What Arises

‘amateur dharmatics’ consists of reflections on dharma and popular culture, with sidelines in reflections on dharma practice, and philosophy.

It’s best thought of as the ‘notes to self’ (or lack thereof) of an incurable dilettante (that’s me) with an interest in the manifestations of the dharma in so-called alternative culture, and also in the practice of intellectual inquiry.

I won’t preface everything I say with ‘it seems to me’ or ‘in my opinion’ for the sake of avoiding repetition, but please take it as read. No judgement makes any claim to be authoritative, objective, or final; all impermanent things are subject to reinterpretation (and, here, rewriting).

Where am I coming from? I’m a Zen practitioner, but with a wider interest in all Buddhist traditions; and rather than being particularly wedded to one tradition, I’m more of a sceptic than anything else, in particular regarding the claims traditions make about themselves (having said which, I also try to avoid the pitfalls of knee-jerk dismissiveness, and of unreflective ‘pick and choose’ consumerist spirituality, both of which tend only to reinforce one’s own pre-existing prejudices).

My interpretation of dharma practice includes:

• the cessation of the suffering of sentient beings as the defining aim of any belief and practice;

• practical rather than mystical-contingent ethics (that is, firstly, the precepts are best interpreted literally and personally, and in relation to social and institutional systems of injustice as well as our individual actions, rather than contingently or metaphorically; and secondly, an undifferentiated ‘ultimate’ reality can never cancel out the ‘conventional’ reality in which prejudice and violence cause suffering; rather, these realms coexist in equal mutuality);

• the rejection of power inequalities and power hierarchies (including those in Buddhist practice, and those between humans and other sentient beings), and the need to challenge institutionalised material oppression and inequality as part of the practice of compassion and of liberating sentient beings from suffering (encompassing the attempt to 'see through the self' as a qualitatively different enterprise from the abdication of the self in favour of an institution, Buddhist or otherwise, nation, or other collective body) ;

• the non-rejection of the intellectual (the intellect is a tool which is necessary for right understanding, which allows us to live every moment in a spirit of open question rather than habit and preconception, and which can be used to skilfully reduce suffering, while the conceptual/nonconceptual binary is a false duality which leads to aversion).

But enough about me…