Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha - An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

The extra trappings are not necessarily all harmful in and of themselves, but they may dilute the amount of practical information about how to awaken with all sorts of other information that may have little to do with awakening and may even be an impediment to it. This may then lead to less than complete emphasis on the three fundamental trainings in morality, concentration and wisdom, which are quite a handful and a great undertaking even in their most simple forms. I was extremely lucky, in that I learned some great Buddhist meditation technology long before I really got to know the culture of mainstream Western Buddhism. I have much use for the former, and as for the latter, well, read on.

It is true that Buddhist training can take on many valid forms, and this is a fine and beautiful thing, as different training methods may be appropriate for different meditators at different times. The added

“padding” of tradition and religion can be a comfort and a support, as most people seem to really like having some kind of dogmatic, mythical or cultural foundation from which to work.

Traditions and standardized conceptual frameworks can also

provide the means by which people can talk to each other about experiences and techniques that might otherwise be very hard to explain clearly. I have a friend from another mystical tradition who knows much that I find useful and interesting, but it took us months to even begin to line up our terminology so that we could benefit from each other’s understanding.

However, these conceptual frameworks and trappings may also

produce the huge amount of useless, harmful and divisive sectarianism that exists within Buddhism and between the various meditative or mystical traditions, as well as all sorts of effort going into things that produce no freedom and may cause other forms of suffering.

Every time I leave my sheltered little academic life and enter the rough and tumble world of endlessly petty, sectarian dharma scenes, I 93

Buddhism vs. The Buddha

am again astounded at how fixated people can be on the minute differences between their tradition and traditions that are so similar to theirs they can only be differentiated by the clothes people wear and the names they call things. I can’t tell you how tiring it is. Sometimes I wonder how these otherwise kind and reasonable people can stand themselves or each other when they are like that. We all want to be special, but I beg you, find a way to be special that allows others to be special also. It is what is common to the great mystical paths that makes them special. The differences are 100% guaranteed to be fundamentally irrelevant. Now, that said, I am going to turn around and bust on cultural aspects of traditions that are not into awakening and mastering what the Buddha was talking about. This is Buddhism, after all, and so it seems only natural that I should be into what the old boy was into.

I have heard way too many conversations between members of

differing mystical traditions that could be summarized, “My dogma and ideals are better than your dogma and ideals.” Even worse are the rare and astonishing conversations that might be summarized, “My dogma and ideals are better than your actual realizations and profound insights.” Frightening.

There is a movement in the West, reminiscent of the original objectives of the Buddha in the early days of his teaching, to divorce Buddhism’s core meditation technology and basic trainings from religion and ritual entirely. I am a great fan of this movement, so long it does not cause people to throw out too many of the original Buddhist conceptual frameworks that are helpful as tools for mastering these practices. There is also a movement in the West to take the meditative technology of Buddhism and integrate it into everything from Catholicism to psychiatry to the freakish fringe of the New Age. I don’t have a problem with this trend particularly, just as long as people realize that you could just as easily divorce these technologies from those traditions and have something that is still very useful and powerful.

There is another related movement in the West, and that is to make Buddhism into something for everyone. Unfortunately, what is happening is that Buddhism is becoming watered down in order to make it have broad appeal. The result is something very similar to what happens in places like Thailand, where most people “practice 94

Buddhism vs. The Buddha

Buddhism” in a way that is largely devotional and dogmatic. In the West, this translates to people “practicing Buddhism” by becoming neurotic about being Buddhist, accumulating lots of pretty books and expensive props, learning just enough of some new language to be pretentious, and by sitting on a cushion engaged in free-form psychological whatnot while doing nothing resembling meditative practices. They may aspire to no level of mastery of anything and may never even have been told what these practices were actually designed to achieve.