Fundamentals of Buddhist View - DJKR Moscow teaching from 14 July

Rinpoche gave a public teaching on The Fundamentals of the Buddhist View in Moscow on 14 July. A recording of the teaching may be downloaded here. (Thanks Linda and Patricia)

Articles on Buddhism in the Guardian UK

There has been an interesting set of articles on Buddhism in the Guardian UK over the past few months by Ed Halliwell, a practitioner in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, including:

• Between the rational and the mystical - What is agnosticism? We neither need an external, creator God, nor to close ourselves off from the spectacular majesty of existence
• Buddhism and the brain - The Mind and Life conference brings together two powerful ways of understanding mind and its place in the world
• A sense of self - Could science abolish personalities along with God?:Personality may be an illusion, but not the kind described by materialists like Colin Blakemore
• Is it always about belief? - The Buddha emphasised that we should not trust the teachings of any faith based on – among other things – scripture, religious authorities, or logical and philosophical reasoning

The Erosion of Buddhism in the West

The UK Guardian newspaper published an article by Mark Vernon on how buddhism risks erosion in the West because of a pick'n'mix culture, the New Age syncretism that Rinpoche is also very concerned about. That's one of the main reasons we need to study Madhyamika. As Rinpoche says, studying the view allows us to become dharmapalas (dharma protectors), who can ensure that the dharma doesn't fall into the pervasive extremes of eternalism and nihilism. Unless the dharma remains the middle way, it is no longer a path to enlightenment.

Unfortunately, it appears that Vernon has quite an agenda of his own (see http://www.markvernon.com/belief/index.htm). So it's perhaps not surprising he's anti-Matthieu Ricard (who, despite Vernon's criticisms, has an authentic lineage as a close student of HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche) and pro-Stephen Batchelor (who, like many "Western buddhists", doesn't believe in karma, reincarnation, etc).

I agree with the argument that you can't pick and choose elements of a path, but that's exactly what Batchelor does, and Vernon seems to be quite happy to overlook this - whereas Ricard presents the whole dharma without leaving anything out. Since karma is the very mechanism of causality and interdependence, a path without karma becomes a nihilist, materialist path. Leaving out karma is a sign that you simply don't understand what it means and its central significance to the path. While you might end up creating something that's attractive and perhaps soothing for the incense-and-self-help crowd, and possibly even sell a lot of books along the way, that's not what authentic dharma is about.

Is Twitter a path to happiness?

Rinpoche has noted that in the absence of an understanding of the view, many so-called "Western buddhists" seem to rely on rather confused paths. So perhaps it's not entirely surprising that many people seek to justify indulging their everyday samsaric habits as somehow being equivalent to a path to enlightenment. And not, I might add, in the manner of the dzogchen yogi who is happy in any activity. As a rather amusing and ridiculous example of this tendency, here's a blog posting entitled Buddhist Monks Say Twitter Can Lead To Happiness. Needless to say, there's no attempt to back up this rather remarkable claim. In the Madhyamakavatara, Chandrakirti says that relative truth is nothing but "the rumours of cowherds." He'd probably be smiling if he were with us today.

Stumbling Blocks on the Path of Righteousness

Rinpoche has often emphasised that view is primary in Buddhism, and ethics and morality are always secondary. They are embraced on the path only to the extent that they support our journey towards realising the view of emptiness. And one of the downfalls of theistic paths is that ethics and discipline can turn into extremism, and then it's no longer helpful but instead descends into self-righteousness, hubris and critical judgment of others. From the article "Stumbling Blocks on the Path of Righteousness" in the New York Times:

In recent years, social psychologists have begun to study what they call the holier-than-thou effect. They have long known that people tend to be overly optimistic about their own abilities and fortunes — to overestimate their standing in class, their discipline, their sincerity.

But this self-inflating bias may be even stronger when it comes to moral judgment, and it can greatly influence how people judge others’ actions, and ultimately their own. Culture, religious belief and experience all help shape a person’s sense of moral standing in relation to others.

Religion appears to amplify the instinct to feel like a moral beacon. The study also found that the most strictly fundamentalist of the students were at the highest end of the scale. "It reminds me of one of my favorite bumper stickers,” said Dr. Epley, of Chicago. “ ‘Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite.’

Week 2 teaching - 18 January 2009

Thank you to everyone who joined us in Vancouver (and virtually in Victoria) for an enthusiastic meeting on Sunday - and for those of you in New York and Germany who wanted to join, our aim is to connect you next week.  A recording of this week's teaching and discussion can be downloaded here.  We talked about:

(1) Our reflections on our homework:

• Why am I on the spiritual path? What am I seeking to get out of it?
  
• When Rinpoche said we should "buy more useless things like Buddha statues, and fewer useful things like iPods", why did he say this? And what did he mean by "useless"?

(2) The first 10 pages of "What the Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula, which cover "The Buddhist attitude of mind", including:

• Individual responsibility: Man is his own master, and no higher being sits in judgment over his destiny; Buddha taught the path to liberation, but we have to walk it ourselves; and since we have to determine right/wrong and good/bad for ourselves, we have to develop our own wisdom - this is why Buddhism is a path of wisdom, rather than a religious system of ethics and morality.
• Freedom of thought, tolerance and doubt: The story of the Kālāmas; the need to develop wisdom, as "To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual"; the story of Upali; how human qualities like love and compassion don't belong to any particular religion.
• No attachment to blind faith, tradition or any teachings or views: The story of Buddha and Pukkasāti in the potter's shed - how the young novice realised his companion was the Buddha because he spoke the truth, rather than vice-versa: how we should take refuge in the truth of the teachings, rather than in the teacher; the story of Kāpathika and how traditions without realisation are "like a line of blind men"; how attachment to any teachings or view, even Buddhism itself, is just another fetter: "O bhikkhus, even this view, which is so pure and clear, if you cling to it, if you fondle it, if you treasure it, if you are attached to it, then you do not understand that the teaching is similar to a raft, which is for crossing over, and not for getting hold of"

For next week, our homework is to read and contemplate the first chapter of Rahula once again (to page 15).  Next week, we hope to complete the chapter and then discuss a teaching by Rinpoche which covers many of these same topics.

Extremism with a buzz-cut and tattoos

Why do things happen to us in life?  There are 3 positions you could take on this question:

1) It's controlled or predetermined by a higher power, such as God or fate

2) It's random, and we're all part of a giant cosmic lottery

3) It's causal, so we reap what we sow - there are 'causes' for all the 'effects' in our life, even though the relationship between cause and effect is too complex for us to ever understand it in its entirety

The ancient Indian philosophers - the Hindus, Buddhists and Jains - termed the first two 'eternalism' and 'nihilism' respectively.  These are both seen as 'extreme views', and much of Indian philosophy was about establishing why extreme views are a bad thing, and how to build a middle way between these two - the Madhyamika.  The philosophy of the middle way rejects the two extreme views of eternalism and nihilism, and accepts the third position of interdependence, which is at the heart of how Buddhists explain why things happen in the world.  

But although this debate was settled many centuries ago in India, at least at a philosophical level, it doesn't seem to have made much difference to the way we live our lives.  For most of us, either we haven't thought much about it, or else our actions don't line up with our professed beliefs. Meanwhile, extreme views continue to spread like invasive species in an unsuspecting and defenceless ecosystem, and many people actually take pride in holding such beliefs. Sam Harris has clearly set out how religious extremism has led to great human suffering and death from religious wars over the years, and this terrible legacy continues today with the nightmare unfolding right now in Gaza.  You might think we'd be ready to scream 'enough is enough'.  But the popularity of extremism continues.

And now we have a new representative here in the Pacific North West. In the article "Who Would Jesus Smack Down", The New York Times profiles Mark Driscoll, the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, a megachurch which draws 7,600 people weekly. He's got "fashionably distressed jeans and a taste for indie rock", and his churches are filled with worshippers - and staff - sporting buzz-cuts and tattoos.  He's out to make Calvinism cool.  And if, like me, you're not up on your Calvinist theology, that means:

"you are not captain of your soul or master of your fate but a depraved worm whose hard work and good deeds will get you nowhere, because God marked you for heaven or condemned you to hell before the beginning of time"

Extreme views, anyone? And it's no surprise that these views don't lead naturally to compassion in your meditation or your action. Driscoll feels that the American church has transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that . . . would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.” Not exactly HH The Dalai Lama.