The economics of Buddhism books

The idea that you can make a lot of money by writing a Buddhist book gets some people really upset.

Brad Warner, a Zen teacher I admire, started getting a lot of flak recently when his books did “well.” People said he was “selling out” or had a swollen head. Rumors about his supposed misdeeds started circulating on the internet.

Internet rumors have similarly implied that the Aro lamas are in it for the money, and getting rich off of the sales of their books.

I wish it were possible to do that—because it would mean that there was a lot more interest in Buddhism than there actually is. There probably are a handful of authors whose Buddhist book royalties would cover their living expenses—but I would guess fewer than ten. Brad Warner, whose books are selling exceptionally well, says that the royalties for each one covers about six months of his rent. (He has a day job in the Japanese monster movie industry.)

The typical book contract gives the author about 10% of the cover price—around two dollars for each copy sold. If a Buddhist book sells a thousand copies, it is considered a significant success. To cover six months of Brad Warner’s rent, his books must be selling several thousand copies, which makes him a publishing star.

Writing a book is an immense amount of work—especially if you do a decent job at it. Per hour, you can make a lot more money flipping burgers than writing Buddhist books.

The alternative to a commercial publishing contract is to publish in-house. Aro Books publishes some of our lamas’ work. It runs at a loss, and is subsidized by donations. (Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen have donated all their royalties from their Shambhala Publications editions to Aro Books, but that is so little that it is not a major source of its funding.)

The economic value of Buddhist publication, if any, is publicity. If you have a book out, more people are likely to show up for your teaching events. If you can run those at a profit, books contribute. That is difficult, though. Brad Warner says he runs his at a loss; he subsidizes them with money from his day job. On average, Aro events run around break-even. Some lose money and some make a small profit—not nearly enough for anyone to live on, though.

I started writing a Buddhish book a few years ago. Once I understood how the publishing industry works, I lost interest. I had never expected to make any money on it, but I had the idea that books were the best way to reach a large audience with a coherent package of explanation. Realizing that I could expect to reach only a few hundred readers that way, it doesn’t seem worth the trouble. If I go public with the “book,” it will be on the web.

About five years ago, Ngak’chang Rinpoche said that Buddhism would soon go out of fashion. I didn’t believe him at first. I have noticed since then that the Buddhist section in typical book stores is half the size it was then. So I am afraid he’s right.

Emailing the Lamas from Afar

I am excited about this book. It is the first new one from my lamas, Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen, since 2002. It is perhaps the most accessible book they have written, and I hope it will introduce them to a new generation of Aro Buddhists.

The book is a collection of replies to emails sent by students. Most Aro apprentices see our lamas only twice a year, on retreats. Email conversations are their main means of individual teaching.

The book, therefore, gives some sense of what it is like to be an apprentice. The personality display of the lamas comes through clearly: the nonlinear whimsy of Ngak’chang Rinpoche’s humor and the kind good sense of Khandro Déchen’s advice.

The questions asked are likely to come up for all serious Vajrayana students, so the answers may be interesting and useful anyone practicing Tibetan Buddhism. The lamas comment on many topics that are important but too small and diverse to fit in a conventional book.

Some of the discussion is theoretical, but in most cases the students’ questions come out of the emotional complexity of everyday living. Vajrayana insists that such concerns are not an obstacle to practice (as Sutrayana might); they are the arena and fuel and essence of practice, and of realization too.

The email exchanges are organized into chapters. Each chapter has an introduction by the editor, Ngakma Zér-mé Dri’méd. These essays give context for the topic of each chapter, and are exceptionally clear, concise teachings themselves.

You can read more about the book, and order it if you like, here.

Below I offer two examples of email replies, from the book, followed by an excerpt from one of the introductory essays.

The ‘ten second problem’

Apprentice: I would like to ask you about practice. Why is it that my practice is often such a contrast to my everyday life, with the depression that seems to dominate me for periods? In silent sitting I am able to relax. At first I tried to stare into the face of my depression. I tried to find, force, and face it, and ‘stare it down’—but finally I relaxed, because I could never get my depression to rise.

Khandro Déchen: Depression does not rise—it sinks, and then you sink with it.

Apprentice: What happened was that an overwhelming and ongoing joy took over my sitting practice; joy about nothing in particular—but simply joy in terms of practising integration with whatever was arising in the sense fields.

Khandro Déchen: Quite. It is not possible to be depressed whilst integrating with the sense fields.

Apprentice: Why am I unable to take this practice into daily life? Getting up from the cushion and getting into contact with anything that reminds me of me and my problems always starts the spiral of depression again. Whenever I force myself onto the cushion, I am fine; leaving the gompa starts the countdown to hell.

Khandro Déchen: Yes . . . it would. The problem you are facing is one of integration. Integration with the sense fields is naturally the answer whilst sitting – but there is no integration when you leave your cushion. You should experiment with integrating your problems into your sitting practise. Deliberately think of one of your ‘life problems’ for ten seconds and then let it go. Repeat this ‘thinking of a problem for ten seconds’ every three to five minutes as you sit. Try this suggestion and let us know what happens. The ‘ten second problem’ will ruin your sitting at first – but gradually you will develop a spaciousness with regard to the concepts that give rise to depression.

I am the last person you should trust

Apprentice: I am feeling as though I know nothing. Teachings used to make intellectual sense to me—or so I thought—but at the moment it seems as if I need to go back to the start and try to understand something fundamental through my heart.

Khandro Déchen: It might be more a question of silent sitting. No matter how much intellectual sense we make, it will be of our making and therefore little better than any other fabrication. If you simply return to more basic teaching and try to work your way forward again, even via a more emotional sense, you will merely arrive at the same destination.

Apprentice: Is the heart part of the path?

Khandro Déchen: Not particularly. The path is connected more to your buttocks than your heart – in terms of understanding the teachings at least. You have to sit. If you gain glimpses of emptiness – your ‘heart’ will make sense of itself.

Apprentice: It feels as if this is a step along the way, just an unexpected one. It appears to be cutting a certain sort of grasping. I realise that I have read about non-duality, listened to teachings about non-duality, and talked with other apprentices about non-duality—but without any practical sense of what that really means.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche: Quite so. It would appear that this is a splendid opportunity and inspiration to sit. I used to get highly excited by the teachings I heard when I was first in India. I was so excited that I tried to explain them to others – but the more I tried to explain the more lost I became, until I ended up losing the inspirational understanding I had. Inspiration occurs when we hear teachings – but that inspiration does not last if there is insufficient basis in practice. That does not make the inspiration worthless or invalid – it simply means that we have to actualise the inspiration through our silent sitting.

Apprentice: I feel inspired by the sense of the teachings rather than the words of which they are composed.

Khandro Déchen: Excellent – that is a most useful approach with material on nonduality.

Apprentice: And being in your presence moves me to open in trust.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche: Well—gag me with a spoon—if you pardon the expression. I think I would rather you simply sat. I am the last person you should trust. After you have spent more time sitting, trust will be self-accomplished rather than having to be inculcated, even through devotion. Devotion is only feasible through experiencing emptiness.

Dzogchen as path (chapter introduction excerpt)

If the experience of non-duality is the starting point or base for Dzogchen, it might seem that there would be no place to go from there. The path and the fruit would be unnecessary. In an absolute sense, this is true. But Dzogchen is a vehicle or yana because as ordinary human beings, we do indeed go somewhere. We wander off and forget who we are. I wonder if there is anyone involved in any spiritual practice who has not had the experience of forgetting what they know and then remembering again and thinking, “Oh, I remember now. How could I have forgotten that?” Returning from those moments or days or months of forgetting are the path aspect of Dzogchen.

This happens for all kinds of reasons. I experience it most often when the demands of ordinary life circumstances on my attention rise to a velocity where I lose my usual schedule of formal practice. A week may go by while I am visiting distant family or taking part in one of those manufactured deadline dramas at work, and I begin to feel a little lost. Then I am able to practise sitting meditation again and I feel like I have been holding my breath for a week. There is a great release of breath and I think, “Yes. I remember.”

The practice aspect of Dzogchen comprises all the ways that we can be reminded of who we really are, what we have been all along but have forgotten. That is why Dzogchen includes such a great variety of practices. Dzogchen practices can be elaborate—in terms of cycles of physical exercise, for instance—but many are deceptively simple. Dzogchen includes practices that can be performed in a moment, where remembering to practise and practising are simultaneous. There are also practices in Dzogchen that consist entirely of how one views phenomenal reality. An accomplished Dzogchen practitioner might not feel lost for long in the wilds of office theatrics, because opportunities to practise are constantly presenting themselves.

Heart of Sun and Moon

My first experience of Aro was a weekend program titled “Vajra Romance,” in 1996. I did not have high expectations on arrival. The topic sounded ridiculous. However, I had some personal interest in romance. It seemed unlikely that Tibetan Buddhism would say anything useful about it, but I was curious.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche’s talks that weekend floored me. He wove together the theme of romance with Dzogchen teachings on the non-duality of duality and non-duality. I was reading Dzogchen books at the time. Even just as abstract philosophy, what he said went far beyond anything I had found.

When I became an Aro apprentice, in 1997, the aroter.org web site announced that a book on vajra romance, Entering the Heart of the Sun & Moon, would be published in 1996. Apparently, it had been already delayed a year. For another decade, it was “to be published next year.” Thereby hangs a story.

In the mean time, for the next ten years, this web page was only publicly-available Aro teaching on vajra romance. It was a revised transcript of an invited keynote speech at a conference of “transpersonal” psychotherapists in 1994. Although not psychotherapists of any sort, Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen tried to explain Dzogchen concepts and practices in a way that would be understandable to that audience.

really, you know, like, Californian, you know?

Unfortunately, publication of the speech gave some Buddhists the impression that the vajra romance teachings were really, you know, like, Californian, you know? Psychotherapeutic and New-Age-y and superficial—some kind of feel-good nonsense that had nothing to do with Buddhism. That was an easy mistake to make. The talk used the language of its audience. It presented only the most obvious parts of the teaching, due to psychotherapists’ unfamiliarity with Buddhism, and the short time available. No more-complete presentation was written for the web, because it always seemed that the full book was about to be ready.

Vajra romance is one of only two topics in which, it seemed, Aro had something unusual to say. Some Buddhists came to the conclusion that the Aro teachings were all New Age psychobabble. This was entirely wrong—but a somewhat reasonable mistake to have made at one time.

Entering the Heart of the Sun & Moon was drastically delayed for two reasons. One was an almost comic series of logistical obstacles to Aro publications. Those are past now; this is the second new Aro book this year, and I expect at least one more. Practical hassles cannot account for a 13-year delay, however.

For most of that time, the authors pondered how, and whether, to make the teachings public. There were several difficulties and dangers.

• The philosophical component is extremely subtle. It comes from Dzogchen men-ngak-dé, which traditionally can only be taught in person because it is so difficult to understand. “Men-ngak-dé” translates roughly as “the part that can’t be explained.” It may be impossible to convey in a book.
• The practical component is extremely simple. It is easy to say “oh, that’s obvious,” and then ignore it. It might also be easy to mix it up with other advice about relationships. Vajra romance is actually incompatible with most other relationship advice. It may be impossible to see this unless you already have extensive experience and understanding of Tibetan Buddhism.

Here is an audio recording from 2006, in which Ngak’chang Rinpoche discusses this problem. (This recording also serves as a general introduction to the topic. You might find it useful if you are deciding whether you want to get the book.)

So—after a bit of a wait, Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon has been published, in April 2009. Now what?

One danger is that the book will be ignored as either incomprehensible or obvious. That would be a sadly missed opportunity, but no harm.

an enormous hunger

The other danger is that it could be appropriated, in a superficial way, by New Age forces. There is an enormous hunger in the West for spiritual teachings on romance. Romantic problems are one of the main things that bring people to religion nowadays. Spiritual teachers want to meet that demand—for good motivations and bad ones. Yet most religions have very little to say about romance.

Misunderstood and mixed up with holistic razzmatazz, the vajra romance teachings could become actively harmful. Tibetan Buddhism uses heterosexual union as a metaphor for non-duality. If non-duality is not understood, these teachings could simply reinforce sexist and heterosexist stereotypes. Someone might try to say that “according to Tibetan Buddhism, men’s sacred role is this, and women’s sacred role is that.” That would be a hideous distortion. It would be actively harmful to sane relationships, which recognize the fluidity of male and female roles, and the presence of both masculine and feminine characteristics in every human being.

Similarly, the book discusses the role of the five elements (a/k/a “Buddha families”) in relationships. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s presentation of this material has been widely misunderstood as a theory of personality types. Putting people into five brightly-colored boxes is exactly opposite to the essential Dzogchen principle of self-liberation.

For a long time, Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen planned to make the book available only to people who had been through a weekend program on the subject. That would make it less likely that anyone could set themselves up as experts on “secret Tibetan teachings on relationships” after having just read the book.

unspeakably bizarre

After much consideration, they decided that the material was too valuable to keep under wraps. The book is available to anyone—but the authors re-wrote it in a way that makes it difficult to misuse. Key parts are written in a style that is virtually impossible to understand intellectually. They are, however, easily understandable experientially. Those who have had the relevant experiences will recognize what is described, even when the words are not comprehensible. For this reason, it should be impossible to attempt to teach the material without a deep understanding of it. One could not parrot the words, because they are unspeakably bizarre.

A coming-out party

Entering the Heart of Sun & Moon is the first book to present a distinctively Aro teaching. Previous Aro books have discussed standard Tibetan Buddhist topics in the unusual Aro style—but have not said anything that could not be found elsewhere. (Vajra romance is taught in every Tibetan lineage, but rarely in much detail. The only extensive non-Aro presentation I know of was by Jetsünma Sera Khandro Rinpoche (1892-1940).)

This is an exciting moment. You might almost say that, 34 years after its rediscovery, the Aro gTér is finally having its coming-out party. A book on Aro sKu-mNyé, which is (as far as I know) unlike anything found elsewhere, should be out this summer. Books on other specifically Aro topics are in various stages of development.

But for now—Entering the Heart of Sun & Moon is a magnificent book. It is strange, beautiful, profound, fascinating, practical, enlightening, and utterly unique.

Back to the future

From the history of Vajrayana, I have learned a lot about its present and future.

• History helps explain why Vajarayana is as it is now. Many aspects of modern Vajrayana do not make sense in religious terms. They do make sense when Vajrayana is understood as partly the product of cultural, social, and political processes over centuries.
• History shows that Vajrayana can be far more diverse than it appears today. The differences between the modern Schools of Vajrayana are much smaller than the differences between modern Vajrayana and past Vajrayana. At each stage in its development, Vajrayana has adapted to changing cultural circumstances. Accepting these many past versions of Vajrayana as legitimate opens the possibility of very different, legitimate forms of Vajrayana in the future. Because circumstances are changing especially rapidly now, Vajrayana will probably need to look quite different in a hundred years if it is to survive.
• Some past forms of Vajrayana may be better for the 21^st Century than the main forms now practiced. I will give an example at the end of this page.

Innovation and tradition

Modern Western culture is based on a fundamental confidence: the belief in innovation and progress. It mostly assumes that whatever is newest is best.

Buddhist culture is based on a fundamental lack of confidence: the belief in degeneration from a glorious past. It mostly assumes that no one can come close to the accomplishments of ancient masters. Innovation is not allowed. Whatever is oldest is best. To count as “authentic,” a doctrine or practice has to be traced back to a mostly-mythical Golden Age.

So the main reason to write history, in traditional Buddhist culture, was to prove that Buddhism, as practiced by the author’s sect, was exactly the same as taught by an unquestioned saint of the distant past. Only then could current practice be considered authentic.

traditional history obscured innovation

As understood by current Western historians, the history of Buddhism mainly concerns power struggles between competing, innovating sects. Each sect had to use history to demonstrate that its new version of Buddhism was the ancient and therefore authentic one. So a main function of traditional Buddhist history was to obscure what actually happened. As each innovation occurred, imaginary history had to be constructed to prove that it was not, in fact, new. Also, Buddhism as previously practiced often had to be hidden, or explained away somehow.

Fortunately, because of Buddhist respect for texts and the past, many histories were preserved, from many periods of the development of Vajrayana. These each tell quite different stories. Because that was inconvenient, older histories were rarely if ever read—but they survived.

Vajrayana has been far more diverse over time

Western historians have been using them to reconstruct a more objective history. This is work-in-progress, with key discoveries in the last decade. Many questions are still unanswered. However, what is now known is quite enough to demonstrate that past Vajrayana was constantly changing, and has been far more diverse over time than at present.

Warnings

The rest of this page discusses some starting points if you are interested in learning more about Vajrayana history yourself.

I have to start with several warnings:

• Much of the objective history of Vajrayana is ugly. As a practitioner, you will probably find it upsetting. To the extent that your devotion to Vajrayana is based on stories of saints with pure motivation, your faith will be shaken. It did significantly harm my practice for a while. You may not want to risk that. Please take this seriously, and consult your teacher if in doubt.
• With one partial exception—Samuel’s book, described below—the Western history of Vajrayana is in academic form. It is written for professional historians. (Perhaps someday there will be a popular overview written for practitioners.) If you are not used to academic style, it will be hard going. You will also need a fairly complete understanding of modern Vajrayana, because doctrines and practices are named, not explained. Some familiarity with the Tibetan language is very helpful.
• Knowledge is developing rapidly, and the interpretations in older works may be overturned by current or future works. Below, I discuss book-length works, which lag the journal literature. Journal articles usually focus on tiny points, however.

Starting points

The best introduction is Geoffrey Samuel’s 1993 book Civilized Shamans. It is written for a general educated audience, rather than professional historians, so it is less difficult than the other works below.

Samuel’s main aim was to describe the diversity of Tibetan Buddhism both over time and across sects. He focuses particularly on an opposition between the monastic, scholastic, sutric, urban, “civilized” strain of Tibetan Buddhism and the non-monastic, yogic, tantric, village, “shamanic” strain. These have been in creative tension from the beginning. Much is now known that was unknown in 1993, so some of Samuel’s interpretations are incomplete or even incorrect, but overall it’s a great book.

Ronald Davidson’s two books form the most up-to-date overview of Vajrayana history. Indian Esoteric Buddhism (2003) covers the period up to Tantra’s introduction into Tibet; Tibetan Renaissance (2005) describes its subsequent development. I found various parts of these frustrating, upsetting, boring, exciting, and fascinating.

Samuel and Davidson cover general Vajrayana history. As a Nyingmapa, I’m particularly interested in the history of the Nyingma school. The following works are good starting points for that.

For a general history, Dudjom Rinpoche’s 1991 The Nyingma School is invaluable. It is the definitive statement of the modern Nyingma tradition’s understanding of itself. It is a mixture of visionary and objective history, however. This is not a criticism, but if it is important to you to know which is which, the book won’t always help.

Jacob Dalton’s 2002 PhD thesis is a history of the Nyingma tradition in relationship to a single key document, the Sutra of Gathered Intentions. Actually a tantra, not a sutra, it is officially considered the root text of Anuyoga. It is, therefore, officially, one of the three most important Nyingma texts—together with the root tantras of Mahayoga and Atiyoga. However, it was not originally an Anuyoga text at all; and for most of its existence it has not actually functioned as one, either.

Dalton’s work is exceptionally interesting in showing the ways that this text has been repeatedly re-interpreted in order to suit changing cultural, social, and political circumstances. Because of its supposedly central role in the Nyingma tradition, these re-interpretations reflect central concerns of the tradition at each stage in its history.

Along the way, we find answers to puzzling questions about modern (post-1900) Nyingma practice. For example, why is the main modern function of the empowerment ritual entirely unrelated to the function prescribed for it in scripture? Why is it that almost no one actually practices Anuyoga any longer?

Samten Karmay’s 1988 The Great Perfection was a breakthrough history of Dzogchen. It was effectively the starting point for separating objective and visionary history. It’s still the only book-length overview. However, many important documents have been found since 1988 that give a much fuller understanding of how Dzogchen changed over time. Unfortunately, this understanding has not yet been summarized, and is scattered across numerous journal articles and PhD theses.

The current consensus of Western historians is that Dzogchen developed gradually in Tibet. It was not imported from India or Uddiyana (other than, possibly, in seed form). Dzogchen tends now to be taught as though it were a single, coherent, homogeneous system that differs only in detail between lineages. The historical perspective is that what counted as “Dzogchen” changed dramatically and repeatedly over time, and was often a matter of intense political controversy.

The closest we have to an up-to-date synthesis is David Germano’s long 2005 article “The Funerary Transformation of the Great Perfection.” It contrasts earlier and later Dzogchen. The early “pristine” Dzogchen was highly varied, and was concerned with the philosophy of non-duality and with extremely simple meditation practices. Later Dzogchen became increasingly uniform, and increasingly concerned ritual performance, in the style of Mahayoga. (I have described this as “yana slip” earlier.)

back to the future

As I mentioned early on this page, I think some earlier forms of Vajrayana may be more appropriate to 21^st Century circumstances than are the current dominant forms. This is an example. Ritualized Dzogchen is probably less useful now than the older, “pristine” form. In fact, if Germano’s account has a hero, it is Nyangrel Nyima Özer. In the 1100s, he resisted the ritualization of Dzogchen. He was probably responsible for the Chiti teachings, which may be the high point of the “pristine” tradition.

Why Brad Warner matters

Brad Warner is a “controversial” Soto Zen teacher. I have long been a big fan of his blogs, but hadn’t gotten around to reading his books. I’ve just read his new one, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. I liked it so much I immediately read his Hardcore Zen as well. These books cover familiar Buddhist fundamentals, so I won’t talk about what they say. Instead, this page is about how Mr. Warner says it.

He is controversial for two reasons. One is boring and one is interesting. The boring reason is that he does not apologize for breaking the Buddhist precepts. Chocolate is an account of his life in 2007, during which he smoked dope (he didn’t like it) and had an extra-marital affair with one of his students (he liked that). His main Buddhist blog runs on a porn site. He aggressively condemns teachers he thinks distort Zen, and uses a lot of swear words. (Parental advisory: offensive language appears below.) Some people have strong opinions about this. I don’t, so I find that controversy uninteresting.

Mr. Warner is interestingly controversial not for what he does or is, but for what he doesn’t and isn’t. Buddhism in the West has hardened around two poles. One approach is caught up in details of esoteric doctrines and rituals. Books from this camp are written in a stilted hybrid of Asian and Western academic styles. The other pole is mixed up with psychotherapy, political correctness, and New Age nonsense. It is described in the gooey style of self-help books. Mr. Warner does not conform to either style:

for way too long Buddhism has been the exclusive province of a) whiny intellectuals who try and make it as complicated as possible so no one but their friends can possibly discuss it and b) spaced out new age waste cases who haven’t got a single clue what Buddha was on about, but they like that little Om symbol. I’m glad to see it reclaimed by normal people. And by “normal people” I mean, of course, booze soaked heavy metal musicians in leather and studs.

The narrowing of Buddhism to two main styles raises a pair of issues. One is that both styles tend towards self-righteous self-justification. The second is that both mostly exclude “normal people.” Mr. Warner’s unusual approach addresses these problems.

Fuck that holy-ocity shit

Holiness—religious purity—is important to both approaches. The traditionalist approach is about being impeccably orthodox and doing everything according to the book; the Westernized approach is about being excruciatingly nice and not harming anyone or anything. Both have value, but Zen and Dzogchen see holiness, and the attempt to be pure, as an obstacle. It is just another way of reinforcing one’s self-image. As a result, the two dominant contemporary approaches risk missing the essence of Buddhism.

Much of Mr. Warner’s unusual style seems to aim at breaking through these misunderstandings. He has zero interest in tradition for its own sake, writes in ordinary (if colorful) English, and wants to make Buddhism accessible to punks and metalheads. He does his best not to be nice (although you get the sense that this is a bit of an act). His offensive language—

These days in America, Zen stuff always gets all caught up in religious ideas of righteousness and holy-ocity. Fuck that shit. (Chocolate, p. 207)

—is a way of cutting through the purity orientation, and making Buddhism available to people who have no interest in being holy.

Buddhism for “normal” people

Whatever their merits, the therapeutic/New Age and academic/traditional approaches each appeal only to small subsets of the population. Most people find nicey-nicey Buddhism stupid, and have no patience for the intellectual sort. Neither seems to have any use in their actual lives. Buddhism may not be for everyone, but it should be useful for many people who are turned off by these main available approaches. It ought to be presented in ways that would be attractive to people from all walks of life.

This is the point of Mr. Warner’s comments about Buddhism being reclaimed by normal people. It is not that academics and psychotherapists are abnormal. And it is not that anyone else really is normal—no one is. But Buddhism should be available for booze-soaked heavy metal musicians in leather and studs, and for

robbers and writers / and cops and calligraphers / studio tape-ops / industrial spies

In Chocolate, Mr. Warner writes about his realization that he is needed, because no one else speaks to his audience:

I had a duty in North America. I know I'm gonna make half my readers throw their books across the room in disgust when I say this. There was no other Buddhist teacher like me in America. And gosh darn it all, someone like me was absolutely necessary. And too bad if you don't like hearing that.

I was struck, reading his books, by how many echoes of my lamas I heard, particularly in their diagnoses of the ways Buddhism is misunderstood in the West. Of course, there are also vast differences. But Mr. Warner and the Aro lamas both have unusual presentations that address segments of the population that are otherwise neglected by Buddhist teachers.

Both insist that, for “normal people,” Buddhism has to be a realistic approach to the nitty-gritty of “normal” life. In Chocolate, Mr. Warner writes about Buddhism’s role in his daily life during a year in which his mother died, he lost his job, and his marriage collapsed. He says:

My life as a Zen dude is sort of an experiment. I want to see if it’s possible to live the principles expounded by Buddha and Dogen and all the rest of them without running off to a mountain and living in a cave with moss growing off my beard or whatever it is people imagine you should do as a Buddhist. If this practice and this philosophy don’t work for people in the real world with real jobs and real lives, then what good are they?

Compare the front page of the Aro community web site:

Aro is principally concerned with transforming our experience of everyday being, rather than achieving an esoteric or spiritualised mode of existence . . . The Aro teachers are not monks or nuns. They are ordained Tantrikas – whose lives are, in many ways, quite ordinary. They may have conventional jobs, or raise children. Many teach as married couples. Their wisdom is embodied in the ways they live everyday life. Facing the same life challenges as their students, they are able to offer advice that is grounded in personal experience as well as profound religious understanding.

For normal people, Buddhism has to be pruned back to its essence. This does not mean adapting it to make it palatable. It also does not mean that only “basic, introductory” material is suitable for lay people. Both those approaches have been tried, and I think they are wrong.

For both Mr. Warner and Aro, the essential practice is formless silent sitting—called shikantaza in Zen and sem-dé in Dzogchen. This is a practice anyone can do; but it is not “basic” or “introductory.” Both Soto Zen and Dzogchen say that formless silent sitting is enlightenment. Nothing is “more advanced.” There are innumerable valuable practices that supplement, reinforce, accelerate, or extend silent sitting. They are worth learning, in time, but they are adjuncts.

For both Mr. Warner and Aro, the essential scripture is the Heart Sutra. You can read it in two minutes, but it is a complete statement of the non-duality of form and emptiness, which is the high point of Buddhist doctrine. No text is “more profound.” It is valuable to study the innumerable Buddhist scriptures in depth; but they do nothing more than elaborate and comment on the theme of the Heart Sutra.

Fucky-ducky

You do what you do
Fucky-ducky
You do it anyhow
People don't like it
Fucky-ducky
People like it
Fucky-ducky
You do what you do
Fucky-ducky
—Zen Master Philip Whalen, “Cynical Song”

After his mother died, and his grandmother died, and he lost his job, and his marriage disintegrated, all during 2007, Brad Warner took a vow:

I vowed to be an asshole for the rest of my life.

What I mean by that is that I just don’t give a shit anymore . . . I’m gonna say what needs saying and do what needs doing, and if people don’t like it, tough titty for them . . . Watching my grandmother die, I realized we all have a limited time in this place . . . So I’d better get my ass in gear and at least do a few things . . . (Chocolate, pp. 206-9)

In Tibetan terms, this is “wrathful personality display.” “Wrathful” teaching largely consists of directness: saying what needs to be said without candy-coating it.

Wrathful teachers display unique, larger-than-life personalities, that express the particular work they have taken on. Mr. Warner describes his own teacher:

When I first started attending Nishijima’s lectures, I found them infuriating. His frank arrogance was contemptible. You’d think the guy believed no one on earth understood Buddhism except for him . . . Gudo Nishijima is like a force of nature. Describing his personality is like trying to describe the personality of an earthquake or a typhoon. Mostly you’re not concerned about what he’s really like so much as concerned about how to stay alive until he passes by. He’s just a little old bald man in robes but he has this voice that can rattle the walls for miles in all directions. There are times he seems to be baiting the audience to come after him, sort of like GG Allin used to do. (Hardcore, pp. 52-3)

Mr. Warner’s own personality display is highly unusual. That in itself is valuable. He writes:

I’m the kind of person who wants to do the opposite of whatever most other people are doing in a given situation. Even when I played hardcore punk I refused to cut my hair because I liked seeing how supposedly “non-conformist” punks got so upset at somebody who didn’t conform to their society. If I’m in a room full of pompous wanna-be Buddhists all trying to be pure of heart and mind, I just want to rip my clothes off, plug my Stratocaster into a stack of Marshalls and blow their fake-ass beatific smiles off their faces. All that soft soap lovey dovey good vibes shit makes me gag. But when I’m here with all the punk rock nutcases I get to be the guy who advocates quiet and equilibrium. Cool.

One of the major themes of his current teaching is the importance of understanding that Buddhist teachers are not special. He does that by writing candidly about his own life. Unfortunately, it is likely that many people will just conclude that he is not special, and that his recognition as a Zen Master was a mistake, but that other, seemingly better-behaved teachers are special.

Teaching wrathfully is the most difficult way, because it is so easily misunderstood. Mr. Warner has vowed to manifest wrathfully, near the beginning of his teaching career. That takes great courage. He will doubtless make mistakes. (Quite likely he already has. There is an unfortunate public spat between him and some of his dharma brothers. I have no idea whose fault that is, if anyone’s.) On the other hand, as he realized while watching his grandmother die, we don’t have any time to waste. We’ll all be dead before we ever feel ready.

What Buddhism teaches, ultimately, is a way of being—not doctrines or practices. I have learned a great deal from Mr. Warner about how to be. I would not want to be like him. Rather, I am inspired by his being unapologetically what he is.

I practice Buddhism so that I can be like myself:

There's only one thing that I know how to do well
And I've often been told that you only can do
What you know how to do well
And that's be you
Be what you're like!
Be like yourself!

I invite you to be like yourself.

Finding Our Sea-Legs

Will Buckingham writes thinkBuddha, my favorite blog. Finding Our Sea-Legs: Ethics, Experience and the Ocean of Stories is his first book of “Buddhish” ethical philosophy. It is a remarkable and important work.

The book is unconventional in form: written in colloquial English with little jargon. It tells many stories: about talking fish, million-year-old princesses, and the need to lower your mast as you near the horizon, lest your boat get stuck between the sky and the sea.

Finding our Sea-Legs is also unconventional in content. It is one of very few books about a key problem in contemporary philosophy: the tension between the urgency of ethics and their inherent ambiguity.

Buckingham is, approximately, a Buddhist, and I find the book infused with Buddhist sensibility. However, it rarely makes any explicit reference to Buddhism. Its reference point is 20^th Century Continental philosophy, although it does not require previous knowledge of that tradition. (Buckingham mainly rejects its conclusions, which makes me wonder why he discusses it at all. Perhaps his editors required him to sound a bit like a conventional philosopher.)

This is an unconventional review. Rather than discussing the book in its own, Western philosophical terms, I explain why I think it is important in Buddhist terms. To do that, I will draw out what I imagine are its “hidden” Buddhist themes. (This may misrepresent the author’s intent.)

Emptiness and ethics

Emptiness is a central fact of Buddhism. Emptiness may be understood as the fluidity, transience, interweaving, wobbliness, and ambiguity of all things. “All things” include ethics—so ethics are inherently ill-defined. This, no one wants to hear.

Religions and philosophers have almost always said that ethics must have a source and a foundation. There must be one true ethical system, that tells us unambiguously whether any action is right or wrong. There must be a way to know for certain that the system is the right one.

It might be nice if that were so; but it isn’t. There are lots of ways we know it isn’t, that I can’t go into here. The Heart Sutra, if you take it seriously, is reason enough. In the West, the emptiness of ethics has been recognized by philosophers since Nietzsche announced the Death of God—which included the death of any hope for a replacement source of ethical certainty.

No one wants to hear that ethics is empty, because they wrongly fear that it implies moral nihilism. We fear that if there is no solid foundation for ethics, then there can be no ethics at all. But this is a false dilemma. We can have ethics without certainty or perfectly crisp rules. The simple proof of this is that we do, usually, act ethically—and we don’t have certainty or perfectly crisp rules.

This fact has been apparent in the West for more than a century, and yet almost no philosophers have even tried to understand its implications. It has been apparent in Buddhism for much longer, but has also been firmly ignored by almost all Buddhist schools—who fear that if the supposed Law of Karma were challenged, the social order would collapse.

This may be the reason Finding Our Sea-Legs makes so little reference to Buddhism. Buddhism, I think, has little to teach us about ethics. I am afraid that is probably a controversial statement; I may explain it elsewhere someday. In the meantime, I can say that the only Buddhist system I know of that explicitly admits the implications of emptiness for ethics—Dzogchen—has, as far as I know, no more to say on the subject. Dzogchen is the practice of Buddhas; and the actions of Buddhas are said to be perfectly spontaneous and perfectly appropriate—automatically. So they have no need of ethics. What about the rest of us?

Empirical ethics

We do have ethics; and they cannot have a foundation. We wanted a foundation because we face ethical uncertainty, which is uncomfortable. We want to do better ethically. We know that we all sometimes fail through lack of ethical understanding or skill—lack of wisdom, as much as lack of will.

To make ethical progress—as individuals, and as a society—we need to better understand how we already do as well, ethically, as we do. We need to understand how ethics actually works in the real world. We really don’t know much about that.

Philosophers and religious innovators have mostly not asked this question. They like to make up simple, universal rules (“thou shalt not steal”) based on general, abstract principles. Such rules are not much use in practice. For example, most people would agree that there are times when it is right to steal—to save a life when there is no alternative, for instance. It is also often ambiguous whether a particular action constitutes theft or not.

Instead, we need to abandon theoretical preconceptions, and carefully observe the complex, concrete reality of ethical perception and action in context. There are several ways this can be done. Will Buckingham mentions two: empirical science and phenomenology. Finding Our Sea-Legs addresses only phenomenology, so I would like to say a little about science.

Several sciences have started looking seriously at the details of ethical choice just in the past fifteen years. What they are finding is surprising, illuminating, and probably useful. (If you are curious, you might like to read about the work of Jonathan Haidt in a New York Times article or an essay he wrote.)

There are two key discoveries. One is that ethics is, in part, a built-in capacity that evolved to allow social communities to function. (Chimpanzees appear to have ethics. Ethics are not entirely a cultural construction.) The second is that there are multiple ethical systems built into our brains, and they are only loosely coordinated. Ethics is not a single thing, and therefore cannot be made entirely coherent.

These facts resonate with similar conclusions that Will Buckingham comes to by means of phenomenology. Phenomenology, in his wonderfully jargon-free definition, is the study of what is it like to experience something. His phenomenology of ethics asks “what is ethical experience like?” He suggests that we need to look at “the ways in which the eyes slide to one side when we want to sidestep our responsibilities, and the sensation in the chest when we encounter another’s suffering.”

The incoherence of experience

Looking closely at experience is the essential method of Buddhist meditation. In emptiness meditation (shamatha/shi-nè), we simply allow experience to be as it is, without judgment or preconception.

In meditation, we find first that experience is incoherent. Time, as experienced, is not a uniform, continuous flow: it jumps about, speeds up, slows down, stops altogether, and changes texture. We find that the boundary between ourselves and the world is vague, shifting, and sometimes absent. Where we thought we had a self, we find disparate heaps: of memories, thoughts, emotions, and sensations. The thoughts that weave them together, which we believed were our own, are mainly just borrowed from our cultural “thought soup.”

We find, also, that this incoherence is not caused by meditation, but exposed by it. We discover that our experience is incoherent also while doing dishes, talking to a friend, or surfing the web.

We find, finally, that this incoherence is usually not a problem. We do not have to “hold ourselves together” at all times. Most contradictions in our understanding are benign. The different ways we come to know the world—through head and heart, for instance—complement each other more than they clash.

All this applies to ethics. Will Buckingham describes ethics as “a great, bewildering muddle of good-will and hope and confusion.” And that is fine. It is fine because it could not be any other way. Ethics is a complex contingent construction. It is a matter of biology and history and culture, not crystalline eternal principles.

Sailing the sea of stories

Stories and the sea are the themes of Finding our Sea-Legs.

Will Buckingham takes the telling and hearing of stories as his phenomenological method. Using that method, he finds the same incoherencies—and illustrates them with stories—that I’ve described as discoveries of meditation.

He develops the ocean as a metaphor for emptiness. (Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche often used “groundlessness” as a translation of shunyata.) We have all, Buckingham says, always been at sea, when it comes to ethics. For thousands of years, philosophers and prophets have proclaimed the possibility of finding land: solid ground. But no one has ever reached any. It is time, he says, to turn away from that fantasy of ethical certainty. Instead, we can make genuine progress in our actual, groundless situation. Metaphorically, we can learn to be better navigators. We can study the winds and the waves and the stars; and can learn to steer around shoals, thunderstorms and whirlpools, guiding our ships into calmer waters where we can gaze at the sea and the sky and watch fish play.

Finding our Sea-Legs also uses the ocean as a metaphor for the unbounded, tangled dimension of stories. Stories do not exist in isolation, but always in relationship to other stories, and to their hearers and tellers. Likewise, we—who are hearers and tellers—do not exist other than in relationship to stories. We navigate the sea of stories as a way to make sense of experience—as a way of finding meanings.

It is wrong to suppose that each story has a meaning—the moral of the fable. In stories we find meanings, not the meaning, because like ourselves, they are shifting patchworks. Stories do not work by conveying information. They must be experienced. Stories are experienced in the body; Buckingham discusses at length the “shudder” we feel in response to ethically difficult stories. Stories transform hearers, tellers, and other stories, in ways we cannot articulate, but that are resources we use to navigate ethical difficulties. Stories are ways to bind together different ways of knowing: for instance, they may translate between religious experience and rational philosophy.

The possibility of joy

Ethics, in the Western tradition, are supposed to make you miserable. The depth of your moral seriousness is measured by the amount of agony you create for yourself around ethical choices. After the death of God, Existentialism added angst—the fear and gloom you have a duty to feel in the face of the supposed problem of moral nihilism.

All this is quite unnecessary. It is antithetical to the Buddhist ideal of the Bodhisattva, who always maintains a light heart.

Finding Our Sea-Legs aims to “ease the hydrophobic shuddering that sees, in these endless waters, nothing but the endlessly rolling darkness.” Ethical nihilism is a philosophical pseudo-problem, not a practical one. On the other hand, the author sees ethical eternalism—belief that somewhere there is solid ground—as the source of irresolvable ethical conflicts.

When we recognize that ethics can only ever be a muddle—but is no less important for that—we can work together to resolve difficulties “with all the kindness, patience, and care that we can muster.” Will Buckingham concludes that “there is no way out” of the ocean, yet ethics offers “not an intolerable burden” but “the possibility of joy.”