Self-identified religious gurus and tea sales

 

A friend recently brought up an interesting subject of discussion, raised initially by someone claiming to be "spiritually advanced" in a Facebook group post introduction.  The problems with this sort of claim and context seems obvious enough:  what if such a person was either making up those credentials, using them for some other type of gain, or wrong about their own assessment of attainment?  The "average cult leader" is someone best avoided.

But then it's all not as simple as it first appears.  How do we distinguish an ingenuine master-type from someone who really has had unique, helpful, and informative experiences, who wants to share perspective deriving from those?  Is the problem only related to someone running a scam, or using that as product or service marketing, or is there a broader grey area to be concerned about?  

This example led into such concerns.  It will be helpful using it as an approach point, so first unpacking what that guy claimed, and what context seemed to relate to making the claims.  Some degree of speculation is involved in any review, so I'll try to be careful about flagging which parts are added by my own intuition, which really is most of it, in this case.

About two years ago someone posted a personal introduction in a Thailand-related Facebook group.  Who it is doesn't matter, or whether this guy really is a scam artist looking to sell something based off false claims, or else a genuine and accomplished spiritual seeker who really would be helpful to others, if one were to seek out further contact.  In the end it does matter, related to his case and actual contact, but this will talk around what goes into making such a distinction, and how different contexts matter.

His back-story was that he had just spent some years meditating under the guidance of a master, as part of an established tradition.  I think it even included reference to an actual cave location, and either martial arts or qi gong, but to some extent those details aren't critical.  It was also associated, if not then soon after, with selling tea.  That's a bit of a red flag, coupling offering spiritual insights with a literal product sales-pitch.  In the initial form it was just an introduction though, not a clear marketing step.

I responded to my friend's question, asking about that context and that guy, in discussing my concerns over such a background, in relation to that person making specific claims about spirtitual-scope accomplishments:

I don't know any stories about him cheating people or anything like that. He was telling stories about training in meditation and something like kung fu (martial arts or qi gong) under a master, claims which are typically problematic, but in some instances there could be validity for that.

Related to the specific subject of spiritual attainment, you could find someone in China to certify that you are anything at all by email, with no background. You could be a kung fu master, tea expert, master electrician, whatever you wanted. Real "spiritual" training and experience typically wouldn't come with titles.

He was promoting himself as spiritually advanced; the reference was to training in a cave under a master, or something such. Taken alone the claim implies a related gap. As I see it he is embracing evaluation of that status in taking up the promotion. Someone offering others advice about some meditation practice in a Buddhism group is one thing; that does imply accomplishment, but only indirectly, towards helping others. Using such direct claims as background to sell tea is something else.

This is the problem with [another similar case of a person using a spiritual role to sell tea]. No one can tell how spiritually advanced he is without meeting him, but he is definitely using a spiritual angle to sell tea, for material benefit. I talked to him only one time, mentioning some background with tea and Buddhism as an intro, and he bypassed any further discussion of both subjects to try to sell me a subscription. He's a salesman. That's fine, but even selling spirituality is problematic, to really serve the other role. It can be promoted, but focus on the sales side and literal profit makes one no different than Joel Osteen.

Probably both guys are decent people, and a good bit of that rejection [mentioned in other comments in more detailed form related to other people's takes] does relate to subculture based expectations. I personally don't care for ego and focus on materialism to adjoin spiritual claimed status; my own negative reaction probably relates to something like that.

It could sound like a contradiction, saying that they are probably decent guys, and that it's ok for people to judge and dislike them. As I see it the positioning as a religious figure or accomplished practitioner is the difference. A Christian minister needs to be more ethical than most people to serve that role. Joel Osteen is fine in relation to the ethical standard we hold stock brokers to, but not remotely ok as a Christian minister. This guy brought up the scope in direct claims, and for sure he's using that scope as part of tea sales business. He implicitly embraces being judged differently, since he is tying a business sales function to an image and a background context. Then the last step about me guessing his personal context based on his claims is a bit thin, mostly just speculation.

The introduction based on spending years in some type of meditation training was probably based on some truth; I don't doubt that part. The next implication of spiritual accomplishment is more problematic.  But I get why some genuine, valid, informative experiences would naturally lead one to try to "bring wisdom from on high" to others.

That clearly left off with the open-ended conclusion that I don't know how this case works out.

One unusual twist here is that the context helps us try to fill in the gap related to knowing how genuine this form of self-identification really is.  Pairing it with selling something is a red flag, but not necessarily a clear indication of the context being false or invalid.  He easily could've had interesting, useful experiences that he really would like to share.  He could also just happen to sell tea.  We have to judge further from other input, or completely suspending judgment is an especially valid approach.

It helps to reference what an "accomplished Buddhist master" actually does look like, but to be clear it won't work to hold anyone who has had any other degree of exposure to the same standard.  The modern paradigms that come to mind are Ajarn Chah (of the Thai Buddhist forest tradition), and Thich Nhat Hanh, of the Vietnamese Zen tradition.  Both are regarded as accomplished, well-informed, personally-transformed and genuine teachers.  The Dalai Lama is along the same line and type, with opinions varying as to whether his political stance and purposes reinforce his spiritual leader role or conflict with it.

Thich Nhat Hanh; we don't have that many genuine spiritual guides like him

Both of these teachers emphasize personal practice, study of core teachings and practices, embracing an unusual degree of humility, and a rejection of materialism.  To be clear I've shifted from Asian spiritual themes in general to focus on Buddhism here; it could be that qi gong practice, or Taoism, within a yoga tradition, or whatever else, doesn't retain the exact same focuses but are also valid.  Equally valid?  Who knows; that's the kind of thing people need to explore on their own personal journey, and decide for themselves.

A materialist theme was one underpinning thread in what the person was communicating (in the introduced status), but only indirectly.  Adjoining the very limited description of practice background was a context including special clothing, elaborate furnishings, and art-collection oriented teaware.  To be clear I don't see all of these as problematic at all in relation to anyone's personal interest in tea.  It's fine to bridge over to collecting teapots, and statues and figurines, owning unique tables and cabinets that relate to the interest, and wearing traditional Chinese martial arts inspired clothing (or other robes; whatever it is).  Those interests aren't invalid in any way, or even problematic.

a dear friend combines interest in tea, teaware collection, and ceremony, and it completely works

The potential problem is connecting ownership of a lot of "stuff" with spiritual attainment claims.  To me that's a contradiction with that context.  One would typically start such a spiritual journey by limiting focus on ownership of a range of items that expands their self-image definition.  Not right away; setting up some sort of shrine and owning some meaningful symbols would be typical, but pretty soon in focusing on internal versus external connections would come up.

form can seem to overtake function, or maybe this is just an everyday look (photo credit)

The cave context itself works as an example of how we would tend to use intuition to break down what is implied but not directly expressed.  There's nothing wrong with meditating in a literal cave; that could be a quiet, comfortable, isolated natural space.  It could also be seen as a red flag related to a teacher putting image above function.  The same would come up related to actual certifications of attainment.  You might wonder, do such things even exist, would that be common?  There's no tight connection to the rest of this but an interesting tangent comes to mind.

judgement based only on appearances is problematic; his religious practice could be completely valid and useful

I don't want this to be about "naming names" but during the time I was ordained as a monk I went on a retreat to a different sect's meditation center well outside of Bangkok, arranged by my "monk-teacher."  I don't think it was chosen as the best possible location and setting for such a training, or the most authentic source, it was just relatively close, and set up for that kind of visitation.  

That sect was and still is controversial for selling a lot of magic amulets and such, for focus on material gain as a part of the organization context.  Stories about talking statues I heard there were really crazy.  They use that revenue to build larger and larger facilities, a theme that comes up in some US Christian ministries.  I didn't care for the teachings or form of meditation practice, which related to a accepting that the Buddha was alive in a heaven realm (a bit of heresy there), and to "guided meditation" focusing on trying to see crystal angel images and such.  If you said that you visualized a certain thing you would be given a certificate announcing your level of attainment.  All not good, as I saw it.  I didn't want any certificate.

In the end I don't know how genuine or spiritually advanced the guy I'm discussing here is.  Meeting him would help a lot in making that distinction.  It's a problem defining yourself as spiritually advanced, but not the same kind of problem I might seem to be implying.  People do experience shifts in perspective and even distinct breakthroughs in spiritual progress.  If that is what triggered his self-declaration there's a pretty good chance that he's just the kind of person someone pursuing a spiritual path would want to meet, and would be lucky to meet.  Just as likely he has experienced some positive aspects of spiritual pursuit and still wouldn't be helpful, due to not getting far, and not having prior exposure to the right kinds of teachers and practice, especially related to placing unusual experience after it happens.

I may be over-reacting to the coupling of spiritual attainment claims with product marketing.  We always tend to be biased in relation to expecting what we already experienced to repeat, and prior negative conditioning could be steering me in the wrong direction related to this.

I've not really fleshed out a sort of worst-case yet here: what if that guy had unusual, interesting, potentially helpful personal experiences, but then derived a number of relatively inaccurate, unhelpful, and potentially damaging conclusions and personal practice steps from them?  That can happen.  

To clarify context with an example, some people really do believe in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and then it matters whether Traditional Chinese Medicine is a set of valid practices or not, or a complete scam.  Maybe it's in the middle, with forms varying, and to me that seems likely.  If that third option is the fact of the matter then it would be possible to run across better and worse references.  Someone with limited legitimate exposure and information, actual positive contact, could have the best of intentions but still pass on very bad guidance.  Experiences would vary in relation to differing exposure, and the exact same external inputs would affect different people differently, in terms of ingesting rare herb or root supplements or undergoing different practices.

I've met a tea vendor before who also sold TCM herbs as a separate second business, and asked him about that subject (not one of the two people I've already discussed).  He wouldn't say if it was valid or not, but his participation in the business implied that he either saw it as valid or else thought it wasn't but didn't care.  

He implied that it was legitimate, but instead of defending it he pushed the validation step off to other people involved who did the TCM analysis and prescription, roughly fulfilling the doctor's role (in the separate Western medicine context).  He saw himself as more covering the function of a drug store, which doesn't try to validate the use or effectiveness of anything sold, they just offer it for sale.  Fair enough.  If he personally thought it was a complete scam that still seems a bit unethical, but withholding judgment is perhaps still a potential option.  I'm not sure to what extent he was really "bought in," or else was working within an ethical grey area instead.

This paradigm can't really hold for someone advocating meditation / spiritual practices; they would have to be involved, and completely bought-in.  Using that range of experience as a background for unrelated product marketing is perhaps a step closer to a grey area.  Really a tea vendor is either selling high quality, good-value, as-sold tea products or else they're not.  If they cite health claims that they don't believe in themselves or tell mythical stories that they don't think are true that sort of doesn't matter.  No one really knows which health benefit claims are valid anyway.  If it relates to a product-background detail maybe it does, or maybe still doesn't; if the tea really doesn't come from beside a wishing-well where some magic event occurred in historical times.  

It's probably a more common case for a tea to be sold as from a specific village area when it's really from an area next to it, or as a spring harvest version instead of fall, or from young farm-grown plant sources instead of older natural environment tea trees.  The "red flags" sort of matter, because if part of the background isn't real the rest might not be either.

Ideally people should be buying tea for the actual experience of that tea, not as part of a story.  In reality different themes like that do tend to mix.  Spiritual attainment and tea quality and experience might seem an odd coupling but it wouldn't be completely new for them to combine.  Tea experience can take on a meditative form, and the principles and practices found in religious context can support that, and can positively couple with it.  Mixing the sales aspects, and marketing, with spiritual practice scope becomes a little strange; one general theme here in this writing is being aware of potential problems with that.

I wrote about that more directly in a blog post about mixing tea experience and "cult" experience, religious group participation, in a limited form.  It's less of a sweeping critique of anything remotely like that than an initial title summary may imply.  I personally don't see a problem with combing varying forms of interest, tea with mindfulness and religion practice, tea experience with aesthetic interest and art collection, and so on.  Focus on the most extreme forms, which would tend to be more negative, helps highlight the scope of the concerns, but in general limited mixing would probably typically be positive.  Even the more extreme example I mention, related to a contact I've discussed here, is probably experienced generally positively by most people who come in contact with that group and form.  

I'll cite that other blog post for further reading:

On tea popularity and tea cults

About an unusual meditation experience

There is a story about something that happened to me once when meditating that I don't tell very often.  I never really knew what to make of it so there was never a lot of point in sharing it with others.  A friend just experienced a death in her family, a terrible tragedy, and it partly, relates, so I'm writing this down and passing it on related to that.  She would just think I'm crazy, but I suspect it won't be occurring to her for the first time anyway.

[Later edit]:  I thought better of publishing this, and am checking back in on the content 3 1/2 years later.  Why not mention it, since few people read this blog anyway?

It's about meditation, something that happened once during that, and I suppose it could be interpreted as being about lots of other things, about something vague and spiritual, or even about death.  I'll start with the event itself, what happened, and then never really will get far with interpretation.  It sort of goes without saying that this was "all in my head," given the subject matter.  That's the part I could be clearer on, what it means, how "real" one could say it is, but as for me I don't say.  I tried to place it more back when it happened, around 25 years ago now, but I let that drop after awhile.  I went on to study Buddhism more formally in two philosophy and religion degree programs, but instead of being about sorting this out all that was about communicating things I had found out.  That didn't really work.


To begin, I had a strange feeling once when meditating.  For anyone interested in dismissing most of the rest I can explain that was in my younger days, during a stint as a ski-bum, and it was kind of a given that people were exposed to different drugs back then, and I'm not saying that wasn't a factor.  It was a different time, the early 90s, but things haven't changed so much.  Except that where I was, Colorado, has since legalized the drug that was already most common then, marijuana.  It didn't seem like such a big deal back then but it was illegal; now personal use of it in that state is not.  I was using marijuana regularly then and had experimented with different psychedelic drugs.

It started with feeling an unusual anxiety.  Feeling a bit of anxiety related to using marijuana is completely normal; that's a main side-effect.  I had just taken a couple of weeks off of that habit, due to preparing for a drug test for a job I was applying for.  Drifting off into considering strange ideas also wouldn't be so uncommon.  For people that have no exposure to the drug it's perhaps not as intense or unusual as people may expect related to drug use.  Or maybe it really is; people growing marijuana have put lots of effort into increasing the potency and types of effects over the last 20 or 30 years, and it's hard to imagine where that has led now.  This was different though, not really an experience related to some crazy strain or "getting too high."  It's hard to summarize, but I'll give it a go.

I had been meditating for awhile, nothing too serious or interesting, so I relaxed to focus a bit.  It may be familiar to anyone doing yoga--which I did a little of, in part related to being flexible for the snowboarding I did then--that breathing adjustment is part of that.  It's nothing too far out there.  It just turns out that to relax your mind or focus your body developing even and deep breathing helps.  It's funny how it seems to actually work both ways; when you are relaxed your breathing naturally deepens, even seems to "come from" a different place, to change from chest breathing to more stomach / diaphragm based breathing instead.  All that gets to be a long subject so I'll leave it at that, that getting in the habit of adjusting breathing to be a bit slower and more from the stomach can help someone relax.

[Another later aside]:  I took up yoga again seven months ago now, in a completely different form than that earlier practice, which was on my own, without instruction, based on using a text for reference.  At that time I would do a series of a dozen or so standard poses, all relatively slowly, trying to relax into those positions.  This required changing breathing and letting muscles and bones settle into relatively unfamiliar positions, releasing a lot of held tension to accomplish that.  

The yoga practice I had been doing recently was with an instructor, and it was more a cross between that sort of practice and calisthenics.  There were themes to individual classes, like Intro, Essential, Stretching, Twisting, Core Strength, and onto advanced ranges more likely to draw on Indian yoga category names.  Sun Salutation variations came up a lot, guided to be practiced at a fast pace, so that physical conditioning also came into play, along with flexibility and balance.  The breathing that instructor recommended was fast and rough, more timed to correspond with motions than to slow and relax the body.  

I have no idea if the breathing part "worked;" I wasn't able to take the practice far enough to get a feel for that.  My flexibility never really developed, related to not stretching in between classes, which I often only attended for one hour per weekend.  Running was probably a negative factor.  I would stretch before runs, which I'd typically do twice a week, but it seemed like leg flexibility decreased along with the leg muscle conditioning.  Sitting at a desk for a work-week definitely didn't help, but then the yoga seemed to offset some of the impact of that.


[Back to the original writing]:  But why do breathing exercises or practices?  Relaxing is nice, but why go that next step, to link it to breathing.  I was using yoga as stretching, which it sort of is, but it's also different, and you need calm breathing to be able to do some positions.  Of course this relates to mental and physical state too, it's not just about some magical effect of breath, but it was all coupled naturally enough.

So just then, related to this meditation experience, I used regular breathing to calm myself--nothing interesting just yet.  In a way it worked but it felt as if the anxiety ran deeper, as if I could somehow continue to follow that experience.  I'd never really had any experience like that before, of being able to recognize and "follow" a feeling; I was only messing around with meditation a little.  Oddly it seemed that I could really stay with that feeling, sort of explore it more deeply, in a sense I can't explain at all.  Finally it seemed this experience of anxiety was really related to some deeper experience of fear.  But what would I be afraid of, really, related to drifting off inside my own mind?

I can't convey what it was like but I want to say that it was like travelling into the experience, even though that makes no sense.  I felt the normal experience of myself start to fade a bit as I did so.  Finally I had a choice, to go back, to stop, or to release my apprehension over really experiencing this fear, and go on to see and experience what it really was.  Oddly it seemed the reservation was over not existing in some sense, losing myself, since there seemed to be some core connection to ordinary perception that I was examining.  Somehow it only seemed possible since I could set or "lock" my breath, to stabilize it as a slow form of diaphragm breathing.

None of this made any sense, and it still doesn't now, which is why I never communicate about it.  I'm talking about vague feelings and interpretation of an odd experience.

It felt as if at a deep core of myself the connection to even experiencing, in general, related to this apprehension, an odd type of reservation or a desire, a fear of not being.  Saying that "I felt fear" really doesn't do the experience justice.  I wasn't afraid, in a conventional sense, like when you are in a bad neighborhood and you don't know what is going to happen next.  Some part of that carried over though, a vague uncertainty, and a relatively tangible experience of fear itself.  I let that go, just experienced it, and moved into the center of it instead of trying to avoid it.  In that process I experienced flashes of my life, in a strange sense, but not like memories, like I felt connections dissolving.  It was like I was gone, along with a normal form of experience.

There was another side.  Things were already strange but this is where it gets more so.  I'd stopped with the "I," so it was a different form of experience.  It wasn't really sequential, not related to other types of experiences, not really sensory.  The fear ceased, and "below" that was an unusual experience of selfless connection, an immersion, a dissolving.  I didn't really seem to experience myself, but an odd kind of positive, broader energy, somehow tied to a sensory experience of light, even though I wasn't "seeing" anything in an ordinary sense.  Without a normal flow of time for reference it was all not really clear.

And that was kind of it.  It seemed a bit like the experience of light, so closer to that in terms of sensory scope, but just different, odd.  Later I kind of came out of it, so it seemed I had really just fallen asleep, that it was an odd dream.  And so it could have been, or so in a sense it really was; what else could internal experience be?

After that

The really odd part was how it changed me; of course I could've just imagined that, or fell asleep and dreamt it.  I was a good bit different after.  That inner dialogue, inner voice we all naturally hear, went quiet.  That alone would have been odd, to experience myself in a fundamentally different way than I ever had, but that wasn't the end of it.  Things seemed different.  It was kind of odd to experience at first, but meat seemed way too common to me to eat it, to what I was made of myself.  I became a vegetarian, immediately, and didn't get back to eating meat for over a decade and a half (after some health problems; living in a country without many vegetarians--in Thailand--made it hard).  There was nothing particularly idealistic about that part; it just seemed like a natural thing to do, as if actually eating meat should've seemed unnatural all along.  I gave away what was in my refrigerator; the change was that fast.  

I'd never had any significant experience of any "sixth sense" or anything like that but unusual things seemed apparent, things about to happen, or happening nearby out of sight, details about people.  It would relate to a sense of expecting someone to walk in a door, to what was happening elsewhere, or in the immediate future.  I didn't know what to make of that so I didn't make anything of it.  It was just something odd that would happen.  In one instance I had a strange impression of someone around that time and asked him if he had either had an unusual form of meditation experience or had died before, and he was surprised that I asked, since he had been resuscitated in relation to severe trauma from a car accident.  I can't really describe what seemed different about him.  He lacked the noise and roughness other people exhibit.

You might wonder how this relates to death, since I mentioned that, and so far it seems not to connect, beyond that odd example.  I didn't really know how to interpret it, but the flashes of my self, not so much memories, but about connections, and the vague relation to light reminded me of those near-death stories.  I don't think that I died, of course; in fact I know that I didn't.  The part that seemed vague at the end, that I didn't say much about, seemed to relate to dissolution into the experience of a greater underlying whole.

I did wonder if any of this related to how people are on a different level.  That fear felt really fundamental, and of course the other experience had some odd universal connection feel to it.  I don't know.  I got the sense that the fear was connecting to something very basic and common, a fear of death, the kind of underlying experience we never really examine or couldn't really embrace, generally.  My interpretation was that one main connection point we have to life experience is fear that it will end, that this ties us into a lot of how we see ourselves, setting up an underlying tension that we don't really consciously notice.  

The rest, it seemed like somehow that related to what we really are.  It didn't feel like I "came back" with answers, of course.  I did get a sense we have nothing to worry about, in the broadest sense, that it's all connected, and ok on a level we never could experience, at least not as the selves we are.  It seemed like the separation of individual self from everything else that we experience is mostly just misinterpretation, if that makes any sense.  It seemed like a "self" is really just a collection of attachments, ideas, feelings, and expectations, but we aren't that at all.

Years went by and I never placed that experience.  The effects of it that I just mentioned faded to some degree over time, some parts relatively quickly, some never really going back to a former form.  I felt like I always was a much quieter person mentally than I'd ever been before, that my inner dialogue never really did resume in the same type of form.  It did come back though.  The odd effect of sensing things about to happen or insights about people faded quickly enough, maybe over a few weeks.  Not a lot changed otherwise.  It seemed I retained just a little capacity to stop being myself if I tried to.  But why would I do that?  It doesn't really shed light on the rest of this but a couple of reasons come to mind, purposes, and describing that works as a tangent.

It's sort of just a trick that someone can do, but it's easy to experience if someone else is lying if you experience how they experience themselves, if you change to be them instead.  There's nothing to it; you just stop being yourself temporarily, and naturally absorb more of them.  I've heard of a similar practice, or perhaps an identical one, described as exchanging self for another.  It doesn't take any special ESP access to know what someone near you is experiencing, on some level, because they exhibit it in so many ways.  Even without talking, but people are very expressive when they convert their thoughts into communication, even when they are guarded and filtered.  Maybe especially then, in a limited sense, because you can sense a different kind of tension in them when there is a divide between what they say and what they think.  Sometimes people who experience no core, inner other self can be scary.  Being mentally quiet, consistent, and genuine is one thing, existing as a less ego-based self, but some people are pure randomness, just disjointed, to themselves there is no center.  That alone doesn't make them bad people, but that form is really strange.  It can work out badly.


This part is a bit of a different tangent, but aside from that, for sports purposes, an odd type of experience of selflessness can be useful.  It turns out you can only perform a difficult physical task up to a certain level if you are thinking about what you are doing, because that overlays a "you" onto the experience, it creates a bit of a feedback loop, "you" do it, then you also analyze and experience it.  It's more direct to just do it (like the Nike ad, right?).  

This takes a different form, and makes sense in a different way, when the margin is so small for what you are doing to even be possible, when being completely in that moment is absolutely necessary, or else it won't happen.  Snowboarding was a good example.  I would "board" bumps / moguls (actual terrain features caused by people making turns, like a small mound maybe two yards / meters across), and do so fast enough that I'd go through / past / around more than one in a second, or several.  You can't think and react that fast.  I would use tricks to drop conscious perception of the actions back when I snowboarded, like singing in my head, but eventually you can just go there mentally, and drop out layers of mental participation.

Maybe rock climbing is a better example.  Your mind can be a bit scattered and you can still snowboard in unusual ways, but there's something compelling about hanging on a rock face by fingertips and the edge of an oddly designed shoe.  You can stay at that edge, at the limit of what you can do, but overthinking it any at all won't work.


Anyway, fast forward a couple of decades and I wonder what all that was about myself.  I can't imagine this would be reassuring to anyone else but somehow I'm sure that we've nothing to worry about, related to death, and to life too.  I'm somehow certain that we connect and it all "makes sense" on a level we'll never be able to experience.  It's nothing at all about making sense, about reasoning, or about us, in any remotely conventional sense.  I had the impression that an experienced self is more about mental habits, assumptions, and preferences than any underlying part of what we really are, that a conventional form of self-experience is just really about the noise part.

Later thoughts and tangents:

There are lots of directions I might take further thoughts in.  It seems there should be a better way to place that experience, and the changes in perspective that resulted from it.  There are differing conventional descriptions of odd forms of experience, but it would be problematic to match it to one.  

Certainly 25 years later I've changed perspective related to what it meant, and how I view my ordinary life.  I've finally got back to meditation again, a practice I only revisited once in between during a two-month stint as a Buddhist monk.  During the pandemic I was able to meditate regularly for a month or two, related to gaining some time and energy due to my daily commute dropping out.  I've even been considering a connection between running focus and meditation, since for both you are at opposite extremes of the experience spectrum, dropping out all physical and most mental activity, or else engaging your body in repetitive, familiar physical activity.  Not much of all of it completely links together, or really informs what that experience was about, or what it may have meant.

To me it seems like I'm a normal person; maybe that doesn't come across in this.  If anything I seem much more normal than the average person.

I can't pass on much for advice or summary related to any of this, but I do want to make one last point.  In reading up on different forms of meditation experience the idea came up of people having unusual experiences tied to drugs (as I did), and being "reborn under the sway."  Anyone going through something like this should seriously consider parting with any negative habits right at that point, any attachments that seem questionable or problematic at all.  

It's too long a story to relate to how that played out in my case, but cutting that cycle short right then would've been better.  Instead I did a longer version, and dropping out some normal attachments and retaining one primary and somewhat negative one didn't go well.  I'm not saying that marijuana is bad, but if you experience a reset of some sort letting such a habit go then would probably be for the best.  I guess the same could be true for a move; eventually I parted ways with that habit related to making other conventional changes, including that one.

Are Thais racist against white people?

That must sound like a strange question, that splitting off who are the main targets of unequal treatment might be appropriate, starting out with asking if Thais are racist full stop.

My take is that answer is simple:  they are.  There is a mainstream, well-accepted prejudice against black people, Indians, and people from the Middle East.  It just is what it is. 

All of this came up recently in relation to a story by Richard Barrow about being turned away at the most popular tourist-attraction temple in Thailand, Wat Pho.  I'll get back to that.


Of course some people are not racist at all, everywhere.  Some see people of all races, nationalities, social status / income levels, and gender self-designation and relationship preference as completely equal.  Good for them.  As I take it the concern relates to the norm, what would be typical.  It's just my impression, based on living in Thailand, but I understand that some very limited degree of racial bias is quite normal in Thailand. 


None of this bias is expressed as the kind of dislike and preferential treatment that seems to stir up social context concerns in the US now.  Some white people there actively dislike black people; this is not a secret.  A black person getting murdered by a white policeman isn't as much of a rare exception as it should be, but it really is an exception.  The more common forms really are nothing like that, even there.  Racial prejudice that should be very uncommon there does occur though, verbal confrontation and violence, resulting differences in hiring practices and prison population, etc.  Of course the cause and effect sequences are all quite complicated; economic and other factors come into play.

Here in Thailand racial bias is very mild in comparison, more related to who some people wouldn't be open to being roommates with.  That typically wouldn't come up anyway, since all those minorities are not prevalent in Thailand, except there probably is a significant Indian population.  Race inspired violence and even public expression of racial slurs don't really come up very often. 

To be clear "people from the Middle East" is not equated with Thai Muslims.  That group is fairly well accepted, even though there is ongoing violence related to a Muslim separatist movement in the far South of Thailand, because Thais are very open about respecting other religions.


The initial question is odd because Thais generally have a positive image of Western foreigners, of white people.  Of many minorities; Thais love Japanese and Korean culture too.  They don't necessarily see them as essentially completely the same as Thais, and I never will do justice to that complex cultural perspective here.  And all of this will just be based on my own opinions; that goes without saying.  Let's start with introducing the perspective from a couple of other angles, from expat perspective (that of local Western foreigners).

Dual pricing at national parks, and so on

It's a running complaint that foreigners aren't treated equally here.  Some of the examples could seem trivial, but it's easy to see how the perspective builds up from different causes.  An obvious example is that foreigners pay more to enter national parks, or places like zoos, or museums.  Visiting a temple associated with tourism is free for a Thai, but Wat Pho just increased the visitor fee from 100 baht to 200 baht (from $3 to $6).

There's really no justification offered for any of that.  Someone might claim that Thais pay local taxes, but then foreigners living here do too.  The idea seems to be that if someone is wealthy enough to fly from a different part of the world to visit that they can then afford to pay $3 or $6 to visit an old temple, but that this is a burden on many local Thais who earn very little.  Without being spelled out it could mean that, or something else instead.  Either way it works out to something like an extra tax on tourists.

dual-pricing was normal in the last place I lived too, in Hawaii (photo credit)

It doesn't stop at those few places; if anything a disparity of cost widens in local markets, where items are often bargained for versus just sold for one price.  How that works out is complicated; most things Thais don't bargain for when buying, they just know what is negotiable per convention.  Sometimes menus can be printed in two languages, with two listings of prices, but typically it's not like that; that would be an extreme case.

Of course some expats (local foreigners) see it all as unfair.  Some recognize that they earn a completely different scale of income as almost all Thais and take no offense.  I can put a scale to that easily enough.  It's my understanding that a foreigner working here as an English teacher would tend to start out around 30,000 baht per month ($1000), with some earning up to 70 or 80,000, all still for high school level teaching.  Some in very bad placements might earn only 20-25k but that would be an exception.

Per my understanding Thais working in a local school would tend to earn only 15-20,000 per month, without much potential for that to scale up.  Some would probably be closer to 10, for exceptions on that lower end.  An average Thai college professor might earn around 30,000 per month, equivalent to what a foreign English teacher with limited qualifications could easily earn, someone lacking a degree in education.

Thai general perspective of white foreigners

Telling this story almost has to involve how this general perception seems to have changed.  It's my impression that just before I moved here, a dozen years ago now, the impression of foreigners was different.  There was an automatic status associated, and an expectation that such a person would be more qualified as a subject specialist or manager, for example.  That was shifting even back then.

Today a lot of Thai companies actively avoid hiring any Westerners for any reason, and international companies tend to get by using almost entirely Thai staff, because it works out better.  It offsets any need to work around Thai language, higher pay expectations, and cumbersome work permit and visa processing.

It would involve too much summary to explain how white people are seen by Thais, in general.  There are a few standard running themes in perspective, both positive and negative biases, but any given foreigner (or Thai) would express that range differently, and how the balance works out.

Sub-themes complicate things.  At one point there was an impression that any foreigner working here was either an English teacher or subject specialist in an international company, for example someone working in IT (the field I do work in, just for a Thai company).  Retirees would fall into a separate category, with stereotypes mapping to those types of cases.

In general the impression was always mostly positive, it seems, and that is still true today.  "Positive but different" can be an unusual range though; it opens a space for perceptions to be partly negative too.  And other sub-themes come up, about foreigners marrying bar-girls, or backpackers, or foreigners being more likely to have a bad temper, and ignore the social convention to stay calm in public expression.  It's probably best to by-pass all this for now and circle back to a local event that seemed to trigger a lot of "white" resentment about this unequal treatment.

Thais only admitted to a main Bangkok temple, Wat Pho

The main foreigner news blogger, Richard Barrow, recently "broke" a story that he had visited Wat Pho and was turned away for not being Thai.  That's actually what happened; only Thais are being admitted now.  Later on it turned out that the main hall tourists visit there, the large Reclining Buddha statue, is under construction, and with that and corona social-distancing concerns the temple opened only for locals from around the time period of June 5 to the first week of July.  Reasonable enough, but of course all that wasn't part of the initial story.  Other outlets ran the story too:

(Coconuts) ‘Thai People Only’: Famed Bangkok temple refuses entry to foreigners

(Bangkok Post) Thais only policy is racism, pure and simple


Signs at the front only said "Thais only."  Staff couldn't add detail to that, a justification or explanation.  The Wat Pho Facebook page mentioned concerns about social distancing, and gave a limited description implying the limit related to ceasing tourism but not religious observation.

a  June 3rd announcement about re-opening, not mentioned in Richard Barrow's post a week later

It sounds like just a misunderstanding, right?  Not exactly.  For one thing it triggered a lot of foreigner resentment, and validated and confirmed a lot of their pre-existing concerns about racism.  If there was absolutely no difference in perspective and treatment of foreigners it would be easier to brush all that aside, but it's not like that.

The dual-pricing issue is really just one of many concerns.  Current government consistently, repeatedly limits foreigner access to visit or stay in Thailand, even though tourism is a major industry that props up the economy.  Many foreigners living here also bring in a lot of revenue, spending retirement money here, or spending a lot on maintaining a second home, or building up a business (which is highly restricted related to foreign ownership).  Rules can change month to month; interpretation of regulations can change, even when the laws themselves don't.

The last step, one step too far, seemingly, was requiring foreigners to purchase a relatively expensive, oddly described insurance plan to limit impact from foreigners who can't pay their own medical bills.  Normal enough, right?  Except that it could also be seen as yet another tax in disguise.  Given how US health care support initiatives tend to go it's all familiar ground; the starting point made sense but the end result and final form less so.

So reactions to that latest story of discrimination were what one would expect:  displeasure and disappointment.  Taken alone it wouldn't mean much, especially with all the details included, which weren't initially available, the part about construction.

To get to how unfair or tone-deaf this is in relation to this background issue it doesn't hurt to go back and consider how reasonable the restriction really is.  Are all Thais visiting Wat Pho for religious observance, and couldn't a foreign local be doing the same, even if they were born in a different culture?  I'm in an unusual position to consider that, since I was a monk ordained at Wat Pho for two months.  That seemingly makes me a counter-example, but then it's also not that simple.

that was a rough morning; an early start and a lot of formal ritual

my son was a novice there too

making a bin ta baht offering to her brother

The "Thais only" restriction considered further

I'll grant that a difference in how people of the two different races and backgrounds are seen is probably the main real issue at play.  But does it even work to split off the "religious observation versus tourism visit" themes?  Kind of.

There's probably more gap on the Thai side.  Thais really are visiting as a tourism practice, along with that having a religious meaning to them.  It wouldn't be possible to divide the two though.  It would be like when a Catholic visits the Vatican; of course it's both tourism and there is personal religious meaning.  I don't think it's anything like a Muslim visiting Mecca; there just isn't that extra level of religious significance to a main Thai temple versus the other hundreds of them in Bangkok.  It's "higher," more significant in history and meaning, but nothing like that context found in Islam.  I suppose that means it works to bracket (set aside) how this plays out for Thais, and accept that it sort of works.

Most foreigners visiting Wat Pho are just tourists.  I don't mean that in some limiting, negative sense; there's nothing wrong with tourism as an activity and interest.  Most wouldn't consider themselves Buddhists.  Some could, and that's where things get interesting, and relevant.  Does Richard Barrow see himself as a religious Buddhist?  I have no idea.  He had added that he was there to pay respects, and I take that as a genuine interest in religious expression.  Others might not; I guess it could be interpreted differently.

Participation and paying respect could be different things, too.  If I visit the Vatican I might feel a personal awe and deep respect for the history and shared meaning there, but the formal personal religious meaning could still be all but entirely missing for me.  I could greatly respect Catholicism but not see myself as participating in a form of it, even if I was Protestant.

What if a foreigner sees themself as a Buddhist?  I don't think Wat Pho was really thinking this through enough to split out that possibility, and consciously reject it through their policy.  I talked to a monk friend in the administration there and he just didn't seem to get that as being possible.

Of course he would relate to me potentially being seen as Buddhist, by myself or others, since I'm in a Thai Buddhist family.  And I was ordained there, and married there, and visit for some religious holidays (missing most--typical of American religious practice), the usual connections any Thai might have.  I studied Buddhism for over a decade prior to living here, and have two degrees in religion and philosophy, focused mainly on the study of Buddhism (and one in industrial engineering; that story makes no sense).

a Buddhist wedding vows ceremony

I still kind of don't see myself as a Thai Buddhist.  I think that really relates to how I relate to categories and labels though.  Obviously I'm white, American, married--I fall into lots of groupings.  But I tend to keep the self-labeling to a minimum.  And I get the difference between how different people would relate to a subject like Buddhism.  I definitely try to live by Buddhist principles, and Buddhism has been a major influence in my life, and I will continue to participate in formal observances as a member of a Thai Buddhist family.

It doesn't map over very directly to the liberal take on Protestant Christianity I was raised with.  That was quite loose and open; if you say that you accept Jesus as your personal savior you are 100% in.  You can even reject that he is the literal son of God, and see the part about him coming back from being dead as pure fiction, and you're still fine.  If you accept the teachings as valid that's good enough.  Even going to ceremonies is a bit optional; up to you.  You're still not that much less Christian than anyone else, if you see yourself that way.  Maybe just as Christian as the Pope, depending on personal mapping out of those themes.

Thai Buddhism is a little different.  It's hard to fill in how, to give it a full description.  The form is seen as meaningful; the monks chanting actually has an effect.  Believing ideas in literal form makes a difference.  To some extent even being born into a Thai family would make a lot of difference.  Because of racism?

No; because of their literal take on the mechanics of karma.

Karma in Thai Buddhism

This will be a really tough one to explain.  A couple of examples will point towards how it works out but 10,000 words on the subject wouldn't make it clear.  The monks chanting has karmic effect, kind of like magic.  Giving the temple 100 baht for restoration also does, and offering 1000 baht has more effect.  So far so good, right; no tie-in with racism or national bias yet.

Being born a Thai relates back to your karma, to your place in human society.  Someone born into a European country or the US would have a different karma.  Someone being born wealthy here, versus poor, ties to a different karmic background.  It's not as if they definitely deserved it (both placements), but to some extent that's how it is taken, it relates directly to what they did in prior lifetimes.  You can't simply strip away your karma; it identifies who and what you are.  It made you who you became before you even existed, this time around.  Even the options that present themselves for change are the effects of karma, along with your inclination to be open to those, to some degree.

It's not even really necessarily seen as a value-determining factor, it's just how things are.  It sounds a bit like the Indian caste system, doesn't it?  It should; it's probably derived directly from that very framework, from an earlier version of it, adopted along with the Buddhism religion form.

This means that saying "we are all equal" is kind of a nonsensical thing to say or believe, according to a Thai perspective.  In some limited sense sure, but Thais tend to focus on individual rights a lot less.  That's because the assumed context is completely different.  The "self-evident truth that all men are created equal" would be complete nonsense for them.  Equal in what sense?

Obviously some people are born into wealthy families and some into poor ones; some people are born into wealthy countries and others into poor ones.  Some are born in such poor health that they are destined to die young, or are deformed, and others possess exceptional physical and mental capabilities.  It's a silly thing to say, that everyone is created equally.

If the state tries to enforce that, if it's an underlying premise within a society, then sure, to that degree it's true.  But in most cultures and countries that would be seen as unnatural, or at least unrealistic.  Even in the US it kind of doesn't actually work in practice.  That went without saying a month ago, all the more so now.

To be clear as I take core Buddhist teachings people are seen as just as equal as within Christianity (or possibly more so, in relation to varying interpretations within Christianity).  It's more the case that putting a flat-level value judgment on everyone isn't how things work.  I suppose that folds into culture more in relation to state defined roles, which are much more implicit here. 

It's worth remembering that in the US the ideal that "all men are created equal" was written and provisionally accepted at a time when people could own other people, as property; concerns over theory versus practice come up everywhere.

Resolving the contradiction

Another tough one, right?  How can people seen as equal--in a general sense--and more positive in some others (the perception of white people here roughly equating to a higher status level), be completely cast aside, forcing local Thais to see everyone as equal? 

Foreigners aren't granted the authority to re-write local Thai culture in their own image.


To local expats (foreigners living here) this temple entry issue is a clear sign of racism.  Under their expectations and paradigm it would have to be that.  Here it kind of is, but it's also a bit silly to set up the expectation that there can be no separate treatment of Thais in relation to foreigners in Thailand.  That would be like rejecting that local Hawaiians pay less to enter the Waikiki zoo.  You just can't put that on them; you can't shift local expectations and rules.  That example ties back to a completely different history and context (the US sort of "stole" their country), but in either case you are trying to swap out local expectations and context framing for your own "improved, higher" version.  Local cultures don't work that way.

The only way this could be resolved, from either direction, is for the expats seeing this as racism to understand the Thai perspective, or for the temple administrators (the monks; it is ran by them, not a PR firm or tourism council) to completely "get" a Western perspective.   Even for people reading this explanation of the underlying context that wouldn't work.  Some part of what I've claimed here would seem wrong, or oversimplified, or it would seem that I've rushed to accept something that just doesn't make sense.  Neither perspective and context makes sense from the other perspective; in part that conclusion is absolutely correct.

I'm discussing the underlying context, a level of assumptions, and worldviews, ordinary perspective, and reasoning is what gets built on top of all that.



All of this results in an odd cycle of how foreigners living here see Thailand and Thai culture, played out over and over in individual cases.  Some few "integrate;" they actually do see things more as Thais do, and take up a role more or less within their society.  They're still farang but the context becomes clear.

More commonly people go through a familiar shift:  they see Thailand as a paradise where everyone is friendly and things are simple, then they recognize pros and cons, and then they hate parts of the local culture for being unfair, for aspects of local systems to be "rigged against them."  And that last part isn't necessarily completely wrong; go into a court system opposed to a Thai and your chances of a favorable ruling aren't good, never mind the actual circumstances.  Go through a divorce, as many do, and you will have exactly that experience.

Those foreigners are all just either at the middle or towards the end of that cycle.  It's not paying $8 to go into a zoo or park, when Thais pay $2, that's getting to them, it's everything.  That's just a symbol.  Based on the expectation that the state and related institutions should see everyone as equal, which is carried over from where they are from (unless they just moved from Hawaii), they are being slighted and cheated.


Next one might wonder:  do the pros and cons of being treated separately not add up to a more even balance for white foreigners, given that Thais aren't actually racist against them? 


Maybe; sort of.  The advantages are hard to place though, and if you would end up valuing most just being seen as normal, as equal, then your main desire and goal is to not accumulate that set of positive biases over other Thai residents.

It's tempting to go into what I mean, how being white automatically maps over to an equivalent social status as a wealthy Thai.  That part is what I mean in relation to how 10,000 words won't cover the context well.  A white person would get more respect, which would lead towards some exceptions being made in unusual cases.

White people also act the part of sources of revenue, to some extent, as the people who pay more in markets, who pay the higher tier in dual pricing, the ones who get more traffic tickets, and play a role in an unusual taxation for needing special medical insurance, and a visa and work permit.  Getting better service in a restaurant--or whatever that extra benefit is--comes along with being charged more across a broad spectrum.

There is no resolving all this.  It is what it is.  At least by understanding it a foreigner could live at peace with the exceptions and additional demands, and a Thai could understand their own worldview that much better.  Bitter, through-the-whole-cycle expats never get there.  They simply accept that Thais are biased against foreigners instead.  It's not really that simple.  They are just seen as different, slightly higher in status in one sense, and not a participant in local group-inclusion benefits in another.

The end of the Wat Pho racial discrimination story

Wat Pho finally posted this on their Facebook page:


Due to restoration in progress on the Reclining Budhha and paintings inside the building it is not allowing access to non Thai nationals, it was decided that for the safety of tourists it would restrict access. It has been discussed and the temple should reopen to all from 1st july 2020. It was decided that it was a good opprtunity to use the situation with covid 19 to do the work that was needed, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience and disapointment people may feel.


Not bad; still not a complete explanation or resolution, but close enough.

Richard's Facebook post has 1700 comments and over 1000 shares; the PR damage was done.

That temple is ran as a religious institution, not mainly as a tourist attraction, so the negative PR would be seen as a bad thing, but it's not the same case as if that would happen to Disney.  They do generate profit to use to support other temples, to pay for maintenance and utility expenses, and to support school systems.  But they just aren't as marketing and profit oriented as a commercial tourism destination would be, which is why this came up in the first place.

not a PR cover story hoax, it would seem

Post-script:  while editing the final version of this I ran across this related Richard Barrow post:


Ancient Siam in Samut Prakan  (https://facebook.com/muangborantheancientcity) is doing a special welcome back promotion of only 465 Baht for an annual pass. I inquired about this as I live nearby but was told only for Thais. Foreign tourists must pay the usual inflated price.

❗️WARNING: This tourist attraction has a #2pricethailand policy.


Dual-pricing discrimination is definitely a real thing in Thailand, not just limited to national parks, zoos, museums, and main temples.  If you show them a local ID (as a foreigner) they will give you the day-pass rate that Thais pay, which isn't so bad, you just aren't eligible to buy the annual pass.

Maybe as in the US it will take a round of protests to draw awareness to this injustice to get that resolved.  It is an odd contrast, considering a drive to get a privileged and higher income foreign minority group on-par lower pricing with a broad and much lower average income local population.

Is Buddhism religion or a philosophy?

I keep seeing this type of question in a Facebook Buddhism group that I'm not very active in, and since an answer doesn't really fit in a post comment I'll write a longer one-page version with my own opinion.  To skip ahead to the answer:  to me Buddhism isn't a religion or a philosophy, it's something closer to a practical version of psychology.  Some context applies before getting to that part though. 

I tend to agree with a lot of other answers that come up in Buddhism groups, but the form and tone of those vary a lot.  Input written in a form closer to a koan (logic puzzle) seems less practical, to me.

Of course Buddhism is also a religion; I'm part of a Thai Buddhist family now, living in Bangkok, and there are monks and temples around.  I ordained as a Thai Buddhist monk here once for two month, and was married in a Buddhist religious ceremony.  To be clear this post isn't supposed to be about self-promotion; I wrote about those subjects, so I'll mention them here, but this is about explaining my general understanding of Buddhism.  I studied some philosophy and religion in degree programs too, but I'm not positioning myself as some sort of subject expert here; I'm just interested in Buddhism.

right after the ordination ceremony (with more on that experience here)

my son once spent two weeks as a novice monk once too (which I wrote about in my tea blog)

As I'm taking the question the title question is really asking something else, more specific, if Buddhism at its core, or as the Buddha taught and intended it, is one of these things over the others.  Any answer would be speculation; it would involve that given person's ideological preference and personal understanding.

At this point some Buddhists reading this might naturally claim that Buddhism isn't an ideology, it's more a methodology, a reductive sort of approach to human experience, so it's not fair to call interpretation of the ideas an ideology.  That matches up with my take.  That also folds in some bias for how the ideas are arranged, regardless of how categories work out, so one has to be careful with that sort of line of reasoning. 

Maybe it works to "sweep away" the framework of the ideas by setting them aside as they are practiced and have fulfilled their function, but it's not clearly a given.  Maybe Buddhism is really an odd form of experiential process or approach that tidies up lots of surplus of other ideas, framing, preconceptions, and assumptions, but to some extent that could also be part of an ideology, even if someone is sure they experience it as something else.


Let's back up a bit, and cover how I'm using terms and categories. 

Religion is designed to explain things using variations on conventional forms, first causes (what made the universe), after life schemes (where do we go when we die), metaphysical structure (is there a permanent soul or not), and so on.  Morality / ethical codes factor in; that's essentially always a core component.

a Thai wedding ceremony.  there were monks chanting in a different part.

Philosophy is something else; it uses ideas to examine human worldviews and forms of perception, and essentially assumes that reason can sort things out, to some degree.  Even in forms where reason isn't assigned some all-illuminating role it's still reason that's describing the usefulness and limitations of reason, for example in relation to other aspects of experience (about direct experience, tied to causal issues and themes, framing meaning--whatever else it is).  To some extent even a personal philosophy that wants to limit and tear down the role of reason is still going to need to use the concepts--reason itself--towards that end.  Ethics also comes up here, but the groundwork needs to be relatively rational, or at least functional, not based on external authority.


Buddhism isn't these things, at its core.  To be clear this is just my take, and I won't be citing any scripture to support it, or even delving into ever-lower levels of supporting broad points made with finer levels of explanation.  It's a methodology that lets you simplify how you experience reality.  To some extent there may be some best-case, very simple, and relatively direct form of experience, but at least initially it's as well to not tie up too much goal-orientation or mental energy in figuring out what that form might be like (enlightenment).  It's just a set of tools to help simplify things, and that's enough.  Later on forms of experience would probably vary from initial practices and perspective changes.

The 8-fold path should be familiar; without some core concepts like that to work with it would be hard to put together any starting-point opinion about what might be going on.  While one explores those sorts of ideas it's best to keep in mind that even though some teachings are said to be the original words of the Buddha we've inherited those across time.  Swap out the meaning for suffering (or dukkha) just a bit and you might lose a lot of the original point. 

That's not an abstract guess at how variations might go; I think this is a core problem with modern interpretations.  If you swap back in "dis-satisfaction" for suffering per my take that's going to work much, much better.  Dis-satisfaction is unsatisfyingly vague, but that makes it work all the better as a place-holder, since understanding of these sorts of ideas are supposed to be iterative.  It's all not something one would "completely get" on one read.

It's not so simple to explain how it all works, but why not go there, with the clarification that this will be a limited start, not an explanation. 


One sub-theme is about how reality is really structured.  It's just not a model, more a description of ordinary forms of error (how reality is assumed to be, but really isn't, at least related to certain assumptions not being as functional as they seem).  That makes it negative, in the sense of describing what isn't, not necessarily related to what is bad, which again could be a bit unfamiliar.  It's not so bad thinking that you are made up of a permanent, real self; there's just a lot of function to be had in questioning that and setting it aside, at least temporarily and to a limited extent.  Anyway, to switch back to pointing out general themes here I'm talking about the one part that is made up of the ideas about reality, that one branch.

Then there is mindfulness (momentary awareness practice), and meditation (hard to describe what that's all about in a few words), both of which go along with the ideas, and support them.  Obviously these things are experiential.  A moral code works along with the rest; in some way it makes sense and is functional to observe an externally-derived set of guidelines related to not causing others harm, and so on.  While the first part (the last paragraph) made it sound a little like a philosophy, except for the deconstruction angle, these last three subjects fall a lot closer to religion. 

Mindfullness is a bit of a twist in relation to how Christianity is described in teachings and practiced, but to be clear Jesus did emphasize that the religious practice he was talking about dealt a lot with how people act moment to moment.  It wasn't something you would set aside until Sunday morning, as he was framing it, to have the slate wiped clean again by some religious representative then.

To some extent you have to "buy in" to try it out (the practice of Buddhism), and it's not exactly a rapid process.  Different people would connect to the different parts in different ways, through a different order of engagement, with some parts leading to others essentially for all forms of that experience.  It seemed like that might be missing "valid forms" of that experience, didn't it?  I think if a practice of Buddhism helps someone then it is valid, even if they've skipped parts and have some ideas or themes dead wrong.  Those types of gaps are just definitely not going to help with "getting far" with it (not that it's a contest).  I'll cite an example, nothing so direct, but a subject I've kept coming back to considering.

the temple where my son and I ordained at night

A friend of mine rejected alcoholism to lead a life not based around that drug, only to become a stoner, to replace it with marijuana consumption.  I did the same in my 20s; I had drank a lot and then was stoned a lot.  Her mantra is "progress not perfection," which kinds of works in a limited sense.  It's not supposed to be a statement of Buddhist intention or guiding principle (she doesn't see herself as Buddhist, as far as I know, or influenced by the ideas, practicing theme, etc.), it's just something she says.  It's not exactly a core teaching to not get stoned (that specific restriction), but in most forms Buddhism does get around to mentioning that drug use is not ideal.  Drugs and alcohol cut someone off from directly experiencing their reality; it's them + the drug instead.  More or less Buddhism is about getting out of your own way, not letting preconceptions and abstract ways of structuring ideas remain problematic, and to lighten attachments, in some limited form or range of forms.

Is the problem clear in this?  The drug is probably limiting her, in some sense; base reality isn't good enough, and it requires adjustment.  As a former marijuana user I have my own understanding of why that's a problem for this case and drug, but it's as well to keep that vague and general here. 

Everyone who went through long term dependence on drugs or alcohol (as I did), or different forms of those, gets that making even a moderate form of adjustment to reality often isn't a stable solution.  Sure, people base their lives around it, and in some cases that goes well enough.   Drinking alcohol a little every other day for the rest of your life is fine, to a limited degree.  To me it's not ideal, but it's close enough to normal and "not negative" that we can set the difference aside.  The other problem is that she is setting up a distinction between things being better than they were 20 years ago, and still never managing to get close to some optimum, which she's not even heading towards.

What would be the problem with this "perfection?"  It's implied that striving towards some form of ideal life is itself an obstacle to be avoided.  Rigid restrictions, removing freedoms, could be worse than any potential gains from removing dependencies; it's something like that.  I get the sense that it's not supposed to make tons of sense; it's just a personal approach to life theme.  Which is fine.  It doesn't match conventional understandings of Buddhism very well but it's not supposed to.

It probably sounds like I'm saying that someone couldn't get stoned every day and be a "good Buddhist," or that if they did try to pair those two directions they would contradict each other.  To me I guess that's true.  It's really not about weed, or whatever else, being so destructive, or counter-productive, its more about a problem with someone heading in two different directions at the same time.  If you walk North-East you'll never really go towards the North or the East, but head out somewhere in between.  If the idea is to avoid going West that's probably close enough. 

To me Buddhism is really Buddhism to the extent that it helps you and improves your life; back to the claim it's practical psychology, or a form of self-help, if one would rather.  It's not so much about crossing a finish line of "being enlightened."  As you get further the form changes (as I've experienced it), and value increases, but then lots of things are like that.  If you exercise a little you barely get past working out how to not get injured, and don't make a start on flexibility or strength improvements, never mind cardiovascular health, or stress reduction benefits.  If you eat fruits and vegetables 2 or 3 times a week that can help, but the rest of your diet remains a much more significant factor.

Maybe there's a contradiction in that take on drug use and how practicing only a little Buddhism is valid, isn't there?  I'm saying that making consumption of weed a priority in your life would run counter to putting into practice the exploration and application of Buddhism, and then I'm also saying that someone doing a little of both could be ok for them.  Different people would take it all in different ways.  My friend is right that setting a distant and seemingly impossible goal as the main driver may not be as effective as embracing ongoing change.  It's a little different to change just a little and then say "this is where I want to be; enough with the self-improvement" related to Buddhist practice making that more continuous.


If you think Buddhism is a religion or a philosophy, versus what I'm describing it as, then you might be inclined to take it in different ways altogether.  If it's taken as something to be "thought out" then momentary practice could be de-emphasized.  If practice of conventional morality is going to be good enough, along with doing some chanting or whatever else, that might work well pursued part-time.  The starting point matters; how one takes it all.  It's probably as well to be open to shifting those underlying premises over time, just in case.  Obviously I'm seeing the side related to experiencing Buddhism as a formal religion.  To be clear I was only a monk for two months, but I do live in Bangkok now, for the last dozen years, a part of a Buddhist family and Buddhist society.

my daughter (now 6) showed me how to meditate ("tam samadhi") recently; it was cool

All of this probably captures enough of how I see it.  None of it is really supported here, by core text citation, or detailed explanation that could be even a little convincing.  I once pursued Buddhism as religion and philosophy in university studies, obtaining two degrees in the process, and it soured me a little in setting it all up like a research paper project.  That's not a bad approach though; it's a good way to sort through a range of different ideas presented in different ways.  It just doesn't make much sense without a lot of emphasis on personal life-practice and perspective.

You either try it and parts work for you or you might as well be reading Scientology (which actually is kind of interesting; it sounds like it should work, but it probably doesn't).  If you put neither in practice you might as well be binge-watching television show seasons on Netflix, or reading about rock climbing without ever rock climbing, whatever it is.  The ideas can be pleasant in some formulations though, so maybe just leaving it as that, as an un-examined form of poetry, could make for an aesthetic experience.  To me that's not really Buddhism then, but in some much more limited sense it still might be.