Buddhism: Lessons from a great teacher, or “just let go”

About five years ago I remember going to an FWBO Sangha night (where Friends of the Western Buddhist Order gather to meditate and talk and drink tea) where Dharmachari Saaramati (aka Professor Alan Sponberg) gave a talk. To begin the talk he asked us all to write down the ‘essence of Buddhism’ in just a few words. I wrote something like, “Buddha, Dharma, Sangha,” others had their own ideas, but that’s not important. What is important is that it got us all thinking, “what is the essence of Buddhism?”

Of course there is no perfectly correct answer, but there are perhaps two types of answer that one should think about. The first is exemplified by Saramati’s suggestion: “Just let go.” The second by a logo printed on one of my T-shirts: “All is one.”

What’s the difference? Saramati’s is a call to action, a call for us to examine our lives to see what we cling to and how that perpetuates our suffering. The T-shirt logo is a metaphysical assertion, which is fine and it is one found in Buddhism, but it is nothing more, just an assertion. The reason I bring this up is because I just re-read one of Saramati’s great articles: Green Buddhism and the Hierarchy of Compassion, where he argues that Westerners all too commonly flee from the hierarchical/developmental/practice-oriented side of Buddhism because it skirts too near the hierarchical/oppressive side of Western culture (my full synopsis is below).

The idea of interrelatedness or ‘all is one’ can become a mere article of faith, which does no good for either the environment or the individual. Buddhism is, if anything, a call to action: ‘just let go’, ‘be here now’, ‘beginner’s mind’. These are all states of being to which we must aspire and then cultivate in ourselves.

On a side-note, I wish I had re-read this article more often over the years, as it really does pin down the slippery aspects of Buddhism in the Western context. I can’t tell you how often students have asked me, “but everything’s already ok as it is, right?” and I’ve had to fumble with the relative/absolute truths or ego-clinging or something like that to assure them that despite interrelatedness and Buddha-nature, we still must practice. It’s a great article, for Buddhist Ethics, Buddhist teaching, and Buddhist environmentalism.

Green Buddhism and the Hierarchy of Compassion, Dr. Sponberg argues that Western Buddhist reactively want Buddhism to be anti-hierarchy because they are rebelling against their own cultural ‘hierarchy of oppression’ where progress leads to greater control over other forms of life. But Buddhism without hierarchy becomes flat, providing the mere metaphysical thesis of interrelatedness. Taken as such it is just an article for faith. Buddhist tradition, however, has always had its own hierarchy, the ‘hierarchy of compassion’ where progress entails reaching out and experiencing the bonds we have to all other life (and nonliving things). Green Buddhism must not lose this hierarchy, which is integral to Buddhism. This hierarchy contains the practices of ethics, meditation, and wisdom teachings that are just as necessary for Green Buddhism as they are for enlightenment.