[Buddha-l] Against the stream

[Richard Hayes]

One of the side-effects of professing is that publishers keep sending books to 
professors in the hopes that the books will be made required reading for a 
course with an obscenely large population. Yesterday a copy of Noah Levine's 
<cite>Against the Stream: A Buddhist manual for spiritual revolutionaries 
</cite> landed in my mailbox. I'll read enough of it to decide it is not 
suited for any classes I teach. It does look sort of intriguing, another one 
of the multitude of entries in the ever-expanding genre of quasi-Dharma books 
by Jewish psychologists who see social activism as a viable Buddhist 
practice. I am a sucker for such books. I am pretty sure they are all written 
exclusively for me.

Levine offers some advice for how to be a "spiritual radical," which is 
defined as a person who 1) meditates more than one hour daily, 2) follows the 
five precepts, 3) commits life's energy to a service-oriented professions, 4) 
participates in a weekly meditation group, 5) takes vows of celibacy for long 
periods of time, 6) attends longer silent retreats yearly for at least a 
month, and 7) waits for ten years of intensive practice before teaching the 
dharma to others. (I'm thinking: Why would I read such a book? I don't do ANY 
of those things, nor do I aspire to any of them, except for sort of following 
the precepts.)

So here is how to BECOME a spiritual radical: 1) Defy the lies; 2) Serve the 
truth; 3) Beware of teachers; 4) Question everything; and 5) Dedicate the 
merits of these practices to helping everyone everywhere. (I don't do any of 
those things either! Merde, I'm off to a bad start. Well, at least I WOULD 
serve the truth if I had any idea what truth was. I like the idea of truth, 
sort of, until I start thinking about it more carefully. As for item 4, I'd 
really like to know what the point of questioning everything is. Seems like a 
very bad way to go through life. "Sure the elevator SAYS this is the fifth 
floor, but surely that's no ground for believing that this really is the 
fifth floor. I wonder why the elevator door has closed, leaving me inside 
wondering whether I can trust elevators.")

That is a preliminary report. I'll say more after actually reading parts of 
the book. Meanwhile, I'm very eager to know what Curt Steinmetz thinks about 
it. (I'm guessing he''l say it's not as good as Hadot but is a lot better 
than Batchelor.)

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico