Dark Buddhism

[Note: This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, “Zen Mind, Thinker’s Mind.” I had planned to publish the book this month, but when the layout person did a poor job, which I rejected, and I subsequently decided to make a some changes to the manuscript, I decided to push back the publishing process until January.]

Dark Buddhism: Integrating Zen Buddhism and Objectivism is a book by Morgan D. Rosenberg that seeks to reconcile Zen Buddhism with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. While I respect Rosenberg’s effort, I have little regard for his “Dark Buddhism,” because his grasp of Buddhadharma does not exceed a pop Zen level, and he fails to creatively and esoterically integrate Zen and Objectivism. Below is my review of Rosenberg’s book (which was originally posted at Amazon, and then deleted by Amazon along with the rest of my 300-plus book reviews). My review summarizes my criticism of his Dark Buddhism, but rather than just criticize his book, I decided to also describe my vision of Dark Buddhism, the description of which follows my review.

My Review of Dark Buddhism

The author of this book, physicist Morgan D. Rosenberg, typifies the numerous professors and scientists who are attracted to Buddhism and think that their worldly success and intelligence somehow qualify them to write books on the subject. But as an authority on Buddhism (and Objectivism), I laugh at their efforts. In fact, though I read and review one Buddhism book after another, I have yet to encounter a living professor or scientist who truly groks Buddhism.

In this text, Rosenberg attempts to marry Buddhism with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, and he audaciously terms his concoction “Dark Buddhism.” But the marriage is a failure because Rosenberg’s understanding of Buddhism (both original and Zen) doesn’t exceed a basic level. Most tellingly, he recommends Steve Hagen’s retarded text Buddhism Plain and Simple (see my review), and the Buddhadharma he espouses reflects Hagen’s.

Although I’m a huge fan of Rand’s Objectivism (see my review of her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology), as is Rosenberg, the problem with Objectivists is that they are allergic to mysticism, and thus incapable of differentiating mystical hokum from esoteric spirituality, the reality of which they reject. Although some Objectivists, such as Rosenberg, gravitate to Buddhism because they perceive it as atheistic, scientific, and non-mystical, in truth, it is none of these. Rather, it is ultra-mystical, pointing its adherents to an ineffable Reality that the Buddha termed Nirvana. But Rosenberg, a smug, flat intellectual, reduces Buddhism to his own shrunken level of understanding, and the result, in this book, is a perversion of genuine Buddhadharma.

Rosenberg’s reduction, or de-esotericization, of Buddhism is exemplified by his fallacious description of the eighth and culminating limb of Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. He writes: “The final aspect of the Eightfold Path is right meditation or right concentration. Right meditation is freeing the mind from distraction so that your thoughts become focused, centered, and aware.” This is a gross misrepresentation of this limb, which is Right Contemplation, which is all about the Four Jhanas (or Samadhis), which are states of infused contemplation involving degrees of absorption in the Stream, or Spirit-current. There can be no attainment of Nirvana without the jhanas, but Rosenberg not only doesn’t understand this, he doesn’t understand Nirvana, which he mistakenly conflates with satori. Moreover, the cognoscenti can only laugh at those such as Rosenberg and Hagen, who, pathetically, reduce Enlightenment to “seeing things as they are.”

Rosenberg’s descriptions of meditation reflect his own limited experience and development. And the fact that his own practice employs a mantra and visualization reveals the beginner’s level he is at. I have no problem with spiritual neophytes, but when they assume the role of a pontificating teacher, as Rosenberg does, it raises my hackles.

I could spend pages deconstructing Rosenberg’s faulty, dumbed-down Buddhadharma, but I have better things to do with my time. Instead, I’ll end my review by briefly commenting on his central thesis: the distinction between his Dark Buddhism and traditional Buddhism. Rosenberg writes, “Philosophically the most glaring difference between Dark Buddhism and traditional Buddhism is that the Buddha taught dissolution of the self, whereas Dark Buddhism reintegrates the self into the philosophy and, particularly, directs itself to fostering healthy and strong self-esteem.”

The Buddha did not teach dissolution of the self. He taught that no Self could be found in the Five Skandhas (or Aggregates). The Buddha would laugh at anyone “smuggling” self-esteem into his Dharma and renaming it Dark Buddhism. Self-esteem has nothing whatsoever to do with Buddhism, which is all about awakening to a supramundane Reality that frees one from, among other things, concern about one’s self-status.

I’d ordinarily give a butchered Buddhism book like this a lone star, but the fact that Rosenberg champions Objectivism, while correctly pointing out some of its flaws, merits an additional star.

My “Dark Buddhism”

Although it’s difficult to integrate Buddhism with Objectivism because of the myriad contradictions between the two teachings, Objectivism has aspects that can serve to improve Buddhadharma. But before I consider them, I first want to delve into another “dark” (or perhaps I should say “taboo”) side of Buddhism—its similarities with Christianity and Hinduism. As I’ve learned from my exchanges with Buddhists at Facebook and Amazon, these people are often loath to consider these similarities. They maintain a condescending attitude toward other religions, and unlike the Hindus, who generally embrace the Perennial Philosophy (which perceives the essence of the major religions to be the same), they make it a point to emphasize distinctions, rather than commonalities, between Buddhism and other religions.

The late Chinese Buddhist scholar Professor Garma C.C. Chang (1920-1988) exemplifies the smug, learned Buddhist who takes potshots at Hinduism, identifying it as inferior to Buddhism. In his book The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism, Dr. Chang writes: “Now the Buddhist stand on the intuitive feeling of Being or thatness is diametrically opposed to that of the Upanishads and Aquinas. Instead of glorifying the ‘beingness’ and augmenting its significance to theological or soteriological levels, Buddhists believe that this intuitive grasping of being, or actuality, is an expression of men’s deep clinging and attachment. It is the very root of all sufferings and delusions in samsara!”

Unfortunately, Dr. Chang doesn’t know what he’s talking about. First off, there is no clinging in Being, because Being, by definition, is the end of becoming (samsara), of grasping after successive (contracted) states of being. In other words, Buddhist Nirvana is the same “State” (or non-state) as Hindu Being. Moreover, the “feeling of Being” is the spontaneous Bliss (or Ananda) that all Enlightened sages (in all religions) experience, and involves no grasping whatsoever. It is, in fact, the very same Bliss that a Buddha spontaneously enjoys via the Sambhogakaya (the Blessing/Blissing Clear-Light Energy Body).

Culadasa (John Yates, PhD), author of the uber-popular The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness (see my review), is a contemporary Buddhist teacher revered by many for his Dharma wisdom. But I’m not one of the many, because I find his Dharma problematic.

One of my problems with Culadasa is his teaching of no-Self. The Buddha himself did not explicitly state whether there is a transcendental Self. But his teaching of Anatta implies that there is, for it rejects the five aggregates as not-Self, which leaves the Self, or Buddha-nature (which is pure Awareness, or Consciousness), as one’s True Nature, or Identity. In other words, a Buddha is one who is Awareness itself. If he were not this Awareness, he could not remain permanently, unbrokenly Awake, or Aware.

According to Culadasa, when one asks, “Who is conscious?” the answer is the “collective of minds that constitute the mind-system.” This is the wrong answer, because the spiritual illuminati (including innumerable great Buddhist masters) know that it is Consciousness, or Mind, itself that is conscious of all phenomena it encounters, not a bunch of mini-minds in one’s head. Culadasa’s collectivist mind-system represents a perverted, exoteric interpretation of the Yogacara school of Buddhism, wherefrom he derives it. The highest Yogacara teaching, exemplified in the Lankavatara Sutra, emphasizes that the unborn, transcendental Self-Mind is the Reality behind and beyond all cognized objects.

Culadasa’s point of view regarding the transcendental Self is in diametrical opposition to India’s greatest 20th-century spiritual master, the iconic Ramana Maharshi. According to Maharshi, when a yogi, via the practice of Self-enquiry, seeks the answer to who or what watches and experiences, the Answer is the Self, which is Consciousness itself. But Culadasa, clearly not a Self-realized master, writes:

Mistaking the witness state for a True Self is what leads some people to claim that Consciousness is the True Self. To properly use the Witness experience, probe more deeply. Go to the Still Point, the place of the Witness, with a question: “Who or what is this Witness?” Who is watching? Who is experiencing? Adamantly refuse to entertain any answers offered by your intellectual, thinking mind. Also, don’t be deceived by your emotional mind, which will try to make you believe you’ve the answer when you haven’t. Just hold on to the question as you experience the Witness. If and when Insight arises, it will be a profound Insight into the truth of no-Self, and it will be so obvious you’ll wonder why you never realized it before.

This paragraph by Culadasa displays his ignorance. Innumerable yogis have realized the Self by seeking the Who that experiences and watches. But the ordinary person, who lacks the ability to draw down Shakti (the Sambhogakaya, or Stream) into the Spiritual Heart-center (the Hridayam, or Tathagatagarbha), located (or felt-experienced) two digits to the right of the center of one’s chest), cannot have a true Self experience. This is the case because the Self is Siva-Shakti (or Dharmakaya-Sambhogakaya). So until the Shakti, at least temporarily, converges with one’s individual consciousness (immanent siva), in the Spiritual Heart-center, the luminous Self (a.k.a. Mind, or Buddha) cannot be experienced.

Dark Buddhism, to my mind, means, among other things, identifying Mind (or Buddha, or Self), and not emptiness (a non-existent with no ontological status), as Ultimate Reality. And because the vast majority of modern Buddhist writers are afflicted with what I call “the Madhyamaka virus,” (meaning the identification of Ultimate Reality as emptiness rather than Mind), as I see it, anyone who champions Mind as Reality is, knowingly or unknowingly, promoting Dark Buddhism.

Culadasa and Garma C.C. Chang are just two examples of the innumerable modern Buddhist writers who emphasize the no-Self/Self distinction between Buddhism and Hinduism. But my Dark Buddhism sees this distinction as false, because, as the spiritual cognoscenti know, Mind = Buddha = Self—and Mind, not emptiness, is the Dharmakaya, the Truth (or Reality) Dimension (or Body) that equates to Hindu Siva, which is universal Consciousness (or Mind, or Being).

Even more “dark” than equating Hinduism with Buddhism is equating Christianity with it. But to the cognoscenti, there are so many parallels between the two religions that not viewing them as kissing cousins is tantamount to spiritual myopia. Just as Gautama the Buddha, the Blessed One, was Blessed by the Stream, likewise Jesus the Christ was Blessed by the Holy Spirit, the same Body, or Hypostasis, as the Stream—later renamed the Sambhogakaya in Mahayana Buddhism. And just as Buddha pointed his disciples to Nirvana, Jesus pointed his to Heaven, the same eternal, or timeless, Reality.

The parallels between Buddhism and Christianity become even more compelling when one considers later trinitarian Christianity in the context of Mahayana/ Vajrayana Buddhism. This is primarily so because the Buddhist Trikaya, which first emerged in Mahayana, is, when properly explicated, a near-perfect match for the esoteric Christian Trinity. Although Buddhism denies the existence of a soul, the Eighth Consciousness in Yogacara, the Alaya-Vijnana, can be construed as a match for the human soul. Renowned spiritual author Deepak Chopra explains:

The Eighth Consciousness is a term what some people call soul. Although Buddhism always says that there is no soul, what it means is that there is no absolute soul. So what Buddhism refers to as the Eighth Consciousness is what many non-Buddhists would say is their soul. In particular, this Eighth Consciousness survives the death of the body, and along with its life energy departs for some other place. When it sees the new father and mother, it mixes with their sperm and ovum and becomes a new person.

Objectivism and Buddhism

Although contradictions abound between Objectivism and Buddhism, there is still much in Rand’s philosophy that can benefit Buddhists. First, Rand’s view on emptiness, which contradicts Nagarjuna’s, should give Mahayana Buddhists pause for thought. Per Rand, emptiness is a non-existent with no ontological status; hence it is simply a derivative term that implies the absence of something. Just as the Buddha rejected emptiness as Ultimate Reality, so does Objectivism. Therefore, my Dark Buddhism, in accordance with Objectivism, rejects Madhyamaka’s emptiness doctrine.

Whereas Madhyamaka posits emptiness as the most fundamental axiom, Objectivism identifies existence and consciousness as axiomatic. In Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, the hero, John Galt, explains:

Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two—existence and consciousness—are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it.

To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was—no matter what his errors—the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

To exist is to exist as “something.” If one extends this axiom to the universal Existent, or Being, its Identity, per spiritual masters, is identified as Mind, the transcendental and immanent Buddha. This raises the question: Is Mind a thing?  Yes, but not a created or space-time thing. Rather, it is the Self-Existing, Self-Radiant Being (Consciousness)—sometimes referred to as the “Thing-in-Itself”—wherefrom all manifest existents stem. And though this “Thing,” or Being, is shapeless and formless, as well as timeless and spaceless, it is not emptiness, which, again, is a non-existent with no ontological status.

When Rand defines consciousness as identification, she delimits the term to mean the identification of manifest existents. But consciousness is also able to identify itself as the unmanifest Existent, or Being, which is possible because its Nature is biunial, consisting of Awareness and Clear-Light Energy (the Sambhogakaya), which, through the medium of an En-Light-ened mystic, reflects Itself back to Itself as Being-Consciousness (the Dharmakaya).

Is it possible to explain the Enlightenment process via Objectivist principles? Absolutely. The spiritual practice that en-Light-ens a disciple is simply an amped-up version of Objectivism, so to speak. It is the conscious process of maintaining full ontological context, which awakens and intensifies the radiant Spirit-current, which en-Light-ens one.

Rand says that consciousness, via the process of mental abstraction, is the faculty that identifies reality. Moreover, she says that logic—non-contradictory identification of reality—is the method for identifying reality. Rand is correct, but only on an epistemic level. If a disciple establishes and maintains a yogic (meaning a direct, immediate ontic) connection of conscious at-one-ment with reality prior to retracting into mental abstraction, then the consciousness-force engendered by this connection translates into Spirit-power.

Rand says that “spirit” means “pertaining to consciousness.” While this is also correct, she has no understanding of the relationship between Spirit-power and consciousness-force on an ontic, or yogic, level.

Rand understood the principle of logic, which is mental—but not the principle of what I call onto-logic, which is spiritual, and which antecedes and supersedes cognition. Onto-logic is simply another term for yoga. Yoga is about directly connecting to, and communing with Reality, prior to retracting into mental abstraction, which contracts one’s field of consciousness and flow of Spirit-energy.

You Really Need to Enter the Stream

The epitome of my Dark Buddhism pertains to Stream-entry. I contend that En-Light-enment can only be attained by entering the Stream, a.k.a. the Sambhogakaya, the Light-Energy continuum of the Dharmakaya. The Four Jhanas, which constitute Right Contemplation, the final limb of Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path, describe progressively fuller immersions in the Stream, and culminate in Bodhicitta, or Nirvana.

I’m not the only Buddhist that emphasizes the importance of Stream-entry in the En-Light-enment project. The Zennist blog (zennist.typepad.com) also advances this same mystical, or “Dark Zen,” point of view. Below is an article (“You Really Need to Enter the Stream”) from the blog, which makes clear the need for Buddhas-in-the-making to be baptized in the Stream, or Spirit-current:

It almost goes without saying, but Western Buddhists are not, by and large, students of the Sutras (P., Suttas), hence all the freaking arguments that tend to erupt. I suspect that most pop Buddhist writers haven’t studied but a handful of Sutras. It is when debates arise over certain key doctrines such as Atman vs. no-self that Sutras become important. But they are also important for understanding meditation and the Five Aggregates (pañca-skandha) and their relationship to our self and why we are not these conditioned aggregates.

The problem facing the novice is what do the specific terms mean as to their notion. What is the specific notion of anâtman (lit., not the self) or pratityasamutpada (dependent origination), or dhyâna (meditation), or vijñâna (consciousness)? What does nirvana mean? Incidentally, even the best scholars have to make educated guesses when it comes to nirvana—not all agree with each other. We see this in the book, The Buddhist Nirvana and Its Western Interpreters by Guy Richard Welbon.

Speaking from the vantage point of the Pali Nikayas, it is only when we have entered the stream or current (S., srotas), a kind of super spiritual baptism, that we begin to understand the Buddha’s terms as they are meant to be understood.

“Better than absolute sovereignty on the earth, better than going to heaven, better than lordship over all the worlds is the reward (phalam) of entering the stream (sotapatti)” (Dhammapada 178).

During this baptism, we get our first glimpse of nirvana. In addition, we begin to distinguish our psychophysical body from our true self. We also put away our doubts about the veracity of the Buddha's teachings because we now can see what he is aiming at. As a result, we no longer cling to ritualistic and moralistic practices which really amount to dead-ends. Short of this, our understanding of Buddhism is like that of a man born blind before he is cured by a physician. He insists that his senses are correct (this was an argument the Buddha used against materialists).

Summary

Dark Buddhism, as I conceive it, is characterized by five factors: 1) It embraces “the Esoteric Perennial Philosophy,” which considers the esoteric (or truly spiritual) essence of the three major religions (Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism) to be the same; 2) it rejects Madhyamaka’s illogical and non-spiritual sunyata teaching; 3) it denies that true Buddhism teaches a no-Self doctrine; 4) it integrates pertinent aspects of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism; and 5) it emphasizes the role of the Stream, or Sambhogakaya, in the En-Light-enment project.

My Dark Buddhism is “dark” only because mainstream Buddhism rejects the five factors it embraces. When it no longer rejects them, then my Dark Buddhism will cease to exist, for its “darkness” will have been eclipsed by its light.