HERE'S WHAT I REALLY MEAN... by Brad Warner http://homepage.mac.com/doubtboy/WhatIReallyMean.html
I recently got the missive below via e-mail: I find your approach, for lack of a better word, interesting. You dislike so-called American Buddhism, yet that very attitude is what makes American Buddhism what it is. Words are useless yet you write a book. You put Japanese Buddhism on an altar, and assume the standards of Dogen's time are appropriate for ours. This is a culture that supported caste systems, abuse of peasants and a unilateral religious hierarchy to rival the Christian church. But as J. Krishnamurti said, "Because they didn't listen to him, there is Buddhism." Reading this, I thought that I must be explaining my ideas really poorly for anyone to think I really believed anything like that. It might even be that there are other folks who think I think like this but who don't write me sarcastic e-mails because they agree with it. So I thought I'd better state my position a bit more clearly on these matters. I'll take the writer's points up one by one. 1) "You dislike so-called American Buddhism" I wouldn't put it quite that way. But I would invoke what science fiction geeks (like me) call "Sturgeon's Law." Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once said, "95% of science fiction is crud. But, then again, 95% of anything is crud." The same rule, unfortunately, may also apply to 95% of what goes by the name "Buddhism," not just in America, but throughout the world. It's easier for me to talk about American Buddhism because I am an American Buddhist. If I were to start lashing out about the problems of Thai Buddhism or Vietnamese Buddhism, it could be taken the wrong way. Plus American Buddhism is such an easy target, what with guys like Gempo Roshi claiming you can get Enlightenment in an afternoon and people offering machines that supposedly allow you to meditate deeper than a Zen monk in mere minutes. It's like a cartoon, fer cryin' out loud. That being said, there is plenty of good Buddhism in America. Most of it takes place in little tiny Buddhist centers no one will ever hear of. 2) "Words are useless yet you write a book" I am not sure I ever said "words are useless" - though someone with more patience than me might be able to find that phrase by going through everything I've written. The Truth can never be expressed in words because the Truth is unlimited and ever-changing while words are fixed. And words mean different things to different people. In Japan, the word "aoi" is applied both to the color of the sky on a sunny Summer day and the color of traffic lights that mean "go" - even though the traffic lights are the same color in Japan as they are everywhere else in the world. It's simply that the word "aoi" stands for a wide range of colors which include both what we call "blue" and what we call "green." By the same token, the meaning of any word I may use and the meaning you apply to it when you read it may not be at all alike. However, words themselves are far from useless. The only way we'd ever learn that words are limited and cannot express the Truth is when we hear someone say those things using words. Words are extraordinarily useful. So I plan to keep on using them. 3) "You put Japanese Buddhism on an altar" Not really. And I'm sorry I've created that impression, because this writer isn't the only one who seems to have assumed I think this way. Sturgeon's Law applies to Japanese Buddhism as well. In fact, American Buddhism may be slightly better than Japanese Buddhism overall because generally in America people become Buddhists out of a sincere desire to understand the Truth. In Japan, on the other hand, Buddhism is a mainstream belief and plenty of people over there are Buddhists just because everyone else they know is a Buddhist. It helps them fit in. No, Buddhism in Japan is mostly crud. Plenty of temples make extra cash by selling recently bereaved families "Buddhist names" for their deceased relatives for hundreds or even thousands of dollars - just like the Catholic church used to sell places in Heaven. There are showy monks who drive around in flashy cars just like members of the yakuza. Most thoughtful young people in Japan reject Buddhism out of hand because of this kind of shitty attitude on the part of a large number of Japanese Buddhist monks. And well they should! Had I grown up in Japan, I probably wouldn't have ever considered studying Buddhism at all. 4) "You assume the standards of Dogen's time are appropriate for ours" I'm not sure where the writer got this idea. But maybe some others reading my page also think I believe this. I don't. I have tremendous respect for Dogen. He clearly understood reality much more deeply than just about anyone else who's work I've read. But the standards of his time most certainly do not apply to ours. His was an agrarian society where only very few people had the time or inclination to study and practice Buddhism. Therefore those who did study it needed to seclude themselves from the world at large in temples - depending upon the charity of others for their livelihood -and work solely on their Buddhist practice to the exclusion of all else simply in order to be able to practice Buddhism at all. The average person today has a lot more leisure time than anyone in Dogen's age could have dreamed of. So today it is possible to study and practice Buddhism while remaining a functioning part of the mainstream society. One can be a monk without ever quitting their day job or running off to live in a temple. All you need to do is set aside an hour or so each day for zazen practice. While in Dogen's era a working person might have risked starvation by devoting that much time to their practice, for most of us all that means is an hour less watching Seinfeld reruns or screwing around on the Internet reading dodgy "Buddhist" web pages (oops!). 5) "As J. Krishnamurti said, `Because they didn't listen to him, there is Buddhism.'" I like J. Krishnamurti's writing a lot. I believe what Krishnamurti is referring to here is the fact that Buddha told his followers not to memorize his words or make them into scripture. Yet after the old guy bit the big mushroom, they went ahead and did just that. Still, you have to remember that the Buddha himself did establish an order of monks with permanent living quarters and specific places of retreat. He set up a code of behavior and a method of dress for those who he practiced with. There was an initiation ceremony for folks who joined his order. He preached his message far and wide and attracted hundreds, perhaps even thousands of followers before he died. Without a doubt it was Buddha himself who created Buddhism. But it is certainly true that Buddha's message became distorted over time. It is extremely difficult to discern which among the many hundreds of volumes of words claiming to be his were actually spoken by Buddha. This would be a tremendous problem if we approached Buddhism the way most people approach their religions. To a follower of some supposedly Almighty Being, whatever words he believes that Almighty Being spoke must be considered right whether they makes any sense at all or not, simply by virtue of the fact that the Almighty Being said them. It's like that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where God appears to Arthur and makes a suggestion. Arthur says, "Good idea, Lord," and God replies, "Of course it's a good idea, I thought of it!" Buddhists, however, don't give a crap who said the words attributed to Buddha. If the words themselves are true we accept them and if they are not we don't. This attitude comes from the Buddha's (or whoever's) own instructions that it was proper to doubt even his words and that we should not accept them unless we see their truth. Hardly useless words! * * * So there you go. Please feel free at any time to write me and ask for clarification. I get such a deluge of e-mail, plus I work a regular job, that I might not be able to get back to you. But I read everything I get and I try to reply whenever I can. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> In low income neighborhoods, 84% do not own computers. 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