The title of this essay refers to a well-known joke, which I will recount here on the off chance that there may be readers who haven't heard it. The Lone Ranger and Tonto are riding along through the sagebrush when suddenly about a million Indians come riding over the hill. Our two heroes are soon surrounded, and things look bad for them. The Lone Ranger turns to Tonto and says, "Tonto, we're surrounded. What are we going to do?" Tonto turns to the Lone Ranger and replies, "What you mean 'we,' white man?"
This tasteless snippet of humor tends to pop into my mind whenever someone talks in terms of "we" when discussing American culture or actions. It did so again when reading Tara Carreon's article. There are a number of approaches one could take to the piece, several of which, such as Carreon's personal psychology or the history of Tibetan religious culture, I am not qualified to tackle. But there is a particular knot of issues I would like to address, and which Tonto's question illustrates quite neatly. That knot involves what constitutes samaya and samaya-breakage, and how that relates to human cultures.
I could not begin to address the questions raised by Carreon's piece without first pointing out that it is an astonishingly racist document. Choosing one paragraph from many possibilities, try this:
From the viewpoint of an educated American, Tibetan culture is anachronistic: young Tibetans are dazzled and overwhelmed by our modern world. The older Lamas are bemused by our culture, and turn away from it too quickly to learn about us. They live, psychologically, on a flat earth, without the benefit of scientific knowledge. Often their lectures are rather quaint, as they present fallacious arguments to support their doctrine. Many are sweet, sincere, and so hopelessly out of touch that Steven Segal managed to pass himself off as a tulku. Can we seriously rely on teachings from that culture?
I would ask if we could seriously rely on anything Carreon says, given that she has exposed her bigotry so plainly. Substitute "black" or "Indian" for "Tibetan" in that paragraph and see if it is acceptable.
That said, it is important to do more than just shake one's head at this. The reasons that Carreon reveals for her prejudices illuminate a question important to practitioners of Vajrayana: what is damtsig, or samaya?
As I understand it, the principles of samaya, like the principles of Vajrayana itself, are transformation and self-liberation. One vows to transform and self-liberate one's addiction to form, especially one's addiction to the form known as "Me," through maintaining an unconditional relationship with the Lama and, through the Lama, with the whole phenomenal world. The vows are a practice that affects every area of one's life, but the first vows are not to denigrate the Lama, the Lama's teaching, or the Lama's sangha. Those three jewels are the method of realization of an infinite and timeless reality.
So, if one ever disagrees with any of the three jewels, is one a vow-breaker? It's not that simple. My Lamas have taught me that only a fully realized being can keep damtsig perfectly. For the rest of us it's a practice of constantly trying and constantly screwing up and constantly trying some more. That's one reason why tsog khorlo (ganachakra or feast practice) is so important in Vajrayana. Its function is to repair samaya. Most lineages practice it at least twice a month: what does that say about an all-or-nothing approach to the practice of damtsig?
It is, however, possible to break vows, and it is true that the community of students of a Lama will shun a vow-breaker. As Carreon says, early in her piece, "On the downside, no one wants to be an accused heretic ... Many Tibetan Buddhists are very careful about what they say. Among those who know, the threat of samaya injury from saying the wrong thing has a very chilling effect on speech." She says nothing about why vow-breakage is a problem, because she manifestly does not understand it. In fact, her discourse is an object demonstration of the difference between simple disagreement or confusion and vow-breakage.
The definition of a complete karma has three parts. One has to plan to do something, one has to do it, and one has to be glad that one did it. If any one of those three are lacking, then there is not necessarily a karmic seed. It is similar with vow breakage. It's not enough to simply say or do something that is outside of the vows. That is always reparable, in fact that is part of the practice. One has to solidify one's action into a stance. One has to justify oneself by convincing oneself and others that the Lamas and the vows are wrong. One has to be self-righteous about it. Only at that point has one put oneself outside of the possibility of reparation.
Carreon demonstrates this precisely. She begins by citing a long list of personal Buddhist credentials, including the repeated claim of "over 20 years" as a practitioner and having received "the entire transmission of Nyingma teachings from beginning to end." She then goes on at great length to explain how and why she was deluded and tricked and why no one should ever study or practice with Tibetans. She ends her first section with this:
The truth is that one who delivers their belief into the hands of others risks having to fight to get it back. Having fought that fight, it is my desire to save other people from wasting their time, energy and happiness in what I now view as a bad investment in the realm of faith. I would suggest that sincere spiritual seekers return to themselves and appreciate the good aspects of our own Western culture in order to achieve spiritual satisfaction.
I could point out several problems with this statement from the point of view of Buddhist practice. For instance, practice and study of Buddhism cannot be treated as an "investment," from which one demands certain returns. There are no guarantees, and one doesn't ask for one's money back if one doesn't achieve "satisfaction," any more than one would from a spouse or lover as opposed to a prostitute. This is not a question of spiritual morality. It is simply how the process works; or doesn't work, in this case.
But what constitutes vow-breakage in this statement and the rest of the essay is first of all Carreon's self-justification. She goes to great lengths to show how awful Tibetan Lamas are. She accuses them of "bait and switch" tactics, obligating unsuspecting newcomers at empowerments into samaya. She accuses them of being mainly interested in money, status, comfort, and power over others. She asks, "Why this paranoia about independent thought?"
The process of either samaya breakage or realization begins when a practitioner experiences the part of reality defined as "Me" to be shaky, impermanent, leaky, discontinuous, and ungraspable. This is necessary. But if the practitioner succumbs to the feeling of threat in this and withdraws, then the defence is likely to be to prove that the teacher, teachings, and fellow students are in the wrong. Thus Carreon does not limit her attack to Tibetan Lamas. She attacks Vajrayana teachings as the Nyingma school presents them:
Tibetans have little need for the Buddha, who has been eclipsed by Padmasambhava, the Karmapa, or whatever tulku-dynasty is revered by the sect. So Tibetan Buddhists know about as much about the Buddha as Mormons know about Jesus Christ (not much).
She attacks the sangha of those Lamas and those teachings as deluded, immature people who cannot cope with adult life and who are prey to childish fascination:
After all, who can resist getting conked on the head with religious objects by a wise old Lama on a throne, while young acolytes circulate holding incense and other magical items? And you get a knotted red string to wear around you neck as a token of your commitment! Increasingly, you pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege of attending an empowerment, for which all are presumptively qualified, who have the ability to pay.
So the Lamas are swindlers (a criticism applied to most spiritually powerful people at one time or another by people whom they make uncomfortable), the dharma is corrupted from its original true form (which is whatever the critic would like it to be), and the sangha is a bunch of deluded true believers. Carreon has built herself a fortress of self-justification in which she is unassailable, since anyone who disagrees with her can be neatly swept into one of those three disparagements. This is not to argue that there are not some teachers, some teachings, and some students whom those descriptions might fit. But it is the sweeping-up of everyone into those generalizations that marks the self-justification of the vow-breaker.
The other mark is Carreon's attempt to convince others that they too should see as she does and join her. Vow-breakage is shunned because it is terrifically damaging to communities of Vajrayana practitioners and to their Lamas. This is not because the vow-breaker removes the scales from the other deluded dupes' eyes and they leave the Lama, which seems to be what Carreon envisions. Rather, the vow-breaker shakes the confidence of the rest of his or her sangha, a confidence that must be cultivated in the face of ego's determination to survive at all costs. The practice of damtsig is difficult. It is not entered into lightly or quickly, whatever Carreon may think - and it requires enormous commitment on the part of the Lamas as well as the disciples. In fact it is said to be more dangerous for the Lamas than for the disciples, because they know the full power of what they are doing in a way no disciple does, and they are responsible to that power for what happens.
Carreon attempts to enlist others in her project by appealing to Americanism and Western scientific materialism. This is where Tonto's words came to mind. She begins with a cheap, flag-waving notion of "freedom:" "Must we choose between Buddhism and freedom? Perhaps in some brand of Buddhism, appropriate to a feudal system, peasants do not ask these questions. Americans, however, would probably choose freedom, thereby choosing, I believe, true dharma as well."
True Dharma, it seems, is Dharma that matches Carreon's culturally-determined criteria rather than those of the "feudal" culture of the alien Tibetans. She goes on:
But what are we surrendering? I would suggest we are surrendering something very valuable-our belief in objective, empirical reality, as revealed through scientific knowledge. We take this belief for granted, of course, because it is second nature.
First of all, "we" are scientific materialists. "Our" world-view is real. Everyone else's is superstition:
Once we agree that science provides a better explanation for phenomena than superstitions involving supernatural forces, there is plenty to agree on in this universe. Rather than cleaving to old ways, retaining magical notions as doctrinal elements, a viable religious philosophy joins with current knowledge of the day to open a way to live creatively and optimistically, thus providing concrete benefit to all.
Is "current knowledge" by definition incompatible with "old ways?" Does reality consist of only the "concrete" physical dimension? These questions are not asked. "We" know what reality is, and "we" know what will be of benefit to all. "We" are sure, for instance, that, "'we' have a very good understanding of what it means to be a 'bodhisattva,' but we don't call it that. We call it being a 'humanitarian' or a 'social activist.'" We do?
"We" are going to re-write Buddhism to suit our cultural prejudices. Never mind that Carreon spent several previous pages upbraiding Tibetans for doing this very thing. Since the vow-breaker is defending the self, and the self is fundamentally untenable, pretzel logic is required in this effort. So "we" are, on the one hand, going to return to the pure example of the Buddha:
Buddha's acts of cultural defiance are far more inspiring: his abandonment of kingship, his rejection of existing doctrine, his transcendence of gurus and asceticism. His self-reliance, in a word. Like the Buddha, who called everything into doubt, we too should question for our whole life.
On the other hand, "Old things are lost forever." "We" are going to move on, leaving the Tibetans to their tsampa and yak-dung fires and medieval notions.
Some of us might even find that our view of "enlightenment" must embrace more than the Buddha is said to have taught ... Someday, if we explore directly for ourselves, we might even be able to take these "mind" teachings out of the realm of philosophy, conjecture and fantasy, into the realm of reality. To do that, we're going to have to work with our culture and knowledge, and test these old ideas against scientific observations of mind. Contrary to what Tibetans think, that their doctrine has codified absolute and immutable principles, I think rather that they can be improved and developed.
Is it improvement to exchange one set of cultural limitations for another? What if realization is not within the parameters the EEG measures? "Slowly, we are all speaking the same language ... Science is allowing us to see the wonder of the universe and of ourselves in a way that has never happened before. Our visions are expanding. Someday we'll be able to travel through the universe. And who knows, maybe we'll even agree on what it means to meditate."
That language is English. The wonder of that universe we will travel can only exist within the limitations of the physical, measurable plane. And undoubtedly, the meditation "we" agree on will be what Carreon wants it to be. This is the logic of the vow-breaker trying to put reality back into the little box.
If individuals were really separate atomized units, and it were only a matter of Carreon's choices for her own path, none of this would matter much. But beings are connected, and the actions of one affect the lives and practice of others. It is also part of Carreon's choice to retreat from the fullness of reality that she has to convince everyone else to do as she does. Her culturally determined worldview requires it. This is the same conundrum indicated by the bumper sticker: "Against abortion? Don't have one." It is part of the anti-abortionists' religious belief system that everyone must do as they do. It's part of Carreon's belief system likewise, and it's part of the belief-system of quite a number of "Western Buddhist teachers" who seem intent not only on redefining Buddhism for themselves in their own image, but redefining it for everyone. "We" know best.
So, while like many Vajrayana practitioners, I would rather attend to the methods that I practice and leave others to attend to theirs, in this case I have to say I want no part of this "We." The culturally determined worldview of Western scientific materialism is just as limited as a "medieval superstitious" worldview. You are only exchanging one Me (or We) for another. I want to grow into what is beyond those shaky, untrustworthy walls. I have learned that I cannot do that from within their limitations. I have to be willing to take risks and make commitments where I see the glimmer of light through the walls, commitments to all of reality. For me - and for others - that includes samaya. That is freedom. The people who have chosen this path have to speak up for it, if only so that "we" will not define it out of existence. Too many of the rest of beings and things have need of it.