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.

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/news/all/20579/Brad-Warners-Hardcore-Zen-Enlightenment-Blues/