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After Buddhism

Gathered notes

Notes from “After Buddhism: a workbook”

what is After Buddhism about?

After Buddhism

Mahanama: the convert

A fourfold task

Sunakkhatta: the traitor

On experience

The everyday sublime

Doubt and imagination

A culture of awakening

Notes from “After Buddhism”

1 After Buddhism

the dharma cannot be reduced to a set of truth-claims, which will inevitably conflict with other truth-claims

Instead of asking “What is the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing to do?” the practitioner asks, “What is the wisest and most compassionate thing to do?

you will never arrive at an irreducible core of which you can say: “There! Found you!” In this sense, the self or person is said to be “empty

that no matter where or how probingly you look, you will not find anything in this world that exists self-sufficiently by its own intrinsic nature, in its own right, independent of all else

emptiness discloses the dignity of a person who has realized what it means to be fully human

all these exercises are ultimately futile because they will come to an end.

to dwell in emptiness means to inhabit fully the embodied space of one’s sensory experience, but in a way that is no longer determined by one’s habitual reactivity. To dwell in such emptiness does not mean that one will no longer suffer

What is this?” I have been guided by this impossible question ever since. It has led me away from a religious quest for ultimate truth and brought me back to a perplexed encounter with this contingent, poignant, and ambiguous world here and now.

The quality of your “doubt”—of the questions you ask—is directly correlated to the quality of your insight

The point, therefore, is not to reject dualities in favor of a hypothetical “non-duality” but to learn to live with them more lightly, fluidly, and ironically

Rather than emphasizing personal enlightenment and liberation, it is grounded in a deeply felt concern and compassion for the suffering of all those with whom we share this earth.

For Gotama, the problem with holding firmly to an opinion or belief is that those who do so become “entangled in a thicket” or “trapped in a snare” that prevents them from making any movement along the path

At the risk of making too broad a generalization, let me suggest that religious Buddhists tend to base their practice on beliefs, whereas secular Buddhists tend to base their practice on questions.

Rather than offer conventional answers, which would lead to potentially endless disputes, these men pressed their students to consider the far more baffling and urgent questions posed by ordinary things that were right in front of them but overlooked.

9 The Everyday Sublime

The mystical does not transcend the world but saturates it

for we human animals who delight and revel in our place, who crave security, certainty, and consolation, the sublime is banished and forgotten. As a result, life is rendered opaque and

This takes time. It is a lifelong practice.

In the light of the fourfold task, meditation is the ongoing cultivation of a sensibility, a way of attending to every aspect of experience within a framework of ethical values and goals

meditation enables us to cultivate an understanding of moment-to-moment experience much as we develop an appreciation of art or poetry or nature

At its core, meditation is an existential “dwelling” within the primary rhythms of the body that link one seamlessly to the biosphere

As a discipline, it involves constant vigilance against getting “eaten up” by the rush of thoughts in one’s head and to instead keep returning to the felt embodiment of experience that is so easily forgotten

The aim is to integrate mindful attention into the totality of your conscious life

While mindfulness entails a degree of detachment and equanimity, it is not a cold, disinterested state of mind

clear, penetrating attention

Nirvana is reached by paying close, uncompromising attention to our fluctuating, anguished bodies and minds and the physical, social, and cultural environments in which we are embedded

Conditioned arising and nirvana are not difficult to see and awaken to because they are tricky to grasp with the intellect. They are difficult to see and awaken to because they confront us with a groundless ground that can be overwhelming and terrifying

stilling and brightening of one’s own awareness through meditative discipline

The “sage” is a metaphor for being optimally human: totally detached but totally alert to whatever is occurring

The division between “meditator,” “meditation” and “what is meditated upon” collapses. Instead, the totality of experience become the hwadu

Meditation is more usefully compared to the ongoing practice of an art than the development of a technical ability

10 Ānanda: The Attendant

Implicitly, he also rejects the idea that rules should be imposed on the basis of an abstract principle

What constitutes the core of the dharma is the cultivation of a comprehensive middle way that embraces the entirety of one’s humanity. The core is not a simple subjective state of insight or enlightenment

11 A Culture Of Awakening

To reject these time-honored practices because the theory of reincarnation appears to be incompatible with a scientific worldview would largely miss the point. People participate in these rites for a range of reasons that has nothing to do with the underlying theology that legitimates them.

Here, too, the theoretical validity of the doctrines of karma and rebirth turns out to be subordinate to the practical role they play in the historical, social, and political life of a culture

The vision takes the believer out of petty concerns into an astonished fascination with the sheer play of life. The vision is mind-stopping, excessive, sublime. There is no need to validate it as true or reject it as false. To do so would be as absurd as dismissing Hieronymus Bosch’s depictions of heaven and hell because they do not correspond to any empirically observable reality.

what ultimately mattered to Gotama was not whether this or that opinion about reality was true or false but whether the opinion supported or impeded the practice of the fourfold task

This secular vision teases out the intuitions of the doctrines of karma and rebirth in vivid and compelling detail

A modern translation might be “repetitive existence,” which highlights how a life conditioned by reactivity is one that goes round and round in circles

Gotama has not eliminated the forces of Māra but become immune to them.11 If reactivity arises in his mind, it can no longer gain any purchase. He neither assents to nor struggles against it.

Māra is whatever impedes human flourishing. Psychologically Māra may refer to our habitual reactivity, but existentially Māra refers to any physical, social, political, or economic impediment to our practice of the four tasks

The Buddha-Māra paradigm enables us to see that the fourfold task entails not only a sequence of actions but a radical perceptual shift that is constantly under threat

This realization undermines any wishful notion that the cultivation of the path will unfold along a steady gradient of self-improvement

The performance of the fourfold task is impossible without the resistance of Māra

To put authority in the dharma entails abandoning any hierarchy and replacing it with a model that functions (like that of the Quakers) through consensus among spiritual equals

A secular sangha is a community of like-minded, self-reliant individuals, united by friendship, who work to mutually support each other in their own flourishing. Such a community is an ongoing practice; it requires commitment and action

Whereas members of a collective surrender their autonomy to achieve a common goal, the members of a community create a network of friendships that support and celebrate the individuation of each member within the context of a shared set of values

we need to consider that the picture of Buddhism presented by its apologists—as a religion of nirvanic tranquillity and enlightenment—may be just a pious caricature that fails to account for how most Buddhists in history actually lived

Buddhist centers turn out to be just as prone to power struggles, sexual scandals, and misuse of funds as any other human institution

If we are shocked and disappointed by such revelations, we entertained an idealistic view of Buddhism to begin with

I do not propose cynicism. All I wish to point out is that Buddhist institutions and teachers are human and subject to human failings

Ten Theses Of Secular Dharma

  1. A secular Buddhist is one who is committed to the practice of the dharma for the sake of this world alone.
  2. The practice of the dharma consists of four tasks: to embrace suffering, to let go of reactivity, to behold the ceasing of reactivity, and to cultivate an integrated way of life.
  3. All human beings, irrespective of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, and religion, can practice these four tasks. Each person, in each moment, has the potential to be more awake, responsive, and free.
  4. The practice of the dharma is as much concerned with how one speaks, acts, and works in the public realm as with how one performs spiritual exercises in private.
  5. The dharma serves the needs of people at specific times and places. Each form the dharma assumes is a transient human creation, contingent upon the historical, cultural, social, and economic conditions that generated it.
  6. The practitioner honors the dharma teachings that have been passed down through different traditions while seeking to enact them creatively in ways appropriate to the world as it is now.
  7. The community of practitioners is formed of autonomous persons who mutually support each other in the cultivation of their paths. In this network of like-minded individuals, members respect the equality of all members while honoring the specific knowledge and expertise each person brings.
  8. A practitioner is committed to an ethics of care, founded on empathy, compassion, and love for all creatures who have evolved on this earth.
  9. Practitioners seek to understand and diminish the structural violence of societies and institutions as well as the roots of violence that are present in themselves.
  10. A practitioner of the dharma aspires to nurture a culture of awakening that finds its inspiration in Buddhist and non-Buddhist, religious and secular sources alike.

Added 2024-11-28.