It seems Buddhism has followed the same path as any other religion/practice of the same age.
I imagine that today's Christianity doesn't look much like it did in 500AD, just as I imagine Scientology in 1,000 years will have evolved.
Is this a bad thing? Does religion not represent our perception of the meaning of life, evolving with us as knowledge, wisdom and tolerance (or lack thereof) is passed through the generations?
It depends on the root of the evolution I would say.
Sure, if someone has gone through the process and achieved enlightenment like Buddha, they may be able to evolve the teachings to better fit the times.
However, my gut says that is often not the case, and much of the evolution is egoic in nature at the hands of a charismatic individual who wants to fulfil their desire or lust for power.
I'm far from an expert on Buddhism, but my own journey has taught me that ultimately we must kill our Buddhas and inner realization ultimately is a journey you must walk alone and discover for yourself. The teachers along the way may serve as wayfinding, but must ultimately be discarded.
If the evolved state of the religion seems like a big club, and isn't serving it's members to strike out on their own on their inward journey, to achieve independence and sovereignty, it should be questioned in my opinion.
> I imagine that today's Christianity doesn't look much like it did in 500AD
I would would say it does look pretty similar. The Council of Nicea nearly 200 years earlier had established a consensus/mainstream theology. The papacy existed, although it did not claim the same level of authority. Even churches were built in styles similar to modern ones.
> Is this a bad thing? Does religion not represent our perception of the meaning of life, evolving with us as knowledge, wisdom and tolerance (or lack thereof) is passed through the generations?
In principle it is not a bad thing, but it is a matter of opinion. Christianity and Buddhism are both revealed religions so losing the truths the founder of the religion taught is a bad thing, learning more is a good thing. Which is which is a matter of opinion.
I was surprised to see Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzburg and Joseph Goldstein not mentioned here.
They’re the founding forces behind the Insight Meditation Society in MA, which although isn’t the West Coast, is perhaps the most influential force in popular Buddhism in the West.
Kornfield also set up Spirit Rock Meditation Centre in California though, which gets tens of thousands of visitors a year.
Having dived really quite far into Buddhism over the past five years, I’ve found their flavour of Insight Meditation (as per the New Burmese Method based on Mahasi Sayadaw’s teachings) absolutely life changing.
A great read, thank you for sharing.
If anybody is interested in reading further - Goldstein’s podcasts, Mahasi Sayadaw’s writing, Kornfield’s introductory texts and ANYTHING by Bhikku Bodhi are a phenomenal place to start.
Interesting article, I've been thinking about this lately myself. Buddhism influenced German philosophy in the 1800's through Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, which basically influenced everything that came afterwards, and it also influenced art through Dada which you could argue was really a crypto-Buddhist/Taoism fusion expressed through a somewhat distorted Western lens, and that really goes on to influence postmodernism to a huge degree. This embedded it in Western thought in a much deeper way than 1960's fascination with Zen and Tibetan Buddhism IMHO.
I think Buddhist philosophy still has a way to go making its way through the West -- liberal democracy's crisis of vacuuity is something we're really struggling to come to terms with, and it feels like Western society is slipping into a full-blown existential crisis. Seems like fertile ground for a religion and philosophy that a large part of is predicated on nothingness and how to live and be content in the void. I have to admit though that it's unbelievable watching the market's seemingly unlimited ability to coopt, repackage and in turn sell literally anything, even a religion and philosophical system which would be completely opposite to a consumer society.
This was a great article, thanks so much for sharing. As a buddhist who started in Tibetan Vajrayana as a teenager and has ended up chanting NMRK in the SGI, I can appreciate that faith, like human beings, adapts to its time and surroundings. While personal gain and financial enrichment and the like have infected almost every faith there is on earth (we are all fallible to some extent) the through line of an ever-narrowing compression of practice makes sense on the pursuit of enlightenment. And, while study is essential in any pursuit of the mind, the mind is sometimes our biggest adversary.
Here is what I wrestled with for years, and I think it’s worth sharing because I suspect some of you have wrestled with it too.
Every Buddhist tradition agrees that all living beings possess Buddha nature. The Lotus Sutra’s parable of the Jewel in the Robe says it plainly: you already have a priceless jewel sewn into your clothing. You always have. You just don’t know it’s there. Enlightenment isn’t something you earn or achieve. It’s something you already are.
So if that’s true — if the jewel is already there — why is it so hard to find? And this is where I kept getting stuck. Because the tool we use to look for the jewel is the same tool that hides it from us. Our consciousness. Our thinking, analyzing, questioning mind. The very thing that makes us human is also the thing that stands between us and what every tradition says is our birthright. Each school of Buddhism is, in its own way, a set of gymnastics designed to get the mind out of its own way. Zen tries to crash it with paradox. Tibetan practice tries to transmute its energy. Pure Land tries to exhaust it into surrender. And each one works, for some people, some of the time. But the fundamental problem remains: you cannot use the mind to escape the mind.
This is the contradiction I brought with me to Nichiren Buddhism. And to be honest, I found the same contradiction here, stated more plainly. We say that a single sincere recitation of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo contains the entirety of Buddhahood within it. And I believe that. But we also say: don’t stop chanting. Keep going. Practice daily. Because your delusions will reassert themselves by tomorrow morning.
So which is it? Is one moment enough, or isn’t it?
The contradiction dissolves when you stop thinking of practice as a means to an end and start seeing it as living itself. Each breath you take is a complete act. No single breath is insufficient. But you keep breathing — not because the last breath failed, but because you’re alive and that’s what living things do. Each moment of chanting or meditating, each act of compassion, each time you turn toward someone else’s suffering instead of away from it — that’s not a step on the path to enlightenment. It is enlightenment, expressed through action.
Kierkegaard wrote that life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Perhaps that’s why Pure Land buddhists seek this fundamental meaning at the time of death, that that is when enlightenment will reveal itself. But remember the jewel? It’s right there, any moment you honestly reach for it.
Thank you again for this fantastic perspective on the trajectory of this universal search for truth!
I'll admit I know very little about Buddhism beyond what I learned at a Vipassana retreat a little while ago.
My own journey has led me to believe that it is the ego that stands in the way of us realizing our true nature. I believe we are born into a state of non-duality, and over time our lived experience is harnessed by the ego to create the separate false self.
To use your jewel example, our perception is distorted by the egoic lens through which we view the world, hiding the jewel within all of us. And, in my experience, this process is confusing as fuck because it is one of subtraction rather than addition, only by directly questioning our beliefs can we begin to shed them. As we shed them, the jewel will begin to shine through.
Is one moment enough? I mean, in theory, if someone could update their priors to understand that the only truth is that I am consciousness and all other beliefs are ultimately bullshit we perceive as real, then sure, done, enlightenment obtained. But, the ego has spent decades for most of us building up walls of false belief around the jewel, so, they likely need to be slowly and sometimes excruciatingly dismantled.
I also think it bears mentioning that the ego evolved in times when safety and food/shelter/physiological needs in general were not pretty much guaranteed as is today(Yes, I recognize this is not globally true at the individual level, but generally speaking, we're better off than we were at any point in history on this front.) The environment ego was borne out of was also stable over a human lifespan. Although it's been accelerating for I dunno, 10000 years or so, these statements were likely still true in the times of Buddha for the most part, so we are likely playing a slightly different game now in some senses.
The ego has jumped the shark in modernity. I'd peg it as speeding up noticeably since the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment Era, getting really fucking weird post WW2, and being absolutely fucking insane since the dot com era, and yet, still accelerating noticeably. We now live in an exponential age of abundance and the ego is simply not build for it in my opinion. John Vervaeke calls it the meaning crisis, I think it's simply the manifestation of many humans reaching their abstraction limit. Most of us would benefit from fostering awareness of the machinations of ego so we are not a slave to them, a slave to all the abstractions. Are the ego's stories serving you? Or are you serving the ego's stories?
And, all of this is not to villainize the ego. A life driven by fear is often a productive one. Ego brought us the vast majority of the technological advancement that provides many of us with a comfortable life. That allows us to discuss the universal search for truth with someone on the other side of the world, through a screen. And, set aside whether all this technology and advancement is good or bad. If there was no ego, if everyone was enlightened, life would probably be a hell of a lot more boring. Ego gets full credit for making Humanity the greatest show on earth.
Indeed the ego and its power to drive advancement can be forces for good, and your example of this chat is a perfect one. How amazing we get to share POVs from across the globe in seconds, hopefully broadening our own and anyone who looks in’s horizons of understanding and ultimately truth (whatever that means). But this “hard” problem of consciousness seems to always get in the way of my understanding of the concept of enlightenment. I try to see it in the word, enlightenment - to lighten the weight of - and perhaps view it as a moment to moment practice of continually lightening the ever-present load of suffering, ego, and consciousness. Be here we are again, up against the hard problem, a metacognizant trying to use the mind to describe the process of getting around the mind.
Amen brother. I spun myself in circles for decades, but read a few books by Jed McKenna last year that helped me get out of my own way as it were. The process of what he calls spiritual autolysis, which is basically just writing your beliefs down and asking what is true was deeply impactful in my own journey. Give him a read if you're open to attacking the problem from a different angle.
My take at present: All our beliefs are nonsense that has been ingrained in us through our lived experience. Our perception of suffering is these beliefs creating craving or aversion, which results in discontent with whatever happens because we want it to be otherwise. The process of dismantling our belief structure is a road to the reduction of suffering and an acceptance of what is. Ultimately, this road leads to understanding that no-self is true self as you begin to appreciate that what you thought of as yourself is just the amalgamation of a bunch of false beliefs you've picked up over the course of your life. I think enlightenment is simply a state of contentment and equanimity with what is, that is achieved by removing all beliefs.
Thanks, I’ll have to give him a read. This concept of self and our our urgent obsession with the subjective experience is indeed a junk heap of ideas we’ve picked up along the way, or machines of reason and identity we’ve cobbled from the misguided cogs adopted in its construction or foisted upon us from others trying to make sense of their own jumbled notions of who they are. The more I ruminate on exactly who this self is - is it my consciousness, a figment of imagination, a device to escape entropy, a receptor pulling down from some universal wellspring, a support system designed to merely keep the flesh animated and alive, an adversary we concoct to challenge preconception and spur our continual evolution - the closer I approach a territory where the self no longer serves a purpose, at least not in the way I always thought it must, and that simply being is the most honest manifestation of this thing we call enlightenment. Being without a need to understand the self, to live in the vast unknowing, and truly be ok with that.
The article "FTFY Buddhist Ethics" [1] comes to a similar conclusion about the development of West Coast Buddhism but isn't on board with it. IMHO an interesting contrarian take.
Honest question: Is buddihsm real? Does it have any basis in scientific and objective reality? Or is it fiction? I don't mean side stuff like meditation improves your IQ I mean does the fundamental point of buddihism have any basis in reality.
If it is fiction, why is it so popular among technical people like people who come to HN? Are the people on HN who are interested in Buddhism aware it is fiction/real?
Wow never thought I would see an article mention Shinryu Suzuki, very cool. I read Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind as a kid and I still remember practicing the sitting and breathing like it was a magical tome.
The hardest part I remember is the nothingness of meditation and I remember his warnings not to fixate on trains of thought. I should probably reread it sometime.
I used to think that in Buddhism, the pursuit of the Void is existential masochism, a glorified search for doom. It brought to my mind Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and such.
Thanks to "Buddha-Dhamma For Inquiring Minds" by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (an ADHD-friendly question & answer format, https://www.suanmokkh.org/books/121), I understood that it is an unfortunate coincidence of words. These two concepts of Void or Emptiness are very opposite, as opposite as Hell and Heaven.
To my understanding, I would use the word "Clarity" instead. Light passes through, interacts with it, but does not cling to anything.
"But the cost of the mindfulness revolution has been Buddhism’s lost monopoly on many of its core concepts. Very few of those using Buddhist practices will ever become Buddhists in a religious sense. California Buddhism is one of the most successful cultural syntheses of the last century; but as far as conversion goes, it seems that it is Buddhism that has embraced California rather than the other way around."
Pretty much. Sad state of affairs. I don't care if people find something positive in Buddhism and offer their own takes, but too many people call their offerings "Buddhism" for the clout. Finding a qualified teacher becomes very difficult if you are actually interested in Buddhism.
On the positive side, I don't actually agree with the first sentence. You still have to find a proper Buddhist teacher if you want to be taught the good stuff. Even if you found the instructions somehow, it either requires proper motivation (at which point you are a buddhist) or a transmission for those methods to actually work.
The majority of my encounters with West Coast Buddhism have been... off-putting.
Particularly in the SF tech scene, there is an unfortunate 'competitive enlightenment' vibe amongst many of those who profess to follow Buddhist teachings.
"Oh, you've only attained the second jhāna? I got through all four on my first try."
I am certain there are plenty of genuine and sincere practitioners out there, but my small sample has not included any.
> as far as conversion goes, it seems that it is Buddhism that has embraced California rather than the other way around
That's not really the measure (and to be expected: Bodhisattva's always work within their context)
As early as 1960's Suzuki-Roshi would leave off temple duties at Sokoji because so many students wanted to learn meditation (and not just practice comforting rituals). For the Soto Zen and Vipassana traditions, practice is everything - not philosophy, opinion, or behavior.
Yes, it's nice that the West has embraced Buddhism and that Buddhism has managed to provide a philosophical counterpoint without actually conflicting.
But thousands - hundreds of thousands? - of people have gone through deep meditation training in the Soto Zen and Vipassana traditions (coast to coast); for most it has been life-changing. That wasn't due to "Buddhism" but to the lifelong commitment of (on the order of a hundred) effective teachers (many of whom are now aging out).
I would recommend at some point in anyone's life, that they build up to some deep meditation practice - weeks-long sessions - from real teachers in these longstanding traditions. There's nothing better for opening the envelope of life.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 60.2 ms ] threadIt seems Buddhism has followed the same path as any other religion/practice of the same age.
I imagine that today's Christianity doesn't look much like it did in 500AD, just as I imagine Scientology in 1,000 years will have evolved.
Is this a bad thing? Does religion not represent our perception of the meaning of life, evolving with us as knowledge, wisdom and tolerance (or lack thereof) is passed through the generations?
Sure, if someone has gone through the process and achieved enlightenment like Buddha, they may be able to evolve the teachings to better fit the times.
However, my gut says that is often not the case, and much of the evolution is egoic in nature at the hands of a charismatic individual who wants to fulfil their desire or lust for power.
I'm far from an expert on Buddhism, but my own journey has taught me that ultimately we must kill our Buddhas and inner realization ultimately is a journey you must walk alone and discover for yourself. The teachers along the way may serve as wayfinding, but must ultimately be discarded.
If the evolved state of the religion seems like a big club, and isn't serving it's members to strike out on their own on their inward journey, to achieve independence and sovereignty, it should be questioned in my opinion.
I would would say it does look pretty similar. The Council of Nicea nearly 200 years earlier had established a consensus/mainstream theology. The papacy existed, although it did not claim the same level of authority. Even churches were built in styles similar to modern ones.
> Is this a bad thing? Does religion not represent our perception of the meaning of life, evolving with us as knowledge, wisdom and tolerance (or lack thereof) is passed through the generations?
In principle it is not a bad thing, but it is a matter of opinion. Christianity and Buddhism are both revealed religions so losing the truths the founder of the religion taught is a bad thing, learning more is a good thing. Which is which is a matter of opinion.
They’re the founding forces behind the Insight Meditation Society in MA, which although isn’t the West Coast, is perhaps the most influential force in popular Buddhism in the West.
Kornfield also set up Spirit Rock Meditation Centre in California though, which gets tens of thousands of visitors a year.
Having dived really quite far into Buddhism over the past five years, I’ve found their flavour of Insight Meditation (as per the New Burmese Method based on Mahasi Sayadaw’s teachings) absolutely life changing.
A great read, thank you for sharing.
If anybody is interested in reading further - Goldstein’s podcasts, Mahasi Sayadaw’s writing, Kornfield’s introductory texts and ANYTHING by Bhikku Bodhi are a phenomenal place to start.
I think Buddhist philosophy still has a way to go making its way through the West -- liberal democracy's crisis of vacuuity is something we're really struggling to come to terms with, and it feels like Western society is slipping into a full-blown existential crisis. Seems like fertile ground for a religion and philosophy that a large part of is predicated on nothingness and how to live and be content in the void. I have to admit though that it's unbelievable watching the market's seemingly unlimited ability to coopt, repackage and in turn sell literally anything, even a religion and philosophical system which would be completely opposite to a consumer society.
Here is what I wrestled with for years, and I think it’s worth sharing because I suspect some of you have wrestled with it too.
Every Buddhist tradition agrees that all living beings possess Buddha nature. The Lotus Sutra’s parable of the Jewel in the Robe says it plainly: you already have a priceless jewel sewn into your clothing. You always have. You just don’t know it’s there. Enlightenment isn’t something you earn or achieve. It’s something you already are.
So if that’s true — if the jewel is already there — why is it so hard to find? And this is where I kept getting stuck. Because the tool we use to look for the jewel is the same tool that hides it from us. Our consciousness. Our thinking, analyzing, questioning mind. The very thing that makes us human is also the thing that stands between us and what every tradition says is our birthright. Each school of Buddhism is, in its own way, a set of gymnastics designed to get the mind out of its own way. Zen tries to crash it with paradox. Tibetan practice tries to transmute its energy. Pure Land tries to exhaust it into surrender. And each one works, for some people, some of the time. But the fundamental problem remains: you cannot use the mind to escape the mind.
This is the contradiction I brought with me to Nichiren Buddhism. And to be honest, I found the same contradiction here, stated more plainly. We say that a single sincere recitation of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo contains the entirety of Buddhahood within it. And I believe that. But we also say: don’t stop chanting. Keep going. Practice daily. Because your delusions will reassert themselves by tomorrow morning.
So which is it? Is one moment enough, or isn’t it?
The contradiction dissolves when you stop thinking of practice as a means to an end and start seeing it as living itself. Each breath you take is a complete act. No single breath is insufficient. But you keep breathing — not because the last breath failed, but because you’re alive and that’s what living things do. Each moment of chanting or meditating, each act of compassion, each time you turn toward someone else’s suffering instead of away from it — that’s not a step on the path to enlightenment. It is enlightenment, expressed through action.
Kierkegaard wrote that life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Perhaps that’s why Pure Land buddhists seek this fundamental meaning at the time of death, that that is when enlightenment will reveal itself. But remember the jewel? It’s right there, any moment you honestly reach for it.
Thank you again for this fantastic perspective on the trajectory of this universal search for truth!
My own journey has led me to believe that it is the ego that stands in the way of us realizing our true nature. I believe we are born into a state of non-duality, and over time our lived experience is harnessed by the ego to create the separate false self.
To use your jewel example, our perception is distorted by the egoic lens through which we view the world, hiding the jewel within all of us. And, in my experience, this process is confusing as fuck because it is one of subtraction rather than addition, only by directly questioning our beliefs can we begin to shed them. As we shed them, the jewel will begin to shine through.
Is one moment enough? I mean, in theory, if someone could update their priors to understand that the only truth is that I am consciousness and all other beliefs are ultimately bullshit we perceive as real, then sure, done, enlightenment obtained. But, the ego has spent decades for most of us building up walls of false belief around the jewel, so, they likely need to be slowly and sometimes excruciatingly dismantled.
I also think it bears mentioning that the ego evolved in times when safety and food/shelter/physiological needs in general were not pretty much guaranteed as is today(Yes, I recognize this is not globally true at the individual level, but generally speaking, we're better off than we were at any point in history on this front.) The environment ego was borne out of was also stable over a human lifespan. Although it's been accelerating for I dunno, 10000 years or so, these statements were likely still true in the times of Buddha for the most part, so we are likely playing a slightly different game now in some senses.
The ego has jumped the shark in modernity. I'd peg it as speeding up noticeably since the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment Era, getting really fucking weird post WW2, and being absolutely fucking insane since the dot com era, and yet, still accelerating noticeably. We now live in an exponential age of abundance and the ego is simply not build for it in my opinion. John Vervaeke calls it the meaning crisis, I think it's simply the manifestation of many humans reaching their abstraction limit. Most of us would benefit from fostering awareness of the machinations of ego so we are not a slave to them, a slave to all the abstractions. Are the ego's stories serving you? Or are you serving the ego's stories?
And, all of this is not to villainize the ego. A life driven by fear is often a productive one. Ego brought us the vast majority of the technological advancement that provides many of us with a comfortable life. That allows us to discuss the universal search for truth with someone on the other side of the world, through a screen. And, set aside whether all this technology and advancement is good or bad. If there was no ego, if everyone was enlightened, life would probably be a hell of a lot more boring. Ego gets full credit for making Humanity the greatest show on earth.
My take at present: All our beliefs are nonsense that has been ingrained in us through our lived experience. Our perception of suffering is these beliefs creating craving or aversion, which results in discontent with whatever happens because we want it to be otherwise. The process of dismantling our belief structure is a road to the reduction of suffering and an acceptance of what is. Ultimately, this road leads to understanding that no-self is true self as you begin to appreciate that what you thought of as yourself is just the amalgamation of a bunch of false beliefs you've picked up over the course of your life. I think enlightenment is simply a state of contentment and equanimity with what is, that is achieved by removing all beliefs.
[1] https://vividness.live/ftfy-buddhist-ethics
If it is fiction, why is it so popular among technical people like people who come to HN? Are the people on HN who are interested in Buddhism aware it is fiction/real?
The hardest part I remember is the nothingness of meditation and I remember his warnings not to fixate on trains of thought. I should probably reread it sometime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner%27s_Mind
Thanks to "Buddha-Dhamma For Inquiring Minds" by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (an ADHD-friendly question & answer format, https://www.suanmokkh.org/books/121), I understood that it is an unfortunate coincidence of words. These two concepts of Void or Emptiness are very opposite, as opposite as Hell and Heaven.
To my understanding, I would use the word "Clarity" instead. Light passes through, interacts with it, but does not cling to anything.
Pretty much. Sad state of affairs. I don't care if people find something positive in Buddhism and offer their own takes, but too many people call their offerings "Buddhism" for the clout. Finding a qualified teacher becomes very difficult if you are actually interested in Buddhism.
On the positive side, I don't actually agree with the first sentence. You still have to find a proper Buddhist teacher if you want to be taught the good stuff. Even if you found the instructions somehow, it either requires proper motivation (at which point you are a buddhist) or a transmission for those methods to actually work.
Particularly in the SF tech scene, there is an unfortunate 'competitive enlightenment' vibe amongst many of those who profess to follow Buddhist teachings. "Oh, you've only attained the second jhāna? I got through all four on my first try."
I am certain there are plenty of genuine and sincere practitioners out there, but my small sample has not included any.
The meditation room and part of the library were impacted by a fire recently - https://www.lionsroar.com/tassajara-zen-mountain-centers-zen...
Tassajara in the Santa Lucia range (south of Carmel valley) can be a harsh environment.
That's not really the measure (and to be expected: Bodhisattva's always work within their context)
As early as 1960's Suzuki-Roshi would leave off temple duties at Sokoji because so many students wanted to learn meditation (and not just practice comforting rituals). For the Soto Zen and Vipassana traditions, practice is everything - not philosophy, opinion, or behavior.
Yes, it's nice that the West has embraced Buddhism and that Buddhism has managed to provide a philosophical counterpoint without actually conflicting.
But thousands - hundreds of thousands? - of people have gone through deep meditation training in the Soto Zen and Vipassana traditions (coast to coast); for most it has been life-changing. That wasn't due to "Buddhism" but to the lifelong commitment of (on the order of a hundred) effective teachers (many of whom are now aging out).
I would recommend at some point in anyone's life, that they build up to some deep meditation practice - weeks-long sessions - from real teachers in these longstanding traditions. There's nothing better for opening the envelope of life.