A Comment on Dharma Wars:Ignoble Silence, Transcendental Egotism and Getting Straight with the Truth
The newest Dharma Cop on the block appears to be Zenshin Michael Haederle former Deputy Bureau chief (Dec.4 entry in link) of People magazine who has written a piece for the latest edition of Tricycle magazine entitled
Dharma Wars:What is it about the Internet that turns Buddhist teachers into bullies?“
An accomplished journalist and writer, (some of his articles available here) with a knowledgeable background in Buddhism, Zenshin Michael Haederle (“…a Rinzai Zen lay monk and a widely published journalist who has taught at Syracuse University”from the Tricycle byline) has contributed this odd piece to Tricycle. On the one hand it seems an investigation into some of the reasons for the loud tone one often hears on the Internet and extends that to the Buddhist quarters. On the other hand it appears to be some kind of admonishment to maintain a culture of silence even in the face of inappropriate if not criminal activity.
After reading the piece several times I was a little mystified as to the point of it. The big message seems to be sit down and shut up (yes Brad Warner is quoted in it) but on the other hand, with the help of a few quotations there are some other undertones and what seems to be some amount of hypocrisy.
The Technological Red Herring and the Iceberg Principle
The article states:
In the era of Internet blogging and online forums with their unfiltered, rapidfire exchanges, disagreements among Buddhist teachers and practitioners seem to erupt out of nowhere.
Out of nowhere? Doesn’t that negate the principle of Karma? Very little comes out of nowhere without some cause, some volitional acts involved including that article. There is a great deal behind all of the situations that are brought up which the author of the article did not bother to indicate. It is not much different than your neighbors having a loud squabble. You are aware there are tensions going on there for some time and by the time it becomes heard in wider quarters a good deal of water has flowed under the bridge. Pretty much anything on the Internet, in print, on television news or called out by the town cryer has a back story. He continues:
What has changed in the past few years is that some Buddhists are now accustomed to casual online mudslinging and name-calling—in short, behaving just as badly as everyone else on the Internet.
I will take up this issue of “ideal” Buddhist behavior later but to continue, bolstering this argument about technology being the culprit in these disputes the authority of a psychologist is brought to bear:
“People say and do things online that they wouldn’t ordinarily say and do in person,” says John Suler, a psychology professor at Rider University, in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, who has studied computer users’ behavior for years. Buddhist or not, Internet users readily fall prey to what Suler calls the “online disinhibition effect.” The medium itself drives much of this acting out, he says. “People experience their computers and online environments as an extension of their selves—even as an extension of their minds—and therefore feel free to project their inner dialogues, transferences, and conflicts into their exchanges with others in cyberspace.”
The professor’s theory is common knowledge. By that I mean it is something people commonly believe. Brad Warner said this kind of thing recently and he’s not even a psychologist. Example:
The experience is not at all the same as dealing with real human beings face to face. No more so than cyber-sex is the same as real sex.
You can get very lost in the twisty twirly world of Internet communication and easily lose sight of what’s real and what’s not.
One can also do that with a video game, movie, drugs or all kinds of other ways. A basic lack of reality-checking is the hallmark of a fantasy driven culture like the United States.
The statement from the psychologist is rather ironic since the article author himself states:
It’s hardly news that Buddhists sometimes disagree— there is a long and colorful history of Buddhist teachers debating one another, often quite forcefully, over their understanding of the dharma. And American Buddhism has weathered its share of internecine conflicts, including sex scandals, financial shenanigans, and power abuses.
So why is it so surprising that these things appear on the Internet? And Buddhist teachers in history debated a lot more than Dharma. Inter-sectarian rivalry and power politics, particularly during the introduction of Buddhism to Japan are infamous. Deriding other temples, teachers and their students in addition to their understanding of the Dharma was practically de rigueur. (Soto vs Tendai, Soto vs Rinzai, Nichiren vs just about everybody, see also Schisms and Sects , and A History of Japanese Buddhism) So if it’s hardly news then why bother to write about it?
As for the various melodramas in American Buddhism, a relative culture of silence has reigned about that for quite a number of decades. Certainly the tightly knit inner circles shared their stories and gossip but the general public including many prospective students and especially prospective donors were kept out of that information loop. Bad for Buddhism and bad for business especially when the early retreats, refuges, hermitages, temples etc. were struggling to get by and expand.
With many web sites and blogs (the author doesn’t seem to recognize the difference-see his blog on WordPress set up as a website) currently bringing forward various documentation and commentary on questionable situations of the past Tricycle magazine is tepidly jumping on the bandwagon and attempting to cash in on the attention with this piece. (They’ve even enabled comments for this particular article!) For example on the The Aitken-Shimano Letters situation, the Zensite with Stuart Lachs as well as former Shimano student Genkaku Adam Fisher (see also letter to Eido Tai Shimano) have placed decades old documentation into the Internet realm. Much of this documentation was originally in the form of typewritten letters because the Internet wasn’t around at the time the problems first arose! The technology to disseminate information now is simply faster and more widespread.
Criticism and concern over dubious practices, questionable qualifications, strong opinions and unconventional ideas have not changed just because the medium of it’s dissemination has changed. Read some old book reviews and criticism of many decades back (here’s one from the NYTimes in 1851-pdf) and see what I mean. The practice of criticism was hardly invented with the Internet. Consider the element of parody in the plays of Aristophanes-his work is said to have contributed to the condemnation of Socrates. And book burnings didn’t start yesterday either. The tone of much of the material of the past is quite like what one reads in blogs today. Just because the subject matter relates to Buddhism doesn’t make it ethereally exempt from its context.
Unrealistic Expectations
In the Tricycle article three highly idealistic views of the “proper” behavior of Buddhist people particularly teachers are put forward:
- [Suler, the psychologist]“There’s a lot more narcissism in the community than we would expect or hope,” he says. “It’s a bit paradoxical that in a philosophy emphasizing the transcendence of self, some people are very preoccupied with self.”
- [anonymous comment] But a few found the whole thing painful to watch. The reader rg1313 commented: The fact that three zen masters have to air there [sic] dirty laundry on blog sites seems a little childish. . . . You teachers are supposed to be role models for our practice not a buddhist sitcom.
- [Michael Haederle] Indeed. If any newcomers exploring an interest in Zen had stumbled upon the fray, they wouldn’t have been inspired. With Buddhist virtues like compassion and right speech in short supply, the whole affair looked more like a schoolyard brawl than enlightened discourse between experienced dharma teachers and students.
Awash with expectations and subsequent disappointments that others don’t live up to an unrealistic “standard” these views expose one of the prevailing problems with much that is Corporate American Buddhism. That is transcendental egotism. The spiritual realm or anything with a whiff of spirituality attached to it, is so ridiculously idealized that followers meekly bleat out the statements of a particular canon without understanding their context, origin, relationship to the entire canon, historical perspective and often even their meaning. How many blogs do you see of any religion that are just cut-and-paste of quotes from a canon or spiritual leaders? It’s easier than thinking about them. And it looks like good spiritual study. But it is only pablum.
As an aside the second commenter has the facts wrong as well. Only one person of those three ever claimed to be a Zen master and that is Mr. Barry Graham. Ven Gomyo Seperic belongs to the Shingon sect of Buddhism. A quibble maybe but to pass on erroneous information offered by truly anonymous sources is rather irresponsible.
These individuals listed above are not unique in demanding the unreasonable from anyone who is associated with Buddhism. Somehow the label Buddhist elevates one to some kind of lofty pedestal of perfection. Failure to perform to spec engenders an ever so gentle, and highly passive-aggressive, finger wagging or an article in Tricycle magazine or in this case both.
This ridiculous idealism and access to the mainstream media to purvey it does next to nothing to provide any sort of sound resource for those interested in the Buddhadharma.
Journalistic Errors and Sensationalism
In the article itself there are a number of troubling phrases and inclusions. I will list and address as many as I can stand.
A few days later, it was Graham’s turn. “I have been the subject of some scurrilous rumor-mongering by a couple of former friends and colleagues,” he wrote on his own blog. Graham went on to allege that one of his accusers (he omitted the names) had been convicted of assault, and that the other’s own teaching credentials were fabricated.
Repetition of unproven allegations about unknown subjects is the realm of the National Enquirer.
The flurry of charges and counter-charges between Graham, Seperic, and Malone over inka—the authorization to teach in the Rinzai tradition of Zen—played out before an online audience, quickly blossoming into a fullon dharma smackdown that drew 171 partisan comments from Hoodie Monk readers.
As one of the partisan commenters it behooves me to point out that Ven Kobutsu Malone made only one public statement disavowing Graham as a student and associate and Ven. Gomyo Seperic made 3 posts. Graham himself made only one innuendo-filled statement. The “fullon dharma smackdown” was presented by those of us in the mosh pit. And the subject was not one of dharma but of fraud.
Regarding the comments cited to illustrate aggressive behavior:
Online, as in the real world, this self-regard often seems to fuel unbridled aggression. Consider this exchange from James Ure’s The Buddhist Blog, in which a reader identified as Twisted Branch commented:
Your lack of knowledge of authentic Dhamma teaching is astounding. It’s amazing you even have the courage to call this the “Buddhist blog.” All this crap you ramble on about has absolutely nothing to do with Buddhism. Your blogs are far more offensive to Buddhist tradition than any off-hand use of the term Zen. Please study authentic Buddhist teachings before claiming knowledge of Buddhism.
An anonymous commenter ,(Twisted Branch would be an interesting name if it was real) who may or may not indeed be a practicing Buddhist is no more an authority or an example to cite than any graffiti tagger is on the subject of politics or whatever the subject of the rage they are venting about may be.
The article author continues to characterize Buddhist bloggers:
In cyberspace, we can craft whatever persona we choose and call our blog whatever we want, and Buddhist bloggers often inflate their experience and understanding.
Is there an example of this? To make such a blanket statement about Buddhist bloggers is erroneous at best and defamatory in many cases. Has this author done a study to demonstrate the differences between these claims and what exists in reality on the Internet? If so what was the criteria used and where were the results published? What was the sample size? What “test” was given to determine blogger’s Buddhist IQ?
Shinge Roko Sherry Chayat Roshi, a Zen teacher who serves as spiritual director of the Zen Center of Syracuse, likens this behavior to online personal ads, where people have been known to misrepresent themselves (to put it charitably).
So the author’s Dharma colleague agrees with the author’s somewhat snarky assessment again without any substantiation. Why is this not surprising? Let us consider some Buddhist blogs and what people say about themselves. In the article itself James Ure is quoted:
If you read in my profile I don’t claim to be a teacher.
And in a few others:
I am not a monk, lay-ordained, enlightened or anything like that. I am not even a particularly good Buddhist but I strive. And in that striving I walk the path. John of Sweep the dust, Push the dirt blog
I have practiced and studied Zen Buddhism for several years and consider myself just an ordinary practitioner of the Buddha Dharma. Kyle on The Reformed Buddhist blog
I’m…a practicing Buddhist who follows the Theravada vehicle.-Richard of My Buddha is Pink blog
An angry demon striving to be a saint, I sit. Jordan on Slow Zen blog [Oh Jordan you've given into hyperbole-they might take away your Metta-tokens!]
I’m a lay practitioner. Striving to do zazen everyday and pay attention to the 10 precepts (as put forward by Nishijima sensei) as guidelines. Buddhism seems to be ‘helpful’ to me in ineffable ways. I’m drawn to the Japanese Soto Zen tradition. I have not looked much at other Buddhist traditions. Lauren on Whitebelt Zen blog
Notes and clumsy texts from a Zen Buddhist lay monk following The Way by Dogen Zenji, Gudo Nishijima Roshi and Peter Rocca (my teacher). byline of Marcus “Uku” Laitinen of Zen-The Possible Way blog
I started studying Buddhism about 4 years ago. It felt like something was missing from my life and for whatever reason, the middle path opened for me. I am still a novice when it comes to the technical aspects of the Buddha’s teachings. But, the core of the teachings– generosity and compassion are very simple to understand. The key is putting them into play and sticking to them, that’s where the practice comes into play, and I could use plenty of practice. I have no specific lineage or tradition that I follow, maybe one day that will come into play. I feel though that Buddhism as a way of life is meant for us to engage the world with the things we learn. Nate of Precious Metal blog
I am not a Dharma teacher nor would I like to pretend to be one, so please use common sense with what you read here-and hopefully at all other times as well. -Marnie aka NellaLou. Yes I say it right in the About page of this very blog you are reading.
There is one blog by a Buddhist badger Bitterroot Badger who states “And seeing as I’ve been a follower of the Buddha for years..” I wonder how he types with those claws!
And as for teachers, there are a small number who make outrageous claims and have come under suspicion. Increasingly it is becoming difficult to hide fraudulent claims and practices even in the Buddhist sphere. These types are by far a small minority just as in real life the number of grifters is a small minority of the people one meets. I know of what I speak here-look at the blog roll on the right under Buddhist Practices-Monks etc. It is familiar territory. Here’s what a few of the majority have to say about themselves:
I’m also a long time Zen practitioner ordained as a Soto Zen priest and one of the guiding teachers for the Boundless Way Zen project, currently serving as school abbot. James Ford Roshi of Monkey Mind blog
I was ordained a Sramanera in the Tibetan tradition on November 26th, 2001, but I’ve lived in Japan and did a stint in Russia as well. On May 11th, 2008, I had the great fortune to be ordained a Bikkhu at Dieu Phap, a Vietnamese temple in San Gabriel, CA. I’m currently in Nepal where I hope to attend the Rangjung Yeshe Institute for an excellent education in Tibetan language and philosophy. Rinchen Gyatso on A Monk Amok blog
I am not the 5th or 9th reincarnation of a great lama, I have not received any empowerments or initiations, I am not the holder of any lineage, I am yet to attain any of the jhanas, I am not a widely respected teacher, I am not a stream enterer (at least I don’t feel like one)and I do not have many disciples. Nonetheless, you may find some of my observations and musings interesting. I have been a Buddhist monk for 32 years and am the spiritual advisor to the Buddha Dhamma Mandala Society in Singapore. Shravasti Dhammika on Dhamma Musings blog
It is quite possible to check the credentials of teachers with a little work, so claims can be refuted and facts put forward. People may have an opinion about the process or about those involved or may pontificate about what the “proper Buddhist” practice is, but the personal authority of opinion is just that. If someone is a member of a Vinaya or registered Sangha or affiliated with a group or lineage then there are possible procedures. When that cannot be established one has to do as one’s conscience dictates. That was what happened in the Graham case.
If these kinds of claims about Buddhist practice on blogs are exaggerated then the meaning of exaggeration has been changed with the appearance of this article. So perhaps this writer and his colleagues could put in a little time doing actual research rather than taking swipes at a group they know so little about. Call it a reality test.
The author’s teaching associate at the Zen Center of Syracuse, Shinge Roshi, is quoted in the article:
“People who purportedly are teachers—whether they’ve been given transmission or not—are seen as Zen authorities online,” she says. “Sometimes students get swept into currents of basically malevolent speech. How can that be what the Buddha taught? I’m very concerned about it.”
Not all of those quoted belong to the Zen sect. Ven. Gomyo Seperic is a priest in the Shingon-shu Omuro-ha lineage.
Shinge Roshi takes a dim view of the whole dharmateachers- with-attitude phenomenon. “If you see ‘Buddhist teachers’ getting caught in an angry give-and-take, they’re not teachers—or if they are, they never should have been given transmission,” she says. “How can you cast these terrible aspersions on others without bringing shame on your own lineage? That’s really what I’m struck by—that people seem to be oblivious to the karmic results of their actions and their words.
Is she suggesting that these people be “excommunicated” or whatever the equivalent is in Zen? By what court? What hypocrisy in this statement! Oblivious is certainly the obvious word.
“There’s something about the social distance that happens on the Web,” concurs James Ishmael Ford, a Zen teacher and blogger. “Anybody with a keyboard is instantly allowed to present whatever they’ve pulled out of their butt as if it were the dharma. There’s some ugly stuff out there. There’s massive misinformation, and there’s an amazing amount of ego wrapped in opinion.”
James Ford Roshi (for a guy who’s hung up on titles the author forgot one here) is quite correct and downright diplomatic in his response. It could apply to anyone not only those who’ve been so negatively characterized by this article. Or was that the point?
In general there is a difference between a website of an organization and a chronicling of personal opinion in a blog just as there is a difference between journalism and personal innuendo. The author of the Tricycle article doesn’t seem to get this point.
Conclusion
Who’s bullying who in this rather passive-aggressive manner? Has Michael Haederle studied Neuro-linguistic programming or just the tactics of the propagandists?
The characterizations associated with the individuals in the first half of the article include “outrageous rhetoric” , “barbed public exchanges “, “online rancor “, “schoolyard brawl”, “in-your-face attitude”, “the know-it-alls who delight in denigrating others while touting their own dharmic understanding.”, “unbridled aggression”, “painful to watch”, “casual online mudslinging and name-calling”, “acting out”.
It is very interesting that all of the negatively characterized individuals in this article are not in the American Corporate Buddhist mainstream. Ven. Gomyo Seperic lives in Japan, Ven. Kobutsu Malone maintains a life in relative hermitage, Mr. Barry Graham (no matter what is said of credentials) maintains a somewhat outsider stance, Ven Brad Warner very publicly doesn’t want to become a corporate entity and anonymous commentors with opinions (right or wrong) by their very nature remain on the margin. All have one thing in common. That is independence. Independence from the mainstream but not disconnection from it.
It is also to be noted that titles are not forgotten for those whom the author lauds such as Shinge Roshi, Merzel Roshi, Venerable Thubten Chodron and others are simply Brad Warner, or worse Graham, Seperic, and Malone without titles even though in at least 3 of the 4 latter cases they have legitimate religious titles.
In contrast to the “Buddhist-themed website is a vehicle for vicious personal attacks” which characterizes the above individuals, others find the Internet:
an effective way to post text, video, or audio links to teachings that would otherwise be unavailable to people living far from practice centers
these sites don’t solicit feedback, but when they do, participants more often see themselves as members of a community, and they may even know each other offline. The discourse accordingly tends to be civil and supportive.
So we’ve got the bad guys labeled as vitriolic and aggressive and the good guys labeled with “civil and supportive”"lovingkindness”, “skillful”, “community”, “effective”, . Buddhists should behave according to the formula presented, that being, “One might suppose that Buddhists, with their mandate to realize no-self and manifest lovingkindness, would be able to navigate such pitfalls a bit more skillfully than most Internet users.” The lines are drawn.
Those characterized in a positive light include John Daido Loori (lets invoke the memory of a beloved dead guy to get the sympathy flowing), Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Ven Thubten Chodron and Shinge Roshi, the latter being a colleague of Mr. Haederle’s. As well “the prominent Soto Zen teacher Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi ” is mentioned briefly as being connected to the “controversial Big Mind program”. A professor (full credentials included) and a teacher are also mentioned. It has not been noted that those in the first half of the article do have some designations and credentials beyond rabble-rousers.
Continuing to draw the lines, previous problems in American Buddhism are characterized as “sex scandals, financial shenanigans, and power abuses.” These vague terms when particularized to cases incorporate misuse of funds, fraud, tax evasion, drug trafficking, extortion, sexual coercion, rape, gross abuse of power, prostitution in terms of trading sex for titles and position, and psychological, emotional and sexual abuse. Associating these things with the term “shenanigans” belittles the suffering of the victims of these crimes. “Shenanigans” are something naughty children are accused of and often excused for.
Sincere, truthful, words however harsh are brought up as if they are capital crimes. Right speech has been invoked. The Abhaya Sutta:To Prince Abhaya delineates the conditions of Right Speech. The third condition:
[3] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing & disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them.
It is not necessary nor is it even possible for all Buddhists to agree on everything much less errors of practice and judgment involving harm done to others and one’s self. As for the proper timing, the sooner the better as then the non-beneficial actions will be hopefully curtailed before more damage is done.
The distorted perspective of Right Speech equals Noble Silence in every circumstance seems to be one of the tenets of the upper-middle class genteel American Buddhist establishment. This gentrification of Buddhist principles worships authority at any cost and disregards it’s own errors as “shenanigans” at worst, while vilifying those on the margins of that gentility.
American Corporate Buddhism is becoming one of the most prominent spokes-vehicles for Buddhist religion in America. It dominates the conventional media, is highly sheltered, self-retroflexive, self-referential, non-inclusive in terms of minority populations, and easy to market.
This article is but another tip of a much bigger iceberg.
It should be noted that Ven. Kobutsu Malone received ordination from Eido Shimano Roshi on Oct. 24, 1993. And that subsequently there has been a falling out. That others of the Shimano clan now wish to impugn his reputation with innuendo and guilt by association with mere bloggers and hold him, his associates, and others who have the independence to think and speak for themselves rather than for the agenda of those in positions of power in the Zen community up as the worst examples of Buddhist practice and behavior, is certainly no small coincidence. Take a look at the The Aitken-Shimano Letters situation that appears on the Zensite and elsewhere and you can discover for yourself what this Roshi teaches. It would be with far more trepidation that I would engage with those who have not fallen out with such a leader. A clear and obvious agenda rather than hidden interests and passive-aggressive articles is certainly what I would prefer.
It is in the interest of American Corporate Buddhism, Eido Shimano Roshi having built one of the earliest corporates, his successors and close associates including Dharma heir Shinge Roshi (Sherry Chayat) , The Zen Center of Syracuse of which Shinge Roshi is the Abbot and where Micheal Haederle has taught, The Zen Studies Society (which maintains both New York Zendo Shobo-Ji and Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-Ji) of which Shinge Roshi is an officer , some of their numerous benefactors and associates (check the contributors at the end of the document), their student base and their various publishers (including Wisdom Publications) and others who benefit by their on-going existence, to put forward an admonishment to silence any agitation within the cyber-sangha. They have a great deal to lose. If people like Ven Kobutsu Malone, Genkaku Adam Fisher and the many others involved find too much of a voice many more questions will be asked publicly. Questions that had been asked privately decades ago without sufficient answer.
In all of this it seems somebody’s getting played here and it looks like Tricycle magazine is at the top of that list. Either played or just another player.
Things are not always as they appear.
My own connections. I’ve not met any of the people mentioned personally. I live in the Himalayan mountains in North India most of the time. A good quiet place out of the traffic but with quite a view. A couple of the people I email with now and then. I don’t belong to any of their schools/organizations nor are any of them my teachers. I have no financial ties to any of them nor are they my relatives-except in that existential sort of way we are all related on this planet.
Is that enough of a disclaimer or do you need to see my tax returns as well?…
[comment regarding Internet bullying being very old news]What you are criticizing is the article in Tricycle. That is where this “finger wagging” occurred. It is old news. That was also my pointWhy is Tricycle and this author getting so excited about it now? And why these particular instances when controversy has occurred for so long?That is the investigation I undertook.
Zen Who’s Who-Hakuin School of Zen Buddhism
Zen Who’s Who-Sanbo Kyodan: Harada-Yasutani School of Zen Buddhism
For all you bad, bad Buddhist bullies-Buddha Jones blog has a say on the matter
Some interesting comments on the Reblogging Brad Warner blog since he was mentioned in it This post.
[Nov. 17 2009]
Dharma Wars and Appolgies to Canada-Brad Warner has a say about the Tricycle article, this blog post and various comments. Comments on his post are here
Barbara O’Brien brings Virtual Dharma War to the table apparently unaware of the facts of the matter. It isn’t all big egos and flame wars among Dharma teachers. There is a lot more at stake. It’s explained above Barbara.
[Nov.18 2009]
On Notes in Samsara blog, Mumon, who is personally acquainted with Eido Shimano Roshi, gives his reasoned and balanced take on the situation in Scandals, internet fights and more
Jade has written her reaction here Dharma Wars?
[Nov.19 2009]
James Ure, one of the bloggers quoted, without permission or notification I might add, has written his response on his blog in the article Throwing Mud
[Nov.20 2009]
Nathan of Dangerous Harvests blog has made a post called Dharma Wars Warring and it includes a copy of a letter he has sent to Tricycle magazine
[This is another episode of this blog's occasional column, Fear and Loathing in McBuddhaland ]
Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles – a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other – that kept me going. Hunter S. Thompson from The Rum Diary
Introduction
This is a bit of a tangent taken from my last column FLM:Dr. Feel-good and the Medicalization of Buddhism.
As well some time ago I got into what could have been a very heated discussion with one of the scientists at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies regarding the mixing of science and religion. (my blog post on this Science and Religion make a Lousy Cocktail… ) but fortunately civility reigned and we had a nice discussion. The discussions there range from debate over human enhancement with technology to global security and techno-immortality. Interesting subjects in the forums and blogs. This Institute also has something going on called The Cyborg Buddha Project which links a number of scientists, all of whom have Buddhist backgrounds including monastic backgrounds to:
…promote discussion of the impact that neuroscience and emerging neurotechnologies will have on happiness, spirituality, cognitive liberty, moral behavior and the exploration of meditational and ecstatic states of mind. from the ieet CBP website
These and an email from a friend have prompted further thought. This time about the techno-medical-pharmaceutical-psychological establishment if I can compound all those together into one great Behemoth to tilt at. I like big targets because then I don’t need my glasses.
So get out your God helmet and strap in.
In the Beginning…
…there was the evolving human brain. From this brain came religion to explain the mysteries of existence. Then, after some time there came psychology to explain the mysteries of the brain that invented the notions of religion. Then there came technology to explain the mysteries of psychology. Then there came pharmacology to alter the human brain. Then there came the corporations.
OK maybe it didn’t happen in just that order. Many of these things co-evolved in many cultures. Pharmacology has long been tied to religion and religious experience. And psychology, though not named as such, has a place in many religions. Ethnopsychiatry, an interest of mine, generally means the indigenous diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. The questions in that discipline revolve around the identification of behavior that is “abnormal” for want of a better term, within a given culture and what is the culture’s response to such behavior.
In academia this has been a fairly scholarly sort of cataloguing endeavor with regard to “other” cultures. The usual ethnographies and texts are written and few bother to read or remember what exactly they were about. And this kind of discipline has extremely limited exposure in the general culture of the Americas or Europe or anywhere else for that matter. Sociology has sub-disciplines based on medicine and psychology but they too are not generally known.
So it occurs to me why not look at “Western” culture through this kind of lens and get a handle on the patient-culture that North America is becoming. And further why not look at some of the efforts to extend this disease/dissatisfaction-model of human existence into the future.
The Modern “Abnormal” and The Culture of the Damaged Individual
A guy walks into a bar and catches the eye of a beautiful young woman. He walks up to her and says “What’s your diagnosis?” She smiles and they exchange the phone numbers of their respective mental health professionals for screening.
Was viewing some of those self-help program web sites recently and they had a pages of testimonials. Some of the quotations included such phrases as:
- I attended the … Retreat hoping to find healing, and renewal.
- … it was deeply healing.
- I am moving towards wellness again.
- you saved my life this weekend.
- You helped me to access my emotions to enable healing to occur
- I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to heal with you.
- “Thank you … for seeing my hurt, for calming my fears, for enabling me to get through my pain, fear and anger that has been an anchor in my life for too long.
- I finally feel as though my cloud of doom has lifted!
There are thousands of such testimonials on every kind of self-help website imaginable. Looking in the mirror it seems all people see reflected is some kind of damage. And on some of these sites it’s almost like a damage sweepstakes and some kind of achievement to have the longest list of emotional and psychological problems, ailments and detrimental beliefs.
Time and time again people invoke some kind of illness or popular psychological jargon in casual conversation. Some of the things I’ve heard include:
- I’m so neurotic..
- I have panic attacks all the time.
- I’m sure I’m bulimic…
- I think my child has social phobia
- That time gave me PTSD. I mean I still think about it.
- He has ADHD for sure…
- You are sooo OCD…
Yet none of these people had any sort of psychology background nor had they been to any sort of psychotherapist regarding these complaints. Nor had they even seen their family doctor about any problems they were confessing to. And the last comment was directed at me. Someone said that to me once sarcastically. I asked them to define OCD. They mentioned something about the neatness of my house and that my DVD’s were in alphabetical order. I am fairly mindful of my surroundings but not in a pathological sense. Neatness is not OCD by a long shot!
Are we all really this fucked up?
Is the “damaged individual” the new archetype? (Consider the celebrity press!)
And are we also demanding that others take on our own versions of perceived illness?
Are we becoming a culture of psychological hypochondriacs and fantasy diagnosis pushers?
Why is it not OK to be OK?
The Big Catalogue of Misery
In an email to me recently Ven.Kobutsu Malone wrote:
The thing about western psychology is that it is solely concerned with
psychopathology…. it cannot identify one single “healthy” state of
mind.
As for the DSM…. talk about “corporate” influence? That book was
created for the insurance industry to enable psych people to fill in
insurance forms with number codes.
In popular culture the DSM has become something more. The hegemony of psychological ideology into people’s lives particularly in American culture has both enabled corporate profiteering in the health care sector and disabled otherwise healthy individuals with diagnoses that are often overblown and incorrect. The ignorance disguised as scientific authority with which the psychiatric and psychological community continue to practice is almost unbelievable. Ask any of them how ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) actually works or what the exact mechanism of SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors-aka Prozac and it’s relatives) action is on the brain and you’ll get an answer that starts with “We think it does…” Please read the criticism/controversy/adverse effects sections of the Wiki pages cited for more information on the dubiousness of these treatments. I could also cite many medical studies that run contrary to the corporate funded research that lauds these things so highly. Only for the sake of brevity will I refrain. [No I am not affiliated in any way with Scientology and their anti-psychiatry campaign!]
What is becoming increasingly popular is the realm of self diagnosis. Any self-help section of a large book store has hundreds of books on subjects taken right out of the DSM. There are such titles as
- Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder For Dummies
- The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook
- Anorexia Nervosa: A Survival Guide For Families, Friends And Sufferers
- Conquering Math Phobia: A Painless Primer
- The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook: A Guide to Healing, Recovery, and Growth
It is not that these books are not useful to those that actually may suffer from these conditions. And it is not that the symptoms clusters do not present themselves with some degree of association and regularity. It is that in this instant expert world and especially with everyone believing they are an expert on themselves, self-diagnosis is often mis-diagnosis. If psychologists and psychiatrists, who have actually taken the time to study these behaviors in depth can often be wrong how much more so for people with little or no knowledge of the subject? Suggestibility is much higher in people than they would like to believe. And in view of marketing campaigns and big bookstore sales tactics that suggestibility is manipulated as much as possible. (Did you know books just below eye level are purchased much more frequently than those lower down? Now you know why they waste space with table displays in book stores instead of all shelving which would be much more sensible and efficient for the housing of books. And these tables are usually dining room sized, which reminds people of food consumption. There’s a lot more that goes into designing the “browsing/buying” experience than most realize.)
These books are well marketed not only to patients but to potential patients. And in the marketing business we are all potential patients. Tell someone they are ill long enough and they might start to believe it. The classic movie Gaslight reminds us of that. Of course there the woman’s husband was setting her up with the scenario. But it does seem increasingly we are setting ourselves up for our own “gaslighting” with self-talk, reinforced by strong marketing campaigns relating to our “unwellness”.
So much time and energy is expended on going from one thing to another in an attempt to relieve this “unwellness” this dissatisfaction with self. After a time we start to look for a definitive definition of this vague “unwellness”. The lists of available “ailments”continue to grow. Look through the big book of misery and try on the diagnosis.
I came across an apparently abandoned blog by a young woman who I will not name here, as she may not even remember writing this a couple of years ago. She wrote the following:
The question is not whether I would receive a diagnosis, but what particular diagnosis it would be; it is apparent that the intensity and nature of my inner experiences would not be considered normative or healthy by the majority of people.
A few months ago, it dawned on me that I might “be” bipolar. Looking over the course of my life experiences, and then stripping them of the spiritual or religious meanings I once attributed to them, it is all too apparent that they match a bipolar cycle of uplift and abjection. I ascend the heights and think I have discovered the “truth,” only to turn around and find it all meaningless.
This young woman had taken some psychology training but was not a psychologist. When you are a psychology student you go through a kind of sympathetic symptom syndrome where you start to think anything described in your Abnormal Psychology text is about you. Sort of like men who go through a sympathetic pregnancy (Couvade syndrome) with their wives.
In any case this kind of self-scrutiny is becoming all too common. And the big catalogue of psychological misery known as the DSM-Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association is rapidly becoming popularized. Articles appear in consumer culture magazines such as Redbook and Cosmopolitan with their advice columns which encourage reliance on some outside “authority” for life’s questions and often pull a considerable amount of their data from the authority of the DSM or from those who’s practice involves invoking said manual. Where the advice giver is not an “expert” in the field outside “experts”, usually psychologists are often consulted and quoted.
Romanticizing Psychological Dysfunction
Susan Sontag’s 1978 epic work Illness as Metaphor contains the following:
With the modern diseases … the romantic idea that the disease expresses the character is invariably extended to assert that the character causes the disease – because it has not expressed itself.
I would take up that theme of linking character with disease and expand it to presently include the romanticization of currently popular psychological dysfunction.
In another quote from the anonymous young woman’s blog she states:
So the question is, then, what is illness, and what is Genius? If so many creative individuals have been driven at least in part by what would now be termed “mental illness,” then why is it that the average “sane” person in this world finds so much inspiration in the fruits of their efforts? Might not such creative individuals, through their “dysfunctional” brains, be brought to the threshold of liberating truths and visions capable of filling others with a holy fire? If the hunger for meaning is universal, what then should we make of the fact that we would diagnose those who have provided us with it as “ill”?
In this case the label of mental illness becomes a metaphor for “special”, “creative”, visionary and liberated. Sontag stated :
Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.
My point is that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness–and the healthiest way of being ill- is one most purified of, most resistant to metaphorical thinking.
And if illness is not a metaphor then neither is wellness. Increasingly the terms wellness and happiness are becoming interchangeable. We can be wholly well yet unhappy. These are different categories of experience. Happiness is too often synonymous with satisfaction of every goal, craving and whim. The striving for happiness is not unlike trying to dress in smoke. One is covered until a good wind blows. And it is never satisfying.
Kicking It Up To The Nth Degree
The healthy are not healthy enough. The intelligent are not intelligent enough. The insightful are not insightful enough. The visionary are not visionary enough. There is something lacking, something is not satisfied. One may take this lack and perform the metaphorical blessing of the DSM-IV and become one of the romantically liberated, the psychologically significant and the Divinely “touched”.
Sontag again had something to say on the subject of psychology. She called it “a sublimated spiritualism”. That sublimation of spiritualism is taking new turns with the advance of technology.
One may, without recourse to disease models, instead search for relief from the self-perception of ordinariness and inferiority into the technological realm which includes the pharmaceutical.
Spiritual technology in various forms in nothing new. In the Amazon basin rites of passage, which have long been affiliated with shamanism, are marked with an initiation ceremony involving participants receiving bites of “bullet ants” which are large poisonous ants. Here is an additional explanation. And here is a video from the National Geographic of the ceremony.
Spiritual technology, be it through natural or chemical substances, manipulation of sensory experience through deprivation or bombardment or other alteration, neurosurgery, machinery or technological enhancement has been and will be something that continues along with the developments in human technology. The apparent need for external manipulation of one’s internal condition is not something that is going away any time soon.
There was a series of articles and interviews from Tricycle magazine in 1996 about Psychedelics and Buddhism. Most of the articles are only subscriber access but one is available The Roundtable: Help or Hindrance with Ram Dass, Joan Halifax, Robert Aitken, Richard Baker. The discussion revolves around the use of drugs and it’s efficacy in the spiritual experience. This series is taken from Zig Zag Zen which is one of the first books to raise some of these issues. The book contains articles and interviews as well as artwork related to the topic. Although most of the material is of a historical perspective questions are asked as to the utility of the drug-induced psychedelic experience in relation to the spiritual. Several excerpts and abstracts are available here.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. Technoshamanism is a term that has been around for quite some time. In essence it is the melding of technology in service to shamanistic spiritual practices. It was taken up by the Rave culture and many of those that self define as Modern Primitives the latter of which also involves body modification often employing elements of tribal cultures. The use of music with strong rhythms along with the strenuousness of dance and often drugs produces an altered state of consciousness. Whether this altered state is for the purpose of spiritual discovery or just having a good time depends upon the individual. Steve Mizrach has an interesting article on the Modern Primitives for those interested entitled “Modern Primitives”: The Accelerating Collision of Past and Future in the Postmodern Era .
The inner/outer apparent dichotomy and the manipulation of one to understand deeper truths and possibly effect change is nothing new in the world. It is not even new in the realm of science which is often seen as a bastion against irrational experience or unprovable speculation. Quantum Mysticism with such eminent thinkers as Heisenberg and Bohr pondering the possibilities and it’s critics such as Victor Stenger (Mystical Physics…,, The Myth of Quantum Conscience, Quantum Metaphysics ) bring these questions into the material realm.
What it comes down to is experience, sometimes its a peak experience, an altered experience, a way to understand experience, a search for a new experience, a way to augment our current experience or simply a satisfying way to understand our human experience.
Dissatisfaction with the ordinary perspective on experience drives most human searching behavior, whether one is a scientist or a shaman.
There is no reason why this will not continue. We have seen it in the popular imagination with such films as Johnny Mneumonic including it’s themes of Neurohacking or the imagined reach of technology in Total Recall or Vanilla Sky.
It’s about experience and dissatisfaction
What strikes me is the zeal of the scientific quest. And the willingness of Buddhists to participate in that quest. It is as if Buddhism, unless proven by science is dissatisfactory. And that science will remain unsatisfied unless it can quantify the spiritual experience with some kind of measurement. It will not accept that there may be something beyond it’s reach.
The psychonauts of the Neurotheology movement are just getting started. Buddhists in America and elsewhere have been invited and are all too willing to attend. (Neurophysiology of Meditation, Meditation skills of Buddhist monks yield clues to brain’s regulation of attention, ZEN BRAIN-from Upaya Institute, Wired 14.02: Buddha on the Brain, etc.)
How long will it be before the Factories of Bliss start to manufacture satisfaction and happiness? That seems to be a promise so many religions have been accused of reneging on. Will science finally make it happen?
It’s about experience and dissatisfaction
Cyborg Buddhas Indeed!
So I have been revisiting my interest in koans on this blog a while back. Actually I haven’t really paid much attention to that interest for many years. Life presented enough of it’s own koans to keep me going. One of these days someone is going to come out with one of those koan-a-day desk calendars with cartoons to boot. But this has gotten me thinking about new sources of koans. And my answer would be in the Google search results.
faith boobs forum-the milk of human kindness discussed
chocolate and the enlightenment – a rather weighty way to go
soup packaging forum-is that creamy soup or clear soup?
porn for charity-that’s pretty heavy.
repetitive violence becomes habit -repeat anything enough and it becomes a habit
computerized chicken – for what purpose?
whitebelt cattle-in a new reality show they will be fighting the computerized chickens
where is lakmi’s beauty parlour-turn left at Green Restaurant in Kulri Bazaar Mussoorie India
tulku hollywood – see Steven Seagal
escaping self zen-there is no escape
is buddhism correct?-works for me
facebook enlightenment-some new app that takes all your information and your friends information and connects it together in a new way
vicara boobs – “Vicara (Sanskrit: Vicāra) means the way mind maintains attention toward any object.” “(slang) Plural of boob, usually the breast meaning; boobs meaning “breasts”. Generally inoffensive.” Seems to be a lot of boobs mentions lately. Must be beach season.
so many spiritual gurus bullshit-see last entry on this list
guy with buddist beads-looking to meet girl with slightly used cushion
practice like a fool-works for me
depeche mode and buddhism-that should be depeche mode and enlightenment. You know I fetishize that band ridiculously.
drikung kagyu porno-I’ve heard that anything is fodder for the porno mill but this is a bit far fetched
sexual practice of nuns-see above
enlightenment porn – see Brad Warner (or my own indulgence in the same a couple of posts back)
extreme exercise to reach enlightenment-not to be confused with Extreme Buddhism-another one of those pseudo-mystical get enlightened quick schemes-they won’t even tell you who teaches it. Check out their reading list-sounds like a first year college liberal arts text list. (They have The Prophet by Khalil Gibran listed as Christian Mysticism. He was a Muslim and the title refers to The Prophet Mohammed.)(In comments James Ford states:
A small quibble. I agree Gibran’s “The Prophet” is not an example of Christian mysticism. But, also, he wasn’t a muslim, nor do I think the prophet of the “The Prophet” is meant to be Mohamed. Gibran was raised a Lebanese Maronite who in his adulthood was heavily influenced by the Bahai faith. I think of him as a “freelance” mystic.
It is good to have knowledgeable readers. I feel his poetic style is greatly Sufi influenced as well. And his association with the Nationalist movement in Syria and the pan-Arab nationalism that seemed to engender and that most of his early writing in Arabic maybe led me to the wrong impression. Though I do think Prophet is a reference to the Muslim figure as it is such an archetype. In the book it is not messianic (in a Christian sense) but more divinely inspired rather than embodying divinity itself. (OK this is not a literary discussion). But I am glad James has brought up the actual facts of the situation. Thanks.
Stumbling around in the dark
Looking for stones
To build my house
I swear
At all these stupid rocks
That block my path.
In an official statement from Wat Pah Pong the well-known Australian Ajahn Brahm has stepped over the line by ordaining nuns. You can read all about it on Bhante Sujato’s blog
Official WPP statement on Ajahn Brahm’s expulsion
which includes a copy of the letter attempting to explain the expulsion.
Oh the times they are a changin.
And here’s a brand new update from Bhante Sujato
Statement from Wat Pa Nanachat
This story’s got some legs I think.
!Note
This link was placed in comments but I add it here for your immediate reference:
A response from the Buddhist Society of Western Australia
Bhikkhuni Ordination at Bodhinyana Monastery, a Response to Ajahn Chandako and Others
By Ajhan Brahmali and the Bodhinyana Sangha
!Note 2
and a letter of support from Bhikkhu Bodhi:
Now Bhikkhu Bodhi’s revised response November 8, 2009
Some Blog and Other Reactions:
From the nun Phalanyani who keeps the marvelous blog silly nun: under shock
From Angry Asian Buddhist Arun writes This is Not a Schism
From The Buddhist Channel
From Buddha Forum
From the Buddhist Society of Western Australia forum
From Wisdom Publications blog Go Beyond Words History in the Making
Rev. Danny Fisher makes his opinion known The Wat Pa Phong Sangha Disavows Bodhinyana Monastery Over Ajahn Brahmavamso’s Ordination of Nuns
Shravasti Dhammika makes his point on the blog dhamma musings with this post Excommunicating Brahmavamso
Bhikkhuni Ordination from the Theravadin blog.
support bhikkhunis-a website set up to collect letters and information of support for Bhikkhunis
Facebook group set up to support Women and the Forest Sangha
Buddhist Channel has taken to Nobel Silence henceforth on this issue (!?)-an explanation of this decision The Buddhist Channel: Why the imposed “silence” on the Wat Pah Pong / Bhikkuni Ordination issue
Note 3
Open Letter To All From Ajahn Brahm On His Exclusion by Wat Pah Pong-from The Buddhist Channel
Some Background
An interview with Ajahn Brahm just prior to the expulsion Interview from the Bangkok Post via Buddhist Fellowship
For a little more background from Bante Sujato on the Five Points that have been adopted by the English Sangha. Not favorable.
My Current Opinion (not that it matters much)
I left a comment on Arun’s blog Angry Asian Buddhist (listed above) but I want to add to it and put it here as well.
He is still Ajahn Brahmavamso Mahathera not Mr. Peter Betts as he was born. So “excommunication” which requires a full Vinaya vote is not what has occurred. The robes have not been repossessed. A political (politics meaning the wielding of power) disagreement among a certain group of monks (who do not represent all of Theravada or even Thai Buddhism) does not throw the entire school or all of Thai Buddhism into disarray. Let’s keep some perspective on this and not sensationalize.
It would be nice if those taking the action against Ajahn Brahm would be more reasonable, in my opinion, but a lot of things would be nice if they came to pass. That’s just not reality. So this thing has occurred and people will adjust and take it from here.
Perhaps, once the upset from the situation wears off some fruitful dialogue will occur. To get people to talk of a situation is the first step to it’s resolution.
[inspired by Justin's post Self, No-self, Psychology and Buddhism on Progressive Buddhism]
Carrying around a sense of I-am-me-this-one-separate-thing-now-and-forever, me vs “that”, “independence”, is rather like carrying around eggs in a tightly woven basket made only of belief.
The problems with this are:
a) All the eggs are in one basket. Mom said “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!”
b) The basket frequently comes unwoven because all the ends of the threads are tied up all over the place.
c) They are eggs not chickens and have not and cannot develop into anything else.
d) Eggs are fragile so you spend a great deal of time protecting them and worrying about them.
e) The more eggs the heavier the basket.
f) The eggs are not eggs but little soap bubbles of ideas of who’s who and what’s what. They change all the time. Some break and more are manufactured to maintain the fullness of the basket.
The term self as a locational device for a particular conglomeration of flesh and point of sentience is useful in a linguistic and geographic sense, as is saying that particular head of cabbage has worms in it. Maybe don’t buy it or clean it before you cook it or something.
In an interview conducted in Austria for Eurozine, the Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar made an interesting statement contrasting the views of ego in the West with that of India.
… with the Indians the boundaries to the ego aren’t as rigid. That comes from the corporeal, the body itself is open. The image of the body that one has in Ayurveda, for example, is that of a permanent exchange between the ego and the environment. If the body is open, the boundaries to the ego are also open. The body forms the basis of the ego. One views one’s body in the same way one views one’s ego, and in the Indian view this ego is more fluid. For an Indian, mental illnesses come from spirits that force their way into the body; one falls ill because of evil spirits. In the West, the ego is a fortress – that’s why in psychology many biological approaches are taken. What happens in the fortress is important and not what comes from outside. Here in the West, it would be considered esoteric to say that sunlight or stones can influence the character, because the view of the ego is different. The exchange between environment and ego is emphasized much more strongly in India.
Kakar has written a great number of books on the psychology of Indian culture and the effects of globalization on both Indian and Western, particularly European culture.
In a conversation about arranged marriage with a friend a number of years ago this point of Kakar’s was reinforced in a rather interesting way. She said [and I paraphrase as I didn't record it]:
My life is not my own. I belong to India, to Gharwhal [a Himalayan region], to my caste and gotra [subcaste]. When I was growing up my life belonged to my parents. Then I went to school and it belonged to my teachers and my family. Then I married and it belonged to my husband and now it belongs to my children. In time it will belong to God.
This view did not disturb her in any way. It is how she identifies and defines herself, by her geographic and social placement in relation to that which surrounds her. It is highly relative in contrast to a movable “fortress” of an ego.
To demonstrate in part how this plays out socio-linguistically in Indian society consider the vast array of kinship terms. For example the name for uncle in English is specifically subdivided so that the terms one uses for one’s father’s younger brother (chachi) and one’s father’s older brother(tau) are different and these again are different than the way one’s mother’s brothers (mama) are named. Each relation is named relative to whomever is speaking so everyone has a plethora of relationship descriptors depending on who is referring to them. This gives a social context to identity.
And as one traces one’s self to a village in Indian culture, no matter where in the world that one lives this gives a geographic context. Ask one of your friends of Indian origin where their village is and I’ll bet they’ll be able to tell you all about it even if they were born in America or elsewhere. They will probably also be surprised you asked since the concepts of home towns are becoming increasingly of use only for sentimental purposes rather than locative purposes in North America and elsewhere. And this is a trend that will likely continue and appear with more frequency in Indian and similar cultures as populations continue to migrate.
In my last post I wrote that Buddhism is not psychology and psychology is not Buddhism. Buddhist explanations of the experience of life are quite different than psychological explanations.
Psychological explanations are given a great deal of credence [synonyms see belief] in the West but consider the following quote from a review of the book Vishnu on Freud’s Desk wherein Arjun Mahey states:
… Harold Bloom’s incandescent suggestion that Freud is a late event in European shamanism: it’s as a shaman (self-healed soul-healer) that he can be compared, fruitfully, to Indian shamans: the reductive aspects of his psychology bear point-by-point comparison to, lets say, Buddhist meditational grids. One can analogise Hinduism and Freudianism as two systems of thought, then, or allow one to supplement the other rather than aiming at joint dissonance.
I had to laugh at this since viewing Freud, or psychology as a form of shamanism tends to really get the “scientific” community up in arms. But if not that though, then what is it?
Neuroscientists work around the clock to try to “demonstrate” some theory to explain consciousness or even sentience but as yet to no avail. These differing categories may well supplement each other but they don’t replace each other.
On more practical terms one can consider the ego-view something of a choice-to work on reinforcing, shoring up the fortress or to work towards seeing it as the inter-fused ebb and flow that it is. And inter-fused is a more accurate term than interdependent which still carries some elements of a will to separateness.
Popular Western culture would have us reinforce this separateness in numerous ways. Consider this popular Simon and Garfunkel song.
Though I like the song and understand the sentiment of the desire to alleviate a sense of suffering it’s certainly not how I would choose to live, just me and my ego locked up in a Fortress of Solitude.
There is a choice.
Simon And Garfunkel — I Am A Rock lyrics
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
Don’t talk of love,
But I’ve heard the words before;
It’s sleeping in my memory.
I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.
FLM: Dr. Feel-good and the Medicalization of Buddhism (with bonus book review of How to Become a Buddha in 5 Weeks-ouch)
[This is another episode of this blog's occasional column, Fear and Loathing in McBuddhaland ]
Freedom is a challenge. You decide who you are by what you do. It’s like a question, like a fork in the road. An ongoing question you have to keep answering correctly. There’s a touch of the high wire to it. I’ve never been able to walk high wires, but I get the feeling. Hunter S. Thompson, in The Playboy Interviews. p. 38
Introduction
I am a religious Buddhist. I have never been a “spiritual” or secular or philosophical or psychological Buddhist. It would be fair to say I am one of those full on 24/7/365 believers full of faith and certainty regarding the Buddhist path. I love and am devoted to the Buddhadharma as much as to anything in life, maybe even more than anything else. It is the breath of life from this perspective. Maybe that makes me a Buddhist fanatic. I hope so.
After nearly 30 years of treading the Buddhist path I’ve come to relish the occasional arduousness and the often ridiculousness of it. As well as the sublime joy of that journey. It’s a very deep and very human path. It takes stamina, energy, courage and maybe even a little bit of foolishness and fearlessness to carry on for years on end. There’s no point in hope alone. It isn’t enough.
The purpose of religion, ultimately is salvation of some sort. Perhaps salvation from incidental day to day bothers or questions or perhaps salvation in the grandest sense of complete understanding of or mergence with the universe. It is transformation on any scale and provides some relief from all that existential angst that is the human condition.
Robert Thurman has said
I have become somewhat averse to the idea of merely ‘practicing’ Buddhism and would prefer to dedicate our efforts to those who have had a lot of practice and are now striving to ‘perform’ the buddhadharma. Or, if they are not ready to perform, they practice with the intensity of one who is determined to perform as soon as possible….There is no true practice of Buddhism if there is no intensity of aspiration to attain the full goal, the whole deal, the unexcelled perfect enlightenment of buddhahood itself. quoted in the editorial of Buddhadharma magazine Summer 2009 p.7
So that is a quick summary of my belief, perspective, aspiration, world view and bias. No point in pretending to some impossible standard of objectivity.
There is no objectivity because there is not a solid settled thing to objectify. And no fixed objectifier. As an aside from the Abhidharma, as soon as an interaction is registered in consciousness any future reference to that thing requires a re-registration in consciousness and a verification with memory. By that time both object and objectifier have been altered from the original contact.
I mention Abhidharma for a very specific reason. Abhidharma is the third part of the Tripitaka-the Buddhist canon. Since it deals with perception, memory, concentration, consciousness, motivation and many other mental factors it is the basis of Buddhist psychological theory. This is especially true of the Theravadin and Tibetan branches of Buddhism. In Mahayana schools it is less emphasized or even ignored to a certain extent.
The forest and the trees is why Buddhism is not only a psychology, a philosophy or a set of rituals or prescribed actions. It is all of these and more. It is an entire system of living. It is a world view, and even beyond that an absolute and universally all encompassing view, and a guide for every aspect of life. It is a lot bigger than the secular specialist viewpoint would like to admit. Interdependence, karma, and other Buddhist concepts are enormous even though they are practiced on individual human scale. The three jewels include Buddha-the first teacher and representative of the goal of Buddhist practice, the Dharma-the description of the Buddhist world view and methodology, and the Sangha-the social circumstances in which the Dharma is practiced and the Buddha is realized. Dharma includes much more than just the psychological or philosophical elements.
“Western Buddhism” as some groups define it has generally become another term for feel-good encounter groups and self-improvement practices. And in other quarters it has become a treatment “modality” or style of office decor for the practicing psychotherapist.
Buddhism is Not Enough-Validation
The social psychology of North America has been profoundly shaped by Christian viewpoints, values, doctrine and practices. Even with attempts to separate religion and politics (church and state) there is no separation between religion and culture. American and European culture is permeated with behaviors that are shaped by authoritarian theism. Culture is a world view informed by it’s dominant elements and one of the most dominant elements of any culture is it’s ideology particularly it’s religious ideology and behaviors stemming from it. In the case of North America this means an authoritarian theistic and specifically a Christian world view.
In this world view there is a very clear demarcation between secular and sacred. The sacred is totally reliant upon authority. That is authority of books, leaders and ultimately a divine figure. The secular realm takes the same tack with laws, political figures, group leaders and the rigidity of educational systems, the emergence of science and it’s “rational” authority and social sanctions against non-conformists. Authority = Power. It is something very few ever question. This viewpoint is self-serving, self-preserving and self-validating. Anything that is introduced to it goes through a rather arduous screening process by socially- and self-proclaimed “experts” before the authoritarian stamp of approval is given.
Here are a couple of points regarding Buddhism’s marginal acceptance in the dominant American culture and to some extent Europe and elsewhere.
1) Buddhism is a side-dish to one’s main religious practice. There are a growing number of voices that insist Buddhism should be “compatible” with other religions. Although this has been historically apparent for quite a long time in the philosophical practices of say the Theosophists and other spiritual adventurers at the turn of the 20th century. The idea seems to be that Buddhism should not replace one’s original religion or ideology but augment it in some way. Why?
Several reasons for this come to mind.
- a) Buddhism is not seen as a “serious” spiritual path due to it’s “otherness” (all that “cultural baggage” and foreign language)
- b) Buddhism is not seen as a “serious” spiritual path due to it’s inherent lack of authority. Who’s the boss? Who tells you what is and isn’t Buddhism?
- c) The practices of Buddhism are internally focused where authority is questionable and cannot be externally validated.
- d) Buddhism is “weak”. That means it is not aggressively prosthelytizing and converting. Nor are there any “serious” consequences for the “Bad” Buddhist. (like Hell). (note: I am talking about the non-Asian context here.) Nor is it attempting to “triumph” over anything so ominous as a great “evil” figure. There is no epic battle to be collectively fought and no heinous “enemy” in the deepest sense of the word to be conquered. There are the factors such as Mara, illusion and the like but in comparison to a Great Satan or other figure they are quite laughable in terms of evil intent. There is no overt “Power” in Buddhism either in doctrine or in action and this in a comparative context renders it without much in the way of authority.
2) The authority of the medical establishment
This is the main point of this column. If Buddhism is without “authority” in America what institution, body, group, individual has the power to sanction Buddhism as “approved” for the American public?
Well that would be the medical establishment. And by extension the pharmaceutical and corporate based research networks.
With the discipline of psychology being enfolded under the tent of Medicine and with the growing number of medical advances an increasing amount of personal behavior, belief and activity has come under the rubric of the medical establishment. Disorders abound and seem to multiply almost daily. And as psychology continues to adapt Buddhist methodology (without much else Buddhist) to psychotherapeutic ends we can already see the onset of such things as spiritual disorders replacing religious seeking. In fact spirituality and religion are already falling under this rubric.
Example: A Spiritual Disorder. A proposal to increase the definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder to include a separate category for “Spiritual Narcissist”. This is actually just the same old Narcissistic behavior in the spiritual/religious realm. Will there also be a “Political Narcissist”, a “Sexual Narcissist”, a “Corporate Narcissist”? This writer also argues that NPD is a spiritual disorder and is “misdiagnosed” as a personality disorder. So the DSM, which is a huge catalogue of named disorders put out by the American Psychiatric Association may need to be revised. At the APA website such plans are in the works for the next edition DSM-V. Spiritual disorder doesn’t seem to be on the menu yet.
So if you are having trouble with sitting on your zafu for more than 10 minutes perhaps you have meditation-deficit disorder. Or if you can’t reach the next jnana in a certain period of time you might want a dose of jnaiagra for your ascension dysfunction. Or if long retreats scare you perhaps you have Vassa-phobia and require an immediate intervention.
Buddhism is an easy target for this enfoldment into the medical realm. While there are Christian counselors the basis for much of the practice in that realm remains adherence to Bible based principles with a dash of psychology thrown in. Buddhism on the other hand is being dismantled whole-sale to serve the powerful purposes of the medical-psychiatric establishment. Christianity in the west is too powerful for the psychiatric/psychological community to co-0pt so lesser targets are subsumed.
And we can see many of the prominent folks in the American Buddhist community jumping on board with this agenda.
I am not against Jon Kabat-Zinn, Norman Fischer, Harvey Aronson, Jack Kornfield, Noah Levine and qualified others using some elements of the Buddhist whole to effect a relief from psychological suffering. I am all for it, in fact. But it isn’t all of Buddhism. Buddhist inspired, informed or influenced psychotherapy definitely but its not the whole of Buddhism. It’s goals are somewhat different than Buddhist goals. Many people say the relief of suffering is the goal of Buddhism and is also the goal of psychotherapy. This is true. But they are different kinds of suffering. On different scales. One is relative and the other absolute.
And now we see even Brad Warner jumping on the psychology bandwagon by attempting to practice psychotherapy without a license or any training by giving counseling advice to survivors of sexual abuse and PTSD. (check the snippet from the upcoming book cited in the linked post) And he is without credentials in the counseling realm.
We have psychologists using elements of Buddhist religion as a therapeutic modality and Buddhist specialists (or at least specialists in shikantaza if nothing else) hijacking psychotherapy and giving Buddhist prescriptions for serious issues about which they know little or nothing. The lines have definitely blurred.
As to the authority of the scientific-medical community Bhikkhu Punnadhammo in an excellent critique of Stephen Batchelor’s Buddhism Without Beliefs has stated:
Consciousness has not at all been explained “in terms of brain function” by modern science or by anyone else. It is entirely a metaphysical assumption that it ever can be, an act of faith of the most credulous sort that Mr. Batchelor should be the first to denounce. There is not a shred of a proof of this claim anywhere, only a pious belief in some quarters that such a proof will shortly be forthcoming.
Even odder is that when there is a conflict between two metaphysical assumptions, a Buddhist writer should be so ready to give the benefit of the doubt to the unbuddhist one.
This is characteristic of what one might call Buddhist Modernism. It’s that:
the influence of Protestant and Enlightenment values have largely defined some of their more conspicuous attributes.[4] David McMahan cites “western monotheism; rationalism and scientific naturalism; and Romantic expressivism” as influences.[5]
Taking up the latter “Romantic expressivism” Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes in the opening paragraph of The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism:
Many Westerners, when new to Buddhism, are struck by the uncanny familiarity of what seem to be its central concepts: interconnectedness, wholeness, ego-transcendence. But what they may not realize is that the concepts sound familiar because they are familiar. To a large extent, they come not from the Buddha’s teachings but from the dharma gate of Western psychology, through which the Buddha’s words have been filtered. They draw less from the root sources of the dharma than from their own hidden roots in Western culture: the thought of the German Romantics.
His entire article is well worth reading and reflecting upon. He also discusses the influence of these ideas from the German Romantics on Western teachers including those Asians who had a “westernized” education before coming to America to teach. Additionally he states:
The question here in the West is whether we will learn from the Chinese example [the dialogue between Buddhism and Taoism] and start using Buddhist ideas to question our dharma gate, to see exactly how far the similarities between the gate and the actual dharma go. If we don’t, we run the danger of mistaking the gate for the dharma itself, and of never going through it to the other side.
That indeed is part of what I am trying to do here as well. If the discipline of psychology is a “dharma gate” due to the sociological authoritarian and familiarity factors then what is it’s resemblance to the actual Buddhadharma?
On a practical level we can note that quite a number of psychotherapists have become Buddhist teachers and vice versa. Of course having an office full of people to whom one could recommend one’s Sangha isn’t a bad thing in terms of Dana (or is it?) and having a Sangha full of people in need of some “spiritual psychotherapy” also isn’t a bad thing for the bank account. (or is it?) But perhaps that is just my cynicism creeping in.
There are some very major differences between Buddhism and psychotherapy. And between the Buddhist principles of psychology and the Western medical principles of psychology.
To summarize some of the principle differences.
1. Psychotherapy or psychology does not involve Bodhicitta. It does not address the mindset that involves aspiration to Buddha-hood or even Bodhisattva-hood at all. (unless they are a symptom of some psychological disorder) Those two things are beyond the reach of psychology. Bodhicitta is the central pivot point to which all Buddhist doctrine, psychology, philosophy, ritual, metaphysics and belief is fixed. To talk of Buddha- or Buddhist-anything is to talk of Bodhicitta.
2. Psychotherapy addresses only the fruits of Karma, not Karma itself. Psychotherapy deals with the results of personal choices based on personal circumstances and seeks to restore or develop an equilibrium in the ego rather than address the fiction of the fixed ego itself and it’s relationship to Karma. It deals only in specifics that are relative.
3. Psychotherapy does not deal significantly with the personal ethics of the client/patient nor does it attempt to confer a particular philosophy to a client nor does it often attempt to address ultimate personal viewpoints regarding life, death and ultimate meaning or understanding. These are beyond the scope of psychology.
Here is a lovely table from Wikipedia that summarizes things further:
Four Noble Truths and the medical model
Broadly speaking, differences between traditional Buddhism and contemporary institutionalized Western psychology[21] can be conceived in terms used in the following table.
Buddhism (Four Noble Truths) Western psychology problem suffering (dukkha)[22] significant distress, disability, pain, loss of freedom, suicidality[23] etiology craving (tanha), ignorance (avijja)[24] conditioning, genetics, biology, childhood development, socialization goal Enlightenment (bodhi), Nirvana[25] normal or higher functioning, lack of initial symptoms treatment Noble Eightfold Path[26] counseling, therapy, medication, systems advocacy
And the definitions of suffering as indicated in the problem row also differ. So the starting point is NOT the same for both. From the footnotes of the article:
- ^ In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Buddha defined suffering (dukkha) in the following terms:
- “Suffering, as a noble truth, is this: Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering — in short, suffering is the five categories of clinging objects.” (Ñanamoli, 1993.)
- ^ For example, the DSM-IV states:
- “In DSM-IV, each of the mental disorders is conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom.” (APA, 1994, p. xxi).
The purpose of psychotherapy is to restore an individual to functionality from a conventionally dysfunctional place and relieve psychological suffering relative to the individual, his/her circumstances and personal ego make-up. The purpose of Buddhist practice is to achieve a particular perception and/or understanding of the world in an ultimate way often called enlightenment which relieves existential suffering. The latter is considerably more intense and well beyond the scope of “normalizing” an individual into a relatively comfortable Samsaric existence.
Routine maintenance of the Skandas is what psychotherapy does. Putting these elements into some sort of livable balance while ignoring that they are significant to the causes and understanding of suffering is what psychotherapy does.
Buddhism encompasses a philosophy, a psychology including methodology, as well as a world view, a set of moral values and a well defined goal that ultimately goes far beyond the relief of day to day suffering even though it does encompass that. Buddhism is a complete system that deals with wholes, with the whole, while science and psychotherapy and other secular approaches like philosophy or psychology deal only with specific parts.
This medicalization process is an attempt to fit Buddhist religion into a familiar box. And to give it the necessary “stamp of authority” to make it palatable to the general public. Some people have even gone so far as to suggest “branding” Buddhism and apparently selling it just as one does a pair of Calvin Klein underwear. Wrapping the “other” in the familiar little boxes whether they be psychology or consumerism do bring some comfort but that doesn’t change what is inside.
Even to those who consciously try to reject the overt Christian references and try to live in the material, the provable, psychology cannot provide the entirety in the same manner as Buddhism. What is lacking is a depth-a metaphysics an understanding of the non-material.
In the west the only outlet to attempting to understand that depth has been psychology or occasionally philosophy, the latter being principally in the domain of the ivory tower and not generally accessible.
The accessibility of psychology, it’s popularization, in part funded by pharmaceutical manufacturers, and the commonality of experiences people encounter in life has broadened its appeal. And under that umbrella psychology increasingly speaks for Buddhism.
They are two different categories of thought and understanding and as such, have two very different ends. Occasionally and with a little tweaking the methodology may overlap but that does not make them the same thing.
Buddhism is a complete system designed for a specific ultimate purpose. Psychology is a sub-discipline of medicine designed for a specific limited and relative purpose.
Buddhism is not a substitute for psychology nor is psychology a substitute for Buddhism.
A Prime Example of My Main Point or a Review of The Worst Book on Buddhism I’ve Encountered in a Very Long Time
The topic of Buddhism Is Not Psychology has been on my mind for some time. What has spurred this episode of this column is that recently I acquired a book that just about sent me right over the edge.
The book’s title “How to Become a Buddha in 5 Weeks:The Simple Way to Self-Realization” written by Italian psychotherapist and university professor Giulio Cesare Giacobbe gives you some indication that I might take issue with some of the contents. You would not be wrong in this regard.
Normally I wouldn’t even bother to read such a book. It is published by Arcturus who brings us such delectable titles as “A History of Cannibalism”, reprints of Nostradamus, “Crop Circles”, “Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures”, “Evil Wives”, “Why Are There No Cats in the Bible?” and “Discover Your Psychic Powers.” Pick up a copy at your favorite supermarket today. They state that is one of their target demographics-OK that was me wallowing in a bit of intellectual arrogance I admit. To be a bit more fair this publisher does also put out low cost editions of classics such as Dracula, Canterbury Tales, The Tao te Ching and others as well as puzzle books (like Sudoku) which I have actually purchased myself.
The reason I am bothering with this title is because this desperately Freudian fellow and his book labeled “The International Bestseller” are being peddled on his academic credentials. He keeps a personal website to sell his books, all but this one in Italian as well as a blog. He is a professor at the very prestigious University of Genoa Italy where he teaches “Principles of Oriental Psychology“whatever that is supposed to mean. This information is prominently displayed on the book. I will say that if his courses are as badly researched as the book woe to those students.
By badly researched let me give an example. His main sources of information about Buddhism include:
- Thich Nhat Hanh’s book “Old Path White Clouds” from which the brief biography of Buddha is adapted
- Dr. Edward Conze (“…one of the greatest scholars of Buddhism…”p.16) -the only Buddhist scholar referenced
- various sutras and other works such as Buddhacarita by Ashvaghosa but no edition, translator etc is given
- Chogyam Trungpa “Glimpses of Abhidharma” from which he takes the term Skandha but states “Skandha [is]..the five means by which perception presents itself. For the sake of greater clarity, the terms used here differ from the traditional ones…the function of perception, which Buddhist psychology subdivides into the five Skandha” (p.69) If he actually read and understood Trungpa’s book he might not have made such statements.
- Patanjali “The Yoga Sutras” Prof. Giacobbe has also written a book “interpreting” this text but as yet it is only available in Italian so all you yogis and yoginis have something to look forward to in the future as well.
- Buddhadasa “Mindfulness with Breathing” The author takes the phases of Vipassana and reduces them to 5 easy steps which he states makes them a “…much more easily practicable version of the traditional Vipassana, which has sixteen phases”(p.153)
- Hui-Neng is referenced regarding “the Zen experience” which is summed up in totality as “Presence in reality” (p.114)
Seems like a reputable list of folks with some knowledge of Buddhism and related material. But what few references are made are used to bolster a bizarre theory that 5 weeks of self-brainwashing will give one some kind of “Buddha” experience. It appears that this list of names is included to attempt to give credence to this theory. The author makes the statement ” My life has been transformed. I have seen enlightenment.” I will return to this issue in a bit as it is important to the content of the book.
As well he includes references from such diverse sources as:
- P.D.Ouspenski who was a long time follower of George Gurdjieff. Having read the works of both these men I can’t see what they have to do with Buddhism but there it is. He calls Ouspenski a psychologist (he was a philosopher) and lumps him in with Maslow and others.
- Osho Rajneesh aka Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh (and the book “Tantra, Spirituality and Sex”) had a rather interesting take on spirituality. He is labeled a Zen master by his followers, hence the adoption of the word Osho, but he had never studied Zen.
- Satya Sai Baba is a controversial Hindu guru in India who has met with numerous unsavory accusations.
- Christian Bible and “Catholic theology”(p. 105) and diverse Christian speculation such as:
Jesus, having shown himself to be not only the son of God but also a shrewd psychologist…It is exciting for psychologists, like me, that out of all possible professions Jesus chose ours. To think that we number the son of God among our members! That our profession now also turns out to include the Buddha is a real stroke of luck! I wouldn’t be surprised if Gandhi and Golda Meir were in there somewhere too.”(p.16)
And his sources for some of the psychology talk are named but not referenced with the exception of Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and Techniques by R. Assagioli published in 1965. Names dropped include Freud at every turn, as well as R.M. Bucke, W. Hall, A. H. Maslow, for no apparent reason as their works are never referenced. Freud’s theory of religion “focusing on neurosis as a psychological origin of religious beliefs” (source) is adopted wholesale and is clearly in evidence in this book. There are no current references and no references to any of the neo-Freudians such as Alfred Adler, Erik Erikson, Karen Horney or Erich Fromm or Freudian influence people such as psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan or those who after Freud actually encountered Buddhism such as Carl Jung.
While this does not claim to be a scholarly book it rides on those coat-tails and to ignore developments in psychology over the past 60 or more years as well as to ignore actual Buddhist scholarship in favor of Osho Rajneesh demonstrates a serious case of intellectual laziness.
The Author’s Disclaimer or Explanation of Sorts
At the outset the author states:
This manual is not about the Buddhist religion.
It’s aim is to present the psychological method taught originally by the Buddha.
…
The sole purpose and objective of this teaching is liberation from suffering. (p.11)
The author then immediately quotes from the Upakkilesa Sutta numerous times at length. The above “…” leaves out some of the author’s opinion of Buddhist religion as he seems to understand or misunderstand it.
The “…” excluded:
Which means you won’t have to shave your head and beg for charity. Best of all, you won’t have to dress in orange all the time;quite an advantage if you prefer other colours. (p.11)
He continues with his opinion of Buddhist religion in other sections of the book as well:
This business of being a parasite on others is one of the characteristic of the Buddha (who never worked a day in his life) that I urge you not to imitate. Not because there is anything bad about begging. But there is something a bit too Eastern about this way, which tends towards passivity. I propose a Western way to Buddhism, an active way that allows you to create, construct and compete as you would in normal life. But without stress. Which also means more efficiently. [emphasis the author's] (p. 34)
You don’t have to shave your head and dress in orange or retire to a monastery twelve thousand feet up in the Himalayas (p.22)
He then goes on to allegedly quote the Dalai Lama as having said “…the Buddha is inside you whatever you do and wherever you go.” and then adds in a footnote:
I don’t know where and when he said it but, given the Buddha’s pot belly, he must have said it somewhere! (p. 26)
OK Let’s just make up stuff and attribute it to anyone we can think of off-hand. And is he talking about the Buddha or the Dalai Lama as having said that. It doesn’t make sense for the Buddha to have said such a thing in such a way.
It’s not only the Asians and the religious Buddhists who get a bash. From Amazonian headhunters to modern soldiers the swath is cut. I’m just going to do the whole quote here:
In Buddhism there is no moral imperative of the Kantian type, which states that moral good is a value in itself (a typically Western notion).
Instead, an instrumental value is ascribed to morality. This does not mean that it is any less categorical. In fact, it is essential for mental well-being and therefore survival.
In other words, it is necessary to do good, or rather not to do bad (that is, not to cause suffering to living creatures), not because this is an absolute good in itself, but because causing suffering to living creatures creates in us a sense of guilt that becomes a cause of suffering to ourselves.
Unlike the Western tradition, this approach to morality, which is strictly speaking psychological, takes the historical and cultural dimension of morality into account.
For an Amazon headhunter, for example, decapitating and enemy, shrinking his head and sticking it on his belt is an act of great social merit and does not produce any sense of guilt. [a footnote is referenced here which states: In fact in the discos of Amazonia, the more shrunken heads you have on your belt, the more women you pull. With the rest of us, it would be dollars.]
The same thing has happened, and still happens, to soldiers in every period and in every country when they kill other human beings in the name of the most diverse ideals and social interests.
The expression ‘to do evil’ and therefore to suffer from a sense of guilt, ultimately assumes a meaning only in relation to the accepted morality of the society in which we have been brought up.
[Oddly he adds] The moral rules handed down by the Buddhist tradition are the moral rules common to almost all human cultures, which is why the Buddha was able to adopt them as absolute. …
This makes Buddhism the bringer of a morality that had never been seen in the history of humanity up until that point, and which would then find a fuller expression in Christianity.
That is why it not only assumed spontaneously the form of a religion, but is in fact compatible with any other religion.(p. 59-61)
Where to begin with this? I almost can’t. In the first part of this piece I addressed some of this nonsense. I only hope that no soldiers with PTSD come to see this guy for any kind of psychotherapy because it would be a disaster. And if this author had any inkling of his own ethnocentrism and misogyny (got another quote about that coming up too!) it certainly is not in evidence here.
Let’s insult some Swedes too!
The distinction between words, thought and reality in Naples, where there are many buddhas, is quite clear… The further north you go , the more this distinction fades. In Sweden if you call someone an idiot, he commits suicide.(p.115)
I suppose that’s some kind of European in-joke.
How about the Americans? In the chapter called “Presence in reality”, after a brief story about imagining while one is in New York that they are in some sleazy area in Paris and behaving boorishly. [my words of his description]
And you would probably end up spending the night in a police station; and if you behaved in the clubs in Times Square as you might behave in the clubs of the Place Pigalle (for example, touching the backsides of the girls) you would end up in a police station;Americans are very sensitive when it comes to the backsides of their girls. (p. 117)
Does this mean that women are the property of the State or of the Men? I do hope no women visit this guy for any kind of psychotherapy.
Let’s have a jab at Zen too
Have you ever wondered how people who practise Zen earn a living (since Zen consists of doing absolutely nothing)? Writing books! I am a Zen master! (p.117)
Yeah just like Osho Rajneesh.
So apparently the disclaimer that the book is not about Buddhist religion is enough to cover any sort of insulting ill-informed blather. No wonder he wants to cut Right Speech out of his methodology for becoming a Buddha in 5 weeks. (coming up shortly)
On Buddhist Topics
There are many examples I could take issue with here but I will reign it in and only focus on a couple.
About Karma the author writes:
The law of karma was discovered by Eastern culture in very ancient times (even before the Buddha);after the advent of writing it was described in the Bhagavad Gita, a work that forms part of the Indian epic poem The Mahabharata, dating from the 5th century BC., and in the classic treatise on Yoga, the Yoga Sutra, fro the 3rd century BC. In Western culture the law of karma was only discovered in the 20th century by Sigmund Freud, who identified the conditioning of the memory of the past (the unconscious) over the present as the cause of neurosis. (p.26)
There is no distinction made between the Hindu concept of Karma and the Buddhist one which is significant particularly with regard to volitional action and vipaka (fruit of Karma). And some kind of Karmic mechanism being encapsulated in “the unconscious” of the individual is another distinction entirely. [It should also be noted that The Mahabharata had much earlier origins. It is alleged to be the account of the Kurukshetra War which took place approximately in the 10th century BCE. and this account was transmitted orally with additions for a lot longer than this author indicates. That is one of the reasons it is in poetic form, to ease memorization. The advent of writing did not bring about the creation of The Mahabharata nor descriptions of Karma. These were both well known long before that.]
Here’s a few more that you can take issue with yourself:
[A Buddha] is always calm and serene…is always relaxed…no longer feels stress or tension…lives on joy, laughter, harmony and love…inspires joy, harmony, love, laughter and good humour in those around him……is someone who has attained serenity and maintains it in every situation (p.18)
Sort of like Santa Claus on Prozac.
Here’s a goody:
This ability to announce one’s own death in advance is characteristic of the enlightened or initiated. Which doesn’t rule out the possibility that some of them kill themselves in order to prove they were right. (p. 32)
As usual no source given for this idea. To care about being right or wrong with some prediction would be a fairly egotistical situation. If the person were “enlightened” why would they care about that?
Apparently we only need a 5-fold path:
As we can see, Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood are moral precepts rather than strictly psychological procedures. …Therefore we can leave them out of our method for achieving buddha-hood.[and further on Right Livelihood]…Not because these [killer etc] professions are immoral. Buddhism does not deal with questions of morality. [?] But because of the sense of guilt, however unconscious, that may derive from the exercise of these professions is a cause of mental suffering that cannot be eliminated even with the practice of Buddhism….It is obvious that a sense of guilt depends on the morality with which we have been brought up.(p.58)
And what if we have been brought up Buddhist? “Buddhism does not deal with questions of morality” I can’t take much more of this! This is in direct contradiction to the above quoted :
The moral rules handed down by the Buddhist tradition are the moral rules common to almost all human cultures, which is why the Buddha was able to adopt them as absolute. …
This makes Buddhism the bringer of a morality that had never been seen in the history of humanity up until that point, and which would then find a fuller expression in Christianity. (p.61)
On reality and suffering:
Reality is the environment that surrounds us. (p. 107)
The world of reality is real, the world of the mind isn’t real. (p. 109)
But suffering is not an object that can be found in reality. It is a mental state. (p. 113)
In reality there is never suffering. (p.113)
A huge limitation on the interpretation of Dukkha and reality. Does that mean that people are not real then? Or that anyone’s existence did not occur even on a material level? If neither the world of the mind nor suffering are real why are there psychologists? If only that which surrounds this body writing this blog is real how did this post get here? It may all be relative but that leaves a lot of gaping holes in this fabric of reality. Who the hell wrote this book I’m taking apart then? Or is it an imaginary book? Have I fabricated the whole thing? Is it just a dream like on that episode of Dallas when Bobby died?
Freud Swallows Buddha
Ego. That’s the biggest problem with this book in ever so many ways. I will just compile some of the statements and you can figure it out for yourself.
We can already, as of now, construct our personalities as buddhas. (p.20)
Indeed, according to Buddhist psychology, the structure of the Ego-in other words, the normal structure of the human personality-is a neurotic structure [there is a footnote pointing to a misinterpretation of Trungpa here]…
Theoretically, it refers to the mental structure of a personality attracted to, and absorbed in, the symbolic expansion of the Ego and the abnormal development of thought.
Since man began his mental evolution, which has made thought his main perceptual activity, his Ego-that is, the image the human being has of himself-has gone past the natural limits of his body.
[a long speech about identification with consumer goods etc.](p.42)…
It is a neurotic process, in so far as it is a process of estrangement from reality-in other words, from the natural correspondence between the Ego and the body. (p. 43)
What makes us neurotic is not so much the excitable life we lead as the mental attitude we adopt towards it;as if our happiness really depended on success. This produces stress, which is the exact opposite of serenity. Happiness is essentially serenity, and therefore serenity, not success, is the true gauge of our happiness. The state of buddha-ness allows us to achieve genuine serenity, without giving up on the idea of success. (p.44)
[on Right Understanding, interdependence and conditioned phenomenon]
Consider also the beautiful idea that this universe could not exist without you. [footnote from page 51 "That is what I always say to patients suffering depression. It gives them momentary relief, but then they fall back into the one thought that obsesses them:that the universe has been created with the sole aim of cheating them.] ..You are necessary to the existence of this universe, just as this universe is necessary to your existence. (p. 48)
Enlightenment includes a psychological growth from a child personality to an adult personality. (p. 123)
The teachings of Buddha involves the whole of our psychological evolution. In the natural evolution from child to adult to parent, the development of these three natural personalities is necessary to the development of the fourth personality, that of the buddha. (p. 127)
My Psycho-analysis of This Book.
This author has dedicated the book to his son who died at the age of 27. Apparently this incident has sparked a certain emotional response which the author describes as follows in the Introduction:
I acknowledge my gratitude to Siddhartha Gautama Sakyamuni who opened the Way and to my son Yuri who, in following it throughout his all too brief life, also led me to it.
Yuri died at the age of 27: the exact age at which the Buddha attained enlightenment.Yuri was a buddha, one of those incarnations of the buddha (Bodhisattva) who, according to Buddhism, appear every so often on Earth. From the moment he was born he displayed an incomparable degree of serenity and love….
He died of nothing more unusual than influenza. But in dying he performed a miracle. He turned his father, this old sinner, into a buddha. He passed his buddhaness on to me, so that I acquired it through no merit of my own. My life has been transformed. I have seen enlightenment. I have seen and absorbed into my own body, totally and permanently, the absolute precariousness of existence, the one reality of the here and now, and the absolute, exclusive importance of love, laughter and joy. I have seen that it is possible to become a buddha.
My Buddhism is no longer theoretical, it has become real. This is how this book came about. …
Throughout the book the author makes statements regarding loss and grieving and attributes them to some kind of attachment which he advocates denying. The tone is one of bravado often and not unlike someone who is trying to sell themselves something while selling it to others.
Urging people with such statements as
…Right Thought consists of the elimination of negative thoughts and the construction of positive thoughts. (In accordance with Eastern tradition, we can define as negative all those thoughts that lead to separation [mistrust, suspicion, antipathy, resentment, hate, etc.] and as positive all those thoughts that lead to union [trust, acceptance, sympathy, benevolence, love etc.].)
In addition, we have also seen that negative thoughts are involuntary.
It is obvious that the positive thoughts that we must introduce into our minds, on the other hand, are in fact voluntary.
The operation we have to do ultimately is to replace involuntary negative thoughts with voluntary positive thoughts. (p.89)
is not helpful in either a Buddhist nor psychological context. It is similar to brainwashing. It is simply denial of reality.
The term Reaction Formation comes to mind. By definition this means
In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation is a defensive process (defense mechanism) in which anxiety-producing or unacceptable emotions and impulses are mastered by exaggeration (hypertrophy) of the directly opposing tendency
So while this book may have been either a catharsis for the author or a bit of sales material to shore up his denial of his grief over the loss of his son it gives little helpful information. As a memoir to a son, a man’s reflection on his own sense of salvation or as a father’s reaction to loss it is interesting but even as a self-help book I sincerely hope that people will not take it seriously either in a Buddhist sense or in a psychological sense as this will only prolong their suffering.
…
Addendum: I highly recommend Chogyam Trungpa’s book The Sanity We are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology particularly the chapter “Is Meditation Therapy?” Short answer: No. (That’s the Amazon link so you can read a bit of the book if you want)
