Buddhism is overrated
(I probably need to revisit this piece)
I was inspired by this blog post. Also, John Horgan’s writing on science is cool.
When I lived in Washington, I attended some Zen and Shambhala meditation groups. I also read Chogyam Trungpa’s “Path of Individual Liberation,” which was recommended highly by a Buddhist teacher. I attended a few Buddhist book group sessions as well. Ever since taking an Eastern religions class as an undergrad, I had been excited about Buddhism. Personally, I was interested in learning how to relax a bit better. I have always had a lot of energy and high expectations for how I should be spending my time. Buddhism promises an antidote to this constant hunger.
After a few months of thinking about and practicing Buddhism, I grew very tired and skeptical of it. I will attempt to briefly explain and justify this conclusion here. In the West, we seem to have this idyllic vision of Buddhism as free of the perceived sins of Christianity. Allegedly, Buddhism is not dogmatic, doesn’t suffer from the familiar abuses of power within Christianity, does not contradict science, does not require faith, and concerns itself only with the internal spiritual path, as opposed to the outward performance of religious virtue. From what I can tell, all of this is incorrect. It boils my blood to see neuroscientists, psychologists, and other brain/mind-focused thinkers of the charlatan variety fetishize Buddhism as some kind of final reconciliation between religion and science.
Buddhism is extremely dogmatic! It has a very specific and rigid vision of what constitutes a consummate spiritual life. As far as I’m concerned, it is not natural (or healthy) to view thought as the locus of suffering. Buddhism will make you feel that you are doing something wrong when you are thinking. Thinking about the past, the future, things you want, analytical thought, thinking about other people, these are all distractions from the path towards liberation. This is a radical and dogmatic claim.
There certainly are abuses of power and suspect hierarchies in Buddhism. Reading about the personal history of the “illustrious” Chogyam Trungpa, who first brought Tibetan Buddhism to the West and taught popular Buddhist author Pema Chodron, will convince you of this. In the Shambhala community, this man is worshipped. This has always made me uneasy.
The point that I really want to make is that a lot of basic ideas in Buddhism don’t check out to me. Are desire and attachment really the roots of suffering? Sure, they may often be tied up with suffering, but these things make life interesting, and kind of define our humanity. Is thought really the vehicle for perpetuating this cycle of suffering? There are lots of modes of thinking that I find infinitely more satisfying than being in thoughtless “the present.” Buddhism’s idea that we are in a cycle of suffering which it alone leads out of is simultaneously a claim of original sin and a monopolization of the path. These are unpopular aspects of Christianity that seem to go and unnoticed and un-criticized in Buddhism. Is the ego an illusion? These days, I just don’t believe people who say they want to be free of ego. In my eyes, the main reason you would say something like this is because it's fashionable and you haven’t thought hard about what it means. The ego is the conscious part of our personality. It is the agent behind relationships, career, hobbies, personality, opinion, desires, etc. Is all of this a malicious fiction? I don’t think so.
Finally, the talk of enlightenment in Buddhism is no different than an afterlife in Christianity. It is a convenient but naive fiction that provides hope and direction to one’s life. I have read that the word nirvana means "blowing out the fires of passion, aggression, and ignorance." If someone offered me enlightenment free of charge, I would politely refuse. Buddhism seems to set its sights on repressing all of the things that make human consciousness distinct from animals. I believe that doing these practices in small doses can have benefits, and I grant that there is a lot of useful wisdom in the religion. But the true religious form of Buddhism is more extreme than the cherry-picked secular version that shows up in pop-psychology. Being free of ego, desire, attachment, wandering thought, passion, aggression, striving, fantasy, delusion, etc. does not seem like a very realistic or artful vision of human life. I would rather be passionate, aggressive, and ignorant than lobotomized.
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