Where's the essence?

Popularizing secular Buddhism in the West has been effective for a number of reasons but one reason stands out the most.  Secularizing Buddhism is done for the purpose of stripping away its cultural facade while at the same time preserving Buddhism’s essence.  

Now while this sounds okay to the uncritical mind, I think what has ended up happening with secular Buddhism in the West is that the cultural trappings have been largely preserved, for example, the wearing of Japanese style robes, while what has been stripped away, over time, has been the very essence of Buddhism!

If the aforesaid is, in fact, true then Buddhism, over time, eventually becomes a product of cultural trappings, that is, a hodgepodge mainly of Asian cultural forms (dress, ceremony, etc.), which contain little if any of Buddhism’s original essence.  As for Buddhism’s essence, I would go so far as to speculate that, over time, this essence will have been replaced with some form of materialism or phenomenalism.   

I should also add that if there is any question as to what is the original essence of Buddhism, one need not look any further than Siddhartha’s awakening by which he became Buddha.  

“The Dharma obtained by me is profound, of deep splendor, difficult to see, difficult to understand, incomprehensible, having the incomprehensible as its scope, fine, subtle, the sense of which can only be understood by the wise” (Catusparisat Sutra). 

Following Siddhartha’s awakening, that is, becoming Buddha, his ministry was chiefly about teaching his most worthy followers (arya) how to awaken fully to what he, the Buddha, had previously awakened to.  Frankly, I don’t find secular Buddhism to be all that interested in what, exactly, Siddhartha’s Dharma was whereby he became awakened; a Dharma “which can only be understood by the wise.”  I have serious doubts that it had anything to do with bringing mindfulness and awareness into our everyday secular life which seems to be the practice of secular Buddhists. 

 

Comments

[emanuel]

Inevitably, focused and purified through many years of deep concentration and meditation, where the thin invisible thread of the spiritual is followed regressively until the shining doorstep of its source of first origin, we might one day stumble over a stone and realize in a flash of a moment, beyond the illusory and deadly veils of the temporal, that our own mind has its root in the Buddha Mind, the cosmic Mind, the great Mind of Brahman etc.

To compare the two as one and the same on the other hand, is (I believe) a grave mistake which can lead to many unpleasant errors. All so easy to create and so hard to overcome.

[emanuel]

For a person, blind since birth, talks about the light filled world of the seeing, carries no real value.