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Our little lives get complicated

Not long after I started using Twitter, I somehow decided to follow @sfslim. Someone must have retweeted something clever he said, I suppose. So far as I have been able to determine, after a year of intensive scientific investigation, he is the most interesting person in the social network. I have no connection with him in the Real Life℠. I once moved in Real Life circles similar to his, but I don’t know any of the people he talks about.

Anyway. Some time back, he tweeted something like:

Rule #17: Never date anyone with a Klout score lower than yours.

Well, that’s a challenge. It sounded like a good snarky joke (and is!). But clearly, not knowing what a “Klout score” was, I was terminally unhip. Better use the Google, Luke.

When you’re down, it’s a long way up

So: Klout is this thing that puts a number from 0 to 100 on everyone in the social network. Use Twitter? Or Facebook? Google+? You have a Klout score.

Klout’s motto is “Everyone Has Influence.” And they’ll measure it for you. Mine is 38 today. What’s yours?

For an engineer, there is something irresistible about this. We love to measure things, because if you can measure something, you can probably make the number bigger.

Of course, it helps if you know what the number is measuring. That’s the first problem with Klout. It measures “influence,” but they won’t tell you what that means.

Evidently, though, the idea is that if more people follow you, you must have more klout. And if more people retweet you, or @mention you, that adds to your klout. And if your followers have a lot of klout, that’s better than if they are nobodies.

So if you want to engineer this, there are some pretty obvious tactics for increasing your score. I’ve almost entirely refrained, because it seems kind of gross. (That’s problem #2.) The methods are the same you’d use to become popular in high school. Paul Graham wrote an insightful essay about why nerds and freaks—I might be both—don’t do those things. Yash Tulsyan’s response anticipates Klout’s likely algorithm.

You cannot go against nature

Sometimes when I read other people’s blogs, I think I detect in their writing an echo of an idea I put out a few days or weeks or months before.

Of course, this might be a delusion of reference. They might have come up with the idea themselves. Or, more likely, they read the same book I did. I have no new tale to tell.

In fact, genuinely new ideas are vanishingly rare. Most of what we think we think, we actually just borrow. Ideas are out there; some look attractive, and we grab them, and perhaps shine them up a bit, and give them back to our friends.

I wrote about this in “Thought Soup.” It seems to me quite a Buddhist observation. In meditation you can see that your thoughts are not “yours.” They arise out of emptiness, dance around, and subside into emptiness.

My world is your world

I write in hope that my tales may be useful. If they are, people will use them. And they’ll pass them on. And after one or two steps, my name will be lost.

That seems to me the true measure of influence. If what you have to say escapes into the wild, so that no one knows it is yours—then you have changed the culture.

Paul Graham’s point is that being popular is a full-time job. Geeks and freaks are too busy pursuing things that are actually interesting to bother.

To be influential, you need to be interesting. To be interesting, you need to be interested—so you lead an interesting life. (At which @sfslim excels.)

To be influential, it also helps to be generous. PG also points out that the most popular kids are often the meanest—and that’s part of the secret of their success.

Nowhere to be found

People like to hear their names
I’m no exception
Please call my name
—Love and Rockets, “No New Tale To Tell”

This is the third and worst problem: Klout is measuring exactly the wrong thing. Its idea of influence is “how often do people call your name.” But that’s a measure of popularity, not influence. It’s easy to compute. But who cares? [Maybe everyone except freaks and geeks?]

Being a geek, I’ll probably keep checking in on klout.com occasionally. All those numbers (with four digits of spurious precision) and graphs (of wrong variables) are so sensually attractive for my Asperger’s.

I can’t take it seriously, though. I’ll count myself as influential if I read a blog post similar to this, and am not sure whether it’s coincidence—because I am nowhere to be found.

A conversation has begun about what post-Consensus Buddhisms could be. I will join in by suggesting renewed Buddhist Tantra as a possibility. Tantra aims in a direction many people want to go—quite a different direction from mainstream Buddhism. So its goal is inspiring; and its path can be exhilarating.

That might seem unlikely. “Isn’t Tibetan Buddhism incredibly conservative? What about all those gods and demons and miracles and Medieval superstitions? And prostrating to lamas, and rituals and robes and thrones and crowns? And hours and hours of chanting gibberish in Tibetan? This is exactly the stuff we want to leave behind—hardly the way forward for Western Buddhism!”

Mostly, yes, vintage-1959 Tibetan Buddhism is the only Buddhist Tantra that is available; and I agree that it’s culture-bound and anachronistic.

Yet I think new Tantric Buddhisms could be particularly relevant to life in the 21st century.

This page previews upcoming posts that will sketch possibilities that might look entirely unlike what has come before.

I say “Buddhisms,” plural, because I don’t want the new, better alternative to Consensus Buddhism. What I want is space for many alternatives to develop. Some may sprout from Tantra; others from other roots.

I say “sketching possibilities” because I do not have a worked-out alternative to offer. I can only wave toward directions that look promising. I hope others will explore further, and that new forms may emerge collaboratively.

Why I should shut up, and why I won’t

There are several excellent reasons for me not to write about this. In short, I am totally unqualified.

However, most of what I have to say, no one else seems to be saying. If I don’t say it, perhaps no one will. I feel responsible for 3% of Buddhism, so I’ll go ahead and say it anyway. And I’ll put a big red warning up front that I may be completely out to lunch.

Fortunately, since I have no credentials, no one will listen unless what I say makes sense. So probably no great harm can come of it.

I expect someone will try to shut me up by yelling “That’s not really Buddhism!” or “That’s not authentic Vajrayana!” I find these objections meaningless, and will ignore them. What matters is whether something works, not whether or not it is “really” or “authentically” Buddhism.

A Tantric attitude

For me, the heart of the Tantric path is not magical methods or esoteric concepts. It is an attitude; a stance; a way of being. It is the attitude of passionate and spacious engagement with this world. It is an ecstatic and agonizing love-affair with everyday reality.

You may find that you already have this attitude. Many Westerners do—although it’s difficult to maintain consistently.

At first this explanation might seem anti-climactic. “That’s all you think Tantra is about? Big deal!”

The excitement starts when you realize there is a whole religion built on this attitude. There is a system for putting the vision into practice, for intensifying and developing it, for making everything you do consistent with it.

The innumerable, brilliant techniques of Tantra flow logically from this attitude. But, if you understand and fully embrace the attitude, then no specific methods are necessary. Any activity—mopping the floor, designing a web page—can be Tantric practice, if you approach it with whole-hearted, spacious passion. This open-endedness makes possible the constant creative innovation that marks much of Tantra’s history.

The intricate symbolism and subtle philosophy of Tantra express and embellish the fundamental theme of spacious passion. They point out its implications and use and value. Again, the forms are limitless. Some are culturally-specific, which implies that—if necessary—it should be possible to develop Western symbolism that accurately reflects the same themes.

The Tantric attitude systematically reverses the attitude of mainstream Buddhism. If you are a non-Tantric Buddhist, and if the Tantric attitude seems attractive or obvious, you might want to wonder why you are practicing a religion based on its opposite.

Nobility

If spacious passion is the path, what is the goal?

Tantric texts often describe the ideal as “nobility” or “heroism.” That, to me, is a worthy objective.

Nobility is about this life, in this world. It is concrete, conceivable, believable, and obviously valuable. Many stories about Enlightenment seem to me to be none of those. Nobility is a destination that needs no metaphysical speculation.

Nobility is a way of being. It’s something that can be seen from the outside. “Enlightenment” is often imagined to be a purely inner quality of mind. I don’t care so much about that.

As a way of being, nobility has both inner and outer aspects, which are actually not separate. Unlike some conceptions of enlightenment, it is definitely not an experience. “Enlightenment experiences” seem over-rated to me. They can only be of value if they result in a lasting change in your way of being. Nobility inherently includes action. As far as I’m concerned, action is where the action is. If you want an experience, you can take drugs; they’re a lot less work.

Nobility, or heroism, contrasts with mainstream Buddhist ideals of saintliness, holiness, detachment, and purity. A hero is nothing like a saint. For one thing, a hero is useful, and a saint isn’t. Who you gonna call?

Tantric history

The posts up to this point in the outline sketch what I hope are inspiring (if vague) possibilities. Before getting into specifics, we have some unpleasant medicine to take: a political history of Buddhist Tantra. Some history is needed in order to understand why Buddhist Tantra is the way it is now, and how it could be different. Unfortunately, some of it is tiresome and ugly: dead people behaving badly. In any case, I hope to show that:

• Tantra has innovated radically through most of its history. This means that there have been many different Tantric Buddhisms. So, there are diverse starting points available for future Tantric Buddhisms, which we can draw on according to taste and need. Further, this shows that Buddhist Tantra is not inherently conservative, and that further development is historically legitimate.
• Tantra has been in political conflict with mainstream Buddhism throughout its history. This is as true now as ever. Future Tantric Buddhisms will face the same conflict—although Western tolerance and freedom of religion should lessen the impact.
• The ruling class has always seen Tantra as a powerful weapon. They have sought to monopolize it as a tool in their power struggles. They have tried to restrict access (denying it to potential opponents), and have controlled Tantric adepts as resources for their own use. This continues up to the present, and explains part of why Buddhist Tantra is so difficult to get into.
• There was a wave of promising Tantric innovation in the West in the 1980s.
• It was suppressed, successfully, in the 1990s and 2000s by a coalition of politically-conservative Tibetans and politically-correct Americans.
• That coalition is losing its grip, and new Tantric initiatives are emerging now.

I will provide a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. (Hint: Tibetan history is more fun with spaceships and ray guns.)

Tantric denials

To open up space for what Tantra could be, I need to explain what it isn’t.

• Tantra is not nice
• Tantra is not secret
• Tantra is not compatible with Sutra (mainstream Buddhism)
• Tantra is not intellectual
• Tantra is not spiritual
• Tantra is not mystical
• Tantra is not a bunch of rituals
• Tantra is not esoteric Mahayana
• Tantra is not Tibetan Buddhism
• Tantra is not traditional
• Tantra is not superstition
• Tantra is not for monks
• Tantra is/not all about sex
• Tantra is not safe
• Tantra is not all that dangerous

In each of these, you can read “is not necessarily.” Tantra could be each of these things, in some versions. Not the kinds of Tantra that appeal to me, though.

An automotive engineering approach

Now we get down to nuts and bolts.

Tantra is a yana, which means “vehicle” in Sanskrit. It is possible to “reinvent” a vehicle. Revolutionary cars like the Model T Ford, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Citroen DS, and the Mazda Miata each introduced many new technologies and design concepts.

All of them had four wheels, an engine, headlights, seats, and a windshield, however. There are some things a car has to have, in order to function as a car.

A vehicle with two wheels is not a car. How about three wheels? People have tried that, but they’re tippy. Five wheels? Forget it.

A car without an engine doesn’t go. If a vehicle is going to take you somewhere, you need a source of energy to turn the wheels. An electric motor? Faddish now, and doesn’t work well. Maybe in the future.

Hey, wouldn’t it be great to power a car with earthworms? That would be so organic and ecological.

The point is, “reinvention” can’t mean arbitrary make-overs that seem really cool. You can’t put wings on a car and expect it to fly. There are things you can change, and things you can’t. This has nothing to do with sacred tradition, or what it says in holy books, or what powerful priests will allow. It has everything to do with engineering.

If you want to reinvent Tantra, you need to understand how it works. What makes it go? What factors affect its energetic efficiency? How do you minimize drag? How do the safety belts function in a crash?

I will sketch my understanding of the fundamental principles and functions of Buddhist Tantra. If I’ve got it right, any future Tantra will need to conform to that general design. But this also points out areas that are open for experimentation, variation, and adaptation.

The Consensus and Tantra

I’ll write several posts on the Consensus’ complex relationship with Tantra.

For somewhat accidental, historical reasons, the Consensus mainly rejected it. However, it did incorporate certain aspects.

I suggest that most potential Western Buddhists would find the Tantric attitude attractive—and would not find the fundamental attitude of mainstream Asian Buddhism attractive—if both were explained accurately. This has led to some major obfuscation.

Meanwhile, because Westerners do want what Tantra has to offer, Consensus Buddhism has had to adopt vaguely similar practices and concepts from psychotherapy, the New Age, Hinduism, and elsewhere. This has not gone well.

Reinventing Buddhist ritual

Ritual is often said to be the defining feature of Buddhist Tantra. This is wrong. All pre-modern forms of Buddhism involved extensive ritual. Also, I suspect an entirely ritual-free Buddhist Tantra would be possible.

Possible, but not desirable. Many Western Buddhists reject ritual; but not—I think—for good reasons. In fact, it is only religious ritual they reject. Non-religious ritual is a vital aspect of every Westerner’s daily life.

So first, I will try to pull out the reasons for this rejection; and I will suggest that they are mostly confused.

We should reject religious rituals if they are boring and don’t work. And mostly that’s how they are. I’ll suggest reasons why.

Buddhism needs new rituals. Rituals that are exciting, fascinating, overwhelming. Rituals that leave you ecstatic, transported, inspired to practice. A great concert or theatrical performance can do that—just not in a religious context. We should expect Buddhism to provide the same high; as it did in the past, and still sometimes can. When it doesn’t, something is missing.

Fortunately, ritual is an aspect of Buddhism that is particularly open to innovation. Leaders have always felt free to create new rituals, even at times when Buddhism was highly conservative about doctrine.

Tantra has a handful of fundamental types of ritual, each with a defined function. For each, there is a primordial structure or underlying grammar. Within that framework, endless exuberant elaboration is possible, expressing the Tantric attitude and aims, in all artistic modes—music, dance, drama, poetry, painting, sculpture, costumery, and so on. An understanding of the basic forms, plus the principles and function of ritual in general, can be a starting point for creativity.

I earlier wrote for this site about the 9th-10th century Tibetan ‘Dark Age’  (http://ngakpa-update.org/causes-and-characteristics-dark-age-tibet).  I find this period fascinating both because it is still rather obscure and mysterious, and because whatever that time was like it clearly was not—perhaps not at all—like the popular Tibetan mythical history of the country’s distant past.

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Joseph Goldstein’s One Dharma claims in places to be a “unified theory of Dharma” that combines “all the lineages of Buddhism.”

The book begins with a two-page endorsement from the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is widely (mis)understood in the West as the Pope of Tibetan Buddhism. The most distinctive feature of Tibetan Buddhism is its inclusion of Buddhist Tantra.

However, One Dharma is 100% Tantra-free.

It’s hard to imagine the Pope of Rome endorsing a book by a Muslim about the unity of all the Abrahamic religions. But it would be particularly hard to imagine if the book never mentioned any distinctively Catholic doctrine.

It might seem that something odd is going on here… But in fact a Tantra-free Western Buddhism is precisely what the Dalai Lama would want to endorse.

And “100% Tantra-free” is a founding principle of Consensus Buddhism.

Explaining why the Dalai Lama and Joseph Goldstein would want to extirpate Tantra will take several posts; this one mostly just points out the anomaly.

No Tantra here, just us chickens

First, let’s check my “100% free” assertion.

The words “Tantra” and “Tantric” do not appear in the book at all.

“Vajrayana” is more-or-less synonymous with “Tantric Buddhism,” and appears in One Dharma five times. Each is only in passing. Here they all are, just to be thorough:

The temple bells of Theravada, the wooden clapper of Zen, and the long horns of Vajrayana all awaken us to ultimate freedom. (p. 5)

The breakaway monks of the Great Assembly were the precursors of what slowly evolved into the schools of the Mahayana (Pali and Sanskrit for “Great Vehicle”) and, later, Tibetan Vajrayana (Sanskrit for “Diamond Vehicle”) traditions. (p. 23)

Mahayana and Vajrayana practitioners view the original teachings of the first turning as being fundamental but not complete, and maintain it is only through the more mystical manifestations of Buddhahood that we come to a full understanding of reality. (p. 25)

By the aspiration of the holy lamas, Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and lineage masters / May all vajra [vajrayana; dharma] friends attain stable mindfulness and ascend the throne / Of perfect Awakening. (p. 90; quote from a prayer; square brackets in original)

None of these actually says anything about Vajrayana (and in each case the following sentences do not elaborate).

Dzogchen is sometimes counted as part of Tantra. Usually, it is better to think of it as a separate vehicle, because it’s quite different in its principles, function, and style.

One Dharma has some passing mentions of “Dzogchen,” plus a discussion on pp. 176-182. On the whole, it seems this is actually about the Mahayana doctrine of trikaya, rather than Dzogchen, and that he didn’t understand the difference. (This is a subtle and ambiguous point, so I don’t want to go into it here.)

In any case, Dzogchen is something neither Goldstein nor the Dalai Lama would want to suppress. (There are Tibetans who do want to get rid of Dzogchen, but the Dalai Lama is not one.)

Is this omission significant?

Vajrayana is not the only kind of Buddhism left out of One Dharma. For example, other than Zen, none of the many East Asian Mahayana schools, such as Nichiren, are ever mentioned.

Goldstein backs off from the “all Buddhist lineages” claim, in places, saying that he actually only draws on Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism. Different Buddhisms are, in fact, so contradictory that he couldn’t have included many of them. So, omission of any particular one might have no significance.

I will argue that his omission of Vajrayana is significant in a way that omission of Nichiren is not. Specifically, the Consensus actively suppressed Vajrayana, whereas it merely ignored the others.

Goldstein says that this selection of Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism is based “simply on the particular passions of my own spiritual journey” (p. 4). It is not a coincidence, though. Those three are the only Buddhisms that appeal to the Consensus’s market: middle-middle and upper-middle-class white Americans.

Consensus Buddhism is not in competition with Nichiren. The main Nichiren Buddhism in America, Soka Gakkai, appeals to working-class people, immigrants, and non-whites. Those are markets the Consensus can’t reach. (The reasons different Buddhisms appeal to different classes are fascinating. I may come back to that in future posts.)

On the other hand, modernized Vajrayana was—in the 1980s—a strong competitor to the Consensus. It appeals to same market. And I suspect that, over the next couple decades, a new, contemporary Buddhist Tantra could be more attractive to that market than the Consensus. In upcoming posts, I hope to sketch what that might look like, and why you might like it.

I don’t think the Consensus has suppressed Vajrayana simply as a business move, to consolidate market share. Rather, its leaders honestly believe that Tantra should not be taught.

And that brings us back to the Dalai Lama. Although Tibetan Buddhism includes Mahayana and Dzogchen, Tantra is its primary teaching. Wasn’t it odd to include “Tibetan Buddhism” in One Dharma, but not Tantra? Why would a powerful Tibetan Buddhist politician endorse that? The full answer will requires a long detour through Tibetan political history.

The short version is that the Dalai Lama himself was a major source for the Consensus leaders’ belief that Vajrayana is eeeevil. Vajrayana-free Tibetan Buddhism was exactly what he wanted to promote. How fortunate that he could get white Theravadins to help!

Here’s something else that might be a clue—although it might just be an interesting coincidence. Who first sponsored Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield as teachers?

(Hint: it was not their Theravadin masters.)

Answer: Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the man who invented modern Vajrayana.

Joseph Goldstein’s One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism is a manifesto of Consensus Buddhism.

It is also an introduction to Buddhism, and a practice manual; but I am interested only in the manifesto aspect. This is not a review; I am not concerned with evaluating the book as something that might be useful to someone now. Rather, I treat it as a historical document. Its significance is as a chess-move in the political program of a movement that is now—I hope—over. (And, as it was published ten years ago, Goldstein’s own view has probably evolved since.)

Introducing the cast

One Dharma is an oddly incoherent book. It is written in three different voices, with quite different agendas.

Most of the book is a practical introduction to Consensus Buddhism (which Goldstein calls “One Dharma”), written for beginners. Its author is a warm, wise, mature mentor. I’ll call him “Goldstein.” Goldstein’s excellence as a meditation teacher shows clearly, and I like and respect him, although the Buddhism he teaches does not appeal to me.

The book’s Introduction is a manifesto, proclaiming a political dogma. Its audience seems to be American teachers of Buddhism. I’ll call the booming, triumphant voice of its author “Goldstein.” I don’t care for him much.

The third voice, “joseph,” is prone to confusion, anxiety, and doubt. He is honest about not being able to make sense of Buddhism—unlike Goldstein—and that is to his credit. His audience is probably just the author himself; it’s not clear what use joseph could be to anyone else.

This combination makes the book pretty incoherent. I would like to write about just Goldstein’s manifesto. Unfortunately, it is impossible to completely separate it from the other two threads.

The frame-story

One Dharma’s first chapter tells a story that encapsulates the book’s message, its virtues, and its failings. It is the tale of how the book came to be.

An existential crisis

This frame-story is set in 1992, at Dai Bosatsu Monastery in New York. There, joseph is on a two-month group retreat with Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, the Tibetan teacher of his friend Lama Surya Das.

As the story opens, joseph is having an existential crisis. Rinpoche said something that seems right to joseph, but that contradicts the Theravada Buddhism he had practiced for 25 years.

For more than a month, joseph agonizes in meditation. He is “impaled on the sharp horns of a spiritual dilemma”: “Which is right?” and “How could I know?” “I felt as though I had swallowed a red-hot iron ball that I could neither digest nor expel.” (p. 9; all page numbers are from the Kindle edition.)

Revelation at Dai Bosatsu

At long last, Goldstein has a revelation. He realizes that he can “embrace a variety of perspectives, seeing the different views and methods as skillful means for liberation, rather than as the statements of absolute truth… For each of us at different times, different traditions, philosophical constructs, and methods may serve us, either because of temperament, background, or capacities (p.11)… The highest teaching is not one view or another, but what actually works for each of us at any given time. If we understand the various points of view as different skillful means to liberate our minds, then we can actually use each of them to complement each other, rather than seeing them in opposition. (p. 190)”

Both Goldstein and some reviewers of One Dharma suggest that this is a unique American pragmatism. It is the “can do, whatever works” attitude that made America great, and is the particularly American contribution to the development of Buddhism.

I greatly admire that American spirit, but Goldstein’s realization is actually one of the most basic teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. It is particularly emphasized in the Nyingma school, to which Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche belonged. (Perhaps that is not a coincidence.)

According to the Nyingma, any Buddhist may practice several different yanas. Each yana is a complete system that can stand alone, and the views of the different yanas directly contradict each other. Yet each may also be most useful in particular circumstances. It is best to view them as varying methods, not absolute truths. In Goldstein’s words: “If we hold metaphysical views (metaphysics being that branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality) as statements of truth, conflict is inevitable, as we have seen in religious and ideological wars throughout history.” (p. 12)

In order to skillfully choose which yana to apply at a particular time, you must understand the differing fundamental principles of each one, how the practices of each yana flow from its principles, how and why these principles and practices contradict. Most of all, what each yana is good for: its “base” (the circumstances where it applies) and its “result” (where it can take you).

This critical point—when to apply which approach—is one Goldstein shows no understanding of.

The birth of a monster

Instead, at this moment in the story, the monster Goldstein bursts forth from Goldstein’s chest, spraying gore, and declares “We seek peaceful coexistence.” By which, of course, he means assimilation and domination of alternatives.

Completely ignoring Goldstein’s insight that different views and practices are valuable in different circumstances, Goldstein proclaims the One Dharma, which “is just this: experiencing the essential point common to all the teachings.” (p. 13) Goldstein’s multiplicity of methods has been supplanted by Goldstein’s single essential point.

And what is that? “In the One Dharma of emerging Western Buddhism, the method is mindfulness, the expression is compassion, the essence is wisdom.” (p. 13; italics in the original)

Immediately Goldstein replaces the powerful, specific, contradictory logics of the various yanas with abstract platitudes. Who could object to mindfulness, compassion, or wisdom? Yet how could such billowy clichés do any work in a tight spot?

It’s telling that joseph never gives us a clear explanation of what Nyoshul Khen’s contradiction was. All that matters to his story is that there was some contradiction—a circumstance that reduced him to helpless suffering. Perhaps Goldstein could have explored the specifics of the problem, but he got exploded before he had a chance. For Goldstein, the difficulty is invisible, because in One Dharma all contradictions are simply ignored.

That’s the end of the frame-story, and of the first chapter.

The manifesto

Goldstein’s manifesto is in the Introduction, before the first chapter.

I call it a “manifesto” partly because it sketches a political program, and partly for Goldstein’s grandiose language:

We are living in remarkable times. A genuine Western Buddhism is now taking birth. (p. 1)

Beneath the differences of method and philosophy, there is a deep common vein of liberating wisdom that runs through all the lineages of Buddhism. Increased mutual understanding is slowly creating the rich and subtle tapestry of One Dharma. (p. 6)

Emerging from the fertile interaction of these ancient teachings is what we can now begin to call Western Buddhism. Not bound by Asian cultural constraints and strengthened by a society that encourages investigation, we are willing to take what is useful and beneficial from different traditions and add it to our own practice experience. (p. 2)

The implications of One Dharma for both Buddhism and our own culture are enormous. A wise cross-fertilization of spiritual practices can only deepen and broaden our understanding. It will foster not only tolerance, but also genuine respect and unity, as we each find from the great treasure-house of Dharma those teachings that benefit both ourselves and others. (p. 6)

This grandiosity is strangely intermittent. In fact, the Introduction is an argument among Goldstein, Goldstein, and joseph. Or, not actually an argument, because they simply talk past each other, without noticing that they have totally contradictory opinions.

joseph, worried, asks:

As old traditions meet in new ways, pressing questions arise. Is the melting-pot approach simply creating a big mess in which essential teachings of a tradition are lost? Or is something new emerging that will revitalize dharma practice for us all? Will it be possible to preserve the integrity of each of these distinct cultures of awakening, even as we nurture the enrichment that comes from their contact with each other? And do we sometimes water down—or leave behind—the essence of the teachings simply because they take us out of our Western physical or psychological comfort zone? How much can we pare away or alter before we start missing the point of it all? (p. 3)

These are, indeed, pressing questions—but One Dharma never addresses them. Instead, Goldstein describes the book as:

…an inquiry born from my own meditation practice and from a compelling interest in understanding—and realizing—the essence of freedom… The investigation of these questions requires great humility. When we step outside the safe bounds of the various individual traditions, each consistent within itself, we need to acknowledge the exploratory nature of a unified theory of Dharma… (pp. 3-4)

So what we have here is not exactly a manifesto, but the author dithering in public about whether he agrees with the manifesto he is mostly failing to write.

Whose Dharma?

In Western Buddhism, according to Goldstein, “we are willing to take what is useful and beneficial from different traditions.” (p. 2) But who decides what is beneficial and useful? What is irrelevant Asian cultural junk, and what is outright wrong? Goldstein frames the problem nicely:

Who or what constitutes ultimate spiritual authority? Is it a person at the top of a religious hierarchy or one’s own teacher? Is it the remembered words of the spiritual founder? Is it a democratic group process that decides what is true? Or is it left to each individual? These are not easy questions, and we find them alive and well in contemporary Buddhist communities. (p. 22)

Goldstein gives no explicit answer. He points out that:

The discipline of awakening is not a democratic process. In a monastery or retreat center we don’t vote on the hour of the wake-up bell or the meditation instructions given in interviews. We rely on the wisdom of the teacher. (p. 22)

On the other hand,

There is usually some mixture of wisdom and ignorance in those who are teaching. Someone may have profound insight in some areas and be immature in others… So there may be some value in relying on the group wisdom as well. (p. 22)

Together with his emphasis on an emerging consensus, this suggests that he believed authority should be given to the leading Western Buddhist teachers as a group. Collectively, they were co-creating Western Buddhism, and students can tag along. This is consonant also with his role in organizing (with Jack Kornfield and Lama Surya Das) the series of Western Buddhist Teachers’ Conferences.

Goldstein seems to have a different answer. “One Dharma” is his personal product. He uses the term as a brand name—you can almost see the trademark symbol—for the specific system he constructed:

When I am on retreat, I begin each day with a One Dharma ritual of prayer beginning with the Three Refuges in Pali and the Tibetan version of the Refuges… (p. 50)

One Dharma™ has its own doctrines, attitudes, practices, and liturgy, all defined by Goldstein.

This is a weak position. It invites questions like “why should we listen to you?” and “how do you know?” Maybe it is because Goldstein has no good answers that his voice is suppressed for most of the book.

Goldstein’s vague collectivism deflects such skepticism. “Everyone knows” that the Consensus view defines Western Buddhism, so no one needs to answer hard questions about whether it is right.

Which Dharma?

One Dharma, according to Goldstein, is a “unified theory of Dharma” (p. 4) based on the “deep common vein of liberating wisdom that runs through all the lineages of Buddhism” (p. 6). That is why One is in the title, and why the subtitle is “the emerging Western Buddhism.”

As [Buddhist] traditions moved across Asia into different cultures, they became more isolated from one another, and many of the differences hardened into their own traditional orthodoxies, often with sectarian overtones… Western Buddhism will inevitably be a synthesis of these great wisdom traditions.… This can be the great gift of our culture to the long historical sweep of the Buddha’s teachings. (p. 26)

I think this idea is factually wrong and politically oppressive.

Goldstein gives no reason to believe that the single, comprehensive Western Buddhism will inevitably be a synthesis of different Asian Buddhisms. That would make sense only if all the Asian Buddhisms had the same religious content, plus unnecessary added cultural nonsense that Westerners should drop. But in fact, the Asian Buddhisms have irreconcilably different core teachings. (This was the realization that sent joseph into shock. One Dharma is his antidote to that shock: pretending it isn’t so.)

In my view, there should not be one Western Buddhism. Inevitably, in fact, there will be many (or perhaps none). Some Western Buddhisms may be syntheses of multiple Asian traditions; others, not. (In fact, I’ll suggest that Goldstein’s own version is much less a synthesis than he believes.)

However, this “common core plus cultural accretions” model gave the Consensus the power to dominate American convert Buddhism for a couple of decades. It was the Consensus leaders who defined what the “essential core” of Buddhism was. That let them marginalize alternatives as obsolete traditions from quaint pre-modern cultures.

Goldstein is more honest about his starting point than Goldstein, and less ambitious. Not a unification of all Buddhisms, but:

I draw on aspects of three Buddhist traditions (Theravada, Tibetan, and Zen) while acknowledging that not only are there other schools of Buddhism, but even within these three, there is a great variety of lineages and sects. The criteria for reference and inclusion are simply the particular passions of my own spiritual journey: a long familiarity with Theravada teachings, the profound inspiration of a few remarkable Tibetan masters, and my great appreciation of Zen Buddhism’s direct pointing to the enlightened mind. (p. 4)

The versions of Theravada and Zen Goldstein draws on are the 20th century export products, which were devised in Asia specifically for Americans. These had already undergone a full century of Westernization before Goldstein’s generation encountered them. (I’ve written about this in several earlier posts, and will fill in some more details when I write the history of the hippie migration to India.)

So it is not surprising that these extensively-Westernized Buddhisms would be largely compatible. Anything that contradicted Western prejudices had already been removed for our convenience.

The issue of the Consensus’s relationship with Tibetan Buddhism is so complex that I’ll cover it in several later posts. Approximately, though, the “Tibetan” Buddhism Goldstein drew on was also an export product.

What Dharma?

Leaving aside its bizarre Introduction and first chapter, the rest of One Dharma is a pleasant introduction to Consensus Buddhism, written in the Goldstein voice. He says almost nothing explicitly about what One Dharma is. Instead, we get the life-story of Shakyamuni, a brief history of Buddhism, the Four Thoughts That Turn The Mind, the lay precepts, the paramitas, metta and compassion, the four foundations of mindfulness, Abhidharma, and so on. And so, most of the book is closely similar to other basic introductions to Buddhism, some of them written decades earlier.

So what, exactly, did Goldstein take from Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism? And what did he choose to leave behind? How did he resolve their contradictions? Based on the Introduction, these would seem to be the key points he would want to explain; but he never does. Lacking a clear statement, we need to look at the details of what One Dharma teaches, and does not teach.

Not surprisingly, since Goldstein mainly studied modernized Theravada, that is the main source for One Dharma.

What he mostly omits from that tradition is renunciation. In an interview, he was asked what his current “edge” was; “the current challenge or evolutionary task you see in your own life.” He replied:

One edge is trying to explore what renunciation means as a layperson. Renunciation is one of the paramis of a buddha, and as a monastic, the whole form is set up for renunciation. As a layperson, it’s quite the opposite. And so just to see, OK, what could this mean, and how can I practice it?

It’s not just Goldstein; all Consensus Buddhism omits renunciation as a practice. Goldstein is unusual in even feeling he ought to attempt it. However, the Consensus is rooted in renunciate traditions, and it retains some of the renunciate conceptual framework. I’ll come back to this important inconsistency in later posts.

From Zen, Goldstein takes only the bodhisattva ideal and the paramitas. Apparently, these somehow contradict Theravada, and Goldstein had a breakthrough (p. 121-2) in which he understood how to reconcile this conflict. Unfortunately, I can’t follow his explanation. It sounds as though he simply understood and accepted an elementary Mahayana teaching. Perhaps I’m missing an important insight here because I know so little about Theravada.

One Dharma also incorporates only one teaching that Goldstein says he takes from Tibetan Buddhism. That is the statement that the nature of mind is “intrinsically empty, naturally radiant, and ceaselessly responsive” (p. 176ff). He calls this a Dzogchen view, as he encountered it in a supposedly-Dzogchen context. It can indeed be found in Dzogchen texts, but it’s not distinctively Dzogchen, or Tibetan. It’s standard Mahayana psychology.

It’s unclear what work, if any, this teaching does in the One Dharma system. In Vajrayana, there are specific meditation methods that work with these three qualities of mind; but those practices aren’t mentioned in One Dharma, which is 100% Vajrayana-free. So is this just attractive-sounding verbiage?

Goldstein covers the nature-of-mind teaching in a chapter on the meaning of Nirvana. As he points out, enlightenment is described quite differently in different Buddhisms, in ways that seem entirely contradictory. What are we to make of this? Goldstein recommends accepting all the different theories. That’s nice…

But I find this discussion so abstract and vague as to be useless. The chapter describes joseph’s personal perplexity at contradictory theories, without coming to any conclusion. It’s not clear that any of these highfalutin’ concepts relates to anything real—in which case, who cares? Not Consensus Buddhism, which mostly abandoned enlightenment as a goal.

So: what is One Dharma? In sum: it’s 1960s export Theravada, minus renunciation, plus the paramitas.

(One Dharma is unusual, as a Consensus text, in mentioning only briefly political correctness and psychotherapy, which are other major additions in most Consensus strands. Goldstein is a bit conservative about this.)

Seeking a strong text

To argue against a system of ideas, it is best to analyze the strongest statement of the system. Ideally, you start from a founding manifesto, whose clear and inspiring explanations sparked a movement. Your analysis points to exactly where you think the author went wrong. Then readers can make an informed decision based on the best cases for and against.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a strong text for Consensus Buddhism. One Dharma is the best available. (The Open Letter from the 1993 Western Buddhist Teacher Conference is another candidate; I’ll analyze it in an upcoming post.)

Considered as a manifesto, there is consistently less to One Dharma than meets the eye. Repeatedly, Goldstein makes a big claim, but then there is no follow-through as Goldstein takes over. And joseph is always around plaintively pointing out that Goldstein is an emperor with no clothes.

This systematic refusal to clearly state and defend its ideas makes it difficult to argue with the Consensus. It’s so vague and weak-kneed. Consensus writing is like a hell-realm ocean of tapioca pudding. Countless damned souls, floating listlessly, suck up the soft, sweet, nearly-tasteless glop. Unable to see any shore, they ignore pleas to swim out. Life-rafts launched by would-be rescuers slowly sink into the unresisting sea.

Why? I do not altogether understand this. Presumably, avoidance of clear thought is a strategy to avoid confronting Consensus Buddhism’s internal contradictions, and the cognitive dissonance produced by its obvious conflicts with reality. Quite how that works, I haven’t figured out.

It’s worth noting, though, that many scholars have pointed out this same deliberate mushiness in the wider trend of which Consensus Buddhism is a part. That is, the “green meme” or “bourgeois bohemian (bobo)” or “consciousness” movement. All these terms name a closed world-view that sees itself as universal, but actually just refuses to recognize or seriously discuss alternatives.

Is there such a thing as Consensus Buddhism?

A common reaction of Consensus Buddhists to my discussion of Consensus Buddhism is to insist that there is no such thing. They say I am just describing the Buddhism of the ignorant—the introductory teachings “shared by all sects”—and I am overlooking the huge diversity of Western Buddhism. In that case, One Dharma is not the manifesto of a movement, but just one man’s description of his personal approach to spirituality. (Which is the way Goldstein presents it in some passages.)

Here I agree with Goldstein. There is such a thing as One Dharma, and he and his friends lead it. It has about a million faithful in the fold, and thousands of teachers. Some have a background in Theravada, some in Zen, some in Tibetan Buddhism, but they are all teaching much the same stuff.

Consensus Buddhism has its house presses (Tricycle, the Shambhala Sun, the major non-academic Buddhist book publishers); a powerful political establishment, extensive training programs, centers, and all the other apparatus of a major religion.

The historical inevitability of the Consensus

Goldstein calls One Dharma “inevitable,” and I quarreled with him about that above. But in a different sense, I think he was right. Consensus Buddhism is a spiritual expression of the broad and deep changes in culture, society, and consciousness that sprang from the 1960s youth movement. (The New Age is a parallel expression, and it is not surprising that there was substantial cross-over and similarity between them.) The Consensus took its skeleton from modernized export Buddhism, but much of the meat comes from the ideas and practices of late-20th century America.

One Dharma’s subtitle describes it as “the emerging Western Buddhism,” and Goldstein repeats the word “emerging” often. He implies that he is observing an organic, self-arising trend that even he cannot yet see clearly, but that will inevitably develop into a coherent, homogeneous Western Buddhism. (Goldstein, on the other hand, takes full credit for creation.)

One Dharma was published in 2002. Goldstein’s tentativeness is odd and ironic, since 2002 was the high point of the Consensus’s political domination. (The publication of Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen in 2003 marks the beginning of the end.)

As one review of One Dharma pointed out, “Rather than needing to argue polemically for his position, Goldstein simply announces with an almost-Marxist flourish that ‘Western Buddhism will inevitably be a synthesis of these great wisdom traditions. It is already happening.’ ” Hegemony was a fait accompli, which relieved Goldstein of the burden of supporting Goldstein’s claims.

Still, my impression is that Goldstein was not alone, among Consensus leaders in 2002, in being unaware of how completely they had succeeded. I suspect that is because they genuinely did not see themselves as creators. (This accounts for the peculiar alternation of Goldstein’s triumphalism and Goldstein’s modesty.) Insofar as the Consensus approach was historically inevitable, they indeed were not responsible.

The Consensus was driven by the teachers and the students of the Consensus leaders, as much as by the leaders themselves. Goldstein and the other leaders were, in part, simply surfing a wave, along for a ride on an incoming tide.

The Consensus was driven by the demands of bourgeois-bohemian baby boomers for a new spiritual system: one consistent with their broader ideology, that met their perceived emotional needs. That created an enormous pull in a particular direction. At times, you could feel the Consensus leaders’ frustration, as they tried to tug back, when bobo narcissism directly contradicted Buddhism. However, caught up in the bobo ideology themselves, the Consensus leaders mainly went with the flow.

The Consensus leaders were pushed, as well as pulled. Their religion was based on synthetic export Buddhisms created by Asian nationalists. Those teachers programmed the Consensus leaders with counter-missionary political agendas that are only now, decades later, becoming apparent. Those teachers were subtle and brilliant and held their cards close to their vests; and Goldstein and the others were manipulated and duped.

In 2002, the Consensus leaders were still looking deferentially over their shoulders at their Asian teachers, not noticing that in America they were already the establishment. Those teachers are now dead, and the Consensus leaders now understand that they are the elders. That implies responsibility to work out how to pass leadership to later generations.

Acknowledgement

My thanks to Naljorpa Ögyen Dorje for drawing my attention to One Dharma and sending me his own analysis of it. I’ve made substantial use of his ideas here.

The second half of my Buddhist Geeks interview is now up on the web.

This covers the recent history of the Consensus, and the future. Among other things, I talk about the possibility for new forms of Buddhist Tantra.

I’m really happy with the way the podcast came out. I sound more articulate than I actually am! Vince must have applied some advanced digital magic.

If you take a look at my Twitter stream (in the right column of this blog, or here), you’ll see that recently I’ve been tweeting mainly about Buddhist Tantra. I’m hoping to write here soon a long series of posts about the possibilities for reinventing Buddhist Tantra. The tweets are a preview—summaries of upcoming posts, in slogan form.

First, though, a couple of posts analyzing Joseph Goldstein’s One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism. That’s a manifesto for Consensus Buddhism, by one of its leaders.

I hoped to post that analysis before the Geeks podcast went up, but haven’t yet had time to finish it. One Dharma is important because, after going on about the Consensus for months, this will be the first time I engage with it directly and concretely, rather than talking about it in the abstract.

After that, I’m planning to write about the future of Tantra. This actually will break the flow of my analysis of the Consensus. Logically, it would be better to continue my historical approach. I would write about the hippies’ encounter with Asian modernist Buddhism in the 1960s and 70s; the innovative creation of Western Buddhism in the 80s; the formation of the political Consensus in 1993 at the Dharamsala Western Buddhist Teachers Conference (with an analysis of the Statement it released, mentioned in this podcast); the suppression of alternative Western Buddhisms in the 1990s and 2000s; signs that the Consensus is now opening up (or breaking down); and only then the possibilities for the future!

But maybe all that stuff is awfully dry; and anyway it’s over. “History is bunk,” as Henry Ford said. I did a poll on Twitter, and 100% of respondents said they’d rather hear about the future than the past. So—that is what I will write next!

Religious conflicts tend to be particularly nasty: whether holy wars that kill millions or flame wars on Buddhist internet forums.

When you have The One Whole Holy Truth, anyone with a different view must be absolutely wrong and wicked, and should be punished severely.

So, this is not news… The question is what to do about it.

One popular approach is to insist that all religions are essentially the same. To parody slightly:

“Religious differences are merely variations in cultural customs. Such differences are arbitrary and irrelevant; no one goes to war based on which side of the road you drive on. What really matters in all religions—their core values—are shared equally among all of them. When we recognize this, we can all join hands as one big happy family and sit in a circle singing Om Kumbaya.”

This is very nice. In fact, it is the essence of “niceness”: pretending that conflict does not exist, in order to pursue a hidden agenda.

“Consensus Buddhism” is founded on this principle. According to the Consensus, all Buddhisms are essentially the same. Their seeming conflicts are merely differences in Asian cultural customs, which are irrelevant to the West.

“Therefore, there is no need for disagreement among Buddhists. This idea that we can, and should, and maybe have, achieved consensus about what all Buddhisms teach, is one of the reasons I describe the current Western mainstream as “Consensus Buddhism.”

Also, by consensus, we can mix Buddhism with other religions, because it is not essentially different from Christianity or Hinduism.

There are three problems here:

1. It isn’t true. Different religions are not essentially the same. Different Buddhisms have incompatible principles, values, paths, and goals.
2. It doesn’t work. Ignoring differences actually makes religious conflicts worse.
3. It justifies totalitarianism. Whoever gets to say what is the “essential, shared core” of religions can define competitors out of existence—if that decree is accepted.

Recently, I described a better approach to religious conflict, which avoids these downfalls.

Here, I’ll expand on the problems with “all religions are essentially the same,” and show some ways they manifest in the Consensus view that “all Buddhisms are essentially the same.”

God is not One

If all religions are essentially the same, what is it that is the same about them?

This is a question advocates of the “brotherhood of all religions” would rather skate over. When pressed, they usually produce one of two answers:

• All religions say everyone should be nice to everyone else.
• The essence of all religions is the mystical insight that your True Self is the same as God.

Both of these are factually false.

All religions advocate violence

Most religions say you should be nice to some people. Some also say that you should be nice to everyone. But all of them also say you should slaughter the infidels, torture heretics, and enslave bad people. (No religion is ethically consistent.)

If the “essential core” of all religions were merely what they have in common, then violence against outsiders would be a good candidate.

Buddhism is no exception. There is some universal-love rhetoric in the scriptures. But Buddhism also justifies holy wars, judicial torture, and slavery. This is no rare aberration, but common all across Asia and through Buddhist history.

Nor is it ancient history. For instance, politically powerful Buddhist monks were primary advocates of 2007-2009 civil war in Sri Lanka, which was widely condemned by human rights organizations for indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatant civilians.

(Several recent books discuss Buddhist justifications for holy war and other forms of violence. One is Buddhist Warfare, edited by Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer.)

Almost no one agrees that your True Self is God

The only major religion that says your True Self is God is Hinduism—and only some Hindu sects.

Nevertheless, the idea that this is the essence of all religions—which are therefore all really the same—is increasingly popular in the West. This is called “Perennialism” by religious scholars.

Perennialism is rejected by most prominent spokespeople for most religions. Perennialists need to argue that all these authorities are deluded about the nature of their own religions. A Perennialist knows The Truth about Islam, that it is really one path among many to becoming God. Most imams consider that the worst idea imaginable, but they don’t really know anything about Islam. Since the essence of Islam is the mystical experience of becoming God, which the imams have lost, they are idiots and should be ignored.

In the case of Buddhism, nearly all Buddhist thinkers have explicitly rejected both the True Self and God, and have strongly differentiated their Buddhism from other religions. Perennialism has become popular in Buddhism recently, though, unfortunately. It’s a very nice idea…

What do all Buddhisms have in common?

It seems to me that the most important aspects of the different Buddhisms are quite different. In fact, I’m not sure all Buddhisms have anything in common; far less do they share their central features.

The various Buddhisms went their own ways a couple thousand years ago. They’ve developed mostly independently, in quite different cultural contexts, over many centuries. They seem now to me to be as different as (ultra-conservative) Wahhabi Islam, (ultra-liberal) Jewish Renewal, and Mormonism. Their common ancestor is equally distant.

Refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is sometimes said to be a shared core. But these three words are understood quite differently in different Buddhisms; and there are Buddhisms that have different objects of refuge.

To show the diversity of Buddhist opinion, here are examples that are currently influential, and disagree about pretty much everything:

• In Sinhalese nationalist Theravada, monks take refuge in raṭa, jātiya, and āgama—“country, race, and religion”—rather than Buddha, dharma, and sangha.
• Tibetan Buddhist Tantra teaches that sexual pleasure is the way to enlightenment, and takes refuge in the lama, yidam, and dakini.
• Sokka Gakkai rejects meditation in favor of chanting the phrase nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Quoting Jan Nattier: “[Its] promise that chanting… will enhance one’s social, economic, and professional circumstances has drawn large numbers of less-than-affluent adherents. Meditative Buddhism, on the other hand—favored by the upper middle class—critiques the concern with material well-being as fundamentally un-Buddhist.”

All of these have been dismissed as “not really Buddhism.” But there is no generally-accepted definition for what is “really” Buddhist. Who gets to say?

If you say “all Buddhists must accept X,” some reply “We are Buddhists, and we reject X, so you are wrong.”

If you say “but scripture Y says X,” they say “Y is not definitive; scripture Z is more holy, and it says the opposite.” For example, militarist Sri Lankan monks point out passages in generally-accepted Theravada scriptures that justify holy war against supposed enemies of raṭa, jātiya, and āgama. (Namely, the Sri Lankan Tamil/Hindu race/religion minority group.)

Pretend unity doesn’t work

“All religions are essentially the same” works until two come into direct conflict. Then it makes things much worse. Conflict can only be resolved on the basis of understanding, and deliberately overlooking religious differences actively prevents understanding them.

“Why are they disagreeing with us? Their religion is the same as ours, so they shouldn’t disagree. They must be hung up on some trivial detail. Or else, they misunderstand their own religion, and wrongly think it is different from ours.

They are being hostile. Why are they hostile? We acknowledge that their religion is the same as ours, so we are very nice people. Why don’t they understand that their religion is the same as ours, so they must agree? They must not be nice people. We need to make them understand that their religion says they have to be nice to us. Or else we’ll have to kill them all.”

Stephen Prothero’s “A Dangerous Belief” is an eloquent call for religious tolerance based on recognizing religious differences. (It summarizes his book God Is Not One.) He writes:

Some people are convinced that the only foundation on which inter-religious civility can be constructed is the dogma that all religions are one. I am not one of them. In our most intimate human relationships, who is so naive as to imagine that partners or spouses must be essentially the same? What is required in any healthy relationship is knowing who the other person really is. Denying differences is a recipe for disaster. What works is understanding the differences and then coming to accept and, when appropriate, to respect them.

America’s various misadventures in the Middle East have been worsened by its unwillingness to learn about Islam. Of course, on the religious right, the attitude may be that Islam is simply evil, so the details are irrelevant. But the moderate or liberal assumption that Islam is essentially the same as Christianity is as much a problem. So is the assumption that there is one thing called “Islam,” and whatever is true for some Muslims must be true for all.

On the one hand, overlooking serious differences means that violent conflicts seem suddenly to pop out of nowhere, and to have no explanation or motivation beyond insane evil.

On the other hand, Americans who understand that there are moderate as well as extremist political Muslims may take agreement from moderates for granted. After all, their religion is essentially the same, so naturally they have all the same core values we do. This can lead to alienating allies, or feeling betrayed when moderate Muslims do not support all American actions.

Ignoring a Buddhist holy war

American Buddhists are usually quick to condemn racism, war, and human rights violations.

In American Buddhism, there was a nearly total lack of discussion of the bloody religious race war prosecuted just a couple years ago by Sri Lankan Buddhists. It was an ugly fact that did not fit the nice story: that all Buddhists—certainly all Theravadins—agree on core principles such as non-violence.

If American Buddhists had acknowledged that Buddhisms can be fundamentally different, we might have been an effective lobby for restraint in the Sri Lankan war. But, to criticize our fellow Buddhists might not have been nice. Mind you, they weren’t behaving in an entirely nice way. But, they were definitely Buddhists, and Buddhists are all definitely nice. (Especially Asian ones.) AAACK! HEAD ASPLODE! Too confusing! Make it stop!

Only avidya—deliberate blindness, ignore-ance—could cope with the cognitive dissonance. Only avidya could keep American Buddhism’s self-image intact.

I have found almost nothing about this war on Western Buddhist web sites. Where, for instance, was the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, a major Consensus Buddhist organization? On their site, I could find only one mild mention of “concern” in a single sentence buried at the end of a paragraph about other matters.

(If you’d like to learn more about this, a good starting point is Annewieke Vroom’s review and summary of Tessa J. Bartholomeusz’s In Defense of Dharma: Just-War Ideology in Buddhist Sri Lanka. There are several other scholarly books on Sri Lankan monastic militarism, plus of course many news reports from the war and statements from human rights organizations.)

Nice religion as a tool for totalitarianism

The third problem with “all religions are essentially the same” is that it has been, from its invention, a tool for totalitarian domination. Whoever gets to say what the “essence” is holds all religious power.

This has been the strategy of American Consensus Buddhism: to define all alternatives out of existence by insisting on sameness.

This is a big enough subject that I think I’ll postpone it to another post.

The most common unproductive way to disagree is to attack your opponent, rather than what they have to say. (This is called “arguing ad hominem”—Latin for “against the person.”)

Ad hominem rarely adds to understanding—but it can be effective at silencing opposition.

Here are some specifically Buddhist forms of ad hominem I’ve encountered:

“You are being aggressive.” In other words, you won’t shut up when I tell you that you are wrong. “Aggression” is the worst Buddhist sin, so if I can make that stick, nice Buddhists will ignore whatever you have to say. (This also trades on the wrong idea that it is inherently hostile to insist that different Buddhisms are different.)

“Obviously, you don’t practice meditation much.” If you did, you would agree with me. Because meditation leads to the Truth, and I have the Truth.

“This is a bunch of academic/intellectual posturing.” I find what you are saying hard to understand. I don’t actually know much about Buddhism, but I’m totally sure I’m right. Rather than learning more—perhaps even from you—I will try to make you look irrelevant and out-of-touch.

“You have no right to say that.” As you know, we live in a totalitarian state in which The Buddhist Authorities determine who is allowed to say what.

“That’s not compatible with our Western values.” Naturally, all good Westerners have the same values, namely mine.

“That’s just a traditional view.” (The usual way for modernists to dismiss traditionalists.) As of last week, we’ve got everything figured out, so anything that contradicts our current belief is obsolete and should be forgotten.

“Your Buddhism is inauthentic.” (The usual way for traditionalists to dismiss modernists. What does “authentic” mean? In practice, nothing more than “my system, not yours.”)

“Yours is even worse.” You don’t believe that my meditation can make me One with The Entire Universe? Well, I don’t believe in your Tibetans’ flying lamas, either.

What other unhelpful Buddhist argument styles have you encountered?

I’m excited and honored to have a podcast interview up now on the Buddhist Geeks web site.

The Buddhist Geeks are doing fascinating, important work in expanding the range of Buddhist voices, and particularly in encouraging discussion of the future of Buddhism.

The podcast is about “Consensus Buddhism,” which I’ve been writing about here for the past few months.

The interview is in two parts; the next is coming in a week. Together, they cover much of the whole story I intend to present here, although of course only in summary. So, it touches on many points I expect to expand into full web pages over coming months.

I was particularly pleased that the discussion was with Hokai Sobol. Hokai is a teacher of Shingon (Japanese Vajrayana). He thinks deeply about how Vajrayana can function in contemporary society—which is also one of my main preoccupations. From the brief conversations I’ve had with him, it seems that we have reached some of the same conclusions. I’m greatly looking forward to his further work.

“You should not argue about religion”—much less criticize anyone else’s. That’s taboo. Everyone knows it’s not nice.

Genuine religious tolerance, however, begins with understanding. Understanding other people’s religions means understanding how they are different.

Respectful argument, including criticism, is the best way we have to get clear about religious differences.

Of course, religious arguments can erupt into hellish holy wars, and that’s why we have the taboo. But “let’s all get along” does not always have to mean “let’s not talk about it.”

A constructive religious argument won’t convert opponents, and won’t result in agreement, and doesn’t try. Instead, it allows both sides to understand their own systems better.

Even better, constructive debate allows on-lookers to better understand their own religious values and needs and capabilities. That is critical to finding a religion that is a good personal fit—one whose goals you want to pursue, whose path you enjoy, and whose prerequisites are in reach.

In this blog series, I criticize an approach I call “Consensus Buddhism.” The approach is based partly on the belief that all forms of Buddhism have a shared essence, and so there doesn’t need to be any real disagreement among Buddhists. I think that’s wrong, and will explain why in detail in another post.

In this post, I hope to sketch a better alternative: how we can disagree productively, and without too much upset.

All religions are useful to someone

A starting point is that every religion must have something of value in it, or else it would no longer exist. Everyone would abandon it.

Because every religion has value, we can respect it—without having to agree with it, at all. If we understand how and why it is valuable to others, we can give credit where it is due.

This is not a matter of being nice—which is pretending to give respect, when secretly you believe none is deserved. Rather, it simply acknowledges the facts of the situation.

Being judgmental

Respecting every religion does not mean that they are all equally true, or equally beautiful, or equally effective. They aren’t.

That might sound shocking to some. Current ethical dogma is that everyone and everything is as good as everyone and everything else. Everyone is special, and everyone must get a prize. The possibility that one thing might not be as good as another is too appalling to contemplate.

Actually, we have a responsibility to judge religious differences, in choosing one for ourselves. For judgements to be useful, they must be based on understanding, and understanding must be based on knowledge and reason.

Pretending that all religions are equal, or (worse) that they are all essentially the same, abdicates responsibility.

This is the lazy way out. Learning enough about religions to make an informed choice is difficult and time-consuming.

It’s bad enough trying to figure out whether or not you can be a Buddhist. Discovering that Buddhism is not one religion, but many extremely different religions, could be totally discouraging. Wouldn’t it be easier to say that they’re all really the same? Surely their heart essence, their essential core, is shared, beneath the heaving mass of intricate, irrelevant sectarian squabbling and doctrinal details?

That is part of what makes the Consensus approach appealing. But if you accept that line, you allow the leaders of the Consensus to define your religion for you. You hand over control of Buddhism to Joseph Goldstein. He’s the Consensus founder whose manifesto One Dharma claims to identify “the essential point common to all the teachings.”

Religious essentialism is, actually, a strategy for totalitarian control. I’ll explain that in detail, and look at how it operates in Consensus Buddhism, in an upcoming post.

Maybe Joseph Goldstein is right, and I am wrong. But you shouldn’t just take his word for it.

What is the aim?

When seeking to understand a religious system, a first question to ask is: what is it trying to accomplish? This can be overlooked, because often a particular aim is taken for granted.

For example, a common, useless Christian criticism of Buddhism is that it won’t save you from the eternal damnation that everyone deserves (because of Adam and Eve’s original sin). The criticism is useless because this is not the problem Buddhism tries to solve.

A different Christian criticism is that Buddhism is nihilistic and life-denying and can only offer more suffering without a workable way out. This is directed at Theravada, which is what most Christians understand by “Buddhism.” This criticism comes closer to the mark, because it recognizes the aim: to end suffering. It asks: how could Buddhism possibly do that?

As a criticism of Theravada, I actually think it might be right. I am not necessarily convinced that Theravada does have a workable way out. I am not necessarily persuaded by Theravadins who defend against the charge of nihilism.

(Oooo, are you shocked yet? I am actually disagreeing with my Theravadin brothers about core Buddhist principles—I must be a bad Buddhist…)

But, my skepticism about Theravada’s way to liberation does not mean I reject or denigrate it. Theravada clearly brings great benefits to people of a certain temperament—if perhaps not all the benefits it claims. There is much I admire in it. Theravada shines with types of integrity that Tibetan Buddhism, which I follow, has mostly lost. And I have great respect for many individual Theravada teachers—as I will demonstrate later in this post.

Religious systems with different aims can’t be compared against each other. They can only be compared with your own aims. You can ask: does this system head where I want to go?

How does it work?

The second step in understanding a religious system is to figure out how it goes about achieving its aims.

This can be difficult, partly because members of the religion usually don’t know. Religions operate mainly by tradition, and the original insight into “here’s how method X will accomplish goal Y” gets lost.

Most American Christians do not know how the practices of their Churches are supposed to bring about salvation. Many actually reject the explanation, if you tell them. Generally, American Christians are unenthusiastic about hell, sin, and the basic principles of Christian morality. Mostly, they operate at the level of “God loves you, so everything will come out OK in the end.”

Similarly, most American Buddhists cannot give a coherent explanation of samsara and nirvana, or of how their brand of Buddhism is supposed to lead from one to the other. Mostly, they operate at the level of “you should be nice to everybody, and meditation makes you feel better, and in theory it leads to enlightenment, which is Becoming One With Everything.”

Famous Consensus Buddhist teachers write best-selling books that say just that. So you can’t necessarily find coherent or accurate explanations by going to apparently-reputable sources.

On the other hand, you can’t dismiss a religion’s own explanation of how it works, out of hand. To think that you understand a religion better than its most prominent spokespeople may be highly arrogant. For instance, a popular idea, that mystical experience is the shared essence of all religions, is strongly rejected by most imams, ministers, rabbis, and priests. To say “I know that all those imams, who have spent decades studying and practicing Islam, are wrong: mystical experience really is the essence of their religion” is dubious.

So, in trying to understand how a religion works, I think you have to navigate a middle course between two dangers: naively accepting its stories about itself at face value, and ignorantly imposing your own ideas on it.

What both dangers share is lack of knowledge. Unfortunately, there is no substitute for the hard work of finding stuff out.

Does it work?

Once you know how a system is supposed to work, you can ask: does it?

Does Christianity save you from damnation? Does Buddhism save you from samsara?

How can we know? Why should we believe it? Where is the evidence? What is the reasoning? These are terribly hard questions.

This is where constructive religious disagreement can be most helpful.

Every religion has an attractive, plausible story to tell—and to sell. The gaps in the narrative, the defects the sales pitch glosses over, will not be obvious. On the other hand, objections that occur to you may be mistaken; there may be good answers.

A good way to sort this out is to listen to (or read) debates between a knowledgeable advocate of the system and a knowledgeable critic. This could be a formal, in-person oral debate, with an audience, or it could just be a quick exchange on an internet forum.

How to argue about religion

For the debate to function, the two must respect each other enough to reply seriously to the other’s points—not merely to insult them, nor to attack straw men.

The critic needs to understand the religion clearly enough that he or she can focus on its weakest central points. Objecting to trivia is unhelpful, even when accurate. (Yes, the Bible says Noah got two of every species into a 300-cubit boat, which may be impossible, but who cares? Debating this is a waste of time; it is not a good reason to reject Christianity.)

The advocate needs to be able to get out of the box, the religion’s closed conceptual system, enough to listen to the criticisms and take them seriously. He or she needs to be secure enough not to offer knee-jerk defenses; to be willing for there to be objections he or she cannot readily answer.

All parties need to assume good intentions. When someone seems to disagree, it is not because they are a bad person, but because they have not spoken clearly, or you have misunderstood them, or because they value different things—or, as a last possibility, because they are confused.

Questions are often more useful than assertions (much less proclamations, or denunciations).

Again, the point here is not to be nice—not to pretend agreement when there is none, or to avoid conflict. Rather, arguing in such a way is more likely to produce light instead of heat.

And at its best, this kind of argument can be highly illuminating for all concerned.

This is not so common, unfortunately. One reason (among many) is the wrong idea that arguing about religion is always a bad thing.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu and I agree—just not about Buddhism

Thanissaro Bhikkhu is a prominent American Theravada teacher. He and I come from opposite ends of Buddhism, and we’d probably disagree about almost all points of doctrine and practice. In fact, we have so little in common that we probably couldn’t even argue, because there would not be enough common ground to start a discussion from.

However, I have enormous respect for him—from afar—for many reasons. One is that he strongly advocates the distinctness of Theravada, and insists that it not be muddled up with other things. Theravada has a specific, coherent logic, which is not at all the same as Mahayana, or psychotherapy, or political correctness, or—as he so usefully pointed out—Romantic Idealism. Theravada’s aims are different, its methods are different, its truth-claims are different.

In a brilliant interview, he violates a Buddhist taboo by speaking of right and wrong approaches to Buddhism. The interviewer, seeming a bit shocked, suggests that “many people in our society are uncomfortable with the notion of right and wrong—especially in the area of religion.” Thanissaro Bhikkhu replies:

I don’t think it’s so much that they are uncomfortable with the notion of right and wrong. It’s just that they’ve shifted their reference points. Being judgmental is now wrong; being non-judgmental is right.

This becomes a problem when people confuse being judgmental with the act of exercising judgment. Being judgmental—hypercritical, quick to dismiss the opinions of others—is obviously unskillful. But in our rush not to be judgmental, we can’t abandon our critical abilities, our powers of judgment. We have to learn how to use them skillfully. It’s all very fine not to pass judgment when you’re on the sidelines of an issue and don’t want to get involved. But here we’re all out on the playing field, facing aging, illness, and death. Our skill in exercising judgment is going to make all the difference in whether we win or lose.

So refraining from judgment is not the answer to the question of how we face the differing teachings we find available. In fact, a knee-jerk nonjudgmental stance can often be a very unskillful way of passing judgment.

It’s a refusal to take differences seriously, and that totally short-circuits any attempt to develop skill. You often find this associated with a lowest-common-denominator approach to the truth: the assumption that whatever the major traditions of the world hold in common must be true, while their differences are only cultural trappings. But that’s assuming they’re all asking the same questions, or that the only important questions are the ones they all ask. Where does that leave people who think outside the box?

Another approach is to assume that all traditions take you to the same place, but that they’ve found different skillful ways of doing it—the old “many paths lead to the top of the mountain” idea. But the reports we get from people who have been up this mountain say that it has plenty of wrong turns, false summits, and sudden drop-offs. One tradition will say, “When you reach this point, turn left.” Another will say, “If you turn left at that point you’ll get stuck at a dead-end.” If we plan to stay on the valley floor, it’s okay for us to stay out of the argument. But can we claim some sort of higher moral ground for not getting involved in the fray? Do we have more comprehensive maps of the mountain showing that dangers are imaginary, and that left turns and right turns are all okay?

Right on, brother!

Ted Meissner and I discussed my site Buddhism for Vampires a few days ago by Skype. He has posted a podcast recording on his site The Secular Buddhist.

Our conversation was a lot of fun and I think you’ll enjoy it. He’s a skilled interviewer, and probably more knowledgeable about the subject than I am! The audio format is completely new to me, so I might sound clueless, but he can make up for that.

Ted is doing important work in articulating a secular vision of Buddhism for the future, and drawing together other Buddhist thinkers who have naturalistic, secular view. I listened to more than a dozen of the podcasts on his site to prepare for mine, and found many of them extremely interesting. There’s a complete list here; check it out.

I originally intended to do the whole Crumbling Buddhist Consensus series in audio format, as conversations. My plans for the series were interrupted by the Maha Buddhist Teachers Conference, which demanded immediate commentary. And so it has developed in a format, and in an order, quite different from my plans.

I had had the idea that it would be less work to produce the series in audio format, because it would force me to spend less of the time-consuming thinking-through and language-polishing work I do for web pages. What I’ve learned recently is that preparing a podcast talk is even more work than writing!

Nevertheless, I hope to do more podcasts soon, so feedback would be helpful. I haven’t had a chance to listen this one yet (I am in what one of my teachers’ teachers called “the SST bardo,” SST standing for “short stupid trip”). Please let me know what you think. Do I sound like an idiot? Do you want to hear me talking, or would you rather read? Or both? Anything in particular you’d like to hear me talk about?