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by
Tara Carreon
Recently an email arrived informing me that new slanders
about Ambu were to be found at Damtsig.org, so I breathlessly made my way
there with flying fingers.
If You Meet the Buddha on the Web.
Jeez-Louise, what a sleaze. Assuming a professional pose, pretending to
wield a scalpel instead of his usual hatchet, Arch Stanton has presumed to
anatomize me and label me a cancer. While he flaunted his new medical
wardrobe, this "patient" experienced merely a disgusting invasion. If Arch
Stanton were a doctor, he'd be running a concentration camp infirmary with
a love for the final experiment on those too far gone to save. Applying
that technique to my case, he autopsied a living being, enjoying the
dissecting rather more than is wholesome, all for the benefit of science.
Still, I'll give the Doctor this much -- I'm plenty sick. And he's on the
right track when he diagnoses my condition as samaya-sickness. He's right
to worry about veering from the Vajrayana path in even the slightest
degree. It's very dangerous. You will experience a lot of suffering if you
deviate from the path. You may even kill yourself. You may experience a
form of PTSD, like recovering cultists experience every day in America,
because my situation is not unique. I share it with people who try to back
out of Hindu cults, Christian cults, and multi-level-marketing cults. The
survivor websites are out there, by the scores. American-Buddha is part of
a trend. Not very classy company, but the truth is tough.
The current brand of "believe or die" Vajrayana is a traditional American
extremist vehicle that bolsters its claim to legitimacy by digging into
the arcane, gothic traditions of medieval Tibetan clerics. As commonly
sold in the marketplace, this Vajrayana trades on its veneer of
"genuineness," but uses the same psychological enforcement mechanisms as
every other fundamentalist belief-cult. "Commit now and forever hold your
peace, lest God become wroth and turn his face against you." To Jerry
Falwell and Dr. Dodson, homosexuals are sick. To Dr. Stanton, it's people
who dare to study Tibetan Buddhism and disagree with him. For both, the
real manifestation of sickness is any conduct with which they disagree.
Thousands of Americans wake up daily to experience a crisis of faith. This
is because their faiths demand that they adopt doctrines that silence
intelligence, deny the obvious, and affirm views contrary to reason.
Buddhists try to obliterate dangerous questions by labeling them heresies.
The good doktor will cut out this evil growth -- your brain.
Dr. Stanton will show you how sinister this organ is. As the origin of
"reasonable doubt," it seems benign, even healthy, but if allowed to
overwhelm the organism's restraints, it ripens into the familiar demon --
Rudra. How gothic. Vajrayanists have predilections toward an authoritarian
regimen. Choices are starkly drawn and made forever, written in blood.
Trouble is all that lies ahead for the "vow breaker." Break out the scare
words. Take her to the oncology wards. Her growth is malignant. The
treatment cannot be benign. The doctor must amputate. At the neck.
Beware, lest you too end up in this ward, rolling motionless through
swinging doors on a gurney. The patient's mistake? Trying to go back,
freaking out in free-fall, a nostalgic desire for reason after having
opted for the truth of magic. It's sad, but true, says the doktor,
studying the charts, blowing a stream of smoke, and smoothing his lab coat
-- it's a one way street. Can't go back. But what kind of a truth is this?
Maybe it's like cancer and cigarettes -- they just go together.
So on Dr. Stanton's advice, all would-be Vajrayanoids should ask
themselves, "Am I ready to commit to success or seppuku? Can I say goodbye
to reason forever and make blind faith in robed wise men my only guide? Is
it possible I will someday want to do something different? Is it Dewachen
or bust?" Because it won't just be shock treatment and thorazine if you
change your mind. It's cancer. Of the brain.
Yes, Vajrayana Buddhism has to be handled like fissionable material,
because it'll blow you to vajra hell. Too bad the refugee lamas couldn't
afford lead coats and clean rooms when they left their mountain
installations. They issued suitcase nukes to everyone. And now all the
recipients are responsible for their own personally assured destruction.
Yep, I've got my own red phone in a psychological bunker. Like Dr.
Strangelove, I'm one of the elect. Every cult has its "elect," or it
wouldn't be a cult. Nobody joins a cult to be a member of the un-elect.
And every fraternity imposes penalties for not playing by the rules,
because that gives the whole adventure spice.
Knowledge that comes wrapped in secrecy has a debt of suspicion to dispel.
Truths, as the Founding Fathers noted in the Declaration of Independence,
have often been thought Self-Evident. Secret rituals, ear-whispered
teachings, gold changing hands -- are part of an old system of making
something valuable by making it scarce. The beauty of truth that you pay
for is that it fulfills all of your desires. It remakes your world in a
shape you have requested. With heavens, hells, the elect, the faithful,
and the damned.
Remember the bumper sticker? "I have given up the search for reality and
am now looking for a good fantasy." While not explicitly declaring the
first part, many American Vajra-cult-recruits are working hard on part two
of this declaration. Like Dr. Stanton's attending nurse, Nora Cameron,
they feel immeasurably enriched by their contact with Tibetan culture --
too thankful for words, really. Nurse Nora feels lucky she can hide in a
fantasy dreamed up by people free of the dull impediment of scientific
facts. It's a lot easier to believe that people are born from lotuses if
you also don't know anything about genetics. Nowadays, things are too well
known. Truth is actually so cheap that your parents give it to you free.
They feed you, send you to school, teach you that the planet is spherical
and the universe is expanding -- ho-hum. So much truth, but "still
something missing." What's missing is fantasy, mystery, a good fairy tale.
Enter the cult. Providing the answers, providing the connections.
Connections to the truth, the hallowed past, the wisdom of the ancestors,
the secrets of the ages. Like those old ads for the Rosicrucians,
promising disclosure of the secret mysteries, or the SRF yoga-by-mail
arrangement. A lifeline to Lhasa and Shangri La, a chance to hobnob with
the wise men from the east. Let's burn frankincense and mhyrr.
Or let's sacrifice some vow breakers in a blood ritual. Imprison them in a
triangular box and assault them with a ritual dagger. Clean up the temple
and expel the demons. Root out the heretics and purify the faith. Yeah,
the old ways! Then we know who's in and who's out, who's faithful and
who's in need of an auto da fe. A little session in the dungeon for the
good of the soul.
Dr. Stanton's compassion resembles that of a reform school director who
requires us, his young charges, to contemplate an electric chair to better
our sense of moral values. It might keep us from following evil paths, but
then again, it might sour our Cheerios right in our little tummy.
Signed out,
Against Medical Advisement,
Tara Carreon.
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