BUDH LITE
I get a real kick out of those glossy four color Buddhist magazines that share the rack with Country Living, Yoga Journal and Real Simple in body worker waiting rooms. I love it that the outer edges of every page are not obsessed by slick sex filled ads for luxurious cars, expensive watches and trashy looking jeans. Rather these are gloriously hemmed with slick, brightly colored professionally produced ads selling me retreats in glamorous locations, books I can’t live without and more meditation paraphernalia than the first thousand years of working Buddhists had in the all together.
Buddhism has survived the horrors of the last 2,500 years due to a remarkable ability to morph into the culture of whatever country it entered. In Japan it became a martial art, in China a menu item (Buddha’s Delight), in Tibet colorfully mystic shamanism. In America, well, you can see in those glossy ads what a consumer paradise we have made it. You get a choice of happenings with souvenir tee shirts and motivational seminars with ubiquitous celebrities like boom box Robert Thurman. You can go on an endless array of tours to Asia, paying for the privilege of going on pilgrimage with this Rinpoche or that. And wow, cushions come in every size, shape and color unless of course you want one of those benches or chairs. How about a fountain or a financial advisor? Tatami mats, thangkhas? Have we got a calendar for you! A few years ago I tried on a winter night in Cambridge to ask the American lama Surya Das a question but in a surprisingly sharp tone he cut me off with impatient words: “Go buy my book.”
Although it is not advertised it is rumored that for enough American dollars you can get yourself a tulkuship. And what's to make of a Stanford MBA candidate who enrolls in a six week Theravadin meditation retreat for the singular purpose of honing job focus skills?
What a surprise that the fastest selling sangha has MBAs helping to run it like a business. Its marketing includes its own 12-step program, its own rock star lifestyle idol, its own interactive website, its own assembly line of meditation programs, its own bouncers at the door, its exclusive centers you can travel to and one of those glossy magazines packed with ads. Forget that Sanskrit stuff: all the self-help self-improvement comes to you in psychotherapy jargon and street English.
Along with the goodies come headlines exhorting you to get engaged. In the US it isn’t enough to engage in daily practice. It isn’t even enough to engage with Buddhist cash registers. You have to get socially engaged! You need to buy into what deToqueville dismissed as our peculiarly cockeyed activism that believes it can cure circumstances. Become a human rights protestor, an environmentalist, a homeless advocate. If you are not out saving the world, you are not an upstanding Buddhist.
Funny thing, I thought you had to be down sitting to be Buddhist. I thought Buddhism’s defining characteristic is that by sitting you were working for the benefit of all sentient beings. Remember the title of Sylvia Boorstein book? “Don’t just do something, sit there!” Remember Trungpa Rinpoche always reminding how American missionaries chided him for just sitting still while they were out saving the world with spam and Bibles? Goaded recently by a street activist to give his view of social engagement, His Eminence Dzongsar Khyenstse Rinpoche closed his eyes, took a few breaths and then quoted Shantideva about how you should sit like a rock. “Like a rock,” he repeated.
Of course if you are sitting, you are not out buying goods and services. You are not a candidate for retail therapy or body building. And there we have the disconnect: Buddhism is the Anti-Price. America is the jingle jangle of selling everything you and your body could possibly want and Buddhism is the silence of teaching the mind to not want it.
In a country where all the seers’ predictions derive solely from reading the consumer index and the consumers’ spending, where stock and bond markets ride up or down on the taut wires of consumer confidence, Dharma’s determination to destroy desire is tantamount to treason. I have been as patriotic as the next citizen when it comes to contributing to the GNP: it takes four closets to contain the clothes I own and suffering as I do from Imelda Marcos outbreaks, I can’t find space for all my shoes even though I only have one pair of feet. I will never be one of those wandering loin clothed yogis. I can’t even imagine being a nun because despite all my obsessing over bad hair days, I can’t bear the idea of a no hair day. Yet practice has cut down my shopping time, my makeup needs and noticeably decreased my "get" drive. Dharma is the only antique I treasure in my house. Worse, my travels in inner space are so compelling, I don’t take vacation trips. I no longer run to theaters, movie palaces and concert halls for entertainment. I don’t tune out with an IPod or even pay for cable television any more. I am so engaged with reality I have no time for virtual fluff. This is scary. Being real simple is, as far as I can tell, so un-American I could be supeonaed any day now as a subversive.
A culture that worships the temple of the body has been invaded by worship of the mind. How ever are we going to make ends meet? The Buddha of the future, Maitreya the Bodhisattva in waiting, is often depicted with blue eyes. We all know what those genetics mean. But do they automatically mean those blue eyes will gaze orgasmically at us from the cover of a glossy magazine as he steps out of a Ferrari in a sloganed tee shirt and designer jeans, his Armani sunglasses jauntily in hand, under the coverline: “His name’s Budh. He’s a perfect “Bod” and he’ll be your server tonight.”
Trungpa Rinpoche
Technorati Tags: Budh Lite. Trungpa Rinpoche. Yours In The Dharma. Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist
Buddhism has survived the horrors of the last 2,500 years due to a remarkable ability to morph into the culture of whatever country it entered. In Japan it became a martial art, in China a menu item (Buddha’s Delight), in Tibet colorfully mystic shamanism. In America, well, you can see in those glossy ads what a consumer paradise we have made it. You get a choice of happenings with souvenir tee shirts and motivational seminars with ubiquitous celebrities like boom box Robert Thurman. You can go on an endless array of tours to Asia, paying for the privilege of going on pilgrimage with this Rinpoche or that. And wow, cushions come in every size, shape and color unless of course you want one of those benches or chairs. How about a fountain or a financial advisor? Tatami mats, thangkhas? Have we got a calendar for you! A few years ago I tried on a winter night in Cambridge to ask the American lama Surya Das a question but in a surprisingly sharp tone he cut me off with impatient words: “Go buy my book.”
Although it is not advertised it is rumored that for enough American dollars you can get yourself a tulkuship. And what's to make of a Stanford MBA candidate who enrolls in a six week Theravadin meditation retreat for the singular purpose of honing job focus skills?
What a surprise that the fastest selling sangha has MBAs helping to run it like a business. Its marketing includes its own 12-step program, its own rock star lifestyle idol, its own interactive website, its own assembly line of meditation programs, its own bouncers at the door, its exclusive centers you can travel to and one of those glossy magazines packed with ads. Forget that Sanskrit stuff: all the self-help self-improvement comes to you in psychotherapy jargon and street English.
Along with the goodies come headlines exhorting you to get engaged. In the US it isn’t enough to engage in daily practice. It isn’t even enough to engage with Buddhist cash registers. You have to get socially engaged! You need to buy into what deToqueville dismissed as our peculiarly cockeyed activism that believes it can cure circumstances. Become a human rights protestor, an environmentalist, a homeless advocate. If you are not out saving the world, you are not an upstanding Buddhist.
Funny thing, I thought you had to be down sitting to be Buddhist. I thought Buddhism’s defining characteristic is that by sitting you were working for the benefit of all sentient beings. Remember the title of Sylvia Boorstein book? “Don’t just do something, sit there!” Remember Trungpa Rinpoche always reminding how American missionaries chided him for just sitting still while they were out saving the world with spam and Bibles? Goaded recently by a street activist to give his view of social engagement, His Eminence Dzongsar Khyenstse Rinpoche closed his eyes, took a few breaths and then quoted Shantideva about how you should sit like a rock. “Like a rock,” he repeated.
Of course if you are sitting, you are not out buying goods and services. You are not a candidate for retail therapy or body building. And there we have the disconnect: Buddhism is the Anti-Price. America is the jingle jangle of selling everything you and your body could possibly want and Buddhism is the silence of teaching the mind to not want it.
In a country where all the seers’ predictions derive solely from reading the consumer index and the consumers’ spending, where stock and bond markets ride up or down on the taut wires of consumer confidence, Dharma’s determination to destroy desire is tantamount to treason. I have been as patriotic as the next citizen when it comes to contributing to the GNP: it takes four closets to contain the clothes I own and suffering as I do from Imelda Marcos outbreaks, I can’t find space for all my shoes even though I only have one pair of feet. I will never be one of those wandering loin clothed yogis. I can’t even imagine being a nun because despite all my obsessing over bad hair days, I can’t bear the idea of a no hair day. Yet practice has cut down my shopping time, my makeup needs and noticeably decreased my "get" drive. Dharma is the only antique I treasure in my house. Worse, my travels in inner space are so compelling, I don’t take vacation trips. I no longer run to theaters, movie palaces and concert halls for entertainment. I don’t tune out with an IPod or even pay for cable television any more. I am so engaged with reality I have no time for virtual fluff. This is scary. Being real simple is, as far as I can tell, so un-American I could be supeonaed any day now as a subversive.
A culture that worships the temple of the body has been invaded by worship of the mind. How ever are we going to make ends meet? The Buddha of the future, Maitreya the Bodhisattva in waiting, is often depicted with blue eyes. We all know what those genetics mean. But do they automatically mean those blue eyes will gaze orgasmically at us from the cover of a glossy magazine as he steps out of a Ferrari in a sloganed tee shirt and designer jeans, his Armani sunglasses jauntily in hand, under the coverline: “His name’s Budh. He’s a perfect “Bod” and he’ll be your server tonight.”
Trungpa Rinpoche
Technorati Tags: Budh Lite. Trungpa Rinpoche. Yours In The Dharma. Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist
posted by Sandy Garson @ 11:13 PM
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