Out of a living silence

While browsing the stacks of a university library In the autumn of 1968, I stumbled upon an English translation of Ernst Benz’s 1963 book Buddhas Wiederkehr und die Zukunft Asiens (Buddha’s return and Asia’s future). The title given to the English translation, published in 1965, was the somewhat more dramatic and unmistakably Cold War oriented Buddhism or communism: which holds the future of Asia? I checked out the book and eagerly read it, not because I was especially interested in whether Buddhism or Marxism held the future of Asia, but because I was interested in gaining some insight into which held my own future.

At the age of twenty-three, I was being pulled in three directions all at once. I had come into contact with Canadian Quakers and admired their ways of arriving at decisions and organizing themselves into an egalitarian and leaderless community. At almost exactly the same time I had come into contact with Canadian Marxist-Leninists and had been impressed by the clarity of vision in The Communist Manifesto. As if that weren’t enough confusion, I was also reading everything I could find on Buddhism and was especially attracted to the Theravāda and Zen traditions of contemplative practice. While each of those three traditions attracted me, each of them also had features that repelled me. I simultaneously regarded myself as a Quaker Buddhist Marxist and as none of the above.

Marx seemed to me to have offered an excellent account of the ways that those who sell their labor (proletarians) tend to be disadvantaged by those who pay for labor (capitalists or the bourgeoisie) to produce goods and services that are then sold at a profit as commodities. He saw clearly that people themselves become commodities, often of lesser commercial value than the products they manufacture. He also made a good case for the claim that the economic injustices inherent in capitalism are unlikely to be rectified by those in power voluntarily relinquishing their power and sharing it with the disadvantaged. He made a good case, in other words, for the inevitability of violent confrontation as the far-more-numerous proletarians angrily tore the tools of oppression out of the hands of the far-less-numerous capitalist bourgeoisie.

It was, however, precisely the idea of violent revolution that ran up against the pacifist ideals I was drawn to in both the Quakers and the Buddhists. Marx himself scoffed at those who, like the Christians, held out hope of achieving a classless society through peaceful means. After all, two millennia of Christianity in Europe has not transformed European society into a classless culture of economic justice; instead, Christianity has been transformed beyond anything that the earliest Christians would recognize as institutions that embody their values. Similar observations could be made of Buddhism in Asia; rather than reforming any culture it has gone to, it has been corrupted by every culture to which it has spread. Rather than liberating the oppressed in India, China, Japan, Tibet and Southeast Asia, the Buddhists themselves became the oppressors. Christianity and Buddhism were both conquered by their converts. On the one hand, it seemed obvious Marx was right about the necessity of violent revolution. On the other hand, I was unwilling to partake in violent revolution. This put me in the uncomfortable position of having to admit that I was unwilling to do the very thing I was convinced had to be done to achieve economic justice and an egalitarian society.

Eventually I became disillusioned with Marxism, because it seemed obvious that it had failed as miserably as Buddhism and Christianity had failed. The Marxist institutions that had been motivated to bring out social and economic justice were undermined by the very forms of corruption they sought to eradicate. There was as little inspiration to be found in the Soviet Union or in the People’s Republic of China or in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or in Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea or the Republic of the Union of Myanmar as there was in the United States of America. Every political reality seemed a caricature of the ideals on which it was founded. Everything was a disappointment. But wasn’t that exactly what the Buddha taught? And was it not the teaching of the pre-millennialist Christians that Christ will initiate the rule of saints and that human effort is therefore of limited efficacy? The other-worldly teachings of those who saw no hope for humanity in this world proved to be an almost irresistible temptation. For better or for worse, the temptation for me never got beyond the almost irresistible stage.

Forty-four years have gone by since I discovered Benz’s Buddhism or Communism, and it is still not obvious which holds the future of Asia, and no more clear which one holds my own future. I cannot seem to swallow either one, nor can I spit either one of them out. I am still almost but not quite a Marxist, nearly but not quite a Buddhist, and nearly but still short of being a Quaker.

It doesn’t worry me that I can’t quite seem to find the right tail to pin on the donkey or the right label to paste on my forehead. That just means that I never quite know which box to tick on questionnaires that ask what my religious and political preferences are. What troubles me more is that the human race as a whole can’t decide to work together to find ways to provide food, shelter, uncontaminated drinking water and basic health care to the world’s human population and viable habitat to the world’s non-human population. It troubles me that the human race can’t seem to find a way to keep its population at sustainable numbers. It bothers me that a significant number of human beings expend so much of their time, energy and money to deceive others and that they are so often more successful at what they do than are those who dedicate their lives to disseminating accurate information and practical solutions to difficult problems. It saddens me that whether one looks at the world as a Marxist, a Quaker or a Buddhist, the goal lies beyond reach, seemingly obstructed forever by hard-hearted men (and a few such women) of narrow vision, limited imagination, selfish motivation, and vicious temperament.

The evils of the world are just as the Buddhists, the Quakers and the Marxists have described them. What Fox, Marx and Gautama had in common was a clear vision of the human condition. What they also had in common was the absence of any workable solution to that evil.

In a comment left on a previous post, Marshall Massey made the following observation:

Successful graduates of all three traditions (Buddhism, guruistic Hinduism, and Sufism) will testify that there is a great “spiritual” opening-up that can happen when our own self-esteem and will are successfully defeated, even if the defeat is only momentary, and a rightly prepared student can grow tremendously at that time. All the crushing burdens of Buddhist monastic discipline and guruistic and Sufi disciplines seem aimed at bringing the student to that point.

It is true that there is no lack of testimonies to spiritual openings in various traditions that identify themselves as spiritual (in some sense of that bafflingly polysemous word). What is not entirely clear is whether there is any truth to the testimonies. Is there any truth to the matter of whether someone has had a spiritual opening, or is enlightened, or has been liberated from the world of suffering, or  is saved? And if there is some truth to the matter, then what is the criterion by which one can distinguish a true from a false claim about the matter? Who is it who is in a position to determine whether anyone (including himself or herself) has had a genuine opening, enlightenment, liberation or salvation? It seems to me that all these questions are so intractable that the best policy may be to set them aside altogether, and in setting them aside, to suspend judgment on all claims to spiritual attainment, whether one’s own or that of another.

At this year’s Summer Seminar on Buddhism, John Maraldo has been lecturing on members of the Kyōto school of philosophy. In the first lecture in his series of talks, Professor Maraldo read excerpts from letters written by Nishida Kitarō, regarded as the founder of what eventually came to be called the Kyōto school. Writing about his own Zen training, Nishida observed to a close friend (probably D.T. Suzuki) that he had seen many people who had passed through the rigors of Rinzai Zen training, which meant that they had passed through the curriculum of kōan, without showing evidence of being improved in any way at all. They still seemed as selfish as ever, as prone to moral peccadilloes as ever, and as subject to falling prey to painful mental attitudes as ever. He could not understand why their Zen master had passed them and certified them as having gained liberative understanding (kenshō). Nishida’s doubt about the efficacy of Zen training increased when he himself was deemed by his Zen master to have passed the hurdles and gained insight into the true nature of things. He admitted that he did not feel any wiser or any closer to liberation after successfully passing his kōan that he felt before passing them. If being authenticated by a Zen master as having had an opening or an insight produced no noticeable differences in mentality or behavior, mused Nishida, then how could one attach any meaning to what was putatively being authenticated?

Before dismissing Nishida as a hopelessly deluded fool for questioning the notion of enlightenment that is identified as the greatest good and the goal of all Buddhist practice—such a dismissal would be facile unless it could be shown to be warranted by some criterion—it should be asked in a more general way who decided that the Buddha was, well, a buddha. That is, who decided that Gautama was indeed awake (buddha) from his dogmatic slumbers? The Buddhist literature suggests that Gautama himself declared himself to be awake. The Buddhist literature also narrates that not everyone agreed with him. There were those who doubted his wisdom, questioned whether he was correct in claiming that he had been liberated from greed, hatred and delusion. And the Buddhist texts also narrate that Gautama’s own teachers declared him to have reached the goal of awakening, but that he himself knew that they were mistaken, for he knew that he had not reached that goal.

Having an opinion about someone else’s attainments is rarely a good idea. It is really not any of one’s business whether someone else has been enlightened, liberated or saved. I would be inclined to say that even when it is one’s business (which happens only when one’s own spiritual state is in question), it is probably not a good idea to have an opinion about this particular issue. Not much can come from thinking of oneself as enlightened except hubris and disappointment.

One of the most provocative stories in the Buddhist literature is the narrative about a monk named Channa, who was in terrible suffering from a disease that all the physicians he had consulted regarded as incurable. Seeing no point in being terminally ill with a painful disease, Channa told his fellow monks that he was going to take his own life. His friends examined him by asking all manner of questions, and on the basis of his answers they determined that he was an arhant. That is, he had eliminated all traces of greed, hatred and delusion and was therefore in no danger of being reborn in heaven or any other realm at the end of his current life. In short, he had achieved the goal of Buddhist practice. Following the custom of the day, his friends remained silent when he asked their permission to end his own life; in other words, they voiced no objections to his decision. Channa then cut his own jugular vein. As he was bleeding to death, says the story, he became afraid of dying. Fear of death is a sure sign that he was not an arhant. In short, Channa and his friends had all been wrong in their judgment that he was an arhant. Fortunately, the story continues, Channa drew all his resources together and overcame his fear of death at just the moment that he drew his last breath. When Channa had died, news of his death was relayed to the Buddha, who used his superhuman powers to determine where Channa had gone after his death. Seeing that Channa was nowhere to be found in any of the celestial realms or the hell realms and that he had not been reborn as a human being or an animal, the Buddha declared that in the very last moment of his life, Channa had become an arhant.

The story of Channa is as disturbing as it is dramatic. It raises the question: how on earth did the Buddha know that Channa died an arhant? Why did the Buddha believe that his inability to see Channa in any of the usual afterlife settings was sufficient grounds for concluding that Channa no longer existed and so had attained final cessation (nirodha), the summum bonum that is the goal of all Buddhist practice? Might the Buddha have been wrong? Is there any reliable way of answering the question of whether the Buddha was right or wrong in this matter? Is there recourse to anything but dogma and blind faith in such matters? Of course, I don’t know the answers to these questions. How could I? How could anyone?

Marshall Massey raises another interesting point in his comment to my previous posting. He says:

But if we reject the idea that it is merely a happy-puppey syndrome, then we have to accept that there is an important potential spiritual benefit to be gained from tough monastic discipline, alongside the undeniable abuses of the system and the undeniable psychological and social costs. And the question then becomes: is there a better alternative? Is there some other path to the same benefit, that doesn’t come at so high a price?

A lot of people — at least here in the West — say, yes, there is: we can defeat our own pride and will without entering a cult. And we point to some examples of success on that alternate path, including Gautama himself, Francis of Assisi, and to a lesser degree, a few of the Quaker giants. But the rarity of such successes is not encouraging.

It seems to me that this observation is based on a questionable premiss. The presupposition is that the legitimacy of monastic disciple, or the lack thereof, is determined by its consequence, and specifically the consequence of spiritual benefit. First of all, I doubt that there is any way of defining spiritual benefit that does not involve some form of circularity. If there is no non-question-begging way to determine whether there has been spiritual benefit, then that cannot be used as a criterion for deciding whether monastic discipline is worthwhile.

Here an important Buddhist text comes to our rescue, a text called Milindapañha (Milinda’s Questions). In this text a Bactrian king named Milinda asks Nāgasena, the most highly-respected Buddhist monk within his kingdom, whether it is necessary to be a monk to gain nirvana, that is, liberation from the root causes of suffering. Nāgasena replies that for every monk who attains nirvana there are one hundred ordinary householders who attain that goal. Then he corrects himself and says that in fact thousands—no, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands—of  laymen attain nirvana for every monk who attains it. Naturally Milinda then wants to know what on earth the purpose of monastic discipline is, if it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for freedom from suffering. Nāgasena’s answer, which might surprise some, is that the monastic life is pleasing to some people. It exists just for those people who find it a satisfying way to live, here in this world, independently of any other considerations. This seems to me just exactly the best answer one can give to the question “Should I be a monk?” The answer is “Suit yourself.”

I would suggest that exactly the same answer is the right response to a whole range of other questions. Should you meditate? Well, if you find meditation enjoyable, and if you can do it without harming anyone, then please yourself by meditating. Should you seek out a spiritual master who will dominate you and break your will, as if you were a wild horse that needs to be domesticated to be of use to someone else? If you find being dominated fulfilling, then please yourself by joining an organization that will break your will. One possibility is to join a Buddhist gang, whose members praise the Buddha for being anuttara purisadammasāratī (an unsurpassed trainer of the human beast). Or should you seek out the company of people who perceive social hierarchies as damaging and therefore try to avoid them? If that would please you, then by all means seek out such company. (Good luck finding it in any species in the order of primates!)

On this whole series of questions, I find that Van Morrison speaks my mind when he sings:

I’m in the here and now, and I’m meditating
And still I’m suffering but that’s my problem
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is

Last week the new puppy in our household graduated from her first course in basic doghood. Although it was billed as a class in training dogs, it was actually a class in training humans how to think like dogs. More accurately, it was a class for training people to act as if they think the way the instructor thinks that dogs think. A principle of which we were reminded again and again is that dogs are pack animals. Pack animals require a pack leader. The human being must therefore learn how to be the dog’s pack leader.

A pack leader, we were told repeatedly, calls all the shots. The pack leader says when it is time to play, which toys will be played with, when play time is over, when it is time for a walk, where the walk goes, when the walk is over, when it is time to eat, and when it is time to sleep. The pack leader must have completer domination over the pack. The pack leader must dominate both space and time. All this, we were told, is for the dog’s safety and happiness. A dominated dog is a happy dog. Being a pack leader is enormously stressful and leads to deep unhappiness. If you want a happy puppy, dominate her.

As puppy training progressed through each lesson of canine domination, my sense of uneasy déjà vu steadily increased. It was all too familiar. It was bringing back all kinds of unpleasant memories of various Buddhist gangs (sanghas) I have belonged to. It became increasingly obvious to me that Buddhist teachers, or at least all the ones I have ever caught in the act of playing the role of Buddhist master, operate on the principle that Buddhists all have dog-nature. Buddhist social training is all about domination. There is very little else involved.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I love the core Buddhist practice (by which I mean the ethical precepts). I can tolerate the theoretical dogmas on which the core practice is based (by which I mean the dogma of conditioned origination). I enjoy the meditative exercises that support the core practice (by which I mean the so-called foundations of mindfulness, smṛtyupasthāna). What I do not like, and have never liked, and have never believed promotes any kind of wisdom or compassion, is the social culture that almost always attends this practice and its attendant dogmas and contemplative exercises. I have never believed that a happy disciple is a dominated disciple.

The social culture of Buddhism is hierarchical from (if you’ll forgive the expression) top to bottom. The Buddha is described in the literature as the best of all bipeds. He is routinely described as the unsurpassed teacher of gods and men. He is never shown as being in the position of having anything whatsoever to learn from anyone else; everyone else has everything to learn from him. He makes all the rules. He decides which rules to discard. He decides who can bend the rules and to what extent and in what circumstances. He decides what happens to those who bend or break the rules without his permission. The Buddha decides. Period. (Don’t take my word for it. Read the sūtras.)

The Buddha is the top dog. This is no doubt why the Zen tradition typically gives a disciple the kōan “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” Until the Zen disciple realizes that he is a dog and that the Zen master is the pack leader, there can be no kenshō (seeing one’s true nature). The only route to satori (understanding) is to sit when told to sit, stand when told to stand, walk when told to walk, eat when told to eat, lie down when told to lie down, and to learn not to pee on the carpet. Failure to submit completely to the domination of the top dog is known in Buddhist circles as delusion. It is marginally better to be a criminal than to be found guilty of delusion.

The Buddhist masters I have seen in action all draw upon the standard techniques of dominating their disciples. One favorite tool is to have complete control of everyone’s time. The Dharma talk begins when the master begins to speak, and it is finished when the master stops speaking. The master, unlike everyone else, is completely liberated from the timetable. The timetable is, for the master, a mere conventional truth; it is only for the dominated disciple that it is an absolute truth. The timetable may say that a talk is half an hour long, but if the Buddhist master speaks for an hour of for ninety minutes (ideally pausing a few times to observe that everyone in the audience is showing signs of being tired, uncomfortable and bored), then the talk is an hour or ninety minutes long. If the disciple is not completely dominated, he will suffer the tremendous unhappiness that invariably attends the stress of having to think for himself. A dominated disciple is a happy disciple.

The control of time is attended by the control of space. There are certain places where only the master can sit or stand. The master never yields space to anyone, never has to walk around anyone or move for anyone; everyone in the pack yields space to the master. Only the master is allowed on the furniture. Everyone else must sit or lie on the floor. If it were not thus, the disciples would become anxiety-ridden and unhappy, perhaps even deluded. It is an act of supreme compassion on the part of the pack leader to make sure that no one in the pack forms the misery-producing delusion of thinking that he or she might be the pack leader, even for a moment.

There are numerous other ways that a Buddhist pack leader dominates the pack, most of which are obvious enough to need no mention. One method that has been brought to the awareness of the general public and mentioned and discussed often enough is sexual domination.  Sexuelle Hörigkeit (sexual bondage) is an important tool for liberating a disciple from the anxiety that attends the delusion of personal autonomy. Having conjugal rights with a disciple is a vital part of discipline, as is telling disciples whom they can and cannot be happy pairing up with. Buddhist masters, like dogs, dominate potential threats to the harmony of the pack by humping them.

Not being the cynical type—bear in mind that the word “cynic” derives from the Greek word for dog and is cognate with the Latin word from which we get the English word “canine”—I have never fared very well in a Buddhist pack. It has never felt to me as if I derived much benefit from being dominated, and watching others being dominated has always made me feel so sick that I have had to go outside and eat some grass until I threw up.  For most of my life I have entertained a fantasy of finding a Buddhist organization designed for human beings instead of for dogs. So far I have been disappointed. But then I have been equally disapponted in the search for a human society of any sort, whether religious or secular, that is made for human beings instead of for dogs.

I would say more, but my puppy is telling me it is now time to go play with her.

Why do most people like the smell of a rose, but not the smell of a skunk? Why do some people enjoy the thrill of a scary movie, or the burn of hot pepper sauce? In this segment, we’ll talk about what’s known about the science of pleasure. What’s going on in the body and brain to make things seem appealing? (NPR’s Science Friday, July 23, 2010)

Ever since I first encountered the Indian Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna in 1969, I have not been able to leave him alone for long. I wrote my B.A. honours thesis on him, a 100-page essay that caused me more sleepless nights than anything I have ever done, and I returned to him in graduate school and have taught numerous courses on him. Although his presentation contains some faulty reasoning, his principal conclusion has always struck me as correct. One statement of his conclusion is that seemingly paradoxical claim that the essential nature of all things is that they have no essential nature. It is acting as if things have essential natures that occasions most of the avoidable kinds of human dissatisfaction with life.

While I think the conclusion that nothing has an essential nature is without a doubt correct, what has puzzled me about Nāgārjuna is his claim that one can be liberated from discontent by learning not to think that things have essential natures. One way I have articulated my puzzlement is to say that Nāgārjuna seems to be offering a cure to a disease that no one actually has. Who, I kept asking myself, would ever believe that things have essential natures? Since people are much too clever to believe in essential natures, it just cannot be the case that their unhappiness stems from foolishly believing in essences.

After listening to the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom being interviewed by Ira Flatow on the Science Friday mentioned above, I was intrigued by Bloom’s claim that a key factor in whether or not a person finds something pleasurable is the person’s belief about what the thing is. If one believes that a performer is famous or that a physical object has an interesting past, then one tends to find that performer’s singing or playing or acting more enjoyable than if one believes the performer is an ordinary person; if one believes a shirt used to belong to a celebrity, it becomes much more interesting than an indistinguishably similar shirt on the shelf of one’s closet. This all reminds me of something that people used to say about forty years ago, namely, that the most important part of the body for having pleasure is the brain. It may not be the case that pleasure is “ all in the mind,” but a great deal of pleasure is indeed in our thoughts about our experiences.

Also intriguing is Dr Bloom’s observation as a developmental psychologist that children begin very early forming notions that things have essences. Not too surprisingly, there is an intimate connection between the notion of essences and the use of language. It is Bloom’s contention that it is a person’s conception of a thing that influences whether the thing is found pleasurable. A child might, for example, form the idea that some things are dirty and disgusting—parents are often instrumental in the formation of such ideas—while other things are pleasant and fun. The notion that the child forms of a thing being pleasurable becomes part of the child’s idea of the thing’s essence. And these notions of the essential natures of things are very difficult to change, except through something dramatic, such as a traumatic experience.

Nāgārjuna and some of his commentators were convinced that one of the means of breaking the habit of thinking that things have essence is to break the habit of talking about things. More important than simply holding one’s tongue is to silence the mind, especially that part of the mind that is constantly trying to figure things out and understand how they work and how they came to be. Coming up with narratives is one of the things human beings do almost constantly. And once a narrative has taken shape, it is difficult to let it go. The narrative becomes not simply a story; it becomes the story.

The kinds of narratives that one allows to take shape in one’s mind has a great deal to do with whether one finds experiences pleasurable, disturbing, intolerably painful, frightening and so forth. The Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti tells the story of a man who hears something tapping on the outer wall of his hut and becomes so terrified that he dies. Investigation later reveals that the tapping was caused by a branch of a nearby tree bumping into the side of the house on account of the wind. A narrative can be fatal!

I find pleasure in standing corrected. For decades I have told myself a narrative about Nāgārjuna having some fanciful idea about people falsely thinking that things have essential natures. Now I am less convinced than before that his idea was fanciful. Perhaps people really do think in terms of essences, and perhaps this kind of thinking really is troublesome. It may be worth thinking about.

On the other hand, if Nāgārjuna is right about the pernicious effects of forming explanatory narratives, it may be best not to give the matter any further consideration.

A post on E-sangha Alert asks whether anyone is a member or has any opinion about the FWBO. Having been ordained as Dayāmati Dharmacārī on January 26, 2000, I qualify as someone who belongs to the organization. I’m not sure I qualify as anyone who has an opinion about it. As much as I can, I avoid having opinions about Buddhist or other religious organizations, whether I belong to them or not. That said, I think there may be a misconception and a fallacy to be cleared up in the post in question. Let’s begin with the misconception. That post quotes one Anders Honore as saying:

the fact of the matter is that [the FWBO’s] teachings are still founded on the thoughts of a sexually criminal mind, who deliberately violated his precepts and whose misconduct in general is too well reported to be put down to the personal grudge of a few belittled souls.

The teachings of the FWBO are based on the thoughts of the Buddha, whose mind was not, so far as I know, sexually criminal. The FWBO draws upon materials from the Thevavāda canon and from a variety of Mahāyāna texts and gives its members the freedom to choose whichever style of going for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha suits their conditioning. Nearly all practitioners do mindfulness of breathing meditation and loving kindness (mettābhāvanā) meditation; in addition to those practices, ordained members of the order typically undertake a visualization practice on one of the buddha or bodhisattva personalities. The FWBO is not aligned exclusively with any of the paths (yānas) but strives to embrace all of them as valid and capable of leading a serious practitioner to enlightenment. It would be inaccurate to describe the FWBO as anything other than a legitimate form of Buddhism that has made an effort to avoid sectarianism and has striven to make adaptations to the social conditioning of modern people.

Now a word is in order about the fallacy in the statement quoted above. The name of the fallacy is the genetic fallacy. It consists in making the false assumption that if the founder of an organization was flawed in some way, then the organization itself is flawed in the same ways. So, for example, let us say that the founder of a corporation called Monumental Motors was a megalomaniac with paranoid tendencies. If one falls prey to the genetic fallacy, one would conclude, unreasonably, that Monumental Motors makes flawed vehicles or that those who drive the products made by Monumental Motors are prone to paranoid megalomania.

The founder of the FWBO, Sangharakshita (born Dennis Lingwood), is without a doubt a controversial figure in various ways. Many question his judgment. It does not follow from this that the thousand or so ordained members of the FWBO, or the tens of thousands of men and women who practice in FWBO centers, are prone to the same questionable behaviors as the founder of the organization. Increasingly, members of the FWBO are unlikely ever to have met the founder of the organization. What they are more likely to have done is to have read his books and found them an inspiring approach to Buddhism, or to have been inspired by members of the order.

Unlike many Buddhist organizations (but like most Japanese Buddhist orders), the FWBO is not primarily a monastic order. There are some celibate order members, but celibacy is not required. Many order members, like myself, are married and earn livelihoods doing secular work, but regard the primary focus of their lives to be doing dharma work. All of us that I am aware of strive to live simple, uncomplicated lives and to put compassion into practice in as many ways as possible.

I cannot speak for others. I can only speak for myself when I say that my experiences with the FWBO have been positive. It has come to my attention that there are people whose experiences have not been positive. Those who do not find the organization to their liking tend to leave and follow other paths. Some, when they choose to leave, cut their ties with former friends in the order; some do not. This is as it should be, I think. What makes most sense to me is that people use their common sense when affiliating with any Buddhist or other religious organization, and that they listen carefully to their own instinctual feelings and stay if the feel comfortable and leave if they do not.

In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I should say that in addition to being a member of the Friends of the Buddhist Order, I am also a member of the Religious Soicety of Friends (Quakers). In both organizations, friendship is a principal spiritual practice. Like everyone else that I know of, my practice of friendship is imperfect. My aim, in the years I have remaining in my life, is to get a little better at being a friend.

Those interested in reading more about my own take on Buddhism may want to look at Inquiring Buddhist or New City of Friends.

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