The one indispensable element in the non-Asian appropriation of Buddhism is meditation as the central practice. Ironically, however, most Buddhists throughout history have not meditated, nor have they studied the Buddhist scriptures. These practices are typically reserved for members of the sangha (monastic community), the only institution created by the Buddha Sakyamuni twenty-five centuries ago, and the only environment in which, after countless lifetimes, human beings can enter the path to enlightenment. In the traditional Buddhist division of labor, the role of the monks (and nuns) is to maintain a certain purity through detachment from the world by keeping more than two hundred vows. The role of lay Buddhists is to support the sangha with offerings of money, food, and other fruits of labor forbidden to monks. In this way, laity accumulate precious karmic capital toward a favorable rebirth. Both monks and lay Buddhists also pray and experience the Buddha through mandalas, images, and other forms of sacred art. But even within the sangha, meditation is only one in the arsenal of “skillful means” used to pursue enlightenment.

The novelty of American designer Buddhism is that its practitioners are laymen and -women who want to do what heretofore only some monks did—meditate and study texts—but without the communal discipline and personal renunciation required by monastic life. (In this they recapitulate the Protestant Reformers who abolished the priesthood and proclaimed the priesthood of all believers.) Instead of the monastic sangha, designer Buddhism is typically organized around a dharma or Zen center where a resident lama teaches meditation and Buddhist thought to groups, like an instructor in an aerobics class, or through intense one-on-one formation. The goal is to enhance life in this world, not the next. In the Seventies and early Eighties, there was no common code of ethics governing the behavior of the teacher or required of students. For instance, at the famed Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, I once observed the learned Chogyam Trungpa, one of many reincarnate lamas who followed the Dalai Lama into exile and then settled on a freelance career in the United States, gulping sake straight while discoursing on the dharma. In 1987, he died bloated and disoriented from alcoholism at the age of forty-seven. More to the point, his teachings on the necessity of detachment did not preclude the formation of emotional attachments between students and himself. Nor was he alone in this regard. In the mid-Eighties, scores of Buddhist teachers, foreign-born lamas, and Zen masters, as well as Americans who had acquired those titles, were discovered to have seduced their students, male as well as female.

The scandal was further evidence to the Dalai Lama that spiritual integrity is hard to preserve in the open, unregulated, and ethically indifferent atmosphere of designer Buddhism. “Dependence on one teacher or person not good. Very purpose of meditation,” he reminded me, “is to increase determination to discipline emotions and reduce afflictive ones.” He was also concerned about the ways in which American designer Buddhists were selectively interpreting Buddhist ethics. They pay him heed when he talks about the environment and promotes religious tolerance. But, he noticed, this was not the case when he declared that abortion and euthanasia are violations of the Buddhist principle of “nonviolence toward all sentient beings,” or when, in San Francisco (of all places), he declared that one could not be a Buddhist and have sex with others of the same gender. Despite his popularity, he said, he sometimes thinks his influence is no deeper than a “screensaver on computer.”

Woodward, Kenneth L.. Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama (Kindle Locations 4395-4416). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Harari seems to work his skills to achieve contact with “reality” but I’m not sure how much work he’s put in to try to figure out what “reality” is.

Anyway, interesting stuff. pvk