Difference in Buddhism

Difference in Buddhism (from TAN01: Then and Now (class) 01:12:29.91 - 01:17:54.96)

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Agnes: Are there differences really between Buddhism as 500 BC versus Tibetan Buddhism? Or is it just... Why do you call it Tibetan Buddhism, just because it is from Tibet, rather than Cambodia Buddhism or others?

Ken: Well, this is a very interesting point. When you look at Buddhism in China, Tibet, well I was going to say Japan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Thailand, to the outside observer you’re dealing with really different religions because you’ll find almost no forms that are common.

In terms of rituals: in Thailand they have the bathing of the Buddha, unknown in the Tibetan tradition.

In the Tibetan tradition you have these lama dances, unknown in the Theravadan tradition; it just looks like demon worship.

In Zen, in Japan you have people going around hitting each other, unknown in Theravadan, not unknown in Tibet, but done very differently in Tibet, nothing like the precision and formality in Japanese.

So they really look like very, very different religions. Yet when Buddhists from those different countries start talking with each other they find that they’re working with very, very similar material, some of it more elaborate and some of it less elaborate, but with very similar understanding, virtually the same understanding.

When you contrast that with Christianity, Islam and Judaism, which are totally comparable because they all stem from Abraham. They are one religion and yet there is these tremendous difficulties and tensions among them in the way that this does not exist among the Buddhist traditions.

So the reason that we call things Tibetan Buddhism and Cambodian and things like that is primarily because of the geographical isolation that these different Buddhist traditions experienced for hundreds of years, thousands really.

And now that geographical isolation has ended, there is a great deal of interaction taking place, which is very interesting. So we’re seeing different forms emerge. But that’s the primary reason is because these are the ones associated with different countries.

Agnes: What you’re describing, the differences seemed to be more the ritual. What about the essence, the dharma itself? Does it have basic differences between these countries?

Ken: Not in my experience.

There are some people who would say that Dzogchen and Theravadan are different religions; I don’t buy it. I think they’re different ways of talking about the same thing.

The rituals and the forms that go with them are very, very different. To a certain extent the spiritual ideals are different. That is, you have a different picture of what they look like, but in the actual experience and everything I don’t find those differences.

I have a colleague who is very, very similar to me except that his training was all in the Theravadan tradition. Whereas I know Tibetan, he knows Pali. He’s put a lot of thought into translation and we have very, very interesting discussions.

Because Theravadans are all set up as straw dogs in the Mahayana — you know, it’s the “Hinayana” [lesser vehicle]. And I discovered much to my amusement that the Mahayanists are set up as straw dogs [ed. in the Therevadan tradition].

He said once, “Oh you Mahayana essentialists!” which is like, you know, a terrible thing to call a Buddhist, an essentialist. But we have virtually no differences in our understanding of what Buddhism is actually about and what the aim is. He’s evolved a way of teaching which is quite unique, which is different from — but is analogous to what I’ve evolved. There’s just that kind of commonality.

Confident Faith

There are actually two points here, but both are short and loosely connected, so you get the first remark on Christianity for free:).

Ken talks about three kinds of faith in the GDP series (among others), of which the confident faith is maybe the weakest, nevertheless it is maybe also the easiest to get to. IMHO it also helps if there is a track record before you listen to someone.

Confident Faith (from GDP03: Guru, Deity, Protector (retreat) 00:00:25.60 - 00:04:15.60)

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Confident faith is described as the feeling of solidity that comes from a rational appreciation. That is, you study the stuff, you think about it, it makes sense. So you say, "Okay, I’ll give it a try.“ And this is one of the reasons why I like Buddhist practice and Buddhist perspective; it’s because it actually does make sense.

Christianity, for instance, doesn’t. And the consequence of that is, faith as a practice in Christianity has to be stronger because it doesn’t make sense. And it’s not just Christianity, actually, it applies to most of the Abrahamic traditions, because somehow or other they ended up with a problem. And the problem was, if there is an all-loving, all-mighty God, why do we suffer? The problem of pain which C.S. Lewis wrote about.

Buddhism, on the other hand, says "There is suffering." That’s where we start. So its existence isn’t regarded as a problem; it’s regarded as a fact. No explanation required; there it is. And so a rational appreciation is for many people an important starting point. And I know this from my work with people who are not particularly into spiritual stuff. You know, if you want to get them to do something, it’s got to make sense to them ’cause they’re not going to do it out of clear appreciation or longing or anything like that.

Then and Now

The podcasts and the transcripts are the fuel that drives this clips & quotes blog. Therefore, and especially as it is the nucleus and main focus of the Unfettered Mind community project (of which this blog is an off-spring), I am very glad that the very first transcripts of Ken McLeod's Then and Now class series have been officially published!

So, enjoy sessions TAN01 and TAN02 of Ken's Then and Now classes.

And congrats to all the busy people who have been transcribing and making it happen!

We will soon follow up with our first TAN01 clip & quote (IMHO an important one). There have been already a few exceptions, and clips have been made from later TAN seesions with internal material Ann and myself had access to, but they have been kind of sneak previews--on important subjects that kind of couldn't wait. But now I am glad we can use the transcripts to make clips chronologically. And you can start reading the whole TAN class by yourself, which will hopefully make it much more accessible and faster for people who don't necessarily want to spent 50+ hours to listen to the whole podcast series (or who don't want to hassle with giving them a try - for some it's much easier to have a quick glance at a text than to listen to an audio speech file).

Oh, and what is it about?! Three things (as far as my limited understanding goes):

1. It is simply the longest series of all of Ken's freely available podcast classes and retreats - 37 sessions of around 1:25 hours each, in total around 50 hours of teachings and Q&A with students.


2. Unlike all other of Ken's classes and retreats, which primarily focus on meditation and practice from all kind of angles, this one focusses primarily on Buddhist philosophy, history, and teachings as such.


3. It does so by going chronologically through an old and important Tibetian book (I don't know if it is comparable in importance to the Christian bible and Islamic koran or not. Maybe not, as Buddhists seem to have a myriad of classical texts, but it sure is a "classic basic text for Tibetan Buddhist students") with two English translated versions. The book is "The Jewel Ornament of Liberation" and the two translations are by Khenpo Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche and Herbert V. Guenther.

So if you are seriously interested in Ken McLeod's teachings, in Buddhism in general, or in the Tibetan book The Jewel Ornament of Liberation in particular, then the transcribed Then and Now classes might be something for you.

The Six Realms

By George Draffan from:

Driven By Desire - Why The Global Economy Won’t Satisfy Us

Ultimately, it’s not greed or aggression that’s the problem: it’s ignoring, not feeling or understanding, the effects of that greed and aggression. We think some self-indulgent action is going to make us happy, so we do it, and we believe we’ve gotten away with it, so we do it a few more times. All the while, our inappropriate behavior undermines our happiness. Somehow, we never make that connection, and so we keep doing this thing that isn’t making us happy; we do it even harder, faster.

But if we can extricate ourselves from that cycle even for a little while, we begin to see that it isn’t making us happy. The problem then is that the impacts of our behavior are so shocking and horrifying, we immediately go into denial again to numb ourselves. On a personal level, we turn away from homeless people — or never even see them at all, standing there dying. On the economic level, we buy and consume vegetables grown with pesticides because they’re cheaper.

Jensen: I’ve known you for a while, and it’s pretty clear to me that your perspective has been deeply influenced by Buddhism.

Draffan: Yes, what we’re really talking about here is awareness, and Buddhism is all about awareness. It’s about becoming more aware of suffering: that other people suffer; that I suffer. It’s about recognizing that happiness is an elusive — and illusive — goal that we keep striving to reach. And out of that awareness comes a desire for something deeper, a willingness to slow down and start paying attention to what is actually happening, instead of being so focused on getting what I believe will make me happy. When I stop long enough to see what is actually happening — both externally and internally — that clarity enables me to take effective action commensurate with what I and other people really need. Buddhist meditation can be a tool for dismantling habitual behavior and projections.

Jensen: What sort of "projections"?

Draffan: We often project our emotional states onto the world, and this prevents us from seeing it clearly. The ancient Buddhists — and, before them, the Hindus — had a different way of describing this. They believed the world is divided into six realms of being, of which the human is only one. The others are the realms of hungry ghosts, hell beings, animals, gods, and jealous gods. To the ancients, these were literally different realms. To a modern person, it might be more helpful to see them as worlds we project onto this one when in the grip of certain emotional obsessions. Buddhist teacher Ken McLeod has done some excellent work on making these ancient contemplative practices relevant to us today.

The hungry-ghost realm, for example, is projected when you are habitually overcome by grasping and greed. The hungry ghosts have huge stomachs and tiny mouths and necks, so they can never get enough to eat, and whatever they do eat turns to fire. If you’re a hungry ghost, you live in a world rich in resources — like the earth — but as far as you’re concerned, you’re wandering in a desert. Nothing satisfies. Sound familiar?

Of course, normal human desire is not as strong as the grasping greed of the hungry ghosts. In the human realm, you actually get some enjoyment out of the things you acquire or consume, but the satisfaction doesn’t last very long. Once I have dinner, I want dessert. Once I have dessert, I want seconds. Humans’ endless desires lead to constant busyness — always working, always trying to achieve more, always driven by a desire that we can never quite satisfy. A thousand-year-old Tibetan text describes the human realm as one of "incessant activity and constant frustration," a never-ending sense that things are not quite right.

The animal realm is based on instinct. According to this cosmology, animals are very efficient and clever, very suited to their world, but they’re locked into certain instincts. Humans enter the animal realm when we’re locked into our instinctual way of thinking and doing.

The hell-beings realm is where everything is seen as opposition. Everyone is attacking everyone else. It’s a realm of aggression, paranoia, hate, and fighting.

Then there’s the god realm, where you feel complete satisfaction to the point of being self-absorbed. The gods live for thousands of years in total comfort, but at some point their time runs out. As they realize they’re going to die, they suffer even more than the beings in the lower realms, because they’d believed this pleasurable state would last forever.

The jealous-god realm is based, obviously, on jealousy, and also on competition. The jealous gods see how comfortable the gods are, and they want that comfort, too, and will do anything to get it. They constantly attack the god realm, but they always lose.

Even if you don’t believe that these realms exist, you might recognize these same emotional states in yourself. The hungry ghosts, for example, might remind you of the desire to have something that, once you get your hands on it, turns out not to be what you want. We need to notice when this happens and understand what the end result of these obsessions is: being stuck in a projected world where everything is viewed through those emotions.

The basis of Buddhist mindfulness meditation is to slow down and focus your attention on something neutral, such as your breath, because it helps us to see through the projections.

Jensen: You once explained to me the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, "Life is suffering," in a way that helped me to understand its meaning — something I’d never been able to do before.

Draffan: The difficulty is in the translation. I’m not sure suffering is the right word. The word in Sanskrit is dukha, which literally means "a wheel with the axle hole off-center." Dukha means that things never seem quite right, and it encompasses everything from vague existential angst, to excruciating mental and physical torture, to inescapable old age, sickness, and death. Even when we find something that gives us pleasure, these pleasures are never permanent; in the back of our mind is the belief that we should be happy all the time. We’re never completely satisfied. One of the first steps to awareness, I think, is to realize that, although we’re pursuing happiness, we’re actually suffering. We’ve been pursuing something that not only doesn’t satisfy, but doesn’t even exist. As Ken McLeod puts it, "We’ve been barking up a tree that isn’t there."

One traditional metaphor is that we’re licking honey from a knife: We keep tasting that sweetness, but we also feel the pain. So we focus on the honey and keep licking, thinking if we do it carefully enough or fast enough, or get a better knife, we’ll escape the pain.

In the phrase "Life is suffering," the Sanskrit word that’s commonly translated as "life" is samsara, which really means "round and round." It describes a circular way of thinking and behaving: going round and round grasping for things that don’t exist and therefore can’t actually bring you happiness. So, of course, "samsara is dukha," because it’s painful to go round and round trying to get something that’s not real.

The First Noble Truth could be translated as "Your reactive emotions and habitual projections cause you to suffer." Because of our delusions, and because we are controlled by the parts of us that are never satisfied, we turn everything to suffering; we are incapable of enjoying real pleasure, of letting it come and go. The problem isn’t that "life is suffering." The problem is that we are stuck in mental delusions and emotional obsessions.

Jensen: How do you link all this to our economic system?

Draffan: Well, the system is driven by our endless desire, and suffering is the result of our habitual ways of seeing and thinking and doing. I once read about a Canadian lumberman who said, "When I look at trees, I see dollar bills." Before we could deforest a mountain, we had to change the way we perceived it. Before the trees could be cut, they had to be redefined as property, and then as private property.

Once that projection and objectification has taken place — from living being to property, from trees to dollar bills — and once you identify possession of that object as your source of happiness, then everything else falls into place. The forest has been privatized, and the landslides and species extinctions are all externalized.

...

Jensen: What will it take for us to survive?

Draffan: Attention to and care for the world. No matter where you are, or what you’re trying to do — whether it’s in your personal life or in the political realm — slow down, pay attention, and take careful responsibility for everything you do.