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16 EASTERN HORIZON | TEACHINGS

These days those who aren’t born into it seem to arrive It’s best to listen to the dharma from educated masters
at the dharma from many different directions. Some who can share the buddhadharma with us. However,
are forced to enter dharma after an overwhelming care must be taken in choosing one’s teachers, since
experience shatters their world and leaves them no there have always been those who would attempt to
other choice. Others arrive more gently, perhaps through sell us a dharma of their own fabrication, passing it off
disillusionment with the shallowness of contemporary as something genuine. Back in the 13th century, Sakya
culture. Encountering the dharma, they find meaning Pandita characterized such behavior aptly enough:
and purpose.
“After showing the tail of a deer, the shameless one sells
Others come because they are wounded in some way, donkey meat.” After all these years, the Shameless One
whether by love or hatred or just by the bitter dance of is still in business.
loneliness. In dharma they discover a salve for their ills.
Since those who invent their own dharma have only
Then there are those who come looking for answers— their own opinions upon which to draw, we need to
answers they couldn’t get from science or philosophy. rely on those masters who are anchored in a tradition.
For them, Buddha’s teaching speaks compellingly of Whether that tradition be Theravada, one of the many
mysteries to be solved and truths to be unveiled. schools of East Asia, or Tibetan - Sakya, Kagyu, Gelug,
or Nyingma—the point is that there is a fundamental
Yet for dharma to fulfill any of these promises, we need sanity to the dharma carried in these traditions,
to know how to learn it. While this point may at first borne out of their presence in the lives of men and
seem unnecessary, we are regularly unprepared for the women generation after generation. Such a grounding
actual task of discovering that which the dharma offers. in accumulated experience and tested knowledge
First, we must have a readiness to learn. It’s unlikely contrasts the deracinated and weightless prescriptions
an arrogant and closed mind could gain anything from of the self-appointed.
the dharma. What’s more, we need to acknowledge that
the process of learning will take a lifetime. At its heart, In any case, one may well wonder whether there’s
this process will form the triad of hearing, reflecting, anything truly innovative or daringly revolutionary
and meditating. about the so-called “new Buddhism” taught by so many
new teachers. One could easily see it as the marketing
HEARING of the same old conventional set of secular opinions
under the guise of Buddhism by people who either
“Hearing” indicates that dharma has always been disagree with fundamental aspects of the dharma
received from others. It is others who connect us to or feel the need to supplement it with withered
the chain of transmission that stretches back to the versions of reheated existentialism or the “Oprahfied”
garden in Sarnath where the Buddha instructed his psychotherapy peddled by those not half as sharp as
first disciples. To disregard this and forage instead Freud or Jung.
for information on Buddhism in books or the Internet
can only help so much. If we adopt this method of Such a toothless Buddhism can’t transform us. Rather
“consuming” the dharma, we are all too likely to than coming to resemble what is set forth in Buddha’s
select those fragments that appear congenial and teachings, this Buddhism only grows to resemble us.
unthreatening to our already entrenched opinions and In this respect, attempts to render Buddhism more
more subtle emotional and cognitive imprints. This is accessible can steal its power. The medicine becomes
surely one of the principal reasons that there are so diluted. Are we so smart today that we need less
many distorted versions of the dharma in the spiritual teaching and practice?
marketplace right now.