The New Buddhism: A Rough Guide to a New Way of Life

by David Brazier

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Genres: Buddhism, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Religion

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

authority on Buddhist psychology, spiritual teacher, Buddhist priest, commentator, author, poet, psychotherapist, traveller, President of Instituto terrapin Zen internacional (ITZI), Head of the Amida Order, co-ordinator of the Eleusis centre in France, patron of the Tathagata Trust in India, has written nine books and many chapters, papers and articles.

Reviews

[Ihor Kolesnyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Доволі дивно читати від буддиста саме такий текст. Це радше революційний маніфест, у якому Будда перетворився на революціонера, боротьбиста, більшовика, антикастовика. Дуже перегукується із процедурами революціонеризації відомих мислителів у радянську епоху. Мені як дитині радянської епохи, совка, ці процедури неймовірно відразливі, перегукуються із найстрашнішими злочинами 20 століття. І коли у тексті зазначено, що це робиться заради блага живих істот, то це ще більше підсилює проблемність цієї реконтекстуалізації тексту та буддійських ідей у західному політичному дискурсі. Ангажований буддизм, наскільки зараз розумію, буває різним за радикальністю - від спокійного Тхіть Нят Хана до ось цього Девіда Брезіера. І ще варто згадати буддистів-комуністів Вєтнаму 20 століття, експерименти із Леніним-буддою у тибетських мислителів.

Жодна шляхетна інтенція рятувати живих істот не вартує і копійки, якщо цих живих істот не намагаються спитатися про ЇХНІ запити до життя, а приписують їм ті ж бажання, наміри та інтенції, що й носії спасіння. Чи це буддисти, чи комуністи, чи неоліберали. Чого людство, припускаю, потребує, то це навички нарешті слухати іншого/іншу.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very inspiring book. Very convincing, very well researched (at least I thought so anyway—I learned a lot).

I'm new to Buddhism and this book has apprised me of things which will hopefully make my practice truer to what Shakyamuni intended.

For me becoming a Buddhist is about making a response to a world of nonsense; a real world but a nonsensical one.

The final two lines of the Kesa verse are
I wish to unfold the Buddha's Teaching,
That I may help all living things.

David Brazier shows in this book that this is the adult response to an afflicted world.

[Heather Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

To the growing body of “socially engaged” Buddhist literature we can add The New Buddhism, by David Brazier. Brazier is a psychotherapist in London and a spiritual teacher in the Order of Amida Buddha. His book is written in a straightforward, almost racy style. Brazier considers the whole historical development of Buddhism, tracing it all the way back to Gautama Buddha. Brazier contends that the view of Buddha we often get from books and teachers, of a world-renouncing Great Teacher solely concerned with leading individuals to enlightenment, is a distortion. Buddha did teach a way for individuals to realize enlightenment, but to Brazier he was also a radical social critic who sought to transform society, creating a "Pure Land" on earth.
Brazier writes that Buddhism today is in danger of losing sight of Buddha's urgent social critique, particularly in the West, where "white Buddhism" runs the risk of "degenerating into a narrow, sectarian, small-minded and irrelevant pursuit of personal euphoria. . . (26)"

In a chapter titled Varieties of Enlightenment, Brazier asks What is enlightenment for? – a question too rarely considered – and then proceeds to delineate, in iconoclastic fashion, eight different definitions of "enlightenment," reach representing a different school of Buddhism. To some Buddhists this chapter will seem heretical. But Brazier’s intent is not to inflame but to illuminate. Briefly, the different characterizations of enlightenment are: enlightenment as escape; enlightenment as emptiness; enlightenment as eternal life; tantric enlightenment; enlightenment as realization of Buddha nature; enlightenment as non-duality; enlightenment as impassivity; and enlightenment as faith. The reader is advised to persist in following Brazier's divagations, because, while he does not adopt a pretentious, scholarly tone, and at times may even appear flip, he does try to be fair. In a sense, what Brazier provides in this discussion of the varieties of enlightenment constitutes a sort of abbreviated survey of historical Buddhism, and one which is very edifying.

One of the more interesting arguments Brazier makes is his critique of monism or non-dualism. Zen practitioners are of course steeped in the virtues of non-dualism, so much so that it is perhaps appropriate to take a look at it with fresh eyes. He revisits the discussion of Yasutani Roshi, whose anti-Semitism and militaristic stance during World War II created much discussion a few years back after the publication of Brian Victoria’s Zen At War. Aitken Roshi, Brazier says, defended Yasutani, asking how can we expect anyone to rise above their own culture? For Brazier "this argument is hardly adequate. . . . If a religion cannot help its leading exponents to rise above their culture, it is worthless." [170]

This discussion was covered at length in Zen At War, which Aitken Roshi had some praise for, as I recall. Some may view it as little more than an unseemly airing of the dirty laundry of a few Zen teachers. Unfortunately, more than a few Japanese roshis defended the militarism of Emperor Hirohito, so it is worth examining what relation such positions have with the theory and practice of Zen as we have received it today. Bernard Glassman Roshi received dharma transmission from Taizan Maezumi Roshi, who received it from Yasutani.

"Glassman's view is that all beings are already enlightened and all being are one body. This means that all life – the good, the bad and the ugly – is all included in the one Buddha body of universal enlightenment. Within this one body, each individual has his or her particular stains and limitations. A lifetime can be a very short time. Not much may change in one lifetime. This is why continuous practice is necessary. Enlightenment is a realization of oneness. Practice, however, goes on indefinitely. We are all enlightened and we are all addicted to our egos – we always will be." [171]

Brazier goes on to say that for Glassman, "if your definition of enlightenment does not allow for anti-Semitism within enlightenment then your definition is not big enough." Brazier, while acknowledging Glassman's large-heartedness, particularly inasmuch as Glassman is Jewish, asserts he is wrong: "My definition of enlightenment does not include room for anti-Semitism." While I have long respected both Aitken Roshi and Glassman, on this subject I wholeheartedly agree with Brazier. If "enlightenment" is consistent with anti-Semitism, what else is it consistent with? Militarism? Racism? Sexism? What meaning can “enlightenment” have if it is consistent with grotesque forms of prejudice?

"On the basis of oneness, both [Yasutani and Glassman] can feel compassion for beings irrespective of how they are manifesting – as concentration camp guards or as humanitarian activists. On the basis of oneness, Yasutani can believe in the importance of destroying the enemy for the sake of the harmonious realm. He can advocate killing the enemy at the same time as feeling compassion for the enemy. This is the 'special way of understanding the precepts'. It may be special, but it is not Buddhist. The Buddha had a similarly all-embracing compassion, but he did not arrive at it on the basis of oneness and so he did not draw the same conclusions." [171]

Rather, Buddha's compassion, according to Brazier, was based on his observation that some were enlightened and others were not. In a sense, it was dualistic, although Buddha, having an existential metaphysic, refrained from reifying the dualism, so one could call it a pragmatic or practical dualism, and distinguish it from metaphysical dualism, which we find in the theistic religions.

Here is where Brazier sets forth what is perhaps his strongest criticism of orthodox Buddhism: he claims that "the Buddha did not teach the Non-Dual. . . ." Rather, the Non-Dual was grafted onto Buddha's teachings long after his death, first in India where the notion of the Non-Dual meant Brahma and later in China where the Non-Dual meant the Tao and the unity of empire. "Buddha rejected the whole structure of Brahmanical ideas and would no doubt have rejected Taoism and Chinese imperialism as well, had he known about them." [173]

Regardless of whether we accept his claim or not on this, and it is pretty hard to know for sure without carefully studying the Pali scriptures, Brazier makes a strong case that non-dualism, or Oneness, is inherently problematic, even while acknowledging that, if understood correctly (an important caveat), it has benefits as well.

"Oneness is popular and can be a useful vehicle for some teachers. However, it has serious drawbacks if pushed through to its philosophical conclusion. If all is really one, it ultimately becomes difficult, if not impossible, to make choices. It can just as well support oppression as liberation. Although the theory of oneness has an immediate superficial appeal, uniting all beings within one ultimate, beneficial, transcendent reality, it also underpinned the Indian caste system, just as it did later the Japanese one. In the quest for universal harmony and compassion, something can go badly wrong. This something is the erection of a transcendent Non-Dual something or other that somehow makes all the actual manifestations of life all right."

On one level, it is hard to believe that Buddhism can dispense with the notion of oneness or non-dualism. However cogent a critique one makes of it, and Brazier advances a very convincing criticism, it still appears incontestably true that behind the diversity of forms exists some essence, whether we want to call it God, Emptiness, Buddha-Nature, or what-have-you. Shakyamuni Buddha, I believe, called it Nirvana, a term which one contemporary teacher calls "Nirvanasara," to emphasize that nirvana is not separate from samsara. Again, non-dualism. We can't escape it.

And here is where I agree with Ken Jones, who wrote in a review of The New Buddhism that the problem is not Oneness or the Non-Dual per se, but our tendency to reify the Non-Dual. We take what is essentially a process and turn it into an entity. Buddha Nature, as our capacity to manifest enlightened action, becomes something like the Hindu notion of Atman, an indwelling divine soul that transmigrates upon the death of the body; Emptiness, as a description of the interdependence of all thing-events, becomes a sort of metaphysical sponge used to wipe away the phenomenal world and declare it "unreal"; Oneness as a description of the underlying unity of all diversity, becomes a denial of dualism and diversity in the phenomenal world.

The consequence of this reification or hypostatization of the Non-Dual is invariably a sort of smugness and self-satisfaction and lack of compassion. Sometimes it goes even deeper than that, becoming an entrenched complacency in the face of overwhelming suffering and injustice in the world, a way of tuning it all out, like turning the radio from a station broadcasting unpleasant news to another playing classical music. Nothing wrong with tuning out the vulgar news of the world machine sometimes – we all need occasional escapes – but the problem is, for many of us, that we tune it out more or less all the time. "It's out of my hands," we rationalize. "I can't make a difference." "They don't care what I think." We all know the easy rationalizations.

The doctrine of Oneness or the Non-Dual also dovetails with the ideology of bourgeois individualism that permits many practitioners to minimize, ignore or disguise the role of economic and political injustices play in suffering. It becomes all too easy to dismiss politics, which is inherently dualistic and conflictual, as a sordid realm, a distraction from one's spiritual practice--which is conceived wholly as inner work. But Brazier reminds us that Buddha's teaching was fundamentally altruistic -- not a doctrine encouraging an endless pursuit of private mystical experience but rather a practical method of mind-body training that would enable people to go forth into the world and make it a better place.

If Buddha had only wanted to bring people to mystical realization, he would have created hermitages and monasteries and remained in them. But he didn't: he spoke on many of the social problems of his day, including condemning the caste system of India as immoral. Similarly, Buddha would have condemned the global caste system of today. It is a system in which the white caste makes most of the rules and enjoys more than three-quarters of the world's wealth, while comprising only a quarter of its population. Buddha inveighed against war. Yet the current global system is one in which wealthy elites in the northern, industrialized nations write the rules of the global economy to ensure the continued transfer of wealth from the poorest countries to the richest countries, imposing their will through institutions such as the WTO, IMF and World Bank.

What is refreshing about The New Buddhism is Brazier's honesty – he makes no pretense of being a Buddhist scholar, but rather admits his biases up front. Brazier claims that the Buddha's original message began to get diluted and distorted around 200 years following his death, when the Emperor Ashoka created the first ostensibly Buddhist kingdom.
Of course, to scholars of Buddhism, this sounds like the same old Hinayana-Mahayana distinction, with the Mahayana Buddhists arguing that the Hinayana Buddhists' enlightenment, or arhat ideal, was insufficient because it was pursued as personal enlightenment excluding the rest of the world, and the Mahayanaists arguing that the bodhisattva ideal was superior because in it the practitioner foregoes entry into complete enlightenment until all beings are enlightened. In other words, the monastic ideal vs. the worldly ideal.

But while that distinction is perhaps there in skeletal form, Brazier's argument is more nuanced: the idea of a privatized, world-renouncing pursuit of enlightenment has become too common, in both Theravada and Mahayana sects. He steps forth to remind us that Shakyamuni Buddha was a rebel who rejected the Indian caste system and repeatedly stood up for the oppressed and downtrodden.

Yet it is hard not to feel that Brazier has perhaps overstated the case. Buddha did teach a way of life that was essentially monastic. He was not, first and foremost, a social reformer or revolutionary; he was a radical mystic who taught a new way of being, a way of relating to life without the distorting lens of ego. While much of Brazier’s criticisms seem well placed in the context of today’s world and its many injustices, monasticism still has its place. The very “busyness” of our contemporary, high-tech, perpetually distracted ways of living testifies to the need for places of retreat, which humans have always sought and probably always will—places in which to renew the soul, to wonder, and to reflect.

[Cobramor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A different perspective on buddhism that takes on the usual cliches.

[Ade Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been my introduction to "engaged buddhism". So much of it I found refreshing. Critiques of all watery prepackaged goo for personal salvation, enlightenment, self-centred elevation etc. particularly welcomed. It has been certainly useful as a guide to help me explore more. At the moment I am afraid that I remain a member of the unenlightened masses, not ready to join those bringing into being the Pure Land. Another way of putting this, almost certainly the better way, is that I just do not understand. But that is not a veiled criticism of the book, it's my call to consider things more. The questions are more important than any answers, so I recommend the book.

[Stephen Piuk]

I liked this book some interesting takes on the difference between ideas on dependent origination (the ideas of sino/japanese Buddhism that says we all emerge out of enlightenment together compared with the original Buddhas message that it is taken in stages.

[Erik Toren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good read. Not too philosophical. Good critique on contemporary Buddhism and its role in our society.

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

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