In general, what Americans try to do when they attempt to
pursue "spiritual enlightenment" bears little to no resemblance to
what my actual Indian Hindu and Buddhist friends are doing. I can generally map
the linguistic terms from one group to the other, but there is a phoniness and
a narcissistic aspect to the way Westerners do it.
Ironically, a large part of Buddhism is about denying
"the self." However, denying "the self" means something
very specific to a South Asian person who was born and raised in a community
that stresses the importance of family and legacy. It's a process of
reaffirming an ethical commitment to being a good person. Being a good person
means caring about your elders, providing for your extended family and
community, sacrificing your own needs to the needs of the people around you, so
that you can all build a better life together.
By contrast, a Westerner’s pursuit of “spiritual
enlightenment” tends to be mostly based on conflating the two distinct
definitions of the word “materialism.” Eastern philosophies emphasize the
impermanence of material existence; in other words, life is short, so focus on
feeding your spiritual needs ahead of your physical needs. But when Westerners
talk of the evils of “materialism,” they are most definitely not thinking about their own mortality. Instead,
they’re talking about the shallow pursuit of commercial goods. Big difference.
Westerners are born and raised in the most individualistic
society the world has ever seen. That’s not a bad thing, but it changes the
understanding of what it means to deny “the self.” A spiritual Westerner who “denies
the self” doesn’t turn outward to his community and attempt to make it a better
place. Instead, he attempts to negate his own needs and desires. He tries to
pursue more happiness with fewer material possessions. “I don’t need to buy
stuff to be happy, I just need to focus on spiritual enlightenment.” And “focusing
on spiritual enlightenment” is, to a Westerner, a goal unto itself. It
apparently involves more meditation, more time spent reading books about
meditation, more time spent learning about “chakras.” More experimental use of
psychedelic drugs. This couldn’t be further from the Easterner’s practice of
Eastern religion.
In fact, this is an enormous
difference in perspectives. To the Easterner, “spiritual fulfilment” isn’t some
mumbo-jumbo that you get in a cedar-plank room with scented candles and new age
music. It’s something that you gain from turning your personal misery into
someone else’s happiness. Are you feeling sad? Then, get over it and help your
brother study for his upcoming math exam. Some girl broke your heart? That
sucks – but here, take the garbage out and then go spend the afternoon helping
your grandmother shop for a new saree. The point of selflessness in this
environment is to heal your misery by focusing on what is “truly important.”
And in Eastern society, what is “truly important” is very specific. Be a good spouse; do charity work; engage with your
community; spend time with your family; raise some kids; and so on.
When you think about it, this isn’t all that different from
the perspective you’d get in a Westerner’s church or synagogue. Traditional
Western religions all take a similar view of selflessness. They advise you to
get out of your own head when you’re feeling anguished and to “do the work of
the Lord,” which generally means community service, kind gestures, charitable
giving, etc. It should come as no surprise, then, that most socially liberal Easterners view Buddhist and Hindu
practices not as a path to new age enlightenment, but rather as extremely conservative belief systems. At the end of the day, Eastern
religion delivers the same advice to Easterners that Western religion delivers
to Westerners.
It’s striking to me that hardcore
conservatives in South Asian societies are using exactly the same language
as hardcore liberals in North
American societies, and yet these groups mean entirely different things when
they use this terminology. Globalization and the internet have given people a
common set of words that everyone uses to describe their experiences, but it
hasn’t yet guaranteed that various societies mean the same thing when they say
the same words. It appears that our languages have converged, but our meta-language
hasn’t done so quite yet.
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