As you know if you've followed this blog for any length of time, I don't belong to a sangha. In fact, I don't belong to anything. I am not a joiner. I am an aloof, remote, arrogant motherfucker.
And in four sentences, author Erik Fraser Storlie explains why for me:
"This is a Mad Hatter’s tea party, where hierarchical robes and titles, sadomasochistic austerities, and subterranean libertinism mix together in incestuous 'spiritual communities' filled with distrust and rivalries – all this in a scramble for the summit of some distant 'spiritual' mountain. This would be comic if it weren’t tragic.
"And it is tragic.
"It is tragic because countless Americans hunger for genuine meaning – meaning unavailable in the toxic mimics offered by game shows, professional sports, 'reality' TV, ugly politics, 'free-market' competition, and unimaginably wasteful wealth accumulation at the top."
This explains why I have resisted joining everything from a zen sangha to the Society of Professional Journalists. These things always look pretty good at first glance, and then when you get a closer look, it's about 5% worthwhile stuff and about 95% horseshit and internal politics and drama. Granted, they don't wear hierarchical robes in SPJ, but that's probably because nobody's thought of it.
(I wrote a lengthy aside here about my own experience with SPJ, then decided it didn't have anything to do with the point I was trying to make, so I cut it. But it's a good story. Maybe I'll make it a post of its own someday.)
Everyone who has studied zen to any degree knows the story of Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu. It may be apocryphal, but it still sets the stage for the arrival of zen in China.
Here's a version lifted from the web site monkeytree.org:
"The emperor practiced the outward behaviors of Buddhism; he wore Buddhist robes, abstained from eating meat, built many temples and supported hundreds of monks and nuns. The emperor was proud of his knowledge of Buddhism and his support of Buddhism in his kingdom. He asked Bodhidharma, 'Since I came to the throne, I have built many temples, published numerous scriptures and supported countless monks and nuns. How great is the merit in all these?'
"'No merit to speak of,' was the shocking reply of Bodhidharma. The emperor had often heard renowned masters say, 'Do good, and you will receive good; do bad and you will receive bad. The Law of Cause and Effect is unchangeable, effects follow causes as shadows follow figures.' But now, this foreign sage declared that all his efforts had earned no merit at all.
"The emperor failed to understand that one is not practicing Buddhism if one does good with the desire to gain merit for oneself. It will be more like promoting one's own welfare or hoping for admiration by the public. The emperor asked his next question, 'What then, is the essence of Buddhism?'
"Bodhidharma's immediate reply was, 'Vast emptiness and no essence at all!' This stunned the emperor. Other masters had explained that the essence was contained in doctrines such as The Four Noble Truths and The Law of Cause and Effect, but this foreign sage of Buddhism had just declared there was 'no essence at all'."
Bodhidharma had presented the emperor with a version of Buddhism that was so stripped down, so bereft of the pomp and circumstance that had accreted since the Buddha's death, that the emperor couldn't even recognize it.
Later, it is said, Bodhidharma spent nine years 'at the wall,' which is to say, in meditation. History does not say whether he entered the room with his left foot, bowed to his cushion, bowed to the wall, bowed to his partner, allemande left and dosado. My hunch is that he didn't.
Nowadays, it seems like zen isn't much better than being in the Assembly of God. Well, they don't roll around on the floor and speak in tongues in zen, so there's that. On the other hand, in the Assembly of God, they don't smack you with a stick because your head is tilted at just slightly the wrong angle.
But this is what happens. This is what humans do. They start out with a good thing, and they cannot resist loading it up with horseshit and drama. The thing gets going, whether it's zen or Christianity or the Platypus Lodge, and then it gets boring. So what we can do to spice this thing up some, broaden the appeal, improve the demographic? Aha! Just add horseshit!
Everyone has seen the phenomenon where a teacher becomes popular, and suddenly the teacher is bigger than the teaching. I think this happens because in any religion or belief system, about 70% of the people can't 'get' the teaching at all. So they focus instead on the personality, whether it's a tulku or a televangelist. And this, in turn, leads to the popularity of sexy, charismatic teachers and preachers who can spin a compelling line of BS for the rubes. And with the sexy, charismatic teachers come the outsized egos and narcissism.
Or they focus on the process, which is why you hear people describe their beliefs in terms of how many retreats they've done, or how many revivals they've attended, or whether they saw Billy Graham in person.
Somewhere down below all the lasers and arena-sized sound systems and online stores and ultramegasuperchurches and ski resorts-turned-upscale-zen-monasteries, there is still some original truth, but who gives a shit about that? What do the focus groups show, that's what we need to know.
(John Lennon was on the mark when he said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. A lot of people are more popular than Jesus Christ. He may be the only religious leader who is actually a minor figure in the religion named for him. At the moment, Sarah Palin is a bigger player in Christianity than Jesus is.)
As is often the case with my lengthy posts, this one just went on and on until it ran out of steam. No conclusion, folks. I'm done for now.
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