CALL FOR A NEW BUDDHISM
by Christopher Calder
WHO AND WHAT IS A BUDDHIST?
Historians tell us that Siddhartha Gautama (563? to 483? BC) was the founder of the organized religion we call Buddhism. The fundamental meaning of the word 'Buddha' is 'Enlightened One.' We know that there were many enlightened ones, many Buddhas, before Siddhartha Gautama's birth and there have been many Buddhas after Siddhartha's death. The historic Buddha was born a Hindu and the evidence suggests Siddhartha wished to reform Hinduism rather than reject it completely. Siddhartha Gautama died a Hindu, not a Buddhist, just as Jesus died a Jew, not a Christian.
What we call Buddhism today is an amalgamation of the true teachings of Siddhartha combined with invented myths and large amounts of culture derived from the country in which the Buddhism is practiced. Tibetan Buddhism, for example, is as much Tibetanism as it is Buddhism. Buddha's words were handed down for several centuries through oral tradition before a committee was formed to commit the communal heritage, not memory, of Buddha's teaching to written scripture. No human being who actually met the Buddha wrote any of the famous Buddhist scriptures that present day followers take so literally and seriously.
Can we separate the essential teachings of the many enlightened ones, the many Buddhas, from mere tradition? Can we bring Buddhism up to date by keeping the essential tools of enlightenment while discarding the cultural biases that burden the path with unnecessary obstacles? I believe we can create a new Buddhism if we use our consciousness to analyze our situation as present day seekers of enlightenment. By this most fundamental definition of the word 'Buddhism,' anyone who seeks enlightenment can be called a Buddhist.
IS BUDDHISM PRO-FAMILY?
Our lives have changed dramatically since the days of the historic Buddha. Technological advances such as birth control have reshaped our most basic human behavior. In Siddhartha's time, if you had sex you were always potentially creating a new child. The strict sexual disciplines of Buddhism were born in a era when sex meant children and children meant no time to meditate. Surviving with primitive farming methods was difficult and raising a family under such severe conditions left little energy for introspection. Today many people are able to have a full life, a family, and still have the time and energy to meditate. The average adult American watches over four hours of television a day, so most of us can easily spare at least one hour a day for meditation. We do not have to give up all contact with the opposite sex in order to find our true existential identity.
A rich society brings with it the possibility of creating a more complete human being than Siddhartha's era could afford. Which is more important for society: sex, family, and wealth creation, or meditation, solitude, and detachment? Don't we have a need for all? If you live for seventy years you can easily spend a few years in solitude and then go on to have a rich family life. Will the added experience of wife and children make you a smaller person or a bigger person? By repressing our procreative desires we are not becoming more whole or holy but rather are simply building a firewall inside ourselves that divides our being into two. Cut into parts we will have less energy, not more energy. I believe it is more wholesome to become a fully functioning human being than to retreat into the misperceived safety of half a life.
Back in 1971, when I was twenty one years old, I had an experience I would never forget. I was walking around the large Baudhanath Stupa near Katmandu, Nepal. There was a large group of monks walking that day, spinning prayer wheels and chanting in the brilliant sunlight. A middle aged monk in his forties came up to me and asked: "What's it like to be with a woman?" I was shocked that a good looking and healthy man in his forties should have to ask a twenty one year old what sexual intercourse was like. I had decided years earlier never to become a celibate monk and that day engraved my feelings even deeper into my soul.
The Catholic Church has made sex a taboo for priests and the priesthood has been plagued with scandals of sexual perversion and pedophilia. Many famous gurus from the East have taught celibacy in public while seducing female disciples in private. I am not against teachers and students of meditation having normal and healthy sex. I am against all the lying and hypocrisy. Sex is as natural to humans as breathing, eating, and sleeping. How can such an essential activity for the survival of the human race be thought of as "unspiritual" and why make it a big secret?
EXTREME BUDDHISM AND SELF-DEFENSE
Some, but not all Buddhist circles have a politically correct insistence on absolute nonviolence. Tibet had no effective army to fight off the Chinese invasion of 1950. The less politically correct and more pragmatic Nepalese fought off the Chinese with ease. The Nepalese Gurkha fighters have a reputation for being among the bravest soldiers in the world. Tibet is enslaved and Nepal is free because Tibetan Buddhism went too far in the direction of extreme philosophical purity. Idealism is a form of mental opium. It may feel good for a short while but the long term effects can be disastrous. I do not call for war mongering or aggressive behavior toward one's neighbors. I do call for a strong sense that self-defense is normal, natural, and a basic necessity of life. Every animal on this planet has some form of defense mechanism and human beings should have many layers of defense to protect ourselves, our families, and our society. Having an army is not evil, it is just good common sense.
WHAT IS RELEVANT IN BUDDHISM?
Over the centuries Buddhism has collected a great deal of hocus pocus and excess baggage. Meditation is not a very complicated affair. It takes time, patience, and whole hearted commitment, but it is not intellectually difficult. Meditation is a gentle and loving step beyond the mind, not a complicated new philosophy that the mind must learn.
The cosmic consciousness we seek is the ultimate blank page. Nothing can be written on it and there is no dogma inside it. No individual can claim ownership of it and no country can pollute it with its customs and prejudices. Cosmic consciousness remains an eternally wild and pure phenomena because it is beyond all of our minds. Our methods may be organized but the thing itself is anarchic and beyond the realm of society and culture. Some Buddhist teachers give the false impression that superconsciousness is a mapped out empire that has been conquered and controlled by the great masters. This is simply not the case and is an absolute impossibility.
I have met people who think that by learning to speak Tibetan, Japanese, or Sanskrit they will somehow become more spiritual. The cosmic blank page does not care about your language. It is simply there and available to anyone who is open enough to perceive it. Frankly, Buddhism and all the other religions of the world have become in large part just nonsense. People are given the impression that if they become enlightened they will have spiritual thoughts and will be talking to deities and angels. A safer bet is that when you become enlightened you will become totally silent inside. You will be able to think or not think, turning the thinking part of your mind on and off like a radio at will.
One Taiwanese Buddhist group has constructed a Godzilla Buddha, a steel statue of a standing Siddhartha so grotesquely monstrous in proportions that I am not sure if it is meant to scare little children or just prove that my God is bigger than your God. Some Buddhist sects still preach that there is a "Western Paradise," where good Buddhist go to live after they die. Are they talking about Beverly Hills? Buddhism has its carnival of nonsense, just as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
DO BUDDHISTS HAVE SOULS?
Many Buddhists believe that Siddhartha Gautama denied the existence of the human soul. Others claim that he only meant to dispel the belief that soul is a magical entity existing beyond any dependence on natural cosmic forces. Another explanation is that Buddha was playing with words in order to keep his disciples from becoming attached and selfish. A denial of soul may be of less value in the industrialized, computerized 21st century than it was in ancient India. The background and lifestyle of humans living today differs greatly from Siddhartha Gautama's original Hindu disciples.
It is my belief that Siddhartha knew that souls exist just as trees in the forest exist, but he also knew that the cosmic void is our most fundamental being, not our physical body and not our soul body (subtle body). If Buddha denied soul he was fighting attachment but he was not telling an exact truth. Many enlightened men have played with words in order to push their disciples in one direction or another. George Gurdjieff said soul was something you had to earn through the meditation of self-observation. Ramana Maharshi said flatly that all human beings have souls. So which Buddha (Enlightened One) do we believe?
Many Buddhists, including the Dalai Lama, substitute the word 'mind' for the word 'soul' and claim that "the most subtle part of the mind survives death." They suggest that the mind is transferred from one birth to the next through reincarnation. 'Mind' is a word normally associated with the function of the brain and thinking, but the brain and the thought process do not survive our physical death. Others call soul a "bundle of desires" but that is not accurate either because the soul also contains positive human traits, not just desires and clinging.
Our souls contains the music, poetry, and personality of the individual and it is through this unique personal character that Tibetan lamas recognize the reincarnations of monks from one lifetime to the next. The subtle body also contains the kundalini passage and thus any progress one makes on the path of kundalini goes with you from one lifetime to the next. Kundalini has nothing to do with the brain or thought process so the use of the term 'mind' in place of the term 'soul' is highly misleading.
Note For simplicity sake I include the second, third, fourth, and fifth bodies in my larger definition of the word 'soul' (see The Seven Bodies). I dislike dividing people into parts, even philosophically, and I would prefer to call the entire subtle body the soul. It is possible that soul is a naturally evolved energy form on a subtle level of existence that science has not yet quantified. There is no need to believe in God to believe in soul. The most basic dictionary definition of the word soul is "the non-material aspect of a person."
If Buddhists say we must deny the existence of our soul because soul is impermanent, then why not also deny the existence of our physical bodies which are also impermanent? Why should you love your wife if she has no soul? Denial of soul is dehumanizing and disrespectful of man's true nature. Buddhists have played word games avoiding the fact of soul for centuries, confusing students and adding little, I believe, to the fundamental understanding of man's multidimensional nature. If you say you do not believe in the dog but you believe in the qualities of the dog, such as the snout, the tail, the legs, the ears, the belly, and the bark, then you are playing a word game.
I see nothing wrong in calling a soul a soul as long as students are advised that soul is not our essential being and that one must ultimately transcend the soul just as we must transcend attachment to our purely physical bodies. One could honestly ask that if the soul does not exist then what is it that becomes enlightened? The soul is the lens through which the universe becomes aware of itself on the grand and cosmic scale. To deny the lens of enlightenment is to be both ungrateful and inaccurate.
BUDDHA'S FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
(1) Life is suffering. Is human life essentially painful from the moment of birth to the moment of death? Even ordinary life can be full of fun, adventure, friends, romance, good food, music and art. Buddhism has been in many ways an anti-life religion that appeals to those who always see the glass half empty rather than half full. Why should we deny the fact that life can be an enjoyable adventure and not just a pitiful veil of tears?
(2) All suffering is caused by ignorance. Much suffering is caused by poverty, accidents, disease, and countless other factors that can be addressed by the positive application of science. Even the fully enlightened suffer physically if they fall down and break a leg. We have modern pain killers for physical pain and psychological suffering can be burned up by meditation. Traditional Buddhist meditation techniques alone have proven inadequate for the Western mind. More relevant and powerful methods are available today. "When the locks (man) change the keys (meditation techniques) must also change." See Meditation Handbook.
(3) Suffering can be ended by overcoming ignorance and attachment. A positive spirit is also needed to overcome suffering and dwelling on the potential misery of life only amplifies that misery. Friendship, jokes, and high spirits alleviate suffering more quickly. Love, an experience rarely mentioned in Buddhist scriptures, is such a powerful force that suffering retreats in its presence. The loveless negativism of the extreme forms of Buddhism may lead to a sickly and unloving soul just as easily as an enlightened Anatman (no-soul).
(4) To suppress suffering Buddha recommended the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right-mindedness, and right contemplation. What are right views? Is a theocracy of Buddhist priests going to dictate to the sangha (monastic community) how to think and what to say? Intense meditation is needed by all but the difficulties of determining what is "right action" and "right speech" is fraught with dangers. Was it "right action" for Tibet to fail to develop an effective military with which to fight off an obvious Chinese threat? What brilliant monk dictated that "right action" to the sheep like sangha?
I am not saying that Siddhartha's Four Noble Truths are wrong, but rather that religious outlook is highly subjective and personal. A more positive path to enlightenment is possible that is every bit as valid as traditional Buddhism and perhaps more suited to the modern Western mind. I see this new Buddhism as an offshoot of traditional Buddhist and Hindu practice with both the old and new schools coexisting without conflict. This new path has been gradually evolving for decades in the West and this essay is simply meant to help codify and clarify that which is already being born.
Buddhism started in India but the countries to which it spread modified Buddhist teachings to fit their own temperament and culture. Tibetans now practice Tibetan Buddhism and the Japanese practice Japanese Buddhism. The original form of Indian Buddhism has become extinct. The West is far removed from Asian culture. It therefore seems obvious that a new Western Buddhism be quite different in philosophy and methodology, while retaining the ultimate goal of enlightenment.
Siddhartha left his life as a recluse in the forest to create an esoteric philosophy for the masses. The problem is there is no such thing as an esoteric philosophy because esoteric people do no need any philosophy. All doctrine is a product of the mind and the esoteric leap beyond the mind leaves all philosophies far behind. Therefore if you create a new religion it should be with the common man in mind. Religion should be life affirming, value honesty, family, democracy, and reasonable nonviolent behavior. Organized religion is useful to elevate the masses to the point where real religion begins. That point is beyond the mind and beyond any organization, scriptures, rules, or teaching.
IS TRADITIONAL BUDDHIST COMPASSION HOLLOW?
In traditional Buddhism you don't hear much talk about love, joy, and romance. That is because the essence of traditional Buddhism is to keep one's focus on suffering and death. This constant remembrance of the negative is supposed to help one become detached from life and thus attain the ultimate freedom of nirvana. The word "compassion" is used by traditional Buddhists repetitiously and unconsciously. Buddhist monks are sometimes taught to visualize sick and starving people and then feel "compassion" for their suffering. Christians are taught to feed the sick, cure the ill, and to love their spouses and children dearly. In this way Christianity is a superior religion to Buddhism because Christian compassion leads to helpful positive action and is not just a self-absorbed, self-centered pretense.
Unlike Christians, Buddhists are not known for doing great charity work because the Buddhist focus is always on the negative. Why develop a cure for a disease if nature is just going to come up with a new disease sooner or latter to take its place? Aging, decay, and death are always on the Buddhist's mind, so why bother fighting a futile battle against the inevitable physical collapse? If your religion makes suffering the centerpiece of your attention you will not nurture life to make it better because all your effort is invested in trying to escape life, not in trying to improve the art of living. If your attitude is defeatist at its core then why even bother to try? Thus Tibet was in a state of physical ruin when the Chinese army simply walked into Tibet in October of 1950. The Chinese took control with little effective resistance because Tibetans had not developed a strong and viable society.
IS ATTACHMENT TO GURU BETTER THAN ATTACHMENT TO MONEY, SEX, OR SOUL?
Another great problem for Buddhism has been the excessive worship of gurus, which is an irrational contradiction for a religion that puts such a great emphasis on detachment. Intense love can be very positive, but worship and idolization quickly degrade into enslavement. Just because a human being realizes his or her own true identity does not make that human being a deity. I have been with many teachers, some of whom were fully enlightened, but none of whom were perfect human beings. It is my understanding that all enlightened human beings remain human with weaknesses and the potential for corruption. Self-realization is not self-perfection in any total sense. It could more accurately be described as self-expansion. You become vast inside but not perfect and not all knowing. You can still be fooled by others and make blunders yourself.
Existential intelligence, the knowledge of one's self, does not automatically give you a higher IQ or a degree in science. The enlightened men I have know have all been pretty miserable at science, mathematics, and economics. They end up living in ivory towers, part created by themselves and part created by their own disciples. Spiritual teachers can even lose their basic common sense through lack of contact with the more ordinary world we live in. The last person you should go to for advice about politics or science is the guru on the mountain because he is divorced from the world that works, creates wealth, and continues the human race.
For Westerners the East represents an imagined source of pure spiritual inspiration. Unfortunately, for many poor Asian monks and teachers, the West has meant a source of income and a new livelihood. Many in the East have long felt that only Asians could comprehend the inner art of meditation and their focus in the West has been largely motivated by a desire to raise funds. If you are living in a hut in India or ramshackle monastery in Nepal, a journey to the West is an opportunity to increase your standard of living. Many Asians wrongly assume that they own meditation as if it were a proprietary cultural commodity. Westerners must beware that the East is no more innocent than the West and many Asian gurus are just as impure in motivation as our own homegrown variety of spiritual opportunist.
IS TRADITIONAL BUDDHISM PRO-FREEDOM?
The East has always had an imperial model for the teacher-student relationship. At worst it has degraded into a Stalinistic charade of spirituality. Tibetans still enthrone their high lamas in elaborate royal ceremonies. Are we in the West going to enthrone those Westerners among us who attain enlightenment in future years? The very idea is ridiculous and counter to our finest principles of equality and democracy. I have never met any human being who was so enlightened they did not occasionally come up with some truly bad ideas. Likewise it is rare to find an individual so low that on occasion they don't have a positive suggestion. The West must develop its own Jeffersonian Buddhism based on the West's most noble principles of dignity and respect for all.
A NEW PATH IS POSSIBLE
Buddha said that life exists as constant change, but many Buddhist leaders want Buddhism to remain fixed and dead like a rock. A new, more direct path to self-realization is possible that avoids trying to make Westerners look and act more like people from the East. If Westerners are to find their own self, they will have to look inside their own self and not merely imitate the persona of others. Americans and Europeans are not the same as Tibetans and Indians. Trying to think and act like a Tibetan will only make you a false Tibetan, never a real Tibetan, and never a real enlightened Western human being.
I love and respect many Buddhist teachers who are alive today. I just hope a newer breed of teacher will one day appear that will actively encourage students of meditation to become total human beings. We need a new living Buddhism that changes with the times and the condition of the seekers traveling the path. Westerners can afford the luxury of being lovers, parents, meditators, and creators of wealth all in the same lifetime. Buddha gave up his wealth because he thought that was the only way to achieve enlightenment. I am saying you can keep your wealth, your spouse, your home, and still make spiritual progress. Science can give us the added energy we need to have it all. It all is important and nothing of importance should be discarded in the name of spirituality.
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