Western spirituality
Came across the lovely title, Sex, Drugs, Enlightenment: Noble Secrets from an Orthodox Buddhist ex-Monk.
From the blurb, it was written by a Boomer – a self-described WASP – and it's all about how LSD, Buddhism, meditation and tantric sex turned one Alex Walking into a higher being. I don't care to read the book, to find out all the interesting details because it's part and parcel of a broader stream of left-handed "Buddhist spirituality" that is really more about Western spiritual values. The electronic dust jacket and the four star reviews from Amazon readers tells you everything.
The author claims he was ordained as a bhikkhu in the Thai Forest tradition in northern Thailand, where he was made privy to certain secret esoteric teachings during his 15-month stint in the robes. Or maybe the sequence is different, doesn't matter. It's highly unlikely that any names will be given since this is of course all part of the gnostic, hidden path set aside for true aspirants and initiates. Walking was and is extremely precocious spiritually and no doubt Thai Forest masters recognized this quality and pushed him straight into the deep end of the swimming pool. He of course probably left the robes shortly after his accelerated training, a full on adept in the ways of the secret lineages. More likely, none of it ever happened.
It's unfortunate how Buddhism has become associated in the Western mind with gods, goddesses and tantric sex because it has nothing to do with those things. Vajarayana, or Tibetan spirituality, could be described as vaguely inspired by some Buddhist ideas, but it is as much Bön and Hinduism as anything. I've tried to read Tibetan stuff and it frankly just leaves me cold. The Tibetans however are more ubiquitous in the West, the Dalai Lama having made America part of his strategy to give Tibet some breathing room from the Chinese. Tibetanism is more or less identified in many minds with the Buddha because of the Dalai Lama and the network of lamas and spiritual gurus who set up shop here.
Walking's book popped up just after I had a good sit followed by a reading of the Bhikkunīmyutta section of the Samyutta Nikaya. The section deals in particular with encounters between Mara the Evil One and the Buddha's female disciples, who, as it turns out, are accomplished in meditation despite being the weaker sex. One of the bhikkunis is reproached by Mara on this point and she observes that it's because she does not identify with either being male or female, seeing them rightly as conventions (the text's word) that are like views, opinions, sense consciousness and so on – in no way a self. Is there a you to be found in the tasting of food? Or in the hearing of music? Of being a registered Democrat? Or in the touch of a cotton shirt? Is there a you in being a big strong man or a petite female?
The Samyutta Nikaya is translated as "connected discourses," where large sections (vaggas) are organized around a common theme of a doctrinal nature. The book reinforces key doctrines through poignant stories with slight but significant variations. Many of them will be very similar, almost repetitive save important details related to a particular point. In the case of the bhikkunis, the women are all approached by Mara in exactly the same way, while practicing concentration in a secluded tree grove, and each is given different temptations or distractions by him to throw them off the path.
In one of the stories, a bhikkuni is told by Mara that she is very beautiful and that since he is handsome, they should delight in sensual pleasure together. His proposal is, "Why waste all your beauty sitting here alone meditating among the trees when you could be having pleasure with some handsome devil like me? The path to enlightenment is hard to see but the sensual is visible and easily seen." Note here that there is no rubbish about spiritual awakening to be had by having sex with a divinity. Mara's offer is all about the pleasure to be had over the dry practice of concentration. If Tibetans had been writing the sutta, the two would've engaged in tantric sex and there would legends of the bhikkuni becoming an arahant through union with a deva... or some such nonsense.
This parallels the earlier vagga in which the Lord Buddha is approached by Mara's three daughters; they make a concerted effort to seduce him, even going so far as to divide themselves into 100 hundred beautiful maidens each. Surely 300 beautiful maidens would be enough to draw a great spiritual being away from his quest! Of course, the Blessed One rejects their offers and like his female followers, gives a reason rooted in the dhamma, in the way we cause suffering for ourselves by choosing the sensuous. Sex with 300 beautiful maidens does nothing besides bring more suffering (Muslims take note here – this carnal sex fest sounds like Yahweh's promise of heaven). Mara and his daughters cannot break the Buddha and finally vanish, defeated.
The introductory notes to the Wisdom Publications edition I have indicates that we may reasonably believe that Mara is in some cases our own human frailties, taunting and pushing us into doing something in order to avoid meditation. The commenter also believes the bhikkunis in this section of the Samyutta are already arahants. I personally did not get that from the text at all.
The beauty in these stories rests on their being truthful and wise in a simple way that edifies. The focus of all the suttas is to teach what is essential to our good without getting bogged down in metaphysical questions, philosophical points of dispute and so on. These things do come up of course, but they are dealt with efficiently, economically and without much fuss so long as it's essential to the well-being of listeners.
Is annihilation at death right view? No. Does samsara have a start and end? Doesn't matter, focus on what's important – your predicament. Whether samsara had a start or not is immaterial to the dukkha you are soaking in every moment. The general spirit of the suttas is practical instruction leading to the ending of suffering and death. What are you doing right now to see dukkha in your life? What are you doing to see the causes from which it stems? Etc.
Here is Walking's book, about his sex adventures, hallucinogenic travels, its consumerist take on Buddhism. It is sold to the witless Westerners as "Buddhism."
Then there's the Pali Canon in which sex, alcohol and other sensual enticements are rejected by renunciants as poisons which delude the mind and leave one trapped in the grip of death and suffering. These two things are very different readings of the spiritual life, but the West is good at selling sex, drugs and rock n' roll and there is enough left-handed, dark tantric material provided by Hinduism and its various offshoots to give an authentic gleam to the marketing material here. You can have your cake and eat it too!
I titled this post "Western spirituality" because Walking and a lot of other Western "Buddhists" are not teaching Buddhism as found in the early texts and tradition. They in fact teach something that reflects Western values with a Hindu-Tibetan cover. Turn to what is actually taught in the scriptures and you find it is often directly at odds with what the Western missionaries dispense to their audiences. Like all spiritual imposters, various putative followers have, true to the Buddha's prophecy, substituted their own teachings for dhamma. Their taints have tainted whatever good they received and as this has repeated over the centuries, the original teaching no longer resembles what it began as. Everything is impermanent and subject to the arising and passing of karmic formations.
Some Western Buddhists are more like Jack Kornfield, who like Walking, spent a short time in the robes, returned to the U.S. and built up a net worth of several million by giving talks, writing books, running retreats for people sloshing around with extra income. Basically, changing the dhamma and making money off it. Walking has probably sold a few copies of his book and, apart from Amazon, doesn't seem to exist.
Kornfield isn't selling what Walking is exactly, his teachings being something tailored to a more educated, materialist crowd who want to fill a spiritual void but without any disruptive ethical commitment. I seriously doubt that there have ever been many pro-lifers in the Western Buddhist movement and if it's easy sex and abortion, you'll find support for it in the Western Buddhist camp. Because Buddhism is such a tiny part of the Western religious landscape, I think it attracted counter-cultural types who always felt at odds with the dominant mainstream ideas of the 1960s and 70s. They blended their counter-cultural leanings with a foreign religion that, in some cases, was sold as being "scientific," a nobler spiritual practice free from the mythologies of Christianity.
Walking includes the adjective "orthodox" in his book title because he wants you to know that he's truly well versed in Buddhism. Orthodox means rightly taught, therefore, rightly believing and he was taught by the Thai Forest masters (!!). That is how Westernism works – the author needs to sell his book to make money and the best way to do it is to tie himself to an authentic, indigenous tradition that appears alien to the West, with all its Christian hang ups on sex, its patriarchal control of women, etc. You can make up any bullshit about your time in the East and the clueless consumers will buy it up so long as it seems quaint, rustic and novel. Lots of people are searching and want help, but they can easily be taken in by those who, like Mara, offer the sensual because it appears immediate, visible and easy to grasp.
Walking's sex, drugs and rock n' roll are Western spirituality, in fact, the only thing left of it. Walking and Kornfield are just softer forms of Western colonialism and if read in this way, as exploiters of witless consumers, then they make perfect sense.
Christianity is an impermanent phenomenon like all phenomena and is disappearing at such a rate that it will be hard to find it in any population in fifty years time. What has replaced it is a bitterness over the errors of a religion that, when examined very closely, has little basis in historical reality. People have been lost for generations with its passing, for its demise has not been sudden, but rather prolonged in some quarters. Some have turned to drugs, alcohol, sex, hallucinogens and "Eastern" traditions, at least during the 60s and 70s when the West experienced a cultural revolution and the ground seemed as stable as Jell-O.
Did the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt happen? Not according to science. If the Exodus never happened, then the rest is a lie. This sudden loss of faith, of feeling deceived by a deity has pushed the West into an unrecoverable nihilism. "If there is no god, then anything is permitted" went Dostoevsky's saw because his version of Yahweh was the foundation for all moral action. When this god was exposed as having clay feet, it sent the West into a death spiral. Yes, the West wanted very much to prove that anything was allowed, from world wars, to materialism, to theft, to abortion, to human trafficking. Dostoevsky's statement could be taken as a warning, a prediction or both.
When your god or gods become all too human, and when they are the reference for right and wrong, then the moral universe becomes an empty void that can be filled with anything. In Buddhism, there are no stories about long tantric sex between bhikkunis and evil spirits because it is unwholesome, the cause of suffering and rebirth. Full stop. This is what the suttas of the early Buddhist community teach us without doubt, without any wavering.
There are no stone tablets at Sinai, there are no oral laws, written laws, commentaries on law, hadiths, Talmuds and so on as is found in the Yahwist schools. In Buddhism, there are a few precepts which say, "This is how things are. If you kill, there will be suffering for you. If you steal," etc.
There is no liberation to be had in getting high on LSD or ayahuasca – but in the West with its consumerism and post-Christian nihilism, everyone is looking for something easy they can have drop shipped to their home that will mute the din of an untrained mind. The nihilist doesn't understand that his suffering is only compounded by his delusion that there are no ethical commitments because god is dead. So he acts like an animal because the thing that was central to the whole narrative – Yahweh – is a mental construct which has been disassembled using the tools of comparative religion, linguistics, archaeology and so on.
Liars, murderers, thieves and so on tend to be unpleasant people and even if they find comfort in a band of like-minded people, they constantly mistrust their peers and lead a troubled life full of inconstancy and stress. There is no god judging them, meting out punishment from a heavenly throne, either in this life or the next. The foolish decision to engage in unwholesome behaviors, whether they involve killing other men on the battlefield or dropping acid and getting drunk, does not put you in the company of good people. You will not find spiritual friends who make this human life a significant step toward Nibbana.
The Buddha did not appeal to a god or gods as the basis for moral action. Does that mean a Buddhist society cannot degrade and become more animalistic, more nihilistic like the West? Of course not. Everything is impermanent and even the dhamma will eventually be forgotten among men according to the Buddha's own teachings. The West had its rug pulled out from beneath its feet and it has been on its back ever since, but Buddhist societies will just forget more and more overtime until a new dispensation arrives.
There is an opinion sometimes shared on the Internet by people who think that returning to the worship of Yahweh would restore the moral order and produce a happier, more stable society. The problem is that the toothpaste has already escaped the tube. Yahweh is a social construct produced by historical, political and social causes in the distant past in a distant land very different from the modern West. Yahweh demands faith, submission or kinship depending on the school in question and all of these are at odds with facts on the ground. One hears a call to return to traditional Christianity as if two centuries of science and scholarship haven't undermined it completely. If your god is the god of truth and his revelation turns out to be fraudulent, then this is a hard fact that will not go away by restoring pretty Latin Masses or having grand Orthodox liturgies.
To claim A, then learn that A is in fact Not A makes it difficult to believe or submit to the authority figure who has made the error of fact a litmus test for one's eternal destiny.
Would keeping the Ten Commandments be better than nothing? Yes, but this requires pretending that the basis of these, Yahweh, is very real. He is mentioned in the First Commandment as a matter of fact. When your moral code is built on a conceit, a fraud, a deception, or creative imagining rather than what can be directly experienced, ethical behavior is doomed. Antinomianism is a side effect of divinely ordained moral codes; when the god fails as they always do, there is a complete break down in ethical life. Society becomes darker, less friendly, even hostile; exploitation by the rich and the powerful becomes normative and the institutions which protect and nurture become fronts for the oligarchs.
Lost souls like Alex Walking end up seeking an out through sex, drugs and rock n' roll because there is no tradition left, at least that they can see. Christianity insisted on objective truth and fidelity to facts as the ground of belief and action and, when those facts condemned it, it died. C.G. Jung observed that medieval scholasticism was the gymnasium used to train the Western mind in logic, reflection, truth and falsity. Without this period, no scientific age could have appeared in the West. When it did, it used the rigors of logical systems and reason to invalidate the myths of the Bible. It's a case of the ungrateful child rising up against the father who mentored him in everything.
In Christianity, the mental objects of Egypt, Israel, exodus, Davidic dynasty and so on are necessary for the educated believer to hold to as brute force facts of history. But they are mental objects, shaped by causes remote from us. We do not know the names of the men who wrote any of the books of the New Testament with certainty. It becomes even shakier when peering further back into Hebrew Testament. The standard of belief is set by concrete historical events recorded diligently in the Yahwist schools, so this is not some unfair standard being imposed from without, by a hostile world.
One can as a Westerner lead a very accomplished life intellectually and professionally as a true Christian believer. If you study medicine and become an accomplished surgeon while still professing a belief in the Exodus, then there's nothing to be troubled by because your world is not shaped by biblical scholarship. Besides, who runs around worrying about the historicity of the Exodus anyway?
You don't care that there's no evidence for a mass exodus of Israelites from Egypt because it's not something you read about or think is important as a point of investigation. Those issues have been settled by the authority of a church or a sacred writing. For the rest of the world however, this subjective standard gives way to a recognition of there being a factual claim on the table.
"Your religion claims the Israelites fled Egypt and this is committed as a part of your sacred history, yet there is only evidence that says it never happened and could not have happened." Again, if the Exodus did not happen – and the evidence says it did not – then the rest of it, all of it, is unreliable as history, and false as a spiritual path towards the ending of suffering.
