NEWS: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Buddhism is Not Spirituality

CULTURE: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Buddhism is Not Spirituality

Looking over some of the comments to my last piece for Suicide Girls, I think I figured out the root of a lot of the confusion I’ve created here. When I write about religion and the religious point of view, it seems like a lot of readers assume I’m including Buddhism in that category. I don’t. Even though books on Buddhism, including my own, are usually shoved into the back corner in the religion section, Buddhism is something very distinct from religion.

When you say that, people usually respond with, “OK, then Buddhism is a form of spirituality.” Spirituality is seen as something better than religion. It exists outside the constraints of the organized formality of religious institutions. It’s a personal relationship with your spiritual nature.

Which is fine. But Buddhism is not a form of spirituality.

The history of philosophy throughout the world has been a struggle between two basic fundamental systems -- idealism and materialism. Spirituality is a kind of idealism. It takes the view that the spiritual world, the world of ideas, imagination, and mental formations is the true reality. Matter is secondary at best or sometimes even regarded as non-existent. We are spirits trapped inside bodies made of gross matter -- some bodies are a lot more gross than others -- and the way to happiness is to get free of this material world and its miseries. In many Eastern philosophies we are told, “I am not this body. I am the spiritual soul within.” This is not the Buddhist viewpoint. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

Materialism on the other hand sees matter as primary and spirit as either non-existent or, at least, negligible. What we perceive as our soul, we are told, is just the workings of a highly complex biological machine. We’re all just animals. The more radical materialists go on to assert that the only way to be happy is to get as much money, sex, and power as possible. There is no soul. There is no afterlife. There is no God.

Buddha explored both of these ideas and found both of them lacking. He was born a prince and spent the first part of his life dedicated to the practical study of materialism. He had everything he could possibly want -- money, hot babes, power. But they didn’t satisfy him. So he set off to see if happiness could be found in the opposite direction. He dedicated himself to various spiritual practices and achieved their highest goals. He got a massive spiritual high, but in the process he nearly destroyed his body. That wasn’t what he wanted. It wasn’t until he rejected both extremes and found the Middle Way that he began to teach the philosophy that now bears his name.

Buddhism starts from the basic premise that neither materialism nor idealism is correct. The Heart Sutra says, “Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form.” In other words, matter is the immaterial, the immaterial is matter. With apologies to Sting, we are not spirits in the material world. Rather, the experiential, internal, subjective, spiritual side of our day-to-day existence and the hard, external, objective, material world we inhabit are one and the same. This is a very radical idea. Even today, 2500 years after Gotama first put forth this notion, few people can accept it. Even those who call themselves Buddhists all too often believe that it’s a form of spirituality.

While it’s not spirituality, Buddhism is not materialism either. Buddhism is realism. There's a tendency for contemporary people to assume that realism is the same as materialism. When they use the word “reality” it most often refers to the material world as explained to us by science. But that's not what Buddhists mean by "reality." The materialistic point of view is also just a concept.

Now, matter is obviously real. But the trouble is that our understanding of what matter is may not be correct. Most of us believe that matter exists first and because of its existence sense stimulation occurs. Both idealists and materialists tend to conceive it this way. The computer in front of you is made of matter and it’s real. So is your forehead. When you bang your forehead on the computer it hurts. The subjective experience of pain is the result of the objective collision of material forehead with material computer. Buddhist philosophers like Dogen, Nagarjuna and Buddha himself turn this around and place sense stimulation first. Because our senses are stimulated in certain ways, we assume matter exists. It is a completely different way of conceptualizing the world from what we’re used to.

Science happens to be a very good way to look at the material side of reality, so we need to accept science (legit science, anyway). But Dogen, the guy who founded the school of Buddhism in which I study and practice, said that the universe in all directions is just a tiny fragment of reality.

That doesn’t mean that the material world is here and somewhere out in the vastness of space is another even bigger universe made of something else. Dogen was talking about our real day-to-day experience. The material component of our experience forms just one small part of our existence.

Furthermore we never experience mind separate from body or vice-versa. The idea that one side is true while the other is false doesn’t fit our real experience.

We constantly swing back and forth between materialism and idealism. When materialism doesn’t satisfy, we try idealism, when idealism lets us down, we swing back to materialism. As a culture we can see this happening right now. A century ago it seemed like materialism might one day solve all the problems of mankind. But, in spite of the fact that most of the poorest among us enjoy wealth and comfort our ancestors couldn’t have dreamed of, materialism has failed to fulfill many of our most basic needs. So we, as a culture have started to drift back towards spirituality in the hopes that it might solve our troubles and bring us the fulfillment we seek. What we’ve forgotten as a culture is that spirituality already let us down. That’s why we became so materialistic in the fist place.

A lot of people look to Buddhism as a spiritual answer to our materialistic woes. But if Buddhism is just another form of spirituality, it’s as worthless as any other religion. We need something different.

Every other religion, philosophy, addiction or any other method for dealing with what life throws at us that I’ve encountered says, “You feel unfulfilled? OK. Try this. It will fulfill you.” Materialism works for a time. But once you buy something the thrill of buying it is gone and you want to buy something else. Spirituality can give you a great big high. But there’s always a comedown.

Buddhism doesn’t promise to fulfill our desires. Instead it says, “You feel unfulfilled? That’s OK. That’s normal. Everybody feels unfulfilled. You will always feel unfulfilled. There is no problem with feeling unfulfilled. In fact, if you learn to see it the right way, that very lack of fulfillment is the greatest thing you can ever experience.” This is the realistic outlook.

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up! and the forthcoming Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff and a MySpace page too.

Plus he also has a spiffy newly revamped YouTube Channel.

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.

Buy the new CD by his band Zero Defex at CD Baby now!

I just wanted to say thanks for helping set people straight on the Buddism is not a religion thing. I get tired of trying to explain to people how you can be Buddist and (enter a religion here). I'm definately going to have to check out one of your books.

take care

Thanks for another nice read, Brad. I always find something to think about in your columns.

I wonder, though, if you are indulging your mischievous side when you say, "Now, matter is obviously real." I am not an expert I have read that viewing things as real and viewing them as unreal are both extreme, and invalid, views. (And so are viewing them as both real and unreal, or neither real nor unreal.) Thangru Rinpoche's 'The Open Door to Emptiness' has a great discussion of this...

My attraction to Buddhism has always been to this hard-headed, pragmatic streak it has. It is precisely this plain spoken realism that separates it from either day camp of religion or spirituality. Thanks for adding clarity to these discussions too often trapped in the dance of opposites.

Actually..I more or less feel the same way.

I actually did think it was a form of spirituality. I was wrong, and..so are a lot of other people who practice it.

If I wasn't such a hard-headed fuck, and had my own set ways of doing things, this article would actually compel me to re-think things, so kudos.

I'm just stubborn, and like my path.

A lot of this also has to do with the words we're using to define things, and their real meanings. "Religion" and "spirituality" ain't what they use to be, as it were...