Not being in the magic circle

I have discovered that if you are not in the magic circle of prosaic Buddhism where Buddhism is almost, as a rule, wrongly interpreted, your audience can be quite small (scholars are included).  I mean who wants to read stuff about the strong parallels between Jainism and early Buddhism that Hajime Nakamura writes about?  Perish the thought that there is not that much fundamental difference between these two religions when it comes to nirvana, for example.  Or, on another note, who wants to learn that the Buddha's ideas about karma and rebirth were strictly his own?

"What I am talking about, monks, I have heard from no other recluse or brahman; and moreover what I am talking about is known only by me myself, seen by myself, discerned by myself" (M. iii. 18).

I could go on and on with passages from the Pali canon that undermine the common, everyday view of Buddhism.  As the readers of this blog are aware, I have devoted a lot of ink to taking down the assumption that the Buddha denied the self or âtman.  He taught, instead, that we are not to regard the psychophysical body as our self.

A lot of prosaic Buddhism’s problems stem from arrogance or atimâna which is tied up with Western culture’s still traceable colonialist attitude.  Atimâna, more specifically, is the psychological condition of thinking others beneath itself and of a superior, thinks it is equal.  This attitude is reflected in the Western development of Buddhism: the pop or prosaic interpretation of Buddhism, which is found in most of the published literature on Buddhism.

Because of the force of atimâna, Buddhism gets twisted around and reshaped into something, perhaps, resembling Eckhart Tolle’s spiritual teaching that, supposedly, is better able to transform human consciousness by transcending the ego-based state of consciousness.  But the Western notion of “ego” is not found in Buddhism.  It is not in the Vedas or the Upanishads, either.  The ‘I’ or ‘self’ is not the bad guy.  The first-person (âtmam) is the one who takes refuge; who undertakes the path; whose goal is to transcend the psychophysical body (the five skandhas of material shape, feeling, perception, habitual tendencies, and consciousness); who personally realizes by doing so, nirvana. 

Not living in the magic circle of prosaic Buddhism certainly has its negatives but it has some positives.  For example, I am better able to see where Buddhism is screwed up and where it is not.  I can see that a psychological and moral grasp of Buddhism is a waste of time.  I can see that having a mind free of presuppositions and prejudices is a must if one is to engage with authentic Buddhism found in the Buddha’s discourses. 

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[minx]

My master told me;

"The hungry ghost of self-deception is born from the poisoned womb of fear.

Fear has a myriad faces. Some are great and dark as space itself and some are small as a grain of sand on a sunny beach. Some are crude and raw and then others are most subtle and dangerously enchanting.

Each day you fail to know your true self, your true nature, you will meet one such face of fear and it will decide your fate where the declined light of Nirvana were not allowed to."