“Fit”

Within a major religion such as Christianity or Buddhism, there are hundreds of lineages or sects to choose among.

In Western religion, seeking a spiritual home is often thought of in terms of truth. One looks for the right sect that has the true answers.

Finding a home within Buddhism is a matter of individual “fit” rather than ultimate correctness. Buddhism is a pragmatic religion. It is concerned mainly with methods, rather than truth. Because we are all different, different methods will be useful for us.

I believe that all Buddhist sects are valid. However, they offer different teachings and practices, and have different styles or “flavors.” What matters is finding one that offers what you need, as a unique individual, to move in the direction you want to go.

This typically takes several years of exploration. It involves finding out:

• What style of teaching and practice do I find inspiring? What motivates me to practice?
• Where am I at, spiritually? What am I currently capable of? What are my strengths and weaknesses?
• What are the different directions I can go from here? Among those, which direction do I want to go?
• What tools are available to take me from where I am to where I want to go?
• Which Buddhist teachers and lineages offer those tools? Where do I feel a heart connection? What do I like?

I will discuss these questions further in the next few pages. But you might like to stop now and spend a little time thinking about your current answers.

It could be helpful to write them down, perhaps in a diary, and save them. When you read them again in a few months or years, you will learn something about yourself. You will see that your answers have changed. You will have moved, in a direction. That will help understand where you want to go next.

An advice vacuum

I have some confessions to make. And I would like to ask for your help.

When I first started writing Approaching Aro, my outline called for a page on the topic of “approaching” in general. By that I mean the process of looking around for a spiritual system that is a good personal fit, evaluating alternatives, gradually getting more involved, asking sensible questions at each step.

“Spiritual shopping,” some call it; but that sounds disparaging. I think this “shopping” is something everyone ought to do, before getting seriously involved with any religious system.

I expected that writing the “approaching in general” page would be quick and easy—because I expected to steal the content. (That’s my first confession.) I didn’t know of anything about this written specifically for Buddhists, so I planned to read a couple of books aimed at a mainstream audience, extract the main points, make some minor changes to reflect the Buddhist context, write it up quickly and move on.

I kept putting it off, because I had trouble finding the “how to choose a sect” books written for a general audience. It didn’t seem pressing.

I kept an eye out. I asked around. I googled.

I asked some more people. I googled again.

Nothing.

I feel stupid. (That’s my second confession.) Three years have gone by. I still think that there must be something worthwhile written about this—but I haven’t found it yet. For instance, there are high school and college religious guidance counselors—surely there is something written for them, explaining how to help students clarify their religious orientation and aim them toward a suitable tradition? If so, I haven’t found it.

There are some things written on “how to choose a religion”—but the ones I have found make it a joke. They ridicule the process, more or less good-naturedly; the implication is that any comparison or evaluation is obviously silly. I don’t understand this.

There is quite a lot of serious writing on “how people do choose religions.” What I have read falls into two categories.

• Some is sociological or anthropological, and looks at the social and cultural bases for choice. Most people choose religious groups mainly on the basis of “do I feel comfortable with these people.” But I think this should be only one of many criteria, and not the most important.
• The rest is written from the standpoint of an author’s own religious tradition, which he assumes is the only right one, for everyone. He explains to a general audience why you ought to convert to his tradition. Or, to the church leadership, he explains how to convince seekers to convert. I find this unhelpful. What’s needed is neutral advice on how to find a good personal fit, not justification for the One True Way.

The only advice genre I’ve found explains “how to spot a dangerous cult.” There’s lots written about that, and it’s worth reading some. But it addresses the question “is this religious group good for anyone.” The question I am more interested in is “supposing this group is basically OK and useful for someone, how do I figure out whether it is a good fit for me?”

Through most of history, the question “how do I go about choosing a religion” has rarely come up. In most times and places, there were few options—often only one. Where religions coexisted, almost everyone adopted the religion of their family/tribe/ethnic group, without question.

But the “spiritual supermarket” has been open in the West for decades. Tens of millions of people do deliberately look about and comparison-shop. That is a daunting process. Wouldn’t some advice be helpful?

I have been through this myself, and I have talked with many other people in various stages of the process. I have quite a lot to say about it.

I feel completely unqualified and inadequate, though. Choosing a religion is a serious and important business, and the advice I can give is based just on off-hand observations.

I am hesitant to say anything. On the other hand, if it is really true that nothing has been written about this, then I feel I have a responsibility to do the best I can. (Maybe that will provoke someone better-qualified to do a better job.)

Can you help?

So I would like to ask for two kinds of help from you.

• If you know of anything written about this, which you have found helpful, could you point me to it?
• If you have thoughts or advice about looking for, comparing, evaluating, selecting, or getting involved with spiritual or religious systems or traditions or groups—based on your personal experience or observation—I’d love to hear about it.

For either of these, you could leave a comment below, so everyone will have the benefit of it. (You can do that anonymously if you like.) Or you could contact me privately.

Thank you. I will credit any suggestions I use, unless you’d rather be anonymous.

Whatever help you provide, and whatever else I may find, I will write several pages of advice on “approaching.” It seems too important a topic not to address, however unqualified I might be for the job. (Please be patient, though—it may be a few months before I get my thoughts in order.)

Approaches to religion

There are different ways of relating to religious or spiritual systems. I relate to Buddhism as a path.

On following pages, I will offer some thoughts about how to find a path that is a good fit for you personally. My advice assumes that you, too, take a path approach to religion or spirituality.

That is actually not usual. Other relationships are more common. All are perfectly valid, at least for some systems. Some may not go well with Buddhism. In any case, this web site might not be useful if you relate in one of the other ways.

So this page briefly compares the path approach with some alternatives: social group, faith, worldview, toolbox, and tradition. I also explain briefly why the path approach seems to work best for Buddhism. The next page explains “path” in more detail.

Path

What makes something a path is that you can follow it.

When you are on a path, you have a direction. You can always see the right place to put your foot next. (Except at trail junctions, where you have to choose.) You can see some distance ahead along the path, and where that will take you.

If you don’t like the direction the path is taking you, you can go back to the last junction and try a different route, or you can walk off the path altogether.

A path may have a destination. Not all do; you may just be walking to enjoy the scenery.

Paths often have a sign at the start saying where they will take you. Sometimes the sign is wrong. That is rare for a city park, but not uncommon in the wilderness. My guess is that it is usual for spiritual paths to be mislabelled. (However, it is impossible to be certain without following them all the way to the end.)

Until you get to the destination, you can’t really know what it is like.

Even if a path has no destination, or the destination is not as claimed, it allows movement. If you can’t take the next step, or if stepping doesn’t change anything, there is no path.

Paths don’t appear spontaneously; they are made by other people. When you follow a path, you go where others have gone before. Some may have written about the route. Some may give you advice along the way.

Social group

When people deliberately look for a religious organization, often it seems their real goal is to find a comfortable social group. They look for “people like us” who share their values, social class, interests, and lifestyle. Such a group can be emotionally supportive, provides some intellectual entertainment, and confirms the rightness of your life choices.

This is probably a fine reason to join many religions. I think it’s a bad reason to join a Buddhist group—although it’s probably the most common one.

It is true that you need to get along reasonably well with your sangha (Buddhist community). However, for Buddhism to be effective, it needs to undercut your basic assumptions about life—your “reference points.” An excessively comfortable group, which constantly validates your reference points, is an obstacle.

A sangha should be irritating. It should include many people whose experience and understanding of life is quite different from yours. They will rub you the wrong way, because the things they take for granted without thinking about them are different from the things you take for granted without thinking about them.

I recommend Mormonism

I would like to actively discourage you from joining a Buddhist group for social support, or as a source of like-minded friends. That wastes other people’s time and emotional energy, and diverts the group from its proper purpose.

Buddhism is probably a lousy religion if you are looking for a social group, anyway. Some of my best friends are Buddhists, but on average we Buddhists are a tiresome lot. I recommend Mormonism. The Mormons I know are all kind, friendly, reliable people.

Faith

For some religions, the important thing is that you believe in them. Faith is sufficient to make you a member. This is true of some Christian sects, for instance.

Some people approach Buddhism this way. They read Buddhist books and agree with what they say. They think of themselves as Buddhists, without wanting to join a Buddhist group, and without doing Buddhist practice.

There’s nothing really wrong with this; but it misses almost everything about Buddhism that matters to most serious Buddhists. Buddhism is primarily about doing, not believing. It is a religion of “methods, not truths.”

Worldview or philosophy

A worldview (or “philosophy”) is a system for understanding meaningness: life, the universe, and one’s place in it. A worldview is not necessarily a faith; it can be a method for looking, rather than a set of claims you are supposed to believe.

Some religions and related systems mainly provide a worldview. This includes particularly ones described as “spiritual but not religious.” A current example might be the work of Ken Wilber and his associates.

Buddhism is sometimes said to be “a philosophy, not a religion.” Buddhism is certainly atypical as a religion, and might not be one at all (depending on how you choose to define “religion.”) It’s not really a philosophy (or worldview) either, though.

A worldview is not—by itself—a path. It is not a path because it does not show you where to put your foot next. It might provide some overall sense of direction (“the purpose of life is the positive evolution of consciousness”). It does not answer the question “what can I do for the next fifteen minutes that takes me that way?”

Toolbox

An almost opposite approach to “faith” is “toolbox.” “Faith” is belief without method; “toolbox” is methods without belief. A toolbox provides various methods that take you in different directions.

Nowadays, many people take a toolbox approach to spirituality. They learn techniques from many different systems and apply them as they seem useful. Some quasi-spiritual systems—human potential seminars, neurolinguistic programming, and workshops rooted in psychotherapeutic ideas—are probably best approached this way.

The toolbox approach can show you where to put your foot next—it includes methods that produce local movement. What it does not provide is an overall sense of direction.

A toolbox is smaller than you are. It becomes a part of you. Religion is mainly about relating to things bigger than you are. You become a part of a religion.

Buddhism does provide a toolbox. (Its Nyingma branch, to which I belong, provides an unusually, overwhelmingly vast smorgasbord of methods—so large that you actually can’t make it part of you, and you can easily get lost wandering between the buffet tables, if you don’t have guidance.)

But Buddhism also provides a worldview for direction, social structures for guidance, and a tradition that may give some confidence. Together, those add up to a path.

Tradition

Most people inherit their religion from their parents or ethnic group. They see no reason to switch. That may be inertia, or the legacy may be a positive reason to stick with the religion.

This is usual for Buddhists in Asia. It has been rare in the West, because Buddhism isn’t traditional here.

However, it is increasingly an issue for second-generation Western Buddhists, who have to ask whether they want to keep the religion of their parents.

The most interesting answer is “Buddhism, yes, but not my parents’ Buddhism.” That answer is starting to lead to new approaches, which may be valuable in current cultural conditions.

Off the path

The last page explained what spiritual paths are good for, a little about how to choose one, and the value of trekking clubs and guides—that is, a religious community and teachers. This page is about the costs, risks, and benefits of going off-path.

“Following your own path”

I have often heard people say things like “I don’t want to join a group—I am following my own path.” If you think for a moment, this makes no sense. You cannot follow your own path. If you are on a unique path, you will always be at the front of it. If you want to go further, you will have to extend the path yourself, not follow one that already exists.

There are three things “following your own path” might actually mean. The first is that you are wandering in the wilderness, off of any path. This is fine—I do it myself sometimes, both literally and metaphorically—but it has costs and risks. It’s important not to think of this as “following a path.” Doing so blinds you to the advantages paths provide when you do choose to follow one.

The second possibility is that you are blazing a trail, building a new path for other people where there has not been one before. This is also not “following” a path. It could be hugely useful, but it rarely seems to be what people mean when they talk about “following their own path.”

In practice, what they almost always mean is “aimlessly jumping from one path to another, taking only a few steps on each one.” They mean “doing a bit of this and a bit of that, depending on what looks attractive at the moment.” This doesn’t take you far enough along any path to be useful, and also doesn’t take you into genuinely unexplored territory. Without a specific direction, you are unlikely ever to get far from your starting point.

People who “follow their own path” are frequently excited about their latest approach: last week quantum aura balancing, this week holistic aromatherapy. But ten years later they are dealing with the same emotional problems in the same ways, and their lives don’t look different. They haven’t followed a path; they have been milling around in the paved parking area at the bottom of the mountain, reading the sign posts that point to the different trails that lead up.

It is helpful to learn a little about many systems, and give several a try, when you are first investigating spiritual matters. At some point, you have to go far enough in a single direction to bring about real change. If a path has any value, following it for a few years will make the world, and your life, seem significantly different. And this change will be stable—not the excitement of the week.

Bushwhacking

A path is not a tunnel. It is possible to head off it at almost any point. In the wilderness, there is no one to tell you not to. You can go wherever you want. Hikers call that “bushwhacking.” Bushwhacking can be the only way to reach some remarkable scenery. It can provide a sense of freedom and exhilarating solitude. It is a way of testing your own skill and determination. Bushwhacking is not wrong, but it has implications you need to know about.

Walking on a path is usually much faster than bushwhacking. If you want to get somewhere, and there is a path that goes there, bushwhacking makes no sense. I think this is true in the spiritual realm as well. You can move much quicker with established methods, teachers, and a supportive social group than you can on your own. The main question is whether their path leads in the direction you want to go.

The most common reason to bushwhack is that no path that leads where you want to go—or the available path seems obviously bad. This applies in the spiritual realm as well.

Bushwhacking is risky and uncertain. Off-trail, the ground is rougher, and you are more likely to break a leg sliding off a rock. If you are injured on a path, someone is likely to come along within a few hours and help. If you are injured off-path, you may die before anyone finds you. There are real risks in the religious realm as well. If you are following a path, help is available when you get into trouble.

When bushwhacking, it often turns out that your improvised route can’t go where you wanted. You hit a cliff, river, swamp, or dense thicket. Then you have to double back and try an alternate route. I have often spent a day in the wilderness trying to reach a particular peak or high lake, eventually giving up. Religious exploration off-path is also likely to bog down and get you nowhere. You thought you could see a spiritual destination—but the obstacles are insurmountable.

It rarely makes sense to drive to the mountains, get out of your car, and start bushwhacking immediately. Almost always, you will want to go a few miles at least along a path to cover ground quickly, before starting off-trail. The area near where you parked is likely to be boring and well-explored. Spiritual bushwhacking, too, usually only makes sense when you have followed a path far enough that untracked territory lies nearby.

There are places where stepping off the path is suicidal—for instance where it is a narrow ledge on a cliff-face. There is religious terrain in which deviating from the path is also suicidal (in religious terms at least, and possibly literally as well). In some Tibetan traditions, following the path of Tantra is likened to a snake entering a bamboo tube. Snakes cannot wriggle backward (apparently), so they cannot back out. The only possibility, once their head is in the tube, is to go all the way through.

On the path

Wilderness adventure

Buddhism and other spiritual systems often speak of a “path.” This metaphor is usually used briefly and vaguely. Considering walking paths in detail provides insight into spiritual paths, and why you might choose to follow one.

Spiritual paths are not much like the paths in a garden or city park. Instead, I want to compare them with hiking trails in remote, rugged mountains. The terrain of religious experience can sometimes be uncertain, difficult, or even dangerous, making this an apt analogy. (It is also a metaphor I enjoy because I live in mountains and spend a lot of time walking in rough places.)

I will explain what paths are good for, how to choose a path, and the value of trekking clubs and guides—that is, a religious community and teachers. On the next page, I will talk about the costs, risks, and benefits of going off-path.

Walking on the shoulders of giants

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
—Isaac Newton

A path allows you to borrow the insight and hard work of many people. Getting about in untracked terrain is slow, risky, and uncertain. Following a path is faster, safer, and more predictable.

Sometimes a wilderness path is nothing more than a series of cairns (piles of rocks) or blazes on trees (bright paint spots a few inches around, six or so feet up the trunk). Those mark the way. They are set close enough that you can just see the next one from each—perhaps one every thirty feet. Even when there is no visible path on the ground, simply knowing which direction you should be heading lets you walk a lot faster. You don’t have to keep stopping to look about and wonder if you are lost, or which is the easiest and safest way to cross the mountainside.

A spiritual path, similarly, has a sequence of way-points that let you know you are going in the direction the path-makers have worked out. To count as a path, a spiritual system has to have stages or a defined curriculum. First you do this, then you do that; and there is some way of knowing whether you have accomplished each stage.

Usually a walking trail is visible on the ground, because the path-makers have cleared the way. They have removed boulders and fallen trees. They’ve cleared away loose stones and roots. They’ve leveled out the bumps. This too speeds your way.

A well-maintained spiritual path also clears away many small obstacles. Usually this takes the form of rules-of-thumb antidotes to specific problems you may encounter on the way. (Plug: the free Aro meditation course has a lot of down-to-earth advice of this sort: how to deal with back pain, sleepiness, dry mouth, and stupid songs playing over and over in your head.)

Knowing where you are going, and a smooth path, both make walking safer. A hiking trail avoids, or clearly marks, cliffs and thorny or poisonous plants. It bridges streams that would be treacherous to ford. You are much less likely to twist an ankle walking on a level path than over a mountainside covered in loose stones.

A path always takes you somewhere; and it is in a direction the people who made it thought useful. That makes walking on a path much more predictable than walking off-trail. As long as there is a path stretching out ahead of you, you can be certain that people have gone that way before, and further progress is possible.

Of course, the path may not take you where you want to get to. (More about that in a minute.) But as you follow it, you can keep checking that it is still heading in roughly the direction you want to go. In the worst case, you will have made progress in that direction. If the path runs out or turns off some other way, you can continue off-path or find an alternate route.

Choosing a path

I choose hiking trails carefully. I have many books that describe the various paths in particular areas.

There are three questions you should ask:

1. Does the path take you somewhere you want to go?
2. Can it actually get you there?
3. Do you have the strength and skills to follow it?

People have different tastes in paths. Some people like walking in forest; I prefer an open landscape. Some people choose paths to lakes; I would rather get to a peak.

I don’t like God

Some spiritual paths are supposed to get you close to God. I don’t like God, and want to stay as far away from him as I can. Some spiritual paths make you holy and serene. I would rather get sweaty and ecstatic.

Some paths do not go where they are advertised to. If they are not regularly traveled, trails vanish. It may be impossible to see where one once was. Or, they may become impassable, due to overgrowth with thicket, landslides, or flooding. It is rare nowadays for a path never to have led where it was claimed to, but that was once more common.

the path to cannibalism

The famously disastrous Donner emigrant expedition was misled by entrepreneurs who sold them an new, supposedly faster route to California. The inventors of this trail stood to profit from traffic, but had not actually traversed their supposed path. In fact, the “shortcut” was a fantasy and virtually impassable. The emigrants were trapped in snowy mountains for the winter. Half the party starved to death, and the others resorted to cannibalism.

I suspect many spiritual paths do not go where their promoters claim. I’ll have more to say about that on a later page.

Some trails are more difficult than others, and you have to know what you are capable of. How many miles can you walk in a day? How steep a slope are you comfortable on? Some paths require special skills and equipment, if they cross difficult terrain.

Some spiritual paths are also tougher than others, and some require particular skills. The strength and skill may be physical (as in yoga), or intellectual (as in the more philosophical forms of Buddhism), or ethical (as in wrathful Tantra).

Clubs and guides

Almost everyone can walk; but walking in rough, remote terrain is a skill. You need to learn how to read a topographic map, the trick of glissading on scree, treatments for common foot injuries, methods for crossing unbridged streams, the self-arrest position that stops you sliding down a steep snowfield, and how to stash food overnight so bears can’t get it.

You can read all that in a book; but in practice walkers learn from other walkers. You can learn the basics from friends who have spent some time in the wilderness. To learn more advanced techniques, though, it’s advisable or even imperative to get instruction from actual experts. Walking clubs usually sponsor talks or guided walks led by such people. Walking clubs here are analogous to religious communities, whose experts are the ordained teachers of the religion.

I am confident on most walkable terrain, but there are exceptions. For example, I don’t walk on glaciers without a professional guide. I don’t have the specialized skills to do that safely. Glacier walking is likely to be fatal if you don’t know what you are doing.

The main value of a guide is not that he or she knows a specific path across the glacier; those keep shifting as the ice melts and slides. The guide knows the methods for glacier walking, and can make sure that you are following them correctly.

Analogously, most spiritual practice is reasonably safe, and if you don’t know what you are doing, the worst outcome is wasted time. But there are religious regions that are actively dangerous (though also worth entering). For instance, any area where religion intersects power is tricky. To walk such terrain without the guidance of a full-time professional—a Lama, for instance—courts disaster.

How I approached Aro

This web site is about “approaching” religious traditions. That is the gradual process of learning about different lineages—and about oneself—to eventually find a spiritual “home.”

This page tells how I came to the Aro lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. My story is neither typical nor atypical. Everyone comes to a religious tradition in their own way. There are some themes and phases that most people experience. It is useful to know about these, and my story includes them. I will write more about those themes on the next few pages.

Approaching spirituality

I had religious experiences starting early in childhood. However, I was raised in a non-religious family, so I had no way of making sense of them. These experiences seemed important, but were not something one could talk about. Instead, I looked for books that had something to say about religious experience. I read about Eastern religions, and a great variety of non-mainstream spiritual paths. I started practicing a muddled meditation partly based on books and partly made up as I went along.

the sacredness of all phenomena

Neopaganism provided my first meaningful experience of organized religion. It had much to offer. It had inspiring ritual practices, group and solo. It celebrated the divinity of all sentient beings and the sacredness of all phenomena. It taught oneness with nature. It upheld the central importance of the feminine. It used romantic love and sex as routes to enlightenment. It provided a religious community and had very little dogma. All these remain important to me. They are on my “must have” list for a spiritual path.

What I could not find in Neopaganism was serious teachers. No one seemed much ahead of me. After a couple of years, I was leading large group rituals. People were looking to me for spiritual teaching. I had enough sense to realize that I was a confused twenty-five-year-old with no spiritual insight whatsoever. If people were looking to me for guidance something was badly wrong. I left.

Over the next few years, I learned a lot from a wide variety of spiritual paths and organizations. Each offered practices and teachings found valuable. Each also had pieces missing, or things I strongly disliked. It was always clear that none of these was “home.”

Shambhala Training

no way could I be a Buddhist

Meditation continued to be important to me. To go further, it seemed I would need to approach Buddhism. That was a problem. From books, parts of Buddhism seemed very right. Unfortunately, other parts seemed quite wrong. Most of it seemed just irrelevant and boring. No way could I be a Buddhist.

Then I discovered Shambhala Training. It was a system of meditation classes developed by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He described it as “secular,” meaning that it was not part of Buddhism or any other religion. (Later it was converted into Buddhism by others, however.)

rigorous, detailed meditation instructions

Shambhala was exactly what I needed at the time. It provided rigorous, detailed meditation instructions. Those greatly deepened and strengthened my sloppy daily practice. And Shambhala gave me a great blessing: the opportunity to work one-on-one with a skilled and inspiring meditation teacher. (The Aro Members program did not exist then. It provides similar training, and does not require that you be a Buddhist.)

What I found missing in Shambhala was detailed conceptual explanation. That might be more important to me than to some others. I find I need to balance meditation with reading and understanding. So as I progressed with Shambhala I read more and more Buddhist books and attended more and more Buddhist teachings.

Looking for a lama

There were parts of Buddhism that had seemed wrong. In my reading, I sometimes discovered alternate interpretations that made sense. These came mainly from Dzogchen texts. (A later page explains why Dzogchen appeals to me so much.) However, you really cannot learn Dzogchen from books. As I approached the end of the Shambhala Training curriculum, it seemed that to go further I would need to find a Tibetan Buddhist lama. I was quite reluctant to do that. (I will explain the reasons later.) Still, meditation was important enough to me that I had to persist.

Over a year or two, I attended talks, classes, and retreats with about twenty different lamas. I was lucky to live in a place where many famous ones taught often.

no generic lamas

I discovered that lamas are all quite different. There is no such thing as a generic high-quality lama. Each lama appealed hugely to a particular audience and might leave others bored or annoyed.

• Most bored me. They did not seem to have anything to say. I could learn more, quicker, by reading a book.
• One lama insulted her audience. I did not think she was a good person, never mind a good lama.
• A few were exceptional teachers in the same style as my best university professors. They led a group through a complex intellectual subject clearly and precisely. I respect this greatly, but it was not what I was looking for.
• Chögyal Namkha’i Norbu Rinpoche inspired me hugely. He teaches authentic Dzogchen. (I was learning that this is hard to find.) It was obvious that he teaches from personal realization, not from book learning. He is funny and deadly serious and compassionate and unattached and wild and sane. I attended two retreats with him. There was one hitch. He has thousands of students. It was not realistic to hope to receive detailed one-on-one instruction from him.

After that, I actually gave up. What I wanted did not seem to be available.

Approaching Aro

Then accidentally I read that some lama was teaching on vajra romance at the local Shambhala center. Although I was no longer looking for a lama, I was curious. “Vajra romance” seemed such an odd thing for a Tibetan to talk about. I had to check it out.

electric, eccentric, hilarious

The lama—Ngak’chang Rinpoche—wasn’t Tibetan. He was English. He taught on Dzogchen men-ngak-dé. This was just what I wanted to learn—but hardly anyone would discuss. And he was electric, charmingly eccentric, and very funny.

I still had reservations about Buddhism. So I was not in a hurry to apply to become his student. However, I went to all Rinpoche’s classes and retreats over the next eighteen months. And I read practically every page on the Aro web site. (It was not so gigantic then!)

I started attending the local weekly Aro practice group. I found I really liked the sangha (community). They were dedicated meditators. They were kind and open to me as an outsider. They were funny. They didn’t make a fuss about being “serious Buddhists” and holier-than-thou.

Then I had a private conversation with Ngak’chang Rinpoche in which I explained my reservations about becoming officially Buddhist, and my mixed feelings about becoming an Aro apprentice. He clarified for me several points about what it means to be a Buddhist. That was very helpful. He recommended that I spend at least the next six months thinking more about whether I wanted to become an apprentice, and also that I talk with current apprentices about their experiences of apprenticeship.

Six months later I applied for apprenticeship and was accepted.

as sure as the color of my socks

At my first apprentice retreat, I took Refuge as a Buddhist. I had been resisting that for years. But the reality was that this was simply a public statement of what had long ago become true. I was confident that the basic principles of Buddhism are accurate. As confident as I am of the law of gravity or the color of my socks. And I was confident that this confidence would never change.

Mixed feelings

Everyone, when approaching a spiritual tradition, feels a mixture of attraction and repulsion. We feel a pull toward it at the same time we experience resistance and doubt. Every religious system seems to have delightful aspects and irritating ones.

It is important to allow this ambiguity. However, mixed feelings are uncomfortable. We would rather know: is this tradition the right one or not? So it is tempting to jump to a definite conclusion. But to really discover whether there is a good fit takes months or years of investigation. So any quick judgment is likely to be wrong. On the one hand, giving up at the first signs of trouble risks abandoning a system that could work, with more effort and understanding. This results in wandering from one spiritual group to another, always frustrated that none is quite right. On the other hand, suppressing feelings of doubt risks wasting time with a system that isn’t right in the long run. And it is likely to cause emotional upset when the bad fit can no longer be ignored.

In Buddhism, there is a deeper point: ambiguity is an essential aspect of experience. Learning to accept ambiguity is a key Buddhist practice.

Approach gradually

Every religious group has some series of stages that allow increasing involvement as your interest and understanding deepens. (For the Aro lineage to which I belong, these are described as “phases.”)

It is important to move from one stage to the next only when you are ready. Mixed feelings are inevitable at every stage—but each requires a greater level of confidence. Or, put another way, the feeling of repulsion needs to be less at each stage.

It is tempting to “bull our way through” feelings that things about the lineage are not right for us.

• We like the feeling of attraction and dislike the repulsion. We hope we can get rid of the bad feeling by pretending it isn’t there, or shoving it away.
• We want the teachers and students of the tradition to accept and like us. We worry that expressing our doubts will make us unattractive to them.
• Finding a tradition that is a good fit can be time-consuming, hard work, and anxiety-provoking. It is almost like searching for a spouse. We want to believe that we have succeeded.

But this risks harm not only to ourselves, but also to the group we approach. They may invest considerable time and emotional resources in a new student who appears unusually enthusiastic. If the student suddenly leaves upon finding that they can no longer deny their frustrations and fears, it can be wrenching for everyone involved. Students who try to go too far, too fast are likely to become hostile and leave with bad feelings when they finally acknowledge that the group is not exactly what they wanted.

discuss mixed feelings with members of the tradition

It is important to discuss mixed feelings with members of the tradition—lamas, other teachers, and longer-term students—as you approach. They should understand and accept that mixed feelings are inevitable, and not inherently a problem. (I would call it a big red flag if a group did not recognize this, and had an attitude of “accept everything immediately or go away.”)

This conversation needs to start in a respectful and open way. Suppose you say “I like some things about your system, but practice X is obviously wrong.” The only possible reply to this is “I’m sorry you feel that way—but as you know, we do practice X, so maybe you will be happier elsewhere.” Keep in mind that, in Buddhism, we are not searching for the one sect that has the truth but for a tradition that is a good fit personally.

A better approach is “I like some things about your system, but I am bothered about X, because it conflicts with Y. Am I missing something?” Useful replies to this may be: “Yes, it appears to conflict with Y, but actually it doesn’t, because . . .” or “Yes, it conflicts with Y, but Y may not be essential, for this reason” or “Yes, it conflicts with Y, but that isn’t a problem, because we only do X when Y doesn’t apply.” After discussion of this sort, you may realize that X truly won’t work for you, so it would be better to look for another tradition. Or, you may realize that X is not really a problem for you after all.

A discussion of this sort also leads naturally into discussion of the nature of attraction and repulsion, and of ambiguous feelings in general. These are central themes for Buddhism. Discussing specific mixed feelings can be a springboard for profound teachings on the essence of Buddhist view and practice.

Opinions and curiosity

Not-knowing is uncomfortable because it is a kind of emptiness. We try to fill that emptiness by jumping to conclusions. Once we have an opinion, we don’t need to wonder any longer—the matter is closed.

I offended someone recently by admitting that I can't remember which Karmapa is which, and have no opinion about which one is real. I think she was disappointed that we could not establish rapport by violently agreeing about them. She also felt that anyone who cared about Tibetan Buddhism ought to know all about the Karmapa controversy, and to oppose the fraudulent one. Only some “very dubious” Lamas, and their deluded followers, support him, she said. But since the Karmapas do not affect me in any way, I see no reason to oppose either.

Many people feel that they have the right (or even the duty) to “take sides” and express intense opinions about things they are ignorant of. Internet Buddhist forums are full of this. People who clearly know nothing about some lineage feel compelled to express their opinion that it is the cult from hell.

I sometimes read the “yes he is / no he isn’t” arguments about Lama X on a web forum—and my opinion is that I don’t need an opinion. If I am curious enough about Lama X, I read something he or she has written. If I like that, I go to see him or her. Then I may form an opinion—but often not even then. Coming to a meaningful, informed opinion might take a lot of work. There is no need for one unless I am deciding whether to become a student. Otherwise, all that matters is curiosity—or lack of it.

we fill the emptiness of not-knowing with cynicism and blind faith

Fear of the emptiness of not-knowing gives rise to cynicism and blind faith. Although these seem like opposites, they are really the same thing. They are personal rigidity, as a defense against uncertainty. Both are dysfunctional. They cut us off from ambiguous situations.

Non-dual vision—rigpa—enlightenment—is the essence of ambiguity. It is the goal of the Buddhist path. To approach rigpa, we gradually abandon “reference points.” Those are our fixed ideas about ourselves, about others, and about the relationship between self and other.

Curiosity is allowing ourselves to be open to ambiguity. It is enjoying the mixture of form and emptiness: knowing and not-knowing. It means actively seeking uncertainty. It is inviting things to be as they are, and dancing with them. In curiosity, we soften our boundaries, to allow wonderment.

Buddhism in the West

Through its history, Buddhism has traveled from country to country. Each time, some aspects of it have changed to suit the new culture.

Every Buddhist teacher, wherever they were born, now agrees that some aspects of Buddhism will change in the West. However, there are sharp disagreements about what should change, and about how to decide.

The position a Buddhist group takes on this question is one of the most important aspects of “fit”—that is, whether the group will work well for you personally. So I think it is important to understand the spectrum of options. For those interested in approaching the Aro lineage, it is important to know where Aro is placed on that spectrum.

There are two ends of the spectrum. At one end, there is “keep as much as possible of what is done in Asia, because we know that works.” At the other end, there is “keep only what can easily fit into the Western world-view.”

Both of these approaches have much to recommend them. Each is a good fit for some students. However, both also are potentially problematic.

The “take as much as possible” approach may create unnecessary obstacles. There are aspects of Asian Buddhist practice that are inessential. They just reflect Asian secular culture, and cannot function in Western cultures. For Westerners, learning and practicing them is alienating, difficult, and in the end a waste of time.

Also, this approach depends on Buddhism “working” optimally in Asia. I am not convinced of that. Buddhism “working” means that it produces personal spiritual progress—ultimately, full enlightenment. Much supposedly Buddhist practice in Asia does not even attempt that. It serves practical, political, social, and entertainment purposes, not religious ones.

The “take as little as possible” approach risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Some fundamental principles of Buddhism conflict with some fundamental principles of the Western world-view. Without its fundamental principles, Buddhism may be reduced to a technique used in psychotherapy or progressive politics. It might be useful there. But this loses the radical transformative possibilities that Buddhism offers. To realize those possibilities, we have to be willing to give up our unquestioned allegiance to some Western values.

So, for me, the best fit is to be found in a “middle way” between these extremes. My guess is that some middle position will be the most useful for most students of Buddhism. Many Buddhist teachers agree. Most Buddhist groups in the West are to be found at some point along the way between traditionalism and assimilation. The Aro lineage, to which I belong, is an example.

Being in the middle can be uncomfortable. You may get flak from both sides.

Traditionalists may call you “inauthentic.” They may say that your group is no good because it doesn’t teach some practice they think is critical. And that you are not really a Buddhist at all, because you do things somewhat differently than they are done in Japan or Thailand or Tibet.

If you are in the middle, Westernizers may make fun of you for adopting some Asian principles and customs. “Why should Westerners pretend to be Asian?” They say that ordained Western monks and tantrikas are “playing dress-up” when they wear traditional robes. They think it is silly to play Asian musical instruments in religious ceremonies. They may find Buddhist concepts of teacher-student relationships uncomfortably authoritarian. They may say that your Buddhist ideas about negative emotions conflict with principles of psychotherapy and so are unacceptable.

I have a “live and let live” attitude toward ideological conflicts in Buddhism. I think all approaches are valuable for some students. I am not interested in arguing about which is “right” or “best.” That means that I can politely ignore rude comments about my lineage being too traditional or too Western. I guess I do have an opinion about this, though. My opinion is that it would be better if everyone did their own thing, and let other Western Buddhists get on with theirs.

Learning from other traditions

Reading in other traditions

I find it important to keep a balance between meditating and reading Buddhist books. There are times when I am greedy for one or the other. Then I either practice for hours a day, or gobble down every book on Madhyamaka I can find. But it works best when I both read and meditate. Books supply both understanding and inspiration. Without clear understanding of a practice, it’s possible to miss the point. Hard work with the wrong approach goes nowhere. On the other hand, intellectual understanding of a practice without thorough experience like reading the menu without eating the meal.

For Aro students, the books of our own lineage are the most important. But they are still few, and they can cover only a fraction of the ocean of Dharma. All Aro students read widely in other traditions as well. The recommended books page on our public web site includes authors from three of the four major Tibetan Buddhist Schools, plus Zen and Bön. These books are excellent starting points for anyone interested in Vajrayana Buddhism, and especially Aro Friends, Members, and anyone attending our weekend public retreats.

Not only do these cover topics for which Aro books are not yet available, they describe the same material from a different perspective. Aro recommends Lama Yeshe’s Introduction to Tantra, and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, even though they say much the same things about many of the same topics as Ngakpa Chögyam’s Wearing the Body of Visions. It is valuable to read all three because they provide (respectively) Geluk, Kagyüd, and Nyingma perspectives. Each also shows its author’s intense, brilliant, and utterly unique personality display. Each one deepens the understanding provided by the other two. (It is only by coincidence that the Sakya School is not represented on our public reading list; it is included in the list of books recommended for Aro apprentices.)

Classes and retreats in other traditions

For more committed students, such as Aro apprentices, receiving intensive teaching individually and in small-group situations is even more important than study. We attend retreats with our Lamas for most of a week, twice a year. That takes a substantial fraction of time off work for many of us, and it is often not practical to attend any other teachings.

However, classes and retreats with teachers of other traditions can again provide a useful alternate perspectives. The Aro Lamas recommend that their apprentices check with them before receiving such teachings, to clarify in advance possible confusions about apparent yana conflicts. From point of view of Dzogchen, all Buddhist teachings are equally valid; yet they may appear to contradict each other. Once a student has a sufficient grasp of principles and functions, truth and methods, this is no longer a potential problem.

Last week (early May 2008), I attended a retreat with Traga Rinpoche organized by the Drikung Dzogchen Community of Vermont. Traga Rinpoche is a master of the Yangzab Dzogchen lineage of the Drikung Kagyüd. I had been curious for some time about these teachings, because the Drikung Kagyüd are the closest “cousin” tradition to the Nyingma. I found descriptions of their presentation of Dzogchen intriguingly different from and similar to the Nyingma presentations I was familiar with from experience with Chögyal Namkha’i Norbu Rinpoche and with Aro. My Lamas encouraged me to attend a retreat with him to learn more. Although I found the intellectual content familiar, it was inspiring to see the different style of presentation. I will carry that inspiration into the “open retreat” I have planned for the rest of this month.

On quite a different note, for months now I have been attempting to attend classes or retreat with Brad Warner, an unusual Zen master whose blogs I admire. His Soto perspective is quite different from the Nyingma one. Yet, at a deeper level, the two schools seem to point in the same direction. He always manages to be where I am not; but I will catch up with him eventually.