Represent

Over the past ten years I've read a lot about Buddhism. I've studied it and met lots of people who practice it. I've noticed something about those people, and it's something that's always confused me. A high percentage of them don't identify themselves as Buddhists.

Many people drawn to Buddhism fancy themselves nonconformists. They've rejected their birth religion and gone in search of something better. They've spurned the embrace of a capitalist society in favor of spirituality. They're not going to believe something just because someone told them it was true (unless that person is Asian). They're open-minded free-thinkers, goddammit, and they refuse to label themselves, to limit themselves to one idea or philosophy. So when they discover Buddhism, and think it has all the answers they're looking for (plus it's so damn Asian), they don't like to be called Buddhists. They may practice its tenets and follow the Buddha's teachings, but they don't want to be pigeonholed.

This is, of course, ridiculous. It's part of the specious notion that by labelling something, you impose all the limits of that label. If someone is a Republican, or a hippie, or a punk, or a Catholic, then that defines them. Not only does it define them, but it implies that they'll never be anything outside of that, never be anything MORE than that word. Once you accept what society and others want to call you, then you're doomed to live in that little niche forever.

What an incredibly short-sighted view, and one that does more harm than the problem it thinks it's solving. People are always going to think of other people in certain ways. It doesn't matter what you call yourself or don't call yourself, those around you will always identify, label, limit and shelve you in their minds. It's damn near unconscious. And, for the most part, it doesn't fucking matter. None of that changes what you are, or what you can become.

I spent a few months at a Buddhist meditation center in Vermont some years ago. It was packed with people practicing one very specific path of Tibetan Buddhism. They meditated every day, they said weird little prayers before they ate, they had secret rituals for the higher ranking members, there were specific rooms dedicated to specific deity practices: in short, they behaved exactly like Tibetan Buddhists the world over. Why, then, were so many of them reluctant to claim they were Buddhists?

I remember one girl in particular. She used Buddhist Sanskrit words in casual conversation. She was very concerned with her suffering and how to end it (which is the ONLY thing that the Buddha taught). She'd been to lots of Buddhist meditation retreats. Yet she adamantly refused to call herself a Buddhist. "I'm a meditator," she'd reply when pressed. Yet there are many different types of meditation, and she was most certainly a Buddhist meditator.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with looking at something that walks, swims and quacks like a duck and saying, "Dude, check out that duck." Your words have not doomed it to duckness. Your ideas have not limited it to ONLY duckness. You have not destroyed it's potential, nor have you really defined it as a creature.

From the perspective of ultimate reality, labels do reinforce dualistic thinking. They perpetuate the subject/object, me/you types of thought that Buddhism seeks to disabuse. But we're not talking about ultimate reality here, we're talking about relative reality. We're talking about our day to day lives that make use of dualism for highly practical reasons. Without it, how the fuck would we know which car was ours when we headed off to work? How could WE pick OUR wife up from HER parent's house without those divisions?

These daily labels are helpful. Without them, we'd have no idea if we were taking Advil or rat poison. And, Buddhist or not, you'll find surprisingly little efficacy in saying "It's all one, man. Everything is interconnected and inseparable," after you swallow arsenic.

So, to all my fellow Buddhists out there: shut the fuck up and get over it. Being Buddhist means many things, and one of those things is that the only limits you have are set by yourself. Stop being so attached to what you're called and start paying attention to what you are.

Wake up.