Are We in a Melting Pot?

[Dharmavidya]

I have the impression that there seems to be a process of loosening up in Buddhism in the West. Groups are by no means as watertight as they were. There are now a lot of people around who have been through the training of one or more denomination of Buddhism and have borrowed from several others and this is, to some degree, creating a melting pot situation. This could mean that co-operation between groups is now more possible. It could also mean that new forms of spiritual expression emerge. Of course, Japan had its phases of new religious movements in the mid and then in the later 20th century, most of them substantially based in Buddhism of one sort or another with additional influence from other religious sources. I do not yet see a lot of evidence of the melting pot extending into the trans-confessional domain, but there are some. There are now Buddhist Christians and Christian Buddhists. There is Jewish-Buddhism too. However, I do not think that this has really become a melting pot so much as a grafting exercise. People graft Buddhist methods onto Christian beliefs, say, with Christians doing Zen meditation. This is not yet a fully integrated approach. From a Pureland perspective, one might want to delve a bit deeper.

These are just stray observations picked up on my travels. I'd be interested if others would like to share their observations on how/whether/where a melting is occurring and also, perhaps most importantly, whether there is now the possibility, as Clark Strand has said, for there "to emerge a new style of collaboration among groups that haven't previously pooled their resources".

What sort of coalitions are now possible for what sort of purposes? What implications does all this have for practice, belief, faith, and civilisation?

[richard meyers]

My own feeling about this question is that we are at a time when we can no longer afford narrow divisions between groups. The planet itself is neither Christian or Buddhist - it just is - vibrant, pulsating, at times cruelly with our human input from the perspective of genocide, geo-cide with the loss of living systems, but also awesome in its beauty and extravagent creativity. For some years now I have taken a broadly ecumenical stance, with a strong pagan emphasis. Deep Ecology has been a major influence, from Buddhists such as Joanna Macy and Joan Halifax. The work of radical Christian Mathew Fox, opened my eyes to the mystical within Christianity, especially the writing and music of Hildegard of Bingen, she was something of a revelation, as was Meister Eckhart. So, I believe firstly, it is about being open to the world around us and recognising that we are inately spiritual beings, that within our Bombu nature we have a kernal of spirituality that longs to find expression. What is lovely about our situation in this context, is that we can reach out in an attitude of interfaith to other traditions, while honouring interfaith within our own hearts.
In my work as an 'outreach'person working for a local council in London - I am currently attempting to facilitate Interfaith visits to a local nature reserve. Regardless of our cultural divisions, there can be no argument about our need to breathe clean air, to listen occasionally to birdsong, to reconnect with the natural world. This, I suspect, is where our spirituality began as children, pond-dipping for newts. As a fairly uncomplicated, even simple, person, the most intellectual aspects of Dharma I struggle to comprehend. What is lovely about Amidism as a wing of Buddhism is that it is straightforward. It is about Love and it is inclusive. Namo Amida Bu.

[Ben Ross]

I appreciate this topic greatly, both because I love thinking about and creating these connections among faiths and traditions, and because I continue to struggle with the ways the various traditions and faiths I am involved with and have been involved with sometimes rub against each other. An example for me has been the difference between Christian prayer, where (in my practice) there is a kind of ongoing conversation with God, and nembutsu, which (as far as I've experienced it) involves embodying the soul's impulse toward surrender in its most essential and straightforward form.

I really appreciate what you write Richard about various traditions and faiths coming together for you through connection and care for nature. It seems to me that moments of being absorbed by the beauty of nature give the most essential and universal experience of spirituality I can imagine. I love Joanna Macy as well, and Meister Eckhart. I have to look into Matthew Fox and Joan Halifax!

For me lately the thread connecting various traditions and faiths (I'm using "tradition" to refer to Buddhist schools of thought that are generally within the "self-power" branches of Buddhism) is the moment of surrender, and the development of trust. It seems to me all traditions (that aren't divisive or violent, that is) may be based on people's experiences of surrender opening up a sense of vast love holding everything, and that then this experience is conceptualized as having been the result of moral goodness or a certain kind of meditation or what-have-you. Whereas in essence it seems possible that it is the basic structure of existence that this love comes to us simply whenever we are truly open to it, that it is either our own natures, the nature of the universe, both or something that can't really be conceived of. What constitutes being truly open and what kind of practice can create the best way to support or kind of garden these green shoots of reality poking through the ground of ego seems to me the most essential question.

But then of course immediately there's some conception of reality that crops up, distorting things. I have to agree with you Richard that I experience myself as pretty simple and that I struggle with the most intellectual aspects of Dharma. There's some tension in me these days between a sense I have that spirit emerges when ideas subside, and a desire to obtain guidance through a deeper understanding of the dharma.

[Ben Ross]

I realize I didn't fully answer the question. It's hard to grasp the hugeness of what the melting pot means for practice, belief, faith and civilization. I'm hoping it means less potential for intolerance of all kinds between groups, and greater understanding of other group's practices. I think the main thing that's happening though is something like what Richard and I describe, where people generally are open to many faiths and borrow from many from an individually-nurtured sense of spirituality, and connect with others with their own unique mixtures, developing trust of one another partly on the basis of not placing any tradition above another. I notice that for myself I long for more community, however, and to experience community as part of practice.

Anyway, kind of rambling, but I think basically most people I know these days are looking for some mixture of individual freedom of belief with communal gatherings that are open and general enough to be inclusive of everything from sufi dancing to christian prayer to vipassana meditation to pagan spirituality to Zen to Pureland to artistic devotion and so on. I work at a place called Windhorse that requires its workers to have a contemplative practice and that describes its treatment as contemplative-based, and it is such a community. The downside is people often don't talk about their practices for fear of stepping on each other's toes. I'm hoping to find a celebratory mosaic of faiths and traditions where essential aspects - such as surrender, reverence for nature, love and inclusion for all people - are the guiding common principles.

Thanks to whoever has read so much of my rambling!!!

[richard meyers]

Maybe we are in a melting pot as far as our spirituality is concerned. If this is true of me, (and I think it is) then it will be so with other people I would have thought. Fortunately, today we have no inquisitions to burn us into recanting our promiscuous ways!
A synthesis of what broadens our awareness, - Doesn't Shakyamuni himself, say somewhere, something to the effect "Whatever is conducive to enlightenment, is my teaching" (sorry, I can't remember the exact quote, or where it comes from)? Whatever opens us up to other people and to the world around us, in an aware and compassionate way, has to be positive.

On the other hand, I think mixing and matching in regard to actual day to day practice, is a slightly different matter and that as in a trip to the restuarent, while we can appreciate the menu, we are better off sticking with one main meal and going easy on the wine. There's so much on offer these days, I think, especially for younger people, things can be confusing. I think we can be open and learn from other people. The Christian example of 'praxis', for example - I suspect has positively influenced Buddhism to become more 'engaged'. Certain tribal groups living close to nature have so much to teach us about 'living lightly' and with respect for our source - the earth itself.

I'm interested in what the implications for the Pureland approach might be?

[Maiku]

While legally, here in Canada, I have to stand in one camp for insurance purposes, personally, my own beliefs are quite integrated. For some time I was on a couple of the Christian Buddhist chat lists, however, I found they were either Buddhists giving some sort of lip service to Christianity or they were Christians doing Zen, as you said. For me, it is all mixed together and it all works for me. I think when we look at the Popular or Folk religions of Hong Kong or the Shugendo of Japan, we can see religions integrated in a nice way. My hope is that in the West we keep moving toward spiritual integration.... not in a form that one can no longer call oneself a Buddhist or Christian, but one in which, if a concept enhances your spiritual journey, but is not part of your own tradition, you can take it in and make it your own. I think that will take down some walls and help us all, bring the Pure Land to Earth or Kingdom of Heaven to Earth.

[richard meyers]

Dear Maiku,
I really appreciate the clarity with which you speak on this topic. I can only say thank you. It's an area that has in the past worried me slightly. Like many of us wondering whether I was being authentic in my practice if I use what I find helpful from a variety of traditions. For some years now I have to a large extent resolved this by listening to my inner response as to what feels right. Living in a box labelled Buddhist or Christian or whatever, certainly feels alien to me. The notion of 'Deep Ecumenism' as espoused by Theologian Matthew Fox seems to strike the right chord, at least for me.

[Dharmavidya]

I hope and believe that what we are fundamentally (sic.) doing here at Amida-shu is contributing to spiritual renaissance. What that will be called by those who look back on it, I do not know, nor does it really matter very much. What the great buddha-messiahs have taught is not inconsistent one with another and we can be inspired by any or all of them. They have each appeared in a particular culture at a particular time and so the message is dressed accordingly. We too occupy a particular era - a different one - and so we do not necessarily recognise what is before us. The institutions that followers created, which we call religions, are more or less good attempts by disciples to follow in the founder's tracks, commonly distorted by the introduction of mistaken ideas some of which are well meaning and some not. Within those institutions, therefore, it is possible to find the marks of the original message and also a good deal of distortion too. This presents each generation with the task of sorting the grain from the chaff, or, more properly, finding enough depth to be inspired enough for new grain to grow. Every generation must attempt a renaissance. A problem that arises, unfortunately, is that there is no reason to think that the individual is a good judge of what is what. We tend to want to keep what affirms our prejudices and discard what doesn't. Many people are thus actually being conservative while believing they are progressive. Thinking that they are being wisely discriminating, they may simply be heaping more (even if pleasing) distortion upon that which is already there. This is why different traditions have various devices that are intended to keep the message pure, but even these attempts go wrong and get distorted into exclusivism or bigotry. We are all lost in the forest of thorns, but even in the depth of the forest it is strangely light. Even when we cannot see the sun for the canopy of overgrowth, still it is not completely dark, and sometimes we do meet souls that have been.to more open parts and have a compelling tale to tell. Generally, however, it is not the lucidity of the tale so much as the manner of their living that gives evidence of genuineness. Here, too, it is the quality of our relations, our friendliness, to put it simply, that is the best test. The strength of our logic, analysis, or principles is also important, but the test of it's output lies, I feel, in a longer term assessment of the lived lives of those who profess. Since it is not given to us directly to see 'the longer term' it is important to proceed upon a wholesome faith and always be willing to continue learning.

[Fran Ayllón]

Hi everybody. I am glad to join this group.

I was thinking today in my evening walk that in our modern world we have no escape from sharing with others that are different from ourselves. I can imagine that very few people lived in India at the time of the Buddha. In a society like that, it would be comparatively easy to form a compact community, with a rather uniform ideological, religious, cultural setting. In the communities in which most of us live today, we are compelled to mix and to show a multicolored picture. No escape.

I was thinking also about something that people of different spiritual paths seem to share. As the Buddha appears to us as a visionary who awakend the ones around him with the clarivoyance of his dream, other confessions do the same. Some examples:

Pure Land - A promise of the real possibility of paradise in this earth
Christian- A promise of Heaven
Dzogchen- The perspective of one's body dissolving in a rainwow of light but staying around to reappear magically in any form to continue helping others
Mahayana - The Bodhissatva ideal of becoming the great hero who will save the entire universe
Tantra - Visualizations of one becoming a deity and of subtle inner energy transmutations until disolving oneself in emptiness
Communism - The promise of freeing themselves from tyrany and opression and creating a new world of justice.

Do not all of these share some kind of visionary ideal? And one thing all the organizations created by these ideologies do, I think, is to put their members at work towards their final envisioned dream. In doing so, I will not say these people are literally creating that dream on earth (some may do, metaphorically or really), here and now but, at least, I think they all do anticipate it, they do advance it in a coherent, real form with the real potential to change their spirit and their lives. Think of the joyful communal atmosphere in the neibourghood meeting together every Sunday at church; or the friendlyness and wormth of any meeting of a buddhist sangha; or the serious, serene recollection inside a buddhist monastery, a church or a mosque; or the high-spirited comradeship of the revolutionary troops advancing to the battle.

These forms of creating anticipations of those big dreams here and now can be used for the worse or for the better, they are not intrinsically good or bad, they are just methods, or tools. Just as a knife, it can do good or can do bad. The fervient christian, the fervient communist or the strict ascet can do good or do bad to themselves and others. The fervient buddhist can also. So I do agree very much with Dharmavidya that in the end what really counts it is not the ideological or philosophical or doctrinal matter but the "longer term assesment of the lived lives of those who profess" and the consciousness of directing themselves to "always be willing to continue learning".

Why, then, can not I share with others the value of being a human and wanting to become more human, whilst also appreciating the beauty of their big dream, the value of the visionary hope that beats in their heart, however different from the visionary dream that beats in my heart?

Yours:

Fran

[Fran Ayllón]

I just want to add the option I personally seem to have chosen to adhere to: an agnostic view that Stephen Batchelor once defined, borrowing someone else's words about (if I remember well) post-modernity, in terms of the end of the great narratives, or, in other words, incredulity towards the great narratives. I mean: no pure lands, no socialist utopias, no rainbow bodies, no super-bodhissatva heros, no promised heavens, etc. etc. No, please, no, no..., but still within a Buddhist (or maybe Bon?), frame. And I hope this agnostic Buddhist knife, that, of course, can also be used for the better or for the worse, can equally serve the purpose of guiding one to "continue to learning" and to the "longer term assesment of the lived lifes of those who profess". And of course it does not conflict with still being open to appreciate the beauty of the noble ideals that guide those who do have chosen for them one of those big dreams or great narratives. So I can share my "no big narratives, please" with your, or their, big dream as long as we use our respective tools for the good, not for the bad.

Fran