[Buddha-l] Re: Filtered Buddhism

[Richard Hayes]

On Friday 29 June 2007 12:24, Franz Metcalf wrote:

> And I can't help but think that here we are beginning to
> see the sort of new Buddhism Sasaki and Hayes were calling for.

I think I have made this disclaimer before, but it never hurts to make it 
again. When I wax enthusiastic about a new Buddhism or an American-style 
Buddhism, I am not at all suggesting that the new replace the old. I just 
think it is inevitable that additional ways of doing Buddhism will evolve 
naturally, and one might as well welcome them to the family instead of 
smiting one's forehead in dismay and saying "There goes the Dharma, to hell 
in a handbasket."

Gen-la Lobsang Norbu, Bill Waldron, Michel Mohr and I were talking about some 
of these issues during the second week of this year's seminar. Waldron 
related an anecdote about the Dalai Lama once being asked a question about 
self-loathing. His initial response was to say he had no idea what was being 
asked. How can someone loathe himself? It doesn't make sense. So his 
interpreter gave him a long description of the phenomenon of self-loathing 
and said it was quite a common affliction among Westerners. The Dalai Lama 
then said he had no idea what to do about it, because he was unfamiliar with 
the affliction. One another occasion, many years ago, I heard that the Dalai 
Lama was nonplussed when someone asked how a person could get over hatred for 
her own mother. Hating one's own mother was unthinkable to him, and he was 
astonished to learn that quite a few Western people have very negative 
emotional feelings towards their own parents and suffer from it. 

It is almost axiomatic in the 12-step movement that the best person to help 
another overcome an affliction is someone who themselves has had the same 
affliction. A former addict (or an addict in remission) knows addiction from 
the inside and knows what another addict is going through and knows how to 
help. Culture can perhaps be described as a set of interconnected addictions, 
so when someone suggests that it would be helpful to have Dharma teachers 
from her own culture, she may simply be saying she feels a need for someone 
who has been afflicted with the same addictions that she is suffering from. 
Wanting a Dharma teacher from one's own culture need not be seen as a thinly 
veiled expression of cultural superiority or xenophobia; it may be as simple 
as a cry for a particular kind of help. If one says "My house is on fire. I 
need a fireman", there is no need to take that as an expression of contempt 
for policemen, surgeons and lawyers, nor need one take the call for a fireman 
to be an instance of obnoxious clamoring for a helper whose help is less 
challenging than that of, say, a brain surgeon.

Speaking of addictions, at a dinner one evening Sasaki-roshi was talking about 
his inability to learn English when he came to America. He was already sixty 
when he arrive in America, and he studied English but was unable to get very 
far. He rarely says more than a few words in English and does all his 
communication through interpreters. Commenting on his inability to make 
progress in English, he said that a big part of his problem was that he is 
deeply attached to Japanese language and Japanese culture and just doesn't 
see much point in learning the ways of another culture. This deep attachment 
to his own culture has caused him a lot of suffering, he said. And because of 
that, he said, he really knows what he is talking about when he tells his 
students that they must get over their attachments if they are going to get 
rid of their suffering. 

One way of helping Americans get over their attachment to American culture 
might be to get them to do everything in a pseudo-Japanese way. Wear Japanese 
robes, eat with chopsticks, chant in Japanese, bow at every opportunity, wear 
plastic slippers to the toilet, eat noodles very noisily---that's the way to 
get over one's attachments to the American lifestyle. More than one Zen group 
seems to have tried that strategy out. It is not obvious that the strategy 
works. It may work for some, but for others it may end up simply replacing 
one set of addictions with another, like giving up one's addiction to cocaine 
by becoming an alcoholic. So for some it may be very helpful to have some 
sort of clone of Japanese Zen, and for others a form of Buddhism in more 
familiar dressing may work better. Why not have both?

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico