Dial Tone (or: Pissing with Buddhists)

I’ve long thought of myself as a Taoist (even “Belief-O-Matic” confirmed this!) but in many ways I consider myself a closet Buddhist. The Buddhist perspective on mental processes makes tremendous sense to me; it’s the religious trappings that keep me from fully aligning myself with that system of belief.

Even before I came across Stephen Batchelor’s Buddhism without Beliefs, I had pared down the extent to which I accepted many of the tenets – especially reincarnation and karma. Just as Christianity sprang from Judaism and carried forward a lot of its premises, Buddhism emerged from the Indian Brahmanic tradition and carried forward its belief in rebirth. Which does not necessarily make it an accurate portrayal of reality.

All religion boils down to an attempt to second-guess death – to find solace in a belief in what comes after and live one’s life with an eye toward some reward. Gautama took his culture’s view of reincarnation and turned it on its head, promising escape from the cycle. But that doesn’t mean that there is a cycle from which to escape. And I’m not saying there isn’t. But to be a full-fledged Buddhist, one really needs to buy into that belief system, just like being a Christian requires accepting the whole package of sin, atonement, and how your alleged soul is going to spend eternity.

Then there’s the first of the Four Noble Truths: “life is suffering.” This may have been a no-brainer a couple millennia ago, but I think it’s relative. Humanity has the ability to reduce suffering, so the ravages of disease or poverty can be dealt with – today we have the know-how, it’s just a matter of getting it done. (Batchelor prefers to render suffering as “anguish” to better capture the psychological component, but I can’t get away from the back-story that what Siddhartha saw in the world was physical suffering, pure and simple.)

The other aspects of Buddhism that have always made me keep it at arm’s length are its propensity toward trappings, such as prayer wheels and robes, and the fact that it has its own pope in the person of the Dalai Lama. (Okay, so it’s for Tibetan Buddhism like the Pope is for Roman Catholicism, but you get my drift.) He may be an admirable guy in his own right, a swell guest at any party (undoubtedly more so than Benedict XVI), and someone who recognizes the good in all religions. But the whole issue of lineage just doesn’t sit well with me (especially with its reincarnation angle), any more than does the papacy. Taoism doesn’t have any kind of head honcho, and I see no reason why Buddhism really needs one. And finally regarding trappings there’s the tendency of American Buddhists to adopt oriental guises, from shaving heads to taking on new names to eating pickled radishes at retreats. Trappings trap – talk about attachment.

What does appeal to me about Buddhism, though, is its recognition that attachment and desire lie at the root of human angst, and that the mental shutdown process – something that can range from meditation to getting lost in an activity – provides a way of breaking free of these shackles. That for me is the essence of Buddhism, as much as loving one’s neighbor is of Christianity. (And when Buddhists talk about “Buddha nature,” isn’t it really the same as te?) Everything else about either religion is totally superfluous as far as I’m concerned.

And so even though I sometimes think of myself as a “basic Buddhist,” I rarely make that claim if only to avoid getting into pissing contests with full-blown adherents. (And if you don’t think this happens, check out the 1-star comments posted on Amazon for Batchelor’s book.) If anyone objects to my calling myself a kind of Buddhist when what I’m primarily interested in is the bit about mindlessness, maybe I should just call myself a “no-brainer.”

Some people seem more concerned with means than ends, and I can’t help but wonder whether Gautama would think very highly of how his message came down through the ages any more than would Jesus. It’s like religion is just a version of the telephone game on a grander scale. For believers of either faith, it’s time to hang up and wait for another call. Me, I’m content to get lost in the dial tone.