3 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: Why Buddhism?
Thomas Merton used to say that he was especially interested in Tibet because, "there seem to be more enlightened people coming out of there than anywhere else."
I think my own background is typical. I grew up American in the 60s. My parents were scientific materialist and futurism fetishists. Flying to the moon and the Jetsons. We went to church when I was young, apparently because everyone did. What I experienced there was a women's hat contest that was more boring than anything else in my life. I dreaded it.
As a teenager I encountered Zen books, Jung, Alvin Toffler, Marcuse and various other people looking more deeply at life. I read Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces and that was a revelation. Finally, someone presented a credible explanation for why religion existed. It was a system of wisdom beyond normal life. The very idea of enlightenment was new to me, as it still is for many people. But it made sense. From there I started trying to figure out enlightenment and find books from people who seemed to have an inside track.
Through all this, I saw no sign of wisdom in the world around me. Priests, ministers, teachers... None seemed to be introspective or reflective. No one talked about trying to know God or figure out Lao Tzu. Eventually I was living out of a backpack, doing an extreme fruitarian cleansing diet, seeking ever more intensely, even working as a semi-pro astrologer. There was a general sense of transcendent wisdom that myself and others were exploring. Myself and my friends were constantly pushing boundaries with drugs, sex, books, art, Hinduism... anything that might promise some breakthrough beyond pedestrian neurosis.
Along the way I came across a Tibetan teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In him I saw someone who was presenting a very real and practical path to enlightenment. I didn't need the fruit diet, astral realms, Theosophy, flotation tanks, herbal concoctions... I could practice meditation and study Buddhism in my life, just as it was. I didn't need to wear a robe or go to India. And I found the Buddhist teachings to be stunningly brilliant; sophisticated well beyond the 100-year-old theorizing of Western academics in psychology. Almost as soon as I started meditating, I felt an unequivocal sense that I had finally found a real path.
So for me I'd say it's partly because Buddhism teaches a system of mind training that can break through the "godless" materialism of the modern world, partly because there are actually numerous enlightened Buddhist masters teaching in the West, and it's partly my own personal karma. For whatever reason, Tibetan Buddhism clicked for me.
There is some mysticism in Christianty today. There's Father Thomas Keating who was teaching something like sampanakrama until he died a few years ago, for example. But Christianity seems to be lacking live mysticism for the most part. It also has an obscure, poetic style that I've never found easy to understand. To my mind, Christianity in the West has reached a state of near total dessication, with only the academics and the moralists left to pick over the remains. If there are bodhisattvas and siddhas running Catholic churches, I haven't come across them.
I think it's also worth noting that Buddhism is actually not all that popular. Buddhist meditation has leaked into the mainstream, but it's packaged in pop psychology worldview. What the Buddha taught was a path to enlightenment. It's almost unimaginably radical. And that's all he taught. As you said yourself, you're dabbling and find that meditation cheers you up. There are very few people meditating. Of those that are, the vast majority are using apps or dabbling. Most of the people currently doing something they regard as meditation don't even have a concept of the path to buddhahood, or the Christian corollary of knowing God.
Comment by daibatzu at 03/02/2025 at 22:14 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Women's hat contest, LOL. I know the feeling very well
Comment by AtmosphereLoud4882 at 04/02/2025 at 08:39 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Wow, that was more profound than expected. It is true that meditation has made it to the west, and the concept of "meditation" that I had was totally destroyed when I started researching and practicing buddhist meditation. Indeed it has proven more profound, it gives me peace and actual calmness, while western pop "meditation" never achieved to give me a sense of peace or fulfillment.