"Love All, Hurt No One, Trust A Few" : Thoughts on Buddhism in the West and Spiritual Community
by KT

Response to "I have some fear of sangha [ Buddhist fellowship ]".

"Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none."
William Shakespeare, "All's Well That Ends Well", Act 1 Scene 1

"This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity. . ."
William Shakespeare, "As You Like It", Act 2 Scene 1

It is perfectly reasonable to be cautious about any religious or spiritual fellowship. This does not mean you have to be in any way concerned about same. There are general principles to be followed.

The most basic principle, which was stated by both Confucius ( Kung Fu Tse ) and Guru Sakyamuni Buddha, has always been this:
"Do not do unto others as you would not be treated by them."

In other words, live and let live. Things get complicated sometimes, so we have to consider the content and contexts of communication. I'll do that here, specifically with regard to Buddhist fellowships in the West. The basic approach is very simple, but I really haven't seen it articulated or demonstrated in concrete terms. So I'm writing this to help people through what can be a rough spot in social and cultural relations: how to deal with unknown people and fellowships.

The basic model is that of the humble samurai, or sometimes, the "peaceful warrior". With that in mind, the following is written as a response to a tribe.net thread "I have some fear of sangha [ Buddhist fellowship ]".

It is different to be concerned ( or cautious ) about an individual Buddhist practitioner than to be concerned about a Buddhist group. These should be separable issues.

You have fear of judgement by others. But others judge us all the time, at work or at school or in public or whatever. But what are the risks of social judgement, for any of us?

Remember that other Buddhist students are just that, other Buddhist students. They don't necessarily have the authority to lay down any law or challenge anyone on anything. Certainly not as a snap judgement, nor based on mere hearsay.

There are some basic rules for Buddhist gatherings, such as
1) Don't arrive unwashed, drunk or drugged at a Buddhist gathering.
2) Don't smoke in front of a Buddhist teacher or at a Buddhist gathering.
3) Don't interrupt a Buddhist teacher when he or she speaks.
4) Don't cause problems for any one individual, group or teacher. If there is a legal or financial or psychological problem area to address, try to find a balanced outcome, by a third party, or by drawing appropriate interpersonal boundaries. You can even resort to police help or litigation or kung fu if necessary. But as I will show later, I don't think such recourses will ever be needed.

Most Buddhists that I have seen tend to be shy, quiet, fairly withdrawn, and often tend towards the less social or nonsocial. Nonsocial meaning socially disengaged, the opposite of antisocial aggression. If there is a problem with Buddhist communities in the West, it relates more to the way these can be "dissocial aggregates", collections of more-or-less strangers who do not know or care much about engaging other Buddhists. But that is changing, as I have seen.

Buddhists are often emotionally weary, and quite often can be depressed or frustrated or self-conflicted people. A typically Buddhist characterological response is to emotionally disengage from others, hence the common introversion. The trend overall however is towards healthier engagement of oneself and others, for a fair number anyway. We have a lot of good teachers, practices, and some really cutting edge psychologists.

Basically, you're more likely to get into problems walking through a college campus than going to a Buddhist fellowship, Tibetan or otherwise. U Cal Berkeley has some risks, particularly for women, as do college campuses in general. But Oakland California is no doubt extremely dangerous as it was many years ago. I wouldn't get out of the BART tube there for any reason. Too much gunfire!

. . .At the same time, I have repeatedly found many Buddhists to very judgemental and some are extremely judgemental. And there can be problems, and these can escalate. But most often these problems are based on real ignorance of others, on jumping to conclusions. This happens quite commonly when a far less experienced "Buddhist" has condemning thoughts towards a far more experienced and far more capable Buddhist. This in fact happens all the time. I really get sick of it, and as a western-born teacher, I have to always be very careful, but I think overall that ignorant attacks are more self-limiting and self-defeating.

Here is the very simple "secret" to dealing with such problems. If someone criticizes you, or even yells at you or outright attacks you, relax and focus and listen. That's it, just relax and focus and listen. This works almost all the time, and it works in really difficult situations. The principle is just the same as "defensive driving". It is classical Buddhist kung fu as well. ( If a police officer were to yell at me, my response would automatically be
"Good afternoon, officer. What can I do for you?" )

I once relaxed and focused when attacked and challenged to a duel, by a Buddhist teacher I did not know. It happened like this. One day in the late eighties I was walking down the road just outside a large Buddhist temple, where I sometimes taught as vajrayana guru ( on a rotating basis ) for a couple years. Some guy, while washing the car of the tantric lineage holder, turned around, straightened and snarled at me "I know you!" and started yelling at me.

Never met him before in my life. He was from London England. Apparently a tantric guru AND a kung fu instructor. Uh oh. . . I stopped and listened, certain this was a complete stranger. Completely baffled, I did the intelligent thing : I listened some more. He handed me his card, which mentioned London, his teaching credentials and so forth.

I said nothing, trying to get the measure of this fellow. My immediate thought was this : This is a formal challenge! Dont know why. He gave me his card, which means, classically, that he expects to duel!

Maybe this guy somehow didn't understand what he was literally saying by presenting me his card in a direct challenge. ( Even more absurd. And reckless: odds disfavor casual duellers. ) Soo. . his "kung fu" was ( unknowingly ) to call for a duel. MY kung fu was to not duel, and instead quietly walk away.

See how easy that was? The next step *could* have been for him to escalate, to grab at me for example. But no one gets to do that. Given the foolish presentation of the card, that means a full duel has begun, leaving me free to defend myself By Any Means Necessary. This is western law and also Buddhist law. I would have then fought this "fellow Buddhist guru", with a first goal of twisting his arm and forcing him to his knees. Some body parts would soon break, his and/ or mine. That's classical, it's called "trial by fire". The point is that the test is mutual, not a one way street!

All of this is encapsulated in the perspective of President Theodore Roosevelt, who said "Speak softly but carry a big stick." That is very classical Buddhist perspective in Tibet, China and Japan. In the Chinese Buddhist kung fu, we speak of the "peaceful warrior", who is
like "a well tempered sword wrapped in soft cloth".

A sword is a crucial metaphor. A sword can block many attacks. A sword can also maim and destroy adversaries. So the etiquette is to not jump a swordsman, whether you are unarmed or whether you are a swordsman. In a real swordfight, your chances of dying are one in three or even two in three. Often both swordsmen die. The basic rule of thumb therefore is: Don't fight unless absolutely necessary, then fight to decisive victory.

This guy from London - a fellow tantric Buddhist guru - somehow thought he was a samurai and I was a peasant. He thought wrong. I saw him many months later at the same temple - and he looked badly shaken up and extremely fearful of me, from eighty feet away. Why? Seems like the Guardians Upstairs ( like, say, Mahakala ) evidently decided to teach him a lesson.

There is also a woman teacher who falsely accused me of "not helping with the translation work." But she never sent me the texts to work on, and I never received them from anyone. What was the outcome? Well, she was very sick for a good many months. And she was a western medical professional to boot.

I distrust these two fellow Buddhist teachers twenty years later, and there has no apology to accept. Very simple, except I ended up with an undeserved bad reputation all the way across the Pacific, in Taiwan. Example: A PhD psychologist from Taipei gave me some grief and treated me with contempt over a dinner table in a Buddhist teacher's house! For a few minutes, anyway. But he didn't prove capable of a simple psychological intake nor did he set up an argument. It was just a knee jerk emotional attack.

So the moral here is simple: just because someone is a PhD psychologist or a Buddhist teacher, don't think they will never make stupid mistakes. They do. Real intelligence means not making the mistakes, like these people.

Therefore don't fear the Buddhists ( or anyone else, whatever they may be called ). Respect everyone to the extent called for, relying on caution and awareness and inner balance and integrity, not social positions.

You need not fear any kind of aggression from Buddhists, not physical aggression, not emotional aggression, not psychic aggression.

These levels of aggression are all pretty much nonexistent among Buddhists in my experience. And I have personally seen about 8,500 Buddhists. What kinds? Chinese, American, Vietnamese, Japanese, Native American Buddhist etc., since about 1980. Where? In Hawaii, on the West Coast from Los Angeles up through San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver BC. In Chicago, and in France, on a month long retreat.

I have yet to see or hear of a psychic attack or psychic aggression of any kind by any tantric Buddhist. Anywhere. In theory this *could* be a real concern, and in Tibet it really was: some Tibetans actually died as a result of pure psychic attacks or combat, Buddhist or non Buddhist Bonpo. This however is simply not a problem in the West.

Basically 99.9% of my experience tells me that Buddhists don't know how to fight, don't want to fight, and don't want to learn to fight. ( Big mistake, especially for women anywhere. ) I also have a definite sense that, overall, Buddhists don't really know how to argue effectively on the interpersonal level. When they argue, it is over abstract philosophy. Most traditional Buddhist culture is against public argumentation, and matters are resolved in private to "save face".

Despite your fear, there is basically no "pressure to assimilate" in Buddhist fellowships.

Major social psychology studies show that a conscious sense of "connectedness", of healthy community, is strongly predictive of a long and healthy life, no matter what your faith or social status. It's best to take an "ecological" perspective. See
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comm...psychology

At the same time, there are many great Buddhist practitioners and teachers who kept mostly to themselves and even spent most of their lives on strict retreat, alone or with a very few other practitioners, e.g. as in Shakespeare's outcasts found in "As You Like It", who are
"exempt from public haunt" and find "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
sermons in stones and good in everything".

Social or nonsocial - either way can work. But the point is to give oneself the choice, to consciously choose and not be psychologically limited or emotionally crippled by fear and doubt. The main priority is a positive one: make the best possible use of your time "to live for that which is highest in oneself and others".

For me that really means Mahayana in a literal sense, so community is critically important to me and I have to handle things very effectively. Otherwise my thirty years of practice is a complete waste, right?

Without Buddhist transmission and empowerment you cannot do any of the key yogas or inner practices. Lacking effective human contact there is no connection to the Mahayana Buddhist practice, nor even entrance to the basic outer sangha fellowship. To have no mahayana guru, means all the many books will be of no help : you cannot practice what is not transmitted.

The good news is that overall the western Buddhist communities are quickly evolving towards really healthy principles and models of sacred fellowship and practical co-operation. Western Buddhists are now far more articulate and psychologically capable than they were thirty years ago.

A key point is that western Buddhists strongly emphasize respect for women, and we have women teachers ( scholars and gurus ). This is a much better and more authentic version of Mahayana Buddhism than was typical of Asia, where dharma opportunities for most women were very meager: Confucian social forms and expectations pervaded Eastern Asia and most women were severely oppressed for close to two thousand years. It's different here!

Everything looks to be going in a good direction in the the West. I would say that we have evolved in a few decades to a sense of Buddhist community that took many generations in traditional Asian societies. And we are just beginning. There have been some severe problems in some Buddhist fellowships, but when the smoke clears these do not cripple the fellowships.

Yes, there is a lot of confusion about Buddhist doctrine among many inside and outside the refuge-holding sangha, but these points are easily addressed, and the Buddhist doctrine will not be lost to mass delusion and external belief systems. Instead, Buddhist teaching is working on society, through such teachers as the Dalai Lama, and others.

The simple and crucial issue and measure comes down to this: We are basically all new to the practice here in the West. We have therefore to prove ourselves to ourselves, to others, and to society. This means that people who claim to prioritize Mahayana Buddhism have to live it, they have to be functional, and the Buddhist fellowships have to prove their worth to society in order to last, to carry on.

This is very doable. It has everything to do with communication and co-operation and resources that cannot be taken for granted, but which must be cultivated.

At the same time, I would not say that Buddhists are in general "reliable and mature." Its not that I definitely distrust them as a group. Much experience has taught me the importance of NONTRUST. I short I don't expect problems from Buddhist individuals, but in my own life I expect little or nothing from them in the way of help or reciprocity.

I keep a personal list of Buddhists that I will not speak to nor help. The reasoning? The Apache ( American Indian tribe ) say "Do not help those who fail to help others." To this I would add "Do not help those who cause problems for others." If a claimed Buddhist is clearly disrespectful towards the Buddhist community, then for me to help that one is a fault in my Mahayana Buddhist vows, and self-contradictory, pure and simple. Better for me to help some one else instead.

Yes, most of history teaches us to be extremely wary of religious groups in general. Yes, much of the course of religious history is basically rivers of bloodshed and oppression and opposition to humanitarian values. But you simply cannot find much to blame in Buddhist history, or in western Buddhist fellowships in the new century. Buddhists are very quiet in terms of world political history. Mostly they have fled war and oppression. Extreme politics and cultural destruction are more found in Communism and Islam, not in Buddhist history.

Many basic issues that have really challenged western Buddhists in the last century have moved into the right tracks, quickly and effectively ( which is the opposite of China, Burma, Tibet and so forth ). Here in the West the Mahayana dharma is, overall, respected ( or at least peacebly ignored ) and not trashed by modern society. Buddhist fellowships and individuals are *not* being derailed, internally or externally. The western model of Buddhism is decidedly sane and multicultural, a real benefit to western society, well founded in both depth and breadth, and mostly functional. We'll show the whole world how it's done!

I can't tell you how crucially important this mostly functional western Buddhism is for the survival of Buddhist practice in the world today. We have so very much to be thankful for, and a lot to look forward to. Much more than you could think possible! I am *very* surprised and thankful to be able to say this, and I say it with *real* confidence born of experience and comparative history, not mere pious abstract faith.

In other words, don't be afraid. Instead, go with the Bard and
""Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none."

I hope this helps you and others as general perspective and guidance. Sarva mangalam.

Long live the Mahayana!

KT, mage guardian, inner medical tantrika and so forth

From Shakespeare's "As You Like It", Act 2 Scene 1:

DUKE SENIOR

Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
'This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.'
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
I would not change it.

AMIENS

Happy is your grace,
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.