Let me pick up on a hint of a theme from yesterday’s book review of Thich Nhat Hanh’s new novel, The Novice. Towards the end of the post, I commented that Thấy’s teachings offer an easy entry to Buddhism. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say he, like many teachers who are skillful, offers an apparently simple beginning to practice. There is wisdom in this. The teachings can be encouraging and lay a solid groundwork for deeper understanding as we continue on the path. However, there is also a danger that we can fall into a flowery, vapid, and naive approach that gentle teachings can evoke.
It has always concerned me that “simple” is absorbed as “simplistic” and the evidence is rampant in the millions of catchy sayings that attempt to transport us from the truth of suffering into a facsimile realm of the Pure Land. Tragically, this creates a blindness to the deeper teachings offered by teachers such as Thấy which are – under the child-like renditions – a complex integration of scripture and aids to practice. Over the years, I have come to appreciate that his words, audio and written, are killing-sword koans whose edge we can skip over or on which we can impale our delusions.
I once said to a dharma teacher in Thấy’s tradition that Thấy offers an easy in but it’s a tough stay. Practice, as Thấy teaches, demands an unrelenting devotion to being honest with oneself in every moment. Try it for five if you question how hard this is. And yet, the preponderance of his teachings seem to end up as sound bytes turning the nectar of compassion into a mind-numbing salve against the reality that the practice of Buddhism is not about salvation in this moment or any other. It’s a true koan of our times. How do such accessible teachings result in such a diversion from the intent of practice?
About the time of my struggle with this conundrum an email arrived pointing me to a delicious post by Glenn Wallis on “Flinching.” As frightened as I am by the depth of Wallis’ erudition, I was compelled by his argument that there is a turning away from the truth of suffering, that we have developed a predictive, fallacious equation whose outcome variable is set as “deep joy.” He refers to this perspective as “a eudaimonistic subterfuge” to which Buddhism is becoming heir. If I grasp Wallis’ exegesis and in my simplistic terms, we Buddhists have taken a wrong turn in our understanding of the Dharma by making practice instrumental rather than intentional. Not only have we let our fears about the true nature of reality get the better of us, we have become deeply desirous of a belief that a virtuous practice will reap a future of deep joy. This utilitarian stance to practice is subtly subversive and the ground quickly becomes unstable because it is driven by avoidance of pain. This is further emphasized by a recent retreat on the Tricycle page in which Rita Gross spoke out on “feel-good Buddhism.”
In psychotherapy, we call this a flight into health. The patient, overwhelmed by what is required to make sincere and long-lasting change, suddenly gets better – a one-hit-one-session-wonder. The therapist, anxious about the depth of intervention and the demands of sitting with the pain of the Other, flinches at the prospect and welcomes or even offers this endpoint of deep joy. It is a collusion that creates a dynamic of mutual blindness. Winding this thread back to Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, I wish had a peanut for every time I heard someone say, “If you just practice for three days, your depression will go away.” Or, “If I could just sit in the presence of my partner’s anger and understand Interbeing, it will be ok.” Well, if I had a peanut for each of these times, I’d be a happy elephant.
Here’s the unfiltered truth: There are no promises. Hope was a demon in Pandora’s Box. Practice simply because there is no choice. Don’t flinch from this.
