However, by formulating my critique, it is not my intention to insult anyone. I mainly ask a lot of questions, questions that I am also asking myself, mostly using simple, straightforward language. I feel that such questions about the part we play in the unfolding of our own vajrayana path, need to be asked. Why? Because asking questions is an act of self-empowerment. Asking questions about my part in any story helps me to take responsibility for my own life and decisions, rather than passing the buck by blaming someone else. Isn't this the Buddhist approach? If we understand the Buddha's teaching correctly, who outside of us is left to blame? Is there really anyone? Anything?
I am simply writing for the sake of gaining greater clarity for self and others. Why? Because I find that refreshing. Because, this subject of the vajrayana, the vast possibilities it offers for human development, even for the development of unseen beings, is close to my heart.
In a way, my own entire adult life has been dedicated to a deeper and more than intellectual grasp of this larger yet ungraspable all-encompassing reality that for a sake of a better word we call "my life & death", by applying vajrayana tools both in formal meditation and in real life situations. You could say, I have a vested interest to find out if I might have been duped into following a cult, or not. Although enough aspects of the way I can lead my life point to the fact that I haven't. For that matter, I am not a part of any organization, not even any vajrayana organization. Just a free bird (in as much as a bird can be free).
And we need to be clear, no? Not just I, all of us. Especially when we talk about the view and its concomitant practices that can cut through millions of lifetimes of suffering, which for many the vajrayana path has achieved, over the course of many centuries; not just since yesterday, or since someone founded a religious non-profit organization in the west. Such liberating potential is a tall order to live up to, to say the least. And also something to respect, not to be thrown before swines.
Personally, I don't see much benefit in purely intellectual exchanges, mere opinions. From my vantage, if we want to talk about something as a 'cult' because it has bothered even misled us, we first have to talk about ourselves. After all, it is we who are engaging in it or have engaged in it, not some abstract entity. When we talk about the vajrayana, we have to talk about our motivation to seek it out and follow it. So, for the record, why do we, or did we become vajrayana practitioners? What is/was our purpose? What do/did we intend to gain, or lose? That's where we have to start, if we want an honest answer that cuts to the bone, not just a fig leaf to cover our inner contradictions and outer inconsistencies.
And we did seek it out, didn't we? We went even out of our way to join the club (if such was our limited understanding). It is certainly not a common thing to be instructed on how to meditate on fierce looking monsters, never mind that they are supposed to be manifestations of our own mind, or sit through long rituals performed in a language that we do not understand, and from a culture that may so alien to our own background and social customs and values, it might as well be from Mars. Even if we maintain that it is a cult that we joined, in order for it to become one, we had to first join. No one forced us. BTW and for your reference, the article in question appeared here: https://whatnow727.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/is-vajrayana-buddhism-a-cult-religion-part-2/
So, is the vajrayana a cult
religion? May be. Anything can be anything. It depends on how you look at it and how you use it.
However, when looking at it from
the way it wants to be looked at and the way it sees itself, as a vehicle dedicated to the liberation from
all (past and future) suffering for the benefit of all seen and unseen beings,
ideally in one short lifetime, the answer is NO. No, it is definitely not a cult. From it's own perspective, which might be the only valid perspective, it is a particular view or set of views of our own being and our world at large, as well as a set of tools, all designed to liberate us from delusional suffering. Why do I call its own perspective the "only valid perspective"? Well quite simple: it's like a playing field. You can't, for example, apply ice hockey rules on the football field and vice versa, or can you?
When looking at it from an irrelevant secular western angle obsessed
with ‘therapy’ and making everyone feel good, the answer could be ‘yes’. But such ‘yes’ does not have any real bearing on the situation
because, if I only want to feel good within the context of a new religious
congregation of more of a social rather than a ultimate liberation-oriented
nature, I don’t belong in any vajrayana circle to begin with. With such motivation, am I not stating that I am not interested in fundamentally questioning myself, my mind, my conditioning?
I that case, should I not practice the religion I was
born with, or no religion at all?
At best should I not just act and behave like a decent human being free of any religious pretense? Why then, do I have to drag the vajrayana into this?
Why does the Dalai Lama always
say that kindness is his religion?
Precisely, you can’t go wrong with kindness. You can’t make mistakes and harm anyone, or may be only unintentionally when in the application of your 'kindness' you go where even angles fear to tread.
Whereas when you question everything,
especially your imputed ‘self’, you can go wrong at many turns & therefore
need good well-trained guidance, which you also need to be willing to follow. Otherwise it doesn't work. For example, my wife is a doctor. She cannot work miracles, but she can do a few things. However even then, can she do anything without her patients following her guidelines? At least, some of them? No she can't. In the same way vajrayana without following a qualified guru is like practicing medicine without a doctor - and mind you a doctor who understands both the healthy function of the body & the disease, rather than just the disease.
So, from my own background as a practitioner and independent observer I have read this article that
makes the case for classifying vajrayana, or at least certain teachers and approaches to it as a cult. According to my understanding it remains pointless. It reveals a lot about the writer, but little about vajrayana. Why for example, was the vajrayana always, but especially in its country of origin in India, considered a secret teaching, or set of secret teachings, to be followed and practiced under cover? Precisely because it puts spiritual law above worldly law.
Of course, we need to understand what the superiority of spiritual law infers and what it doesn't. For example there is no spiritual law that says that the guru, for selfish worldly gain, is entitled to exploit, abuse or misuse the student. Not in the books. Nowhere. But according to all appearances, the teacher could do something that in ordinary eyes looks a lot like such abuse of power, whereas in reality t isn't. Who's to tell the difference? Whose perception is sharp enough? What standard will you use the measure the skillful means of a truly skillful teacher? To decide if it is a case of a abuse, or a highly specific teaching meant and given under very specific circumstances to break through very specific mental obscurations, not only from this lifetime but from lifetimes ago? Quoting Mingyur Ripoche or the Dalai Lama does not in the least settle the issue.
I have practiced vajrayana for
several decades, with mainly three lamas, all of Nyingma background (two of
whom were carefree yogis the least bit bothered about creating huge dharma
centers and/or businesses, whereas the third, well he created and maintained many organizations over many years but has never
been seen to operate them for his own personal benefit, not even for glorifying
himself… it is actually hard to find more than a few token pictures of the guy
on the net). He truly sees no
benefit in trying to be in the limelight.
And essentially, I have to agree with him, there isn’t any. The limelight doesn’t help you when
your aim is to foster deeper understanding in self and other. The limelight only high-lightens the
superficial.
Anyway, in the course of 40 years
of practicing vajrayana, I was never requested to become an obedient follower,
nor was I forced to think or do things I didn't want to think or do. In fact, one of my teachers shouted at
us when we gathered around him in a small group, “I want no followers, I want people who can think for themselves and act
on their own cognizance, and then also take responsibility for it!” The stress was laid especially on
the latter.
The idea of 'samaya' or
obligation to the teacher (and of the teacher to the student) has nothing in
common with what the writer of this piece seems to assume what 'samaya' is.
Samaya isn't meant to disempower or disenfranchise the individual. On the
contrary, samaya is meant to empower the individual beyond the prison of the
ego. If someone insists on staying imprisoned,no problem, join the club frequented by
billions. Vajrayana has no problem with you joining or remaining there. It
doesn't even think of itself as 'higher' and 'better'.
In the same way as we can see
reality only in the way that we see it (namely based on past conditioning)
vajrayana can only recognize diamond nature. For it everything is a diamond. If we want to shit on the diamond, that’s our privilege, but
it doesn’t change anything for the diamond that still remains what it is, intrinsically pure.
When I stated above that I wasn't
forced to do or think what I wouldn't have wanted to do or think, I did not
intend to omit mentioning that in the course of these forty years my
perceptions, concepts and presuppositions were indeed challenged. Such happens without needing to be mentioned in any genuine vajrayana teacher/student relationship. Challenges arose,
and naturally more than once. In other words, at certain turns of events the teacher chose to exercise authority, most often in conventional ways, but sometimes also rather unconventionally. Which is only fair, no teacher can be called such without exercising authority at some point.
However, in the end the authority of how to react
to these challenges or 'power games' always stayed with me. An unpleasant situation arises, my
teacher rescues me out of the frying pan only to throw me into the fire, what does such action trigger in me and how do I react to it? Preferably without thinking too
much, like when answering a Zen koan. Honestly, from my gut.
Of course, I could have felt unduly coerced sometimes. But is it really coercion as long as I feel free to respond according to my own perception? And I always felt that free, with all of my teachers. Like at one point I had made an agreement with my lama of staying at a certain place and working with him there for three years. My life situation changed and I wanted to leave after less than one. He called me quite forcefully on my promise and let me know in no uncertain terms what he though of breach of contract, even threatened me implicitly to never see me again, and so forth. We had three or four hour-long talks in the course of which he for moments berated and harangued me. But when I stood up for my decision and left, even though I was clearly breaking my word, he did not make true on his threat of completely throwing me out. We are still connected.
So, was his berating and haranguing me verbal abuse? Or was he testing my resolve? Or what was it? We will never know. We will never know any of such things by conventional wisdom. Which is why we shouldn't let conventional (actually non-) wisdom come between us and the teacher. Anyway, what can a teacher really to impose his will on a student? Pull a gun and shoot the sucker?
Shame and belittle me in front of others? May be he did the latter on occasion.
But do I have no resources of my own? Am I four years old and helpless?
Furthermore, do I not have the
power of discrimination to differentiate between hidden intent and manifest
action? Are we all supposed to be bereft of our wits and senses that we need to
be protected from harm for our own good? If that's the case, go and see a
therapist, and preferably a sweet talker who loves to spin new prisons made
from sweet talk around you. Avoid the vajrayana like the plague. It's for
mature adults who have a strong sense of self, which allows them to go beyond
it.
I don't think that there are any
pitfalls to negotiate in any authentic vajrayana teaching situation other than
the lies, deceit and never-ending trickiness of one's own conventional mind.
However, there needs to be a fundamental and shared understanding on the part
of the guru and the aspirant that such is indeed the nature of the work. That
would be, so to speak the basic contract, spoken or unspoken. Our common job and aim here, is to
demolish falsity, and like in love and war, everything is allowed – except for
the intention to harm, to degrade, to make use of, even when the means applied
might appear to be harmful or even degrading.
O boy, this sure gets tricky, and
requires a high level of alertness.
If anyone, teacher or student,
thinks otherwise, then they should stay away. The vajrayana is not meant for
everyone, never was never will be. And the only criticism that I can see myself making of some
Lamas with big organizations is precisely that they probably allowed too big a
following to form around them. This is okay in the context of a general presentation of he teachings but not
always the right forum for challenging people individually.
There is this phrase that one of
my Lamas kept repeating, "the warm breath of the guru" (like in the
title of the book The Warm Breath of the
Dakini). Inferring that when you get instructions, the guru needs to be so
close that you feel his warm breath.
Which means that we are not talking
big crowds, here. We are talking small groups, or even a one-on-one as the
ideal teaching situation. But again, not small therapy groups, but small
vajrayana groups where everyone understands the nature and intent of the
contract they entered.
Be that as it may. A watered down 'secular' vajrayana, custom made for our times and cultural hang-ups and preferences would
defy the purpose.
About the hearsay (and no matter
what everyone claims it will always only be hearsay) regarding other teachers
and communities I have nothing to add, either.
Sign up for vajrayana training only if you want to recognize the 'one taste' - not for the sake of cultivating the eight worldly dharmas.
Sign up for vajrayana training only if you want to recognize the 'one taste' - not for the sake of cultivating the eight worldly dharmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment