Buddhism is not a philosophy, science,
psychotherapy, or culture. It is a religion.
May 30, 2015 David Brazier
tricycle
It should not need saying. After all, it's
obvious. Nonetheless it does need saying. It needs saying because
it has been denied by so many people including many who are eminent
and even some whose own roles, behavior, and faith contradict what
they are saying. It needs saying clearly, that Buddhism is a
religion.
Further, this is the right time to say it.
The bandwagon of secularization of Buddhism has gradually gathered
momentum to the point where it now threatens the whole basis of
what the Buddha bequeathed us. Buddhism is becoming popular, but it
is doing so in a form that is a new creation. This new creation is
not the traditional Buddhism of Asia and it is not the Buddhism of
Shakyamuni Buddha, the founder, either. This new creation is an
artifact of modernity and postmodernity using elements abstracted
from Buddhism, tailored to gain popularity by satisfying
contemporary prejudice.
Having said that, we must add that there is
nothing wrong with adaptation and creativity. Many of the new
manifestations and applications of ideas and methods derived from
Buddhism are intrinsically valuable and can stand on their own
feet. Buddhism is like a copious spring, the water from which can
be gathered and poured into many different shaped containers. What
is problematic, however, is that the reductionist philosophy by
which such artifacts are being generated threatens to poison the
spring from which the water is flowing. It is a kind of asset
stripping, or, we could say, it is like taking the fruit while
killing the root.
The basic reductionist principle that
informs this process is itself the opposite of dharma. It is
precisely the kind of blindness that dharma teaching exists to
awaken us from. This is why a warning bell needs to be
sounded.
I have played a role in the propagation and
popularization of Buddhist psychology so I have a personal part in
this process. As somebody who could be seen to be one of the
culprits I have, perhaps, a double onus to keep the record
straight. Buddhism developed a sophisticated psychological approach
two thousand years before the modern world discipline of psychology
was invented. Psychological investigations have gone on throughout
Buddhist history and the result is a gold mine of knowledge,
experience, theory, and practice from which we contemporary people
can learn a great deal, but although Buddhism has given rise to
this treasure, Buddhism is not fundamentally or exclusively a
psychology.
My contention is not that we should return
to a past that is now irretrievable. It is that while accepting
that Buddhism is changing at a cultural level and finding new forms
of expression and organization, we should acknowledge that it is
more than merely an expression of modernity using elements of Asian
terminology. The most forceful way of doing this is to acknowledge
that it is more than a way of life, more than a philosophy, more
important and profound than a mere cultural artifact—that it is a
religion.
Buddhism is commonly said to be about
relieving or abolishing suffering. This can be taken as a worthy
humanitarian goal that could have little to do with religion. A
methodology that overcomes suffering by training the mind is a
psychotherapy. There is, thus, a case to be made that Buddhism is a
psychotherapy, and if one were to take abolishing suffering, or
achieving happiness, as the goal of Buddhism, then one could claim
that Buddhism is primarily, or even nothing other than, such
therapy. Such a line of rhetoric can then be used to integrate
Buddhism within the frame of modern, secular hedonistic ideas.
Doing so, however, involves discarding most of what Buddhism
actually consists of and missing the point of the Founder's
original teaching.
Just as it is possible to present Buddhism
as a psychology, we can also look at other things that Buddhism has
given rise to. Buddhism has generated great cultures that have
played prominent parts in history together with their many
constituent ways of life, roles, forms of organization, social
structures, politics, economics, and sciences. Modern academic
investigation finds in this history fascinating areas for study and
research. Some modern people adopt aspects of some of these
traditional cultures and find it satisfying to do so. They wear
Buddhist style clothes, sit on the floor, and have houses full of
Eastern artifacts. They study thangka painting, or create
Zen gardens. Many people now have Buddha figures as garden or
household ornaments. These things look fine and contribute to a
more gentle tenor of life. Buddhism has given rise to treasures
such as these. Buddhism, however, is not fundamentally a culture.
It has bred many cultures of great diversity. Buddhism is not
fundamentally a way of life. There are many ways of life that can
be considered to be Buddhist. Buddhism is not, basically, a style.
There are many Buddhist styles. Buddhism has its views of economics
and society, but Buddhism is not fundamentally a mode of social
welfare. These things are all expressions of something more
fundamental. Buddhism is a religion. Only a religion could generate
such a diversity of riches permeating every aspect of
life.
The Buddha gave remarkable codes of ethics
tailored to different groups of people, to monks and nuns, to lay
people, and to those who would follow an altruistic
bodhisattva path. To this day we can learn a great deal
from this ethical science. However, Buddhism is not fundamentally a
system of ethics. Buddhism is a religion.
The Buddha was sometimes referred to as a
doctor of the soul, and perhaps also of the body. It is likely his
early disciples, wandering from place to place, not only taught the
fundamentals of his doctrine, but also functioned in many cases as
healers and medical practitioners. Many modern people are
particularly concerned about health. They employ techniques drawn
from Buddhism for stress relief, for an improved diet, for deep
relaxation, for the treatment of depression, for massage, and so
on. All this is wonderful. Buddhism has given rise to such
treasures, but Buddhism is not fundamentally a health cure.
Buddhism is a religion. The purpose of Buddhism is not stress
relief. Buddha did not teach a method to help busy executives
survive better in the rat race.
It is because Buddhism is a religion that
it has been able to generate such richness. From the perspective of
secular, humanistic materialism it is possible to see a value in
many of the things to which Buddhism has given rise, but it is not
really possible to see how they have come about because such an
approach does not value the processes that constitute the substance
of religion and does not recognize the religious nature of the
human being. In fact, it consciously, deliberately, and
systematically excludes them.
Modernity sees the fruits of Buddhism as
its substance and then wonders how it can be so diverse. The
substance of Buddhism, however, is what gives rise to all these
fruits and this substance is not part of the materialistic scheme
of things. In fact, it involves and is crucially dependent upon a
renunciation of such materialism. It is this renunciation that
modernity cannot admit, yet which is at the core of the Buddha's
dispensation.
In Buddhism, the spiritual is primary and
the physical is a domain in which spirit acts. In modernity, the
physical is primary and the spiritual, if it is acknowledged at
all, is the epiphenomenon. For Buddhism to survive and continue to
produce such wonderful fruit we must not cut off its root in this
way. Although Buddhism is, in some respects, very different from
the religions we were used to in the past, at core it is a
spiritual matter.
Many contemporary thinkers have asserted
that Buddhism is not a religion in order to fit it into our
culture. They want to create an American Buddhism or a European
Buddhism, in which the encompassing frame is American culture or
European philosophy. However, if you cut Buddhism down to fit into
one of these frames you cut off the essence and root.
Buddhism is not something with which to
decorate our existing materialistic culture. Using Buddhist methods
to help one be more efficient at work, or cope with the stress of a
go-getting lifestyle, is decoration of this kind.
Buddhism has entered this materialist world
sometimes disguised as a saleable commodity. In a world where money
is the measure of all things, this is the disguise you need to gain
entry. Another measure is popularity. One wins by getting more
votes. Votes and prices, however, have no necessary relationship to
quality or depth. Buddhism aims to deepen life, not trivialize it.
Measures are abstract, useful for some purposes, but never touch
the essence of anything. No measure can tell you how beautiful
something is. None can tell you how pure a person's heart or soul
may be. The science of measurement is valuable and utilitarian. The
soul of religion is something else. It is a different domain of
existence. It is the one that makes life worth living.
Sometimes it is said that Buddhism is
scientific. This assertion would put Buddhism somehow
within the frame of science, but Buddhism has much that would not
fit into that frame.
We should not muddle up science and
scientism. Scientism is a modern philosophy. Scientism is not
Buddhistic because it is the attempt to make the restrictive rules
of science into the dogmas by which the whole of life should be
governed. Scientism is a different religion and a rather narrow one
and it would be a tragedy if Buddhism in the West were reduced to
it. Actually, scientism as one finds it in ordinary members of the
public is largely based on a version of science that was superseded
in the early decades of the 20th century. I have met people of this
persuasion who say that "One should not believe anything that
science has not proved." Fortunately or unfortunately, we have
discovered that proving is not something that science does.
Sometimes science disproves, but science always has an open
frontier: it is always open to the new case that overturns what has
been thought to be true up to now. Science demonstrates, but such
demonstrations are never ultimate or final. We have seen so many
revolutions in science in the past century that nobody should be in
doubt of this. It does not make science redundant that its findings
are so often overturned. It is in the nature of the situation.
Science implies that there must be an incalculable amount that we
do not know. In this respect science is Buddhistic.
Scientism, however, seeks to restrict our
vision of the universe to things that are physically demonstrable.
Most of the things that are important to most people—love, loyalty,
faith, goodness, meaning, purpose—do not fall into such a category.
As a philosophy, therefore, scientism is limited. It's popularity
is based on a misreading of the prestige that currently attaches to
technology. The proposition that one should believe nothing that is
not empirically demonstrable is itself not empirically
demonstrable.
An extension of the popularity of
scientistic ways of thinking has become the way that many people
currently approach Buddhism as though it were a collection of
techniques. Certainly Buddhism has generated many techniques. This
is another of its richnesses, but the tendency to see it as being
merely technique, or merely practice, is a function of the modern
world's worship of technology, not a true representation of
Buddhism. It is just another case of picking the fruit while not
seeing the root.
Buddhism is a religion. The common
ground—perhaps the only one—of all schools of Buddhism is a
religious act called taking refuge. We take refuge in the three
treasures: the buddha, dharma, and sangha. Buddha is the supreme
source of teaching, love, compassion, and wisdom. Dharma indicates
the fundamentals of life and being. Sangha, in this context, is the
assembly of spiritually awakened beings. Taking refuge in these
three has salvific power. The popular view is that the aim here is
to join the sangha, learn the dharma, and thereby become a buddha.
That, however, is not refuge. Refuge is not about taking these
jewels in our hands, it is about ourselves being held by
them.
The mystique of this act is not something
that can be grounded in materialism or psychology. It has material
and psychological consequences, but they are incidental. The whole
purpose is to transcend such considerations and open the
possibility of being liberated from them.
Each deepening of refuge is a lessening of
ego. More faith, less ego. Thus Buddhism finds salvation beyond
self. It is not a collection of methods for greater
self-development, self-assertion, self-cherishing, self-esteem, or
anything of the kind. Rather the opposite. Buddhism is not
narcissism. The devotee is encouraged to be ever mindful of the
objects of refuge, to bow to them, make offerings, revere and
worship them. Being mindful of their supreme qualities one becomes
more aware of one's own deficiency. Becoming more aware of the
deficiency of self, one's need to take refuge increases in
intensity. Finally one lets go of self entirely, takes refuge
wholeheartedly and enters nirvana.
Taking refuge is an act of faith. To think
that taking refuge is just like joining a worldly organization is
to miss the essence and to reduce the supreme mystery to a mundane
procedure. Far from reducing mystery to mundanity, Buddhism is
about infusing the mundane with the sacred.
Buddhism's foundation is faith. This faith
is based in real, close-to-the-bone, experience. We find that the
body is not reliable; the mind is not reliable; thoughts are not
reliable, emotions are not reliable, circumstances are not
reliable, social status is not reliable; the present moment is not
reliable. No technique or methodology will make them so. Direct
awareness of the present and of the sequence of things occurring
demonstrates to us the unreliability of all that the worldly mind
considers as self. Awareness alone would leave us frightened and
helpless. Therefore we need mindfulness and the other factors of
enlightenment that flow from it. We need mindfulness of the
treasure that is available to us. Initially we may think it is our
own treasure, but this is just the conceit of the self reasserting
itself. The treasure is universal and unconditional, but each of us
encounters it in a unique way. Buddha speaks to each of us in our
own language. Thus everybody has some spiritual treasure to rely
upon if they will just heed it. Buddhism helps us to do so with
ever-greater depth and confidence.