Quote
The religious-secular binary is a historically specific way, not just of classifying knowledge, subjectivity, meaning, practice, and power—but also of constituting it. The discourse of secularism determines what counts as secular, what counts as religious, what is marginalized as superstition or cult, what qualifies as a legitimate exercise of religion and what doesn’t. It instills particular disciplines of subjectivity, curates particular beliefs, cultivates sensibilities, and authorizes normative models of behavior, practice, and, indeed, religion. In this sense, ironically, secularism is not secular—that is, it is not what it purports to be: a neutral space of rational discourse and practice free from the irrational subjective passions of religion. Rather, it is a discursive tradition, with values, normative practices, attitudes, prohibitions, and metaphysics—much of it still retaining the underlying ideological apparatus of Protestant Christianity.
McMahan, David L.. Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practice in Ancient and Modern Worlds
David McMahan, a religious studies professor who has written about the historical origins of Buddhist modernism (Guess what! contemporary Buddhism is constructed!)1. What I like about this quote is that it points out that the very categories of religius and secular is itself an empty construction, and very much arises historically as a fundamentally Protestant Christian conception. I know some non-Christians who are keenly aware of this and feel a deep discomfort with it. Relatedly, I bristle a little bit at the notion of “secular Buddhism” — so many teachers are reluctant to label their teachings a religion because they worry about people’s aversion to anything that has a whiff of the woo. I don’t think that’s the right stance - instead we should be embracing non-duality and pushing on the categories of woo/non-woo, religious/secular, and belief/non-belief2. I’m not sure a purely rationalist mode of Buddhist practice can get people to awakening.
Links
Fantastic framework by Ted Gioia for thinking about the various spheres of life and what a truly balanced life consists in. Worth reading in full. In some ways an update to the Hindu four aims of life (achievement/material gain, morality/other people, pleasure, liberation). His 6 spheres are: Body, Mind, Spirit, Vocation, Community, Family. Ignore any at your peril :-) We of course have strengths and make tradeoffs, but a full life requires investment across all of these. The sub-spheres of each of these are also very illuminating. I can say that much of my life has been centered around Mind and Vocation and as I’ve aged, I’ve turned increasingly toward Body, Spirit, Community and Family.
Poetic essay about an natural encounter with bees and the liminality of the present moment (h/t Jeff). Touches on many of the themes I’ve been writing about (deep encounters in nature, the current transition point in human history, etc.)
This somewhat uneasy sense of liminality is accentuated by a world in the throes of radical change. Anxiety, fear and anticipation permeate the collective realms. We all feel it. Things are shifting. Worn out illusions are being stripped away. Narratives are crumbling. The systems of domination and control that have fixed reality in place for so long are losing their grip. With war raging across the globe, the worst of human nature is on full display. Even as we watch tragic patterns being repeated, so much of what had been hidden in the shadows is now being brought into the light. In the midst of the chaos and immense suffering, there is a deep yearning. Where will choose to go from here?
Gorgeous collection of photographs by BJ Graft, documenting the Dalai Lama’s visit to a Thiksey monastery in Ladakh, India (h/t Jeff!).
On letting go
There’s a very common summary of the path as being all about “letting go.”3 While this is a useful summary, it can be misleading and difficult to know exactly how to let go. In a purely meditative context (like a shikantaza “do nothing” meditation) the idea is supposed to be to notice every time you find yourself doing something (e.g. focusing attention, getting involved in thought) and to stop doing it4. I heard Michael Taft once liken it to unclenching a fist. Beyond that, there is a question of letting go in every day life — an example of that is the instruction to “drop the story” when experiencing a complex emotional reaction and instead be with the constituent somatic sensations5.
Something I’ve personally seen is that some things are harder to let go of than others — specifically, it’s hard to let go of what you never had than it is to let go of something you have. If you’ve attained something in life, it’s very easy to tune in with the unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) of it6. Like, you might aim for a great career success, achieve it, and realize it doesn’t satisfy, and by realizing that you stop grasping after career success. That’s easy (relatively). But if you’ve never had the thing, then you are trying to let go of the idea that it can satisfy without the direct experience that it won’t. Letting go of your mental construction of that result is much harder. For some people, they have to actually get the thing, unfortunately.
I have not been able to finish reading this book and found it frustrating at points — McMahan’s critiques of contemporary Buddhism (e.g. not enough emphasis on ethics / interdependence) doesn’t resonate with the Buddhism I’ve been taught. Not all Buddhists? :-)
That doesn’t mean completely shutting off your critical faculties either! I should just rename this Substack “It’s complicated (except when it’s not).”
What this means exactly can vary - here I’m conflating letting go as a meditation instruction (e.g. “remain uninvolved”) vs. being able to let go as a kind of renunciative move. The latter may not actually be a goal of practice - the Vajrayana view is to include everything and not to try and make anything go away.
This doesn’t mean “stop thinking” - to stop thinking is a kind of doing. If you notice yourself trying to stop thinking, stop doing that too!
Notice here you aren’t trying to make the story go away, either, rather you just stop feeding it. You allow it to be and then let it naturally do its thing (i.e. subside).
Better still is to view the unsatisfactoriness as wisdom dawning - no need for the dissatisfaction go away - it can be utilized skillfully, e.g. to connect with others’ experience more empathetically, to orient yourself toward service more fully, etc.