The last post inspired some thoughtful comments, and James Shaheen at Tricycle Blog added to it with some links to articles on the nature of religion and whether Buddhism is one. So I'd like to stay with this topic for a bit.
At the Vancouver Sun, Douglas Todd looks at the New Age teachings of Eckhart Tolle. I only recently became aware of Eckhart Tolle because I was googling for a quote from the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1328) and I kept getting hits for this Eckhart Tolle guy instead. So let me just admit that I am hopelessly out of the New Age loop and don't know Eckhart Tolle from eggplant.
Anyway, Todd says that Tolle's shtick is "'religion' is bad (oppressive) and 'spirituality' is good (liberating)." Todd argues that Tolle comes to this conclusion by defining "religion" in a harshly narrow way, and contrasting that with a warm, fuzzy and vaguely defined "spirituality." This is, Todd says, a false dichotomy.
A larger point is that antagonism toward "religion" is sluicing around in western popular culture, and this antagonism is behind much of the insistence that Buddhism isn't one. And the largest point, seems to me, is whether this antagonism might be threatening to smother western Buddhism in its crib. There seems to be widespread interest in bleaching the dharma out of Buddhism altogether to turn it into just another means for psychological self-improvement.
And this takes us to another link from James Shaheen, a commentary by Huston Smith called "'Spirituality' Versus 'Religion.'" Huston Smith said,
For many American Buddhists, the favorite saying of the Buddha is, “Be a lamp unto yourself.” Now actually, you find that same thing everywhere in Christianity - “Seek and ye shall find,” et cetera. But in Buddhism, in the absence of a god figure, this can become license to do whatever you want and still call it Buddhism. But Buddhism itself doesn’t support that. All religions, including Buddhism, have organizing principles, proven pointers, to help guide us through our lives. And if you sign onto Buddhism and don’t follow these, well, then you’re left with Saint Ego picking and choosing things that satisfy oneself. That is not Buddhism.
Amen, Brother Huston.
In his book Keep Me in Your Heart Awhile: The Haunting Zen of Kainin Katagiri, Zen teacher Dosho Port (of Wild Fox Zen) wrote that using zazen to deal with anger or other psychological problems is "counterfeit Zen ... ego seizing a new fascination, co-opting zazen into a personalized system of self-grasping." Of course, many of us begin Buddhist practice in that spirit, but if we're fortunate we find good teachers who show us that self-grasping is the problem.
Then Dosho quotes his teacher, the late Katagiri Roshi:
As to renewing Buddhism, there is nothing to renew in Buddhism itself but instead renew human beings who take care of Buddhism [emphasis added by Dosho]. Buddhism is mainly very conservative in order to maintain the essence of the Buddha's teaching century after century. Wherever Buddhism has gone, Buddha ancestors have tried to maintain this essence. That is why Buddhism has flourished in China, Tibet, and Japan. If you forget the essence of Buddha's teaching Buddhism doesn't work for the long run.
The point is, Dosho continues, that instead of "Americanizing" Buddhism to make it more marketable, "we ought to maintain the essence and encourage practitioners to become new by fitting into the Dharma." Otherwise, instead of allowing dharma to renew and awaken us, we render dharma into something more comfortable that allows us to stay alseep.
However, people filled with antagonism toward religion tend to run screaming from any suggestion that they adapt themselves to religion, rather than the other way around. We can debate endlessly (and pointlessly) whether Buddhism is a religion, strictly speaking. As long as people are projecting their antagonism toward religion onto Buddhism, it's a problem that needs addressing.
I think that instead of packaging Buddhism as not-religion, the real solution is to counter the antagonism. This is a common cause we have with people of other religions.
And I think the West needs to re-think the definition of religion. Along those lines, Robert Bellah wrote an outstanding article for Tricycle called "The R Word" (Spring 2008) that discusses the popular backlash against religion that is (mostly) the basis for the Buddhism-is-a-philosophy-not-a-religion view. It's a rich article, and I'm not going to attempt to present a shorthand version. Just read the whole thing.
Well said Barbara.
As a religious Buddhist I am grateful for all that the Dharma has shown me throughout life. A raft when needed. It took time though to develop a trust in teachings beyond what “I” knew or thought I knew.
Paradoxically serving the Dharma is far more freeing than serving Myself. If one of the meanings of religion is “to bind”, then Buddhism is a paradoxical religion. In my experience it is a life long bond that delivers on it’s promise of freedom.
According to Tai Situ Rinpoche:
“Buddha manifested as a result of what made him Buddha: his compassion manifested. So, to anybody who has devotion, Buddha will manifest to them. According to the capacity of the being, the Buddha’s teaching manifests. They hear him say things according to their own capacity: their level of maturity, their level of devotion, and according to their level of compassion for all sentient beings, which we should call their motivation. According to that, the Buddha’s teaching manifests. So although we have to say the words such as “Buddha spoke,” “Buddha taught,” “Buddha said that,” and “this is what Buddha meant,” we have to say these things, but we can never mean that.”
So perhaps one way of viewing it is that Buddha Dharma manifests as “self-help” to those able to receive it in this form; manifests as “philosophy” to those able to understand it in this way; manifests as “science” (a “science of mind”) to those able to hear it in these terms; and manifests as “religion” to those able to relate to it as such?
Elizabeth — yes, that’s pretty much how Buddhism has always understood itself. However, the issue is that there’s a strong tendency in the West to either deny or smother “religious” Buddhism.
I don’t understand the sharp distinction you seem to be making between Buddhism as “psychological improvement,” which apparently is the same thing in your view as “doing whatever you want,” and Buddhism as religion.
If the only alternative to “doing whatever you want” is religion, then religion covers an awful lot of territory.
Anyone who seriously pursues “psychological improvement” soon discovers that it takes a lot of self-discipline. Every school of psychotherapy, however secular it may be, recognizes that. Patients who don’t discipline their self-therapeutic practice don’t get anywhere. So “doing whatever you want” is by no means the same thing as “psychological improvement.”
I would argue that there is a strong tendency among Western Buddhists to look critically at the enormous mass of traditions which accumulated over many centures in many Asian countries and suggest (humbly, I hope) that some of them may really not be necessary to following the Buddha’s path. Finding out whether this is so or not is a long, tortuous process of experiment which we are only just beginning, I think.
No one person can be faithful to all these traditions, anyway, so everyone has to pick and choose. We Westerners just weren’t born in a little traditional village somewhere in China or Thailand, with its village temple. If you want to call this selection process “smothering religious Buddhism,” then I guess I’m a smotherer, and I’ll just have to make the best of it.
For four years or so, on most mornings, during the 17 minute drive to the office I listen to either Thich Nhat Hahn or Eckert Tolle CD’s. I consider both to offer Dharma teaching.
My take is that Eckert focuses his teaching primarily on learning to live in a nondual framework avoiding egoic constructions of thought. He makes frequent references to Buddha mind and the essence of Christ. He refers to God (infrequently) as the ultimate reality, the one mind or love.
He has mentioned in one instance that I have heard individuals who want to label him some mixture of Buddhist, mystic Christian and a teacher of Advaita
Vedanta philosophy. His response was, “Really?” I took his meaning to suggest that labels can separate us with thought forms and that there is just one taste, one mind.
His references to any system of belief that relies on egoic constructions usually has something to do with dogmas (political, scientific and religious) and the “us vs. them” dynamic that provides inner cohesion to the group, but creates separation from the “all of us”.
In as much as I have not listened to all of Eckert’s material I cannot say Mr. Todd is mistaken, but rather, that I have a different experience of Eckert Tolle.
I think that people avoid the “R” word because it’s come to mean “believing things you can’t prove” at the least and “believing things that aren’t true” at the worst. Since Buddhism doesn’t require “belief” in the Christian sense, it doesn’t fit the paradigm. I’m perfectly comfortable as a religious person, and have no problem presenting Buddhism as a religion. I just don’t think of it as a “belief system”.
The “Buddhism without beliefs” thing feels tricky to me — because while ultimately we transcend all beliefs; and are encouraged to access the truth experientially — there is also Right View: things like the Four Seals & Three Gates, which for most people are initially just as conceptual as any other belief — and need to be taken as a matter of faith in order to function as skillful means leading us, eventually, beyond to a non-conceptual state beyond all belief.
In other words, part of the path does include holding beliefs, and I don’t see how Buddhism could function as such without these.
Buddhism is a religion in a sense that we are bound to the necessity of the raft, boat, chariot as the Noble Eightfold Path.
This raft leads us ultimately to freedom, however, we can get this raft only after we take refuge in Buddha.
Those who are averse to religion, forget Buddhists make the ultimate testament of faith in Buddha by taking refuge in Buddha alone — it is monotheism par excellance!