Buddhist "Ideas"

I hope this won't be a rant, but I just saw a program on PBS that got everything possible wrong about enlightenment.  The commentator was personable and obviously interested in Buddhism, but she didn't have a clue.

Should this be a cause for distress?  I don't know. Maybe it's to be expected.  How can you know you don't know the real thing until you experience it?  This is, after all, why there is such a thing as lineage (which I so much appreciate despite my dislike of hierarchy):  people who have been given permission to teach can be trusted to speak from the Truth they have realized. But when people who don't know speak as though they do, then others who listen also get confused.

What did she say wrong?  Pretty much everything. First of all, she kept talking about "Buddha's ideas."  Yes, in a way, anything that is put into words can be called an "idea."  But what Buddha realized is not about thoughts in the head.  In fact, it's about what is not thought.

The commentator at one point says that Buddhism leads us to seek escape from the real world of suffering -- I'm paraphrasing but that was the essence.  This is the whole problem:  when you experience the world you see as the "real" one, then everything you say after that has to be wrong.  

The commentator kept saying that Buddhists believe that you have to do this and that in order to find tranquility or nirvana -- she pretty much equates the two.  And maybe I'll stop here, because really the fundamental problem is that not once did the essential truth come up:  we don't exist.  Until that is known, everything will be seen upside down and backward.

But I remember myself how confused I was when people used to say this to me.  Sometimes I'd even get angry. What do you mean, I don't exist?  Who is this person who is dialoging with you right now if I don't exist??  And it is, actually, very difficult to explain what that means when this psychological self has always seemed so solid, so it's no wonder that the subject wasn't even broached on this show.  But at the same time, this is the raison d'etre for the Teachings.  It's not about following some path in order to get psychological satisfaction of some kind.  It's to realize that we are transparent -- empty -- and it is because we are empty that all of existence finds its home in us. 

Masters of Deceit?

I left Zen behind decades ago, and yet I still feel there is something sacred about Zen lineage. Perhaps this is why I'm so annoyed as I notice, more and more, how half-baked teachers from other traditions —or perhaps from no tradition—apply the term “Zen Master” to themselves. Even someone who has practiced and taught Zen for years is not a Zen Master, or Roshi in Japanese, unless that person's own Roshi has designated him or her as a successor. Certainly, then, someone who has scarcely, if ever, set foot in a Zen center is not entitled to this designation.

My own teacher, Adyashanti, who comes from Zen, doesn't call himself a “Zen Master,” or any other kind of “master,” for that matter. But after a series of awakenings inspired by his presence, there was a period almost a decade ago now when I researched the various American Zen lineages. It seemed—and still does seem—that something incredibly precious was transmitted, and that it didn't start with my teacher but went back hundreds or even thousands of years. Maybe it's this sense of the preciousness of transmission that causes me to feel that it's a travesty for someone who has only the vaguest familiarity with Zen, or even with Buddhism in some cases, to refer to himself as a “Zen Master.”

Still, even those with a little knowledge of the history of Buddhism in America know that those who are legitimate dharma heirs—successors to the lineage holders in their tradition—have sometimes behaved in less than enlightened ways. Thus, people may well ask, “What does it even mean, anyway, to be a Roshi? Does it really guarantee that a person is a completely enlightened teacher? It seems that it doesn't. So if the purpose of lineage is to help potential students decide if a certain teacher is genuine, maybe it isn't that helpful a guide.

This brings up the whole question of teachers and their role. In an interview in Dialogues with Emerging Spiritual Teachers, by John W. Parker (Sagewood Press, 2000), Eckhart Tolle concluded that teachers who are awake sometimes experience return of their ego because of all of the projection from students (p. 122). In other words, when everyone thinks you're a god, it's hard not to buy into that view eventually. Christianity doesn't have that problem because the earthly manifestation of its god came to earth over 2,000 years ago and never since. But for seekers in Eastern traditions, the teacher often unconsciously represents the inner, unmanifest Buddha that is only consciously realized in awakening. This is natural but also causes much confusion.

In response to the quandary over how to find spiritual leaders of integrity, some communities based in Eastern wisdom have decided to elect their head teacher through democratic process. But this solution also raises some questions: Given that we don't know what enlightenment is ahead of time, how is it possible to select the right person to lead us to a goal of which we are ignorant? And how can we choose someone who will not succumb to the egotistic temptation of believing him/herself to be a great master? I continue to think we in the West need to grapple with this issue until we find the right structures through which the teachings transmitted from the East can flourish.