The folks at the OneCity Blog on BeliefNet were kind enough to accept an article that I’d recently finished up on the potential downsides to making Buddhism completely secular. It’s entitled, Secularizing Buddhism: Making it Accessible or Stripping the Roots?
Here’s a little snippet from the article:
The problem with not seeing how Buddhism has evolved, and in not seeing ourselves as a part of Buddhism’s evolution, is that we can believe we are somehow the holders of the “essence” of Buddhism. But what is the essence stripped from the practices, realizations, models, and people who have contributed to this living tradition? Is there really such a thing? Could it be that the whole idea of there being an essence to Buddhism that is distinct from it’s extraneous forms–those forms that are so irrelevant that we can simply ignore them or dump them–is coming from a set of cultural assumptions that exist here in this place and time? We need to recognize that possibility, and see that there is a kind of violence in trying to strip something from its historical roots, and also a kind of arrogance in thinking that we can even do that successfully.
Please go check it out, and drop a comment there if you feel so moved.
Vince: I’d rather leave my comment here. You are part of a new circle of people I am coming into contact with online. One thing that I feel is happening is certainly secularization, reduction of Buddhism to a stress reduction technique, pay as you go, with no community, yet another medical program, existing as a prescription, that you need to take for a cure. This model has serious flaws just as the practice of medicine today has many serious flaws. There is more energy going into the system than what is coming out. I am really looking for community that has more energy coming out than what goes in: they have the source.
Personally I self-identify as a meditator, a Buddhist, a yogi, American Transcendentalist (Thoreau, Emerson), and Unitarian Christian, and a few other things. There are a group of us at UUBF. My Buddhist practice owes a lot to Theravada, a bit to Ch’an, and a bit to the Vajra too. I don’t think the Chinese canon can easily be dismissed. But the core practices are pure Insight at this time.
One way I establish a cultural connection, and this may at first seem trivial, is by making the tea bowl. It really is more difficult than you can imagine. I was holding the Koetsu bowl at the Freer. I suppose it is worth about 10 million? The experience was so rich you don’t even think about that. You can see it at the blog site. I thought you would appreciate this since you are a Pu Erh customer.
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