Unloading Some Things
The Buddha said it would be better, not worse, to listen to a wise person if you find one. And who’s wise? The ones who love. Not always the loud or popular ones, not the cruel ones, not the flatterers or the show-offs, but the ones who help you see clearly and act better. That’s kalyanamitrata — good friendship. When Ananda said it was half the holy life, the Buddha admonished him. He said no, Ananda, good friendship is the whole thing. Because if you have good friends, you’ll walk the path together, and that will help you all remember why it all matters.
Good friendship includes teaching. It means we tell each other the truth, even when it stings, because that’s how minds change — how they change in healthier directions. A teacher-friend will offer what she has, but a student-friend has to listen. If they don’t, they’re not being a good friend (the was really clear about what good and bad friends are), and they miss the chance to learn how to help others. In Buddhist practice, the good friend is both teacher and student — it depends on the reality of the situation, the need, the capacity.
The Bodhisattva path — what we call engaged Buddhism — depends on all of this too. We are always listening, learning, and applying. Through that application, we begin to see more deeply and more widely as the field of Buddhadharma clarifies the field of flowing worldly (dualistic, conditioned, conventional) appearances.
This field of worldly appearances is what we, in English, call “conventional reality.” Conventional reality is the flow of dualistic discrimination — vijnana — but that word is usually flattened into “consciousness,” which confuses Western readers.
So remember: “the world is on fire.” The Buddha said that, and then he explained what he meant by “the world” and “the fire.” The world is this flow of appearances, carried along by the winds of worldly causation, along the streams of vijnana that eventually give rise to what we meet in the teaching of the five aggregates. It’s called form when it manifests as the appearance of form (the first skandha) at one of the sense gates.
There are five gates we usually talk about as the flows of worldly perception — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching — and there is another flow of dualistic discrimination that works like the others but also watches the activity of the others, and even itself. It’s like what Tolkien meant when he wrote about the “One Ring to rule them all.”
This is manovijnana, the thinking mind. It’s like a sharp knife! It slices reality-as-it-is into bite-sized chunks which can be digested by the weak little mano-vijnana. And, it is both a problem and a potential solution. Remember this when you read English translations of Buddhist texts and see the word “consciousness.” The consciousness meant here is split — dualistic — the way ordinary prthagjana minds slice tathata (suchness) into knowable syzgies (pairs of opposites). Not all consciousness is like that.
A big problem for us here in the U.S. is that most of us were raised inside this strange mix of rugged individualism and hyperconsumerist convenience — all swimming in what Max Weber called the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It’s worth reading that little book, especially for American engaged Buddhists who actually want to understand our people better, so we can help change minds in the most helpful and harmless ways.
There have even been studies showing what anyone who spends time with beings on these interwebs already knows — we tend to overestimate our own understanding. I’ve met this pattern over and over again, online and in person, inside and outside. And when I notice it inside, I take it as a signal to do more work. People think they’re experts in Buddhism before they’ve even begun any study or sila training. How can they follow the Buddha if they don’t know what he taught, or the way he walked?
We see it all the time, especially online. The masses want meditation without ethics, enlightenment without effort, bliss without responsibility. For many, “spiritual” has come to mean “spiritual bypassing.” The “I’m not religious but I’m spiritual” thing isn’t helpful. It’s confusion about words and their meanings — and yes, words are empty, but they still have function in conventional reality. Their meanings are conditioned, interdependent, and mutually noninterfering. They inter-are.
So when people rail against “religion,” especially in engaged Buddhist spaces, it doesn’t make much sense. Engaged Buddhism is religion in its most alive and real sense. People mistake religion for the Abrahamic systems they’ve experienced or rejected, then throw the whole idea away. They say “all organized religion is bad,” but they rarely define religion. The word itself is empty and has changed meaning over time. It comes from the Latin religare, “to bind.” And yes — to bind. Any true community is bound. In that way, religion is collective spirituality, but we’re addicted to commercialized, hollowed-out versions of the old religions.
If people actually re-read their so-called “New Testament,” they’d see that Jesus taught the same triad the Buddha did — sila, samadhi, prajna. Ethical discipline, concentration, and wisdom. He lived the bodhisattva path and taught nonduality long before the councils and creeds twisted his words. The Nag Hammadi texts weren’t “Gnostic heresies.” “Gnostic” was a label invented by those who feared understanding — gnosis, which is simply prajna(na), higher knowing, the wisdom that liberates.
The way the Buddha taught liberation doesn’t fit the way many modern Westerners wish it would. And the Jesus story shows the same pattern — people took his words, wrapped them in empire, and built a machine that repeatedly does the opposite of what he taught. Augustine gave them “original sin.” Pelagius tried to fix it, reminding everyone that ethical discipline still matters, that good karma is good. The New Testament even keeps a trace of that truth: “Faith without works is dead.” Works means good karma — good action. When people come to you with their suffering, you don’t just say “thoughts and prayers, be well.” You help them. “Fear of the Lord” isn’t something to brag about either — James pointed out that even the demons believe and tremble. Believe in loops all you want, but awakening begins when belief ripens into gnosis — direct knowing — and that knowing flowers as love. The perfection of gnosis is the perfection of love.
Then there was Paul, complicating everything, turning the Bodhisattva of Galilee’s living ethics into strange and hollow abstractions. He didn’t know Jesus — not really — beyond the hallucination he experienced while on his way to kill more of Jesus’ friends. The guy had to change his name because he was one of the early enemies of the movement. James did know Jesus, and that difference shows in his words. It’s the same ollllld Western habit energy still at work: killing ethical discipline, glorifying belief over compassionate action. What’s needed now is the same thing that was needed then — to listen deeply again to the still, small voice of Dharmakaya, Tathagata Mahavairocana — the luminous father Jesus was really talking about.
Jesus’ own parables already carried the Dharma. The farmer and the enemy who threw weeds in the field — that’s karma teaching. The wise farmer says wait, watch with mindfulness and concentration, and you’ll see which seeds are which. That’s vijnanavada. And the Gospel of Thomas shows the same spirit as Maitreya, Asanga, Vasubandhu — and later, Thich Nhat Hanh — clarifying the same birthless and deathless teaching.
Augustine’s “original sin” is just bad metaphysics — the idea that a being can be “originally” anything is delusion. Pelagius tried to correct it, but the bishops preferred control. So the Roman imperial vibe swallowed the bodhisattva of Galilee, twisted the Dharma into lists of dogma, and called the resulting confusion “faith.” Even in their own gospels, the Bodhisattva of Galilee is disappointed in his students. Judas played his role. Peter became the rock — but he was the rock of “counterfeit Dharma” (an old Buddhist term).
And yet, the signs were always there. Jesus traveled with three Marys — mother, aunt, and beloved — triple goddess resonance echoing ollllld truths. But patriarchy keeps repeating: swelling up and crumbling, over and over. Through it all, the Holy Spirit — Dharmakaya itself — keeps whispering, “The kingdom is already spread out, but people don’t see.”
It’s hard for beings trapped in greed, wealth-hoarding, miserliness and busyness to see the kingdom. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a wealth-hoarder to find the kingdom. The Gospel of Thomas nails it: the busyness man merchant throws a banquet, invites his rich friends, but they’re too distracted by their own busyness and wealth-hoarding games to come to the party. So he opens the doors to the poor — those free enough to taste the Pure Land of the present moment.
And here we are, in a Protestant-ethic, capitalist empire pretending to be holy, worshipping productivity instead of compassion, trapped in the same karmic loops. The Buddha warned about all this too — greed, hatred, and delusion dressed up as virtue. Different language, same poison.
Sila still matters — bodhisattva sila. Because if we don’t stop killing, stealing, lying, and abusing, our minds won’t settle. Those actions stir up inner storms, psychospiritual turbulence that blocks samadhi. No stability, no clarity. No shamatha, no vipasyana. The pattern repeats until we finally choose to listen, to learn, to practice, and to love again.
And then there are these other extremes. There are the secular reductionists who think vipasyana alone — bare mindfulness only — is the whole thing. They usually don’t care to engage. There isn’t much effort in terms of sila, especially not in terms of bodhisattvasila. And there are plenty of spiritual bypassers who get a little taste of shamatha and think that’s the end. Both get stuck. Many cling to a hollow and small version of the teaching, which has been twisted into nihilism to protect addictions to apathy and indifference toward the suffering of others. There is too much addiction to personal comfort and not enough empathy in general, and mistaking personal peace for liberation is a fault for any Bodhisattva. Both miss the Buddha’s path.
Engaged Buddhism means doing the whole thing — ethics, meditation, and wisdom together — for the sake of all beings, in the world, with friends. It isn’t about retreating into quietism or performing “niceness”. It’s about learning to listen to good friends and apply the Dharma in real life so the world we share becomes less cruel and more woke.
The Buddha and the great bodhisattvas already told us how a bodhisattva thinks about all of this — about the very same things we keep facing again and again. The sources are there, but too many in the West still refuse to look, understand, apply, and strive on. So I’ll keep pointing them out, and maybe some friends will understand and help spread the good news with us Buddhagangsters.
Infinite blessings,
all the love,
and much respect to those who strive on.