Bhikkhu Cintita

Tag: religion

  • Q&A w/BC: Is it useless to try to fix the world’s problems?

    Question from Celsa

    Because this world and our life is ‘suffering’, there is no hope that the suffering will go away, and it’s useless to try to fix the world’s problems. Of course, the obvious solution would be that every person becomes virtuous and behaves in a moral way, so suffering can decrease. This is not feasible at a mass level, so maybe humanity is hopeless? and there is no way out, except individually? Why is it so hard to surrender desire, doubt, anger, etc. Aren’t the 5 hindrances our very inherent makeup? And if one eliminates them, one ceases to exist? Isn’t Desire the very motive of existence, keeping us eating and reproducing? Does Buddhism say that human life is absurd?

    Response from BC

    Celsa, I’m sorry to hear so much despair, and I know most people feel this way at this stage in history (or any other stage). Let me try to put the role of Buddhism in all this into perspective to show how Buddhist practice helps make the world a better place and the individual more fulfilled.

    Let’s start with the issue of our inherent makeup. You’ve probably heard the following little story.

    An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One wolf is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

    The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

    The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

    This really says that we have two incompatible inherent makeups; this is the human dilemma. The Buddha never spoke in these terms, but notice that the qualities of the two wolves correspond almost precisely to what to Buddha regards as unskillful/unwholesome kamma, and skillful/wholesome kamma respectfully, so I’ll run with it. In fact, the Buddha has a lot to say about the psychological differences between the two wolves. Dependent coarising is an apt description of how the evil wolf’s mind works. (I have a bit of trouble picturing a good wolf. Maybe a highly domesticated collie like Lassie counts as a wolf.)

    It seems like the evil wolves are getting plenty to eat these days, certainly among public figures and the powerful. Our individualistic, “Greed is good” culture favors evil wolves (not all cultures do). However most religious traditions, if they have not been corrupted, favor good wolves. Buddhism unambiguously favors feeding the good wolf. For the Buddha that is the one inherent human makeup that counts, and that must be developed and cultivated.

    Most people think when the evil wolf is in charge it is good for “me,” but bad for others, when the good wolf is in change it is good for others, but bad for “me,” so they try to balance the two: “If I give to them, there is less for ‘me.’ Mostly I care about ‘my’ happiness, but I am not indifferent to theirs.” They feed both wolves, maybe the evil wolf a bit more.

    For the Buddha, this balance makes no sense at all, for a well-fed good wolf is always far far happier than a well-fed evil wolf. The reason is that each wolf experiences a different kind of happiness: for the evil wolf happiness is mundane, based on sense pleasures, fleeting and unreliable. For the good wolf it is supramundane, is based on contributing to greater things including others, just accumulates, and leads to a fulfilling, meaningful life well lived. Only the good wolf can be fulfilled spiritually. This is the fruit of good kamma, that many in our hyper-individualistic culture fail to recognize.

    How does Buddhist practice therefore make the world a better place?

    The adept Buddhist brings ceaseless benefit to those around him or her, though compassionate action, though cooperation in group pursuits, through harmonizing with them, through example and teaching. This is our inherent nature, the one worth developing and cultivating, the one concerned with something greater than the individual self, in that it includes others.

    It may be frustrating that the world overall does not seem to improve, but that is just “all or nothing” thinking. Helping a few others is huge in itself. Contributing the to the frustration is that we commonly do not see the far-reaching consequences of our influence, but they there. (I can think of various people whom I barely knew who have no idea of the influence they had on my life, like the odd Polish man in a suit and carrying a briefcase that I picked up hitchhiking in Corte Madera, California over fifty years ago, with whom I had a conversation about languages, and who recommended a book for me to read, before I dropped him off.) It is best to practice in small communities of like-minded people, where we can actually see the world getting a bit better, at least in one place, and where we are working together with others to accomplish this. Community was essential in the Buddha’s thinking.

    But even if the world does not become a better place, or we fail to see it, we individually will live much more fulfilling, meaningful lives for having dedicated our practice to something greater than ourselves, to living as good wolves according to the standards of Dhamma.

    In summary, yes Buddhism does say that human life is absurd. But Buddhism knows how to make it sane, just not for everybody all at once.

  • Q&A w/BC: How do we repackage Buddhism to make it simple, relevant and compelling for young people?

    QUESTION from Gerry Trione:

    Bhante, As you probably know, there are about 700 million Buddhists around the world, most of whom are in Asia. There are an estimated 3-4 million in the US, but most of whom are Asian, leaving only about 600,000 “westerner” Buddhists; far less than 1% of the population. I know from personal experience that Buddhism is essentially unknown or misunderstood with Americans. Moreover, the prospect of US as a fertile ground for religious Buddhism is becoming more tenuous as young people are taught in school and social media that there is no “god” and anyone who follows a religion is a loser. The result of turning away from religion is the loss of moral and ethical guidelines on how to live a wholesome life. This is why we have such a high rate of drug and alcohol use, and psychological problems. Over 60 million people in the US have psychological problems, and over 50 million have drug addictions. And, its getting worse.

    The question is: Why is Buddhism, the proven best means to end mental suffering, so hard for young people to grasp?

    ANSWER from BC

    Gerry, Thanks for this important question. I agree with you: the modern world needs Buddhism, because Buddhism is almost the opposite of what ails modern culture: its hyper-individualism, its consumerism, its commercialism, its secularism, and so. But exactly this this is what makes Buddhism difficult to grasp for modern people. Buddhism is not an easy-answer guide to life, except in some of its regional, primarily devotional “folk” manifestations, which are simply going to seem strange to westerners.

    Partly as a way to popularize Buddhism, many modern teachers westernize or pare down Buddhism. I daresay that much of what is taught as Buddhism by western teachers is not of Asian origin at all, but is a continuation of currents of western thought that can be traced through the early Protestant Reformation, through Romanticism, American Transcendentalism, psychoanalysis, and probably through the beatnik and hippy countercultures. Buddhism is being significantly co-opted by modern culture, rendering it unable to squarely oppose those aspects of modernism that are most vexing. David McMahan’s book, the Making of Buddhist Modernism, offers a fascinating discussion of this issue.

    Of course, modern people are always going to see Buddhism through a modern lens. The challenge is to do this without distorting the Buddha’s original intent. East Asians certainly do not conceptualize Buddhism the way Indians did, yet the managed to preserve the functionality of early Buddhism well. Much of my own efforts center around presenting “Early Buddhist for Modern Buddhists” (which I’ve made the name of this web site) without distorting the intention of the earliest sources.

    I don’t have a clear answer on how best to promote Buddhism in the west. I’m doing my best. The commercial culture seems to overrun everything. The number of monks in Thailand, for instance, has fallen by 50% in 20 years, apparently because of the growing influence of modernity. Taiwan, on the other hand, continues to sustain very strong Buddhist and Taoist traditions in spite of its modernity. I’d like to know how they do it. I doubt that we will manage a sweeping Buddhist movement, say, in the USA. What we might accomplish is small communities here and there that are dedicated to living sanely according to the Dhammic principles, much as the artifacts of civilization were preserved in the monasteries of the Middle Ages.

    MORE DISCUSSION from Gerry

    The answer is the primary message of Buddhism, to end suffering, is not being communicated to the masses. It is obscured and eclipsed by a larger focus on the more mystical concepts of rebirth, merit, realms, devas, and the supernatural. The elegance of Buddhism from my perspective, having studied psychology in undergrad, is the close resemblance to psychology of the 4 Noble Truths. Namely, suffering, or “psychic irritants” exist; we know the causes (Three Poisons); Suffering can be cured; and, the cure is known (8 Fold Path, Precepts, etc.). This is classical psychology with “psychoanalysis” and “Psychotherapy”.

    What young people ask themselves is: “What’s in it for me?”. The answer is “Happiness”; the end of suffering. But, young people I know don’t think they’re “suffering”. They think that anger, hate, resentment, jealousy, envy, worry, fear, cravings, addiction, anxiety, and depression is “normal”!!! In short, Buddhism needs to be repackaged to appeal to these younger people in a form which is Simple, Relevant, and Compelling.

    RESPONSE by BC

    I agree with your most of your points, and along with you am particularly alarmed at what young people experience as life.

    You are right: Buddhism, at least the early Buddhism taught by the Buddha, is psychological through and through. I am a retired cognitive scientist and I am simply in awe the the Buddha’s understanding of the human mind. I’m discovering that early Dhamma matches up with modern cognitive research well. However, I don’t agree Dhamma bears a close relationship to psychotherapy (although a lot of psychotherapists are Buddhists). The goals are different. Freud described psychotherapy as curing psychological abnormalities that cause individual suffering, and added something like, “so that sufferers can return the common level of suffering that we all share.” Buddhism is concerned with curing the common level of suffering that we all share. But even that goal is incidental to its main goal: to improve and eventually perfect the human character in its dual aspects of virtue and wisdom. I think of the suffering of young people in modern society, and of almost everyone else, not so much as an abnormality of individual psychology, as of the break-down of the society in they live.

    As for the “larger focus on the more mystical concepts of rebirth, merit, realms, devas, and the supernatural,” many teachers explicitly exclude such teachings, particularly the secularists. As for preserving the integrity of early Dhamma, I’ve concluded that devas, realms and much of the supernatural (like acquiring the ability to jump up and touch the sun) are dispensable, but fun. Rebirth and merit are critically important. Merit (or the fruits of kamma) is simply the effects of wholesome practice on our character, and can be largely explained cognitively. Rebirth gives us an important way of framing our long-term practice. It’s not necessary to believe that it is actually true as described, only that we accept it as a working assumption. We do this all the time anyway: money is not true, it is a social construct that everyone accepts as a working assumption, and thereby serves an important social function.

    Please REPLY if you would like to continue this conversation on a multifaceted topic that perhaps all readers have a stake in. I would like to encourage such discussions in order to revive this web site, to which I have given insufficient attention in the last years. Submit a question

  • New Book: Rethinking Satipaṭṭhāna

    From investigating Dhamma to dwelling in jhāna,
    Bhikkhu Cintita (2025)

    Satipaṭṭhāna (often translated as “Foundations of mindfulness”) is the Buddha’s method of wisdom contemplation, best known through the ancient practice tutorial The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. It is recognized as the basis of the modern vipassanā or insight meditation movement. Unfortunately, the currents of Buddhist intellectual history have not been kind to this early teaching.

    Rethinking Satipaṭṭhāna is a thoroughgoing reevaluation of the early satipaṭṭhāna teachings that integrates right view, right recollection and right samādhi based on a critical rereading of the earliest Buddhist texts in an effort to recover a doctrinally coherent, cognitively realistic, etymologically sound, functional, and explanatory interpretation of this ancient wisdom practice.

    Satipaṭṭhāna is seen as a practice that extends Dhamma study to investigation, verification, and internalization in terms of direct experience to produce the fruit of “knowledge and vision of things as they are.” The jhānas are seen, in accord with modern cognitive research, as an aid to internalization that offloads sophisticated Dhamma understandings onto the effortless and intuitive “intrinsic” system of human cognition.

    Bhikkhu Cintita is an American Buddhist scholar-monk. He is a former professor and research scientist in linguistics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. Since 2001 he has dedicated himself full time to Buddhist study and practice. He ordained in 2003 as a Soto Zen priest, then in 2009 as a Theravada monk in Myanmar. He currently resides in a monastery with 4 Burmese monks in rural Minnesota, and is the author of several books, including Buddhist Life/Buddhist Path, an introduction to Buddhism based on the earliest texts. He’s been a meditator for 45 years.

    Download Rethinking Satipaṭṭhāna (pdf).

    Order a printed copy from Lulu.com.

  • American Folk Buddhism (17)

    First Quarter Moon, Uposatha, July 26, 2012            Series Index

    Conclusion to Series

    This will be the last and concluding episode in this, uh, longish series on American Folk Buddhism.

    In summary, I made a distinction between two kinds, or actually polarities, of Buddhism: Essential Buddhism and Folk Buddhism. The Refuges assure the authority of the former.

    Essential Buddhism is what is understood and sustained by Buddhist adepts who are thoroughly engaged in the study and practice Buddhism to the extent of significant attainment. It is generally beyond the grasp of most Buddhists who are simply more casual in their engagement or busy doing other things. Essential Buddhism is also functionally equivalent to what the Buddha taught but manifests in various forms, often culturally determined; for instance in East Asia it picked up many highly ritualized practices as effective instruments of mindfulness. In a sense there are multiple Essential Buddhisms, but in another sense there are very nearly simply different manifestations of a single functionally integrated system.

    Folk Buddhism is the popular understanding of Buddhism in a particular folk culture for which it provides accessibility to a much broader community, albeit with occasional loss of accuracy or sophistication. Folk Buddhisms are highly culturally determined and one Folk Buddhism is likely to appear incomprehensive to the adherents of another Folk Buddhism just as one culture will tend appear mysterious to the members of another. In the course of this series I have considered the Western cultural, and therefore non-Buddhist, sources of many prominent features of the emerging Western Folk Buddhism.

    The Refuges, or Triple Gem, establish the authority of Essential Buddhism over Folk Buddhism as it expresses trust in the originator, the teachings and the living adepts of Essential Buddhism. The Triple Gem gives Buddhism as understood and practiced in the entire community the comet-like shape in which the tail of Folk Buddhism is oriented toward the head of Essential Buddhism, without which Folk Buddhism would eventually float off into space as an amorphous cultic cloud, Buddhist only in name.

    Distinguishing between Essential and Folk Buddhism provides a framework for understanding and monitoring the process by which Buddhism is being assimilated into the Western cultural context. Ideally this process will:

    (1)   maintain the functional integrity of Essential Buddhism at all costs,

    (2)   establish the authority of Essential Buddhism over Folk Buddhism and

    (3)    result in a wholesome Western Folk Buddhism.

    The integrity of Essential Buddhism is threatened by the assumption common in Western circles that adapting Buddhism to the West is a matter of stripping Buddhism willy-nilly   of Asian cultural accretions in order to make it look more Western. This aesthetic would include, for instance, getting rid of rituals, robes, bowing, chanting (at least in foreign tongues), non-productive lifestyles and so on, not to mention renunciation. However, distinguishing between Essential and Folk Buddhisms highlights the danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, of hacking away at the corn when trying to remove the underbrush. Essential Buddhism is the baby, Folk Buddhism the bathwater. The functional role of any culturally arisen features of a transmitted Essential Buddhism is preserved only by leaving it intact or replaced by Western-looking counterparts. History seems to favor leaving such things intact, tending to lend Essential Buddhism an archaic flavor, for instance as retained in gestures of respect and in monastic garb.

    Establishing the authority of the Triple Gem ensures that any particular person immersed in Folk Buddhism knows where to look to deepen his practice and understanding of Buddhism, and that that Folk Buddhism remains recognizably Buddhist. That Folk Buddhisms vary so widely should not be a source of alarm as long as each Folk Buddhism is so anchored in the authority of Essential Buddhism. Without that alarm each Folk Buddhism can be appreciated and respected in its own right as an effective intermediary between a relatively uniform Essential Buddhism and the respective cultural context.

    A Western Folk Buddhism is wholesome or beneficial to the extent that it is friendly and not inimical toward Essential Buddhism. It is not necessary or desirable to preserve any particular Asian Folk Buddhism, which would be largely incomprehensible in a Western context in any case. It should be recognized that a pure Essential Buddhism goes “against the stream” in any cultural context and that the function of a Folk Buddhism is to carry the challenge of Buddhism into its cultural context, that is that it should make a real difference is people’s lives and attitudes in spite of the cultural context.

    In the course of this series I have examined some prominent features of the emerging Western Folk Buddhism in terms of their consistency with Essential Buddhism. These features are resistance to authority, particular forms of understanding and revering the Triple Gem, individualism, gender equality, consumerism, social engagement and the intermediating influence of psychoanalysis on the Western understanding Buddhism. The picture that emerges ranges between total accord and significant discord. Western Folk Buddhism is still quite raw but the master chef of Essential Buddhism should cook it up nicely with time.

     I have tacitly assumed throughout this series that the integrity of Essential Buddhism itself has been successfully preserved through history and transmitted to us in the West. I would like to conclude by considering the role of Western Buddhism in making this assumption even more true than it actually is. Essential Buddhism is probably not currently preserved anywhere in its pristine purity. Tradition has a way of tugging out its own roots: understandings become calcified, shortcuts establish themselves, assumptions are not often enough revisited and questioned, the history of each tradition has often been rewritten. For instance I feel that the Theravada would do well to look more critically at the way eating meat and gender roles are understood even among most of the adepts. In the West Buddhism in all of its aspects will be seen with fresh eyes. Scholars are challenging the accounts traditions generally have of their own histories, practitioners question the why’s and wherefore’s of everything and are open to debating these things. Eventually I predict a renewed and stronger purer Essential Buddhism will emerge in the West, one that will go on to reinvigorate all of Buddhism East