It’s been an interesting week. Several of my former companions in Tibetan Buddhism have written scathingly of me, As I type, they huddle together against my onslaught. The funny thing is that I had no idea it was an onslaught until they started screaming.
In hopes of starting a thoughtful discussion, I’d suggested that for all we know the Buddha may never have existed. As with Jesus of Nazareth, there’s not much evidence one way or the other, and either religious founder might be a successful invention.
I was just saying.
This upset one of them so much he actually claimed to not remember me. He contradicted my every memory and photographic proof. I don’t think he forgot me; I think he was trying to unremember me. He was sounding desperate.
Another was furious because I invited him to a webinar about ‘breaking dependency on spiritual teachers and beliefs.’ He took it as a personal insult, and has been posting rambling, sarcastic posts ever since, some of them here on my timeline.
Cronies jumped right on board and accepted his lopsided version like a pack of chortling schoolboys. These are grown men in their 50s and 60s who used to call me friend. They claim the Dalai Lama as their role-model. From their point of view my apostasy destines me for aeons of torture in the vajra hells, but they don’t seem to care. I’m a jerk and a spoilsport.
Unfortunately for them, I am but one of a growing tide. We call ourselves ex-Buddhists, former-Buddhists or recovering Buddhists, but for short perhaps we could be the Buddhist Jerks. Our vision of what the Buddha meant couldn’t be more different from the fearful religion of my attackers.
The sort of Buddhism in which modern educated people adopt a medieval Asian culture is a dead end. Forty-odd years ago we were young and idealistic and thought it was the future, but we were wrong. While these zealots practice sophisticated rituals that would blow the Buddha’s mind, others among us have been working to interpret him as a human being whose message speaks loud and clear.
What he taught needs to make sense for the life we’re living here and now. Otherwise what’s the point? Somehow it must take root it in this insanely pluralistic, digitally accelerated, self-destructive monster of consumer capitalism that we call home.
When the Dalai Lama and his monks build their sand mandalas and blow their long horns, it all seems quite natural. It’s their inherited culture. They’re doing what Tibetans do.
When non-Tibetans try to share in that medieval simplicity, simplicity is the first casualty. They don’t fit in. They stick out like sore thumbs. They are weird.
When I felt weird in my crimson robes and shaven head, I had to suppress it in order to pursue my career as a monk. Eventually I and others like me reached a breaking point.
These few did not. Just like you and me, they’re products of a modern, sceptical, scientific education. Even if we only did secondary school we’re irreversibly non-medieval. Perhaps these boys have forgotten that what tossed them into Buddhism in the first place was a rejection of their own inherited religion (or atheism). With them, the Buddha’s quest to transcend ideologies has become just another ideology to hang on to and defend.
We the jerks do not study the Buddha for his certainties and guarantees but for precisely the opposite—we are learning to thrive in the clear understanding that no belief system will ever be ultimately true, and that there is nothing to defend. ~ Stephen Schettini, on Facebook.