NEWS: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Enlightenment Blues

CULTURE: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Enlightenment Blues

I got tons and tons of responses to that last post I put up here and the related ones on my blog. So I take it that I may have stumbled upon a subject that interests people. Either that or it's cold in the rest of the country and people have nothing better to do than type on their computers. Anyway it interests me, so I’d like to continue.

One source of the problem lies in the idea of Enlightenment and what constitutes an “Enlightened Being.” While India is chok-a-blok with Realized Sages, Japan is just swimming with Zen Masters and the rest of Far East has seemingly endless traditions of purportedly God-realized men and women both ancient and modern, historically we in the Wild, Wild West haven’t really had many encounters with supposedly “Enlightened Beings.” The few we have met with on this side of the world have had their reputations blown up to unimaginably gigantical proportions. I once heard a story, don’t know if it’s true or not, but it certainly could be. Some missionary goes to India to bring Christ’s message to the poor Godless heathens. An Indian guy asks him why he should believe in Jesus. “He walked on water, healed cripples and raised the dead!” says the missionary.

“Oh,” says the Indian guy, clearly unimpressed, “There’s a guy over in the next village who does that too!”

In the Sixties we had a huge influx of rishis, roshis and lamas into this country. For a few years there they were the era’s new rock stars. The idea that these guys were Gods descended to Earth spread quickly and, unfortunately, not a whole lot of them made any big effort to dispel the notion. The Beatles were horrified that the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (allegedly) made a pass at Mia Farrow’s sister because they thought he was supposed to be some kind of ethereal creature with no such desires. But he wasn’t and Prudence Farrow was a smokin’ hottie in those days — though I still woulda gone after Pattie Boyd, myself. The problem wasn’t that the Maharishi was a man like most men, it was that he had allowed, even encouraged himself to be seen as something else.

My friend Gwen works for a very cool website called Buddhist Geeks. While I can't say I'm down with everything that appears on the site, the people who run Buddhist Geeks seem much more intent than most others in the biz to get at what really matters. Last week they posted a really great audio interview with a guy named Daniel Ingram on just this subject. You can listen to it here. Daniel is a teacher in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. And for a guy from the Lesser Vehicle he’s pretty smart! (This is a joke, OK.) Though I think he lays it on just a tad too thick towards the end — like someone else I know has a tendency to do (me) — he’s spot on in his basic assessment and I really wish more Buddhist teachers would say stuff like this.

One of the problems is that it’s very easy to play the Enlightened Master role and it most definitely does pay very well. But, as Wil Wheaton wrote about in his column this week (can’t wait for part 2!), just cuz someone can act like Captain Kirk for a few hours a day doesn’t mean that person really is Captain Kirk. Wil had an excuse for believing in Captain Kirk, though — he was 16. But Captain Kirk was just a character from a TV show and William Shatner was not him. Unfortunately, far too many grown-ups are eager to believe that their favorite Enlightened Masters really, literally are the spiritual equivalent of Captain Kirk on a 24/7 basis and way too many so-called spiritual masters are happy to let them go on believing that.

It’s a vicious circle for which I hold both sides equally to blame. The masters allow themselves to be deified because it’s the key to making a damn good living. That’s been widely reported and talked about. But what about their supposedly “innocent” students, duped, they’d like you to believe, by clever manipulators who wanted only their money? What would happen if these Masters let down the disguise for a minute and allowed their flock see them as they really are? Those adoring devotees would drop them faster than a teenager drops Britney for Lindsey and run off to someone with a more convincing schtick and a brighter fake spiritual gleam in his eye, never admitting that maybe the whole Awakened Spiritual Master guise itself was the problem all along. Since I’ve been at this Zen Master game I’ve seen for myself the intense pressure “spiritual seekers” of all kinds put upon their teachers to live up to their own silly and unrealistic expectations of them. It’s tempting to try and play that role just because of how badly all kinds of people seem to want you to and how disappointed or even angry they get when you don’t. Lately though I’ve started taking great pleasure in disappointing and angering folks like this. Who knows where they run off to after? At least they’re not my problem anymore.

Inevitably troubles arise when an inner circle of intimate students develops around a teacher. Because, although any decent actor — or even William Shatner — can be Zen Master Kirk for a couple hours a day while on stage in front of adoring crowds garlanding him with flowers and singing his praises, it’s quite another to try and keep that up offstage. In fact it cannot be done.

If the teacher is a decent enough person and his (or her, but I stick to his for now) students are not too full of fantasies, the problems that arise when the students start seeing him acting like a human being are easily solved. In fact they add to the relationship and help deepen understanding. On the other hand, if the teacher is a total asshat and students’ heads are clotted with visions of the Perfected Master you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Usually the real situation is somewhere between these two extremes. But depending on where along the gauge the needle lands, that’s how much trouble there’s gonna be. In the worst cases, the students start trying to fool themselves into believing that their Master’s every perversion is a sign of deeper wisdom while the Master’s perversions just get more twisted as he tries to escape coming to terms with the vast gulf between his students’ desire for him to be Swami Superman and his own sure knowledge that he is nothing of the kind. As time goes on there is more pressure to keep up the appearance of the saintly master and the students at his lotus feet, just so both sides don’t end up looking like a bunch of dolts to the rest of the world. So-called “Enlightenment experiences” only make matters worse as both Master and students dive deeper into their own head trips, becoming more and more convinced by the shallow and tawdry game they’re all playing together.

A great book about just how dire this can get is Enlightenment Blues by Andre van der Braak, all about Andre’s years with American guru Andrew Cohen. It’s a harrowing account of just how sick and twisted the relationship between a supposed Enlightened Master and his dewy-eyed student becomes when reality takes a back seat to pretty fantasies.

Great Enlightened Beings free from all worries, cares and difficulties, with no desires and no defilements, possessing magic powers to bestow their spiritual prowess upon you only exist in bad movies and fairy tales. This isn’t to say that there’s no benefit to Zazen practice, or that you end up just as much of an asshole after ten or twenty years of hard work. Nor is it to say that Zazen practice can’t help you see into the deepest truths about life, the universe and everything. It all depends what you’re working towards. If you’re trying to escape real life by running away into the ever-deepening fantasies buried in the recesses of your subconscious, you’re going to end up being an even bigger buttwipe than you ever were. But if you make your efforts to see clearly exactly what you really are, and what you see is that you’re a buttwipe, you’re likely to want to make changes. That’s when we can start talking about real Enlightenment.

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and the forthcoming Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.

I have experienced similiar 'hero worship' in my practice of budo. When I started training with my first budo, I was in awe of his skills. I revered him; I was his lowly student and he was the highly skilled teacher. I was oh-so serious and earnest in my dealings with him, which played a large part in maintaining this formal distance between us. As I trained with him over the years, however, I got to know him as a person; through classes in the dojo, converastions over coffee and dinner, and trips to Japan, I learned that he was as human as I was. A more experienced human in budo than me by virtue of his years on me, but he was just as fallible as I was. He made mistakes, got angry, laughed at ribald jokes, farted, burped, drank a little too much, lusted after women - he did the whole gamut of human experience since I've known him. I did not end up disappointed with him, though. In fact, my relationship with my teacher improved because I was able to see him as just another human being who was trying to figure out what life was all about as much as I was. Now, I count him as one of my friends, in addition to respecting him as a teacher.

It is crazy when people start thinking of themselves in these ways. Cat I knew a few years back, guy I really respected as both a martial artist and a friend, got these people around him who started telling him he has all this energy that he needed to be using, and it got really weird. He would "throw" energy at you if he thought your "energy" was "off".

Anytime myself and our sensei would try to talk to him about it, he would just take off, saying we were trying to distract him so we could steal his energy. He eventually ran off with a phone psychic/sex worker he was calling late at night and left his wife and kids to fend for themselves.

But honestly, I can't imagine being where I am now without that experience. Training and sparring with that guy, and the meditations our sensei led, laid a whole other level of reflection open to me. Having that "false messiah" figure sitting there in the path when I look back on it is a hell of perspective. In some ways I feel you need them.

Hmm.

I wish all the enlightened people would stop showing off so much. We've don't need any more crazy ideas and silly dreams in this world. No more people thinking they're somethin special when they obviously are not!!

GREAT ARTICLE, key word : head trip

this Buddhist teacher stuff sounds very kinky
i am all over it asap

^ Yes xani I think you'd find some of the master-teacher stories in Zen could certainly lead into kink territory if viewed that way.
Plus, they're funny.

You've touched on quite a few things Brad which first caught my interest in Buddhism- mainly that 'an enlightened being' is by no means a perfect one, a saint or a divinity.
It was always refreshing to me when first learning about Buddhism that the highest form of being is achieveable by normal people without having to change much about themselves, expect possibly their perspective.
Its a shame teachers are 'diefied' but I suppose this is common.
I'm sure Buddha wouldn't have wanted to be diefied, as this really misses the point of Buddhism.

Enlightenment is about opening up to reality.
Its really as simple as that.
We all run from things or react badly or deconstructively to things we don't like.
The road to enlightenment is the process of doing this less.
I think anybody trying to 'attain enlightenment', whatever that means, by running away from the world will be sorely dissapointed when they find that the first noble truth reads 'existence itself is suffering'.
Ain't no rainbows and cookies here- just reality!!
(And how wonderful it is!)

Yeah, that's sort of the problem with religion, and why these cats get into such a head trip; they just get so focused on this one aspect. Bill Hicks knocked it best, "Do you really think what Jesus wants to see when he comes back is a fucking cross? It's like going up to Jackie O. with a sniper rifle pendant saying, 'We're just thinking of John. We loved him."

I once read an account by a student of tibetan buddhism who took part in a public ceremony performed by dilgo khyentse rinpoche, considered to be one of the most highly realized teachers of the twentieth century. The student was taken aback by two things. First, one of his fellow devotees turned to him and sighed "rinpoche is as far above me as I am above my dog..." (which is funny if you know that khyentse rinpoche was almost seven feet tall, but I digress...). The second thing that bothered him was that khyentse rinpoche scratched his balls and picked his nose occasionally during the ceremony.

The first point, the one about the star struck student, makes me squirm as well, it's that sort of attitude that takes something like enlightenment and lodges it firmly in the ether, beyond the reach of mere mortals.

On the second point I have to disagree with the author however. To me, that says that not only was khyentse rinpoche a highly learned teacher and meditator, he also wasn't a pretentious ass. You can fulfill whatever high religious function you might get saddled with, and still be very ordinary, still express ordinariness, I think.