I’ve learned a lot in recent months, as I extricated myself from two of the so-called “Buddhist groups” with whom I previously interacted online. I realised that not only did I find the combination of the righteous indignation of some of the more fundamentalist Theravadan and certain Nichiren adherents to be disappointing, and the irksome outbursts of some of the blatantly clueless idiots, using the boards as a place to garner attention by baiting and attempting to discredit those for whom Buddhism has been a lifelong pursuit and practice to be a waste of time; but I also noticed that I was frustrated by the lack of genuine leadership that I was seeing by members of the sangha, who indeed knew better and should have stepped in when others were being attacked.
While beginning the first week of a very slow, apparently painful recuperation from this reconstructive surgery, I spent some time considering this, and looking at my reaction and response to these phenomena, recognising that none of it is real, and that there must be a lesson therein for me.
What I kept thinking about was that although both the Dharma of the Christ and the Buddhist Dharma (indeed, the Sanatana Dharma as well) teach that we are to focus on creating a better world, there is a more basic, primal instruction that teaches us to first create a better, more awake self… a task that seems contradictory, because we also realise that the mind which perceives all illusions as “reality” can never truly correct that which is the root of the delusion – the mind itself. So we back up and realise that we are, through the mind, creating our lives… and we can learn to create better lives, improving the conditions in which awakening can more easily occur.
Thomas Merton wrote, “The centre of Christian humanism is the idea that God is love, not infinite power. Being love, God has given ‘himself’ without reservation to humanity, so the He has become man. It is man, in Christ, who has the mission of not only making himself human, but of becoming divine by the gift of the Spirit of Love.”
The spiritual path of the Enlightened and Anointed Ones does not teach that we must extract ourselves from the material world, in order to attain the inner ideal of Sacred Tranquillity and Awakening. Neither does it teach us to abstract ourselves from these material phenomena, including ritual, liturgy, and spiritual practice, as a means of achieving the desired Calm Abiding. The Dharma of Compassion teaches you and me to give ourselves to all of humanity and all beings in a service of love in which that Eternal Law (which some call Intelligence, others call God, Sunyata, Emptiness, or the Void) manifests its creative power through dependent arising and the cloud of causes and conditions. Then, freed from the bondage of our own “ideas”, we can begin living in the moment with greater awareness, and can choose to respond from a place of loving service to all.
I don’t think I will likely ever understand the bizarre phenomena of those who permit others to be so blatantly disruptive or disrespectful as one often finds on the net. Especially those who profess to be Buddhists, and allow monks, nuns, and respected authorities to be attacked. I’ll understand even less those who profess to follow Christ or Buddha’s teaching, and who do nothing to help those who are hungry, in personal or financial need, hurting or alone.
But at least now, I have come to recognise their behaviours are indicators of how very little work they have done on actually internalising the Dharma. Such folks, it seems, have turned Buddhism into a curiosity or a “religion”, much like those who have distorted the Dharma of Christ, turning that into a religion as well.
How unfortunate that more do not see with the eyes of St. Francis of Assisi, who taught, “What you are looking for is what is looking.” For after all, as Alan Watts so brilliantly queried: “If you do not get it from yourself, where will you go for it?”
Thank you for your continue patience with my intermittent lapses of posting during the past couple weeks. The reconstructive surgery was quite successful; however, when they opened the arm, they realised the damage was much greater than anticipated and were therefore not able to do the kind of procedure they’d hoped for. I will still regain about 40-50% of the use of my arm over the next six months, and the intense pain I am now experiencing, which is only unbearable because the insurance company refuses to cover one of the only narcotic pain relievers to which I am not allergic, will subside over the next twelve weeks. I continue to sit for two hours each morning and evening in meditation and remember all of you (en masse) during puja and our Eucharistic liturgy.
A few have written with hopes that this surgery would have magically caused me to waiver from my non-theistic perspective. I cannot, I am afraid, bring those folks the news for which they are hoping. I continue to believe that religion and theism are purview of those who find comfort in the imagery, superstition, ritual centring and communal traditions of such primitive practices. I see nothing inherently wrong with embracing such a path, if that is something that works for you. I draw deeply on the mythos and legends of the Christ, typified in the teachings of Rav Yeshua the Nazarene, despite a great deal a new scholarship indicating that the existence of the Nazarenes (Essenes) is (like most biblical tales) fictional and midrashic innovations of later centuries. I draw on the rich tapestry of the Divine Feminine, personified in the images of Mary the Christotokos, Kali, Kuan Yin, Tara, Vajrayogini and the Great Spirit – without feeling compelled to imagine any of those stories are based on physical beings.
Let it be comforting to you that I am well, as I know that you are. And let peace flow there between us, and love fill the space between the breaths.
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