Through the ages many Buddhist teachers have thought up new and improved ways to realize dharma. Some of these ways were passed on, becoming new traditions that helped many people. So I don't want to put down a new approach just because it's new.
On the other hand, when someone is advertising a "fast track" approach to spirituality, a skepticism filter is warranted. And if they are advertising a "radical, rock-star, make-it-happen-now kind of spiritual path," slap a hand on your wallet and move on.
On the third hand, when they've got Brigadoon on their list of films that enable fast-track spirituality, one might assume they not scam artists; just a tad ditzy.
I'm talking about a group called "Extreme Buddhism," which is advertising a two-day workshop at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, November 14 and 15. The most significant thing about this group is that the first five books on their recommended reading list are about Hinduism. They also recommend the Harry Potter series, Machiavelli's The Prince and the complete works of Shakespeare. So you get a dose of world lit along with the fast-track spirituality.
Somehow I am reminded of a co-worker from back in the 1980s, who was a follower of Elizabeth Clare Prophet. The co-worker had earphones on her head nearly always. I learned she had been directed to listen to the triumphal march from Act II, scene 2 of Verdi's Aida, over and over again, all day long. I suspect that was a fast track to something.
Given that a basic teaching of Buddhism is not to go to extremes, one could argue "extreme Buddhism" is an oxymoron. I don't know if this group is actually harmful or just silly, but you don't need to go there.
However, if you like musicals and have never seen the film version of Brigadoon (1954), rent it sometime. It's cheesy, and the scenery is fake, but it's got Gene Kelly doing the song-and-dance numbers. Great stuff.
I can’t help but view this as other extreme methods we find out there. For instance, the Atkins Diet. While it produces results, it’s not necessarily a method one should use for the rest of your life. I think most people who engage in extreme methods eventually, after time and subsequent research, discover a more balanced approach to their goal. And for some people, particularly those that have chaotic personalities or lifestyles, extreme methods may be the only way to get them focused and on track to pursue their goal. So in that respect, there is a place for it. With regard to the Extreme Buddhism group, I sincerely hope anyone who attends their seminars eventually finds the middle way after “Dude! This ROCKS!!” wears off.
Sadly, we live in a world where the word ‘extreme’ garners attention. Extreme sports, extreme this, extreme that. Clearly this group or whatever it is thought it could compete by using such a title. No doubt using Buddhism in their name is just another come-on, since Americans have a vague sense that Buddhism is a successfully spiritual brand, so to speak. And if they want to use Gene Kelly, well then why not ‘Singin’ in the Rain’? Makes more sense than ‘Brigadoon’. They could say that, once you use their method, you’ll get a glorious feeling you’re happy again.
The extremes we think is the subject of acadamics. You don’t need a Buddha to tell extreamism is bad. But, whatever told by The Buddha nobody else can tell. Nobody can argue Budha’s teaching. If somebody can then it is not Budda’s teaching.
Therefore, one must find what did The Buddha mean by extremes and middle way (path).
Close your eyes and keep yourself absolutely motionless for five (05) minutes. You can see either the mind 1. thinks (of past experiences and knowledge), 2. travels to eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body (five senses) or 3. looks, hears, tastes, smells or feels.
The Buddha told these are the 03 extremes of mind attachment. Nobody can argue this! Anybody’s mind is always attached to these three – planes of mind activity which The Buddha named as the three worlds or three Bhoomis.
Whether you are a follower of the group of “extreme Buddhism” or not you are an extremist according to The Buddha as your mind is always attached to one extreme.
To overcome this extremism The Buddha discovered the only way out called The Noble Eightfold Path (NEP) or The Middle Path.
If the three planes are like the sides of a triangle made of magnets the mind is like a steel ball jumping from one plane to another.
Middle path or NEP is the training of the mind to travel through centrally without getting attached to any side.
Unfortunately, the practical NEP or The form of meditation discovered by The Buddha was lost for more than 2000 odd years untill it was rediscovered recently in Sri Lanka.
Therefore, do not ask people to not visit the seminar by “extreme Buddhists”. Everybody including those extreme Buddhists will some day get to know the original Buddhism now available in Sri Lanka if they have merit!
Everybody can now have a taste of original Buddhism.
Has anybody got a name behind this little venture?
It’s all so incognito. One guy said it was a woman who used to be a nun. He also said that security was tight and had high visibility.
Keerthi, are you from Sri Lanka?
Sorry Keerthi, but there must be a language barrier here. Why don’t you have a bilingual speaker read your post and explain to you what you actually said?
Best to you!
Fitz
@ Fitz
Yes I live in Sri Lanka. I just wanted to share a bit of truth with the world. Every lay being lives in suspicion and doubt. Buddhist saints live in truth and reality!
You can contact me on keertiwijet@gmail.com
Thank you Kerthi, I shall do so!
I went, I saw, I chunkled, I left…Ommmmmm
oops, I chuckled…not chunkled….my bad (^_^)
Regarding the extreme buddhism events, in my experience, the word ‘extreme’ might have something to do with this…
For some, finding a philosophy in this day and age that suits one’s own view, some folks wander the bookstore aisles, perusing the various religious and/or ‘new age’ modalities. Perhaps finding something of interest in the ‘Buddhist’, ‘Hindu’, ‘Zen’, Qaballah, new age, or other mystical branches.
At some point, the books, while inspirational perhaps, inspire a person to look beyond a bookstore to find something more experiential, something of their own direct experience rather than reading about experiences of others relayed through print.
Seminars on meditation and the like abound in typically liberal metropolitan areas from LA to SF and others and one may peruse from one meditation teacher to the next as the next step in a chain from bookstore aisle to meditation seminars.
So many books, so many seminars…where does it all go?
Most meditation seminars might offer some instruction on breath techniques or different philosophies and some may have charismatic speakers.
Then, there is another approach.
There are lineages which have discovered that there is a way to experience a more ‘in the moment’ experience only described in books through certain methods relevant in today’s culture, without using the old breath control or trance induction as their guide, but by using a modern day approach.
A modern day approach might be taking the tools at hand.
Say, for instance, you spend your days in a particular job or maybe you don’t have a job, but you are in a trade school or maybe you keep your house clean in support of others in the house whose job it is to pay bills.
A modern day approach might be to take whatever you do on a day to day basis and explore doing that ‘extremely well’, to your previous standards, go just a little beyond that place just beyond what you previously held as your standard for doing what you thought was possible in terms of how well you could manage to do.
And in the process of challenging yourself, redefine the lines of how you view yourself.
Do it enough, you might let go of your old barrieres…what you said ‘I can’t do’ before drops from your perception of yourself and you find your perception of the world around you shifts as well.
Suddenly and all at once, you realize you aren’t trapped in the same old states of mind and you feel free.
Feeling free or liberated can be a different focus…a sort of existing without clinging…clinging to perceptions of our self as a limited old self…and allowing change to be the constant…change towards beyond a continually more challenged and liberated, more fluid non-statically-defined self.
Looking back at the part in Buddhism that says not to be attached…is it attachment to a thing, a self, a state of mind or are all of those things inter-related and when one is attached to a thing, one is also attached to an idea of self that has that attachment and a state of mind limited to that view?
So, in doing your daily pursuits to an extremely challenging and better level than you previously saw yourself as capable of, do you lose your attachment to your old limited view of yourself?
Maybe ‘extreme’ is how one lets go of self or attachment.
Extreme non attachment to the past perception of self and limitations could be a path to liberating one’s state of mind and experience directly what one perhaps only reads about in bookstores or hears about in seminars.
So, the real development takes place after the seminar, when one is at home or at work deciding what, in their life, they want to challenge themself with. It’s the homework, not the class that changes the student. The class is just there for the inspiration to do the homework.
Sometimes, watching someone else lose their old attachment and share their own liberation from their own self motivates others to want to do the same for themselves or help others to do the same for themselves.
I found the colors in the poster were vibrant in such a way as reminded me of times when I have felt more ‘in the moment’ and the world seemed perhaps a little less solid and a little more at play with color and life.
Illustrations sometimes remind us, like places in nature, of a feeling inside of us, a place inside of us, that we may have not recalled immediately, but which we remember each time we experience life in a more vibrant or transcendentally still moment to moment fashion.
Anonymous — if you’re saying that Buddhism always has been extreme, then I agree.
Non-action is action, nothing is something and certainly the mildness of the middle way is extreme…especially given our world today.