I'm glad to see that one person has a down to earth perspective of how consumerized we've gotten..lately.....at least this article cuts thru the bullshit.. so we can get where we need to be.. which is where ever you are... and not some neatly packaged product...it is merely discovered.... consistently..

Hahaha. That's the most insistent sock monkey ever...

Man, I am soooo sick of all this instant results crap our society seems to be all wet for these days. Take this pill to loose weight, use this Botox to look pretty, go under the knife to be more beautiful now, use these steroids to be stronger now, get a bigger penis, bigger boobs, more money, more friends, a new house, all right now with NO EFFORT!!!

Yeah, it's gonna come crashing down soon.

Oh wait....

I come away from this column with the same question that I always have when I read your columns, Brad, which is, how is it that you distinguish between the real dharma and the false dharma? I don't mean "you" in the generic sense, I mean "you, Brad", since you claim to know.

You must be familiar with the Northern School/Southern School debate that occurred in Buddhist China, and you are aware that all surviving Zen and Ch'an schools descend from the Northern school of sudden enlightenment, rather than taking the gradualist approach of Southern China, Indian Mahayana, and Tibet. I don't think it's a stretch to say that sudden enlightenment is the ubiquitous refrain of Ch'an and Zen scriptures and writings for the last thousand years. Grabbing a proximate example at random:

"Enlightenment is not a matter of far or near, but if you are confused, mountains and rivers will block your way." - Sekito Kisan

Or you may have heard of "The Platform Sutra"? Hui Neng just picked up the guitar and started to play, and that's kind of the whole point. Right?

You're welcome to disagree with that perspective, but it's hard for me to see where you get the balls to wave that all away, discounting the teachings of every ancestor in the lineage. Maybe dismissing the core of Zen for the last thousand years plays well to an audience that knows nothing about Buddhist doctrine, but for those of us who have more of a context for what you're saying, it's a tough sell. Which gets me back to my question ... why should we believe you?

I do not disagree about Big Mind McDharma ... it's getting harder and harder to take Ken Wilber seriously, and it was never that easy. My point is that when you set yourself up as arbiter of what constitutes the "real dharma", you are no different from any other of the self-appointed custodians of the true dharma throughout history. It's autocratic, arbitrary, hostile, and misguided, and has nothing to do with the Mahayana that I know.

I know I'd be a whole hell of a lot more impressed with the instant enlightenment/success/wealth/harem folk if I saw a few more people running around with wind powers and the ability to generate glowing qi-force weapons and armor.

Ironically, even your own implied definition of enlightenment sounds wrong when I read it, although I suspect you didn't intend it that way.

But this kind of dialog is kind of frustrating. Kenpo Roshi's claims are extraordinary, but your response to them is pretty cavalier. Many claims made by the Buddha are also extraordinary, but here we are practicing Buddhism. So making a mockery of debate doesn't seem like the right answer.

Er, WADO, enlightenment means a lot of things, but the ability to make cool weapons isn't one of them. They say that when the Buddha reached enlightenment, all of the weapons of Mara's army turned to flowers as they reached him. As a Buddha, you do not need weapons, because no-one can appear to you as harmful - as Master Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutras, in the presence of a person who has mastered ahinsa, all violence ceases.

Now that the miracle of effexor + wellbutrin + neurontin is here as the antidepressant of choice, it's becoming easier and easier to hit the "enlightenment" bullseye, as any kind of "awakening" moment gets amped times ten, as if you were always about to catch your first "e" wave. Of course that sort of enlightenment is temporary, but in our American pose of the blase tourist at a street fair, we don't believe it til we see it. The more people who at least get a "taste" the better... they at least get a whiff of the good stuff so maybe they get the courage to make the long trek.

I'm not defending no snake oil salesmen, but in my heart of hearts there's a bit of the huckster, a W.C. Fields meets the shaman-beggar king, so i say, let it be. Who knows how much time we have left? What did the great Lou Reed once say? "Don't settle for walking?"

And that's the thing too--maybe-- for certain punk rock buddhists who've already taken a half-step towards judgment of someone else's trip, the minute you tell someone their "enlightenment" is wrong you presume your own is "right" at which point, it is, alas, right no longer. the drop back towards duality is steep so take no step there but rather see all the scammers as little dime store Buddhas on a merry hustle!

Agreed.

Will the Dharma grant you a sense of humor?

No, but you will get super sweet powers. Like flight, sprouting random lotuses everywhere, growing chakra wheels on your body and turning weapons into flowers.

As much as I agree with the rest of this, I'd take "mindfulness" over "spirituality".


Rather than argue that Big Mind isn't Buddhism, why not grant it it's own little island-cult school? It's biggest (only) visible supporter is someone who claims not to be a Buddhist.

Claiming he can lead you to the goal of enlightenment makes it suspect as Buddhism, but that goal does not even exist in Soto. To non-Soto people it could make some sense that if there's a goal there might be a faster way to get there. These people are pretty annoying to listen to tho.

[I just checked Wilbur's wiki, NICE EDIT.]

I wasn't looking at it literally.

Bruce Lambson the Executive Director at the Big Mind Big Heart / Kanzeon Zen Center said:

Is this for real? That is some anger issues this dude has. I love the hierarchical argument. "Roshi is the authority, how dare someone who is not even a Sensei question him?" It's so sad that this is what passes as the Dharma in America.

I have enjoyed several of Wilbur's books. However, his ego seems to grow and grow each time. C'est la vie!