Mu Soeng - Dharma for Sale

7/28/2019 Mu Soeng - Dharma for Sale

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Dharma for Sale

Contributing editor Tracy Cochran speaks with

Buddhist scholar Mu Soeng

about the danger of selling the dharma

One Saturday afternoon in December, Mu Soeng, the longtime co-director and now resident scholar

at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Barre,

Massachusetts, walks down a street in Manhattan,

talking about the sheer force of American corporatecapitalism and consumer culture. This is like talking

about the weather in the middle of a hurricane,

because at this particular moment we are threading

our way through a tide of Christmas shoppers surging

into the side streets from the megastores on Sixth

Avenue, and pooling around the entrance to the open-

air antique and flea market at Twenty-sixth Street.

Mu Soeng, who trained in the Korean Zen tradition

and was a monk for eleven years, speaks of the Zenimage of the old man entering the marketplace after

his enlightenment: the old man’s hands are empty,

and his expression is jolly and free. This is the

surprise ending of some versions of the Oxherding

Pictures, a traditional Zen guide to awakening told in

drawings.

“He bestows blessings with empty hands,” explains Mu Soeng. “He doesn’t try to grasp anything.

He wants nothing. He carries nothing.”

“Prada! Gucci! Right here! Fourth floor!” yells a young man who is balancing on a brass fire

hydrant, the better to be heard.

Mu Soeng, the author of poetic and incisive commentaries on the Heart Sutra, the Diamond Sutra,

and most recently the beloved seventh-century Chinese Zen poem Hsin Shin Ming (Trust in Mind),

has spent the day teaching a workshop on the Heart Sutra in the serene sanctuary of the New York

Insight Meditation Center, only to emerge into the marketplace at its most elemental.

“I think it would be possible to live like a kind of hermit here,” he says with a smile. “Not easy, but

possible.”

New York has hermits, we think. New York is a river of human possibility. On any given day, you

can see isolation and celebration, heartbreak and joy, anger and generosity, poverty and wealth,

flowing past in quick succession. What you don’t see very often are willingly, reposefully empty

hands. This is the world capital of finance and marketing, of grasping and longing, of materialism.

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Even the destitute here push shopping carts piled high with stuff. The Twenty-sixth Street flea

market we pass charges admission just to browse.

I am with Mu Soeng because writings and remarks he has made in an article about the last

presidential election recall the revolutionary spirit that prevailed in the earliest days of the tradition

— and in the earliest days of Buddhism in America. He has written about how Buddhists, especially

Buddhist teachers, can live skillfully in a culture dominated by a “corporate oligarchy” driven by

“predatory greed.” His views recall a time when practice felt like a subversive act because it wassacred — set apart, beyond price. We settle in a quiet cafe and talk.

— Tracy Cochran

You have said that Buddhists, especially Buddhist teachers, have no choice but to be outsiders,

willing to speak the truth at all costs, and you have implied that Buddhist communities in

America are in a state of decline. What I have tried to say is that very few places or teachers seem

to be interested in the teaching of liberation. In most places, Buddhism is in danger of becoming

another consumer item.

How so? Teachers live in the marketplace, like the rest of us. They know how the game is played,and at a very unconscious level, at least, they want to play that game. Many of them have spent their

lives in dharma communities and they seek the approval of their peers, yet they also want the

success, the rewards, that our materialistic culture has to offer. In the end, many of them allow

themselves to succumb to marketplace dynamics. They have to promote their books and attract

students, so it becomes a celebrity game, because celebrity brings attention, it brings money, and it

satisfies people. It’s human nature to want to say “my students” and to have a lot of students. Most

people forget that they began practicing for the sake of liberation. Teachers may now be playing the

student game, the numbers game, the celebrity game.

There is a famous teaching story. In the 1880s there was a monk who was so dedicated to liberation

that he had the meditation hall of his monastery outover a sea cliff, and he had a hole cut in the floor

so there was a sheer drop onto the rocks below. He

was very respected for his sincerity, and many

people would come for seven-day retreats. The

rules were very strict; people could not lie down

during those seven days. Two trained monks

guarded the door so people couldn’t leave. The

monk would sit there watching twenty-four hours a

day, and when he saw people nodding off, he

would shout, “Wake up! Wake up! This is precious

time!” Once in a while, when someone kept fallingasleep, he would get up from his cushion and drag

the person over to this trap door, open it, and just

hang him upside down. That was his way of

waking people up. I don’t know if it’s true, but the

legend is that sometimes he would let somebody

go. From his vast knowledge, he would see that

they would not wake up in this lifetime.

I don’t think this approach would attract many people in America, nor does it seem at all a realistic

one in our culture. But it was a highly respectable one in Korean society within the context of

Buddhist practice. This kind of unflinching and uncompromising commitment to practice was

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expected. The teacher was putting himself on the line to do his job. When you’re working with that

kind of pure motivation, it doesn’t matter if you have many students or if you’re working alone. But

everybody in America seems to want to become a teacher in the shortest possible time. Then the

competition begins for students and all the means to get students — centers, books, media

engagements — and this takes away from the purity of the motivation. In ancient times, a person

would become a monk and stay a monk for fifty years and not bother about being a teacher. Out of

ten thousand monks, one teacher might emerge. Here, out of ten students there will be one teacher.The hard reality, though, is that the centers have to raise money to survive, and in the thick of

whatever else may be arising, there is still a genuine motivation to spread the dharma. This is

true. But some of them get caught up with getting media attention, and it’s very sad to see what

happens to them. They get caught up in a desire for fame and for the wealth and comfort that comes

with it.

Getting caught up, as you say, with establishing a bourgeois version of a Buddhist lifestyle is

just another way of being manipulated by the system. It’s like an addiction, though, isn’t it? It

is. American Buddhists have brought a very sophisticated understanding of psychology, cognitive

science, physics, to Buddhist practice. Yet we may not have paid sufficient attention to our personal

greed, hatred, and delusion.

What do you think in your own background has contributed to your view? I grew up in Delhi,

in India, in a middle-class, devout orthodox Hindu family. But at a very early age I had some insight

into the hypocrisy of the bourgeois society all around me, and that sense of disappointment has

never left me. Indian people can be very materialistic. I was influenced by Marx and the

existentialist thinkers as a teenager, and these influences segued into my Buddhist practice. I am

very conscious of the way that bourgeois society co-opts everything it comes in contact with.

What brought you to the U.S.? I came here in 1969 because a close friend was coming to New

York. We had thought of getting a car and traveling all around, and then I was going to go to Europe

and enroll in a university. Once I got here, I was completely fascinated by the counterculture, which

was in full bloom at that time. I really believed that the counterculture was going to changeAmerica, that there was a new consciousness that was the cutting edge of some new evolutionary

leap. As it turned out, it was a very fringe movement and it never made any real impact on the

mainstream culture. I misread the movement.

Yet you stayed. I stayed, but not with any intention of living the typical immigrant life. One of my

personal benchmarks has always been the question, “Why did the Buddha choose to live the life of

a homeless person after his awakening?” He did not return to his palace to live a life of luxury as a

philosopher-guru. I’m not suggesting that Buddhists go around half naked today, but it is still

crucial to look and investigate the levels of greed, hatred, or delusion in our psychological lives. A

lot of what goes on in Buddhism in America is about creating a personal story and an identity.

Dharma centers can become social clubs that allow people to process an identity, allowing them tofeel good about themselves for a short period of time. I meet people who tell me, “I am a Theravada

person” or “I am a Zen person.” But this is just another process of commodification, of packaging

oneself. It has nothing to do with Buddhist practice. It’s a group sharing, a group identity. Yes, there

is some connection to Buddhist practice, but underneath it all people don’t really want to displace

their personal and social identities or their inherited Judeo-Christian worldview. When Buddhist

teachings are practiced authentically, there’s no choice but to deconstruct the inherited psychic

structures.

This is not an Asian culture. The teachers and centers have to hustle to survive, and it is

clearly good and valuable to have retreat centers where people can go practice. So what is the

alternative? To just let these places go? In some cases it may indeed be appropriate to let some of

the places go. I think your question contains the hint at the problem. If a teacher or a center is

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“hustling,” as you say, what exactly is the point? Is it necessary for a teacher to have a center? Why

can’t a teacher be happy as a hermit? Granted, one will still need a few basic necessities to survive,

but I have seen plenty of self-aggrandizement when teachers rationalize their teaching by saying

that they are teaching the true dharma. The story of the Buddha meeting his five former colleagues

after his awakening experience is quite instructive, I think. The Buddha was not hustling to find

disciples. It was his inner radiance that convinced his hearers that they were in the presence of

something transformed. When this radiant presence is not there, a dharma center is in danger of becoming another business shop.

Still, isn’t a center the most skillful way to reach people? In my reading of Buddhist history, I

have always been struck by how the tradition was kept alive in each generation by a handful of

practitioners. The pursuit of liberation was never a mass movement.

The Buddha advocated the homeless life for his own community. You could not stay in the same

village for more than three nights. You could not stay under the same tree for more than one night.

Buddha was completely committed to the wandering ascetic life. He was aware of the dangers of

even an institutionalized monastic life. He understood that human self-interest basically dominates

everything else. The point of promoting this kind of community was psychological homelessness.

Who is an outsider today, someone outside of our

institutionalized society? That’s a good question. I think

Noam Chomsky is an outsider. Ralph Nader, perhaps. Gary

Snyder.

These people are famous. There may be countless

nameless others who haven’t bought into the system.

Do you think this is what’s required for a sincere

Buddhist practice? I do.

The post-Marxist Frankfurt School philosopher

Herbert Marcuse talked about how America could

dismantle any revolution by making a consumer item

out of it. Is this what is happening to Buddhism in

America? The old lion is being made to tone down the

roar? I think so.

So what are we to do? This may be contro-versial, but as an example, I don’t think a Buddhist

should own stocks. The stock market is driven by greed and manipulation, and by its very nature an

investor becomes greedy. And yet there are dharma centers that have their money in the stock

market.

And the Barre Center of Buddhist Studies, of which you are co-director, does not? It does. But

this was not my choice or decision. This was decided by the board of directors.

Isn’t your presence at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies a tacit approval of their policies?

Don’t you benefit materially from those policies? You separate yourself from the board’s

decision to invest in the stock market, saying it is not your decision. Yet you have a home, a

salary, and a forum all provided by that decision and other values and policies that you

disagree with. How do you view this apparent contradiction? One way of looking at BCBS is as

an ongoing process rather than an organization with identifiable goals, such as selling a product,

making profit, supporting an entrenched corporate managerial class, et cetera. Participating in the

values and aspirations of BCBS is, I think, a significant form of public discourse about Buddha-

dharma in the West. BCBS distinguishes itself from most dharma organizations in that it is not

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centered around a particular teacher or a sectarian tradition and does not seem to have those

unconscious drives that ignore the shadow side of things. Apart from the fact that BCBS has its

endowment in the stock market, BCBS is a transparent organization. The internal conversations

about its vision and its possible role in the transmittal of Buddha-dharma in the West seem like a

wholesome and worthwhile thing to do. At this stage in its evolution, I may even have something to

contribute to that process and to public discourse.

The only thing I can do as an individual in this complex situation is to be responsible for my ownmotivations and integrity, and argue for those convictions when possible. In the case of Tricycle, for

instance, if it doesn’t want to be an engine of Buddhist commodification, it could throw itself at the

mercy of like-minded philanthropists who will privately support its publication entirely. But it

would work only if Tricycle stops taking ads. Tricycle can perform a valuable service, but it has to

be radically honest itself.

It is true that I am provided with modest housing, but I only get a stipend — just barely enough to

buy my toothbrush and gas for my car. I would like to think that by consciously choosing to live a

life of self-restraint I am better able to argue for it as a necessary condition for the core paradigm of

Buddha-dharma. There does not seem to be a disconnect between my personal views and my

participation in the ongoing conversations about the vision of the study center. If, however, thesituation changes in such a way that I feel my core values are being distorted by the policies of the

board and our internal conversations, I would be happy to pack up and move out.

Yet you speak of psychological homelessness as the preferred state. Wouldn’t it be more true

to the path, and more honest, to really choose homelessness — to walk out on BCBS?

Psychological homelessness is not necessarily dependent on physical homelessness. If physical

homelessness is full of angst and confusion, it does not serve any purpose. I mentioned that I

thought it would be possible to live like a hermit in New York City. I meant that I think there can be

creative ways of pursuing psychological homelessness without being physically homeless.

But what do you think the Buddha would do? Knowing a little bit about the shramana [ascetic or

monastic] culture of ancient India, I feel reasonably certain that the Buddha would choose to live ina community of hermits and let the world come to him. There’s the story of one of the prominent

Korean Zen masters of the twentieth century, Han Am [1876-1951], who came to live at a mountain

temple in 1926 and vowed never to leave the mountain. Even when the North Korean Communists

invaded in 1951 and took over the temple, he remained. The rest of the Korean Buddhist world

came to him.

I would like to think that if the Buddha were alive today, he would not be on the celebrity circuit

and would not participate in the marketplace and turn his dharma into a commodity. Of course, the

community will have to be supported by some people, just as the structures in the Jeta Grove were

supported by [the wealthy merchant] Anathapindika. The crucial thing here is to consider whether

the symbiosis between the Buddha and Anathapindika of ancient times could be replicated in our contemporary situation. I would like to think so. Of course it also means there needs to be a Buddha

with the sensibility of the Buddha and an Anathapindika with the sensibility of the latter, with the

same clarity of intentions and motives and commitments, on the part of the donor and the recipient.

To many laypeople in the dharma today, the purity and uncompromising nature of your views

will seem like a luxury, even an indulgence. Many people seem to be all but overwhelmed by

their jobs and their lives. To support themselves and their families there seems to be no choice but

to get up each day and go to work. There is a certain kind of circularity here. People want to engage

with teachings that point out that craving and clinging are root causes of stress. Yet people don’t

want to let go of patterns of being and consuming that fuel craving and clinging. We have to ask

honestly whether the people you describe really want to be transformed or whether they are simply

looking for ways to reduce their stress. What do they want?

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In the Buddhist cultures of East Asia that I know of, there is a pattern of people finding themselves

in the difficult situation of having a family and caring for them, but there was also an equally

powerful understanding that this is not how one should live one’s life forever. The spiritual markers

of those societies encouraged people to leave home after reaching middle age, having taken care of

their families. In Chinese and Korean societies, there was a respected tradition of rich merchants

using their money to build a temple or monastery where they would retire and live the rest of their

lives as lay monastics, either with or without an ordained monk as the resident teacher. Like-mindedretired laypeople would join in and create a community that could perhaps survive for a few

generations.

This way of thinking and being may be totally horrifying to Western sensibilities, but it is a model

that should not be dismissed out of hand. This model may also highlight the basic clash of intention

in the Buddha-dharma and the Western intellectual and Judeo-Christian traditions about self and

being. For the Buddha the basic issue is unsatisfactoriness, as opposed to “being.” It seems much

more reasonable to expect that this unsatisfactoriness gets resolved to a large degree if one retires to

a community of like-minded practitioners, leaving the problems of the world behind them.

Likewise, if this is the retirement plan one is working toward, one naturally tends to live a life of

self-restraint now.The intentions of Buddha-dharma are remarkably different from the inherited intentions of Western

culture, and this tension needs to be sorted out by each and every practitioner in their own life. The

basic intention that gets set up in the study and practice of Buddha-dharma is that the whole sense-

linked world, samsara, is inherently unsatisfying.

What about our style of practice in the U.S. itself? According to an article in the New York Times,

the world’s fastest-growing religion is not any type of fundamentalism but the Pentecostal wing of

Christianity. What is most important to Pentecostals is not doctrine and the inerrancy of Scripture,

as it is for Christian fundamentalists, but spirit-filled experience and healing. The same tendency

seems to exist in American Buddhist practice. Without the context, meditation practice can become

another quest for a certain kind of experience. But it is worth considering that while the broader context of Buddha’s teaching is dukkha [unsatisfactoriness], its resolution is nibbana, or liberation,

not sukkha [happiness]. Sukkha is an experience, a by-product, a fruit of letting go. The search for

happiness, as some teachers might offer, is not the context of Buddha’s teachings. It does not mean

that Buddhists want to be miserable. The context of Buddha’s teachings always and above

everything else is of anicca [flux] and anatta [insubstantiality]. I translate them together as

“psychological homelessness,” to get out of the trap of empty philosophizing and provide a context

for personal transformation. We could, for example, take the Pali word nibbida [turning away] as

another layer that informs the context of psychological homelessness. I believe all of Buddha’s

teachings are aiming for this contextualization.

Buddhist philosophical thought is extremely sophisticated, and I find myself fascinated by its ideas,

but it must be in the service of psychological homelessness as the framework for personal

transformation rather than a word game.

What do you suggest we do to get out of our peculiarly Western predicament? What’s the

solution? It is a peculiar American hubris to look for radical solutions. Each solution has its own

life cycle, and it gets commodified. Small communities are a start, but I continue to think of small,

intentional communities as a process and model rather than a solution. The ultimate problem in

human existence is alienation. The only solution to alienation is to deal with it in wholesome and

skillful ways. The teachings of the Buddha seem to be a wholesome model for dealing with

alienation. But these teachings cannot be a formula or even a solution. They have to be living truths.

Images: © Libby Vigeon

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Mu Soeng - Dharma for Sale