(note: This post has been updated slightly to reflect a correction from Lazy Buddhist)
I've just finished reading a series of posts on Lazy Buddhist entitled "You Gotta Have Faith?" (Here's the complete series, but it's in reverse order. Start at the bottom and work your way up.)
As some of you know, I was a fundamentalist Christian for a brief time in the early seventies – a period of my life which, from a spiritual perspective, I wish had never happened.
Much of what Lazy Buddhist posts in her series reminds me of that experience. Hers was in a Buddhist group, mine in a Christian group, but some of the basic dynamics are the same. I think this stuff happens in every organized belief system. It even happens in multi-level marketing operations (which, I suppose, are also organized belief systems).
There is a lot to be said for following your instincts. As I understand this, Lazy Buddhist's instincts were on the right track, and taking her in a direction that her less awake friends couldn't understand.
I think any time you encounter a group where a teacher, pastor or leader is held up as a focal point of the practice, there's a problem. There's an old Zen saying - "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." If we are warned not to make the Buddha himself a focal point of practice, how much more so is that true for a teacher, meditation leader or 'Archbishop' Earl Paulk?
I'm also leery of any group that wants to start off its gatherings with chants, hymns, cheers, fellowship songs, or any other behavior that is intended to simply put you in a certain frame of mind – to make you more susceptible to groupthink and less willing to question what you see and hear next.
And if what you experience seems so creepy that you're reduced to tears by it, run.
As my friend JohnX sometimes says, "A guru is just an asshole looking for a body to attach itself to."
By the way, I'm not sure it's true "You Gotta Have Faith." I'm not so big on faith. I think faith is another of those filters that gets in the way of seeing things as they are.
7 comments:
Thank you for the mention. :) Please note the series is called "You have to have faith?" with a question mark at the end. Faith is a tricky thing. I think what passes for faith with a lot of people is blind faith. And blind faith is what gets people in trouble.
I look forward to reading more of your blog.
I love having faith, I couldn't get through this life without it.
What I don't like is organized religion or people who try to make faith complicated.
Credit where it's due:
I stole the "guru-asshole" quote from the late great Robert Anton Wilson, who also said (paraphrasing:)
"It's no coincidence that the initials for 'belief system' are BS."
Bob was the greatest...
Even though Robert Anton Wilson (Bob) had a palindromic name, he was the greatest, I mean. Even IN SPITE OF that worrisome handicap.
I think for the majority of us a brief blip in fundamentalist thinking happens through the spiritual journey. As children we needed to be told what to believe, etc. then adolescence hit and we question everything. Just as there are stages in coming of age, I think so too, there are stages in the progress of our thinking/beliefs.
Some never arrive at questioning however nor keep an inquisitive mind.
One of the Alan Watts podcasts recently stated that a minister is forced to keep you hooked. Here’s the snippet that I saved from a couple of months ago. I like the idea of “faith in turnover.”
"The difference between a physician and a clergyman is this: The physician wants to get rid of his patients and he gives them medicine and he hopes they won’t get hooked on the medicine. Whereas the clergyman is usually forced to make his patients become addicts, so that they’ll pay their dues. The doctor has faith in turnover. He knows there will always be sick people and the clergy also need faith in turnover. Get rid of your congregations. Say, 'Now you’ve heard all I’ve got to tell you. Go away. If you want to get together for making celestial whoopee, which is worship, alright.' When I was a Chaplin at the university, I used to tell the students that if they came to church out of a sense of duty, they weren’t wanted. They would be skeletons at the feast. It would be much better if they went swimming or stayed in bed, because we were going to celebrate the Holy Communion and I meant celebrate."
oekfrxs
"I'm also leery of any group that wants to start off its gatherings with chants, hymns, cheers, fellowship songs, or any other behavior that is intended to simply put you in a certain frame of mind – to make you more susceptible to groupthink and less willing to question what you see and hear next."
does the Pledge of Allegiance apply here as well?
Yes.
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