I must admit that today does not find me in the best of moods. If I were to be very “mindful” about the whole thing, it would have to boil down to my frustrations on wishing to find a Teacher to guide me a bit more skillfully on this path that I am on. However, seeing that this is my blog… I am going to take this time to bitch about it instead. I must admit, it feels good to let it all out sometimes.
Tonight in my Sangha marked yet another in a now long-running series of dharma talks that are really just self-help books wrapped in a bit of meditation and the occasional quote from some Buddhist text. I am just sick and tired of it. I am tired of looking around the room at every Buddhist meeting I go to and seeing that I am either the only guy, or one of two guys in attendance. I went to one group (not my Sangha) the other week ago and the lady leading the group spoke on how meditation can help us get healed from past rejection and hurts. I was one of two guys there, and the thing ended with about 20 middle-aged ladies crying on each other’s shoulders over how their dads were not there for them, someone was mean to them in high school, or over some marriage that fell apart. The whole thing ended in a sobbing, wet, group hug. I returned last week, hoping that it was a fluke, and it was none the better. I go to meditate at someone’s home and have to sit through a dharma talk by one of those mellow-voiced monks, smiling, sitting in front of some picture of a flower or something, and talking about the power or love and how beautiful we all are. Tonight in my Sangha was yet another (and they do this a lot) night where the lady reads from a self-help book written by some other lady about how meditation can help us all get over our fears… fears of rejection, or failing, of being ugly, fat… whatever.
Books like: How Buddhism Can Help You Get Over Past Hurts. How Mindfulness Can Help You Lose Weight. How Meditation Can Heal Past Family Wounds. How Buddhism Can Heal the Wounds of Daddy Not Being There Enough. How Meditation Can Help You Get Over Not Having A Prom Date.
Tonight the topics in the discussion ranged from how someone is afraid they are fat, or another that they are not as smart as their sister or another girl, how someone is afraid they are not as good looking as the next girl… Then, someone else mentioned how Truth sets us free, and used the example of how they are afraid that someone may be bad for them or hurt them, and that if they got over that fear and gave that person a chance… it would all work out and that person would wind up being nice, good, and good for them.
That was when I offered my own thoughts on the matter.
I said that Truth does set us free, but noted that all of their examples were warm and fuzzy, flowery, and that the Truth is not always that way. Truth is truth. Sometimes it is not flowers and sunshine. The Truth is that person who you are afraid of hurting you, may, in fact, hurt you. Or, to take the opposite position, you may be deluding yourself into thinking that someone is good for you when the Truth is that they are bad for you. The truth IS that you may be overweight, maybe that other person IS more attractive than you, and maybe your sister IS going to always score just a little bit higher than you on that test in school. So what? Really, so what? That truth is also liberating, and can set you free. Isn’t the point to embrace reality? Being trapped by irrational fears that are holding you back from enjoying real life is delusion. However, fooling yourself into thinking that life is a bed of roses all the time a delusion that holds you back as well. Embrace the reality of the situation, and then you can effectively deal with your shit.
Seriously, I think there has to be more “Suck-it-up-ness” and “Deal-with-it-ness” in the practice.
I then told a funny story from my own life to make the whole thing a bit more human and light-hearted.
When I was in High School I started to get into acting. My junior year I landed a key role in my first-ever play. On (and several days before) opening night I was petrified with fear that I would forget my lines and make a fool of myself–scared to death of it. So what happened?
Well, I forgot my lines.
Yup, totally froze, right up there on the stage, lights on me, in front of hundreds of people. Totally bombed, and forgot all my lines within the first few minutes of the first act. I was embarrassed, scared, horrified… but I somehow managed to fumble my way through the scene, exit the stage, and not freak out. Then all the sudden, this enormous sense of ease came all over me. Why? Well, that was my worst fear, and it just happened… and I am still standing… I am still ok. I lived. After that was over, the fear was gone, and I went through the rest of the performance without any problems. I did many a play and musical after that night, and never had that same crippling fear of forgetting a line again. It already happened; it sucked, but I got through it, and it no longer had a hold on me.
So there is truth in that as well. Maybe you have to face some fears. Maybe everything is not always ok. Maybe you need to lose some weight. Maybe you are not the brightest bulb in the bunch. Maybe that really bad thing you just don’t want to happen IS going to happen, and maybe you are going to have to learn to be OK regardless. Maybe you will soon learn that it really isn’t that big of a deal anyway.
So what is your worst fear? So what if it were actually realized? Really, so what?
P.S. I hope that this rant did not come across as my saying that what is wrong with Buddhism today is that we have too many females in charge. Not at all! I know some great “no nonsense” Buddhist ladies. Besides, most of those books I am complaining about having to listen to were written by men (eunuch’s?). But, I think this current movement of reducuing Buddhism to a non-religious self-help philosophy is sad, and that it has to go. I do wish that there were more strong males in the practice for me to relate with though. I had to do studies for churches (growth, lack of, and demographics) before where it was found out that teachings like this touchy-feely self-help crap will only drive most males away, and then when new ones come… they will leave after seeing that there are no men there to relate with. Then the vacuum continues.
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For more heresy please join me on my new blog at www.evolitionist.com
That was fantastic.
Every time I read about you looking for a teacher, I really think to myself – you’re really doing a fine job figuring this (life) out on your own.
One thing I’ve figured out with teachers is that I’ll come across a person (maybe a stranger) who will teach me a great deal about myself. Sometimes it will last for one conversation and other times years. People come in and out and yet they’re all teacher’s to me.
Thanks:) Maybe you are right. I wonder why I feel the need to have a teacher so badly? I know that I want to be a teacher myself one day… I guess that I think that I want to make sure that what I am saying is as accurate as possible and that it is backed by some kind of accredidation…. maybe that is not necessary, but it seems to be practical to me.
From what I see in older sutras (like the perfection of wisdom) one simply does not “retire into the Blessed Rest” (Nirvana) kinda like jesus giving up his spirit to heaven, or the buddha giving himself over to Nirvana before he died.
Ok, I found this:
“Those who attain the enlightened Bosatsu stage will certainly achieve Buddhahood, but for a time, they renounce the blissful state of Nirvana (freedom from suffering), vowing to remain on earth in various guises (reincarnations) to help all living beings achieve salvation. Hozo Bosatsu, for example, after countless good deeds over countless years, becomes the Amida Nyorai. In artwork, the Nyorai are often pictured together with Bosatsu acolytes. Yet both types embody spiritual enlightenment and serve as guardians, teachers, and saviors to the faithful.”
So they do opt to reincarnate over and over again instead of hitting Nirvana.
the doctrine of Sprul-sku (read: tool-koo, Sanscrit: nirmanakaya — magically produced body, or magically transformed body)), i.e. the ability of the bodhisattvas and other saints (arya pudgala) to create by the force of mind special “artificial” bodies to reveal theirselves to the samsaric world by their wiil for the benefit of the living beings.
Thus, Dalai-lama is a sprul-sku of bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, Panchen-lama the sprul-sku of Buddha Amitabha, Bogdo-gegen of Mongolia the spruls-sku of the saint Taranatha, etc. And only such special incarnations can be realised on the levels of mind, speach and body.
Moreover, each bodhisattva by his/her supernatural powers can produce unlimited number of such “magical bodies” and therefore, to be incarnated in several persons (we had seen such a collision in the Bertolucci’s “Little Buddha”). In common speach such incarnations are called “incarnated lamas”, or even “living buddhas”. But ordinary beings move in the wheel of the cyclic existence by the force of their karma keeping the unity of their “santana” — individual continuality of their psyco-phisical experience.
Your post states quite a few of the things that I’ve also questioned in some North American Buddhist sanghas. One Zen teacher I know has called it pablum and another has called it child’s Zen. I agree with you on all this fuzzy-wuzzy kind of teaching.
It is more often an encounter group therapy session than a Zen teaching. If I want therapy there are plenty of places to go for that.
So I don’t know what sort of term would be used for a woman who has the same feelings about these things as you. But you are not the only person who thinks this way for sure.
Thanks. Actually I talked to some ladies today who said the same thing… so I had to stop using words like Emasculated or effeminate. lol. It’s nice to know that this is not just a guy vs girl issue. It has more to do with North American teaching vs traditional I suspect. This is not about gender.
I think you have to be careful about turning your spiritual search into an academic exercise. It’s nice to know how one person got from one thought to another thought, ie, how these different branches of a given teaching formed, but in the end you also have to ask yourself why there are branches in the first place. Is it because not one thing works for everyone? Is it because they all work, but are personal to that person? Is it because they are all a bunch of lies? Maybe it’s some combination of all of that. Semantics is also a tricky beast that one has to be careful not to get caught in.
If you trace all of these teachings back far enough don’t you also come to the point where either you can’t trace it further and so you have a single person, or do you go even further and say, did this person spontaneously come to this understanding, or was it in turn shown to them by some higher source, ie God, spiritual teachers, angels, etc (whatever name you want to give)? Let’s go further and say you can trace it to multiple roots. Surely then you must ask, there must be one source? So again if it is a teacher you seek, then maybe the place to go is to God, and if your understanding of God is such that you have a hard time to trust that He exists, then perhaps the place to ask is yourself. And if not in yourself, of others – not one, but many who can show you the way. Life is a great teacher and so are the many you will encounter.
What humans touch becomes human. We run to the quickest relief of our fears — but we have no concept of lasting effectiveness.
You know, I don’t get what you are looking for?
Haven’t you already found it?
If you are looking for a teacher, you might be interested to listen to Gil Fronsdal, who was ordained in the Zen tradition (many years at San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara) and is now a Vipassana teacher, after completing a PhD at Stanford in religious studies. The sangha he leads:
http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/
Free audio:
http://www.audiodharma.org/
I think you raise some good points here but it was hard to read what you wrote and not feel that it wasn’t an attack on middle aged women. Being one myself, I did feel a little tingle of anger at some of your descriptions. On the other hand, the points you raise are important. May I suggest that it is an ego thing, not a gender or age thing. When people ask “what can Buddhism do for me?” they are already mountains and rivers away from the path.
I guess you have two choices: try to continue to speak up and guide the group back to what is really at stake here or find a new sangha that isn’t awash in self-help mumbo jumbo. Happily the sangha I sit with is full of amazing women (and men) who have no patience for Building Better Abs Through Buddhism. So, it does exist!
You will know a good teacher by those who surround him/her….keep looking.
Neil,
Thank you for this post. Always good to hear folks wrestling with and questioning the self-help status quo or mainstream American Buddhism. Keep up the good work.
Take care.
Neil: Loved your post. My small sangha group has more men than women but quickly degenerates into new age platitudes nevertheless. However, I’m discovering that the group is my best teacher. I’ve become aware how my inner critic (small mind) attacks the things these members say, and then how it attacks me for being critical. If I can just silence the damned thing for a little while…maybe I would be better off meditating AFTER the dharma discussion so I can practice letting go.
haha. there’s actually a term for the kind of “Buddhism” that you described: see “Boomeritis Buddhism”
http://integrallife.com/spirituality/eastern-traditions/buddhism/chapter-5-boomeritis-buddhism
it seems to me that your temperament is more compatible with hardcore Buddhist practice. so i recommend checking out Daniel Ingram, and my teacher, Shinzen Young. below are links to my blog posts for more information.
http://www.c4chaos.com/2009/01/mastering-the-core-teachings-of-the-buddha-my-kind-of-kick-ass-dharma/
http://www.c4chaos.com/2009/01/shinzen-young-is-my-kind-of-kick-ass-dharma-teacher/
enjoy!
peace, love, happiness, and Divine discontent,
~C
Thanks for the information! I will check them out. I know that there is a place for everything, but you are right… I am more attracted to the more hardcore practices. Heck, even when I took Kung-Fu it took me a while to find a school that actually made me train hard, harden my hands, and that would push me. I know I have that temperment. Although I will try to stop being so disapointed by practices that are not that way:)
Really nice to know that the dynamic works both ways and that it is NOT just a male vs female thing. Do you still get anything out of the group meetings regardless?
Thanks for the comments Robyn. I think that your point is valid. It did come across that way. I was not intending on that though. You see, I think it is just that the people I know here in town who are into this kind of Buddhist teaching seem to be mostly female and so I associate it with them, but I know that is NOT a correct assumption. As Peggy pointed out, her group is mostly male and went in the same direction. I am very glad to stand corrected:)
hi there from another middle aged woman
william harryman pointed me here from his twitter page.
good ol’ c4chaos talks about hard core buddhism, and that’s one way to go.
and then i think of “the middle way”.
i, too, find new age buddhism a bit hard to swallow and i, too, prefer to hang out with people who dig a bit deeper and don’t mind looking at some unpleasant realities. but really, it’s a problem that can be found anywhere – my father, an artist, would often talk sneeringly of dilettantes in the realm of the fine arts.
but maybe it’s a truth, too – that there are dabblers, dilettantes, boomerites. we all have different ways of walking the path – or stumbling it.
could that be the middle way – to realize that we each need to find what works for us, and then be open, present, kind and compassionate to those who do it differently, when we encounter them?
I thank “God” that someone has been able to clearly articulate the reason that I stopped going to Buddhist meditation nine years ago. It really wasn’t clear in my mind why I stopped going until I read Emasculated By “Buddhism.” The “dharma talks” – usually by middle aged women – at the three Sanghas that I attended over a period of ten years were so painfully fraught with pop psychology and “touchy-feely, self-help crap” that rather than an evening of meditation ending with me feeling centered and peaceful I felt increasingly perplexed and I struggled with anger knowing that I was foolish to attend in the first place.
Hi, I just read this post after seeing it mentioned on the Tricycle blog. I can relate to this sentiment as well. I wrote an article I posted on the group blog “Progressive Buddhism” that discusses this from a different angle. I thought you might be interested in reading it:
http://progressivebuddhism.blogspot.com/2008/02/we-all-could-use-some-metta.html
Check the lineage/history of a teacher. If they go back to the Buddha Shakyamuni, Guru Padmasambhava etc, you wont hear this namby pamby bulls%%t anymore. There are alot of self styled Buddhist teachers out there, sounds like you’ve made the rounds with them. Find a good Lama, not a flashy attention/student seeker, but a good, true Lama. Initially the cultural differences and level of commitment may be a little bit of an adjustment, but you certainly will no longer experience this very valid and toxic frustration I feel you are experiencing.
I have to say, your article made me smile – as a Buddhist, it is very frustrating to hear all these watered down theories on Buddhist psychology all over the West. So many people make so much money off of it.. Good post..
Thanks for the advice! I am actually taking the month of August off to start a search. So your advice will come in helpful.
Thanks. I will certainly read that.
Thanks. I hope you are still sitting though:)
Hi. Nice to hear from you. I don’t think that is what Buddha was meaning by middle way, it was more a balance between hedonism and asceticism. Although, I do believe in the fact that different people need things at different times in their lives. If this stuff that drives me nuts helps someone move onto their next step… so be it. Seems to me though like the thing is set up more to keep people in that stage and feed off it though.
btw, speaking of hardcore practice, you might be interested in this hardcore geeky (mostly Buddhists) forum started out by Daniel Ingram and some of his friends. check it out and enjoy.
http://dharmaoverground.wetpaint.com/
~C
I think you need to find a good Rinzai Zen place, or a place in Philip Kapleau Roshi’s lineage. You’ll find a much more masculine, energetic style of practice that isn’t afraid of pain and suffering. Good luck to you!
Thanks for the tip. Although I do not know of any in the area. I know of a Chan group though. I am traveling to California soon to check out other teachers and practices.
dude, try zen.
This IS a Zen group.
hm, it always seemed to me that the idea of the middle way applied as a general attitude.
btw, one teacher who seems to completely sidestep all of this is sensei ogui (see shin zen talks http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Shin-Talks-Sensei-Ogui/dp/0965835219)
I don’t think the goal was a general way of living your life, emotions, attitude, spending, etc, as “not too hot, not too cold”; being the lukewarm porrage that was “just right”. Thanks for the link to the Zen talk! I am going to check it out.
You might want to take a look at an online sangha–the Unfettered Mind ning: http://www.unmind.ning.com
Some good discussion. We teach each other out of our own experience. The ‘teacher’ is Ken McLeod (www.unfetteredmind.org)
the “middle way” (or Madhyamaka) is often interpreted in the mainstream as “not too hot, not too cold” (or Goldilocks way). although that interpretation could be useful at some psychological level, the “Middle Way” is a very technical hardcore Buddhist philosophy that goes beyond that mainstream notion.
the Middle Way is rooted in *emptiness.* Wikipedia captures its technical definition clearly:
“Mādhyamaka is the rejection of two extreme philosophies, and therefore represents the “middle way” between eternalism—the view that something is eternal and unchanging—and nihilism.”
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhyamaka
~C
Very useful comment, thanks! Your comment is accurate, although, since we are bringing wikipedia into this:)
My “guess” was correct as well. My definition was the traditional one, and yours was the later, but also accepted, one. From what I can see, the definition you use also took off quite heavily in the Mahāyāna tradition. This is from the wiki:
“In Theravada Buddhism’s Pali Canon, the phrase “middle way” is ascribed to the Buddha himself in his description of the Noble Eightfold Path as a path between the extremes of austerities and sensual indulgence. Later Pali literature has also used the phrase “middle way” to refer to the Buddha’s teaching of dependent origination as a view between the extremes of eternalism and annihilationism.”
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Way
“If you are looking for a teacher, you might be interested to listen to Gil Fronsdal…”
It is hardly my place to recommend a teacher to somebody, but you should check out Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Fronsdal actually takes a lot of teachings from him). This is one monk who actually has the balls not to be politically correct and he is willing to be very critical of the touchy, feely Jack Kornfield/Oprah/Eckhart Tolle/Deepak Chopra New Age Buddhism in the West:
http://www.purifymind.com/BuddhistRomanticism.htm
http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/ThanissaroBhikkhu.html(check out the lecture on Buddhist Romanticism at the end)
…and he won’t insult your intelligence by watering down Buddhist theory:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/wings/index.html
More on Thanissaro:
http://umkumar.blogspot.com/2006/02/thanissaro-bhikkhu-at-harvard.html
just wanted to thank you all for the various interpretations of “middle way”!
I realize I’m coming to this conversation a bit late, but I’m wondering if you’ve come across any of Noah Levine’s stuff. He is definitely a straightforward kind of teacher, and not at all touchy-feely. Theravadan tradition I believe, although I am not very familiar with all these labels as yet. He has a lot of podcasts at dharmapunx.com and againstthestream.com. I love his blunt, stripped down style, and I am a middle aged woman myself. Could be I like his stuff because I work in a jail, and the touchy-feely stuff just would not go over there at all.
I have not come across his work yet, I have only been studying this seriously for about a year and most of the people I have come in contact with have been of the Zen tradition. Thanks for the info, I will see if I can find their work as well.
You are welcome. most places i have gone to seem to interpret it as a kind of “grey line” or not too hot not too cold kind of porridge. From what I researched.. it is a bit stricter than that.
Hi there,
I read this post a few days ago and found it really, really thought provoking.
Initially, I was going to write a response in this comment section – but I had so much I wanted to say that instead, I ended up writing a response as a post on my blog!
I’m not sure if it’s OK to put the link here (I think that it might be bad blogger etiquette to put a link to my blog on your comments section!)
Can I e-mail you the link, and then you can decide whether you want it on here or not?
Em
I am all for you recommending you link off this site. Thanks for the concern, but knowledge should be free, and anyone finding anything of use off this or your site is nothing but a good thing.
Cool… here’s the link
http://chronicmeditator.blogspot.com/
Emma
Thanks for the post Emma. I read it and found it to be wonderful. So glad that you wrote it. I am also glad that you understood some of my sarcasm to be simply ‘tongue in cheek”; as some others simply get hung up on it too much. I am harder on myself than anyone or any thing else I break down here. Best wishes to you on your journey.
Phew…glad you liked it. I didn’t want to come across as disagreeing with what you had to say – it’s just that my perspective was different.
I am a big fan of ‘tongue in cheek’…bring it on!
No, there is a huge difference between having different perspectives or experiences and having a disagreement. But I still do stand by the point that most of the Buddhism that I see practiced and written about today is a very watered-down, self-help, new age philosophy that doesn’t resemble the teaching of the Buddha or the Masters they tend to quote from time to time. On the other hand, there is no reason why there can not be a place for a more gentle, more healing kind of practice. Like most things, it all comes down to having the right balance. It looks like you found/have a good one. For me, things were so out of balance the opposite way (all love and fluff and nobody teaching any kind of discipline or “meat”) that I had to take off and find some. You had almost the opposite experience and found what you were out of balance with. So now I guess we are meeting in the middle.
I’d quit if I were you. I wish people would stop trying to sell Buddhism. There’s no point in having more & more people who call themselves “Buddhists”.
You see, real compassion only comes from seeing things as they truly stand. Any amount of self-deception causes flinching and stiffening to that degree.