Have you ever wondered why some of the people who follow teachers in ancestral Buddhist communities, and their ‘traditional’ teachings, loathe secular Buddhism and secular Buddhists, at times with a palpable feeling of distaste that clearly is not rational? I know I have.
These will be people who have accepted some (but not all of) the broad range of Buddhist truth claims without questioning. Here, for instance, is one of the rules that was spotted in a list pasted onto the wall of a Goenka-style vipassanā retreat centre in India:
Associate professor of psychology at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, Danny Osborne, examines the causes and consequences of inequality. Writing on the reasons that some people follow authority figures in Scientific American recently, he suggested that:
Authoritarian followers share three tendencies: they obey authority figures from their in-group (called authoritarian submission); they punish rule breakers (authoritarian aggression); and they rigidly endorse long-held traditions (conventionalism).
This brought to mind some of the adherents of ancestral, traditional Buddhist communities that I’ve come across over the years. Is it reasonable to use Osborne’s description of authoritarian followers as one way to understand the criticisms, the shunning, that secular Buddhists and secular Buddhism receive from other Buddhist tendencies?
At an event in Melbourne
Described as a ‘secular vipassanā group’ by Hartmut Veit during the introduction, Melbourne Insight Meditation brought together Ajahn Brahmali from Bodhinyana monastery, Perth, and Stephen Batchelor in February 2014 to debate the relevance of early Buddhist texts in the modern world.
Near the start of his opening statement, Brahmali offered this binary proposition: that ‘a gulf was opening’ up between secular Buddhism on the one hand, and traditional Buddhism on the other’. And the thing is, by traditional Buddhism he didn’t just mean the organisation he adhered to, but all the other Buddhist tendencies. Whatever happened to the middle way, I wondered‽
He went on to draw a line between what Buddhism is, and what it isn’t. ‘We have so much in common’, Brahmali said. He then went through some of the aspects of the world view of his dharma community that he said were among the core shared ideas of all Buddhists. Among these, said that ‘the texts of the Pali canon … is essentially the word of the Buddha’. Really‽ Is this the view of Zen, Chan or Sŏn practitioners? Or Tibetan, or Mongolian Buddhists?
Another essential element Brahmali proclaimed was belief in rebirth, ‘the fact there is another life after this one’, with the purpose of practice being to achieve awakening, as a result of which a practitioner would suffer no more rebirths. He was very passionate, making it clear that we need to take this teaching seriously.
Stephen Batchelor responded by describing Buddhism as an historical phenomenon, a response to particular human situations. As practitioners, we need to acknowledge that the worldview we have today is as much informed by the natural sciences and other philosophical, cultural and social developments as it is by historical texts.
The richness and power of the early Buddhist tradition brings with it a repository of teachings, he stated. Interpretation is unavoidable, an ongoing task. We need an understanding of the historical circumstances of which these texts were a record. Gotama, the Buddha, responded to the needs of his audience. For us in the twenty-first century, wherever we are, we need to develop a historical critical analysis of the texts in the Pali canon, applying the skills of philology as well as critical thought.
As a human being who suffers, we ask what it means to be human. Our engagement with these ideas create a living tradition, one that is in an ongoing conversation with the past. ‘A dead tradition,’ according to Batchelor, ‘is one that just keeps on repeating what has been handed down over the centuries, intent on preservation, but rather suspicious and perhaps even rather threatened by interpretations that don’t accord with the traditional view.’ This was a formulation set out in Alasdair McIntyre’s 1981 book After Virtue.
Instead of attacking what he felt Brahmali might believe or practise, Batchelor attempted to look for common ground between secular Buddhism and ancestral traditions. ‘Secular Buddhism is a work in progress, an idea that some of us have found helpful’, he stated, not just a crude opposition to religion (which is how the word secular is conventionally used), but something of this age, of this time. ‘I do not see a contradiction between the words religious and secular’, he said. Religion is not about adopting certain religious beliefs, the emphasis on beliefs being a feature of the Christian world; it is ‘that about which we are ultimately concerned.’
Interestingly, the debate was supposed to have been held in the Buddhist Society of Victoria’s centre in Malvern East, Melbourne. While this organisation purports to be open to all forms of Buddhism, they demand that any lay teacher must in writing affirm the truth of rebirth and the superiority of monastics over lay people before they can be allowed to offer teachings. (See its policy statement, clauses 4 and 6.) When Stephen Batchelor refused to sign such a document, and it looked like the meeting might have to be cancelled, Melbourne Insight Meditation arranged for the debate to take place in the Augustine Center in Melbourne city.
Here’s the recording of their debate, and the discussion that followed.
How do you feel about this conversation? You can if you wish leave your thoughts in the comments below.
I would suggest that some Buddhist monastics are not actually practising the dharma – Gotama’s teachings – that much. What they are practising is the vinaya – the monastic rule for ordained Buddhist monks and nuns that was developed gradually from thirteen years after the Buddha’s awakening. For them, a good life and ultimate transcendence springs from meticulously following the rules.
Meanwhile, back in Wellington
In 2010, Wellington Insight Meditation Community (WIMC), which I was involved with at the time, discussed joining the New Zealand Buddhist Council (NZBC). In the end we didn’t apply to join since some of the members of the WIMC committee were strongly opposed to paying a fixed subscription fee to be part of a Buddhist organisation, rather than being able to offer support for it as dana.
Also, what amused my secular Buddhist sensibilities at the time was that for an organisation to become an NZBC full member, it needed to be an incorporated body, and a charity registered the NZ Charities Commission. This prevented Secular Buddhism in Aotearoa New Zealand (SBiANZ), an informal network of spiritual friends that I was also involved in, from taking up full membership.
Keen, though, to contribute to the life of the Council and to help promote awareness of the dharma in Aotearoa New Zealand, SBiANZ applied for associate membership as a ‘Buddhist individual’. NZBC ignored the fact that this was not a ‘Buddhist individual’ and the application, I am pleased to report, was accepted.
Actually, that’s not all it was necessary for everyone to ignore. To become a full member, an organisation or individual was asked to declare that they were either Theravada, Mahayana, or Vajrayana. No ‘Other’ category was available.
We made the point to the Buddhist Council that if they were to operate as a representative organisation in twenty-first century Aotearoa New Zealand, they needed to make room for ‘Others’ among their categories of Buddhist organisations. In time, the category ‘Other’ did become available.
Given the opportunity to write something in the ‘Other’ box, what would you have written in place of Theravada, Mahayana or Vajrayana? What I came up with was Aniccayana – The way of impermanence. Could this perhaps be the way of a creative, secular dharma – or one of the many ways?
Another possibility we discussed at the time, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, was Kiwiyana. The word Kiwiana (without a y) usually conjures up images of buzzy-bees, Swanndris and hokey-pokey, so might our claim to be a Kiwiyana community have raised the profile of secular Buddhism in this country?
Returning to Danny Osborne’s Scientific American article, it would appear that he had the current US president in mind with his conclusion that:
Democracy rarely falls at the hands of a single individual. Rather it dies through the complacency and obedience of otherwise well-intentioned authoritarian followers. We must help them follow their better angels. As the historian Timothy Snyder has warned, ‘Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.’
How far could this go towards explaining the reasons why some people follow dharma teachers who demand obedience?
Biography
Ramsey Margolis has had an interest in secular Buddhism since reading Stephen Batchelor’s ‘12 Theses on Secular Buddhism’ in 2005. Ramsey ran Wellington’s first course on secular Buddhism in 2007, and currently serves Tuwhiri in the role of publisher.
