Liberal Buddhist irony
Now, I know where this woman is going with her statement, but does anyone else catch the irony?
“A lot about Unitarianism is very dry and arid,” said Ani Liggett, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Lafayette, Colorado. She has been going outside her congregation to add a Buddhist practice. “There is a missing piece for me. It’s the lack of an inner focus. I appreciate the intellectual aspect of UUism but I miss having a practice that gives me a deeper connection with myself.”
Jeff Wilson called me out, a few weeks ago, on my hyper-intellectual take on Buddhism. And he is the expert, so I will admit he’s probably right that, sociologically and historically, I’m an oddity. Yet I can’t help but notice that the motivation (I’ll include myself here, too) for taking up a religion whose goal is to blow apart our concept of self is… to connect with ourselves.
Maybe this has something to do with the Western (and Unitarian) tendancy to misunderstand Buddhism. We aren’t alone, though–a recent issue of Shambhala Sun was focused on “Yoga Body, Buddha Mind“, or the synthesis of Hindu asana yoga and mindfulness meditation. Letters to the editor complained that the authors were trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. There is a constant debate about what Buddhism “is”, and whether “engaged Buddhism” or “liberal Buddhism” is really real Buddhism.
My fellow humanists are keen to scrape away concepts like rebirth, karma, and rituals that smack of supernatural agency. We’re content to sit with our minds, trying to attain peace from the constant chatter inside–mental chatter that is probably why we’re Unitarian Universalists in the first place. James Ismael Ford points out that this kind of syncretism is practiced in Buddhist countries already–just with Taoism, Confucianism and Shintoism. And like I’ve said before, there’s nothing sacred about religion (to a humanist, at least), so I’m all about appropriation.
It’s just that I’m terribly ambivalent about both of these movements right now. Peeling back some of the layers that cover why we believe what we do is disconcerting, although ultimately freeing. However, it makes it hard to dive whole-heartedly into another venture without examining it from all angles, warily.
But maybe that’s why Buddhism is so attractive to people like me–it does seem to be all about this wary investigation, unlike, say, Christianity, Islam, or (just to toss something else in for good measure) Scientology. That’s what it shares with Unitarian Universalism–except that in the latter, our suspicious eyes are focused upon other religions. In Buddhism we get to turn that lens on ourselves.
That brings me full circle to Ani Liggett, whose ironic statement now seems less so.
Image: http://www.dailymantra.com/