Even quite senior Order members can be heard to talk as though the teaching of the Buddha is largely an antiquated and superseded form of religiosity which is quite inessential to what the Dharma is about. What follows is that they can then, on that basis, feel free or even entitled to re-invent the Dharma in their own image. To some extent, they might feel encouraged in this by the ecumenical approach Sangharakshita took originally, even though that he was making relatively careful comparison between established Buddhist traditions specifically, and doing so on the basis of some actual Insight. We seem remarkably ready to decide for ourselves what is relevant and what can be discarded in the Buddha-dharma, perhaps on the basis of no Insight at all. We can go for some form of de-natured mindfulness or spirituality, or perhaps prefer instead the science of neurophysiology as a description of what the Buddha’s teaching is ‘really’ about… Anything! as long as it’s more up-to-date than that dusty old Indian stuff, that only seems to be relevant to a distant and primitive age.
I’m perhaps over-doing it, in this rather generalised portrayal of a common kind of discourse in many Buddhist circles. This kind of discourse that seems so uncontroversial to many, does though contain serious unexamined assumptions. At best, our intentions may be to present something in a contemporary way which does no harm to the teaching – this would be standard Triratna practice in principle. But we can easily import some degree of what I am calling religious universalism during such a process, and give free reign to our limited insight in so doing. This is a problem that is aggravated in Triratna by mere wet-behind-the-ears ordination being also taken as a licence to teach. Someone who teaches can feel empowered or entitled to re-present the Dharma. Assumptions imported during this activity can so de-nature the Buddha’s teaching that it becomes ineffective, or is even lost altogether whilst being quietly and gruesomely transmogrified, especially as the originator may well be unaware of the inappropriateness of what they are mating with the Dharma. And of course, there are many who, inspired by the full hybrid vigour of post-modern righteousness, are quite happy to play, as they do, at being Frankenstein.
A broad assumption common in such discourse is that the Buddha is directing us toward a state of awakening that does not have to be arrived at or understood in terms of the Buddha-dharma. Large parts of his teaching therefore would be inessential and can be detached from ‘what he was on about’ without any harm (it is believed) to the essential ‘message’. Ever since William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, and Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy, we have been engaged in this sort of project, it seems. Such a broad assumption is often more or less explicitly under-pinned by the view that there is a Pure Reality, in relation to which any form of view, teaching and practice becomes quite secondary or even almost irrelevant – not much more in the end than a personal choice, a kind of spiritualised fashion-statement; one amongst many means to the same end. This then is what I mean by Religious Universalism.
This broad view assumes then that Pure Reality on the one hand, and the Buddha-dharma or some ‘equivalent’ on the other are in fact detachable, and this more than just conceptually. The way we often meet this in and out of Triratna at the moment is in the notion of Pure or Direct Experience (in a few years’ time we’ll get excited by something else instead – probably to do with Identity). This Pure or Direct experience is, it is assumed, Dharma-free – that is, ‘it’ can be ‘attained’ and ‘experienced’ quite apart from the Buddha-dharma. These notions of pure or direct experience are at the sharp experiential end of this broad assumption of religious universalism. If such a view were to be true, then the trappings of form and practice would indeed be quite secondary. We could pretty much ditch the Buddha and his teaching, and replace it all with something we liked more (I wonder, would it be something less challenging, perchance?). This is broadly how most post-modern Buddhists think and function. This kind of view can even be back-ported to underpin the ‘Going for Refuge is Primary, Lifestyle is Secondary’ notion, though this was not the original rationale for that idea (more of that another time).
So what does the Buddha say about such things, if he says anything? I have seen no explicit reference to pure or direct experience, though he does talk much about mindfulness and unmindfulness, prapanca and nisprapanca. He sees this mindfulness as progressive and augmentative, as is shown within the teaching-practice of the Satipatthanas. Mindfulness is a practice and not a state, and so cannot be equated with any sort of “pure experience” (as it sometimes is in universalist discourse) – the practice of mindfulness shelves to the final goal like the sea-floor deepens at the edge of the ocean.
“Just as the great ocean gradually shelves, slopes, and inclines, and there is no sudden precipice, so also in this Dhamma and Discipline there is a gradual training, a gradual course, a gradual progression, and there is no sudden penetration to final knowledge.” [Uposatha Sutta, Udana 5.5]
New experiences flower from the fading petals of the old, and deeper realisations become available on the basis of such transitions in our conditional processes. But views are pervasive, and in this saha-world of experience never cease to give way to any sort of pure experience. That is to say: if you are talking or thinking or knowing what you are doing or have a belief or an understanding or a plan, or a sketch of a plan, you are not having a pure or direct experience. Believing in pure or direct experience, or believing that you are actually having same, is just another variety of dualistic clinging to a view, another form of world-laden recognition. Pure or direct experience is thus no more than oxymoronic for a proper Buddhist. To continue to believe in and chase same is fraught with the danger of progress-blocking assumptions that get mistaken for realities.
Then, as now, Buddhists in a teaching role were no strangers to dealing with people’s lust to keep talking when they should really shut up. Sariputra calls it ‘proliferating the unproliferated’ (confer AN 4:173, the Kotthita Sutta) – allowing the language of Samsara to reify and pollute that which transcends the Samsara, thereby confusing the efforts you engage in and holding yourself back by blocking your own exit. We, like they, can be told even by Sangharakshita that the Transcendental cannot be spoken of, only realised, and that through actual bottom-numbing practice – we can pay lip-service to this, but then immediately go on to talk about it even harder. Whatever our apparent views, our speech-behaviour shows that we don’t get this, or that we regard ourselves as a special snowflake with regard to this issue, or something such. If you believe you can usefully talk about the Transcendental, you are betraying that you don’t have a clue – whether you are speaking of Your Transcendental, somebody else’s, or simply The Transcendental.
It is worth reflecting on this impulse to talk about what is beyond words, and about that which cannot be experienced. Why is it so strong, and why do we believe we can usefully do it? There are a number of cultural factors. Cognition punches above its weight in our culture, and is a way in which we can assert some control in an increasingly fragmented and unpredictable way of life. It has in many ways become our replacement for the previous culture of Faith. People are more rootless than ever before, and have a great anxiety about their place within the social fabric, and the wider scheme of things. Needing to know what is going on in order to feel safe and confident is part of managing this, since we are no longer usefully held within the wider social fabric, or (as of old) by a liberating and over-arching mythic narrative. Alongside this cognitive over-emphasis, we also seem to have a dark fascination with emotional autism – with those who seem untouched by the ordinary tormented emotionality of existence that we would so like to find a short-cut through.
So, what follows from ditching the notion that there is some Dharma-free pure experience of Reality? We should firstly take guardians of the Dharma more seriously than those who give themselves authority to draw out what they regard as fundamental to all religious traditions, or to the Dharma. This is to say, we should determine the Dharma according to the Dharma, as Sangharakshita says in his preamble to discussion of the Four Great Reliances:-
” ‘Determining the Dharma according to the Dharma’ implies not determining the Dharma in terms of that which is not the Dharma. For us in the West this means not trying to understand the Dharma – whether consciously, unconsciously or semi-consciously – in accordance with Christian beliefs, or modern secularist, humanist, rationalist, or scientific modes of thought, or ‘new age’ philosophies. The Dharma is to be determined and understood in accordance with the Dharma. To determine it or understand it in accordance with anything else is to falsify it, distort it, and betray it.
In the same way, Dharma worship consists of applying the Dharma according to the Dharma. If you try to break off a bit of the Dharma, to take some Buddhist teaching and apply it according to, say, Christian ideas, it just won’t work – that is, it won’t work as the Dharma. There is no such thing as ‘Christian Zen’, for example. The Dharma is to be applied according to the Dharma.” [Inconceivable Emancipation, p.140]
We should also be wary of these post-modern meta-Buddhists, who proclaim they do not identify themselves as Buddhists in the same way as they do not identify as women or men or historical entities, but then proceed to define what the Dharma is for us. We can be more influenced by someone’s post-modern style, by their seeming to know more or better or deeper, and thereby seeming to have what currently counts as esoteric knowledge. We need to depend instead on realisation, not on charisma – even when it is this charisma of fashionable ideas. What you open yourself to with these lesser views is a wild goose chase after a mirage, or the idolising of what is merely a particular state of consciousness which is being mistaken for ‘awakening’. Neither of these things are the nibbāna we both worship and seek; neither of these things are Dharma-worship proper.
For many, giving up an addiction to ideas and more talking is difficult, as it is a dominant realm of craving and clinging these days. Because we tend to separate the goal of practice from the means in this way, we are made uncertain of our practice, because it is now effectively a subjective choice. We can become novelty-seekers as we cast about for greener grass, and slide away from useful difficulty. The value of killing the Chimera though, is a falling away of interest in contentious discussions (whether on facebook or elsewhere) and doubts about our practice, and concomitantly realising that realisation simply has to be realised in the way the Buddha-dharma describes. Mindfulness is a skill – the skill of turning towards and seeing more deeply – and is not a state or an end-point. We can learn in full consciousness the art of letting go and not clinging, and articulate and assimilate that skill progressively in all elements of our experience and lifestyle. All talk about that skill, or merely trying to imagine its outcomes and stopping there, is like reading recipe-books and drooling over the pictures and calling that activity nourishment. When we are skilled in letting go of experience altogether, never mind whether that experience is pure or dirty or otherwise, we can verify for ourselves whether we have established the practice-skill of relinquishing craving for and clinging to this life that the Dharma uniquely proposes as the end of suffering.