A Reason-able project?

I don’t make an effort, but when I see Bill Moyers’ show, Faith and Reason, on my Tivo, I’ll watch it. I spent so many years listening to spiritual teachers and, well, old habits are hard to break. So far, I haven’t been able to make it through an episode. I hear a lot about faith, but not so much about reason. Or, more accurately, I hear reason that, at some point, hits its limit, and then is replaced my major leaps of logic that are called faith.

Anyway, the Western-born Tibetan Buddhist Nun, Pema Chodron, was on the other day. I used to really enjoy her writing, but I hadn’t read anything of her’s since I stopped nodding my head (see the first post). And, back in my nodding days, I nodded a lot at various Buddhist ideas.

Watching Pema Chodron, it was as if a Buddhist veil had fallen off of my head when I began tilting it. Let me tell you what I mean.

I only saw the second half of the interview (my Tivo is set to record the whole thing if it’s ever replayed), but in that 30 minutes, Pema said 3 things that floored me:

1. She sees the Buddha as a role model because he’s an ordinary human who achieved “awakening.”Now this is the common idea about the Buddha in the West. In the East, most Buddhists think of the Buddha as a god. “Lord Buddha” isn’t just an honorific over there. But, more importantly, when you read the Buddhist stories, the “he’s just a guy” idea doesn’t hold water.Ignore for a moment the uniqueness of his life — born the son of the king of the Sakya clan, raised without seeing suffering, experiencing the best that his father could offer. The same teachers that say “he’s just a man” also tell the stories of his past lives, the hundreds of thousands of lives where he demonstrated almost super-human levels of compassion, insight, wisdom, intelligence, generosity, etc. It’s said that all those lifetimes prepared him to become awakened, to become the Buddha. And the Buddhist teachings also talk about how rarely an awakened one appears in the world.Does that sound like an ordinary guy?Michael Jordan is an ordinary guy. But nobody thinks that by practicing basketball for a few hours a day they’ll become one of the rarest basketball talents is the world. Tiger Woods is just a man, but nobody thinks that — with any amount of practice — they will become the next Tiger Woods.

   So why do we think that we can and will like someone who, by definition, is an unfathomably rare individual?

   And, hey, I’m not saying we won’t. I don’t know. (At some point, I’ll write the Kabbalistic story about how we *could* be that one and not know it).

   But look at what it costs to hold a unique and rare individual as a model… when our lives don’t seem to compare to it. When, no matter how much we meditate or pray or chant, we still get angry in traffic, or confused by our spouse, or frustrated at, well, anything.

   Related to this is…

2. Pema Chodren said she has faith that all beings have the potential for awakening.Sounds good, but then Bill asked, “Are you awakened?” She laughed at the seeming absurdity of the question. “No,” she said.Now, this is a woman who has been “practicing” Buddhist meditation for over 30 years. She’s a Buddhist nun. She hasn’t “gotten it,” but everyone has the potential to?Sure, given enough time, enough lifetimes, it seems possible. I’m all for it. But Buddhism promises “enlightenment” (and other religions promise something similar or the same). The question is: Where is the evidence that it delivers what it promises?

   Where are all the enlightened beings who are no longer “practicing” because they’re playing (the game, the music, or whatever else you practice for)?

   Again, reading the Buddhist texts, the Buddha taught 84,000 people and only 500 “got it” (and they became awake, but NOT Buddhas… they still had many of the personality traits that most practitioners hope will go vanish in the light of enlightenment). He was the best teacher there was and only .6% of his students got the gold ring.

   Tibetan Buddhists like to say that what makes their version of Buddhism unique (and better than Zen or Theravada) is that it promises awakening in one lifetime. Then the obvious question is: Why aren’t all practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism enlightened?

   Before you answer something like, “Not everyone practices well enough,” I’ll ask, “How can you really know what’s going on in someone’s head, in someone’s practice?” I’m sure I’ll write about how we can’t use end results as a “proof” for undefinable causes, like how well you concentrate, how much you want something, or what your “vibration” is.

   Maybe the better question is: If there are any who did become enlightened, was it REALLY a result of their practice or was a bigger factor something like past lives or eating Mexican food or some other factor that we can’t know or can’t quantify?

3. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Bill quoted the Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi, who once said to his students, “You’re all perfect; and you need some improvement.”Pema Chodren nodded in agreement with that one. It’s a great line. It points to the paradox of unity and duality. Genuinely understood, it’s a show stopper. But think about how we normally hear that statement.Normally, we REALLY BELIEVE the second part, and HOPE TO EVENTUALLY REALLY BELIEVE the first part… after we finish improving ourselves. We give lip service to the idea that we’re perfect, fine, showing up exactly as we should be. But we spend countless hours, dollars and energy attending to our self-improvement project.

   This line — we’re perfect and need improvement — and that we don’t really experience the perfection but do experience the idea of needing improvement, is the motor that drives a multi-billion dollar improvement industry. It’s what keeps us in annoyingly lit hotel rooms for a weekend instead of enjoying a day in the park with our loved ones. It’s what motivates us to engage in all sorts of practices that subtly reinforce the idea of our being broken while simlutaneously letting us think we’re better than others who aren’t “on the path.”

So, how do I put all this together?

Without the idea that there’s some ideal person to emulate, that there’s some practice that will get me to become that person, that in this imagined “awakened” future I can finally be happy… without all of those ideas? Guess what? Perfection. Here. Now. Really.

Not “perfection” as in: the best, the smartest, only having the thoughts I want, etc. That’s perfection COMPARED to imperfection.

Instead, without nodding my head at the notion of being an improvement project, it (and by “it” I mean “me) is genuinely fine, exactly as it is. I can see how every movement of my life, and my parents’ lives, and their parents’, and so on all the way to the beginning of time, led inexorably to this moment. How dare I suggest I think I know how it could/should be “better.”

And, if I wake up in the morning with the idea of exercising or meditating or chanting or whatever… it’s not about improving this thing I’ll call me. It’s just what this me thing does as an expression of… well, there’s no word that can even fill that place in the sentence.

Okay, it’s done. Off to what’s next.