A few years ago the journalist and author John Horgan wrote an record about his personal exploration of Buddhism, and the unfavorable view of Buddhist convention and philosophy that he had "regretfully" arrived at. Mr. Horgan, who as a writer specializes in covering the world of science, is also well-versed on the branch of spiritual enlightenment, having written an perfect book on what cutting-edge science has to say about the quest for transcendental experiences. Having read a couple of his books, and having a high understanding of him as both a writer and a person, when I recently chanced upon his record on Buddhism I was naturally keen to learn what understanding he had formed.
Even though I don't literally wear the label "Buddhist", my reasoning and spiritual convention has a great deal in base with inescapable Buddhist schools of thought. And I've always had the top regard for dedicated Buddhist practitioners. So I felt a miniature disappointed and defensive when I read some of Mr. Horgan's critical thoughts. It's not that his thoughts, per se, took me by surprise. Some of his pet peeves against Buddhism are literally pretty superior criticisms. Criticisms that chauvinistic and racist Western opponents of Eastern religions first began to voice way back in the late 19th century. But Mr. Horgan is not a racist, a cultural imperialist, or a closed-minded fundamentalist type. The fact that he can still entertain such critical views about Buddhism means that they need to be taken seriously, and thoughtfully addressed by both "card-carrying" Buddhists, and sympathizers such as myself.
To take on that task here, I'll touch on each of the points he makes against Buddhist beliefs and practice, in the order they occur in his article. The first point that he makes is that Buddhism is "functionally theistic". That the doctrines of karma and reincarnation imply "the existence of some cosmic judge who, like Santa Claus, tallies up our naughtiness and niceness" to resolve our next incarnation.
Although, personally, I don't subscribe to the philosophy of reincarnation, I find this first annotation to be fairly weak. Reading a trust in a man-upstairs kind of deity into the theories of karma and reincarnation is obviously a effect of our tendency to anthropomorphize, to explain the impersonal as personal, to think in terms of humanlike persons acting as agents behind natural troops and processes. Of course, the tendency to think in terms of a big-guy-in-the-sky God who micromanages the universe from the covering is also a legacy of two thousand years of Western religious training. Mr. Horgan seems to be branch to these two tendencies. But the Buddha, and many Buddhist denominations are absolutely not.
What's more, it naturally does not logically and necessarily effect from the understanding of karma that there must be a supernatural "cosmic judge" who makes sure that karmic law always serves up justice to us. I'm not going to go off on a digression here, and survey the reasoning of great Hindu and Buddhist philosophers who've endeavored to explain how karma might possibly work without the micromanagement of a judgmental Jehovah. It will have to suffice here to say that some fantastic Eastern minds have in fact provided alternate explanations.
So, Buddhists are not literally guilty of dodging the "theistic implications" of their trust in karma and reincarnation. A Buddhist does not need to be intellectually dishonest with her/himself to avoid these supposed implications. She/he merely needs to subscribe to one of the alternate explanations.
Mr. Horgan next offhandedly reduces nirvana to the Buddhist counterpart to the Christian Heaven. This is a remarkable reduction, inspecting the multitude of glaring differences between the Buddhist understanding of a blissful state of liberation, and the Western religious hope of "pie in the sky". Mr. Horgan does mention that we don't have to die to enjoy nirvana, but he thoroughly glosses over the rest of the distinction between the two paradises. Webster's defines heaven as "the dwelling place of the Deity and the blessed dead", and "a spiritual state of everlasting communion with God". Nirvana fits neither definition. It's not a supernatural place or realm, where a deity resides. And, as Horgan concedes, you don't have to be deceased to get there. Neither is nirvana a state of communion with an otherworldly God.
Nirvana is naturally a transcendentally calm and contented way of experiencing reality that we graduate into by diligently practicing the internal discipline that the Buddha taught. It's the supreme internal stability, strength, and serenity that results when we fully emancipate ourselves from our drug-addict-like enslavement to the cravings and demands of the "ego". Needless to say, this is not exactly what the Christian churches understand by the word heaven!
There are, however, a couple of ways in which nirvana does literally loosely look like the Christian Heaven. For example, like manufacture it into Heaven, nirvana is an ideal spiritual goal to aspire to. And just as we must be virtuous boys and girls to reach heaven, practicing good ethical guide is an important part of the Noble Eightfold Path to nirvana. But this is where the similarities end. There's miniature else to explain dissing nirvana as merely "Buddhism's version of heaven".
Having disparaged the goal of Buddhism by comparing nirvana to Heaven, Mr. Horgan then proceeds to try to discredit the reasoning discipline Buddhists use to reach their spiritual goals. He points up the fact that there's scientific research that calls the benefits of meditation into question. He grants that meditation can sell out stress, but emphasizes that it can also sometimes worsen clinical depression and anxiety.
Sure, meditation is a remarkable tool, and as is the case with any power tool it can cause injury. Especially in the hands of habitancy who have miniature training in how to properly use it. But the effectiveness of meditation as a means to achieving both inner peace and enlightenment is supported by abundance of what scientists dismissively call "anecdotal evidence". What scientific researchers pooh-pooh as "anecdotal evidence" of the value of meditation is what non-scientists would call impressive examples that go to show that when done correctly meditation is well worth any risks that might be involved.
As for Mr. Horgan's claim that meditation is no more useful for decreasing stress than just sitting and stilling ourselves, apparently he doesn't appreciate that just sitting and being still is the essence of some forms of meditation. And that the stress-reducing effect of sitting quietly may then, somewhat ironically, literally go to prove the value of meditation for our reasoning health.
Mr. Horgan then segues into questioning the spiritual insights rendered unto Buddhist meditators by their contemplative practices. In particular, he has a question with the philosophy of anatta. Anatta is the Buddhist view that there's no such metaphysical item as a "soul". No such thing as the separate, solid, central reasoning entity called the "self". Anatta is nothing less than the Buddha's basic inspiration that the "self" is just a process, the ongoing byproduct of the interaction of dissimilar reasoning activities. As opposed to what's called a "homunculus", a teeny, tiny miniature man in our heads who does all our reasoning and experiencing.
Horgan points out that contemporary brain science does not exactly retain the denial of the existence of a self. This is quite true. But if we're going to rely on what science has to say on the branch we can't aggressively dispute the philosophy of anatta, either. Because although contemporary cognitive science doesn't endorse anatta, neither can it currently disprove it.
And, although science is literally often quite good at what it does, I do not share what appears to be Mr. Horgan's implicit position, that materialistic science is the only valid way of gaining knowledge of our deepest nature, and of the extreme nature of reality. Maybe for Mr. Horgan it's a must that unmystical scientific methods confirm an comprehension before he will adopt it as his own. But then this means that he willfully harbors a bias, against mysticism and in favor of scientific materialism. A bias that ironically disqualifies him from being scientifically objective on the whole subject! (Btw, I recommend that everyone read Huston Smith's perfect book on the blatant materialistic bias of contemporary science, Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief.)
Yes, there is such a thing as scientific dogmatism, even though it's hypocritically at odds with the supposedly impartial spirit of science. And lamentably this dogmatically scientific mindset has no more use for the perennial spiritual insights of Buddhism than it has for some of the outdated theological beliefs of fundamentalist Christians and Islamist extremists. So I for one am not inclined to reject a bodhic idea just because it hasn't yet been rubber-stamped by the scientific community.
Horgan then explains why he thinks that the philosophy of anatta doesn't literally make us good Samaritans and citizens. His reasoning is that if you don't believe in a self, if you don't believe that habitancy have that ole "homunculus" (little man or woman inside their heads) who's feeling all of their pain, then you're not going to care about the suffering of others. Although this line of reasoning has the ring of logical thinking, that ring is not literally very strong. Logically speaking, that we don't have a central self, that our self is literally a process rather than a being, does not make us mere illusions, whose suffering doesn't matter! A logician would point out to Mr. Horgan that his reasoning is both "invalid", and "unsound".
And contrary to what Mr. Horgan's reasoning would lead us to expect, one of the chief ethical values of Buddhism has of procedure always been compassion. Sure, Buddhist societies and practitioners have not always lived up to the Buddhist emphasis on compassion, just as Christians have not always practiced some of the noble morals they preach. But is this failure of Buddhists to fully actualize their notable compassion due mostly to the philosophy of anatta, or more to the normal mystery that humans have consistently living up to their top ethical ideals? At any rate, literally no Buddhist sect has ever literally taken the position that because we don't have a self or soul compassion is unnecessary. In the real world, and in the history of the Buddhist religion, the theory of anatta naturally does not work in the dangerous, compassion-undermining way that Mr. Horgan logically fears.
Horgan also thinks that Buddhist enlightenment is morally risky because it places enlightened habitancy on a moral pedestal, above distinctions between right and wrong. He fears that there's a real danger that habitancy who fancy themselves to be enlightened will lose the sense of right and wrong altogether. That they will come to believe that they are ethically infallible, that they truly can do no wrong because they are so darn enlightened. And that they will begin to control accordingly. He cites a couple of examples of Buddhists behaving badly, such as the alcoholism of the Tibetan instructor Chogyam Trungpa, and the "masochistic behavior" of Bodhidharma.
Okay, possibly some "enlightened" Buddhist masters were not quite perfectly enlightened, possibly they still suffered from enough egoism for their "enlightenment" to give them a swelled head. possibly this is a real pitfall of the quest for enlightenment. One that we should carefully guard against. But does it invalidate the very idea of enlightenment? Does it literally effect that there's no legitimate enlightenment to be attained by practicing the Buddhist path? Because not all reportedly enlightened habitancy have been perfect, does this mean that enlightenment is a lie? Once again, the logic of the critics of Buddhism and religion is not as good as they'd like to think.
Mr. Horgan also has his issues with the Buddhist path's emphasis on extreme renunciation and detachment. He even criticizes the Buddha himself for coldly deserting his house (glossing over the miniature fact that the Buddha was a prince who left his wife and child in the lap of luxury, not in a skid row homeless shelter!). Horgan thinks that reckoning the self to be a fiction, and cultivating nonattachment from inescapable aspects of the self's experience, is not literally conducive to greater happiness, and is literally "anti-spiritual".
If this were true, then I suppose that Jesus Christ, who told wannabee disciples that they needed to free themselves of all their worldly wealth, and their attachment to their families, was not very spiritual either? He literally doesn't come off sounding like a "family values" oriented sort of spiritual life-coach. But genuine spirituality can literally sometimes alienate you from the habitancy in your life. And it will turn how you prioritize the aspects of your life. You don't reach enlightenment by continuing to take life the way you always have!
And the enlightened state of mind, in which our attachment to our ego-self, and its selfish loves, has been overcome is literally less plagued by anxiety and depression. Less prone to heartache, despair, and bitterness. The external world no longer has the same power to inflict melancholy and miserableness on the enlightened mind. The caress of many enlightened individuals bears ample survey to this fact.
Mr. Horgan then cites a Western Buddhist who admits that his Buddhism may possibly be superfluous, a touch of unnecessary window dressing on his basically secular humanist worldview. But are we supposed to stop that because Buddhism may sometimes be spiritual window dressing that secular Westerners put on their values it's incapable of being a real-deal form of growth-oriented spirituality? Have all the devout Asian Buddhists who've practiced it in a truly religious spirit (despite its metaphysical differences with other world religions) been fooling themselves for the last two-and-a-half millennia? Has it literally just been a way of dressing up secular attitudes for them too? Are contemporary Western Buddhists too spiritually shallow, or deeply materialistic to adapt Buddhism to their needs without demoting it to a bit of phony religious ornament on their lofty ethics? Have they just found a new way of being holier-than-thou?
No, to all of the above! What's true for some is not true for all. Sure, the Buddhism of some Westerners is a pretty thin veneer covering an essentially humanistic outlook. But this is literally not the case for many others. And not at all the case for most practicing Asian Buddhists. This one is possibly Mr. Horgan's weakest annotation yet. How do I prove the depth and sincerity of the spirituality of Buddhists? Just look at the truly spiritual way that so many Buddhists live. You can know authentic spirituality by its fruits, after all.
Mr. Horgan's final negative consideration is about religion in general. In Horgan's view religions are miniature more than trust systems that men and women make to pander to their own anthropocentric sense of man's importance in the grand task of the cosmos. According to this kind of cynical reasoning a religion is just an ego-boosting worldview in which the whole universe is supposed to be "anthropic", geared to and revolving around human beings. I quote, "All religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created for our benefit, as a stage for our spiritual quests." Religion is just way too broadly besmirched and belittled here as being merely a reflection of our self-centeredness as a species! This is hardly an impressive, let alone an appreciative comprehension of religion.
I would humbly submit that possibly there's a wee bit more to religion, and to why humans keep inventing religions. More than just our human bigheadedness. Or our tendency to anthropomorphize, to look for human personality elsewhere in reality. Instead, and to the contrary, maybe religion and spirituality are an outer manifestation of an inner awareness of our own depth. An awareness that our deepest reality and identity transcends our human narcissism. possibly religion is literally man's mark beyond his egoism, to profoundly greater depth and self-transcendence.
Horgan also thinks that science is much more noble than religion, because science is bravely honest about the cold meaninglessness and scary randomness of existence. Once again, he seems to share the materialistic mindset of a great many contemporary scientists, who consider science's blindness to the values inherent in reality to be an intellectual virtue. Those of us in the "religious" camp, of course, see science's blindness to values as more of a spiritual handicap. We should have compassion then on our radically skeptical sisters and brothers in the sciences, as they are, after all, ethically and spiritually-challenged.
However, despite his scientific materialism, and mild cynicism, John Horgan is not one of the bigoted and ignorant critics of Buddhism and alternative spirituality. He and his criticisms cannot be literally dismissed as anti-Eastern religion, as anti-religion in general, as intolerant or conservative. This is why Mr. Horgan's faultfinding opinions merit such a lengthy response. Mr. Horgan demonstrates that it's altogether inherent for a contemporary someone in the Western world to have a good and open mind and still seriously misunderstand inescapable key "Eastern" spiritual concepts and techniques.
Another Western admirer and learner of Asian inner sciences was Carl Jung. Despite his interest in "Oriental" thought, Jung held that it's naturally impossible for Western minds to fully take on board Eastern religions. possibly he overestimated the mystery of consuming a philosophy of life imported from an "alien" culture. But if the fact that a man of goodwill, such as Mr. Horgan, can undertake an exploration of Buddhism and reach a negative verdict similar to that of Western cultural and religious chauvinists is any indication, possibly Jung did not literally overestimate by much the mystery of perfectly attuning our minds to foreign philosophies.
It does seem that Eastern ideas always whether get misinterpreted or thoroughly reinterpreted by Europeans and Americans. Well, once you take a trust out of its original cultural context it's going to feel some change. This is just inevitable, and not always a thoroughly bad thing, of course. But often it does lead to the misuse and abuse of "exotic" religious beliefs.
To give a reverse example of what I mean, in 19th century China an Easterner named Hong Xiuquan twisted some "exotic" Western beliefs that he had learned from Christian missionaries, and launched an insurrection that may have cost more than 20 million lives! Admittedly, an extreme example. But it shows that transplanting beliefs is a tricky proposition. Transplanted beliefs can sometimes be downright risky to our corporeal and spiritual well-being. To the degree that even progressive intellectuals, such as John Horgan, turn against them. This is something of a tragedy, since such individuals, who are on the cusp of communal and spiritual enlightenment, could potentially help humanity make great strides in its ongoing evolution. If they had not been soured on spirituality by some of its unfortunate distortions, that is.
To sum up here, there are still some old negative saws about Buddhism and alternate spirituality hanging around in the minds of even progressive intellectuals. Folks who aspire to enlightenment still have abundance of work to do spreading enlightenment, about their enlightenment.
a total noob Is Buddhism Just a Form of Spiritual Self-Centeredness? Not! a total noob
No comments:
Post a Comment