There’s a saying: you never know what goes on in other peoples relationships. I guess it means the weird stuff. Well, one of the weird things that happens in Philippa’s and mine is that when Philippa wakes in the morning she usually immediately starts talking about something profound. I tease her and call it her ‘thought for the day’. So today’s was spiritual materialism. Using our spirituality to create a solid sense of self. Protecting ourselves from others by constructing a wall of spiritual superiority.
I personally have a very good example of this that I have written about in several books. I say I have had two ‘goes’ at Buddhism. The first began in my early twenties (when in fact I heard this concept for the first time) and went to India and then later Italy where I was part of a Buddhist community. This whole time is really a blur of emotional mess and it’s a long unedifying story but the point is that after taking a prolonged break from the whole thing I eventually came back to my teacher, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, and apologised. I said something like, “I’m so sorry, I took your teaching on how to lose a self and used it to make one.” And the story ends with him laughing and saying, ”Everyone does that.”
So listening to Philippa I suddenly thought that while the more extreme examples of this are very easy to spot and are universally unappealing - you know what I mean, exuding a kind a spiritual superiority. Calm, wise, ready to give advice but somehow entirely unreal, impenetrable, actually not kind at all. However, the lesser cases are more hidden, in fact I begun to wonder - obviously thinking of myself - if it were not true of all of us to some degree? Am I, doing a bit of meditation and spending so much time talking and writing about it, not also a spiritual materialist? Am I not deriving my sense of self from my engagement with the Dharma?
It’s a good question if rather disquieting and I think the answer must be yes, but fortunately I have found a caveat. (Little voice inside says, yes, of course you have!). I wonder if there is not a grey hinterland between the pathology of spiritual materialism and the entirely legitimate deriving personal meaning from our engagement with the Dharma? Here I am thinking that as human beings we are always creating meaning out of our experience because it is one of the components of what keeps us sane and happy. We have no choice, we just do it and do it all the time. This doesn’t mean that the meanings we create are necessarily accurate or even desirable - think here racism or misogyny- but for the person who holds these views they give his life a structure that makes it liveable. Similarly with the Dharma. Having this in my life gives it a shape and form, it’s a vehicle for the values I think important - principally kindness. And it offers hope - there really is a better way to live that’s not just all about me. So, lots of meaning that defines who I am.
So how then does this relate to spiritual materialism? If indeed there is a hinterland between them where one shades into the other, what is it? I think the answer here comes down to how we use what gives us meaning. It’s all about defence. If I use the Dharma to defend against experiences I don’t want to have, emotions I don’t want to feel, then I’m using it defensively. And if I use it to help me explore and stay with places of vulnerability then I’m not. However, the trouble with this rather black and white definition is that when we explore our edges there is always an element of defensiveness that we find. There is always a place where closing down is dressed up as opening. Where we are creating a self while pretending to lose one. Where - going back to the last blog - my ‘mere I’ is actually my ‘social I’ masquerading as a mere I and that conceals my defensive ‘reified I’ behind it. However this is OK. It’s not only just how it is, it’s what the whole path is about - it’s about bringing our defensive closures to consciousness and choosing to do something different. In Buddhist speak, it’s not wrong to have hinderances to meditation or obscurations to our buddha-nature. But it is important to become aware of them and make working with them our practice.
So here we have it. Yes, probably all us use the Dharma to create and maintain a solid and seperate sense of self. But when we notice this and relax, not making ourselves wrong or bad, but just holding that contraction in a kind awareness, then the whole thing becomes the path. It’s what we do. And doing this gives a great deal of healthy meaning to our lives, lives that crave for meaning.
NW. 5 September 2024 And thank you P. for the thought of the day.
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