I borrowed a book by David Brazier recently. It’s called simply “Zen Therapy.” I greatly admire it. It really highlights, for me, the vitality of the Endless Knot: the union of discerning wisdom and warm, unclinging compassion in helping patients recover from mental illness. Here are some passages that I felt were particularly inspiring and insightful.

“Shunyata is innocent. A child picks up an unfamiliar object and turns it over in his hand. He looks from this side and from that. We can do the same. Pick up a stone. Turn it over in your hand. Become familiar with it. Notice its colour, its contours, its crevices. As you do so, the stone becomes real for you. It becomes something… Thus tenderness grows. We start to care about the stone. Just like a child, we invest caring in the object. From a materialistic viewpoint this is absurd. The rock has no monetary value and minimal utility. But is this not precisely the nature of caring? We do not care in order to get something back… We simply appreciate the thing itself. In some ways a stone is particularly easy to care for since it asks nothing in return” (p. 206).

I would like to add to this that Buddhism has always cherished and treasured the individual sentient being as it is, not for any other reason like utility or usefulness within a “system.” Such mechanisms belong to the world of business, the military, mass entertainment, and politics. In other words, everything that if taken to their extremes, will simply kill the sentient individual in more ways than one.

“Allison told the therapist, at the end of a session, that she was going to commit suicide. The therapist was immediately filled with strong feelings and said that he would not allow her to do any such thing: that, if necessary, he would not let her leave his office. She protested that it was none of his business whether she killed herself or not. He retorted that it now felt like it was very much his business – how could he live with himself if he let her go and she were dead the next day? Eventually she promised not to kill herself before seeing him again and left. Later she told him that this encounter had made a great impression on her because she realized that her being alive made a difference to someone else. She stayed alive that week because she did not want to inflict hurt upon him. In due course she found more reasons” (p. 198).

Every writer strives to provide good reading as opposed to awful reading in their publications. Their final decisions on “good” or “unsatisfactory” works is often founded on personal criteria based on past experiences of published work, subjective taste in literary aesthetics, and the importance accorded to whatever subject that may be at stake. However, as with everything else in the considered and thoughtful life, careful and compassionate reflection on one’s basic criteria can yield deeper insights into whether or not one is true to one’s principles of truly challenging, engaging, and fulfilling a prospective reader. Good reading is reflective of good writing, and good writing can only blossom from what is nothing less than systematic, philosophical deliberation on what constitutes quality compositions.

To begin with, I pose this question: what would happen if an author substitutes the word “good” with “beneficial?” When she decides on an essay, article, or book to compose, her primary concern would suddenly be to ensure the benefit of the reader first and foremost. What needs to be expressed? What current of thought merits at least some degree of public coverage and communication? What positive change – or simply enjoyment – can this exposure bring about in the individual who chooses to give time to her publication? These questions and re-aligning of priorities is based on the presupposition that is a privilege for a fellow human being to sit down and devote even fifteen minutes of time to absorbing something that a writer feels that must be communicated. Imagine the immense honour that is, or should be, accorded to an author when a reader snuggles in bed one cold winter night with the intention to get through at least a third of her book. It is all the more extraordinary when such a book concerns philosophy and religion, what Paul Tillich called an individual’s “ultimate concern.” To touch the hand of Infinite Light, to live in accordance with the higher precepts, or simply to live a humane life – it would appear that to write of these endeavours is to contribute in a very important way to the fulfilment of such aspirations, because barring the physical destruction of civilization and the inevitable impermanence of all contingent things, religious and philosophical writings will remain of intellectual and spiritual benefit to others long after their authors have departed. Why else would such composition be written unless it was for the benefit for sentient beings? Perhaps a self-dialogue or the clarification of the writer’s own understanding, such as Shantideva’s Bodhicharayavatara, would be a wholly legitimate reason.

But even with this qualification, a clarification of the author’s own understanding through writing would correspondingly be of benefit to her.

So we have benefit as the first criterion of what can be considered worthwhile writing. Is there another criterion catering more specifically to the reader’s casual taste, namely that of entertainment? Unfortunately, good writing does not necessarily have to mean good entertainment. But perhaps that is a happy fact. To benefit a reader already entails some effort to engage them, to invite them to be interested in one’s subject matter. In works that are meant strictly to entertain, there is complete license for not only humour, but a degree of cool nonchalance that allows it to fulfil the role of entertainment, to be able to be presented in a manner that can be held on to perhaps more loosely than subjects dearer to the heart such as politics or euthanasia. Religion and certainly modern religious writing and teaching can (should?) have a degree of humour, but it cannot be the least bit nonchalant because nonchalance denotes indifference, and indifference is something to be totally avoided by all authentic religions. Religion is not intended to be an opiate, but aims to penetrate into the deepest facets of reality with the aid of narrative, metaphor and symbols, though this is far from the complete story. Religion cannot be a sentimental retreat for our good feelings about ourselves and superficial charity and witty personalities. As Thomas Merton aptly pointed out, the mark of true life is effervescence transmuted into lucid direction and passion sublimated into tranquil mysticism. We religious authors might do well take heed of his advice.

Perhaps there can only be two fundamental things that an author can control: how beneficial her composition can be to others and how closely it corresponds to a work of pure entertainment. But she must ask herself: does she merely want it to entertain? Is entertainment benefit in its strictest sense? Or is there, perhaps, a subtle distinction that can contribute to her criteria of good writing?

Buddhology, or the systematic study of the Buddha and Buddhahood, has its roots in the earliest beginnings of the early Dharma. Asked if he was man or god, Shakyamuni simply replied that he was Awakened. No doubt an inspiring and affecting response, but within many of the early suttas are questions from diverse and curious disciples, skeptics and teachers: who is the Buddha? What is Buddhahood? During the colonial period, Buddhology came to be associated with Europeans anxious to impose their own projections of what they believed Buddhism to be onto the great traditions of the surviving Theravada and Mahayana schools. This was ultimately unsuccessful, however. The schools of the Blessed One proved, at least intellectually, far more tenacious than colonialists and exploiters expected. Some even began to take Buddhology seriously as an ancient discipline that dated to the epoch Shakyamuni walked this earth, which is called Endurance in the Buddhist tradition. This is the fundamental thrust of Buddhology and cannot be forgotten. It is of unsurpassed importance that scholars, philosophers, and historians return to what Buddhology fundamentally seeks to understand: to meet the Buddha and share in the inconceivable, holy enlightenment that is Buddhahood.

The universality of Buddhological study is such: like all other endeavours in the spiritual tradition, it fosters personal growth in the form of intellectual refinement, open-mindedness, and spiritual curiosity. It provides the conditions necessary for Amitabha’s infinite light to illuminate the pathways of one’s potential. The trails that whisper to the secretive heart are suddenly brightened and seem more comfortable, less daunting. But personal development is not limited to the academic sphere. Buddhology is certainly complex and sometimes even unfathomable, for it is as vast and deep as the ocean and cannot be mastered in one lifetime. One must revisit the subject over many returns. But in doing so, the scholar becomes an activist, and the student becomes a meditator. The universality of Buddhology lies in a true “Buddha-remembrance” that follows the untraceable footsteps of the Pure Land masters: to remember the Buddha and the Buddha’s loving compassion. Sentient beings, without exception will be enlightened and experience complete bliss. This is the soteriological truth of that Buddhology, like all other Buddhist disciplines, testify to. All that remains is to determine how to express these truths and experiences so that the humans of Endurance can prepare for their turn to return to the world as blissful bodhisattvas of limitless light and limitless life.

In the postmodern world, Buddhology has to be reclaimed as a field in which the very study of Shakyamuni, and indeed all other Buddhas, have some significance to those who tremble with spiritual hunger. Buddhology must be erudite, scholarly, and intellectually rigorous, no doubt. We owe much to the scholars, both Eastern and Western, who have developed it into such a stern discipline within the fields of history, anthropology, and sociology. However, a practical approach to Buddhology must speak to Buddhists as well as teachers and writers who may or may not be Buddhists. For without the Buddha, there is no Dharma, and there is no Sangha. In this sense Buddhology has no choice but to be universal, and ever more pertinent to our pluralistic society of diverse spiritual disciplines.

We, your spiritual children for countless past lives,

Have chased after worldly things,

Unable to recognize the clear, pure basis of our true mind.

Our actions of body, speech, and mind have been unwholesome.

We have drowned in ignorant cravings, jealousy, hatred, and anger.

But now the sound of the great bell has caused us to awaken

With a heart that is determined to renew our body and our mind.

Please help us to completely remove the red dust of all wrongdoings, mistakes, and faults.

We, your spiritual children in this moment, make the vow to leave all our habit energies behind,

And for the whole of our life to go for refuge to the Sangha.

Awakened One, please place your hand over us in protection,

So that loving kindness and compassion will guide and assist us.

May our heart’s garden of awakening

Bloom with hundreds of flowers.

May we bring the feelings of peace and joy into every household.

May we plant wholesome seeds on ten thousand paths.

May we never attempt to escape the suffering of the world,

Always being present wherever beings need our help.

May mountains and rivers be our witness in this moment

As we bow our heads and request the Lord of Compassion

To embrace us all.

The cosmic Buddha is always present everywhere but also closely intimate to individual sentient beings. In Buddhist cosmology, the universe is composed of worlds upon worlds, ad infinitum. Our world system, Saha, means “endurance,” referring to the many afflictions and suffering that permeate it, although its inhabitants endure it, for better or for worse. The Buddha, who is cosmic, is referred to by many names, though in the Avatamsaka Sutra this name is given as “Vairocana,” or Great Sun (Illuminator). Vairocana’s Pure Land is in fact the Flower Store World, which is the entire cosmos, every particle of dust, every atom of totality. However, the grandeur of the Buddha should not detract our attention away from revering the Buddha intimately. An example would be the practice of visualizing Amitabha, the Lord of Ineffable Light, Ineffable Light itself. The sacred gaze is important not only because it is a central religious concept in Mahayana Buddhism, but also because it is the most intimate pedagogical tool of the Buddha.

In Schroeder’s words: “What Dogen calls ‘face-to-face’ transmission,’ in which teacher sees disciple, and disciple sees teacher, is a bodhisattvic exchange that is direct and unmediated, relying on no fixed criteria and no substantial doctrines, and in which liberation is revealed as intimacy and love of another. Upaya reflects this unmediated encounter, showing that spiritual transformation occurs in a liberated ’space’ where one’s body and mind is fully present, and where the sheer ‘emptiness’ of anything fixed or tangible leads to a deep sense of vulnerability and intimacy” (2001, p. 156). The presence of the Buddhas and emptiness, sunyata, therefore can only be expressed in “word-play,” in rather difficult terms of non-duality. The Vimalakirti Sutra says: “The true nature of things is beyond the limiting concepts imposed by words.” This is echoed by the earlier Perfection of Wisdom literature, which formulated complex dialectical structures to linguistically demonstrate the tradition’s understanding of language’s limits whilst affirming its usefulness for practical purposes.

The Blessed One said: “Subhuti, when you consider the number of particles of dust in this world system of three million world systems, would they be many?” Subhuti answered: “Yes, Blessed One, many. And why? Because what was said by the Tathagata to be particles of dust, the Tathagata has said are no-particles. In this sense, the Tathagata has said ‘particles of dust’. Moreover, that which is a world system is said by the Tathagata to be no system. In this sense, he says ‘world system’.” (Conze, e.d., 1957, Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita. Rome: Serie Orientale Roma XIII, p. 38 [5a])

In all circumstances expressible and inexpressible, the Buddha is always present in the being and hearts of all sentient beings.