Bodhisattvas do not lose patience; knowing ignorance to be pervasive he and she take it lightly and engage only mindfully in debate. This mindfulness does not mean a lack of critical acuity. There is a real risk that as large hegemonic Buddhist institutions, possessors of sometimes dubiously acquired wealth, might seek to dominate the rendering of the Dharma in the state, (in education for example) so governmental acceptance could lead to the purveying of false or inadequate Dharma in schools and the undermining of the true Way. The critical Bodhisattva will have to stand up and oppose such developments with all the skills that persuasive argument can deploy. If this means unfavourable assessments of some Buddhist institutions so be it. The name ‘Buddhist’ does not imply anything sacrosanct, indeed sadly, at present, sometimes the reverse.

At another level, close attention needs to be paid to developing a mutual accountability between teachers and taught. Our own constitution is an attempt along this path and we must watch carefully to see how it works out. Authority needs to be appropriately employed. Thus the interlinking of the authority of the teacher to provide Dharma and the authority of an Executive Committee and Advisory Board in examining the means need developing as twin poles of a safety-conscious structure. It is exactly in this constitutional area that so many Western Buddhist institutions are currently severely incompetent. An institutional Vinaya needs to be debated and put into practice (see discussions with the Dalai Lama, page 10 and the article on pages 31-41).

We cannot ignore the world. Samsara and Nirvana are twin perspectives on one whole. What goes on in the world requires confrontation - even as the Buddha, a skilled politician, had to confront it. Yet it needs a quality of ego-disengagement if one is not merely to contribute to destructive debate. And here practice becomes all-important. It is essential to examine one’s own life in the light of the Eight-Fold Way with great care. In particular, to know that only through concentration and meditation is underlying falsity disclosed and the Way made plain. To construct institutions without a personal humility, to advocate practices that are nonsensical given the state of Western scientific and psychological knowledge, and to engage in vicious and aggressive defence of held-onto positions is to undermine the whole project. Ultimately, true teachers have an option to retire to the hills and await those who seek truth to come to them. In such an option may lie the salvation of the Way. We have not come to that yet. Watch out!!

John Crook Ch’uang Teng Chien Ti