The theme of 'Whose Story?' is one that, to my knowledge, has not really featured in the multitude of strands going to make up Buddhism in the modern west. This I find curious, though this is unfair of me, since in my twenty five-plus years as an ordained Buddhist I had no notion of the topic either. The point, however, is this. Focal to Buddhism, as I have always understood it, is the notion of mind and consciousness. The Dhammapada, a central text from what is generally regarded as early Buddhism, begins with the celebrated statement variously translated as 'Mind precedes all mental states', 'Phenomena are preceded by the heart', or 'What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday' (with such divergent translations, what chance do we have of really understanding.....?). Different schools of Buddhism talk of 'Absolute Mind' and 'Mind Only doctrine'. Yet the world 'out there' is as much a manifestation of mind and consciousness as is the world 'in here'. Or, to take Buddhist philosophy to a more advanced level, the distinction between 'inside' and 'outside' is illusory anyhow. Shamanic traditions recognise this: for them, the outer world is unashamedly ensouled, alive, animate, conscious, and full of meaning. But Buddhism, in its more popular and exoteric forms at least, and as it has come down to us, seems overly personalistic, taking 'the individual' and his/her development too literally and seriously. The idea of 'working on my mind' can be uplifting, yet is yuk-inducing in equal measure.
Buddhist analyses of the world tend to vex as much as inspire me nowadays. The Buddhist Wheel of Life purports to depict the world and its workings. In the centre of this wheel, the engine making the entire show go round, are a cock, a snake, and a pig going round in an endless circle, biting one another's tails. The three animals are normally said to represent greed (lobha), hatred (dvesa), and delusion (moha), the driving forces of the samsaric (non-enlightened) world. This is all very well, as far as it goes. The problem, in my experience, is that it is so generalised and abstracted as to be totally inadequate as a tool for real analysis and understanding of the dynamics of worldly existence. At worst, this branding of non-enlightened existence as 'all greed, hatred, and delusion' amounts to a dismissal, an escape from doing the hard work of truly understanding what consciousness is and how it works. In order to do this, we need to be courageous enough to go into the heart of the beast - or to the entrails, more like.
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist (whatever that is, apart from an ad hominem dismissal) to see that our modern world of politics, finance, media, legal institutions, and, sadly, much mainstream science and academia, along with many large 'charitable' and other non-elected organisations, comprise an interrelated and mutually supporting network of interest. And one of their prime interests is to further a particular version of reality, to broadcast a certain type of consciousness as the one and only one; but a consciousness that is limited to say the least.
Within the aforementioned 'network of interest', many people now realise something of the nefarious nature of politics and global finance. But it can be more difficult to see the essential part that media, academia, and non-elected organisations play as part of the same web. While the notion of the personal shadow is well recognised nowadays, there exists a corresponding and equally significant, yet curiously less celebrated, 'shadow of the world'. This is just as much a function of consciousness. And just like the personal dark side, this needs to be owned, worked on, and incorporated into our wider experience of consciousness and mind. A similar point is being made in 'Love, Reality, and the Time of Transition' (readily available through youtube), a film I personally find rather uneven but well worth watching and taking seriously. I submit that Buddhism needs to examine, in specifics and in some detail, how the world is put together as a construct of consciousness, and the kind of consciousness that is being continually created; how and why. Only then can it truly claim to understand how 'mind precedes all mental states.'
And remember: Maya is not a democracy.....
