Tibetan Buddhism, in the pop-cultural psyche of the United States, is
the Dalai Lama’s face grinning from a cover in the self-help section
of your nearest bookstore.
It’s a monk in a maroon robe sitting calmly
in a full-skull electrode cap as researchers probe his brain to learn how
meditation plays into his unique serenity [
absorptions].
It’s that over-the-top scene
from the film Seven Years in Tibet (1997) in which Brad Pitt
is trying to build a movie theater for the young Dalai Lama in Tibet's capital Lhasa in
the 1940s when he realizes that his local crew has such a strong
reverence for life and abiding patience that none is willing
to harm a worm while digging ditches.
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| Earth-witnessing mudra in Tibetan Buddhism |
Which is to say that Tibetan
Buddhism in the US pop-cultural psyche is a monolithic and benign
spiritual tradition built around simple wisdom, loving kindness, and
unflinching non-violence.
This belief in an uncomplicated, compassionate,
and progressive Tibetan Buddhism is what allows us to reliably portray
Tibetan Buddhists as sympathetic victims in the media.
It’s what powers
headlines in The Onion such as "Buddhist Extremist Cell Vows to
Unleash Tranquility on the West" -- and what at one point created an
unprecedented market for Tibetan nannies in cities such as New York.
However pervasive the stereotype, though, the US vision of Tibetan
Buddhism is anemic, to say the least.
Sure, compassion is central to the tradition, but there’s room for
violence
as well. Medieval Tibetan tales describe religious teachers breaking
students’ bones, then healing them magically to bring them insight. They
tell of monks assassinating corrupt kings to save Buddhism in Tibet.
Modern history brings us the stories, often neglected in the West, of
the CIA-backed violent insurgency that Tibetan Buddhists waged against
the Chinese occupation from the 1950s to the mid-1970s -- and of an
all-Tibetan refugee unit formed in India to fight the Chinese in a 1962
war.
Far from being easy to grasp and anodyne, Tibetan Buddhism is
complex with tantric practices, the impenetrably esoteric ideas and
techniques used to try to slingshot spiritual seekers directly towards
the enlightenment they seek to attain within this lifetime to best help
others.
It is difficult to succinctly sum up the diverse tantric
traditions and sub-traditions, each of which contains a trove of
doctrines and practices, some of which monks intentionally obscure from
lay audiences, for fear that they will be misused or misunderstood by
non-initiates.
Perhaps the best-known esoteric tradition in the
West is the Kalachakra Initiation, the ceremony in which the Dalai Lama
or other high-ranking monks slowly construct beautifully intricate
mandalas out of colored sand, and then wipe them away. Laypeople in the
West usually...
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MARK HAY is a writer on culture, faith, identity politics, and sexuality. His work has appeared in Esquire, The Economist, Foreign Service Journal, Slate and VICE, among others. He is based in Brooklyn, New York.
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