About “The Inner Jihad”

I just read a very interesting article on “The True Jihad” on  the Enlightennext.org website, and here is my response. Please read the article first before reading this comment:

Key to this article is that view that the inner jihad – inner spiritual battle against evil – demands the existence of the enemy, namely the ego. Thus the current mindset that tries to look away from evil, thinking that the evil should be brought to the fold and not be discriminated against, is a total humbug. We need an evil, so that author says, in order for our struggle to be meaningful. If we lost sense of the evil, then the evil will have done away with us all.

That’s quite a nice point. But it enters into some kind of paradox that is very hard to get out of. Bear in mind that we are talking about inner spiritual battle here, the kind that Jesus went through when he was tempted by Satan, when the Buddha was tempted by Mara, and so on. And the Islamic tradition certainly has it right on the spot when it identifies that the enemy of the spiritual battle is our own selves. In the end the largest and most meaningful spiritual battle is one raging inside our minds, when we can overcome our own tendency to the ordinary ways of living and thinking, which is no different from blind people rushing about from one place to another hitting into things. Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed taught that this is only because we fall prey to our own egos; their hold on us is so strong that it takes utterly strong effort to see through.

The paradox, however, arises when the author insists that the egos are real. He is correct when he says that if we don’t take our egos seriously, or if we want to “include” the egos so that they, too, could be liberated, then the whole spiritual edifice breaks down and we will continue running around as blindly as before. But then in the zest to defeat the ego we have to be very careful not to fall prey to it yet again. So the longer the ego is needed, the further still from the eventual goal of spiritual battle we will be. In our enthusiasm to kill our egos we seem to have brought back those very same egos through the back door without our knowing through our very enthusiasm. If we are intent on destroying the ego with hatred, then not only will we not accomplish anything, we will suffer from self hatred, which is completely as bad as any form of hatred if not more. The longer we are convinced that the ego is there, existing substantially, then we cannot defeat it. We might believe we have crushed it by brute force, or sheer will power, but then the ego is a very wily enemy, one which has a way to catch us unaware at any time. So it seems that if there is no ego, then no spiritual battle is meaningful, but if there is an ego, then fighting against it just brings it back.

So what do we do? That question lies at the very heart of the spiritual battle. We realize that the so-called “ego” is ultimately speaking just a creation of our own mind. This is not the same as not engaging in the spiritual battle. The slothful who does not practice has no way of spiritual advancement because he does not make any attempt to see. For him things are just right the way they are. They are completely under the spell of their egos. But the truly spiritual also realizes that reifying the ego creates the same problem. So the way out is first to identify the enemy, which is the sense of “I” or “mine” that has gripped us for so long and is the source of all our problems. Then we see that this “I”, this ego, is no more than an illusion. At first the illusion appears real because it is the face that it is perceived to be this way that is the source of the problems, then the only way to get rid of the problems is to realize that the ego is only an illusion, and has been so all along.

Filed under: Buddhism , Buddhism, Christianity, enlightenment, evil, Islam, Jihad, Mara, Satan

Buddhism and Culture

One thing that Lewis Lancaster talked about in his lecture at Berkeley (see here) is that Buddhism is a “portable” religion. This means that Buddhism was the first “global” religion which was followed by Christianity. The core or the essence of Buddhism is not tied up with any particular place, or a race of people. Earlier religions, such as Brahmanism and Judaism, were very much tied up to particular places and people. You can’t become a Hindu; you have to be born one. That is, you have to have already a context in which you are a Hindu. You have to belong to a certain caste, and foreigners are always outside of the caste system. Hinduism, then, is not a proselytizing religion.

What interests Lancaster is that you can always take Buddhism with you, everything that enables you to set up and have a fully functioning religions practice and doctrines so that you can transplant the whole religion in a far away land. This is also in accordance with the teaching about no-self; there is no self, no core thing that one gets attached to. Buddhism in this sense does not have a core. Of course the Buddha said that there were important places for Buddhists to travel to in order to commemorate the Buddha’s time on this earth — his birthplace, the place where he attained Enlightenment, and so on. But those are not necessary for accomplishing the highest goal of the religion. For Hindus, on the other hand, the river Ganges is a “real” source of blessing. No other river can even come close. But there is no such river in Buddhism.

Another religion that is closely related to Buddhism, Jainism, has aboutthe same apparatus that could have made it as portable, but Jainism is not portable. This is not because of the doctrine in itself. There is no holy river in Jainism either. What has made Jainism much tied up with the land of India is instead its injunctions that the Jain monks may not make use of any vehicle. They have to walk wherever they want to go. So they cannot go far. This severely limits the range at which Jainism can fully spread.

Later religions, Christianity and Islam, all partake of this “portability” feature of Buddhism. You can have everything about Christianity without being tied up to, say, Jerusalem. All you need is a Bible and a set of practices. These practices even do not have to be exactly the same. As is the case in Buddhism, the practices serve to carry on the message of the religion, and they don’t have to be the same. All that matters is that they help to realize the purpose. For Buddhism, all you need is the set of the scriptures and a group of monks who follow the Vinaya rules. The monks are the ones who embody the teaching, so to speak. And even the monks themselves are not absolutely necessary, because one can gain Realization without becoming one. This is a rather controversial point, but even if the monks are necessary, one can become a monk only when certain minimal rules are followed. All this helped the spread of Buddhism far and wide.

What makes all this possible is the emphasis on the mind. And this shows how universal the religion really is. Since all of us possess our own individual mind and the capability of thinking and understanding, all of us have the potential to become fully realized. This is one of the important messages of the Buddha.

Filed under: lecture , Buddhism, Christianity, culture, global, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Lewis Lancaster, religion, teaching, universality

Buddha, God, and Emptiness

During the symposium on Buddhism in German philosophy and literature, there was a lively discussion on how to compare Buddhism and Christianity on the topic of God and ultimate reality. There was a question from the audience whether the difference between Buddhism as a non-theistic and Christianity as a theistic religion would be a significant matter in an attempt to compare the two. In short, whether the fact that Buddhism is a non-theistic religion would make it inadequate in some way to answer the people’s needs.

This is an age-old matter. The talk started out with the comparison between the two religions on meditation. There is meditation in Christianity too, and it was kind of marginalized as a result of the movement toward rationality in the modern age. Thus meditation came to be regarded as some kind of mysticism. But it was there in the Christian tradition. So the question was posed whether the difference between Buddhism and Christianity on the existence of God would make any differences in meditative experiences. Christians presumably meditate on God and the purpose of the meditation is to get closer to God, but if there is no God in Buddhism, what do the Buddhist meditators meditate on?

For Buddhists this question sounds quite strange, because there are so many things one can meditate on, and there is no restriction that one has to meditate on God only. God does not have a monopoly when it comes to meditative object. In any case, I said during the talk that one way to find a common ground between the two religions is that, instead of looking at God as the creator, one might look at God rather as the Ultimate Reality, one whom the meditator tries to get closer to. If God is identified with this Ultimate Reality, then He would have a lot of affinity with Buddhism, because in Buddhism meditation the goal is also to get closer to Ultimate Reality, to become one with it, in effect.

This Ultimate Reality is known in some traditions of Buddhism as Emptiness. This is the ultimate nature of all reality; it is the real nature of everything. Thus God can be identified with Emptiness, and since Emptiness is just another word for Nirvana, God and Nirvana are in fact one and the same. The goal of the Christian is to become “one” with God, and the goal of the Buddhist is to realize Nirvana, which in other words is to become “one” with it too.

I also said that the perceptible world, according to the Buddhists, has no beginning nor end. The world has existed “since beginningless time,” as Buddhists are wont to say, and it will continue to exist so long as there are causes and conditions for it. Thus there is no creator God, but there is the God that is to be identified with this beginningless world. What both share in common is that they are eternal. God always IS, and reality, Emptiness, whatever it is called, always IS also.

The problem, of course, is that Christians do not accept this picture. Since to say of God that He is identified with the world is to destroy the distinction between the creator and his creation, and if there is no definite future, then no eschatology is possible. No dramatic story of Jesus coming down and give the final judgment.

The Buddhists have no idea whatsoever of eschatology. This only makes sense in the theistic setting and in the context of putting everything under a dramatic plot or a narrative. For the Buddhist future is an illusion created by the deceived mind, and there is no metanarrative that informs every event in the universe. Your future depends on what you do at this moment. You might be born as a god in heaven if you acquire some positive merits, or you go to hell. This is entirely up to your choosing. But there is no such story for the world as such. No, the world is definitely not going to be any particular way according to some preordained plan. The world is just there, and what it is like is up to the people inside it who do their various actions.

One way to understand what I am saying here is this. It is accepted that God creates Himself (sui generis), so isn’t there a problem here about the created and the creator? So why don’t we look at everything as God? God creates the world when we look at Him in one way, but in another way God does create Himself, and He does this continually.

I know I am encroaching upon Christian theology, a topic which I claim no expertise whatsoever. My aim here is only to find a common ground between Buddhism and Christianity and other monotheistic religions. This picture would be quite compatible with Buddhism, just change the word ‘God’ to ‘Emptiness’ according to the Madhyamika, or ‘Ultimate Reality’ according to the Abhidhamma, or the ‘Mind’ according to the Yogacara.

I also know that this picture is pantheistic, and thus unacceptable as a Christian doctrine. But that is not my problem. So Christian theologians would have to find their own solution if they do not want to go the pantheistic route. If the goal of the meditation is to enter the state of union with God, how is that going to be possible if there is this unbridgeable gulf between the creator and what is created?

Filed under: meditation , Buddhism, Christianity, emptiness, eschatology, meditation, religion, samsara, theology

Did God Have a Wife?

The PBS is putting a new series on “The Bible’s Buried Secrets” which documented Jewish history at the period which led to the Bible as we know it today, as well as the whole idea of monotheism. However, it was discovered also that the Israelite God, Yahweh, did have a wife, who was a Canaanite fertility goddess. This is really interesting. Here is the video preview:

Well, for Buddhists this is totally normal, nothing surprising. We Buddhists might consider Yahweh himself to reside in one of the high heavens, corresponding with Brahma (they both created heaven and earth, you know), and Brahma came down often to listen to the Buddha’s teaching. So Brahma in a way was one of the Buddha’s students, a celestial one at that. Brahma did have a wife, Sarasvati, who played some role as the goddess of learning and poetry.

It’s too bad that the Israelites chose not to promote their own goddess, so she kind of faded away from history, until now.

Filed under: Language , Brahma, Buddhism, Christianity, God, Goddess, Islam, Judaism, monotheism, Sarasvati, Yahweh

Buddhism and Music

I have been listening to this beautiful YouTube video of Elizabeth Parcell’s singing of Mozart’s “Exsultate, Jubilate” and think that I should be saying something about Buddhism and music. But first let us listen to the first part of the video:

Very beautiful, isn’t it? The music does not end with this part, and I will post the second and final part toward the end of this present post. The theme of the music, of course, is Christian. If I am not mistaken, “Exsultate, Jubilate” are words that exhort people to praise Jesus, and the music ends with a rousing “Alleluia” or “Hallelujah.” (You will find this in Part 2 of the video.) Very Christian indeed.

So what does this have to do with Buddhism. I have thought for a long time, in fact since I was very young, why Buddhism does not have such beautiful music praising its founder as Christianity does with their founder. I went to a Christian school in early primary years, and they usually took me to a church where they sang hymns that contained praises to Jesus and things like that. I went with the flow, even though I was Buddhist as were most Thai students there, but I could not help thinking why there is no such beautiful music in Buddhism. All that we had was monks chanting, but monks in Thailand do not play musical instruments, nor do they sing melodies, and the chant had no harmonization at all. I was told, moreover, that music was a kind of “defilement,” something to be avoided. Music is something that leads you to become attached to sensuality and pleasure, leading you away from the true goal.

But then I began to wonder whether music is really as “defiled” as I was told. If music was really defiled, then the Mozart above would be so, but I find it very hard to bring myself to see that. In fact I remember the story behind the “Exsultate” according to which Mozart was commissioned by the Archbishop of Salzburg to write a piece of Church music for liturgical purpose, and Mozart came up with this classic masterpiece. The story had it that the Archbishop was not amused at all by this masterpiece, which he thought to be too “sensual” (well, I can see that too ).  Anyway, the point seemed to be that Mozart was a rebellious soul, and his “Exsultate” could be interpreted as a statement against the Archbishop and his conservative attitude. Perhaps art took precedence over piety. In fact I think historians of music would say that the “Exsultate” did not have any religious sentiment at all; in fact it is a piece of secular music masquerading as a religious one. In today’s secular West, the piece is performed not in a church but in a concert hall, where people applaud loudly, which they don’t do at all in church.

However, I believe that the music is very deeply spiritual and listening to it I can’t help but think of the devotion that Mozart must have felt toward God, but being the artist that he was, this was how he showed the devotion. If the singer has to sing like an opera diva praising God, then she sings that, even though it may arouse feelings that typically one does not associate with religious piety. But I think one has to look beyond that. The real significance of the music is that, precisely because of the very beautiful coloraturas and harmonization, Mozart shows that art can arouse deeply religious feeling, and one who thinks that religious music has to be dull and lifeless may have to revise what they think.

This pertains directly to Buddhism and music. My point is that it is not necessary that beautiful music such as this has to arouse attitudes or sentiments that run contrary to the goals of either Buddhism or Christianity. Of course the “Exsultate” is very sensual; that is the point. But one be sensual while being deeply religious. If you are not convinced try reflect on the meaning of the Latin lyric, but if you do not know Latin (which I don’t by the way), at least you should know “Alleluia” if you are a Christian. Let the beauty of the music come to you without any judgement (like the Archbishop did). Let is seep into you, soaking you with the sheer rhythm, melody and harmony, and blend them with the meaning of the lyrics. The two cannot be considered in separation of each other, and I think this is where the mistake of those who think this is essentially a secular music lies.

Now what if this kind of beautiful music be set to words that praise Buddha instead? What if there is a full expression of joy and delight that the Buddha comes to the world and teaches us the way out of suffering and samsara? Wouldn’t that be appropriate to “Exsultate, Jubilate” too?

I end with Part Two of Elizabeth Parcell’s singing of Mozart:

Filed under: Happiness , art, beauty, Buddhism, Christianity, Exsultate, Jubilate, life, Mozart, music, pleasure

Subject, Self, and Soul

The Ninth Annual Conference of the Metanexus Institute has just finished yesterday amidst all the fanfare and four very dazzling Flamenco dancers who performed for us during the closing banquest at the Husa Princesa Hotel in Madrid. It was a good memory and I believe people will look forward to the next conference, wherever it will be, as the organizers have decided to move it around the world.

Regarding the content of the conference, I would like to have more representatives from the Buddhist tradition, as there were not many at all at this conference. So this is perhaps something that the organizers might want to think about for the next one. Buddhism is a growing religion, and it is making its presence felt even in the West in many ways. (There were not too many representatives from Islam, too.)

The topic for this conference is on “Subject, Self and Soul,” certainly very big topics. That perhaps is a reason why there are a lot of philosophers at this conference. I think there are much more philosophers and more purely philosophical papers at this conference than in the previous one in Philadelphia. And I think last year´s conference featured more scientists, so there was a discernible shift from focusing on scientists to philosophers. I don´t think they designed it this way; perhaps the topic lent itself more toward philosophical investigation. But the sciences have a lot to contribute to the topics of the self, and who knows they might have something interesting to say about the subject and the soul too.

Listening to the many papers from the Christian tradition presented at the conference, I could not help but find similarities between Christianity and Buddhism. Of course there are certain differences but I am not talking about them in this post. The conference was opened by a keynote talk by George Ellis from South Africa. His key theme was on “kenosis,” the process of “emptying out oneself” that Jesus did for the sake of all of us. One empties out oneself when one totally eliminates any sense of one´s own individuality and totally opens oneself to all the sufferings, all the sins, of all beings in the world. 

This is where the similarity lies. I said “all the sufferings and all the sins” so as to bring about the two key terms in Buddhism and Christianity. Buddhism talks about sufferings, and Christianity about sins. What one gets from Christianity is that the reason why Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise was that they gain “knowledge.” But this is a very special kind of knowledge. We could look at it as the kind of knowledge which enables one to distinguish one thing from another; it is a kind of discriminating knowledge, one that embodies the process of conceptualization. Now Adam and Eve “know” that they are naked and so on. But to know that one is naked means that one is able to compare oneself and others. Knowing this requires that one also knows all about the convention and everything that makes up discriminating thoughts.

But this is also found in Buddhism. What Adam and Eve have learned is that they are now mired in the process of samsara, because they possess this discriminating thought, which corresponds to the Sanskrit samskara. This is usually translated as “thought formation” and it is not out of the mark. Adam and Eve learned how to formulate thoughts and as a result committed the original sin. Stated in Buddhist terminology, the representative of the human race came to possess samskara, which is a result of avidya, or “ignorance.” So here is a difference. Christianity (and Judaism and Islam) talks about the forbidden knowledge, but Buddhism talks about the ignorance. But to me at least both refer to about the same thing .

The process after that is about the same in both traditions. Most readers of this blog who are from the West should be familiar with the story about the original sin and the lost paradise. In Buddhism, avidya gives rise to samskara, which in turn gives rise to all the remaining links of dependent origination, ending in all sorts of sufferings that afflict us everyday. So the Buddhist “original sin” is this avidya and the goal of Buddhism is to gain “redemption” though realizing the ultimate truth, to get rid, that is, of the root ignorance. (Of course there are differences but let´s focus on the similarity.)

So when Jesus came to the world, his mission was to take humans back to where they originally belonged – union with god or whatever you might want to call. Jesus takes away all our sins and as a result we are “redeemed.” The Buddha´s mission is to come to the world and announce the Teaching, the Dharma, and through following the Dharma one gains Liberation, or Nirvana, through which one is free from the cycle of sufferings. Jesus did this, according to Ellis in his talk, through the process of kenosis, emptying out himself so that all the sins and sufferings of everybody flow into him. The cross that Jesus died on is thus a very powerful symbol. In suffering on the cross, Jesus takes away our sins, as if our collective sins and sufferings are all collected together at that moment. When we reflect on that we are reminded of what Jesus did and what he came to the world for.

This is also a Buddhist message. A practice that is prescribed for those who vow to gain Realization so as to help liberate all the sentient beings in the world is called “Equalizing Oneself and Others¨and “Exchanging Oneself and Others.” The key is to realize that every being is interdependent and that sufferings arise only through thought fabrications and formations and conceptualizations that take things as they appear as being real in themselves. When Christians talk about “union with the divine,” Buddhists talk about becoming one and the same with the Bodhisattvas, taking up their qualities, which is full of compassion and the insight into the real nature of things, which is Emptiness. Buddhists learn to take up all the sufferings and pains of all sentient beings, no matter who they are, no matter whether they are their enemies, friends, or anything, so that they are free from sufferings and ultimately realize the Truth. If the Bodhisattvas are divine, Buddhists can eventually become one with the divine in this sense too.

Filed under: Buddhism , Bodhisattva, Buddha, Buddhism, Christianity, Jesus, kenosis, Metanexus, philosophy, religion, self, soul, subject

Buddhism and Fear

During the question and answer period at the World Buddhist University after Kris’s talk on the Bodhisattva Tara, a member of the audience asked about whether Buddhism was governed by fear as is, according to him, Christianity. In Christianity, he said, people are motivated because they fear the fires of hell and the like, and he seemed to think that Buddhism offers a way out of this. However, when he heard the idea that there were a lot of hell beings in Buddhism as well as hungry ghosts, who are wandering around in samsara, he felt rather uneasy and proclaimed that Buddhism was not governed by fear. For him this would return to the same situation. Buddhists appear to be motivated also by fear, fear of having to wander around in samsara, spending some lives as hell beings, others as hungry ghosts, etc.

This is a good point for reflection. Is Buddhism governed by fear? Does the teaching of the Buddha demand credence and obedience because you will taste the fires of hells if you fail to do so? Nothing is further from the truth. The first difference between Buddhism and a theistic religion like Christianity is the absence of the supreme being who upholds the laws. According to the questioner here, the Christian God is a fearsome creature, one who metes out punishments to those who do not obey his commands. You had better behave well, or else God will punish you. This is a very popular picture indeed. And one could then extrapolate that onto Buddhism. If you do not behave well, then watch out for the lives of hell beings, hungry ghosts or non-human animals.

I am not an expert of Christianity, but I think he is wrong on both counts. I don’t believe that Christianity is governed by fear in such a way that anyone who does not behave will immediately be angrily punished by an unforgiving God. If that is true, then why did Jesus have to die on the cross? But I leave a more nuanced answer to the Christian theologian. My concern is with Buddhism. Since there is no God, the impersonal law of karma seems to stand in His place as the ultimate law giver and upholder. But do things really work that way in Buddhism?

Not at all. Fear is one of the defilements and destructive emotions that we need to get rid of in order to have any hope for Liberation or nirvana. We fear because deep down we believe that there is this individual self, this ‘me’ inside that we need to protect. And whenever we feel that this ‘I’ is being threatened, we fear and we react as a result. We either run away, or confront the threat head on, fully intent on destroying the threat, all in order to protect this sense of the self, this ‘me’ inside.

According to this picture, the questioner’s fear is perhaps due to his unexamined and unfounded belief that there is his ’self’ that he thinks is there and needs protection. Since he does not want his self to be grilled and boiled in one of the Buddhist hells, he fears that this will happen so he is motivated to follow the Buddha’s teaching. However, he feels that this is not right because there should not be any fear; more importantly, any teaching that is based on fear is not a right one.

He is right in thinking that no teaching should be based on fear. But his problem is that he has this rather strong sense of fear inside. So whenever he hears about hell beings, hungry ghosts and the like, he feels very uneasy. Instead of looking at these creatures with compassionate eyes, thinking of how they have come to suffer like this and how they should be helped, he wants to run away from them with fear.

The key is to eliminate all fear altogether. This cannot be done unless the sense of the individual self, the ego, the ‘I’, is totally eradicated. Then one has no fear and in that situation instead of looking at hell beings or hungry ghosts with fear, one realizes that they are intensely suffering and then shares a lot of their sufferings, feeling the same thing as they actually do. Out of the compassion, one then does anything in one’s power to help them. Actually these beings happen to be there because of their strong defilements, strong mental obscurations. Having eradicated all the sense of the ego, the Bodhisattva then has no boundary between herself and all beings around her. Everything becomes one and the same. Thus the sufferings of hell beings thus become hers too.

One of the most powerful meditation techniques is known as “Realizing the Sameness of Oneself and Others and Exchanging Oneself with Others.” Shantideva said that this is the path undertaken by all the realized Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. A necessary element in that is the total elimination of the ego. Having no ego, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas thus have no fear. Shantideva said that they enter the deepest and hottest level of hell out of their compassion for those trapped there as swans lowering themselves onto the lotus pond.

Filed under: Buddhism , Bodhisattvas, Buddhism, Christianity, ego, fear, heaven, hell, hungry ghost, religion, self, selflessness