Not your Tibetan Buddhism

https://aeon.co/essays/what-lies-behind-the-simplistic-image-of-the-happy-buddhist

122 89 8 years ago

Anyone who lives near mountains long enough understands cabin fever. Is it any wonder the humans that live in the Himalayas experience cabin fever to a greater extent?

Stoicism, or Buddhism, in my view, is simply the most efficient ideology for surviving in dangerous environments.

pokemongoaway• 8 years ago

Yep can't get much cabin fever if you're actually training! :)

qntty2• 8 years ago

Can you explain what you mean by cabin fever? Is it just boredom with being inside? And if so, how does it relate to being near the mountains?

flyingcircus32• 8 years ago

Just watch The Shining. All work and no play made Jack a dull boy. All play and no work is just as bad.

Cabin fever is extreme introversion, to the point that you have cut off social contact with most people for an extended period of time. You effectively create an echo chamber of one.

I have found it to be prevalent in areas of rugged natural beauty, such as mountainous regions. As an introvert, one can fill all of their free time exploring this paradise forever.

But as you get better at seeking out more rugged and wild adventures, it almost serves as a positive feedback loop for your introversion. Thus, when you are in a stressful situation, the escape hatch is to get out in nature away from all those pesky humans.

The "logical" conclusion is that you should just buy a cabin in the woods. Then you don't have to deal with any people, and your already in your comfort zone 24/7.

The downside of all of that is you eventually become singularly focused on whatever your echo chamber has reinforced. And when you live among mountains, without focussing on all of the immediate danger that constantly surrounds you, that danger has extreme consequences.

est2• 8 years ago

In Chinese internet pop culture, Tibetan Buddhism == 密宗 == having sex with your master.

volgo• 8 years ago

Wouldn't be surprised if it's scandal filled like the Catholic church. When you combine mysticism and people in position of absolute spiritual leadership and people who willingly believe it, you get some interesting relationships...

tombh4• 8 years ago

It very much is scandal-filled. Just take the recent coming to light of Sogyal Rinpoche's abuses of power: https://www.lionsroar.com/letter-to-sogyal-rinpoche-from-cur...

Not to mention the extraordinary mess that was Chögyam Trungpa.

yorwba• 8 years ago

My dictionary translates 密宗 as Tantric Buddhism, which in the West is also associated with sexual rituals. (But as I understand, those are not actually as common as some would prefer.)

tombh4• 8 years ago

Glad to see this article getting some attention. My university training is in Religious Studies and it became clear pretty quickly that Buddhism suffers just as much as any other religion from the pathologies of global institutions of power.

The one that always gets me, as it's so glaringly obvious, is that Buddhism is so audaciously and unapologetically male-dominated. It just seems embarrassing to me that on the one hand the teachings place so much emphasis on kindness to all living beings, yet none of the major lineages (until recently under Western influence) have female lineage holders - therefore those that are considered worthy enough to pass the teachings on to the next generation.

gtirloni• 8 years ago

Religion is not detached from the cultural aspects of where it exists. Such was/is the situation in Tibet, male-oriented.

The Catholic Church says priests can only be male too. Women weren't given much freedom in society when these policies were defined.

Western-adapted Buddhism lineages are much more open to women in general.

b6• 8 years ago

Buddhism is so audaciously and unapologetically male-dominated

From what I understand, the Buddha taught anyone who was interested without the slightest regard for gender, age, wealth, caste, or anything else -- 2500 years ago, in India.

The monastic orders have very reasonable rules about how new monks or nuns get legitimacy by being approved by former monks or nuns, and that worked for, I think, over a thousand years. The problem is, for some reason, the female lineage suffered a break, and there was no contingency plan for restoration. But this is now occurring, at least in Theravada. Please don't paint it as if Buddhism is sexist. It is actually amazingly and remarkably non-sexist, back in a time when this was unheard of.

paloaltokid5• 8 years ago

I think the parent is talking about the people in the "ism" of Buddhism, not the Buddha himself. I think it's similar in Christianity. We have no idea what Christ believed, but his followers sure have had some regressive attitudes towards women.

Also, I'd agree with you that Buddhism itself is not sexist. But many of the practitioners are as sexist as everyone else. We shouldn't assume that just because someone practices a certain religion or spirituality that they are perfect.

KingMob2• 8 years ago

It's quite a bit more complicated than that, unfortunately.

First, the Pali canon didn't begin to be put to paper until 100-200 years after the buddha, so like Jesus, there aren't clear first-hand records.

That being said, the Pali canon states Buddha was reluctant to teach women, and had to be exhorted by his aunt to agree. Supposedly, he agreed but warned that if he taught women the lifetime of the sangha would be halved. Even after letting them in, the monastic rules for women were/are much more extensive than for men.

In the modern era, there's still a lot of resistance in traditional Theravadan countries to female nuns. Sri Lanka only started ordaining women in the 1990's, and both Burma and Thailand have jailed nuns in recent history.

One thing you learn being in a Buddhist country, is that there are many buddhists (even monks) engaged in unskillful behavior, just as there are many Christians who don't understand Christ's actual message.

jrochkind1• 8 years ago

From the OP:

"...two-dimensional caricatures tend not to deepen. Instead, they flip – in this case, from loving and peaceful back to the sinister and violent caricatures that..."

Much like arguments over whether who and what is "real" Christianity, or Islam... it's all equally "real". Buddhism is made of people and has a couple thousand years of history across large swaths of the world. And like everything made of people, it's complex and has parts and times and trends we might like and parts we might not.

I suppose the believer can say the parts they don't like aren't 'real', and different factions of believers can fight it out over which parts are 'real', as in all religions. But that doesn't seem very "Buddhist" to me. :) And like with all religions or ideologies, the non-believer has no stake in the game. It's all equally "real Buddhism", as it's all things that have actually happened and been done by and in the name of Buddhism.

tombh4• 8 years ago

I must unreservedly restate, Buddhism is sexist. This is not a casual statement. I retort that anyone that considers otherwise has not seriously studied Buddhism. There are those who legitimately go even further to say that vast swathes of Buddhism are misogynistic, see Rita Gross' "Buddhism After Patriarchy". This is a very serious matter.

hapnin• 8 years ago

You speak truth. The sad part is that early Buddhism was revolutionary in that women were given the same rights and powers as men to quit society and join the monastic community. According to tradition, the first woman ordained by the Buddha was his aunt, Mahāprajāpatī Gotamī.

KingMob2• 8 years ago

When I became a monk in Burma, sayalays (sort of like female novitiates) in the monastery were expected to show respect to me, even when they had been there for 30 years, and I had only been a monk for two weeks.

A western monk friend and I discussed it a lot, and we concluded that the rules of the sangha (the monastic community) ensured it would be roughly as sexist as the society around it.

See, one of the rules of the vinaya (the ancient monastic code) is that monks are forbidden to grow their own food; all food is a gift from someone. This is an interesting rule, with both good and bad consequences.

The beneficial aspect is that it keeps the sangha tied to the lay community; it prevents Theravadan monks from disappearing into the forest with no ties, and is probably crucial to maintaining the existence of a religious order for over two millennia.

The detrimental aspect is that it punishes sanghas that are too progressive for their community. Every morning, we would walk out at 6:00 for alms. If the townfolk were pissed at us, we'd have starved.

One of the things western buddhist communities have done better is gender-inclusion. In fact, most of my teachers in both zen and theravada have been women.

jschwartzi• 8 years ago

When I was younger my mom experimented with one of the Buddhist organizations in the United States that follows the Lotus Sutra. From what I recall of that time, in earlier writings Buddha wrote that women could not become enlightened because they were enslaved to their emotions. In the Lotus Sutra he recanted this. If I'm remembering correctly that would explain the sexism in some Buddhist organizations. Or it may be an excuse for perpetuating it.

potatote3• 8 years ago

I grew up in Myanmar until 23 and know what you're talking about. Those 'sayalays' follow a less stricter rules/precepts than a fully-ordained monk. That's why they are expected to pay respect to the male monks. Of course, there is no denying that it's a male-dominant religion, but it is no worse than Catholicism. Buddha, according to the Buddhist legends, appointed his step-mom to be in charge of female monks and they have established their own structure, which follows closely to the one established by male monk's structure (but with slightly less strict rules).

As an atheist, I am not going to defend Buddhism (be it Mahayana, Theravada or Tibetan) because they all have major flaws, and aren't very practical--in my opinion--for the modern society. As with most religions, there are good and bad parts in Buddhism and a lot of original teachings by Buddha have been 'tainted' by cultural reasoning (not to mention that even Buddha himself likely got a lot of influence in his philosophy from Hinduism and other mainstream religions in his time). Overall though, I have to say that Buddhism at its core is fairly benign (no eliminate-those-who-don't-believe-in-our-god's-teachings that can be found in old testament or Koran).

rossdavidh• 8 years ago

There is a Burmese Buddhist community near Austin, Texas, where I live, and most of the monks there are Burmese. There is definitely a tendency for the monks to be slightly more progressive on the idea of women roles in religion, but then these are monks whose Burmese lay supporters live in America.

I think one could say generally that, whatever the shortcomings of Western understanding of Buddhism, there has been a non-zero positive influence in the area of a role for women in leading religious communities.

By the way, the way I have heard it explained by Burmese monks and Zen priests (in both cases, western) is that there was a tradition of Buddhist nuns from the time of the Buddha (his mother-in-law actually), but this tradition died out about 500 years after his death (in the Therevada tradition anyway). There is a lot of discussion and disagreement within Buddhist communities about the specifics of if/how it should be reinitiated.

I am a Buddhist, but not born Buddhist, and I am not a monk, etc. etc.

JBlue42• 8 years ago

Off-topic: Are you still a practicing monk? What brought you to HN?

nugga2• 8 years ago

I wonder why that is. In plenty cultures and traditions they're treated as less capable or less trustworthy or less honest etc. Even in Bhagavad Gita women are said to be somewhat comparable to children and lower in the spiritual game than men.

Are you playing on hard mode if you respawn as a woman? Is spiritual practice or reaching enlightenment harder for women? Modern studies seem to indicate that women seem to be more prone to neuroticism or hysteria and being clouded by sense pleasure.

kk58• 8 years ago

Wheŕe in gita does it say it?

bobthechef• 8 years ago

"male-dominated"

Is that perhaps a fashionable contemporary Western idea bleeding in?

cko3• 8 years ago

Yes, like LGBT rights, slavery is bad, scientific method is good. These are things most of us in the West take for granted as objectively true, but there is surely a cultural component to everything. What can ya do?

In traditional Chinese medicine (my uncle and dad believe in it despite both having PhDs) they believe in acupuncture and chi.

Two months ago my ankle was bothering me. I thought “it’s because I just walked like ten miles.” My dad was like nah, it’s energy flow or something. Then I let him put huge amounts of pressure on my upper arm area (because apparently that’s connected to my ankle). After five minutes of pain, he proudly sat back and said, “better?” I wanted to say “no you idiot. I sprained my ankle badly ten years ago and just walked excessively. You know this.” But I didn’t because I don’t get to see him much and didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Believe it or not, it didn’t help at all, and my arm was bruised for two weeks. The guy has two PhDs. Two. Published papers and stuff.

Just goes to show how... compartmentalized? Inconsistent? our minds can be. /end rant

I’ve been trying to find a more “untainted” and universal set of truths, and that just leads to reflecting on human nature and behavior. Then again, there is a heavy dose of western skepticism and whatever in my methods.

Culture runs deep.

jackstraw14• 8 years ago

Buddhism originated from a man sitting very still under a tree for a while.

The core issue I think this article ignores, is a Western buddhist's need to identify their spiritual life with a specific geographic region across the globe. The goal of Buddhism is not to create an alliance to eventually rule the world and compete with evil Western forces, but to develop a way of life through personal enlightenment that allows a better world to emerge.

These constructs in between us and enlightement only have life because of the energy we give to them. When the Dalai Lama talks about ways of finding personal peace, that's because it's the key point that you need before you can even know if your calling is to put your energy toward saving the Tibetan Buddhists.

est2• 8 years ago

Buddhism originated from a man sitting very still under a tree for a while.

Buddhism originated from a wealthy prince, who enjoyed every aspect of upper-most human life, began to ponder why there miseries exists among humans.

hliyan• 8 years ago

And then he spent the next decade studying with every philosopher he could find, from theists, atheists, agnostics to materialists and then finally decided to figure things out on his own. Only during the last period before his enlightenment did he sit under a tree. His meditations would not have borne fruit without all the experiences that preceded it. Source: raised as a Buddhist.

voice_of_reason• 8 years ago

"The goal of Buddhism is not to create an alliance to eventually rule the world and compete with evil Western forces, but to develop a way of life through personal enlightenment that allows a better world to emerge."

Suttas of Pali canon, the most ancient collection of Buddhist texts, are not dedicated to building a better world, though they contain advise on how to achieve happier and more peaceful existence. The goal of Buddha's teaching is an escape, a release from the endless cycle of rebirths, that is achieved through renunciation and non-clinging to the world and the concept of "self".

sorokod• 8 years ago

The Budhism in Burma and Sri Lanka is extremely political and virulently nationalistic. Like many others you are cherry-picking.

zdw• 8 years ago

This is an interesting article because it exposes how little most Westerners know about non-Western thought and history. Most westerners can probably name dozens of western countries that rose and fell, but are unlikely to be able to name more than one or two of the Chinese dynasties.

To provide a parallel to western culture, the view most westerners have of Buddhism is like if Christianity was portrayed purely as a well sanitized Joel Osteen prosperity gospel book, ignoring the entire history of violence in the old testament, the east/west catholic/orthodox split, upturn of the protestant reformation, and all the other "historical nasty bits".

And with Buddhism being offered based on that pop-culture sanitized version, no wonder people are surprised when they dig deeper (as would be the case with any long-standing religion).

gcb0• 8 years ago

the funny thing is that this is the way japanese people see Christianity. in most japanese literatute and anime, cristians are always persecuted and pure of hearth and whatnot. oh and also not a male dominated religion at all, they even have women leading mass in some cases.

digi_owl• 8 years ago

Speaking of Japanese, i ran into a claim some time back that the view of Bushido that we have now is one fabricated by a Japanese writer. That effectively transplanted European chivalry over long after the samurai had turned into career bureaucrats, and was called out on it by his contemporaries.

Noos2• 8 years ago

Considering Japan persecuted Japanese Christians so ruthlessly that they went underground for hundreds of years(1), if only they would portray them as such. If anything, anime is notorious for making any Christian in it a distaff version of shinto, just glammed up; TV Tropes has the trope "All nuns are mikos" to show it. (2)

Anime's treatment of Christianity and its own Christian history is insulting. Amakusa Shiro is an evil boss in a series of videogames, ffs,(3) Their treatment in real life demands massive censure; Christians never did anything to their co-religionists on the level that Japan did to their own believers.

(1) The subject of Endo's "silence," also look up Kakkure Kirishtan for the sect.

(2) Notice all all nuns in anime tend to be 23 years old or under?

(3) Samurai Showdown to be exact. Shiro led an uprising of Roman Catholics against persecution, one that was brutally put down.

robaato• 8 years ago

I participated in half a dozen lectures with a Shinto priest and another Japanese participant (who was like me martial arts practitioner).

One interesting thing was when the priest asked the other guy (who professed to be a Shinto practitioner) to describe what Shinto was all about and then to describe Christianity - he was more clearly able to describe Christianity!

The priest was not surprised.

The priest was also clear about the state of religions in Japan: there are a majority of of believers in Shinto and yet may people conduct Shinto ceremonies for young children, Christian marriage ceremonies and Buddhist funerals!

mc32• 8 years ago

A few westerners see the Dalai Lama in a fawning light yet before the Chinese went in there, it was a terribly feudal society where the subjects were virtually slaves. To many western eyes, the Chinese are imperialists, and so they are, but they also liberated the locals and brought them into modernity and broke them from feudal shackles.

That is to say, it’s more complicated than Chinese bad, Dalai Lama good. Yet, the Dalai Lama gets invited to state dinners and the likes of Stanford as an exiled benevolent leader of a subjugated people, yet, the people are actually freer than they were under the theocracy, although there is also episodes of sporadic Chinese repression.

8bitsrule• 8 years ago

the people are actually freer than they were under the theocracy

Pretty sure that the indigenous Tibetans don't see it that way. Comparable to native Americans in that way.

abritinthebay• 8 years ago

Most westerners can probably name dozens of western countries that rose and fell, but are unlikely to be able to name more than one or two of the Chinese dynasties.

Not going to lie... I only know most of the few I do know from Wuxia movies and Dynasty Warriors :/

spicymaki4• 8 years ago

“Buddhist-based mindfulness practices are used to teach dissatisfied cogs in corporate systems to suck it up”

Mindfulness practice like everything else is much more complicated. It is more than a management tool for complacency. There are times when you have to really just have to suck it up and times when you don’t. The overall goal is to stop torturing yourself about things you cannot control even if you are trapped with no options. The more you peer through delusion the less you need to suck it up. You might even start to see new possibilities where none were apparent.

tonyedgecombe3• 8 years ago

There is a big difference between an individual using it as a tool to cope with the difficulties of corporate life and a business using it to try and improve their bottom line.

spicymaki4• 8 years ago

Agreed. However, there are people in organizations that are actually trying to improve the welfare of the employees (by introducing mindfulness programs) who work in soul-less corporations. In the company I work for, the mindfulness program is a bottom up initiative, but we do need to request for office space and budget to run it. To that end we do need to demonstrate why this might be in the interest of the company to fund it.

Erlich_Bachman2• 8 years ago

How do you differentiate between a business using it to "improve their bottom line" vs a business that is trying to provide their employees with some increased life quality? Is everything a business does evil just because they are a business?

Noos2• 8 years ago

I hate how westerners view Religion. "Oh, Buddhism is a thing of peace an enlightenment, as opposed to Christianity, which a vicious God condemns people to hell." Never mind the fact that Buddhism has multiple hells whether its Chinese or Japanese (possibly in the hundreds where the tortures to people are all described in glowing detail.) We're talking about the faith that gave us Sokishinbutsu, self-mummification while alive.

Most folk Taoist and Buddhist beliefs would probably horrify people who tend to think New Age bowdlerization of eastern faiths is what really goes on.

eeZah7Ux• 8 years ago

The "facebook motivational quote" approach to spirituality is naive and romanticized as many other topics.

You are vastly generalizing "how westerners view Religion" while, at the same time, cherry-picking and oversimplifying facts about Buddhism.

qntty2• 8 years ago

Seeing as Christianity is by far the most popular religion in western countries, I don't think that's an accurate way to portray how "westerners" view religion.

spicymaki4• 8 years ago

I find it funny how we can revere anything historical, the more I learn about history, the more I get disillusioned by people and institutions.

Currently I feel there are two ways to meet that problem: With ignorance: "Oh, Buddhism is a thing of peace an enlightenment, as opposed to Christianity, which a vicious God condemns people to hell." or with acceptance: "There are people who just did things in contexts I might just never truly understand, some of it might be of value and some of it might not be of value. Is there anything I can learn from that?"

Nothing is untainted. The best anyone can do is just separate the wheat from the chaff and move on.

Jeaye• 8 years ago

Hitchens has a section on Buddhism in God is Not Great[1] wherein he discusses some violent atrocities in which Eastern Buddhism has taken part (Japanese Buddhism during WWII, for example), as well as the malevolent sex acts forced upon female practitioners.

Worth a read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great

justicezyx• 8 years ago

Good to see such articles from western writers, as the same content from anyone with a Chinese heritage would be easily labeled government sponsored propaganda (most of it is, but that's not the reason to dispute their validity).

zenbai• 8 years ago

The way this article talks of Tibetan Buddhism without comparing it or contrasting the teachings in it to the Theravada school of Buddhism practiced in Thailand and Myanmar is very disappointing. It is painting another wrong image of Buddhism as a whole.

It is almost like if someone never knew what Christianity was about and after learning about a sect (church) with strange practices proceeds to write an article talking about it using the name of the church interchangeably with Christianity as a whole- to a group that knows nothing about Christianity.

This is especially disappointing because the Theravada school is the school that emphasizes philosophy more than rituals (other than meditating) and is thus actually closer to the Western idea - even though it is not exactly the same, because again Westerners including the author of this article mostly know nothing about Buddhism.

The result is this articlle paints a picture that Buddhism as a whole isn't really worth learning about.

Yes the author says he is talking about 'Tibetan Buddhism' but he doesn't inform the reader of other schools of Buddhism that may be more interesting to learn about and that don't have an emphasis on tantric rituals and mysticism that he is complaining about.

amriksohata• 8 years ago

I've always wondered why abrahmaic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) never question why they came after Eastern religions (Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Jainism)

mythrwy• 8 years ago

Buddhism is more recent than Judaism though and Sikhism is a lot more recent than Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

Other than that, probably for the same reason Hindus don't question why Hinduism came after tribal shaman religions.

Because in the believers mind maybe age doesn't matter and if it does, it's simply that people were foolish before religion X appeared.

fsiefken• 8 years ago

also see the chapter on the dalai lama in 'stripping the gurus' by geoffrey d. falk for that other side of buddhism http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stgsamplechapters/dalai.htm...

Zyst• 8 years ago

This article is, from what I can tell, genuinely well informed.

Throughout the last few years I've read around 8 books on Buddhism, Meditation as a practice, and Zen Buddhism. And some of the differences that popped up were bizarre to me. Incredibly so in the Tibetan side of the literature. Even more so because I started with a very westernized view: The Zen Programmer.

It took me over a year of some non-focused research to get a general idea of what was going on, and I feel this article actually summarizes, and ties it together pretty well. It is fairly simplistic of course, but you can't go too in depth in a handful of pages.

I do feel they explained the situation more eloquently than I would have.

dvfjsdhgfv• 8 years ago

I fail to see the conclusion of the article. Yes, Buddhism is much more than most people think. Yes, it's much different than most people think. Nevertheless, if someone gets interested in it, they should do some background research - and very often do. After that, when you deepen your knowledge, you naturally learn much more about the history and culture. In the case of Tibetan Buddhism, it's also a bloody and unpleasant story, with all kinds of degeneration, also of religious nature. It would be naive to expect that one religion would be magically devoid of these.

For example, the famous yogi Drukpa Kunley sings about nuns who have sex, and then, ashamed, bury their newborn so that the walls of the monastery are filled with their corpses. Similar things were happening everywhere. Nevertheless, this has nothing to do with the essence of the religion, which in the case of Tibetan Buddhism is Dzogchen and Mahamudra, and which can be practiced without any monasteries, complex rituals, and other elements of Tibetan culture.

TACIXAT• 8 years ago

This is very similar to what happens to Daoism. You have this rich esoteric tradition, a monastic and religious tradition, and people in the west labeling it a philosophy. Since I practice esoteric Daoist meditation I'm interested in other traditions. I've heard cool things about Tibetan Buddhist practices, but as the article said, it's really difficult to find the esoteric stuff in English.

Not your Tibetan Buddhism

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