“If you can’t make your argument briefly, you probably don’t have an argument.” John Meacham
After he read my last post, my friend James Ismael Ford asked, ”What are the consequences of so much of Buddhism in the West's proximity to the self-help industry? I look forward to your analysis.”
The short answer is suffering, but the question is not easy. There are different kinds of suffering, and some medicines are better than others for the kind of disease you're suffering from.
Who am I to be splitting hairs in what appears to be a somewhat technical Buddhist dispute about suffering and the causes of suffering? Suffering, real or imagined, is the reason why our Western version of Buddhism gets entangled with the Self-Help Industry. It’s hard for me to be objective. I’ve got a pony in this race. It was a very personal experience of suffering, both real and imagined, that led me to a cushion in a zendo. That’s factual, and I am not alone. This personal experience has helped me with what I call “a working position” for my own life—if it helps relieve suffering, it is worthwhile.
Without trying to be all super-Zen and theological, it is a bit like the contrast between gradualist and sudden enlightenment in the Platform Sutra. The Fifth Patriarch issued a challenge. The head monk wrote for the gradualist position, “Little by little, one small speck of suffering at a time, wipe the mirror clean and do your best to keep your house in order,” while our disruptive hero, Hui Neng, blasted the Big Bang Zen position, “The mind is not a mirror. It’s all Suffering and it’s not. Open your eyes to Emptiness. That’s always here.” Little by little, then all at once.
To reintroduce the Self-Help Industry: there are as many valid reasons to put some money down and sit in a hotel meeting room for several days listening to Werner Erhard as there are to shy away and continue a boring day-to-day routine. (For the record, I have spent far more than several days with Werner’s programs, and my dollars were well spent.) Weighing the positives and negatives of taking action is a human trait. I can list my personal reasons to distrust Buddhism, to avoid the teaching, or to dive into the Tao. It’s a choice.
As I said, I am no expert. Here in Thailand, I live alone and spend much of my time by myself. Of course, I am not a recluse in a cave in the remote hinterlands of China; I have cable and wifi. I meet and talk with other people, family and friends, though by choice in small doses, but most importantly, I have time to meditate, read, reflect, and write; I feel an obligation to use this gift wisely. I haven’t answered my own question, but I am inching closer to what I have at stake in any answer, and as I do, I feel a great deal of gratitude that I have been given enough freedom to explore the question.
I try to sit for at least two periods a day. It is something I usually look forward to, now that I am almost 80 and have given myself permission to sit in a chair. Recently, I started to end with a private ceremony. I wanted to put an end to my formal meditation and boot up the computer with some equanimity. One of the English versions of the Heart Sutra allows me to acknowledge that all there is is the moment right here in front of me. I feel some confirmation that I am Buddhist, at least in the sense that I want to see an end to suffering, mine as well as other people’s, and most importantly, that I am willing to dedicate myself toward that goal.
Suffering is not fun. But I have observed that there isn’t just one kind of suffering as if it had a unique DNA marker. I have explored the kind of suffering that comes from some indulgent interpretation of past events or being deprived of some imagined right to exercise my power and grab what I think I need. Then I stand back and see how different that is from the unimaginable suffering of innocent settlers in the kibbutzim on the borders of Gaza and the equally horrific suffering of Palestinian mothers and children caught in crossfire with nowhere to turn, I know that my petty suffering is just that, petty and self-serving, and there is almost unendurable suffering. There is no way to take back the actions that have caused it.
The Self-Help Industry through the Test of Suffering. Transference and Projection*.
When I was on staff at Landmark Education, a few other Zen students showed up. There were rumors of another former Jesuit who became one of Werner’s Forum leaders, but I never met him. During the time I coached the Self-Expression and Leadership Program, six women students of Cheri Huber drove from the Sierra foothills to San Francisco for group work. Their SELP projects were wonderful and had a very Zen feel to them, something that my teacher Issan would have been proud of, reaching out to marginalized and homeless vets in the area. Then out of the blue, another friend, the Jesuit brother, Tom Marshal, told me that Gempo Roshi’s students in Salt Lake often did the Landmark Forum “in order to discern the Spirits,” an odd but refreshing mash-up of spiritual technologies. But all that is just anecdotal evidence of a connection. I only mention it to note that often the proximity can be very real, real Zen practitioners.
But rather than consider a few outliers, I am going to turn to the language we use in practice to examine the connection. Monks from the Golden Age of Zen, more than a thousand years ago, never heard the words “Projection” or “Transference,” but they are part of most modern Western Zen students' working vocabulary. We learn them as quickly as we use gassho and kensho in our practice conversations. However, both words have a whole set of nuances that are hidden, assumed, or poorly understood. A woman priest whom I respect said, “It's about realization and recognition and withdrawing unconscious projections.”
The advent of the new psychological gurus depends, in my view, on the emergence of two strains of teaching. First is undoubtedly G.I. Gurdjieff, but no less important is Freud. More on that later.
“If you want someone perfect, write a novel.” I might add the caution: “If you want someone perfect, don’t look for a guru."
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*Carotenuto, A. (1991). Kant's dove: The history of transference in psychoanalysis. (J. Tambureno, Trans.). Chiron Publications.
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