In the Forge: Where Buddhism Fails (and Sometimes Works)

 

By Tim Cooper

There are those that say that when tough things happen in your life, they build character.

There are also those that like to use millennial euphemisms. They may use the word “challenge,” rather than say that they’re actually on half a bottle of bourbon a day to wash down frequent handfuls of opioids to cope with what others (like myself) would call the toxic backwash from the frenetic thrashings of the shark otherwise known as neoliberalist economics. I personally feel that tough times suck. Impermanence, karma, all that’s for comfy middle-class weeds who can’t understand why not everyone likes them.

In just over two years I’ve seen my profession rapidly going down the drain thanks to sycophantic robots.

Translation work is effectively moribund; if your job involves anything that looks like a desk and a computer, start training to be a plumber. Work in any other field that I’m familiar with is well-nigh impossible to find. To cap it all, the landlady wants us out of our flat by the end of the year, in a city notorious for having the highest rental prices in Spain.

I’d love to think that this journey through the forge will make me tougher, more compassionate and wiser. But the only thing I’ve been feeling recently is shit scared. And that has made me look at some aspects of Western Buddhist belief and practice with a very jaundiced eye.

You see, to my mind there are occasions when you need faith, and by faith, I mean something out there who’s watching out for me.

Something that’s moving the pieces on the game board so I don’t end up sleeping in a tent and eating cold beans out of a can. Impermanence does not pay the rent; a firm belief in karma does not put food on the table. Buddhism may be a cool way of looking at your life, but when we need to pray to some fucker to help us out with this mess, and ask around to see who’s open for business to listen to requests and petitions, some Western Buddhists would most likely frown slightly and say something like, “do you have foodbanks in Spain?” and then scuttle off to do some heavy metta.

Countries with a strong and ancient Buddhist tradition have deities for the grunts, the masses that cater to the needs that monastics and Western middle-class lay practitioners don’t necessarily have to face. The Thais have Thao Wessuwan, the Nepalese can turn to Vasudhara, the Tibetans pray to Green Tara.

I’d argue that secular Buddhism is a very one-sided view of what Buddhism is; one professed by Western Buddhist Modernists, who prefer to believe that Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion, thus catering to modern Western prejudices about superstition, faith and religion. This may even be a reflection of their own personal discomfort with faith in the intangible.

One rather cheap side swipe to this approach would be to ask how many Christians they know who say, “Christianity is a philosophy, not a religion?”

And how many Buddhists from countries with a solid Buddhist culture would say the same thing about their beliefs (although some might if they’re raising funds for another centre in Los Angeles, because you never bite the hand that feeds you).

I sometimes wonder if the recent growth in interest in Western Buddhism is little more than a brand of spiritual escapism from a reality that actually demands real commitment and action.

Action, for example, like the willingness to do uncomfortable things like getting hosed down with pepper spray for a cause. I remember reading a book by Bertrand Russel who described the growth of inward-looking religious practices such as Neo-Platonism in the late Roman Empire. He felt that there was a change in how belief was expressed and envisioned. He felt that the gods were no longer an integral part of your civic life and duties, deities that you sacrificed to as part of an active process of civic engagement, an outward looking system that expressed your satisfaction with the social order and the hope and belief that it would continue that way because that was the way it should be.

Then came the Crisis of the Third Century: foreign invasions, a rapidly tanking economy, collapsing trade networks, civil wars.

The Roman Empire survived but was radically transformed, and one of these changes was, according to Russel, a turning away from civic life, a loss of faith in the old values and a search for a personal solution. Something along the lines of, “oh dear, it’s all just too dark and complicated, let’s seek the Golden Void, turn our backs on our civic duties and live on immense estates guarded by mercenaries.”

In my darker moments, I sometimes wonder if Buddhism in the West has become a plaything for middle class dilettantes, a sizeable number of whom seem to prefer to turn their back on current realities—because they can.

It’s easy to feel appalled by your level of attachment to sex or your Lexus SUV, another thing altogether is to feel attachment to the idea of having a home to live in, or access to free healthcare, or the feeling of responsibility for feeding your partner.

I know I’m being very unfair.

There are Buddhists who’ve come out into the harsh light of day and taken a stand. Thich Nhat Hanh’s Engaged Buddhism, the Dalai Lama’s efforts to negotiate some kind of peaceful deal to get his country back, the many writers on TTB who feel that something needs to be done, without resorting to anything as fuckwitted as physical violence.

But, late at night, when you can’t sleep because your partner is on the verge of tears and affordable flats can’t be found and fewer and fewer agencies send you work because they’re all closing down or adapting to AI—at that moment, right then, Modernist, Protestant, Western Buddhism just doesn’t cut it for me.

It’s then that you look at the little Ganesha figure on your bedside table and whisper, “remember me? Can we cut a deal? I’ll light you a shitload of incense and some candles if you talk to Lakshmi and get her to help me out of this ‘challenge’. Fuck Buddha, I’ll go back to being a Hindu, whatever you want, whatever, just give me a break.”

A good friend of mine is a Bhakti practitioner and devotee of Sai Baba of Shirdi, and he’s probably the only guy in Coruña who understands these things. His response to my hysterical babblings on theology and imminent homelessness was to say, “Western Buddhism’s just too arid for me. I need someone out there to watch my back.” So do I…

Epilogue: 

Two weeks ago, I sat down to meditate, utterly convinced that it was going to be a complete waste of time; a losing battle against a brutal shit-storm of worry, anger and self-recrimination. It started that way, but after about ten minutes, there was a shift from “out there” in the midst of the action, to “there but somewhere else,” to somewhere that just watched it all happening and laughed.

I was still laughing while I was having dinner. Figure that one out.

 

Tim Cooper is a more or less practicing Buddhist and recovering alcoholic who’s lived in Spain for over half his life. After many years of stumbling about in the lush gardens of Buddhism, picking one flower here and another flower there, he finally settled down and is trying to make sense of it all in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and generally trying to be a bit nicer. He works as a translator, teacher and facilitator with fellow ex-drunks. He likes flowers, rugby, bad science fiction films and cooking. He also likes to think he writes like Hemingway, but the rejection slips tell another story.

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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