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Apologia Report 18:12 (1,148)
April 3, 2013
Subject: "... there are nothing but hybrid Buddhisms ..."
In this issue:
BUDDHISM - why "understanding region is crucial to understanding American Buddhism"
+ "common misconceptions about Buddhist practice that can derail even the most seasoned practitioners"
EVANGELICALISM - sociologist explains "the American evangelical relationship with God"
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BUDDHISM
"The World Is Places" -- Sam Mowe interviews Jeff Wilson, author of Dixie Dharma: Inside a Buddhist Temple in the American South [1]. Wilson (assistant professor of religious studies and East Asian studies at Renison University College, University of Waterloo) considers what regionalism and pluralism mean for American Buddhists, concluding that "understanding region is crucial to understanding American Buddhism."
Mowe explains: "When it comes to understanding the Buddhist phenomena of America, attention to region helps clarify some of the variety of experiences that American Buddhists have." Wilson explains: "Buddhism is very unevenly distributed in America." For example: "Is it important to you to be part of a multigenerational temple community made up primarily of people with a strong family connection to Buddhism? You're out of luck if you live in most parts of northern New England, but you can find that in Fargo."
In Richmond, Virginia, a Buddhist temple, Ekoji <ekojirichmond.org> (Wilson's case study in Dixie Dharma), "houses Pure Land, Soto Zen, Kagyu, and Vipassana lineages, as well as the Meditative Inquiry Group, a practice group that is informed by Buddhist ideas." In Ekoji, "Most of the groups use the exact same space, altar, and cushions. Therefore the distinctions come out in subtle ways of usage, such as choosing to face the altar, face away from it, or ignore it altogether. Differences are apparent in the liturgies each group uses, or if they choose to forego ceremony completely, and in the choices of texts for discussion."
The first two pages of this article include a map of the USA spread across them. Distinct regions are identified and various summaries are provided below, including: West Coast - "Los Angeles alone is said to house virtually every type of Buddhism present on the planet;" Mountains - "largely remain a new mission field for Buddhism - where it must try to compete in a heavily Mormon and Protestant regional religious culture;" Southwest - "many retreat centers take advantage of region's ... temporary or permanent renunciation of mainstream American life;" Plains - "the least Buddhist of all our regions;" Midwest - "has a long history of Buddhist activity and boasts many groups and types of Buddhists [primarily in the Chicago area] due to the Buddhist presence at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions;" Northeast - "seems to be at the end of many national networks;" South - "has been very slow to grow ... characterized by a strong evangelical Protestant culture, a particularly thorny racial history, and a long initial period as a primarily rural region;" and Hawaii, - "the only state in America where Buddhists are the second-largest religious group, behind Christians."
Wilson concludes: "As a basically noncentralized religion composed of myriad competing and intersecting lineages, even the most esoteric or restrictive forms of Buddhism have usually afforded practitioners the ability to move with relative ease between traditions and combine them to a certain degree. There are no forms of Buddhism that haven't been profoundly impacted by other Buddhist groups, so in a certain sense there are nothing but hybrid Buddhisms, from Theravada to Nichiren. ...
"On the other hand, there are Buddhists who caution against diluting one's approach.... I have spent time in monasteries with monks devoted to mastering a single practice, and observed the amazing transformations that can occur. And I have encountered Buddhists so passionately attached to a particular practice or lineage that their egos became ever larger and stronger." Tricycle, Spr '13, pp46-49, 101, 102.
For another assessment of the book's strengths and shortcomings, see the online review by The Journal of Southern Religion at <www.http://ow.ly/jGCZx>.
"Are We Really Meditating?" by Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel -- "examines common misconceptions about Buddhist practice that can derail even the most seasoned practitioners." She begins: "What is meditation practice? When are we genuinely practicing and when are we just going through the motions, caught in unexamined assumptions about practice? I often ask myself these questions so I don't succumb to spiritual vagueness and because I want my practice to continue to grow. ...
"As meditators we look at the mind and its activity. When we begin to practice, we often feel surprised: "I didn't realize my mind was so wild and unruly!' Even experienced practitioners will complain, 'I have been practicing for thirty years, but my mind is still crazy!'"
Beginning with the idea that "methods alone are not the practice," Mattis-Namgyel goes on to write: "We're taught the great yogis of the past, including Milarepa, Yeshe Tsogyal, Bodhidharma, and Wesley Snipes [couldn't resist - RP] spent years practicing austerities, such as sitting naked on snowy mountaintops and cutting off their eyelids so they wouldn't fall asleep in meditation.
"As we practitioners struggle with our experience, we may begin to associate meditation with suffering. We may even view this struggle as purifying karma, assuming that unless we are uncomfortable, we are not really practicing. ...
"The Buddha, in his very first teaching, said, 'There is suffering.' ... In this simple but powerful statement, the Buddha suggests that suffering is not something we can fix, ignore, or get rid of. Rather, he is intimating that practice provides the ability to make ourselves big enough to include both the pain and beauty of the human condition - not only our own but also that of others. ...
"The move from 'I am suffering' to 'there is suffering' allows the pain of the human condition to touch us and releases our deepest wisdom and compassion. In this way, the great practitioners of the past have experienced what we might call suffering as a kind of fierce empowerment.
"If our practice consists of toughing it out, a time will come when we feel we have endured enough. ... We really just want to come home after work and watch TV, but we feel we *should* meditate. ... My teacher, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, once defined bliss as 'the absence of grasping and rejection.' If this is so, enjoyment could be a good way to define 'practice.'
"The purpose of meditation practice is to enjoy the natural vitality of the mind; practice is not something we *should* do out of a sense of duty. Who are we practicing for? The teacher? Are we doing this so we won't go to hell? To be good? Who is the arbiter of 'good,' anyway? The point of practice is not to be good, but to learn how to be at ease with our experience and deeply enjoy our mind and life. ...
"If practice is not merely a technique or something that can be identified by physical boundaries and short passing experiences, then how do we know when we are practicing and when we're not? ...
"If we think meditating means just applying a technique, we may never experience the liberation that genuine practice can bring, and we may conclude that practice doesn't work. ...
"Our ability to accept our humanness with all its struggles, insights, and confusions increases our capacity to behold both the beauty and suffering we encounter in the world ...
"To be in sane relationship with our experience, our life, our world, we need to learn how to digest experience - to let life touch us, nourish us, and move through us rather than reacting to it with so much fixation and preference. This means we need to find a way of being that is beyond grasping and rejection. Only then can we enjoy our humanness in all its fullness. And isn't that the point of meditation?" Buddhadharma, Spr '13, pp58-61. <www.ow.ly/jBflJ>
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EVANGELICALISM
When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, by T.M. Luhrmann [2] -- Bill Williams begins his review by noting that in 1947 "an eminent historian" wrote that "fundamentalist Christianity was in retreat" because such beliefs "seemed like a 'cultural and intellectual wasteland.'" Fast forward. "'Christianity around the world has exploded in its seemingly least liberal and most magical form - in charismatic Christianities that take biblical miracles at face value and treat the Holy Spirit as if it had a voltage,' writes T.M. Luhrmann in her compelling study of American evangelicals."
Luhrmann spent four years "interviewing and praying with members of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, an evangelical church with hundreds of branches." Of the Vineyard evangelicals, Luhrmann found: "They think of God as a buddy or best friend.... Vineyard congregants 'must develop the ability to recognize thoughts in their own mind that are not in fact their thoughts, but God's,' Luhrmann says.
"Much of the book explores the puzzle of how evangelicals can be certain that it is God speaking to them when they hear an audible voice or when they have a thought that seems to come from God. Many struggle with that issue, and some wonder if they are crazy. ... Outsiders are sometimes surprised to learn that evangelicals can be filled with doubt and dry periods during which they detect no response to their prayers. ...
"Luhrmann devotes a chapter to the conundrum of how a loving God can stand by when there is so much suffering in the world. She says Vineyard members simply ignore the question. They believe that pain and suffering offer believers opportunities to draw closer to God. ...
"Her purpose in writing the book was to explain to nonbelievers 'how people come to experience God as real.' She hopes the book will increase understanding of evangelical beliefs. 'Perhaps,' she says, 'that will serve as a bridge across the divide, and help us to respect one another.' ...
"She compares evangelical practices with Catholic centering prayer, Christian and Jewish mysticism, and Buddhist mindfulness meditation. All are designed to connect practitioners with the holy, the luminous, the unknown. ...
"On the final page Luhrmann gives readers insight into her own beliefs and how this project changed her. 'I do not presume to know ultimate reality,' she writes. 'But it is also true that through the process of this journey, in my own way I have come to know God. I do not know what to make of this knowing. I would not call myself a Christian, but I find myself defending Christianity.'" Parabola, Spr '13, pp116-118. <www.ow.ly/jBaag>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Dixie Dharma: Inside a Buddhist Temple in the American South, by Jeff Wilson (Univ N Carolina Prs, 2012, hardcover, 304 pages) <www.ow.ly/jBeF4>
2 - When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, by T.M. Luhrmann (Vintage, 2012, paperback, 464 pages) <www.ow.ly/jBaB1>
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