What Makes You NOT a Buddhist - Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Book Review

Synopsis:

Moving away from conventional presentations of Buddhist teachings, Rinpoche challenges readers to make sure they know what they're talking about before they claim to be a Buddhist. With wit and irony, he urges us to move beyond the superficial trappings of Buddhism - beyond a romance with beads, incense, and exotic people in robes - straight to the heart of what the Buddha taught. He throws down the gauntlet to the Buddhist world, challenging common misconceptions, stereotypes, and fantasies. In essence, this book explains what a Buddhist really is.

Can you accept that all things are impermanent and that there is no essential substance or concept that is permanent? Can you accept that all emotions bring pain and suffering and that there is no emotion that is purely pleasurable? Can you accept that all phenomena are illusory and empty? Can you accept that enlightenment is beyond concepts; that it's not a perfect blissful heaven, but instead a release from delusion? Rinpoche encourages us to examine our most fundamental assumptions and beliefs, and he inspires us to explore the authentic Buddhist path based on these traditional four seals of Buddhism.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche is one of the most innovative and creative young Tibetan Lamas teaching today. The film director of critically acclaimed movies The Cup and Travellers and Magicians, this provocative teacher is widely known and admired in the West.

Extract from the book:

CAUSES AND CONDITIONS: THE EGG IS COOKED AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

When Siddhartha spoke of “all assembled things,” he was referring to more than just obvious perceptible phenomena such as DNA, your dog, the Eiffel Tower, eggs, and sperm. Mind, time, memory, and God are also assembled. And each assembled component in turn depends on several layers of assembly. Similarly, when he taught impermanence, he went beyond conventional thinking about “the end,” such as the notion that death happens once and then it’s over. Death is continuous from the moment of birth, from the moment of creation. Each change is a form of death, and therefore each birth contains the death of something else. Consider cooking a hen’s egg. Without constant change, the cooking of an egg cannot occur. The cooked-egg result requires some fundamental causes and conditions. Obviously you need an egg, a pot of water, and some sort of heating element. And then there are some not-so-essential causes and conditions, such as a kitchen, lights, an egg timer, a hand to put the egg into the pot. Another important condition is absence of interruption, such as a power outage or a goat walking in and overturning the pot. Furthermore, each condition—the hen, for example—requires another set of causes and conditions. It needs another hen to lay an egg so that it can be born, a safe place for this to happen, and food to help it grow. The chicken feed has to be grown somewhere and must make its way into the chicken. We can keep breaking down the indispensable and dispensable requirements all the way to the subatomic level, with an ever-increasing number of forms, shapes, functions, and labels.

When all the innumerable causes and conditions come together, and there is no obstacle or interruption, the result is inevitable. Many misunderstand this to be fate or luck, but we still do have the power to have an effect on conditions, at least in the beginning. But at a certain point, even if we pray that the egg won’t cook, it will be cooked.

Like the egg, all phenomena are the product of myriad components, and therefore they are variable. Nearly all of these myriad components are beyond our control, and for that reason they defy our expectations. The least-promising presidential candidate might win the election and then lead the country to contentment and prosperity The candidate you campaign for might win and then lea4 the country to economic and social ruin, making your life miserable. You may think liberal, left-wing politics are enlightened politics, but they may actually be the cause of fascism and skinheads by being complacent or even promoting tolerance of the intolerant. Or by protecting the individual rights of those whose sole purpose is to destroy other people’s individual rights. The same unpredictability applies to all forms, feelings, perceptions, traditions, love, trust, mistrust, skepticism—even the relationships between spiritual masters and disciples, and between men and their gods.

All of these phenomena are impermanent. Take skepticism, for example. There was once a Canadian man who was the very embodiment of a skeptic. He enjoyed attending Buddhist teachings so that he could argue with the teachers. He was actually quite well versed in Buddhist philosophy, so his arguments were strong. He relished the opportunity to quote the Buddhist teaching that the Buddha’s words must be analyzed and not taken for granted. A few years later, and he is now the devoted follower of a famous psychic channeler. The ultimate skeptic sits before his singing guru with tears running like rivers from his eyes, devoted to an entity who has not a scrap of logic to offer. Faith or devotion has a general connotation of being unwavering, but like skepticism and like all compounded phenomena, is impermanent.

Whether you pride yourself on your religion or on not belonging to any religion, faith plays an important role in your existence. Even “not believing” requires faith—total, blind faith in your own logic or reason based on your ever-changing feelings. So it is no surprise when what used to seem so convincing no longer persuades us. The illogical nature of faith is not subtle at all; in fact it is among the most assembled and interdependent of phenomena. Faith can be triggered by the right look at the right time in the right place. Your faith may depend on superficial compatibility. Let’s say that you are a misogynist and you meet a person who is preaching hatred against women. You will find that person powerful, you will agree with him, and you will have some faith in him. Something as inconsequential as a shared love of anchovies might add to your devotion. Or perhaps a person or institution has the ability to lessen your fear of the unknown. Other factors such as the family, country, or society you are born into are all part of the assembly of elements that come together as what we call faith.

Citizens of many Buddhist-ruled countries, such as Bhutan, Korea, Japan, and Thailand, are blindly committed to the Buddhist doctrine. On the other hand, many young people in those countries become disillusioned with Buddhism because there is not enough information and too many distractions for the phenomena of faith to stick, and they end up following another faith, or following their own reason.

When we learn to see the assembled parts of all things and situations, we learn to cultivate forgiveness, understanding, open-mindedness, and fearlessness. … Fear and anxiety are the dominant psychological states of the human mind. Behind the fear lies a constant longing to be certain. We are afraid of the unknown. The mind’s craving for confirmation is rooted in our fear of impermanence.

Fearlessness is generated when you can appreciate uncertainty, when you have faith in the impossibility of these interconnected components remaining static and permanent. You will find yourself, in a very true sense, preparing for the worst while allowing for the best. You become dignified and majestic…. By knowing that something is lying in wait for you just around the bend, by accepting that countless potentialities exist from this moment forward, you acquire the sill of pervasive awareness and foresight like that of gifted general, not paranoid, but prepared. … The recognition of impermanence is key to freedom from fear of remaining forever stuck in a situation, habit, or pattern.