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by
Charles Carreon
Here I am, visiting the
Tibetan Wall of Silence. It's very quiet here, probably because of the
restless patrols of warrior monks with big sticks who threaten anyone who
hangs around. They absolutely take no lip, knowing of course that book
learning is not their forte, and they prefer not to engage on the enemy's
ground.
On the other side of the
Tibetan Wall of Silence, there is a great deal of chatter. Ceaseless
chatter, disputation, uncertainty, neurosis admitted, splayed out for
revelation. Among themselves, Buddhists are fulsome in their admissions of
spiritual defect. Rotten Buddhists, losers who can't practice, ass kissers
without real motivation. Just tell them a lama said those things about
them, and they'll agree it's all true. And it is. Nobody can win at the
game, and everyone pretends to have the painful problem of life sewed up,
like old Ram Dass, half-gorked by his spiritual exertions, probably unable
to admit that he's madder than hell under the assumed serenity. Yep,
they'll admit that in an encounter-type situation, or while doing a little
drinking with other Buddhists, but they will never admit it to the
opposition.
The opposition gets the
stony silence when start talking back to the preachers, criticising the
doctrine. Then everyone's perfect. They know why they're meditating, how
to meditate, and that it's working. They know the path, they are on it,
and they are making progress.
Of course, practicioners
have to tell themselves these things, because otherwise the tautological
engine would not run. Further, I believe we must all stoke our own fires
with self-encouragement and healthy pride. But self-derision is a
counter-force that can cause a painful mental split in the mind of the
devotee. Tara often reminds me of how much she feels injured by having
indoctrinated herself with frightful images and metaphors, and having to
overcome the threat of those self-erected icons.
Of course, the silent
Buddhists say, one must encourage oneself in the right path, the
doctrinally approved path, and that means being mindful of pitfalls to
spiritual growth. Sounds great, but guess what? Your little baby mind
inside your heart doesn't hear all your high flown reasoning. That little
baby mind just wants to know that it is safe, that it is good, that it is
not guilty, not threatened, and is loved. Question why we would feed our
mind a diet of cosmic-sized fears about multiple innumerable afterlives to
be spent in roaring furnaces or as wild beasts or as long-lived gods in
heavens unseen.
What did the person who was
the Buddha think about these cosmic conundrums, about the fear of the
afterlife? If you ask the Tibetans, of course, he knew very well that the
universe was exactly as the Tibetans now conceive it -- an amalgam of old
Vedic notions, interpreted using Chinese and Nepalese artisanship, and
infused with the strange macabre spirit of Mongolian herdsmen and their
wrathful gods of the howling wastelands of stone and ice. Because, of
course, on another plane, he had divinely appeared to do a Special Turning
of the Wheel of the Dharma in the Highest Heaven, attended by all the gods
and goddesses, gurus, vidyadharas, bodhisattvas and arhats from the ten
directions and three times. And the lamas of today are emanations of that
very Buddha. You better believe it.
Strange, of course, that not
a word of these extracurricular activities of the Buddha were ever
mentioned by him. He sat around telling stories about how, if you argued
with him about irrelevant details, you were like a guy stuck by a poison
arrow who refused to allow the physician to extract it until he learned
whether the arrow had been shot by an archer of his own caste. That guy,
obviously, is going to die, said the Buddha. So will you, if you waste
your time with stupid questions. That's a good rhetorical trick, and has
since shut up generations of philosophers, but I never heard that they got
enlightened.
Of course, that's another
thing the Buddhists talk a lot about among themselves, but never with
outsiders. Who is enlightened? Among themselves, there's lots of mutual
back-scratching until the competition for students gets hot. Then they let
their hair down. They admit that the titles are all inflated, and no one
on the market right now can teach you much of anything deep, because they
don't know it. But over here, on the other side of the wall, they claim
there's lots of enlightened people, some in Tibet. And of course, the
really great teachers "aren't interested in teaching Westerners." (Said
Alan Wallace)
If you take that deeper, and
you ask, "What does it mean to be enlightened?" you encounter even more
division. People in the press and publishing ask what "Buddhists" believe.
Well hell, they believe more crazy shit than Christians, Moslems, and
Scientologists all put together, and of course they're not much more in
agreement. Buddhists have blasted each other as heretics since the early
days, and taken it quite as seriously as Rome took the Christian problem
during that backward pre-Christian Italian era. The Gelukpa takeover of
the Kagyu monasteries using Mongolian thugs, and their subsequent
ascendance to theocratic dominance, is a good example.
The Nyingmas, of course,
remember very well that the Gelukpas have been praying to Shugden for
their demise for centuries, and that their Dzogchen doctrine was a
prosecutable heresy in their homeland, and the only reason the Geluks
don't string them up right now for defiling the Dharma is because this
isn't Tibet, and the Geluks need to make nice.
Tibetan Buddhists disagree
bitterly on what constitutes the path to Enlightenment, and on what
Enlightenment is. But again these disputations are never heard beyond the
Wall of Silence. Instead they stick to the positive, and allow the Dalai
Lama's bland formulations of goodness to pass for the doctrine itself. In
truth, of course, most Tibetan Buddhists who are at all well-initiated are
looking for much stronger stuff than the Dalai Lama's one-size-fits-all
feel-goodism.
And what does the average
fool Buddhist do with this plethora of clashing opinions? Do they try to
sort it out? Do they compare doctrines, ask their teachers why they
disagree with other Buddhists, and demand some explanation of the
purported unity behind the obvious multiplicity? No, they don't. They
blame themselves for lacking faith, and they numb themselves with service
and activity, and/or try to silence that dreadful "monkey mind" that gives
them no rest. And all they really want is a banana.
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