Pema Chödrön’s When Issues Fall Aside is a good looking and beneficial work on coping with troublesome circumstances. What strikes me in it’s how Chödrön – regardless of being a monk herself – takes a place so deeply at odds with conventional Indian Buddhism.
Chödrön refers back to the conventional Buddhist “three marks” (tilakkhaṇa or trilakṣaṇa) of existence: all the things is impermanent, struggling, and non-self. This concept goes again to very early texts. However Chödrön does with it’s one thing fairly totally different from the sooner concept:
Regardless that they precisely describe the rock-bottom qualities of our existence, these phrases sound threatening. It’s simple to get the concept there’s something fallacious with impermanence, struggling, and egolessness, which is like pondering that there’s something fallacious with our elementary state of affairs. However there’s nothing fallacious with impermanence, struggling, and egolessness; they are often celebrated. Our elementary state of affairs is joyful. (59)
Right here’s the issue with this passage: the classical Indian Buddhist texts are fairly clear that in actual fact there may be one thing fallacious with our elementary state of affairs. She is disagreeing with them, whether or not or not she acknowledges it.
Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddha refuses to take pleasure in our elementary state of affairs: “I don’t despise objects. I do know them to be on the coronary heart of human affairs. / However seeing the world to be impermanent, my thoughts doesn’t enjoyment of them.” (Buddhacarita IV.85) That is very typical of early Indian Buddhist texts. The Kathāvatthu says “all conditioned issues are, with out distinction, cinderheaps” (II.8). The Theragāthā says: “the physique is oozing foulness — at all times. Sure along with sixty sinews, plastered with a stucco of muscle, wrapped in a jacket of pores and skin, this foul physique is of no price in any respect.” The aim, within the Pali texts, is to get out of “our elementary state of affairs” – to flee saṃsāra, the wheel of rebirth, right into a nirvāṇa that’s past it.
Nor does this world-rejecting angle change with Indian Mahāyāna. Śāntideva – on whom Chödrön has written an whole commentary – tells us to reject romantic relationships on the grounds of their impermanence: “For what particular person is it acceptable to be connected to impermanent beings, when that particular person is impermanent, when a liked one will not be seen once more for 1000’s of lives?” (BCA VIII.5) He frequently criticizes sexual pleasure on the grounds that the physique is disgusting and foul. His criticism is not only of attachment to issues, however of the issues themselves. That’s the reason the bodhisattva should surrender the world in each delivery (ŚS 14).
Thus Chödrön is doing one thing far faraway from the Buddha when she speaks of impermanence on this method: “within the means of making an attempt to disclaim that issues are at all times altering, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We are likely to overlook that we’re part of the pure scheme of issues.” (60) Classically, the pure scheme of issues is dangerous, and we’re making an attempt to get out of it! Thus interdependence is just not one thing to be embraced; fairly the other. Interdependence (pratītya samutpāda), in Indian Buddhist texts, is a bit like alcoholism: it’s completely important that we pay attention to its existence, as a way to escape it. I’ve highlighted factors like these a number of occasions earlier than on Love of All Knowledge: classical Indian Buddhists see the world’s impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and essencelessness as causes to reject it.
Now right here’s the factor, although: I don’t suppose that that classical Indian view is appropriate! I stress elements of Buddhism that I discover unappealing as a result of I feel we are able to be taught loads from them; I’ve carried out so myself. However on the query of rejecting the world, I’ve successfully already sided with Chödrön: I don’t suppose that the impermanence of issues is a cause to reject them. I don’t suppose that the classical Buddhists have made the case for the view that it’s – and moreover, if the proof doesn’t assist rebirth, as I don’t suppose it does, then world-rejection might properly lead us to suicide and even homicide. Much better to embrace the products of worldly life.
And but, like Chödrön, I say all of that as a trustworthy Buddhist. Which, lastly, leads me to embrace Chödrön’s phrases because the clever recommendation they’re, coming from somebody within the Buddha’s lineage who has devoted her life to its path. Śāntideva would by no means say any of the next, and I don’t care:
Who ever acquired the concept we might have pleasure with out ache? It’s promoted somewhat broadly on this world, and we purchase it. However ache and pleasure go collectively, they’re inseparable. They are often celebrated. Delivery is painful and pleasant. Demise is painful and pleasant. (60)
I had described one other work of Chödrön’s as Buddhism watered down – however watered down in a great way, like opening up a cask-strength Scotch. And I feel the identical is true right here. This isn’t the Buddha’s Buddhism, but it surely doesn’t want to be.
I don’t know Tibetan custom all that properly, and I don’t know the way conventional Chödrön’s views are in Tibet (versus India). I don’t see something like Chödrön’s strategy in, say, Künzang Sönam’s commentary on Śāntideva. However they could possibly be. I feel right here of the “nondual mindfulness” that John Dunne finds within the sixteenth-century work of Wangchuk Dorje: there, a preferred modernized Buddhist view not present in classical India (on this case present-moment mindfulness) does prove to have historic antecedent in Tibet.
Even when this view is new to Chödrön and different fashionable Buddhists, although, I don’t suppose that’s ample cause to reject it. Once we take refuge within the Buddha, we wish, at some stage, to remain trustworthy to him and his knowledge – however that religion doesn’t have to be blind. I don’t consider that the Buddha was omniscient. He mentioned some fallacious and terrible issues about ladies, in any case. Śāntideva’s views have been fairly totally different from the Buddha’s personal, and possibly in some respects an enchancment on them. He wouldn’t have admitted that, however we can and will. We will doubtlessly enhance on his views too – and I feel Chödrön does! I’d similar to us to acknowledge that that’s what we’re doing.
