Syncretism and traditionalism

Came across photos of Hercules protecting the Buddha. This is syncretism, the combining of traditions as the Silk Road connects early Buddhist culture with Greece. When you open up to the mythology of the whole world it's quite an exciting world. 

The opposite of syncretism is fundamentalism. In fundamentalism you ward off combing ideas. Buddhism shouldn't combine with modern psychology. Buddhism shouldn't combine with secular ideas. We shouldn't care about the parallels with modern physics and Buddhism. Even Buddhism and Taoism or Confucianism shouldn't combine in early china. New age hippy ideas shouldn't be combined with Buddhism. 

Closer to home, I think reliance on the guru in Vajrayana is Hinduism influence, perhaps. Buddha nature is Hinduism inspired, we are all god in some sects of Hinduism, OK we're all really Buddhas. Shake out what kind of interesting insights that might shake out. Pudgalavadins believe in a soul. Buddhism tries out other ideas in the history of Buddhism. Pure Land is an exploration of a kind of thinking, more reliance on other power. 

We need self power, community power, and other power in the spiritual life because it is so demanding. There are some who believe the burning of oneself in protest isn't part of Buddhism. In a way the battle about what is and what isn't Buddhism is a constant battle. In Cambodia monks are brought up on heresy charges. In Europe there are blasphemy laws designed to protect Christianity being utilized for Buddhism.

I mean you can try to keep things pure and uninfluenced, and it's good to be clear what is what. To pretend like we're not influenced by everyone around us is silly. Materialism brought about by more fair economics is also a change in culture. The world is changing rapidly and yet humans need things to be the same, we are all profoundly psychologically conservative. Boredom is the emotion that drives us to challenge ourselves and try new things.

I can't help but think the spiritual life isn't where wars should be fought. The spiritual life can be focused on comfort, but it must also include an element of confrontation and discomfort. Not knowing and the negative capability can be used in the spiritual life. 

People from traditional Theravadan countries sometimes see American adaptations of Buddhism as something they don't recognise, and can be offended by how it's being adapted. Some people want to have conflict over sects. There is a kind of branding war that smacks of materialism to me.

If there's no permanent self, can there be a permanent Buddhism? I think you can make mistakes, claim something is Buddhism and it's not, so I think there is a temporary essence, even if that is philosophically is problematic, it works psychologically.  I keep coming back to the practices of community, devotion, study, ethics and meditation. Maybe it's my overly secularized influence, but I think Buddhism is more about what you do than what you claim to believe. Humans are complex and don't always act on their belief, we are hypocritical and unintegrated, confused, bewildered. Enacting ideals isn't easy. I also believe in authenticity over pretending you're more advanced than you really are. 

Even if I am not a heritage Buddhist from a Buddhist country, and find secularizing interesting, doesn't mean that I can't be offended by McMindfulness and capitalism coopting the language of mindfulness to exploit workers better. I can even see traditionalist behavior as against Buddhist's quest for harmony. An over reliance on "right view" can seem like Christians hunting for blasphemy and dogma. Right view is the first step on the path, but like the first step in AA, is has to be constantly refreshed.

On page 80 of the Long Discourses the Buddha says to beware of eel wrigglers, people who can't be pinned down and won't express an honest commitment. Vagueness and superficiality are a problem.

My life experience matters, and the forced Christianity in America means I have little tolerance for what is Christian evangelical moves. Buddhism is supposed to change as it moves through new languages, new cultures, and new geography. But it still needs to be identifiable as Buddhism.

There is a point where Buddhism isn't just an individual sacred cherished aspect to a person and must enter out into the larger world. How involved in politics will it get? America is going through hype partisan times, as people don't understand that psychology pushes one to see the world in different ways, to see others hypocrisy, and not your own as much. It's the same old struggle in battling with yourself versus battling with the world. At the end of a soccer game, they play the song about how "everyone wants to rule the world."

Yes, maybe my white middle class male Buddhism is tinged with all those descriptors, but I still hope it reaches for something more universal, transcendent, and rooted. I like to think Buddhism isn't obsessed with gonads, flesh color and class, without deny those things are in play in the world, and not trying to silence anyone is expressing their experience about those things. I want to throw open my arms to everyone, metaphorically, but realize you can only see the people you see, in front of you, face to face. There are book Buddhists who just write on social media, but don't connect with sangha face to face. Everyone engages with Buddhism with their personality, history and culture.

Syncretism is unavoidable and therefore not unwelcome because resisting reality is a recipe for exhaustion, and errors. We both want to shoot for what we are not already and we must start where you are. It's about becoming, the glorious process of seeking.

Buddha, Lao Tzu and Confucius.

They think this is Taoism on Reddit.

I was reading a book about Ancient Greece to my daughter and she said that Athena was a Buddha.

Further side note: Did Sangharakshita get neither monk nor lay from Shinran?

Bill Porter quote about syncretism

"Meanwhile, back on the veranda, Daniela [Campo] manifested another bag of fruit, more mangoes, and tangerines, too. We had a long discussion about Zen and Taoism. She was an advocate of the view current among most Western scholars—and some Eastern ones too—that Zen didn't come from India but resulted from the intersection of Chinese Taoism with Indian Buddhism. The proposition would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove either way, and would ultimately depend upon how one defined terms as much as the marshaling of so-called facts.

I've never liked the idea. Over the years, I've combed through the biographies of hundreds of early Zen monks. Among those who had an affiliation prior to becoming monks, most were Confucians. Taoists were rare. But I would suggest that Zen didn't derive in whole or in part from Taoism or Confucianism, or even from Buddhism as it existed in China at the time. Zen was something new. Who else besides Zen masters delivered wordless lectures or offered sermons in a cup of tea--no Taoist or Confucian I've ever heard of, and no Buddhist prior to Bodhidharma." (p. 308) Zen Baggage

Daniela Campo was doing her Ph.D on Empty Cloud (Xuyun (1840-1959) in 2006 when Porter was traveling in China and traveled with her for a time. There is a biography of Xu Yun by Ji Dyn Shakya.

I finished the book and I miss it already. What a great book. There was a sad bit when he started thinking about his friend who committed suicide because he couldn't find a job to support his family.

I got really excited about the idea of Buddhist Hall of Fame when he mentions visiting one. Then I thought about the Triratna Buddhist refuge tree of inspiration. Then I thought about how I'm writing a book about the great Buddhas, and that's already an idea I'm into.

My take on whether secular Buddhism is real Buddhism.

I think this is a battle of worldviews, culture and the battles inside us.

In modernism, a modern view of the world takes up Buddhism, westerners are skeptical, scientific, often refuges from a Christianity that insists of belief. Seems like Buddhism doesn't have orthodoxy, but orthopraxy, where it's what you do that counts: Meditate, study, reflect, commune, be kind. With the perfection of wisdom tradition there's even a sophisticated almost postmodern viewpoint. A leading spokesman is Stephen Batchelor who broke with Tibetans and went to Korean Soen. He articulated it beautifully, but when he got more into the Pali Canon faltered a bit.

Then you have credulous traditional eastern Buddhist who are rightly twitchy about colonialism and people thinking they know better. They run into the western modernist and don't recognize the Buddhism that is deeply embedded in the culture they hope to preserve. They might insist on a more literal polytheistic worldview, maybe haven't read the perfection of wisdom tradition, and they can behave like an orthodox Christian who focuses on believing questionable metaphysical things literally, in this day and age. They go hard on right view and say modernism just isn't even Buddhism, too much syncretism. Are they protecting the tradition or gatekeeping and confused?

You're allowed to make sense of the tradition and think for yourself. I interpret the story where the Buddha whisks a monk off to the realm of 33 gods as a lovely mythological story that isn't literally true. When I called them the 33 Hindu gods, I was corrected, Hinduism didn't really exist then and they wouldn't have gone away in Buddhism, if you believe in them. I think the mythology of Avalokita and archetypal Bodhisattvas is beautiful and a Jungian could go nuts. So it's not like we're really stripping away that kind of thinking, it's just we don't think you need to pay some kind of belief price to enter. This makes a traditionalist uncomfortable, and the different ways of using language clash in a kind of misunderstanding that seems like there are two different ways of being, and the traditionalist can be persuasive to the insecure who distrust their thinking and want to be obedient. To the modernist it looks a lot by all the harping on obedience in Christianity, regardless of your own thinking.

Buddhism is rooted more in your experience because meditation is about your experience. Christians who went on long meditation retreats have said this is what spirituality is really about. We can't talk about the transcendental because it's beyond words, but I see all the God talk as trying to connect to the transcendental and the mysterious.

On top of that the Pure Land tradition smacks of a trying to get to heaven thing. I don't believe mappo, that the world has degenerated so that nobody can get enlightened any more. That seems like a statement that you can't prove, and a self fulfilling prophecy. I get it that it takes the foot off the pedal and you can just try for enlightenment in the next life, and it brings in more Buddhists. Pure Land is the most popular form of Buddhism. I love the Pure Land sutras, but I take them as inspiration to get on the cushion. And since USA is a Christian nation, Thich Nhat Hanh used to use Christian language to communicate the Dharma in English. To the anti-Christian that's hard to swallow.

Then to accuse the person who rejects the Christian power games, to be called a colonialist is quite challenging. I'm not trying to influence anyone's practice and I'm not a teacher, I'm just discussing how it all makes sense to me. I'm not going to get upset if you call me not a Buddhist. But I also don't think it's a philosophy, I do think it's a religion. And most secular Buddhists are folded into a traditional sangha, and just don't talk about that stuff.

Buddhism has interacted with Confucianism and Taoism in China, and it must interact with the modern world. It must stand the buffeting of ideas the Buddha never commented on, forms of government, scientific advances like DNA, and the rapid change due to technology, and social media. We can see through the patriarchal systems of power. A Buddhist informed westerner with a highly educated and sophisticated worldview is welcome in Buddhism I hope.

Some of the newer forms of Buddhism are marginalized because they try harder to modernize, and they have good teachings, but NKT and Triratna have been marginalized on this subreddit because there have been very human growing pains and abuses of power. There are other traditions that maybe should die because of the level of abuse. The very public scandals that are well documented show the abuse of power and exploitation, and traditional forms seem to do better in fighting an anything goes abuse of power, so there might be some wisdom in being a traditionalist.

Even if Chinese immigrants brought Buddhism to North America 500 years ago, Buddhism is very new in North America, and there are many things to figure out. Add to that in the USA we are battling a political worldview that spits personalities in half, those who want a minimalist government and those who want to try to ameliorate some of the systems that hurt people, modify capitalism into a kinder form. There is a lot of confusing manipulation to try to get their way, information wars. And the leave-me-alone ideology has won a lot lately, it's almost an anti-awakening movement. There is great turmoil in the USA at the moment, growing pains for a young nation. And traditionalism versus progress is part of that. Traditionalism isn't bad, my relatives who stayed in the church don't have drug problems, they build stronger families. And yet I've lost 40% of my friends lately because of politics and culture wars. America is deeply troubled and I almost could see mappo. The pandemic has been very stressful. Then look at what is going on in Ukraine.

There are still monasteries and great teachers who haven't been disgraced or abused power, and many foreign teachers who are willing to try and seed Buddhism in North America. America has an intellectual meditation focused Buddhism, but is weak on community because our society is so fractured at the moment, our rugged individualism, and traditional sanghas are foreign, cling to foreign culture. There is no true American sangha, except maybe new movements in a lay Theravadan tradition in IMS, where you're also allowed to have a secular bent. I have no wonder that traditionalist eastern Buddhist are shaking their heads at the wooly headed Americans. Meanwhile after years of horrible Civil War, Sri Lanka is on the brink of financial collapse. If only the chaos in my head and the chaos in the world would go away. And yet, that is the very mud for the lotus.

Influence

When I learned about the concept of syncretism, I loved it. Instead of keeping ideological purity, the idea of syncretism is to meld good ideas together. Buddhism has always transformed as it entered into each country. In Tibet it melded with the ruggedness needed to stay there, and the magic. In China it melded with Confucianism and Taoism. If there's a melding of America, it's an antipathy towards spiritual materialism. It's a kind of religious freedom, that rejects calls to unite the USA under one religion, no matter what Michael Flynn thinks.

Hinduism perhaps worms it's way into Buddhism through Buddha Nature ideas. Maybe the guru relationship in Tibetan Buddhism is a Hindu import. Nevermind, now it's Buddhism. To understand the history of Buddhism you have to accept that these ideas were taken in and made Buddhist.

As Buddhism interacts more with Christianity, the appreciation for Amitabha, the Bodhisattva of love, is connected to Buddhism. You can be reborn in a pure land. Pure Land Buddhism is a kind of Christian import. Nevermind, now it's a Buddhism hybrid.

The cult of love is just a kind of emotional flavor of altruism, of the Bodhisattva ideal. I'm not sure if the historical Jesus really talked about love, I think it might have been a palatable assertion along the way. Never mind. Syncretism is good in my book. Nothing would survive without the white hot gravity that pulled in ideas. No human wants to exist on one system. Godel's theorem says one system will never be complete. We need a bag of ideas to draw from. Part of my journey studying philosophy in college was to understand some of the ideas at our disposal. To me psychology says we're never going to be completely integrated, but trying to evolve integrity is a good practice. There's a certain kind of clarity in meditating a lot and understanding your mind, that lends to increased integrity.

The melding of Buddhism to self help and modern psychology is also a something that guardians of purity can talk about. Lots of people come onto r/Buddhism and ask how to cope with things. Maybe the larger perspective of Buddhism can help with meaning and coping. But it's a pretty radical idea.

I'm surprised Buddhism caught on at all, that it's still alive. It's a pretty intense solution. You meditate a lot, once you have built a foundation to support intensive meditation, and seek to attain a level of objectivity of mind and mindfulness and kindness. There's a all kinds of flowery metaphysical talk but from an enlightened perspective, it can seem like it's a certain level of mindfulness and insight.

The project of pushing on and on and on is never done. "I'll quit when I die," says Jerry on Rick and Morty. People go onto r/Buddhism and think "how can I do an end round of all these complications," and, "tell me the direct efficient path." That's not a bad instinct, but the world doesn't answer itself on Reddit, it's just a place to talk about things. The revolution won't be televised, it also won't be written about on Reddit. 

We live in extraordinary times. With rapid changes, there are lots of experiments in how to be. Humans are fairly conservative. Love, kindness and metta never go out of style. We can get intoxicated by technology. I can, I know that, and I think it's universal. I've seen the Amish in Mcdonalds watching the TV. I'd rather have a syncretic inclusive bag of ideas to guide me through complex times.

Learn something new every day

source

Came across this interesting photo combing the Buddha with some pagan elements. Someone said they came across it on a hike on the eastern coast. It's a popular Buddha rupa sold at a popular retail store. My partner has one. I like that gnome in the background.

Came across an interesting paper, combing shamanism and Buddhism, and the use of mediums. A whole world of Buddhism I've never imagined.

Syncretism is the idea of combining useful ideas and ways of being, and not looking for heresy and blasphemy. In the end it's about what you do, how you treat others, and what moves you along the path.

It's Rosh Hashanah and the kids have off from school in NYC. It's a new year! We get to celebrate new year from so many cultures in this lovely multicultural city. Happy new year to all my Jewish friends. 

Thomas Jefferson with a Buddhist advisor?

What if Thomas Jefferson had a quasi-Buddhist advisor (who focuses on wellness) and his letters were recently discovered?  Suneel Dhand has written a book that explores these themes in a pleasant and clear little book.

Suneel Dhand is a doctor who has focused on wellness.  You can follow his tweets about wellness.

At times reading Thomas Jefferson: Lessons from a Secret Buddha I was a bit incredulous.  This Buddha friend participated in the Boston Tea Party?  I mean, I believe in engaged Buddhism and all, but the Buddha didn't get involved in the various kingdoms of his time beyond advising kings on how to deepen their spirituality.  He didn't take to modern political protesting.  As revolutionary as he was, he operated mostly on a personal level, he was a revolutionary of the internal world.

In many ways, this wasn't the Buddha I recognize, he was more like a modern wellness guru, and a political activist.  Like Dr. Suneel Bhand perhaps.  Perhaps I took the word "Buddha" too literally regarding the historical Buddha.  There were many politically active buddhist including Ashoka The Great.  There's no telling what the Buddha would have done in Revolutionary America.  And this is an honest act of imagination.

Dr. Bhand says the quotes are from the Buddha, but I have the feeling they were more along the lines of fake Buddha quotes.  I can't actually prove that, but I do know the "live in the now" stuff isn't so much exact Buddhism, but a vague kind of modern version.  Mindfulness in the Buddhist context is much more specific.  Not that I mind different definitions of mindfulness and wellness.  And you can create any kind of Buddha you want, there's no such thing as blasphemy in Buddhism.  "My thinking was so uptight," as the Dude says.  I think it's a kind of western thing to be such a fussbudget.  In the east syncretism is much more acceptable, I imagine.  Alas, that was my initial reaction to this fine book.  He's really trying to put forth the positive wellness aspects of certain approaches of Thomas Jefferson that are congenial to eastern ways.

When I settled in to this Buddhist inspired wellness guru (instead of quibbling about his vision of the Buddha), Thomas Jefferson and the American Revolution, I enjoyed this book on revolutionary history and the wellness of one of our great founders.  Dr Bhand is also the author of a book on wellness, and I take his comments about wellness seriously.  I think I would like Dr. Suneel Dhand if I ever met him, and I think he's tackled an awesome project of retranslating eastern spirituality into western culture by weaving into Thomas Jefferson's life a kind of eastern guru of wellness.  A very impressive book.  Thank you.

I always appreciate a book that gets me thinking and this one did.

I kept singing Shot Heard Round The World, after I read the book.

Which of course lead me to this video

which of course lead to this video