The spiritual language
Continuing from the last blog, I need to add that it takes time and good fortune (punya) to develop the ability to understand the spiritual language of Buddhism, especially, in regard to what it is really saying and pointing too. It not just about words and their dictionary meaning. A spiritual context is also present. It also takes time to gain the ability to learn what is not a spiritual language. Incidentally, this is where I believe the line of separation between the advanced students and the tyro is to be drawn. The tyro has almost no understanding of spirit.
Obviously, I cannot pour into some tryo or beginner's ears the magic medicine that will give them the ability to understand the spiritual language of Buddhism. It's not that easy. The tyro's tendency to turn spiritual words into spiritual materialism is ever present even among veteran monks. Even if some forward progress is made, it is short lived because of the tyro's habit of looking at life from the perspective of materialism.
It is a truism to say that those who have had real spiritual experiences are much different than the spiritual materialist—even the spiritual materialist of twenty or more years.
Just recently, I listened to a lecture by a Malaysian Theravada monk about undermining the ego. Of course, anyone who has tried to translate attâ or âtman into English knows that the term "ego" is a calque. The borrowing of ego is not at all representative of attâ/âtman. For one thing, it is loaded with too much psychological baggage. Ego can mean reason and circumspection (Freud); something to get rid of (cultism); the organizing center of wholeness (Blanck and Blanck); the fundamental cause of fragmentation (Neo Gnostic psychology); the small self as opposed to the higher self (Jung). The list goes on.
The monk's lecture amounted to a huge misreading of what the Buddha meant by anattâ or no-self. The monk was unconsciously misleading his audience. If the monk had a real spiritual experience he would have realized, almost immediately, what anattâ is, namely, his finite psychophysical body. From this, the belief that the self is the bad guy is ludicrous—it's wrong. It is just the opposite. Only someone who has realized what the self is, first hand, knows exactly what the not-self (anattâ) is which has to be rejected. By analogy, without knowledge of what gold is (that is, having seen it first hand), how can one distinguish brass or fool's gold (iron pyrite) from real gold?
Spiritual materialists are so blind and devious that if the Buddha stood right in front of them discoursing they would not recognize him or her. The core of the problem, surely, is a condition of spiritual blindness (avidya) if not a kind of spiritual sleep so that one lives always in dreamland. To borrow a turn of phrase, their eyes are wide shut.
How is the spiritual materialist to be gradually weaned off of their special variety of materialism? I don't think there is an easy answer. I don't think the Buddha had the answer either.
Comments
Post a Comment