Beware the self-centered pursuit of spirituality

Editor’s note: Final in a three-part series of essays on Buddhism.

I recently finished teaching a seminar on Buddhism in America and had a strange encounter with a Zen Buddhist monk promoting his memoirs.

I clasped my hands and bowed before him – tradition that shows respect for the Buddhist clergy. Encouraged by my peers, I explained to him what I wanted to teach and wondered if he had any advice.

He glared – Zen monks are notoriously strict – and said, “It’s all one – Buddhism and Zen – no problem!”

In today’s America, Buddhism is part and parcel of a networked and “globalized” community – by globalized we mean “interdependent” and integrated. Buddhism’s practitioners then must be wary of D.T. Suzuki’s admonition about “commercialism” and the wave of “sordid materialism.” For Buddhism also teaches that one of our greatest weaknesses is our delusion about reality – which is to say, our shared “madness.”

The practice of Buddhist “meditation” is specifically designed to help combat this madness. It is popular today in the West to speak of “mindfulness” as the essential characteristic of Buddhism. But this is only half-truth. As with anything else in America, “mindfulness” is the catchphrase that moves the most units.

Contiguous to the revelation of “global warming” then is a young Buddhist movement that declares it our moral imperative to be both mindful of our “selves” and our impact on the planet.

Sulak Sivaraksa (b. March 27, 1933), the shooting star of the movement, declares, “If the United States and its allies want to assume global responsibility, they must first cultivate mindfulness and use ahimsa [non-violence] as guidance. They must derive their leadership from legitimacy, compassion and justice, not from military might. The more the United States uses its power illegitimately, the more its standing as the self-designated leader of the world will be repudiated and undermined.”

Sivaraksa, while denouncing the United States, goes on to explain that Buddhism can heal the West and the whole world, although I have a strong feeling that G.W. Bush talks only to Jesus.

This is a problem then for Americans who bought the Buddhist dharma. We appear to live in a country that is somehow “antithetical” to the ideals of Buddhism. The conflict must create a kind of psychic turmoil. Sivaraksa tells us that the religion of America is “consumerism.” But he is wrong about this. Our religion is Christianity – and we also enjoy buying things.

A small minority of Americans now practice Buddhism and “mindfulness.” They wander the hills, the high country and the low, with the works of people like Jack Kerouac stuffed in their rucksacks. They eat things called “trail mix” and study the writings of Thoreau and John Muir. And they are, indeed, surrounded by a natural beauty that seems God-given.

“When all the inhabitants of society practice Dharma, there will be equilibrium in nature,” says Sivaraksa. “In other words, there is a connection between morality, beauty and harmony in nature. Buddhism envisages moral conduct as the natural state of being, as natural as the cycles of nature.”

Is “moral conduct” the natural state of being, as Sivaraksa suggests? Ralph Waldo Emerson might agree though he, too, would be surprised and chagrined to learn of “global warming.”

Ironically, Buddhism came west on the silent wings of American “exceptionalism” or democratic “individualism.” There is a reason that many American adherents of Dharma practice only “mindfulness” without the ritual or ceremony of Buddhism. For these people, religion is still “un-cool” so Buddhism provides a venue for introspection without the claptrap of moral responsibility. They incorrectly think that honoring the ego is like honoring nature.

As the Buddha was well aware of, even “spirituality” can be an obstacle.

I would argue that a meditative “mono-culture” is quickly developing in the West. One of its dangers is the rabid belief in “self” which can also lead to the centrality of individuals and their self-aggrandizement. It’s especially likely in a country that already perpetuates the unholy desire for money, status and self-importance.

I look out my window and I see a black crow in flight. His shadow moves over the land. There is a full moon tonight and a wicked wind. The cycles of nature, say what you will, are all inevitable. I turn to Ralph Waldo Emerson once more. He strikes like thunder:

“O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith.”

Justin Maseychik of Northport teaches Buddhism and comparative religion at Thomas College in Waterville. He may be reached at maseychik@thomas.edu.