Emergent Dharma: By Any Upaya Necessary
âWhen in doubt, bow.â
â anonymous master
Now we are conscious evolutionary beings, an evolving intelligence becoming aware of its own potential to go beyond present limitations. This very well applies to the way we go about Dharma. Living Dharma is about discovering the radical, indestructible, dynamic continuity, and then serving it fully, by best means available, for the benefit of everyone.
A Project for the New Buddhist Century
The days of initial immigrant Dharma are gone, but mainstream Buddhists still tend to frame a lot of their thinking in East/West terms, so the most frequently made threefold division isnât View, Meditation, and Action, or even Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, but instead itâs Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, and Vipassana. Perhaps itâs due to marketplace pressure and the ubiquitous brand™ management, that influence our classifications. Or perhaps itâs an attempt to create an impossible diversity, for these three modes of the tradition have never co-existed alongside, their historical forms never touching in any manner whatsoever. What will come of them in a shared timespace remains to be seen. Meanwhile, we also have a number of Buddhisms known by their national designation, including Korean, Chinese, but also American Buddhism.
A different distinction, however, needs to be made. What we ought to discern at this point is the three horizons, invisible to classical teachings, within which all previous threefold divisions, including the Zen-Tibetan-Vipassana, can be approached, practiced and interpreted: the strongly felt but often unnamed traditional, modern, and postmodern frameworks.
Because these frameworks include worldviews, identities, values, needs, and self-evident truths, they exert huge influence on the way Dharma in any form is understood, practiced, organized, and promoted. Typically they produce fundamentalist, rationalist, and relativist approaches to every aspect of Sangha, of Dharma, and of Buddha.
In terms of historical development, traditional precedes modern which precedes postmodern. Thereâs an undeniable organic continuity between them. Nonetheless, because of a dialectic tension, the three are notorious for deep mutual distrust, known at large as culture war. Such behavior is somewhat tragicomical, being reminiscent of actions by three generations in a dysfunctional family. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote, âThe evolutionarily later always subsumes and includes the evolutionarily earlier.â
Whether our practice is in the Vipassana, Zen, Tibetan, or any other stream of Dharma with headquarters in either East or West, we may go about it in any of the three ways. And any of these three ways has moderate and extreme manifestations. Traditional brings many values to the table, but can also produce rigidity and dogmatism. Modern approaches will emphasize pragmatism and critical inquiry, while often sliding into rationalism and reductionism. Postmodern approaches will assert the need for sensitivity and inclusion, and yet discard the many virtues of tradition and rationality as oppressive and limiting, while unwittingly paving the way for extreme relativism.
Now, the way to go forward is to develop and sustain objectivity in relation to all these, because we need their healthy aspects to establish a robust Dharma for the 21st century. To midwife a relevant, emergent Buddhadharma, we need whatâs best in traditional, modern, and postmodern stages of psychological, cultural, and institutional unfolding, in addition to the unhindered ultimate realization, however defined, measured, or tested. In the words of the Integral philosopher Ken Wilber, we must âtranscend and include.â That, in short, is the basis for a new Buddhist century.
Post East/West Buddhism
While the âfirst generationâ transmitting the Buddhist teachings and practices were Eastern teachers, at present itâs mostly the Westerners doing the actual teaching in the West. The days of early immigrant Dharma are gone, but many Buddhist networks in the West continue to maintain strong ties to Asia, which is only natural.
Domesticated translations of Dharma are becoming the norm, even while some historical forms persist, whether as art and ritual, as genealogical mythology, or as institutional anachronism. This process isnât without comparison in Western religious traditions, though the actual shift is without precedent, for many specific changes are happening for the first time, and the effects of these are largely unpredictable. The influence of secularism and laicism, universal access to various technologies, and the ongoing commodification of spiritual offerings â such developments are seen around the world. What is exclusive to the West, however, is the cultural crucible wherein most if not all existing streams of Dharma not only meet, reconnect, and interact but also share stuff and merge, giving rise to unpredictable hybrids, beyond accepted notions of either purity, orthodoxy, or authenticity.
While most established temples and centers in the West could use larger regular memberships, new vitality springs in unexpected places. Such emergents will particularly be seen with groups formed around the actual possibility of realization, especially if they can establish the synergy of (1) core spiritual principles, (2) accessible instruction or guidance, (3) innovative modes of practice, and (4) transparent organizational structures, while allowing the broader public a degree of access to all four. ((An elaboration of these requires a separate article.)) While existing examples are certainly exciting and promising, their sustainability is yet to be confirmed. According to Buckminster Fuller, âYou never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â In this case, itâs not just what we do, but what we intend that will make the difference.
WYSIWYG
Speaking truth to power in most Western Buddhist circles equals to speaking out of turn. That is slowly changing. While loyalty and devotion are certainly essential to spiritual life, their expression is by no means limited to feudal ideals. With initiative, discernment and dignity, each individual practitioner should make a unique ongoing contribution to evolution.
Because politics and religion have never been strange bedfellows, we need both political and religious reform in the grassroots sangha. Forty years have been sufficient for each tradition to establish its own variant of doublespeak and soft taboos. We can use the next forty to act together and redeem a widely intelligible language of truth and reality, editing out the sectarian jargon in discourse whenever possible, voicing the implicit conscience in organizational dynamics, and building a vigorous online community based on real names and faces.
Coming back to what living Dharma is about, liberation and awakening are not be found outside of ourselves, and this also means we need to establish them in our communities and sitting groups, in our families and working places, in our friendships and significant relationships, starting with our fellow practitioners, students and teachers equally. Giving birth to new, vibrant mandalas of actual, wakeful people has never been more important.
Keep it real!
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I'm really glad I came across this site, Integral Buddhists is exactly what I needed
Thanks to @stuartdavis who mentioned you in one of his tweets. I've got a whole lot of podcasts to catch up on!
Hey Mark. Great to have you hear brother. I hope you enjoy catching up on the episodes.
This was so hpelful and easy! Do you have any articles on rehab?
Hokai, thank you for this very timely article. Observing and being part of Buddhist Geeks, being in Boulder with quite the diverse group of Buddhist friends, I feel this every day in my life. It's extremely nascent. I wonder if you wouldn't mind commenting a bit more on this observation of us having moved from focus on view/mediation/action to Zen, Tibetan, Theravada. What does that mean for us more specifically? Is it overall a good or bad thing?
In reading over your section on Post East/West Buddhism it dawned on me that it might be good. It seems that we are moving to a focus on more pure elements, if I could say that, of practice, those pieces that transcend our traditions, through which I and my friends can easily connect to one another, and in fact, in more powerful ways than limiting ourselves to a tradition. That being the case, if it continues in that manner, I wonder what role tradition will play in the future.
Hey Ryan:) There are certainly both good and bad aspects to every possible trinity, and it's our job to make sure we employ them in useful ways. The way Zen-Tibetan-Theravada has been used so far is mostly to make sure each remains distinct and self-contained. It's surely good to know that, what we call "Theravada" is mostly some variant of vipassana meditation in diverse ideological, institutional and cultural contexts, and the teachings and methods used also vary. The same goes for Zen in the West, and "Tibetan" may mean so many different things. In short, we need a more accurate, more nuanced taxonomy to reflect this dizzying diversity, but also to re-affirm the underlying unity for which the four noble truths are hardly an adequate basis.
To look at the notions of "tradition" and "lineage", this comment space is hardly sufficient, so I'd like to recommend the article "The three lineages" by Reginald Ray. Link: http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/issues/2005/winter…
Yes, I believe focusing on more pure elements, as you say, is essential at this point. Also, letting go of some superficial traditionalism would also help us more openly recognize valid innovations that have taken place. Whatever happens, tradition will take root in the West only through continuous evolution. That is the primary meaning of the Middle Way for us here and now.
What a terrific and timely article!
Very good article, I definitely think more critical inquiry of Buddhism in America (and in general, around the world) is necessary to maintain and grow a vibrant faith. Thanks again!
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thanks, Hokai. Just glancing quickly at Reggie's article, I can see the distinction of the three lineages being extraordinarily helpful. It seems that the concept of lineage often holds people back from innovation (and I have a feeling this is even more the case in Tibetan Buddhism). To pull out these three different meanings of lineage – primordial, transmission, and organization lineages – I think encourages the innovation we need. When they are lumped into one it becomes more sacrilegious to talk about change.
Speaking strictly from the standpoint of Tibetan practice, which is the only kind of Buddhism I've practiced seriously, I try to evaluate ideas, whether they're East-West, lineage, 21st-century Buddhism, or whatever, based on the experience of whether they seem to be deepening, clarifying and simplifying my practice. One of the things that sometimes does this is connecting with a really good lama and doing the stuff he/she suggests doing, with an attitude of trust and confidence in the teacher. This doesn't seem to work with all of the lamas, but it works really well with a few of them. Some absolutely great stuff can happen through doing this that does not seem to happen through "innovation" and trying to figure out what 21st-century or American Buddhism ought to look like. I guess I'm fine with innovation as long as the people guiding it are coming from a basis of real, deep realization, but one way or another, it's the connection with realized teachers that improves things the most for me, not the cultural context or relative age of the concepts being discussed.
Loved this article!
Wonderful site BTW Geeks! I've only been reading and listening for a week now and I'm hooked! Getting caught up!
Metta,
Kayla