Why Buddhism for me: a response to a guest’s question

Posted: May 2, 2009 | Author: Doug | Filed under: Buddhism, Religion | 9 Comments »

Hello,

Recently, Slingword, a visitor on the blog asked some good questions about Buddhism, and my choice to follow it in this post. The questions are a bit detailed, so I thought it best to try and answer them in a separate blog post. I’m copy-pasting excerpts of his question where pertinent. Hope this works.

Background

I grew up as a Mormon actually, thought my parents converted as adults, and later lost interest, so we were never very active to begin with. By the time I was sixteen I developed a real fascination toward Asian culture, and become an asia-phile, or “rice lover” as one of my Asian-American friends once called me.¹ I went crazy for anything “Zen” and “Samurai” and of course Asian girls. I also converted to Buddhism at age 16, though I believe in hindsight I did this for the above reasons, and also to be something of an intellectual rebel. Not the best start on one’s religious path.

This persisted until college, when I went to study abroad for a few months in Hanoi, Vietnam, where I discovered that Asian culture was quiet different than my romanticized images of it.² Seeing corruption among some monks, and the same kind of petty religious behavior I saw in the West killed my interest in Buddhism for a time. Years even. It was during this time I explored Islam briefly, as well as Catholicism, as well as good ol’ Atheism. My wife will tell you I switched beliefs almost monthly if not more during this 2-3 years time.

Then a funny thing happened. In 2005 I took my first trip to Japan and visited some Buddhist temples in Kyoto. I visited Ryuanji and its famous Zen rock garden as well as Kiyomizudera, the ancient and eclectic temple, and finally a lesser-known temple called Chion-in, home of the Jodo Shu Pure Land sect. At each one, I had a positive experience of some kind, but it was at Chion-in that I was moved the most. It was there, at the main altar room, I saw a lone monk, kneeling in that massive room, beating on the “wooden fish drum” and reciting a prayer to a tall Buddha statue with a halo of light around his head. Something about scene really clicked in my mind like nothing else ever did in my life, but I couldn’t really explain why. It was the simple, sincere devotion, but also the mystery behind it. This was a kind of Buddhism ignored in Western textbooks, but something very moving even to a newb like me.

That whole trip, for reasons, I can’t quite articulate, taught me a lot about Buddhism beyond what the textbooks, websites and western magazines say. It was the people and the culture, heavily interwoven with Buddhist principles, that moved me I guess, but when I returned to the US, I found that these experiences quickly faded, and it was hard to share them with others. That’s what began my blogging ‘career’ I guess: my effort to understand Buddhism itself beyond what most Westerners know, but also to help reconcile my experiences there with my life in the West.

So, the struggle continues, but I grow from the challenge, and I enjoy sharing what I find with others to help foster better understanding.

Addressing Slingword’s questions:

I get that some forms of Buddhism are at least not based on some, well, nonsense, like the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But I’m back in the same old place here.

This was my impression too for quite some time. Pure Land Buddhism,³ definitely looks that way on the surface. Again, if you go by some of the classic definitions of Buddhism, all written by dead white-men in the 19th century, Pure Land Buddhism definitely looks like a corruption of what the Buddha taught, and these same prejudices still persist. Go pick up a Buddhist quarterly in the West, and it’s mostly Tibetan and Zen stuff.

But as I’ve studied Buddhism for years now, what I realized is that even in the Buddha’s time, he encountered a wide variety of people, and for each of them, he taught the Dharma in a variety of ways based on each person’s inclination. For example, one of his monks, Sona, was once a lute player, so the Buddha used that to explain how Buddhist practice should be like a lute string, neither too taught (too intense), nor too slack.

But in a broader sense, Buddhism accepts the (rather obvious) fact that the world contains a great variety of people with different inclinations, dislikes and so on, so Buddhist practice is quite varied. Some gravitate toward meditation, some lean toward devotional practices, or tantra, whatever. The Sanskrit term for this is upaya (expedient means). The idea is that whatever teaching in the context of Buddhism inspires a person to live an ethical life, be kinder to loved ones, to seek the truth, etc is just another practice within Buddhism. If 10 people hear the same teaching from a monk, some will be bored, some will be inspired, some will space out, hence we have a term “the 84,000 doors to enlightenment” to refer to the many paths and teachings within Buddhism. 84,000 is of course metaphorical. It’s also part of the reason why I believe Buddhism adapts well into new cultures. Instead of bringing a lot of cultural baggage, it kind of assumes a certain core set of truths, and people strive to adapt them to their own culture. Chinese Buddhism is pretty different on the surface than Tibetan Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism or Thai Buddhism, but if you study a little deeper, they’re all teaching the Dharma, just expressing the same core teachings in their own way. As Buddhism grows in the West, this trend will probably happen again.

Quite a bit in Buddhism can be metaphorical or symbolic. Pure Land Buddhism, for example, means different things to different people, and I don’t just mean a West vs. East view. For some, the Pure Land of the Buddha is real, so many billions of miles to the West and has a literal description. For some, the Pure Land is a state of mind achieved when one attains the truth and sees the beauty of all life itself. For some, the Pure Land refers to Nirvana (and Amitabha Buddha an idealization of the historical one). But Buddhists are tolerant of all these views because again if it inspires that person to study and practice the Dharma more, then great. Also, one’s understanding of the Pure Land may change over time too, and that’s just part of the maturing process that goes along with following the Buddhist path for a time. Buddhism is like a big onion with many layers. Sorry for the silly analogy.

Another example is esoteric or Vajrayana Buddhism. That branch of Buddhism is just rife with symbols, rituals and such. Westerners either love it or think it’s completely crazy, but the Vajrayana practices and symbols help to conceptualize some deeper, pretty hard-to-grasp truths that just don’t have the same impact on paper.

Long story short, Buddhism is pretty heavy in its emphasis on empirical wisdom (through experience, not just reason). Reason and study get you primed to a point, but as you put Buddhism into practice, you can see how it applies to life. The Buddha taught that anger can never be appeased with more anger, only with compassion. If you apply this to your life, you can see it working for you, for example. More below…

Above you talk about how many different forms of Buddhism there are. But you have chosen one, or some combination of them. Why your choice?

Pure Land Buddhism for me, as explained above, was somewhat by accident, but I suppose the reason why I stay with it is that despite what it looks like on paper, is a pretty down-to-earth approach to Buddhism. I found that it made me much more grateful for my own life, for all the efforts others have done for me, and to appreciate the time I have in it. The simple devotional style has inspired me to live a better life and to be a better spouse, but also to really follow the Buddha’s teachings to fruition.

If it’s all just philosophy, and there is no truth to any of it, making the choice purely personal (just believe what has been handed down to you, or what feels good, or what is convenient, etc) then why even bother with just Buddhism? Why not just pick this passage of the Bible, that writing of this “expert”, and what your friends tell you that you want to hear?

Buddhism, all Buddhism, at heart is praxis or doing stuff. Buddhism sits neither entirely in the realm of religion, nor in philosophy. It’s not quite a way of life either, but rather a combination of all three. As mentioned in the Kalama Sutta link I sent you before, the Buddha encouraged people to take up what is considered wholesome and skillful and follow that. So the emphasis is on real-life observation, mindfulness and becoming aware of your own self, your hidden habits and so on. It’s very much a kind of mental training, so it’s not enough to just read a nice passage from the Bible, because without the study and training to really actualize it in your own life, the good feelings fizzle and you’re back to square one.

Also, even the deeper stuff the Buddha taught: the emptiness of all phenomena, the cycle of rebirth, etc, the Buddha encouraged to discover these through one’s own experience. One can never really understand what cinnamon tastes like, no matter what others say, until you experience it for yourself. The Buddha showed us the door, and encouraged us to walk it ourselves. Thus the Buddha didn’t so much invent the truth, but discovered it and said “let me show you what I’ve found, see for yourself”.

Of course, whether a person chooses to follow the path and see for themselves is a personal choice, so Buddhists don’t actively convert others, but we also teach that in time, across the many eons, all beings will eventually be enlightened, so we’re not in a rush either. There is a Buddhist analogy of lotuses. Lotus flowers grow deep in the mud, yet when they peak through the surface, they bloom unstained. We liken all beings to lotus flowers growing deep in the mud of hatred, greed and ignorance, and we do what we can for each person to help them grow a little more.

Truth is what is real. And there is only one of those. There aren’t an infinite number of possibilities, there is only one. That makes truth unique. Not just another of an endless number of possibilities of things to believe to be true when they aren’t, or things that make you feel good (or worse, sometime perverted like “my personal truth”, which is a distortion of the definition of truth).

I know exactly what you mean. The “personal truth” stuff is what the Buddha warned against in the Kalama Sutta I posted on your blog. In a sense, the eye cannot see itself, the hand cannot grasp itself, so you need something external to test your experiences with and see whether you are right or not. This helps temper some of the whacked-out experiences people can have in Buddhism, thinking they’ve attained enlightenment. It’s why good teachers keep students well-grounded. Bad teachers are ones who are not well-grounded themselves and make their students lives worse for it. Another reason why the Buddha encouraged the importance of finding admirable friends and mentors.

But in all seriousness, reality is what reality is. We can only perceive it, but we tend to overlay our narrow view of the world on top of this, which in turned is colored by our own influences from the past. What we call “I” is a kind of amalgam of all the causes, conditions and past actions by yourself and others stretching back to the beginning of time. Why do you speak English, not French, for example? Why vote one way, not the other.

The Buddhist solution of course isn’t to just stop thinking, but recognize that much of the beliefs we hold dear are just that: beliefs. A Buddhist learns a lot about one’s self, and learns to let go of one’s ego, which ultimately turns things outward toward others in compassion and wisdom. It’s not a quick path, it’s a lifelong one.

What do you have that is truth?

I was tempted to come up with some silly, witty Zen one-liner, but I refrained from that one.

Instead, I’ll put it this way: I realized that I am going to die. I mean really die, as in grow old, feeble, or be struck down with a sudden heart attack.⁴ So, that right away, made me realize that much of the pursuits of life don’t matter. I am rather fond of a famous letter in my own Pure Land tradition called the Letter on White Ashes. Knowing that I too one day will be cold and dead made me really think my priorities in life, and that until now, I was living a kind of self-centered life, which was ultimately self-defeating. That’s when I started to appreciate the Buddhist approach to morality, because I could really see how it benefited others around me, but also helped me as well. Lastly, another important truth in Buddhism is the inter-dependency of all things. Our lives are very contingent on the efforts of others. I have servicemen in the military who protect me, police who keep the streets safe, people who farm and make my food every day, or people who make my clothing. In the same way, people depend every day on the efforts I do in my own life. Whether helping my wife by doing the dishes, or what I do at work. So we constantly depend on what another for our existence, and this is where I tell people to be a light for others.

Light is an important symbolism in Buddhism in that it dispels darkness (ignorance) and brings comfort to people. So as we cultivate ourselves through Buddhist practice, our light “grows” brighter in a sense and becomes a benefit to others. We brighten a corner of the world in a sense. That’s why when you see Buddhist art, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have bright halos around their heads because their wisdom and compassion are a great benefit to others (metaphorically of course).

You have some writing of opinions of how to live your life. Which is great! There are a lot of poets who do the same thing, except they don’t call themselves religions. A little help?

Not sure what you’re asking here, but I guess what I’d say is that quite a few people live a kind of aimless wandering which the Buddha called samsara. This makes for good writing maybe, as one expresses their own frustrations in life. I guess the difference between a good poet and a religious follower is the sense of direction. All Buddhists strive for bodhi or awakening, but also try to effect a lot of good on the way. The Buddha once said that all followers are like rivers and streams all following into the great ocean of awakening (oceans are another big symbol in Buddhism), so I guess I am one of those streams.

Well, I hope that helped. It was a bit verbose, and maybe off the mark, but if it helped address some of your questions, great. If others read this, please feel free to chime in too.

Namu Amida Butsu

P.S. If you managed to get this far, also check out a nice poem (speaking of poetry) by Kenji Miyazawa. I think it epitomizes the Buddhist life in a way.

¹ Ironically the same friend who years later introduced me to the same Buddhist temple my wife and I went to years later in Seattle. I lost touch with the fellow, but I wish him well and hope we can meet again.

² I also spent some small time in Thailand and Japan in the trip, so I did get to see a bit more than just Vietnam. Ironically this trip also killed my romanticized views of Communism too, which were also part of my “intellectual rebellion”. :p You’ve never known poverty until you’ve spent time outside the Industrialized World, let me tell ‘ya. Few of us realize just how lucky we are. There’s a great mass of people in the world surviving and struggling just to meet basic needs that we don’t even pause to consider.

³ Regarding your question, I am not sure what kind of Buddhist I’d consider myself these days. My background and mainstay is still Pure Land Buddhism, but I’ve branched out quite a bit since then, and feel it’s helped me grow even more. Some folks are just that way, while other Buddhists are good at taking their particular path to fruition.

⁴ Buddhist “rebirth” is not to be confused with Hindu “reincarnation”. The latter presupposes the belief in a soul, while Buddhist rebirth has no soul. The nature of Buddhist rebirth is, to say the least, complicated, but think of it as a endless unfolding, moment by moment, that persists beyond death. Each moment, you are a shifting and changing person. The body changes biologically each moment, different thoughts and ideas arise in your mind, etc. There’s no static basis for this, but just endless shifting and unfolding. Yeah, not the best answer, but it’s the best I can offer for now. :p

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