Only Because You Were Wondering

Wikipedia tells me that her mantra is exegetically (I learned a new word!) translated to “Devotion to the Mystic Law of cause and effect that exists throughout all the sounds and vibrations of the universe”.

Wait, who’s Amy Winehouse?

I thought Buddhist doctrine was to only teach Buddhist doctrine if invited?

Bless. Some harmless chanting is better than getting off your face every night and enjoying yourself….er.

You know, she hit me as the type to value moderation in all things.

> Umm… So… how does her not believing in god not make her an atheist?

To be an atheist you have to not believe in all of them, not just a selection.

of course, i’ve been known to sit facing a wall for upwards of eight hours a day, so take the source as you will…

Ngl,

I take it you’re a Zen practitioner (or possibly Vipassana, but eight hours sounds like a lot for them)?

I used to manage a Tibetan center. I once showed the monks a documentary about Japan. There was a scene in which Zen monks were sitting facing the wall. The discipline monk came around and hit them with the keisaku. One of the Tibetan monks, a young man in his thirties, looked at me wide-eyed and exclaimed, “Japanese monks crazy!”

And believe it or not, after a couple hours of Zazen, that keisaku feels so frickin good.

Yeah, I’ve heard that, actually!

I studied Japanese-flavored Zen for a little while from a Norwegian Minnesotan. He didn’t use the keisaku, but his teacher (who was Japanese) did for a while. One day, a visiting sensei (who, IIRC was not Japanese, but Korean) made a comment about how he didn’t hit people with sticks, and the Japanese sensei immediately discontinued the practice.

My teacher taught in a very non-religious way to a bunch of white Minnesotan hippies, it always felt more rational than metaphysical.

I gave up Zazen when I couldn’t stay awake for more than 5 minutes. The sensei said that the purpose wasn’t to relax and get sleepy, so if you are, something is wrong- like you’re not getting enough sleep. Turns out I have Narcolepsy, so meditation is out for the foreseeable future 🙂

Buddhism is generally presented to Westerners as “a philosophy, not a religion”. It’s really much more of a religion than Westerners realize.

Tyler,

I agree with you about Tibetan Buddhism, but Theravada in its native form is just as bad. Westerners don’t get to hear about it much, because it’s presented to them in the form of Vipassana, which is meditative method derived from Theravada, but largely stripped of iconography and doctrinal content.

Whether Buddhism is, at its core, a philosophy and not a religion, is a matter of contention. I’ve been throwing up to them for years the fact that we’re told constantly that the Buddha said not to accept anything merely because he said it, until you get to the part about karma and rebirth – then, guess what? You have to accept it on faith; you have to have faith in the Buddha’s awakening, in his ability to understand reality in all of its fullness, and in the accuracy of the subsequent reporting over the centuries. I’ve been given answers all across the board. One Western scholar who is also a Theravada monk told me, a couple of years ago, that the necessity of having faith was assumed from the beginning; the idea of faith not being a requirement came in later with Buddhist philosophy, particularly with the Mahayana philosophers. A few months ago, Alan Wallace told me that he disagrees; blind faith was never a requirement. I like Alan tremendously – he’s the only Western teacher of Tibetan Buddhism I’ve met in thirty years who hasn’t succumbed to fanaticism – but, honestly, at this point, I don’t know whom to believe. Which is, ironically, representative of the problem at hand.

My repeated experience has been that, as is the case with all religions, you can never get a straight or definitive answer.

Call me a buddhist or not, no matter, really. Why am I typing?

Well, that’s a very Zen statement!

I’m not “dismissing” Buddhism. I think its meditative practices are of value. I also think it’s important for Westerners to realize that a lot of what they think they know of Buddhism is the result of marketing.

There’s a lot of fire and brimstone in Buddhism – the threat of “lower rebirth”. It doesn’t get emphasized in Western Zen or in Vipassana. They were altered on the journey over; Tibetan Buddhism has come here more or less unadulterated.

If you find sitting helpful, that’s great. And you may certainly call yourself a Buddhist – but zazen alone doesn’t constitute all of Buddhism. In fact, there have been scholars in the past who debated whether of not Zen should even be considered Buddhism, as it represented a confluence of Buddhism and Taoism, and its teachers tended to be iconoclastic. Certainly, the Tibetan teachers I’ve known, if they knew anything about Zen other than just the name, would have had trouble considering it to be Buddhism. But, then, the Theravadans would say the same of Tibetan Buddhism.

If you have all these Buddhist saints and odd fire and brimstone ideas never attributable to the Main Dude Gautama, then why is it called Buddhism?

It’s generally accepted that the Buddha did talk about lower rebirth. How much of what is attributed to him did he actually say? That’s a matter for scholars. How much of Jesus’ sayings were actually uttered by him? Did he even exist? It’s a matter of scholarly debate, but no one knows for certain.

Again, you’re practicing Zen – and Western Zen, at that. These are concepts that would have been presented to you as peripheral ideas, if they are even presented at all. Method and content vary with tradition, even from teacher to teacher within a lineage.

Religion is like language; it grows and changes over time. You want to get back to the “essence” of the Buddha’s message? You have to make decisions about what you think he said, and what he didn’t say. It’ subjective. Look at the Jesus seminar – they’re distinguishing between what they think Jesus said, and what they think was added later. They may be discerning fairly accurately, based upon years of study, but, in the end, it’s subjective.

The bottom line is that, even though we are told that the Buddha said not to accept anything on faith, one has to accept as a matter of faith that the Buddha said thus and so. It’s a contradiction, but it’s difficult to get most Western Buddhists to acknowledge this. You can throw all of that out if you want to, and just practice meditation. Is that Buddhism? I know plenty of practitioners who would say it isn’t. But, then, I know some who would say that merely being compassionate is practicing the Dharma. I think the Dalai Lama would say as much, but I’m quite certain he’d also tell you that the goal of existence is to reach that high evolutionary state known as “enlightenment”, and that meditation alone won’t get you there.

I really don’t think that it ought to be a real target for atheists.

I don’t know of any atheist who has a problem with Buddhism in the way they do with Western religions. My experience has been that atheists, when they “target” a religion, generally go after Christianity, and, to a lesser extent, Islam – because these are the religions that are creating the most discord right now.

We need labels for the sake of convention, otherwise communication becomes difficult, if not impossible, but, you’re correct – labels are inherently problematic. When an atheist says something like, “You can’t be a Buddhist and an atheist”, two things are going on – 1. He/she is getting hung up on the label; 2. He’s equating atheism with materialism. I think most atheists are material realists, but it isn’t a requirement; I’m not convinced of it, myself. So, what is Buddhism? Again, you have two choices: 1. You can regard it as Westerners regard “divine revelation”, and insist that Buddhism is whatever was taught by the historical Buddha (but then, again, you have the problem of determining what he actually said); 2. Buddhism (as is the case with any belief system) is what is believed by people who call themselves “Buddhists”.

Ultimately, I have to come down on the side of those who see Buddhism as a religion. The “religious” aspects aren’t manifested much in Vipassana or in Western Zen. In Asian Zen and in Theravadan Buddhism, it’s another story, but to what extent they still affect the development of these cultures, I couldn’t tell you; I’m not an Asia scholar. I do frequently get to talk to scholars, and they always agree – the “Buddhisms” to which virtually all Westerners are being exposed are sanitized versions, marketed for Western consumption.

Consider that the Soto tradition is often mockingly called the ‘funeral directors association.’

That’s funny! I was aware that the Japanese tend to turn to Buddhism for their death rites, but I hadn’t heard this one, or that Soto was the preferred form. Any particular reason (Soto, I mean)?

For this reason, I find it illogical that you would assume based on my response that I am practicing ‘western zen.’

OK, sorry. I made an assumption. But, by “Western Zen”, I don’t mean just that Zen that is taught by Western teachers, but the Zen that is taught to Westerners. Sometimes Asian teachers, out of sensitivity or practicality, or just individual temperament, adjust style and content accordingly – Suzuki, for example. The Tibetans, as I mentioned, tend not to do so as much. If a lama isn’t constantly going on about hell realms, I think he thinks he’s made a serious accommodation. Although the young ones seem naturally to be more liberal. Exile and encounter with the West have had a lot to do with it. We’ll see how it develops.

Just out of curiosity, what do you do?

You mean for a living? Right now, not much. I used to do some IT work, but very little now. About a year and a half ago, I ended a three-year gig as Manager in a Tibetan center.

as a side-note, the other main sect of zen in japan is rinzai. i don’t know much about it in respect to death rites, but it focuses more on enlightenment through koan study and immediate experience, where soto relies more on “shikantaza” or the act of “just sitting” for enlightenment experience.

That, I knew. I didn’t know that Soto was predominant (or, if I knew, I’d forgotten).