[Buddha-l] Back to the core values?

[curt]

Richard Hayes wrote:
> On Thursday 31 May 2007 15:18, curt wrote:
>
>   
>> Batchelor does in fact "threaten" something that I hold dear. Like many
>> people (including Pierre Hadot, C.G. Jung, Sangharakshita, Ghandi, the
>> Cleary brothers, and many others) I feel that there is something
>> fundamentally missing from "western" culture - something "spiritual" if
>> I may use that word.
>>     
>
> No sensible person (if I am allowed to stipulate what is sensible and what is 
> not) would deny that modern Western culture has become defective, deficient 
> and dysfunctional. But what does that have to do with Batchelor? Do you 
> interpret him as saying that modern Western culture is fine just as it is? If 
> so, you are reqading a very different Stephen Batchelor than the one I have 
> been reading. 
>   

OK - I'll allow myself one more disagreement (here) - and, below, one 
final agreement with Richard (to end on a positive note), and then I'm 
probably done with this for now. Probably.

I think that Batchelor is exceedingly ambiguous with respect to western 
culture and it's defects. On the one hand, there is obviously no sense 
in any kind of "buddhism" - agnostic or otherwise - if one can find 
everything that one needs from the bountiful spiritual harvest of 
Judeo-Christianity,  generic secularism, the writings of Nietzsche and 
Marx, and UFO-cults - which seems to be the sum total of "our" culture's 
contributions to the inner life of humanity. While implicitly 
acknowledging this, Batchelor is (a) very insistent that he doesn't want 
to stray too far from "his own" culture - and (b) he even goes so far as 
to say that there are absolute limits on how far westerners can 
"sustainably" go in embracing Buddhism qua Buddhism.

The problem is that it is hard to pin Batchelor down on why either of 
the above two considerations are compelling to him - or should be 
compelling to anyone else. *Why* is it that in his later years he has 
begun to miss the secularist lullabies of his youth? And *why* is it 
that there is supposedly an unbridgeable chasm that prevents a westerner 
from being just a plain-old Buddhist - requiring him or her to be some 
kind of hyphenated Buddhist?

The answer of course lies in Batchelor's dislike of "religion". 
Batchelor's whole approach is framed negatively - and explicitly so: 
"Buddhism Without The Stuff I Don't Like About Buddhism". But if he were 
a "good Buddhist" he would examine this dislike - instead he has chosen 
to merely give in to it. Not that I have any gripe with giving in to 
one's likes and dislikes, which is mostly all I ever do with my likes 
and dislikes. But that is something that should either be done 
discreetly, or openly. But instead, Batchelor has decided to wrap 
himself in the ridiculous argument that what the Buddha "originally" 
taught just happens to coincide (rather precisely) with his own personal 
proclivities.

And most importantly, this "dislike of religion" is at the core, in my 
opinion, of what ails the western soul. If *we* have come to dislike 
*our* religions - then let's deal with that. Why in the world would we 
want to "project" that dislike onto the *very spiritual traditions we 
are looking to for help*??

>   
>> As far as what I find attractive about Buddhism - I'd have to say "most
>> of it". Of course I reserve the right to make up my own mind on all
>> particulars - and as far as I can tell the Buddha wouldn't have wanted
>> it any other way. But I love *both* the ruthless spirit of inquiry *and*
>> chanting mantras, etc, in Sanskrit, Chinese, or whatever. I love big
>> calligraphies that just say "MU!" *and* blatantly devotional portrayals
>> of Celestial Bodhisattvas. After all, "The Great Way is not difficult
>> for those who are unattached to preferences." (Not that I claim to yet
>> be unattached to preferences - but it's on my "to do" list.)
>>     
>
> In this I think you and I are very much of the same mind. I love the 
> intellectual rigor of the forms of Buddhism I know something about, but I 
> also find almost everything in Buddhism aesthetically pleasing, from the 
> garish complexity of Tibetan painted scrolls to the spare calligraphy and 
> one-line depictions of Bodhidharma. There is none of it (except for the neon 
> halo I once saw flashing over the head of a Vietnamese Buddha image) that I 
> don't find attractive. And I have never found a ritual I didn't both like and 
> find useful. (I have to say the same about Western religion; I am every bit 
> as home in an Eastern Orthodox Christian mass or a Roman Catholic mass as in 
> a Quaker meeting. About the only thing that makes me uncomfortable is getting 
> hugs from Methodist ministers who don't even know my name and have never seen 
> my face before; when a hug is given so promiscuously, it feels somehow 
> inauthentic to me.)
>
>   

As much as I moan and groan about Stephen Batchelor (let me say here 
that I am a huge fan of Martine Batchelor - I actually have a small 
stockpile of her books that I keep on hand to lend out to people) - it 
is only because I take him seriously - and because I take many of his 
"fans" seriously.

And I'm glad you mentioned that neon halo. I once knew a guy in 
Indianapolis who was a Vietnamese Buddhist priest - he had built a 
temple in a building that used to be an AAMCO shop. You could still make 
out, in huge letters, "TRANSMISSION" on the side of the building. The 
altar in the temple had electronic candles - and it had a lit-up halo 
behind the Buddha's head *that actually moved* - in two concentric 
circles. If anyone knows where I can get something like that please let 
me know!!

- Curt