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

Thus, their meditation is largely a devotional meditation, something that externally looks like meditation but achieves little. In short, it is just one more spiritual trapping, though one that may have some social benefits. Many seem to have substituted the pain of the pew for the pain of the zafu with the results and motivations being largely the same. It is an imitation of meditation done because meditation seems like a good and noble thing to do. However, it is a meditation that has been designed by those “teachers” who want everyone to be able to feel good that they are doing something “spiritual”. While it is good for a person to slow down to take time out for silence, I will claim that beyond these and a few cardiovascular benefits there is often not a whole lot of any great worth that comes from this sort of practice. True, they are not out smoking crack, but why get so close to the real thing and then not do those practices that make a real difference?

Many will consider my devaluation of low-grade sitting practice radical and counterproductive. Perhaps it is, but I claim that many who would have aspired to much more are being short-changed by not being invited to really step up to the plate and play ball, to discover the profound capabilities hidden within their own minds. This book is designed to be just such an invitation, an invitation to step far beyond the increasingly ritualized, bastardized, and gutless mock-up of Buddhism that is rearing its fluffy head in the modern West and has a strangle hold on many a practice group and even some of the big meditation centers.

To be fair, it is true that spiritual trappings and cultural add-ons may, at their best, be “skillful means,” ways of making difficult teachings more accessible and ways of getting more people to practice correctly 95

Buddhism vs. The Buddha

and in a way that will finally bring realization. A fancy hat or a good ritual can really inspire some people. That said, it is lucky that one of the fundamental “defilements” that drops away at first awakening is attachment to rites and rituals, i.e. Buddhism, ceremony, specific techniques, and religious and cultural trappings in general.

Unfortunately, the cultural inertia of the religions of Buddhism is hard to entirely circumvent.

It need not be, if the trappings can serve as “skillful means,” but I assert that many more people could be much more careful about what are fundamentally helpful teachings and what causes division, confusion, and sectarian arrogance. Those who aren’t careful about this are at least demonstrating in a roundabout way that they don’t know what the fundamental teachings are for themselves and have attained little wisdom.

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14.CONTENT AND ULTIMATE REALITY *

There is too much content-centered Buddhism and content-

centered spirituality in general. It is not that content isn’t important, but it is only half of the picture, and the half we are already quite familiar with and typically stuck in. By content, I mean everything except determined effort to realize the full truth of the Three Characteristics of impermanence, suffering, and no-self, i.e. to realize ultimate reality.

Perhaps two illustrations will help.

The first odd phenomenon I have noticed is that when students of meditation gather together to discuss Buddhism, they almost never talk about actual meditation practices in depth and detail. They almost never talk about their diligent attempts to really understand these teachings in each moment. It is almost an unacknowledged taboo that nearly any politically correct topic under the Sun is acceptable as long as it doesn’t have to do with trying to master meditation techniques. While there are sporadic moments of “dharma combat” or heated discussion for the purpose of learning and sharing the dharma, even these tend to be mostly on the philosophy of all of this.

The second odd phenomenon I have noticed has occurred in

situations when one might suspect that there would not be this problem.

I have been to a fair number of retreats in the West, and these tend to have small group meetings. The dharma teachers have invariably been giving instructions that emphasize following the motion of the breath or the sensations of the feet, developing concentration on these objects, not being lost in thought, and giving precise attention to bare reality just as it is. They tend to use the phrase “moment to moment” often, which in my book means, “Fast!” This is all as it should be.