Wasn’t it true all the time?

The Buddha’s Dharma is often said to be eternal, meaning the Buddha just happened to discover it in this age, but it was there anyway for anyone to discover. It will also still be there in future, ready for anyone to discover, even if it has died out in the meantime. Anyone could also discover the Dharma by themselves, without contact with Buddhism, and even in theory become enlightened all by themselves (becoming a pratyekabuddha).

This universality of the Dharma is something that always appealed to me. It is what led me to think that there is nothing Eastern about Buddhism, and any culture through which Buddhism has expressed itself is entirely accidental. If we take it seriously, not only can Buddhism be completely (not just partially) Western, but the Dharma can even be seen completely independent of Buddhism, perhaps even being practised in the cultural context of other religions. Indeed, if Buddhism is supposed to reflect and support the Dharma, it should be completely flexible in its acceptance of that Dharma wherever it is found.

But do Buddhists take the universality of the Dharma seriously? They may pay lip-service to the idea of Dharma being everywhere. They may even describe a certain non-Buddhist book or film which seems to capture important insights as “dharmic”. They may even make a distinction between “dharmic” and “Buddhist”. However, the “dharmic” is there to provide extra spiritual snack-food, not to be invited into the Buddhist feast. No matter how closely their ideas and inspirations may cohere with those of the Buddha, no one is accounted a Buddhist who is not a follower of the Buddha. “After all,” they may say, “Isn’t that what Buddhist means?”

A parallel could be made here with scientific theory. A credible scientific theory should be one which is fruitful in predicting events which may confirm or deny it. It does not matter who or what is the originator of a scientific theory, only what relationship it has with evidence.  Scientific theory, of course, is not exactly the same as Dharma, but aspires to universality in the same way. Excluding pieces of Dharma as “Not Buddhist”, however, is akin to, say, excluding scientific theories because they were formulated by people who were not English-speakers.

The measure for Dharma should not be “Is it Buddhist?” but “Does it fit with the core insights of Buddhism?” The fact that the core insights of Buddhism are not universally understood in the same way by all Buddhists perhaps provides a practical reason as to why Buddhists have fallen back on purely cultural criteria, but it provides no excuse for doing so. Rather, it provides a reason for urgently clarifying the core principles (as you will have seen in the earlier chapters, I think this means giving precedence to the Middle Way as the only truly universal doctrine in Buddhism). Only once the principles have been established can the Dharma then be discriminated with more confidence.

In the Western Buddhist Order I used to find a large measure of agreement that the Dharma was universal, could be distinguished from Buddhism, and was based on principles. Unfortunately, though, when it came to making important judgements about what was a right doctrine, these points were insufficient. This was partly because tradition still competed with principle for precedence, as the traditions were still vaguely believed to embody the principles when this was not necessarily the case. It was also partly because the principles themselves were not clear. Instead of the Middle Way, the two most commonly cited were dependent origination (pratityasamutpada) and Going For Refuge to the Three Jewels. I have already discussed the former (see Chapter 5), which is useless as a general principle because it implies nothing specific. Going For Refuge to the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha) is a faith-practice found throughout Buddhism. It is often interpreted as beginning with faith in the Buddha’s enlightenment, immediately defining Buddhism in metaphysical terms: but even if it is interpreted more liberally than this, it is a very culturally Buddhist construction, and hardly a starting point for identifying the universal Dharma.

Sangharakshita, the founder of the Western Buddhist Order, in the important task of trying to develop a “Western” (or genuinely universal) Dharma, seems to have left the job half-done, and thus left a muddle behind him in which no-one is really sure what the universal principles are, and the ones given do not have clear practical applicability. This may simply be because, due to his conservative tendencies, he was unwilling to clearly put the universal Dharma first and use it to resolve all other ambiguities in the tradition.

The prioritisation and clarification of the universal Dharma is the most important task facing Western Buddhists today. It is theoretically recognised by Buddhists that the Dharma was there all the time, but that the Buddha just happened to be one bloke who found it, but this point does not seem to be given nearly the emphasis it deserves. Certainly its implication that the Buddha is entirely dispensible needs to be more widely drawn. The universality of the Dharma is also incompatible with the notion that belief in the Buddha’s enlightenment is essential for spiritual progress, which simply has to be dumped if you believe that the Dharma is universal. There is nothing holy or mystical about this self-contradiction and confusion: rather it stands in the way of spiritual progress.

Continue to Chapter 8 part b 'Putting it in context'

Return to Chapter 8 index page

Return to 'Trouble with Buddhism' index page

Return to moralobjectivity.net home page