Choosing Dharma: A Secular Western approach to Buddhism, Meditation, life & actuality

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Dharma Tweet: Every thought word or action creates an effect. Develop meditation, ethics & insight and help those effects to free you from worrying mind.

The Dharma Matrix

Morpheus: I imagine that right now, you’re feeling a bit like Alice. Hmm? Tumbling down the rabbit hole?

Neo: You could say that.

Morpheus: I see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees, because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, that’s not far from the truth. Do you believe in fate?

Neo: No.

Morpheus: Why not?

Neo: Because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.

Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Neo: The Matrix?

Director: Cut. Mr Fishburne (Morpheus) will you stop pretending to be the Buddha!

OK, that last line didn’t happen, but, when the film ‘The Matrix,’ that was written and directed by brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski hit the screens of cinemas in 1999, it became the must-see movie for Buddhists all over the globe. Although it was within the genre of sci-fi fantasy, there was so much within it that Buddhists could identify with as being Dharma based. So, I thought it would be playful and helpful to begin this book by exploring some of the classic quotes in the film and unpacking them a bit, within the context of secular western Buddhism. Then you will be offered a choice. Do you take the red jewel or the blue jewel?

What is the rabbit hole? Within this context (humour me here), I suggest that it’s the confused and conditioned self-referential mind, that accepts things (physical, emotional, psychological or any combination thereof) that it engages with via the five sense gateways of taste, touch, sight, sound, smell, as being real. But, that reality is, according to the Buddha, just the subjective experience of the un-awakened mind that believes it’s a fixed or separate and enduring ego-identity, personality, individual, self, soul, spirit, essence, mind-stream, conscience, energy, vibration or any other thing than can be identified, labeled or established as being you, me or I.

So here we all are, sitting in our own little rabbit holes, thinking we’re experiencing actuality, without realizing we need to wake up to do that. In the movie Morpheus says to Neo: I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it. That sentence represents, I suggest, the very essence of the communication approach of the Buddha. He’s the finger pointing to the moon. He’s not the moon. He’s encouraging you to walk the eight-themed journey of helpful view, emotion, speech, action, livelihood, effort, concentration and awareness. This is the fourth of the four principal assignments that he set out in his first public communication, his primary teaching. This, he suggests, could lead you to the door of the awakening experience of clarity.

On this journey, he encourages you to test, challenge and attempt to refute every thing he says within your own direct experience. He suggests this, so you can see for yourself, if it works to move the mind away from the worrying of living in our own little rabbit hole of subjective reality, towards the freedom that is realized when the mind is at peace with itself, others and the world around it. But, the Buddha is not going to turn the door handle, or try to push you through the door. It’s your choice and if you have found the most helpful context for your practice, there will be nobody there trying to manipulate or coerce you to walk through that door.

Here, we see the awakened mind (Buddha) of Morpheus exploring and explaining, what in classical Buddhism is called dukkha, but within this context is called worrying. Whether you are ready to accept this or not, I suggest, that if you peeled back all the multi-layers of your experience, you will find, as he says, It is this feeling that has brought you to me. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. This, I suggest, points to the actuality that worrying is inherent within all human experience, because all things are impermanent and insubstantial in or of themselves, including what you think of as you. Because, within the pre-conscious, biological, nature aspect of the human species there is the drive to survive, this gives rise to an inherent fear of non-existence. This creates the worrying mind which then clings to ideas such as fate, chance, luck, destiny, reincarnation and a first cause entity/being/deity/intelligence that’s in control. That fear of taking 100% personal responsibility for what we think, say and do, without recourse to blaming others or external events for the quality of our mind state, is what the Dharma journey sets out to become liberated from.

My personal favourite scene from the movie is the one where Neo goes off to be tested to see if ‘he is the one.’ There, he meets a young boy with a shaven head, dressed in robes, who appears to be bending spoons using his mind, a bit like the illusionist Uuri Geller used to do on TV. He gives Neo a spoon and says Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. "What truth? asks Neo. There is no spoon says the boy. This, I suggest, points to the actuality of no-thing-ness, which was the realization within the awakening experience of the Buddha. This is the central theme of conditioned causal continuity, (causality) that is the source of everything the Buddha communicated. What the Buddha is pointing to in this source communication, is that it’s the conditioned and confused self-referential mind that prevents us from seeing things as they are. In the film Morpheus says Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. And so it is with the Dharma. It can only be pointed to. You have to go there and experience it for yourself.

The Dharma journey, could be said to be the move away from the reactive habitual patterns of thinking, speaking and acting in ways that cause the mind to worry, within conditioned subjective reality, to the awakened mind of conscious awareness, that engages with actuality as it is and responds as is appropriate to the experience and allows for the mind to be at peace with itself, others and the world around it. There’s a great clue about this in the film when Morpheus says What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

According to a current functional understanding within neuroscience, that fits, I suggest, very well with what the Buddha taught, is that consciousness is the state of aliveness. All living things are consciousness. They do not have consciousness. Consciousness is not a separate thing from aliveness. Human consciousness/aliveness is considered to have evolved to be an ability to be aware of being aware and make sense of the neuro/electro/chemical firings in the brain, that react to sensory data input and is dependent on that living human brain and cannot exist independent of one. This, if correct, blows wide open the classical Buddhist version of rebirth, but would sit very well with the approach taken to rebirth within the secular western approach, where it’s not denied, but engaged with on a more practical level.

Finally, before we move away from the Matrix connection onto the exploration of a range of topics, let’s take a look at one more scene from the film. In it Morpheus says to Neo: "The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." Neo asks What truth? Morpheus replies That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind. When you translate that into Dharma-speak, it’s saying that actuality is what’s happening when there’s no sense of you within the experience. It’s saying that it’s the conditioned and confused self-referential mind that’s pulling the wool over your eyes and preventing you from seeing things as they are. It’s saying you’re a prisoner of the self-referential mind and the prison is the worrying state penitentiary.

At last we come to the reason why I chose to introduce this book this way. In Buddhism there are three jewels that correspond to the three acts of going for refuge, which is the one thing that connects all forms of Buddhism. This is known as the triple gem, which, is in itself, a representation of the single cintimani jewel, which symbolizes the arising of the will to awaken for the benefit of all beings. These three jewels are associated with colours. The Buddha jewel is yellow, the Dharma jewel is blue and the Sangha jewel is red. In the film the blue pill would symbolize staying within the cyclic pattern of pleasure and pain of conditioned subjective reality of group think and behaviour. The red pill symbolizes the liberation of awakening to the way things are. Within this context, I’m going to change the colours around and amend what Morpheus says so it reads This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the red jewel, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe and continue to worry. You take the blue jewel and you discover how deep the rabbit-hole was and find your way out of it and realize peace of mind.

Before you make that choice however, it’ll be helpful for me to point out that taking the blue jewel is not the easy option. The Dharma journey is not a bed of roses. It’ll challenge every thing you think you know and believe. The easy option, the comfort blanket option, is to take the red jewel.

Let me leave you with a couple of lines from the movie as a stark reminder of the choice you are making by exploring the Dharma, but bear in mind I changed the colours around. In the movie the character Cypher says: I know what you’re thinking, ’cause right now I’m thinking the same thing. Actually, I’ve been thinking it ever since I got here: Why oh why didn’t I take the red jewel? and finally, according to Morpheus There’s a difference between knowing the path (journey) and walking the path.

Dharma Tweet: In meditation, words & all forms of abstracts created by thinking fall way. What remains is a continuous experience of the way things are.

Dharma Tweet: Just being is enough as it is. Life is amazing as it is. Striving, searching, seeking, or religious struggling can be the source of worrying.

Secular western Buddhism

Let’s start with the word secular. If you look it up in most dictionaries, it seems to have it listed as meaning non-religious. But, if you trace the word back to its root, it means something like ‘of this age.’ This, for me, is a more helpful understanding, rather than getting caught up in any crossfire about Buddhism being, or not being a religion. This understanding means we don’t have to worry about something that is actually irrelevant. The only thing that the secular western Buddhist context is concerned about is trying to make the Dharma of the Buddha relevant to the ever changing landscape of human experience within modernity. No bells and whistles, no frills and add-ons, nothing supernatural or superstitious. It promotes a way of life that is experientially led and based on simplicity and practicality. It doesn’t really matter if you think of yourself as religious, spiritual, agnostic, atheist, an Egyptian Princess in a former life, or anything else come to that. This entire approach is not driven by belief. It’s driven by what works. It’s driven by what works to move this thing we call mind away from worrying. It’s driven by developing and maintaining contentment or peace of mind.

The common theme that runs throughout this approach is not to believe any thing. You’re always encouraged to test, challenge, refute, or realize a functional understanding of everything you explore. You’re encouraged to see if what you engage with is helpful or unhelpful to alleviate or eradicate the worrying mind. And that, in a nutshell, was all the Buddha was ever really interested in. If we peel back all of the layers of the entire historical story of the Buddha and try to simplify it, we are left with the following six points:

He worried about stuff

He noticed he worried about stuff.

He left home to try and find out why he worried about stuff.

He found out why he worried about stuff.

He found a way to stop worrying about stuff.

He shared a way that you too could stop worrying about stuff.

Pretty simple huh?

At this point let me make one thing absolutely clear. The secular western approach does not set itself up as better, special, or more important than any approach that came before it. It recognises equal validity of all schools of classical Buddhism. It draws on teachings from within the entire Buddhist tradition, with an emphasis placed on the Pali Canon as its primary reference point. As such, it’s an amalgamation of all three periods of development, of Buddhist expression. It’s the free association of individuals, who seek to develop opportunities for human flourishing and who engage with Dharma and Meditation practice as a method for that realization. Secular western Buddhism is, if anything, just a new voice, a new perspective, a new vantage point. It attempts to leave behind anything considered unhelpful by way of dogma, or world views within classical Buddhism that have any connection with the supernatural. And by supernatural I simply mean anything that cannot be considered or explored within the scientific method of inquiry.

Within this approach we set out to try and answer three basic questions and to do so in a way that is simple, practical, helpful and effective. Those three questions are:

What works to free this thing we call mind from worrying.

What works to accomplish the development of compassion.

What works to awaken us to the way things are in actuality.

If you’ve been involved in Buddhism for some time, you might struggle at first to get your head around the new terminology we use, but stick with it and see if it works. There’s a very valid reason why those changes have been made. It’s helpful to try and not be too attached to what you think you already know, because it tends to close the mind to the on-going learning opportunities that the Dharma journey presents. If you’re new to Buddhism it’ll be a piece of cake, because you’ll be an open book waiting to be written and in this approach it’s you that gets to hold the pen and decide what to write.

So, we’ve looked at the word secular and now we turn to the word western. Why western? Well, this approach is based on life, as it is now, within a modern westernised culture. It makes little difference where you were born, or where you live. If your life has, or is significantly influenced by western culture, then there’s little point in pretending that you’re not conditioned by that culture. This is very important to understand. If you were born and have spent most of your life in Tibet, Nepal or Bhutan, then Tibetan Buddhism is possibly perfect for you. If you were born and have spent most of your life in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, then the forms of Theravada Buddhism that are practiced there are possibly perfect for you. If you were born and have spent most of your life in Japan then Zen is possibly perfect for you. All of these traditions are equally valid and great in and of themselves, because they engage on a cultural level with the unique conditioning process of individuals within each of those countries.

But, if any of those countries have, or move rapidly towards embracing western culture fully, then the attachments to the traditional or cultural aspects of those forms of Buddhism might possibly not be that helpful for you anymore. Let me be clear again. I’m not saying this is fact. I am saying it’s something to explore within your own direct experience. Secular western Buddhism is not evangelical and it’s not seeking converts. All it’s saying is, it’s conditioning that’s at the centre of our worries, therefore it’s simply something worth considering. My golden rule, as always is: if it works, it works. And only you can know that.

That just leaves us with the word Buddhism. Now, you’d think that’d be pretty easy wouldn’t you? But, as the Dharma points out No thing is ever as it seems. Buddhism, it seems, has reached a kind of cross roads. It’s not the first time and it probably won’t be the last time. It’s just a different time, so there is no need to panic, or get all defensive about the possibility of change. Within a rapidly expanding secular society, there is less reliance these days on beliefs in which we can find no verifiable evidence. Within modernity, many people now turn their attention to the scientific method of inquiry to provide them with current facts, as a preference from mere belief.

This modern approach does seem to have thrown a bit of a spanner in the works, or drawn a line in the sand which classical Buddhism and the secular western approach can’t seem to reconcile at the moment. But, as we know, all things are subject to change. It’s clear, that many schools within classical Buddhism hold to the belief and teach, some form of literal life after death, for what you might consider to be you. This, I suggest, is because of the way they have read and tried to make sense of the historical texts that were recorded in ancient times. The difficulty is, that they appear to have become cast in stone and unchallengeable and that simply does not