Tricycle Magazine.Fall 2007(1).pdf

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editor’s view

buddhism: for adults only?

“HOW DID YOU COME to Buddhism?” It’s a question I’ve

asked plenty of Buddhists I’ve met over the years. People

often answer that they came to Buddhism because they felt

their churches or synagogues had lost touch with their

faith’s spiritual ground. Or that they felt they could no

longer abide by mores or live by tenets that did not suffi-

ciently address the realities of their day-to-day lives.

Attending ritual after empty ritual, they associated key

dates of the religious calendar more closely with holiday

sales and seasonal vacations than anything else. And yet,

when it came to weddings and funerals—and, even among

the more secular-minded, baptisms—they found them-

selves seeking out the local rabbi or priest. In this issue’s

“Dharma Family Values” (p. 80), one pastor tells con-

tributing editor Clark Strand that parishioners usually fall

away at fourteen or fifteen, after which “you’ve basically

got only three opportunities to get them back—when they

get married, when their children get baptized, or when

someone in the family dies.”

Still, they do come back—even many Buddhists. Without

such rituals to provide the cultural framework for continuity

across generations, Strand argues, Buddhist sanghas in the

West, populated with baby boomers gone gray, will leave

future seekers to reinvent the dharmic wheel.

On the other hand, who among us came to the dharma

in order to raise our children as Buddhists? Many of the

elders in Western sanghas converted to Buddhism against

the backdrop of a counterculture that held a bias against

institutional life—precisely what child rearing requires.

They became Buddhists in spite of their upbringing, and in

spite of a consumerist culture that at nearly every turn

opposed core Buddhist tenets. And many, if not most,

came to Buddhism before they had children or considered

how to raise them.

So it’s no surprise that raising children “Buddhist” was an

afterthought and, in the absence of a supportive culture,

even a long shot. The individualistic spirit that motivated

so many to leave their own traditions and become seekers is

not necessarily compatible with hearth and home, let alone

institutional life. And that same spirit—or at least its

extreme—has been decried by thinkers like sociologist

Robert Bellah, who claimed in his Fall 2004 interview with

editor-at-large Andrew Cooper (“The Future of Religion”)

that “a purely private Zen is a contradiction in terms.”

According to Bellah, what we often call spirituality is often

little more than this “purely private” pursuit, as opposed to

religion, which evokes community and institutions. Bellah

pointed to the pitfalls of spirituality and its self-help ethos:

Spirituality in this new sense is a private activity, though it

may be pursued with a group of the like-minded, but it is not

“institutional” in that it does not involve membership in a

group that has claims on its members . . . [that] expects that

they will stick it out even when the going gets tough, and

will not leave at the first indication that their needs are not

being met.

What Strand points to in his essay for this issue is thus

symptomatic of a broader problem, one that Bellah would

describe in part as an undervaluation of community in

American society at large. At a time of general institu-

tional decline, forms of spirituality that exalt individual-

ism at the expense of the collective might contribute to our

self-serving conceits rather than alleviate them.

Lifting Buddhist practice out of its cultural context chal-

lenges us to create a context of our own. Here, many voices

need to be heard. Strand’s is one, Bellah’s another. As

Vipassana teacher Gil Fronsdal told me in an interview for

the Winter 2002 issue (“Living Two Traditions”), in some

ways incorporating more traditional Buddhist rituals into a

stripped-down American practice makes sense because “rit-

ual is helpful in better integrating our lives, as well as in

building a community that supports practice. It’s very hard

to practice Buddhism, especially all the way to enlighten-

ment. A community can help us integrate our Buddhist

practice with all aspects of our lives.”

But it’s important not to forget that there is still room

for the traditional monastic view and that of the solitary

yogi—the independent spirit that led American elders of

Buddhism to find the dharma to begin with. As the quin-

tessential American poet Walt Whitman wrote, “Do I con-

tradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am

large, I contain multitudes.)” ▼

James Shaheen, Editor & Publisher

FALL 2007 TRICYCLE | 7

TRICY CLE FALL

2007

letters to the editor

TRANSGENDER BIAS

Pagan Kennedy’s account of Michael

Dillon’s quest to become a Buddhist

monk (“Man-Made Monk,” Summer

2007), and the bigotry he encoun-

tered, hits a tender spot in me. In

2005, having studied Buddhism for

ten years, I cut off my hair and

aborted my four-year-long transition

from male to female to seek ordina-

tion as a Gelug monk. Careful

research revealed, though, that as a

“eunuch” I was ineligible to become

even a novice monk.

My ensuing disenchantment with

Buddhist monasticism propelled me to

seek my own truth, and at long last I

joyfully completed my transition to

womanhood in the spring of 2006. My

disillusionment with Tibetan Bud-

dhism became complete last fall when

an American laywoman with whom I

studied traditonal Tibetan dance

repeatedly put me down in front of the

other women. Currently I sit zazen

while writing my autobiography and

deciding whether I’ll continue to study

Buddhism or move on in search of a

religion that isn’t steeped in sexism.

Joni Kay Rose

Rio Rancho, NM

ing Theravada Buddhism and the

practice of Vipassana in the U.S. for

seventeen years. Sharf very succinctly

described the “quick fix” technique of

Vipassana that has been imported to

the States while pointing out that

what has been left behind is the

sangha or community that holds the

Buddhist heart and soul. When

asked what I think of Theravada

Buddhism in America, I often say,

“Americans brought the cream but

left the cake behind.”

I believe this was partly due to the

Burmese political climate during the

sixties when Westerners were study-

ing and practicing there. At that time

Westerners were given permission to

stay in the country only if they stayed

in meditation centers for a restricted

period and for the specific purpose of

meditation. Even now, when the

THE CREAM AND THE CAKE

I was delighted to read “Losing Our

Religion,” the interview with Professor

Robert Sharf in the Summer 2007

issue of Tricycle. I am a Burmese-born

dharma teacher, and I’ve been teach-

F ALL

2007

TRICYCLE

letters

issuance of tourist visas has eased up,

it is still difficult for foreigners to live

in a community with Burmese fami-

lies and friends. I feel that without

firsthand experience of what makes

Buddhism tick in the lay community,

it would be impossible to feel the

essence of Buddhism and how it has

profoundly affected the Burmese peo-

ple for over sixteen hundred years.

For members of the Burmese com-

munity, going to retreats at the med-

itation center is only one part of their

lives as Buddhists. The lay communi-

ty is constantly exposed to the teach-

ings through movies, novels, maga-

zines, and plays as well as sermons by

monks and tutoring by elder rela-

tives. There are all kinds of courses

available at monasteries and nunner-

ies, courses run by lay teachers, where

anyone can study the full range of

scriptural teachings.

I think if Westerners traveling to

Burma in the sixties had had a chance

to live among the local Burmese

Buddhist community, a chance to

learn the language and get to know

the integral role of Buddhism in the

lives of the laypeople, the story

of the emergence of American

Theravada Buddhism could have

been different. Of course, that is only

my personal opinion.

tion from the work on the cushion. . . .

Rather than compare the ‘results’ of

science and religion, we would do bet-

ter to compare the experiences, aspira-

tions, and training of the most

dedicated practitioners of each

stream.” There is some truth in what

he says, in that both disciplines

demand an unflagging commitment

to truth, but fundamentally there is a

drastic difference between the aspira-

tions and experiences of scientists and

those of spiritual practitioners.

When Professor Frank pursues theo-

retical astrophysics, no matter how

abstract, sophisticated, or far-reaching,

it is an objective, conceptual analysis

of nature. Even if he took a few weeks

off from astrophysics and developed a

grand unified theory of all the forces in

nature so that his graduate students

could put the equations on their T-

shirts, it would be a conceptual

scheme whose objectification would be

shown directly by its mathematical

formulation. This is not the main aspi-

ration of Buddhism in any of its fla-

vors. In his book How to Practice, the

Dalai Lama writes:

To apprehend the “mind vivid, with-

out any constructions, just as it is” or

to know the “luminous and knowing

nature of the mind unaffected by

thought” is an experience of identity

between the knower and the known.

Alternatively, the empirical subject,

what we normally take ourselves to

be, becomes so attenuated by the ces-

sation of conceptual thinking that it

no longer impedes a direct apprehen-

sion of the mind. Such knowledge is

neither an objectification nor reifica-

tion. Such a first-person experience is

radically different from scientific

knowledge, which must be fully

objectifiable and quantifiable.

Dr. Thynn Thynn

Sae Taw Win II Dhamma Center

Sebastopol, CA

NONCONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

Professor Adam Frank draws many

excellent parallels between science and

Buddhism as forms of spiritual prac-

tice in his essay “In the Light of Truth”

(Spring 2007). However, his main

point is fundamentally misleading.

Professor Frank writes, “When carried

forward with right intention and an

open heart, science is a kind of spiri-

tual practice, no different in its aspira-

I love physics and astronomy and

have dedicated my life to their

research and teaching. However, if the

Buddhist tempter Mara asked me to

choose between a grand unification

scheme and a nonconceptual appre-

TRICYCLE FALL

2007

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