Sherab Chamma. Pre-Buddhist Bon figure
Part One: Animal Farm or wot?
Buddhism. Buddhist tradition. Buddhist traditions. Buddhist people. I spent over twenty-five years formally ordained into Buddhism, making a final extrication getting on for six years ago. At least, that's what I thought.
Just recently, various happenings have coalesced to cause a more deeply critical revaluation of certain things Buddhic, at least as I have come to experience them. I present a summary below.
First up, the Buddha. Or, should we say, the historical Buddha figure, the one who prowls through the pages of the Pali Canon. Was he really everything he cracked himself up to be? Wise and accomplished, little doubt, and with a rare enthusiasm for communication. But the claims of uniqueness and exclusiveness, at least in this era, that he insists on so strongly? The new bright light burst into an otherwise uniformly dark and brutish Kali Yuga? The One and Only? The Really Special One? All seems a bit dodgy to me these days.
Next, Tibetan Buddhist Tantra. From the days of my early acquaintance with Buddhism, this is the stuff that really turned me on, communicated to the 1970s neophyte with zeal by Govinda, David-Neel and the rest. Blueberry-coloured beings with huge bellies, half-human half-animal, three eyes, lots of flailing arms, out to scare you shitless. Great stuff. But in more recent times, it has come as a surprise to learn that some of this carnival of the bizarre is not Buddhist (or Hindu, whatever that catch-all phrase means) in origin at all. Some, at least, of the figures have come up through pre-Buddhist Bon, which in turn most likely inherited them from more ancient shamanic peoples.
The Bonpo themselves get a bit of a bad press from the orthodoxy. Weird magical anarchists with a penchant for hurling rocks and thunderbolts at their neighbours. Then along came the Buddhists with their proper, organised spirituality, bringing light and peace in place of the dodgy rituals of those unpredictable practitioners of the Dark Arts.
So the story goes. But maybe the truth is rather different. Maybe we are looking at a tale of invasion and repression of indigenous shamanic peoples and practices, a tale rendered respectable by modern pro-Buddhist spin. Could it be that the newly-arrived Buddhists in Tibet cleverly hijacked and absorbed the Bon and pre-Bon elements for their own ends, just as the Control System twists and assimilates to its heart's content nowadays?
History is written by the victorious.
It has been disquieting to consider that Buddhism, which I once embraced so enthusiastically as a radical alternative to the ignorance and blindness of the Judeo-Christian religions, may share, in degree and at times, in the same patriarchal idiocy and hierarchical power sickness.
Simultaneously, realising that the figures of Enlightenment are not the exclusive preserve of any one particular tradition has been personally liberating. They roam the world wild, pure, unfettered, larger than any system that humans can hope to come up with.
Then there's the teacher. The bottom line is that I left the Buddhist Order he founded because the practices and techniques weren't working for me any more. In retrospect, there's the temptation to feel hoodwinked. I signed up for the Great Enlightenment, and I got generalised exoterica - which worked for a while. Then he showed me nothing else. The disquieting niggle is that he had nothing else to show. I may be wrong.
Actually, what I have written above is not quite correct. As well as the exoterica, my former teacher passed on a sadhana of a particular Buddha/Bodhisattva. This sustained me for years, and for that introduction I am truly grateful. But when it comes to navigating consciousness as it begins to extend beyond the world of everyday third density perception, there was no guidance, no advice; not even any proper recognition of its existence. Maybe that is the mainstream Buddhist way. Look elsewhere, however, and helping hands abound. There are the shamanic traditions scattered across the globe; there are western mystical traditions, if you can get your head around them. There is Jung, fragmentarily; in fictional guise there is Castaneda, even. And there are quite a number of modern folk whose words can be accessed through books and the internet: Neil Kramer and John Lash have proved most helpful to me personally.
And let's not forget the disciples. Some remain among my best friends. But when I formally embraced Buddhism I assumed I was joining a bunch of folk who, to a person, were uniformly busting their gut for realisation of the Unborn, the Uncreate, the Immaculate. With respect, I would now say that this was a miscalculation on my part.
Part Two: Skinny-Dipping
23rd July 2007: a letter arrives. It is acceptance of my resignation from the Buddhist Order by my former teacher. He is not surprised, he says, at my leaving. The letter is courteous, though failing to express any appreciation of the years of blood, sweat, and tears I put into teaching meditation, organising classes, and running centres devoted to spreading his own brand of Buddha Dharma. I suppose this is OK.
Once I had decided to resign, writing the letter and the rest had come easily. At least I thought it had. One day, however, just recently, an alarm bell went off very loudly. There was something I still hadn't dealt with. The kesa....
A kesa is an item worn around the neck by those formally devoted to following the Buddhist path, in some schools at least. It's soft-core uniform (I use this word, not as a put-down; I came across it as description on a Zen Buddhist website). Getting rid of the kesa encountered more resistance than writing the letter. I mean, what do you do with a kesa? I put it off. And put it off. Then forgot. Or, should I say, 'forgot'.
With time, deeper layers of purpose began to reveal themselves to the act of leaving behind formalised Buddhism. 'The drugs don't work any more' morphed into a spiritual imperative: to go freestyle. The very act of identification - as a Buddhist in this case - manifested as an obstacle. So I turned spiritual vagrant. With nothing to tie me down, I became like a beach-comber, wandering through the flotsam and driftwood of the seashore looking for bits and pieces of value. It was not long before I realised that the great ocean, in its abundant generosity, would throw up all manner of treasure once I learnt to open my eyes. I became a student of the intuitive art of beach-combing.
Things have changed in the Order to which I once belonged. Its members can roam wide, free to gain succour from many areas of spiritual nourishment. I look upon this as a good thing. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, they will return from their wanderings to a comfy bed with the recurring motif hung above the pillow: Home, Sweet Buddhist Home. A sound night's sleep beckons.
To walk unfettered, free of any fixed identity, revealed itself as necessary for me to develop further. Much can be learnt from a spiritual tradition, but the time arrives when, with gratitude and respect, the aspirant needs to jettison it, leave it all behind. The leap into the void, into pure empty space, is just that. No ties, beliefs, identities. No umbilical cord, however fine and gossamer thin. Not exactly comfortable, I know. But to dance in the company of the wild, naked dakinis is a two-way affair: you need to go naked yourself.
Part Three: Grey Sky, Blue Sky
Monday 18th March, 2013. I open the back door to an east wind that cuts my breath. The perpetual winter sun of late February has long since given way to the unrelenting viciousness of March. The thermometer reads three degrees, but in the wind it feels far colder.
The sky is painted a uniform grey as I head down the hill, alongside the river, then across mud-tangled grass. Monday: the world seems in quiet mourning. A thick murk hangs over the landscape; as I climb, I can see thick smudges of snow on the lower hills to the east, then barely perceptible sheets of dirty white covering the higher ground beyond. Mercifully, the murk renders the wind turbines which rake the far skyline invisible. Darkness has its uses.
I am finally beginning to warm up, and stop to remove hat, gloves, and scarf. At last I leave behind human habitation, and begin to ascend the wide and muddy track up the hillside. I am nearing my destination. I had reckoned on two hours to get this far, but a glance at my watch shows me that, with the cold, I have accomplished the walk in only ninety minutes.
As I turn up the final narrow path leading to the little stone circle on top of the hill, a few grains of snow fall from the canopy of grey above. The white Buddha, the Buddha of purity, of the mantra, is conferring his blessing.
The remains of the circle sit at two hundred metres above sea level, perched on the brow of the hill. To the west lies forest, but eastwards the view is panoramic - on a clear day, that is. Today, the gorse and thick grass hang damp in the silence. I open my rucksack and take out a small wooden box, delicately carved for me by an old friend many years ago. Opening the lid, I take out its contents. There is a ring of flames and a number of tiny vajras, all made out of card, relics from a ritual in the Spanish mountains over twenty years ago. Out comes a pouch holding a kesa; then a second older and grubbier specimen of the same.
The ritual is simple and effective, involving a few brief invocations and the burning of the wall of flames, vajras, kesas, and finally the pouch. At first, it is difficult to get a fire in the wind and damp, but eventually the objects are returned readily to their constituent elements. All this takes place to the quiet background hum of the mantra of the pure white Buddha. I have not recited it for years, but it comes effortlessly to mind. Ironic, indeed, that these Buddhist regalia, and with them any remnants of Buddhist identity, should disappear to the sound of the pure white Buddha. A Buddha stretching back, beyond Buddhism into a distant authentic shamanic past, before Buddhism as history. And, more profoundly, back to Universal Mind, beyond time altogether.
Midway through the ritual burning, a flock of wild geese fly directly over the circle. They are disconcertingly low, and in perfect V-formation. The group geometry, the distinctive honk-cry, the great migration to a distant who-knows-where, is something I have found, in these Scottish parts, singularly moving. Now I begin to understand why.
The little fire begins to exhaust itself; with nearly all reduced to ashes, I pour some water over the remains just in case, before taking silent leave of the scene. My hands are numb with cold, and I move quickly, eventually catching a bus for the final stretch of my journey. I search out warmth in a corner cafe and, over coffee, begin to write. It wonder if a tear will come: it doesn't.
References: for more on the relationship between Buddhism, Bon, and shamanism, go for the magnificent 'Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas' by Claudia Muller-Ebeling, Christian Ratsch, and Surendra Bahadur Shahi. The equally magnificent John Lash writes in various places on metahistory.org: try 'Open Source Earth Wisdom for Kali Yuga' for starters.
