Something isn't right in Buddhism

There are times when you have to face the facts.  Something isn't right in Buddhism.  Many Buddhist writers I am familiar with, not to mention the bulk of the Buddhist public, don’t read much of the Pali canon or the Mahayana canon, enough to know what it actually contains (this includes Asians).  This is guessing, but I think their Buddhist reading list may only contain two discourses they’ve actually read such as the the Kalama Sutta and the Heart Sutra.  Of course there are others.  But these two seem to be the main ones. 

The first discourse, the Kalama Sutta, they interpret to mean, reject anything the Buddha said if you are uncomfortable with it, for example, rebirth and karma.  Turning to the Heart Sutra, it is interpreted to mean, in general, everything is basically nothing or the same, void.  This goes nicely with modernity’s long march towards nihilism which according to the Oxford English Dictionary means “An extreme form of scepticism, involving the denial of all existence.”

The popularity of these two Buddhist discourses tells us more about the modern ethos than Buddhism.  In fact, if this is all of the Buddhism someone has read, they don’t know much about Buddhism, especially about its mystical side, for lack of a better term.  In fact, the mystical side is really what Buddhism is all about or in the words of Bodhidharma, “The most essential method, which include all other methods, is beholding the mind” which is not our ordinary mind but is the very spiritual stuff of the universe.

I have noticed that most Buddhists stay away from any discussion about Mind.  It is what Kryptonite is to Superman!  Discussions about Mind are not in mainstream Buddhist literature and if it is, Mind is turned into awareness as if the discovery of awareness is some great advance in human evolution.

What all of this suggests to me is that the majority of Buddhists have an innate fear of undertaking introspection to the point where it is possible to penetrate through the veil of phenomena and immediately come into direct contact with Mind.  Naturally, these same Buddhists lump this up with ontology which is the study of reality in its ultimate nature which they then equate with metaphysics which is a no-no in Buddhism!  

Frankly, it is not surprising Buddhism is really getting no place these days.  In academia it does somewhat better.  Some Buddhist scholars are sincere seekers who love the subject.  But I can’t say this about the majority of Buddhists who really don’t want to think out of the box, let alone escape from the wheel of birth and death who believe that no such wheel actually exists; that when you die, that’s it.

 

Comments

[Joe]

Thank you! When I first started sitting with a Zen sangha in New Jersey in 2006, I was also reading Bhikkhu Bodhi's compilation of Pali Canon suttas grouped by theme (name escapes me), as well as the Dhammapada. The more I studied the Southert in tradition, the more pronounced became the reductions present in so-called Western Buddhism, which is more akin, in my opinion, to a gym membership for the mind, or a wellness tool, than a transcendent path which leads to the end of birth and death. (We Westerners don't talk much about rebirth either).