I practiced Zen Buddhism for many years and left my sangha due to many of the points that Sasha brought up:
Many of the teachers and students I knew were not rising above their neuroses. Many of them were masking their life problems with the Buddhist aesthetic as opposed to really working with them. We would cycle through the same concerns repeatedly without any progress. I started to figure out that the process was to drop the issue and disengage with it. The problem is that does not work outside of a sheltered monastic community because you need to face your problems constantly in the real world.
I agree that many modern Buddhist schools stray away from the Buddha’s original teachings (as we know it from the Pali Cannon). Many branches won’t even really teach what Buddha said; only interpretations from later traditions. We did not talk about Buddha much in Zen practice at all. Much more time was given to Dōgen, and the Chinese masters than to Buddha. In Zen everyone is a Buddha so Siddhartha Gautama (O.G. Buddha) gets marginalized. There is also a pantheon of Buddhas which dilutes things even more. Buddhism has a pretty straight forward thesis (Four Noble Truths), but it has become esoteric after centuries of appropriation and reinterpretation.
Modern Western Buddhism pushes meditation above all of the other practices. We spent more time meditating than anything else, which was different than how the early Buddhists and even how most Buddhists in Asia practice. This leads to people thinking that all they need to do is sit and not change anything about their lives and it will magically work out. In fact in Japanese Zen Dōgen essentially states that sitting with the correct posture (zazen) is enlightened practice itself. This enlightenment is transitory, so one could imagine that the longer you sit zazen the more time you get to stay in this enlightened state. You can see how this could become an obsession. This in practice leads to a lack of engagement which would have you thinking you are actually putting in the work, but you are just eschewing reality.
Buddhism has a rich tradition of debating and challenging teachers. In fact the Pali Cannon is full of these debates. However, these days if you bring up a question or objection to some teachers they don’t really engage with you. In Zen you can cover up inconsistencies with esoteric vocabulary and wave it away. Just sit and it will be okay.
Buddha in the Pali Cannon was actually more human than we give him credit for. He made mistakes and learned from them (even after nirvana). He got old and died. He scolded his monks for breaking monastic rules. The Buddha represented in the Pali Cannon can be raw at times which goes against the ideal Buddha archetype.
> Many of them were masking their life problems with the Buddhist aesthetic as opposed to really working with them
The phrase "spiritual bypass", which I'm sure you know (it is a cliché by now) is often used to describe this phenomenon. I recently learned that it has a specific origin: it was coined in the early 80s by the psychotherapist (and Buddhist) John Welwood, who had a lot of experience with it in spiritual communities. There's a great interview with Welwood from 2011 about this. I have a pdf somewhere, but all I can find online at the moment is this excerpt: https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/on-spiritual-by....
The relationship between spirituality and therapy is endlessly fascinating to me. (Edit: it's no coincidence that the OP eventually ends up talking about IFS.)
are you familiar with James Finley? he did his PhD in clinical psychology on the relationship of contemplative spirituality and psychological healing, worked as clinical trauma therapist until his retirement and taught and still teaches his open minded down to earth approach to contemplation (what in Buddhism is called meditation) and psychological healing and wellbeing.
I find his work down to earth, approachable, undogmatic and tender
Most valuable to me is his for lack of a better term non-violence. I've never read or heard him say negative things about other schools or teachings. He simply puts out his approach to things and lets you free to take, pick, choose, whatever. For example he gives _criteria_ for a practice, a teaching, a community.
The other extremely valuable aspect is his explicit approach to trauma, to overcoming deep rooted early onset trauma, little by little.
He fluently moves between traditions, if he is teaching a Christian audience then he'll use Christinesian lingo, if he is in a neutral settings (like training therapists) he'll "translate" concepts, like "contemplative church" or "sangha" or Ashram"; or "blind" and "see" vs "unknowing" and "awakened". Like a stream enterer would know that rituals are valuable (to some or many) but interchangeable or not useful to some. Which leads me to the third valuable thing: I'm rooted in a very liberal Catholicism and it's rituals, noises, smell and lingo feel "home" to me while the Zen noises, smells and lingo confused me, while not being _substantially_ different.
so in summary I was happy to find someone in the intersection of being trauma sensitive (healing even), being open minded and seeing Jesus-as-Zen-teacher-not-mage.
:-)
on the cac.org site they host some podcast, teaching series, really, with nice transcripts even:
I can recommend Jack Kornfield's modern classic, A Path With Heart.
Just as you say, he spent years practicing with the much-loved Ajahn Chah and the formidable Mahasi Sayadaw - and then came back home to find his old patterns still there. Of course, the insights and experiences he'd had helped him, but the patterns still had to be worked through.
There is a lot to be said for lay practice. Instead of running off to a monastery, do a couple retreats a year and maintain a daily practice. There is plenty of dukkha to encounter in a normal life.
This is really hard to remember if you've had some dramatic meditation experiences or you're really eager to make progress, which is one reason the Soto folks are always emphasizing patience.
I echo your sentiments as I was first introduced to the practice many many years ago through JK’s writings and recordings. Years of recordings are available on the Dharma Seed app as well.
I've never been a practicing Buddhist but did see a therapist that incorporated Zen into his overall framework. I stopped seeing him after some time, because I realized while he was effective in helping me understand things from my past/childhood and how they were manifesting now, those didn't lead to actual answers, and when I'd press on this point, it'd end in some sort of parable that I realized was similar to the thought ending cliches I grew up around in an evangelical family.
For many people, the first step in accepting past/childhood experiences is recognizing them and how they manifest now. You can’t let go until you’ve recognized and accepted. So you’re most of the way towards letting them go.
You're saying recognition is a necessary condition and jasonwatkinspdx is saying that it isn't a sufficient condition. There's no contradiction there. I would say you're both right. The big question is what is a sufficient condition.
Sure — but a good therapist will not only teach you the mindfulness portion, but the redirection portion where you retrain your responses. (Including workbooks with exercises to do just that.)
question is - what answers could there be. one had a traumatic experience as a child. accepting this and moving on - I would say - is about the only real "answer". parables can help get there by personifying / objectifying a subjective / abstract / emotional experience. I don't know if this is true - but that's my take of such as of now.
> This leads to people thinking that all they need to do is sit and not change anything about their lives and it will magically work out.
Do I understand it correctly that you’re saying that such people only try to practice samādhi instead of sīla, samādhi, and paññā? So that they neglect most of the noble eightfold path?
The Thai forest tradition has been very meditation-focused (as was, in my reading, the Pali canon) but they emphasize the importance of the rest of the eightfold path too. The Pacific Hermitage had good discussions uploaded to YouTube for example.[1] And the UK and Australia branches seem to have had a similar sutta-centric and practical focus.
I practiced zen for a while and had the exact same experience. I had real-life problems that were causing me psychological distress and was using buddhism to avoid having to address those issues. I figured none of it mattered anyway since life is dukkha and trying to improve my life wouldn't remove the craving that is the fundamental cause of dukkha. So I might as well just meditate as much as I could and hope for enlightenment. I wouldn't blame buddhism entirely for my personal failings, but buddhism certainly didn't help.
I've come to the conclusion after a lot of reading, practice, and contemplation that there is NO form of buddhism that makes any sense to engage with unless you believe in rebirth. The point of buddhism is to escape rebirth, not achieve some psychological state like happiness or well-being. If you're expecting the later out of buddhism, you're probably better off putting your energy into more "worldly" endeavors. I've been much happier since I stopped meditating and started using that time to focus on friends, hobbies, career and dating.
Traditional buddhists would probably facepalm at this and say something like "no duh, rebirth is buddhism 101". But a lot of American buddhist traditions present rebirth as an optional belief which is nonessential to buddhist practice. I even watched an American zen teacher call rebirth "bullshit" publicly in a talk once.
What's sad to me is that therapists have started recommending meditation as some universal good, despite the research on it still being pretty young. It seems they've been influenced by the American buddhist/mindfulness movement and are being rather uncritical. I'm sure small amounts of meditation can help some people with stress and anxiety, but it shouldn't be viewed as something to automatically recommend to every patient like sleep and exercise.
I had almost the exact same experience. I was very into Buddhism for a time, to the point of seriously considering becoming a monk. I ultimately left the faith because I realized a) I was using it as an excuse to avoid facing my demons and b) rebirth underpins the entire philosophy. If you don't believe in rebirth, the whole thing falls apart.
I imagine you may already be familiar with his work, but "Buddha in the Pali Canon was actually more human than we give him credit for" is a huge theme of Stephen Batchelor's recent books such as Confession of a Buddhist Atheist and After Buddhism. His focus on lived experience, pragmatism, and the four great tasks (instead of four noble truths) has really resonated with me.
Having seen all the "new-age" bullshittery, I'm convinced that Westerners never really can understand Dharmic/Indian traditions.
To wit, even the whole notion of "prophet" and the "original teachings of Buddha" and how Zen and more broadly Mahayana are "not the original teachings" as compared to that in the Pali canon etc. that are brought up again and again by Western practitioners are hallmarks of Christian, and more fundamentally Abrahamic, thought process.
No one in Asia cares that this is so. Period.
Alas, Indians, and most Asians too are increasingly turning into half baked Christians today (see 'Navayana'), so the above is a bit of lie. The traditions too are all dying much like their country and culture of their birth... Way to go occidental monoculture!
To your point specifically, the Pali Canon is really not philosophically sophisticated. The Nalanda school which is now preserved in Tibet after the Islamic destruction of India has very deep philosophical roots as compared to those traditions in the periphery like Zen and do make very compelling arguments against the old schools of Buddhism.
The development of Mahayana has a parallel on the Hindu side of the tradition, but of course, since us brown-skinned heathens are infinitely uglier, the Europeans have made it their goal to demonize us vis-a-vis the white-skinned E-Asian Buddhists (lol). I'm not surprised to see books claiming that Siddhartha was a Scytian, and hence Buddhism is Greek (also, lol). I wonder what they'll next claim about Nagarjuna. At some point, you just laugh and move on (instead of debating endlessly with idiots on listservs).
Sadly, Mahayana and Advaita never had much debate within themselves, so the typical view on the Hindu side (prototyped by Madhava) of Buddhism is also quite outdated.
Much of this comment is great and informative but please don't cross into flamewar. We ban accounts that do that, especially when it's religious and/or nationalistic.
> He made mistakes and learned from them (even after nirvana)
His very first attempt to transmit the Dhamma ended up in failure (the guy before the first five) - and that made him to question, worked on and fixed the way it was delivered.
My experience with modern western Buddhism is that insight and self improvement are explicitly treated as two separate things, especially in non-dual traditions. You can achieve insight without bettering yourself, though it is certainly recommended to better yourself. Often therapy in parallel is recommended to students.
In a study where no-self is an objective, it is no mystery why problems with a particular ego are not always addressed.
That reminds me (granted fuzzy memory) of a history class in college, where the professor pointed out that Buddhism is not immune to human, i.e. political concerns, and that the OG Buddhism morphed as it traveled east to fit the political entities/dynasties of the time, i.e. Indus Valley Buddhism to Chinese Imperial/Confucian-compatible Buddhism to Japanese/Zen Buddhism...
I am not sure whether I'd agree with everything you said, but simply because I only tangentially got exposed to "western" zen and buddhism, through some zen monasteries in California. But you put certain things/concepts in words that I didn't manage to express clearly by myself, so thanks for that.
This post got me wondering, and I hope somebody in here can inform me. Wasn't Zen one of the only schools that wasn't wiped out in Japan because they didn't place so much emphasis on the warrior priest? I seem to recall some shogun or another felt threatened and purged almost all of the Buddhist monasteries at the time.
Seems like the Zen school wouldn't be such a threat if they just sat inside all day working on their posture.
shakyamuni lived in a class society, and if the religion he created were incompatible with it it would've been destroyed. same applies to all religions. something to keep in mind when thinking about religion, they all exist, at some level, to provide an emotional justification for class domination.
anyway, to cite "zen mind beginners mind" regarding just sitting around all the time:
> Zen is not something to get excited about. Some people start to practice Zen just out of curiosity, and they only make themselves busier. If your practice makes you worse, it is ridiculous. I think that if you try to do zazen once a week, that will make you busy enough. Do not be too interested in Zen. When young people get excited about Zen they often give up schooling and go to some mountain or forest in order to sit. That kind of interest is not true interest. Just continue in your calm, ordinary practice and your character will be built up. If your mind is always busy, there will be no time to build, and you will not be successful, particularly if you work too hard on it. Building character is like making bread—you have to mix it little by little, step by step, and moderate temperature is needed. You know yourself quite well, and you know how much temperature you need. You know exactly what you need. But if you get too excited, you will forget how much temperature is good for you, and you will lose your own way. This is very dangerous.
_"The problem is that [disengaging] does not work outside of a sheltered monastic community because you need to face your problems constantly in the real world"_
Not so! The problem is that disengaging is much more difficult outside of a sheltered monastic community, not that it is impossible. It becomes a balance engaging and disengaging; you spend as much time as necessary engaging so you can set up your environment to allow as much time for disengaging as possible, and find relationships which will be able to support you in this. Stopping the process of disengaging to deal with something like dealing with a difficult social interaction or rearranging your finances can be very painful and frustrating. But in the end, dealing with these interruptions is a part of the process of awakening.
> Many of them were masking their life problems with the Buddhist aesthetic as opposed to really working with them.
Insight meditation is not supposed to solve your petty life problems, heck it might even exacerbate them if you do it badly. Stick to practicing sila if you feel like you aren't ready for the more challenging practices.
While Stoicism comes from a different tradition it's actually a great introduction to a good frame of mind for sila and even for the more rational-adjacent kinds of meditation practice like Zen, and one that will be especially familiar to a Western audience. Of course it's also true that many people resort to therapy in order to address these same challenges, and there's nothing wrong with that if it's your preference.
There seem to be quite a few parallel messages between Stoicism and teachings of the Buddha (separate from the Buddhist religion, which seems vastly different).
> The problem is that does not work outside of a sheltered monastic community because you need to face your problems constantly in the real world.
Yes - that's why I'd value a _true_ master (Zen terminology) regarding maturity higher as a monk. In terms of ML monks risk overfitting their trained mental strategies to a monastic context which then turn out to be unsuited for chaotic urban environments. OTOH of course it shows maturity IMHO to turn your back on modern urban environments and withdraw into a monastery. Then there is no need to steelman yourself for the next dozen disappointing Tinder dates and how they'll affect you.
This issue is addressed in the Vimalakirti story, which I recommend to people looking to consider the issues with trying to separate from society vs transform within it in ways that help it mature.
Many of the teachers and students I knew were not rising above their neuroses. Many of them were masking their life problems with the Buddhist aesthetic as opposed to really working with them. We would cycle through the same concerns repeatedly without any progress. I started to figure out that the process was to drop the issue and disengage with it. The problem is that does not work outside of a sheltered monastic community because you need to face your problems constantly in the real world.
I agree that many modern Buddhist schools stray away from the Buddha’s original teachings (as we know it from the Pali Cannon). Many branches won’t even really teach what Buddha said; only interpretations from later traditions. We did not talk about Buddha much in Zen practice at all. Much more time was given to Dōgen, and the Chinese masters than to Buddha. In Zen everyone is a Buddha so Siddhartha Gautama (O.G. Buddha) gets marginalized. There is also a pantheon of Buddhas which dilutes things even more. Buddhism has a pretty straight forward thesis (Four Noble Truths), but it has become esoteric after centuries of appropriation and reinterpretation.
Modern Western Buddhism pushes meditation above all of the other practices. We spent more time meditating than anything else, which was different than how the early Buddhists and even how most Buddhists in Asia practice. This leads to people thinking that all they need to do is sit and not change anything about their lives and it will magically work out. In fact in Japanese Zen Dōgen essentially states that sitting with the correct posture (zazen) is enlightened practice itself. This enlightenment is transitory, so one could imagine that the longer you sit zazen the more time you get to stay in this enlightened state. You can see how this could become an obsession. This in practice leads to a lack of engagement which would have you thinking you are actually putting in the work, but you are just eschewing reality.
Buddhism has a rich tradition of debating and challenging teachers. In fact the Pali Cannon is full of these debates. However, these days if you bring up a question or objection to some teachers they don’t really engage with you. In Zen you can cover up inconsistencies with esoteric vocabulary and wave it away. Just sit and it will be okay.
Buddha in the Pali Cannon was actually more human than we give him credit for. He made mistakes and learned from them (even after nirvana). He got old and died. He scolded his monks for breaking monastic rules. The Buddha represented in the Pali Cannon can be raw at times which goes against the ideal Buddha archetype.
+1 from a long time fan of the Buddha