[Buddha-l] Enlightenment for Sale! (was: Review of a review)

[Richard Hayes]

Joy Vriens asks: Can one "learn dharma" at seminars where dharma is
sold as a Wellness product?

I suppose the answer to that depends on what question is being asked.
If the question can be paraphrased "Can one learn dharma if Dharma is
portrayed as a form of wellness" then the answer can only be Yes.
Dharma is nothing at all if not a form of being well. So I would say
that Dharma must be portrayed as a method for achieving wellness.

There is, however, another question to ask, which I think has a much
wider application than just Dharma. That question is "Is it legitimate
to commodify wellness, to make it a commercial product?" This question
strikes at the malaise of the American health-care system. In the
United States of America, there is virtually nothing that escapes
being turned into some kind of commercial product. Education is a
product, health is a product, justice is a product, reputation is a
product, safety is a product, charity is a product, national security
is a product, research is a product. So it goes without saying that
the particular form of wellness that Dharma provides is also a
product. In the United States, not to be a commodity that can be sold
for a profit is not to exist. When one adds to that the fact that the
United States is a plutonomy (an economic system designed to make a
few people extremely wealthy to the disadvantage of the vast majority
of people) as well as a plutocracy (a political system in which only
the extremely wealthy have any political power), it is obvious that
institutionalized Buddhism, if it is to survive at all, must be a
commodity marketed exclusively for the very wealthy and the
politically powerful. If it were anything else, it would not be
American Buddhism.

One of the greatest tragedies of the modern world is that the American
way of doing business is finding its way almost everywhere. The
American diet, the obesity that goes with it, American laziness, the
degradation of the environment that goes with it, American greed, the
corruption that goes with it, American ignorance and the bad policies
that go with it—these have very nearly obliterated every tradition
everywhere that provides for the real needs of human beings and makes
life possible for other species. People who try to resist being
Americanized are crushed, humiliated, nullified and wiped from the
historical record. Sadly, what this means is that America will crush
Buddhism and offer in its place something that goes by the same name
but is the very antithesis in every possible way of Dharma. On the way
to the complete obliteration of the Dharma, a few people will make
some money, cheat some innocent people and leave a legacy of shattered
lives.

I'd say more, but I have to rush to the magazine stand and buy the
latest copy of Tricycle Magazine. I hear there is a pentrating article
on how to avoid having bad hair days on expensive spiritual retreats.

Sill howlin' after all these years,
Dayamati

"America, fuck you and your atom bomb." (Allen Ginsburg)