The Legacy for Our Children
American Buddhism
Judith Simmer-Brown
My topic is Buddhism in the 21st century, the legacy we are leaving our
children. My first concern is a housekeeping concern. Have we set the
American Buddhist house in order? Specifically, if our children wish to
continue the traditions of Buddhist practice, what are we doing to make
that possible? Have we created the ground of a truly American Buddhism
which can sustain practice, community, and culture into the new millennium?
Have we, the baby boomer generation, created a legacy which will nurture
the hearts of the practitioners who are to follow?
Almost 30 years ago, in graduate school, I was introduced to what
seemed arcane then, but relevant to me now. They were four classic
criteria developed by Western Buddhologists, which predict the resilience of
Buddhism in a new cultural setting. Specifically, what factors must be present
if Buddhism is to survive beyond a single generation? While these
criteria were developed from observation of Buddhism moving through Asia,
with certain adjustments they may be of relevance for an
assessment of American Buddhism.
These are the four criteria-elements of Asian Buddhist tradition
necessary to assure the continuation of Buddhism in an
American setting.
The first is, have the key sutras, commentaries, teachings,
practices and liturgies been translated into English? And
are these translations usable for the practice communities themselves?
Excessively scholarly translations will not do - and translations which
strip away all tradition dilute the richness of our Asian heritage. Access
to these texts is a priority, and we must continue to work on this
monumental task. The Tibetan tradition, for example, is most fragile: the
situation in Tibet itself shows little improvement, and the great exiled
masters of the traditions grow old and pass on. We know that we cannot
translate these texts without their supervision and commentary. I must ask
you this - have your communities worked with this? Are you training and
supporting your translators and their translation projects?
The second criterion is, have the essence teachings been
transmitted to American dharma heirs and students? Are these
heirs trusted and respected by their Asian lineages, and have they
received everything, with nothing held back? We must realize the incredible
auspiciousness of our place in history. To receive these teachings requires
sincere, heartfelt practice, fervent and sustained devotion, and
unfailing communication. My teacher, Ven. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche,
passed on 11 years ago. I and others have dedicated ourselves to carrying
on his heritage, his transmissions, his instructions. Do we
understand the preciousness of human life, that our teachers will not live
forever? How might we more fully receive the transmissions which they
offer us?
The third criterion is, has a strong base of American patrons been
established? In Buddhist history, this was accomplished by
royal patronage, for if the king supported the dharma the people would as
well. Obviously, it is somewhat different in 21st century America, but we
need financial support and cultural sympathy in order for the dharma to
thrive. Here, we court Hollywood, Washington, and Silicon Valley.
Rockefeller, Ford, and Lilly. Patronage is an important chance to communicate
something fundamental about the dharma and it is an acknowledgment of
the ordinary practicalities of power, influence, and prestige. Without
American patronage, there can be no sustained American Buddhism. What
are we doing to ensure the future of the dharma through appropriate
patronage?
And the fourth criterion is, has monastic ordination been
fully passed to American monks and nuns? This category
also reflects Buddhism's Asian history, in which monasteries
served as preservers and propagators of the tradition. Where the
monastery did not continue, there was no place where dharma could remain
powerful outside of the whims and intrigues of cultural and political life. For
the American context, we must preserve and nurture the monastic traditions
which have fostered Buddhism in this way. But in the American context,
the lay tradition is destined to play a major role in the continued
development of Buddhism. Are there also strong places of practice for lay
people, for the yoginis and yogis of our culture? Can we preserve the
tradition, established in our "boomer" generation, of strong commitment
to practice for everyone, both monastic and lay?
All of these criteria merely suggest the heart of our dharma
connection. As first generation American Buddhists, we made
practice our link, and it is practice which brought us here today.
Practice has given us a new lease on life; practice has conquered the
hopelessness and depression of our generation; practice has opened us to
the suffering of the world without embittering or hardening us. Do we have the
fundamentals of our practice established so that we can continue? Do we have the
texts, the transmissions, the financial support, and the institutions
and places of practice? And can we, above all, commit ourselves to
continue to practice? Can we commit ourselves to teach our children, so that they
can practice as well?
We must always remember, our practice is not just for
ourselves. Of course, we practice for our teachers, out of gratitude and
devotion for the precious jewel they have given us. We practice for our
children, for all children, for all people in the next seven generations. We
practice because this is how we are most alive. We practice because we don't
know how not to practice. It is the only way to be who we are.
Most importantly, we practice so that we do not remain
merely Buddhists. We cannot solidify our identities as Buddhists.
We know that to hide in Buddhism is not the way to honor our teachers and to
nurture our descendants. If the three refuges remove us from the
suffering of the world, we have not understood them. American Buddhism must
serve the world, not itself. It must become, as the 7th century Indian master
Santideva wrote, the doctor and the nurse for all sick beings in the
world until everyone is healed; a rain of food and drink an
inexhaustible treasure for those who are poor and destitute.
Social Engagement in the World
This leads to the next level of reflection about my children
in the 21st century: the importance of socially engaging in the world.
My children, Owen and Alicia, will increasingly encounter suffering; we
can only imagine the kinds of suffering our children will encounter. Even
now, we see the poor with not enough food and no access to clean and safe
drinking water; we see ethnic and religious prejudice that would extinguish
those who are different; we see the sick and infirm who have no medicine
or care; we see rampant exploitation of the many for the pleasure and
comfort of the few; we see the demonization of those who would challenge the
reign of wealth, power, and privilege. And we know the 21st century will
yield burgeoning populations with an ever-decreasing store of resources to
nourish them.
Fueling this suffering is the relentless consumerism which
pervades our society and the world. Greed drives so many of the
damaging systems of our planet. The socially engaged biologist Stephanie Kaza
reminds me, in America each of us consumes our body weight each day in
materials extracted and processed from farms, mines, rangelands, and forests-120
pounds on the average. Since 1950, consumption of energy, meat, and lumber
has doubled; use of plastic has increased five-fold; use of aluminum has
increased seven-fold; and airplane mileage has increased 33-fold per
person. We now own twice as many cars as in 1950. And with every bite,
every press of the accelerator, every swipe of the credit card in our shopping
malls, we have left a larger ecological footprint on the face of the world.
We have squeezed our wealth out of the bodies of plantation workers
in Thailand, farmers in Ecuador, factory workers in Malaysia.
The crisis of consumerism is infecting every culture of the
world, most of them emulating our American lifestyle. David Loy, in
The Religion of the Market, considers whether consumption has actually
become the new world religion. This religion of consumerism is based on two
unexamined tenets or beliefs:
1) growth and enhanced world trade will benefit
everyone, and
2) growth will not be constrained by the inherent
limits of a finite planet. Its ground is ego gratification, its path
is an ever-increasing array of wants, and its fruition is expressed in
the Descartian perversion - "I shop, therefore I am." While it recruits new
converts through the floods of mass media, it dulls the consumer,
making us oblivious to the suffering in which we participate. "Shopping is a
core activity in sustaining a culture of denial."
Now that communist countries throughout the world are
collapsing, consumerism is all but unchallenged in its growth. As
traditional societies become modern, consumerism is the most alluring path.
Religious peoples an communities have the power to bring the only remaining
challenge to consumerism. And Buddhism has unique insights which can stem
the tide of consumptive intoxication.
How do we respond to all of this suffering? How will our
children respond? It is easy to join the delusion, forgetting our
Buddhist training. But when we return to it, we remember-the origin of
suffering is our constant craving. We want, therefore we consume; we want,
therefore we suffer. As practitioners, we feel this relentless rhythm in
our bones. We must, in this generation, wake up to the threat of
consumerism, and join with other religious peoples to find a way to break its
grip. We must all find a way to become activists in the movement which
explores alternatives to consumerism.
Three Kinds of Materialism
As American Buddhists, we must recognize the threats of
consumerism within our practice, and within our embryonic communities and
institutions. From a Tibetan Buddhist point of view, consumerism is just the tip
of the iceberg. It represents only the outer manifestation of craving and
acquisitiveness. Twenty-five years ago, my guru, the Vidyadhara Chogyam
Trungpa Rinpoche, wrote one of first popular dharma books in America, Cutting
Through Spiritual Materialism. Its relevance only increases each
year. He spoke of the three levels of materialism which rule our existence as
expressions of ego-centered activity. Unchallenged, materialism will co-opt
our physical lives, our communities, and our very practice.
Physical materialism refers to the neurotic pursuit of
pleasure, comfort, and security. This is the outer expression of
consumerism. Under this influence, we try to shield ourselves from the daily
pain of embodied existence, while accentuating the pleasurable moments. We
are driven to create the illusion of a pain-free life, full of choices
which make us feel in control. We need 107 choices of yoghurt in a supermarket
so full of choices we feel like queens of our universe. We go to
24-Plex movie theaters so that we can see whatever film we want, whenever
we want. We need faster pain relievers, appliances to take away all
inconvenience, and communication devices to foster immediate exchange. All of
these create the illusion of complete pleasure at our finger-tips, with none
of the hassle of pain. When we are ruled by this kind of physical
materialism, we identify ourselves by what we have.
But this is just the beginning. On the next level,
psychological materialism seeks to control the world through theory,
ideology, and intellect. Not only are we trying to physically manipulate
the world so that we don't have to experience pain, we do so
psychologically as well. We create a theoretical construct which keeps us from
having to be threatened, to be wrong, to be confused. We always put ourselves in
control in this way. "As an American I have rights. As a woman, I deserve to
be independent from expectations of men in my society. I earn my own
salary, I can choose how I want to spend it. As a Buddhist, I understand
interdependence..." Psychological materialism interprets whatever is threatening
or irritating as an enemy. Then, we control the threat by creating an
ideology or religion in which we are victorious, correct, or righteous;
we never directly experience the fear and confusion which could arise
from experiencing a genuine threat.
This is particularly perilous for the American Buddhist. In
these times, Buddhism has become popular, a commodity which is
used by corporations and the media. Being Buddhist has become a
status symbol, connoting power, prestige and money. His Holiness' picture
appears on the sets of Hollywood movies and in Apple computer ads;
Hollywood stars are pursued as acquisitions in a kind of dharmic competition.
Everyone wants to add something Buddhist to her resume. Buddhist Studies
enrollments at Naropa have doubled in two years, and reporters haunt our
hallways and classrooms. Conferences like this attract a veritable parade
of characters like myself, hawking the "tools" of our trade. What is
happening is that our consumer society has turned Buddhism into a commodity like
everything else. And the seductions for the American Buddhist are clear. We
are being seduced to use our Buddhism to promote our own egos,
communities, and agendas in the American marketplace.
This still is not the heart of the matter. On the most
subtle level, spiritual materialism carries this power struggle
into the realm of our own minds, into our own meditation practice. Our
consciousness is attempting to remain in control, to maintain a centralized
awareness. Through this, ego uses even spirituality to
shield itself from fear and insecurity. Our meditation practice can be used
to retreat from the ambiguity and intensity of daily
encounters; our compassion practices can be used to manipulate the sheer
agony of things falling apart. We develop an investment in ourselves as
Buddhist practitioners, and in so doing protect ourselves from the
directness and intimacy of our own realization. It is important for us to
be willing to cultivate the "edge" of our practice, the edge where panic
arises, where threat is our friend, and where our depths are turned inside
out.
What happens when we are ruled by the "three levels of
materialism"? The Vidyadhara taught that when we are so
preoccupied with issues of ego, control, and power we become "afraid of
external phenomena, which are our own projections." What this means is that when
we take ourselves to be real, existent beings, then we mistake the
world around us to be independent and real. And when we do this we invite
paranoia, fear, and panic. We are afraid of not being able to control the
situation. As Patrul Rinpoche taught:
Don't prolong the past,
Don't invite the future,
Don't alter your innate wakefulness,
Don't fear appearances...
We must give up the fear of appearances. How can we do this?
The only way to cut this pattern of acquisitiveness and
control is to guard the naked integrity of our meditation practice. We
must have somewhere where manipulation is exposed for what it is. We
must be willing to truly "let go" in our practice. When we see our racing
minds, our churning emotions and constant plots, we touch the face of
the suffering world and we have no choice but to be changed. We must allow
our hearts to break with the pain of constant struggle that we experience
in ourselves and in the world around us. Then we can become engaged in
the world, and dedicate ourselves to a genuine enlightened society in which
consumerism has no sway. Craving comes from the speed of our minds,
wishing so intensely for what we do not have that we cannot experience
what is there, right before us.
How can we, right now, address materialism in our practice
and our lives? I would like to suggest a socially engaged practice
which could transform our immediate lifestyles and change our
relationship with suffering. It is the practice of generosity. No practice
flies more directly in the face of American acquisitiveness and
individualism. Any of us who have spent time in Asia or with our Asian teachers
see the centrality of generosity in Buddhist practice.
According to traditional formulation, our giving begins with
material gifts and extends to gifts of fearlessness and
dharma. Generosity is the virtue that produces peace, as the sutra says. Try
it. Every day give something to someone. Notice what happens. Give
something which is hard to give. Give money or gifts. Was it hard, and what was
hard about it? Give emotional support or comfort. What happens when we
genuinely make ourselves available to others? Generosity is a practice
which overcomes our aquisitiveness and self-absorption, and which benefits
others. Committing to this practice may produce our greatest legacy for the
21st century.
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Judith Simmer-Brown is professor of Religious Studies at The
Naropa Institute. This article was adapted from her keynote address
given at the Buddhism in America Conference in San Diego in 1998.
Updated April 18, 1999, szpak@well.com
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