How To Be An Agnostic
Buddha did or didn’t say, become common – even as Buddhists
insist that theirs is a non-doctrinaire approach, with nothing
taken on trust, for all must be experienced. Or there’s the ques-
tion of whether you attend a Tibetan class, Zen or something
offered by the Western Buddhist Order, or one of the subdivi-
sions therein. It’s quite as confusing as choosing a therapist.
You can ignore these elements, more or less, and just stick
with the mindfulness, glad for the silent company of others –
a substantial aid it must be said. There will be some of your
fellow meditators who will believe the whole thing, drawn by
the very exoticism of Buddhism. Only then, I wonder whether
there is not an element of donning a Buddhist persona in
a desire to belong to the group, to become attached to a new
community – a ‘good church’. While entirely understandable,
given the alienation from Christianity that is so prevalent in
the West, it feels inauthentic. Not infrequently do you see the
glazed look of the convert in such settings, a face adorned with
a Siddhartha smile or Gautama grin. Such are the ungenerous
directions in which my mind wanders while sitting, though
I suspect that a similar critique lies behind the frequent exhor-
tations, given by Buddhists like the Dalai Lama, to fi nd a way
that originates in your indigenous cultural context. Then, you
will be dealing with who you are as a whole person.
A related concern arose for me when I noticed how converts
to mindfulness are often evangelical about its benefi ts. There’s
nothing wrong with that per se but the desire to sell it, and
make it acceptable for a Western audience, can distort. Hence,
it’s increasingly common for mindfulness to be advanced as a
remedy for stress and anxiety, or for the worried well, as a path
to a richer happiness. (I’ve seen it offered as a workshop at one
conference under the euphemism ‘wellbeing services’, which
made it sound like a manicure for the mind.)
Buddhism is interpreted in this way via the doctrine of suffer-
ing. Suffering here is meant in a broad sense, everything from
the faintest emotional perception that something is wrong, to
the manifest psychological injuries that human beings infl ict on