by Madeleine Kando
Let’s face it: we live in a world of opposites: night and day, warm and cold, life and death, joy and suffering. But many of us are searching for a way to combine the two into one ‘Whole’, thinking that this might make us more complete, happier, less prone to suffering. That is the goal of ‘Enlightenment’.
In ‘The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power’, Diana Alstad and Joel Kramer examine the age-old traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism and conclude that these 3,000-year-old religions have been a total failure. We are not less selfish and divisive today as we were when it was founded in northeastern India by Prince Siddharta in the 6th century B.C. India is the most internally divided culture in the world with its Caste system. The ‘Oneness’ framework, which says that ‘division’ and ‘difference’ is but an illusion, gives the haves a reason to justify the misery surrounding them and is used by the have-nots as a way to cope with an unbearable situation.
The usual reasons for this failure are placed at the foot of the ‘seeker’. Humanity has not done enough soul searching and is not ready for true bliss. But what if the reason for its failure is because this ‘Oneness’ framework is impossible to achieve?
Contrary to secular ideologies like Marxism, which also sacrifices ‘differences’ for the sake of the ‘whole’, the ‘Oneness’ ideology cannot be tested for its validity, since its payoff occurs after death. Marxism, which did not deliver on its promise to improve the quality of life, lost its power and crumbled.
Humanity, the authors argue, is in some respects incredibly sophisticated and creative. For example, in the realms of science, technology, and the arts, new facts replace old facts and we go from there. Einstein’s theories win over Newton’s, etc.
But in other respects we are still an "adolescent species”. In the realm of relationships, we follow guidelines that are thousands of years old. These cannot be disputed because they are authoritarian and unverifiable. Besides, how can you criticize selflessness, love, giving? These aspirations ARE too good to be true and living up to them is impossible. Trying to be completely selfless and lose your ego goes at the cost of healthy thinking and it makes you terribly self-absorbed. It’s all about you. It is a spiritual conundrum.
If you look at humanity through the maturing lens, science and human rights have rendered much of the so-called wisdom of our ancestors obsolete. “I don’t believe it’s possible for anyone to transcend self-centeredness in a permanent way. Altruism and egotism are embedded in each other, as are all of life’s other dualisms.” In other words, the ego has an inbuilt function, which will never go away. We eat, make love, bond, and form groups, take care of ourselves and protect. Separateness and interconnectedness are both real. Dialectic altruism is real but so is self-centeredness. It is necessary for survival.
If the goal of spirituality is to make the individual feel better, then Buddha was right in preaching detachment. It is beneath the enlightened person’s dignity to concern herself with such trivia as other people’s suffering or hunger. Buddha himself left his wife and children to go on his spiritual journey.
But if the goal of spirituality is to improve the world, mysticism and spirituality defeat this primary purpose. Cults and cult leaders (Gurus) go out of their way to create a separate realm whereby spirituality is removed from daily life by presenting themselves as the ultimate authority on how to become enlightened.
Byron Katie, one of the most famous ‘gurus’ of our time, claims that her method which she calls ‘the Work’, can eradicate ALL suffering. This claim is preposterous since it would not end someone’s suffering that is dying of starvation in Somalia.
In this video clip, you can see that her entire ‘system’ is based on dangerous thought distortions, ultimately blaming the victim. The audacity of her approach shows the power of thought manipulation, which is one of the tools cult leaders often use.
The idea of pureness is a dangerous idea, says Alstad. It separates the body from the mind, whites from blacks, the enlightened ones from the rest. A healthy spirituality should help us confront and find solutions for all the ‘impure’ problems of the world, such as overpopulation, lack of drinking water, environmental degradation, violent nationalism and racism. There are so many minds lost to the pursuit of this ‘purity’. People who could be part of intelligent solutions Even a spiritual path that emphasizes selflessness, forgiveness, and unconditional love can do harm by diverting us away from real-world problems.
So yes, Buddha and Jesus were reformers in their days. Meditation and religion represented a step forward for humanity, because it provided some deeper understanding of the cosmos that was beyond ordinary perception for that time.
But maybe it is time to abandon the concept of finding the ultimate truth— whatever that is. Confronting real-world problems that threaten our very survival should be the main focus of that which makes us truly human: our brainpower. leave comment here
4 comments:
Hey Madeleine,
I hope you're well! Without taking the time to fully respond to your post, I'd like to say a couple quick things:
1) I'm an athiest and agree that cults and spirituality can be dangerous.
2) I think your depiction of Byron Katie is misguided. There are so many obvious examples of how her work is intellectually sound (e.g. someone who has been upset because they thought their partner had forgotten their birthday, when really that person hadn't mentioned celebrating the birthday beause they were planning a surprise party. Suffering came from belief about what was going on which was not in fact true; it came from the mind and not facts within the world. Much of our suffering conforms to this principle, even if it wouldn't cure suffering caused by starvation). The Work is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is an evidence-based system that really does improve human wellbeing.
3) Your point is not about Byron Katie's work generally, but that searching for forms of pureness can blind us to real-world problems that need fixing, and that victims are not to blame for their situation, so people should not always start with fixing themselves first--or something to that effect.
I worry that your approach is itself a form of purism that throws the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, sometimes we need to blame external forces for causing unnecessary suffering on others. But people also need to find some agency within their own lives. They aren't always trying to fix starvation in Somalia. Sometimes, they're trying to help themselves come to terms with anger against friends or family members. Tools that help people get out of their own myopic world view and into an empathic space where they can see the situation from someone else's view can be a good thing. It doesn't necessarily amount to blaming the victim, or even saying that another person is "right." After all, part of the point is that there is no one Truth--even from the others' perspective. Sometimes, we need to identify and accept that which we cannot change (e.g. our mothers' judgments of us), and work on what we can (e.g. loving her in spite of those judgments--if that will ultimately make us feel better).
Hi Bethany:
Yes CBT is ok. Getting your facts straight is ok too. But turning a statement that says that ‘I am afraid Trump will do harm to our country’ into ‘I am afraid I will do harm to our country’ is total BS. That is a thought distortion that takes the wind out of ANY argument.
And in general, I think worries, fears and negative thoughts are the only way to safeguard against all sorts of bad things that CAN happen in the future: abuse of power, climate change, you name it. They didn’t happen (yet) but worrying about it is the only way anything can and hopefully will be done.
I am afraid the confusion lies in Byron Katie trying to bite off more than she can chew. If she clearly stayed in the realm of the personal, that would be fine, but when she goes off into the realm of politics and trying to solve world problems where she has no clue what she is doing, her method is becoming dangerous.
Yes, I believe there IS an ultimate truth in certain situation: the Holocaust WAS evil, Trump IS dangerous to our democracy, dying of cancer DOES cause horribly negative feelings.
Her thought distortions are making me angry because she denies people who suffer their own suffering.That is terrible and harmful therapy.
But I have not taken any of her workshops, I admit. It is just a gut feeling of mine and that is why I included her as an example in this post.
What do you think?
I would not deny a suffering person their suffering. I also wouldn't deny a person who is suffering, but wants to find joy, the ability to find that joy. When it comes to Byron Katie, she offers people who come to her, and who want to dismantle their suffering, mental mechanisms to try to do so. Is this dangerous? Should she not help a person who deliberately sought her counsel some tools to help them achieve peace?
Perhaps. Perhaps by helping people find peace, they remove themselves from the pool of warriors against external causes of suffering, we all must fight external causes of suffering where we see them. If we see Trump enacting injustices in the US, perhaps all of us should be giving all our energy to taking him down, and not to finding peace.
I'm not sure I believe that for a variety of reasons. I won't give all of them, but I will mention two of them. The first is practical. Many of us--Trump supporters and detractors--have lives of our own to attend to. Besides the occasional facebook post, and perhaps increased internal anxiety and news consumption, our day to day experience is not that different from before.
Regardless of how we "should" behave, many people still get up and go to work during the same hours. We haven't completely modified our lives to be full time political activists. I, for one, am not protesting in washington every day, calling my legislators at all hours, running for office, working as a lobbyist to advance progressive politics. I do what I can, when I can, and others do the same. It isn't clear to me that normal people are not entitled to try to find peace, when other than being a diligent citizen and voter, and perhaps donating more to key campaigns or calling a legislator on occasion, there's little they can practically do. All that anxiety doesn't change things in itself.
Second, it isn't clear to me that the project of finding internal peace, in itself, isn't an act of resistance. Imagine if every conservative who was opposed to immigrants did "The Work" and questioned whether immigrants were the cause of their suffering. Imagine if everyone practiced a little bit of buddhism and ten minutes of daily walking meditation. Going back to practicality--not everyone will. But the existence of spiritual leaders who are grounded in teachings of kindness to onesself and others--these tools do offer some form of resistance to policies grounded in fear and exploitation. It isn't the active act of protest in the street, but it is a groundswell of its own, based on people who want to find kindness. It won't fix the current political situation by itself, but I don't know that there is a one-size-fits-all solution for resistance.
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