[Buddha-l] Back to the core values?

[curt]

Richard Hayes wrote:
> It has become quite clear that you have little use for Batchelor. So I wonder 
> why you read him, and why you spend so much energy trying to discredit him. 
> In what way does he threaten what you hold dear? What many of us would 
> probably be more interested in hearing is what authors and teachers you find 
> inspiring and helpful. What about Buddhism do you find attractive? We know 
> what you find distasteful. So what do you find appetizing? 
>
>   
Just as Batchelor finds it necessary to constantly harp on "religion" 
and "mysticism" and "dogma" and "beliefs" - and all of his other 
bugaboos - just so do I seem to find it necessary (or at the very least 
extremely helpful) to have a convenient punching bag when trying to 
express myself. The same was true of T.H. Huxley, for that matter.

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. I once attended a retreat led by Stanley Lombardo 
(actually I've had that pleasure more than once), and during a Dharma 
Talk, he said something to the effect that all of the wisdom found in 
Buddhism can also be found in Homer (maybe he added Hesiod and/or Plato 
or some other Greeks as well). When we had the chance to ask questions I 
asked, well, if that's the case, then why don't we just build some 
Temples to Demeter and Athena and forget all about this Buddhist stuff 
from Asia? His answer was that we have lost the *practice* of the kind 
of spirituality found in Homer - all we have left are the words (or 
something like that). In rushing back to embrace "his own" culture I 
feel that Batchelor is papering over this still very sizable problem.

Worse yet is the fact that western culture has become hyper-aggressive 
since the end of the Cold War. Spiritual Materialism has become 
Spiritual Globalism in our "unipolar world" - and this is as much a part 
of "cultural imperialism" as are MacDonalds, handgun violence, and the 
NBA. People who live in cultures where the *practice* has not been lost 
(places like India, Japan, Korea - the kinds of places westerners still 
go to to learn about the wisdom of the east) are under a psychic assault 
on two fronts. On one front there is the vast machinery of Christian 
"Missionaries" whose explicit aim is, as it has always been, the literal 
extirpation of all other religions. Huge amounts of money and literal 
armies of white people from the developed world are at work 24x7 trying 
to bring about that blessed event. As laughable as the buffoons are who 
are the public face of this juggernaut - they are incredibly effective, 
as anyone whose been to Korea in the last 20 years knows. In places like 
Mongolia they have had the resources to "move in" as soon as Communism 
was over and, out of nowhere, compete head to head with indigenous 
religious traditions that are thousands of years old. They are just 
waiting (and, of course, praying) for the day when they get their shot 
at China.

But the other front in the assault on the spiritual traditions of Asia 
is the sneering "secularism" that may yet finish the job begun when the 
Portuguese, Spanish and other "great powers" began "spreading the 
gospel" (with the sword, the cannon, the slave ship, and the rack) in 
Africa, Asia and the "New Word" over 500 years ago. It is really not 
going too far to say that the European secularist attitude toward the 
great religions of Asia is nothing short of racist - and at any rate it 
is a seamless continuation of the "white man's burden" attitude from the 
days of outright colonialism. On this point I highly recommend the 
writings of Ashish Nandy, one of the few Indian intellectuals (at least 
that I know of) who has managed to steer clear of both the Hindutvas and 
the Secularists. He makes, in my opinion, a strong case that secularism 
in India is just colonialism "by other means". And he is much more 
reasonable sounding and articulate than I am. Here's a quote:  "The 
pressure to Westernize is the most conscious form of this colonial 
mentality: Colonialism has a long way to go before it is vanquished! Our 
nations are ostensibly independent, but our minds still remain enslaved. 
" (for more see, for example: 
http://www.overlandexpress.org/179%20darby.html ). Nandy is a Christian, 
by the way, and something of a leftist - but mostly he is his own man. 
As a consistent opponent of secularism he is pretty much a pariah among 
the Indian left, and as a leftist and a Christian is pretty much a 
pariah among the Hindutvas.

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.)

Thank you for asking.

- Curt