Modern Buddhism suffers from a strange form of narcissism

Modern Buddhists postulate a ‘quasi’ or ‘as if’ self which means they accept a false, temporary self that exists as long as the biological body exists, but not beyond.  This means that both the false self and the biological body with its brain are the same.  What is beyond the annihilation of both is not known or recognized by them.

Put differently, the modern Buddhist, fundamentally, believes they do not exist as real persons which would necessitate a survivable real self or ātman which they believe Buddhism denies.  Instead, because they do not exist as real persons (have a soul or ātman) they must be mere reflections that exist for a limited amount of time, not unlike the “Replicants” in the Ridley Scott film, Blade Runner (1982).

However, the modern Buddhist has a major problem with his or her belief.  It is, basically, a narcissistic problem.  This, I have hinted at in previous blogs, is connected with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, “The Story of Echo and Narcissus” in which Narcissus, because of his thirst, falls in love with his image in a pool of water not knowing that this image is totally empty.  It is only a reflection lacking any substance.  Still, the real Narcissus believes that the image in the pool of water is both real and desirous.  He does not know that to regain his self he must turn away from the image in the pool.  This turning away, breaks the identification process with the fatal image which if it continues causes, so the speak, the atrophy of his soul.

This brings up the Buddha’s real teaching that modern Buddhist don't understand; which does not deny a self or ātman but, as with the example of Narcissus, teaches us to abandon desire for whatever is not our self, namely, the empty, biological image we were reborn into!  Only then do we discover and return to our true self once the break is made. 

This is not unlike the real life story of neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor who suffered a massive stroke of the left hemisphere of the brain.  In an interview with Katy Koontz, Taylor revealed the following:

“The consciousness of my right brain did not recognize the boundaries of my body at all. The left parietal region of the brain, in what’s called the orientation association area, holds a holographic image of your body so that you know where you begin and where you end. When those cells went offline after the stroke, I no longer had that perspective. I felt as big as the universe! My body was attached to me, but I didn’t experience it as my essence. Instead, I was the collective whole, connected to everyone and everything—I was completely fluid. Our right brain doesn’t see the artificial division of individual bodies that the left brain places on us. We’re actually all energy. Our bodies are just energy compacted into a dense form.”

In Buddhism, the formation or compacting (saṅkhāra) into a dense form (sankhāta) is like the image of Narcissus in the pool of water.  It is also about our own conception and birth.  Unbeknown to us, the right hemisphere of the brain is the portal, you could say, where our true self is accessed.  The left hemisphere, on the other hand, holds the empty holographic image that we identify with as being who we are, and like Narcissus desire it greatly, especially, during the phase of youth when sexual passion runs high.  Our desire for this image and its world compels us to supply it, constantly, with what we imagine it needs.  This is the becoming of narcissism and all the psychopathology that goes with it.

I am suggesting Jill Bolte Taylor’s experience including what we know about the right hemisphere of the brain, is not outside of the ballpark of a mystical experience like Siddhartha had by which he became a Buddha.  And it may be the fact that all Buddhas have through meditation (dhyāna/samādhi) accessed the right hemisphere of the brain which leads, directly, to the absolute which is also a return to the universal/one self (P., ekamattā), not the countless moons in the water, but the one in the sky.

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[Tivra]

Why Corporations Want You to Shut Up and Meditate

Ron Purser’s new book McMindfulness examines how spiritual practices and self-care became tools for corporate compliance.

https://www.thenation.com/article/ron-parser-mcmindfulness-mindfulness-meditation-book-interview/

[n. yeti]

Within the open and entirely pure field of mind there is the limited or separated field of knowing in which impurities are known (not actually impurities but seen as such). This limited knowing, as I see it, functions in perfect conformity to conditions, taking the precise shape and assuming the aspect of the object known in perfect malleability. One doesn’t need a teacher or school to see this, it is quite possible to observe this on one’s own. Unfortunately today’s Buddhists are very stuck on the idea that there needs to be an external teacher of some kind from this or that established tradition, some lineage of some sort, and from this notion comes all kinds of confusion and being led astray from what it immediately and directly available to anyone without any kind of intervention by any holy man or rigid doctrine whatsoever – many of whom in this age are frankly charlatans. I feel it is a most immature attitude and very unfortunate.

When this function ceases, and no phenomenal marks are taken as references points for reality, it becomes possible to enter into direct cognition of this empty field in which there is nothing at all to speak of and no conditioned entity there to cognize it except what is of itself real – something quite impossible to describe even through abstraction though many have tried. In awareness of this unmoving, unchanging, immaculate and entirely empty reality, the appearance of phenomena – or “suchness” – then is recognized as having no ultimate distinction from this empty field. There are many specific samadhis referred to and various forms of supercognition which are described resulting from these concentrations/absorption, but I think it is clear the validity of such practices, at least in Zen, depend originally upon a sudden awakening to the basic nature of reality as it is. From that moment, phenomena can be grappled with and the work of liberation be taken on in the form of a “bodhisattva”, but in truth no bodhisattva exists except as a function of the vows by awakened beings to manifest within the phenomenal world to liberate all beings. Once understood, bodhisattvas are not bodhisattvas. All the senses operate without the senses operating. The relative is no longer in conflict with the absolute. Even the idea of attaining anything is seen as without validity from the word go.

The functioning of the skandhic system, described in great detail by Buddhist scripture, in which conditional reality is mistaken for absolute reality is also well established in Mahayana discourse. Paradoxically, there is the underlying unity of samsara and nirvana as revealed by the Lotus Sutra and others, and it is easy intellectually to fall into the trap of thinking that ordinary ignorance is the same as awakened cognition. All the more so when one is not aware that the sensory system and sense bases arise together with phenomena, and that these transient phenomena are not of themselves real but essentially mistaken cognition. And from this prison of mistaken cognition arises the sense of self as an entity or being interacting with an objective universe – essentially two objects, the self-contained bodily entity and the material universe in which it appears. This is the default condition of sentient beings – falsely associating the nature of experience with a self-existent universe and a self-existent cognitive-sensory body in which consciousness appears to reside. Neither has an unchanging nature and the continuous transformation of phenomena is eventually distressing to the sentient when that which was taken for the basis of reality ends and destruction or death occurs. This is not an abstract thing – it can be experienced by a simple austerity such as not eating for several days.