Don't Be Buddha

There is a fundamental paradox at the heart of all self-improvement work: You’re perfect just the way you are, but you could use a little improvement.

            Whether you categorize your self-improvement process as spiritual, religious, secular, psychological, or some combination thereof, the fact remains – something about the way you’re living your life isn’t quite right. You’re stuck in self-defeating cycles. Bad habits keep tripping you up. You’re tired of being angry or afraid or sad all the time. There’s a pervasive sense that the sweet stuff of life is just out of reach and you don’t know how to bridge the chasm. In a word, you’re unhappy.

            And yet you know intuitively that the worst thing you could do is indulge in the downward spiral of self-loathing, the false idea that you’re not good enough, and that you’re broken beyond repair. This kind of negative thinking only throws gasoline on the embers of your despair and helplessness. And upon deeper analysis, self-loathing may be yet another symptom of debilitating self-obsession. Life thrives only where there is love. A healthy, humble dose of self-love heals us from within.

            Teachers and models help. They embody and demonstrate for us the self-discipline, wise choices, and best practices that lead to increasing wellness. If we are willing to be led, teachers lead us toward our best life. In the same way we seek out expertise when we need our hair cut, our car repaired, or our taxes done, so too with maladies of the spirit we seek out discipline-experts who’ve devoted their lives to the soul-healing arts. They know more than we do not because they’re better than us, but because while we were doing other things, they were doing that. Practice may not make perfect, but it does make experts.

            But what should our relationship with our teachers be? This is where it gets tricky.

            Confucius said, “I give a student one corner. If they can’t bring back the other three, I stop teaching,” a profound statement about the teacher-student dynamic if there ever was one. Wisdom can never be packaged and delivered from one person to another. The best a teacher can do is provoke. The student has to do almost all of the work.

            And then there’s this – the dangers of devotion loom large. In the practice of psychotherapy it’s called transference. As the patient feels the fog of neurosis lift they erroneously transfer their elation from the process to the person. But it’s not about the practitioner – it’s about the practice. This is a dire occupational hazard for every healer, minister, guru, therapist, and teacher. Many a teacher and student have fallen prey to the seduction of this delusion. Did even Jesus struggle with transference?

            In chapter 13 of the Gospel of Thomas Jesus asked his disciples to define him.

“You are like a just messenger,” said Simon Peter.

 “You are like a wise philosopher,” Matthew said.

Then it was Thomas’s turn. “Teacher,” Thomas said, “my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like.”

            “I am not your teacher,” Jesus said. “Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended.”

            Is Jesus the tender of the bubbling spring, or the spring itself? In this metaphor Jesus is not the water, he is the groundskeeper, maintaining a clear channel through which the life-giving water of wisdom can move. His role is to clear blockages and provoke us into openness. This interpretation is clearly out of step with mainstream Christian orthodoxy where we are called into a devotional relationship with Jesus. In traditional Christianity Jesus is the spring, not its tender. Still the deeper question remains: what’s more important, the message or the messenger?

            For both Confucius and Jesus, the onus is on the student to get it right. And for both of them, teachers are initially essential, but ultimately expendable. For Jesus, “the kingdom of heaven” is within us. It is not to be received second-hand from another, but discovered within and realized. No teacher could give it or take it away.

            As a well-educated Jew, Jesus had his mentors too. But if Jesus had conformed perfectly to his teachers and their traditional practices, there would be no Jesus, and no Christianity to boot. Wisdom requires breaking rank with authorities.

            The same holds true for Buddha, the 5^th century B.C.E Indian teacher. Born into the ancient tradition of Hinduism, he studied under many gurus and was well-schooled in the wisdom of the Vedas and the science of yoga. But if Buddha had conformed to the demands of his teachers he would never have become the Buddha, and there would be no Buddhism. Great minds don’t follow, they lead.

            Both Jesus and Buddha were shaped by their respective religious traditions. Then they abandoned them. Instead of obedience to others, they obeyed the unimpeachable authority of their own experience. They had the guts to go it alone and trust that Brahman, God, or the universe spoke most clearly through the sound of their own voice.

            It is in this spirit that the 17^th century Japanese Zen poet Basho wrote, “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise men of old, rather, seek what they sought.”

            So too the Sufis, the mystics of Islam, challenged the elders. They were not content to follow Muhammad – they wanted to be Muhammad; to experience directly the divine as he had.

            Mainstream religions are sometimes described as elaborate institutions constructed around someone else’s religious experience, someone who lived long, long ago. What if we respected, or even revered the teachers of the past, but then went out and had our own spiritual experiences? Buddha didn’t follow anybody. Jesus didn’t follow anybody. Muhammad didn’t follow anybody. Maybe we shouldn’t either.

            In spiritual circles there’s even a thing called the no-guru movement where one abandons all paths, teachers, and teachings. But the “pathless path” has its dangers. If you rely solely on your own experience, with no checks and balances from teachers or a trusted community, you’re vulnerable to confirmation bias and other cognitive errors. Once again, Buddha’s middle path comes to mind. Wary of his student’s propensity for devotional adoration, Buddha said, “Be lamps unto yourselves.” But he also offered a method, a path.

But don’t try to be Buddha. Be yourself. “Imitation is suicide,” Emerson wrote. “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.”

            In an old Hassidic tale, Rabbi Zusya was worried that when he got to heaven God would be disappointed in him because he hadn’t been as great as Moses, or David, or Solomon. When Rabbi Zusya finally stood before the Almighty, God's only question was, “Why were you not Zusya?”

The Golden Rule

[This article first appeared in the July/August 2013 edition of Unity Magazine and is reproduced here with permission.]

“One going to take a pointed stick to poke a baby bird should first

try it on himself to feel how it hurts.” – Yoruba proverb, Nigeria

Everyone knows the golden rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  A quick Google search gives you all the examples you need.  In one form or another the golden rule is found in all religions and ethical philosophies.  Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and beyond – all the world’s sages sing the one song of our inherent interconnectedness and our sacred duty to treat others as ourselves.

The golden rule begins in empathy and ends in right action.  First we must understand our identity with others and the mutually binding interests we share.  With this fundamental understanding in place the foundation is set – we are now free to act in accord with our principles, knowing that our actions co-create our highest good.  Right action is not born from self-interest but from a broader, more universal awareness of the good, an impulse grounded in the insight that I cannot thrive while my brothers and sisters are not thriving.  When we serve others our own interests are served, automatically and indirectly.  This is what the Dalai Lama meant when he said, “Considering the interests of others is clearly the best form of self-interest.” 

The simplicity of the golden rule heightens its appeal.  Properly followed, it renders all other rules moot.  In Confucianism the virtue of shu or reciprocity calls us to be aware of the impact we have others.  “What is hateful to you,” Confucius said, “do not do to others.” Every transgression would be prevented by the proper application of this simple maxim. If we saw our selves through the eyes of others, our words and actions would naturally soften and grow more compassionate. 

In an uncanny parallelism from the Talmud, Rabbi Hillel says, “What is hateful to you, do not do to others.  This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.” It’s as if the golden rule contains in encapsulated form all of the learned complexity of the world’s voluminous ethical and religious codes.  Even St. Augustine, a staunch teacher if there ever was one, leaves us with a simple task, reducing Christian ethics to a seven word motto: “Love God and do what you will.”  By calling for all thought and action to be rooted in a condition of consciousness in which one is lovingly aligned with God, Augustine bypasses all of the intellectual hand-wringing and second guessing that commonly plagues ethical reasoning and gets right to the heart of the matter – a child-like state where right-action and kindness flow like water.  When you begin with love for what is right and true, your actions will fall into accord with what is right and true, and the people will prosper.

The golden rule is not information.  It’s a reminder.  It calls us back to our higher natures, our inherent kindness and our commitment to affirm the infinite value of all sentient beings.  It’s simple enough for a child to understand, yet deep enough to occupy the most skillful philosophers for millennia.  It stands like an ancient monument, yet it’s perennially fresh and invites us in anew moment by moment.  And its universality points to a possibility – that regardless of the wide variety of surface inflections and cultural diversity found in the world’s wisdom traditions, there is an underlying commonality in the human experience that transcends time and culture.  We are far more alike than different.  Our unity is affirmed by our universal values.

We all carry the golden rule within us.  Whether we attune to it or not is another matter.  We are free to ignore it any time we want, and follow instead the dictates and longings of our endless woundedness.  But when we come back to our sacred core we feel once again the inherent wellness of our hearts, and know that we are safe, and that there is always enough.  Only then do we dare to love and be loved, falling into the arms of a truth unbound by space and time – the law of our own infinite value.  And with new eyes we immediately see that all the blessed others around us share in this infinite stance, this infinite abundance.  It is from here that the golden rule makes perfect sense.  We wouldn’t have it any other way.  

Are All Religions the Same?

Mystics of all traditions have long held that the doors of the world’s numerous religions open into one room. “The Truth is one,” says the ancient Rig Veda, “though the sages call it by many names.” For Joseph Campbell, the endless masks of God hide the one face. And today, a thriving interfaith movement seeks new ways to embolden this ancient dream of unity. What if we are moving into a post-religious age, where our theologies and doctrines dissolve into one? When asked about his religion the Dalai Lama famously replied, “I don’t have a ‘religion’. My religion is kindness.” What if it’s just that simple?

But it’s not that simple. It’s one thing to imagine and intend a bright ecumenical future where all religious disputes are laid to rest. Creating such a world, on the other hand, is a tall order. Mystics, with their dreams of oneness and universal love are invariably heretics within their own traditions. There is considerable push-back from the mainstream which sees mysticism as a threat to its autonomy – a threat it is often willing to meet with force. Jesus wasn’t the only one killed for claiming God-consciousness.

Sometimes in our zeal to find the underlying unity beneath all faiths we overlook important differences – differences that deeply impact the lives of billions of people and shape civilizations. Religion does as much to divide us as it does to unify us. Without first confronting the fundamental differences between the world’s religions we cannot move past them. Denial and ignorance never solved anything.

Let’s look at three central questions and explore how the world’s religions have traditionally answered them. But before we do, a word of caution is in order: sweeping generalizations are dangerously misleading because they obscure the natural diversity of thought found within every religion. Saying “all Catholics belief this” or “all Muslims believe that” distorts the truth by rubbing smooth the complex and multifaceted array of positions found within any faith community. Nevertheless, generalizations, if used lightly and provisionally, help us begin the process of deepening and clarifying our thinking about the world’s religions.

Who or what is God?

Joseph Campbell made a useful distinction. In the religions that originated east of Iran, ultimate reality is generally understood as an immanent, impersonal energy within everything whereas west of Iran, ultimate reality is understood as a transcendent being, a personified entity above and outside the created world. This fundamental distinction would have far-reaching effects.

In Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism this immanent source is known as Brahman, Buddha-consciousness and Dao, a reality beyond all concepts and definitions – the mystery behind the masks. All existence, including the gods, flows from this ultimately nameless source. In Hinduism this is particularly apparent. The many gods of the Indian pantheon are part of the created world, not its ultimate cause.

West of Iran a very different understanding of God or ultimate reality emerged out of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Here, God attained personhood and stands above and outside the created world. We are not manifestations of God-consciousness; He is the creator and we are merely creatures. This fundamental dualism shapes all of the other elements of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic worldview.

In the fundamentally non-dualistic eastern worldview the spiritual path is comprised of realizing one’s unity with this divine source, a realization covered over by ignorance. God-discovery is, in a very real sense, self-discovery. The purpose of religion and spirituality in the east is to awaken us to who and what we really are.

In the western traditions the spiritual path is one of obedience to a set of divinely revealed doctrines, beliefs and practices designed to bridge the chasm between us and a distant God, a God who cares, but a God who we have exiled through disobedience.

Another important difference between east and west involves the issue of inclusion and exclusion. If all is one as the eastern view claims, then we can realize Oneness through any number of means just as a summit can be reached from many different directions. No paths are excluded. If, however, there is only one tribe or creed the transcendent God favors, then joining the right religion becomes a matter of eternal life or death.

Understanding God as the divine Ground of Being within us and all things leads to one particular vision of human nature and human purpose. Understanding God as a personified deity outside the created world and ourselves as profane, disconnected products of that God leads to another.

What is a human being and what is our purpose?

In the western view, a human being is a mixed bag – made in God’s image yet terribly limited at the same time. Higher than the animals, lower than the angels, we are here to live as best we can in accord with God’s love and fulfill our divine appointment with as much dignity as we can muster given the mixed qualities of our nature. Jewish law, Islamic law and the guidelines of Christianity set the boundaries of authorized behavior. Obedience is rewarded and defiance punished. All three western faiths share the notion that we are called to be co-creators with God, working diligently for the good including practicing wise stewardship of the earth and its resources. Sacred service – giving our time, talent and energy for the good of others – is our highest purpose. When we participate in the healing of the world we are the hands of God.

Traditional, mainstream Christianity holds that because of our sinful nature we are adrift in self-imposed exile from God. All of the descendents of Adam and Eve carry within them an internal, irreparable flaw. We can’t think our way out of it, will our way out of it or wish it away. The only thing that can restore our severed connection to God is God’s grace. For Catholics this grace is accessed through membership in the Church and willing participation in its sacraments. For Protestants this grace is accessed through faith, belief and adherence to the word of God as recorded in the Bible. In Christian thought, thinking that you can “save yourself” is a grievous sin: pride. Without a relationship with the Christian God and adherence to Christianity’s codes, all is lost.

On the other hand, there is no doctrine of original sin in Judaism or Islam (or in Mormonism for that matter). In these faiths sin is understood as an event, not a condition; a lapse in judgment resulting in a violation of God’s law, not a genetic inevitability. This view of sin was also found in the early Christian church and advocated by some bishops like Pelagius, a British contemporary of Augustine who today is known mostly as the namesake of the Pelagian heresy. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin won the day and became Christian dogma. Pelagius and his followers were condemned and drummed out of the Church.

In the eastern view the nature and purpose of humanity is understood quite differently. If all is one, then every aspect of creation is an expression of the Divine, especially human beings with their capacity for reflection and self-awareness. The fact that most human beings are utterly unconscious or asleep to this fact in no way diminishes its veracity. Closing one’s eyes does not make the sky go away.

The tension in eastern religion is between ignorance and wisdom, not sin and salvation. We do not need to be “saved”, we need to be awakened. Buddha devoted his life to teaching a very effective awakening process, and countless gurus in the Hindu tradition did the same. In the great classic of Indian spirituality the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna teaches Arjuna a variety of methods for seeing past the illusory separateness of surface perception to the underlying unity of divine reality. We can attain this unitive wisdom through selfless action, through devotion and love, through study and through meditation, depending on one’s individual proclivities and preferences. The point is to awaken to who and what we really are and live authentically from our inner being, leaving behind the ignorance of our former lives, bound as they were by karma and the repetitive cycles of conditioned thinking. Shifting our identity from the surface ego in perpetual conflict with everyone and everything to the divine inner Self frees us from ignorance and opens us up to a life of compassion and joy.

What happens when we die?

Just as distinctly different philosophies of life emerge from the world’s religions, so too distinctly different philosophies of death chip away at our lazy assumption that all religions are the same.

While the Hebrew Bible is nearly silent on the issue of life after death, later Judaism arguably absorbed the powerful influences of Christianity and Islam on this issue so that today, all three western faiths share a similar understanding of the life and death process. God created our souls at a certain point in time (we have not always existed as the Hindus claim), then He put us into a human body where we live one life. At death our souls are judged and a determination is made regarding our eternal residency – cut off from God forever in hell, or basking forever in the beatific vision of God in heaven.

The eastern traditions are considerably more complex. In the Bhagavad Gita Arjuna learns from his teacher that death is not real. “There never was a time when you did not exist,” said Krishna, “nor will there ever be a time when you cease to exist.” The divine Self exists beyond time and space, beyond the duality of life and death, taking on many bodies in a lengthy succession of reincarnations. In the field of time everything flowers and fades, but beyond the temporal veil lay a vast changelessness. And that is where our true Self resides, whether we know it or not. Just as we cast off worn out clothes and put on new ones, so too we cast off these bodies and take on new bodies. The wise, said Krishna, see beyond the suffering of the physical realm to the implacable peace beneath all of these tumultuous processes. “All forms arise and all forms fade,” said the Buddha, and shifting our identity from the ephemeral flux characterized by craving and suffering to the underlying wisdom of Buddha-consciousness is the work all of sentient beings.

The urgency of the west, with its one life scenario and imminent divine judgment is entirely absent in the east. You have a long time to work out your wisdom. And no one needs to save anyone else.

These and many other differences between the world’s religions point out the difficulty in upholding a simplistic “all religions are the same” perspective. But what if beneath the cacophony of these very real and problematic conflicts a deeper stillness awaits? What if beneath these doctrinal variations a trans-rational, experiential reality stands ready to burn away all of our oh-so-interesting intellectual distinctions? Perhaps the Dalai Lama was right. Maybe it is simple.

Mystics of all traditions agree. Like white light through a prism, Truth splits into many colors when run through the prism of human understanding. A fundamental characteristic of wisdom then is the ability to see that behind all the conflicting truth claims lays a deep and unspeakable unity.

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This article was previously published in the March/April edition of Unity Magazine under the title "Religion: A to Zen", and is reproduced here by permission.