NewThangka

"Towards a Postmodern Middle," by Roger Jackson; from Buddhist Theology by John J. Makransky and Roger Jackson (Routledge,2000):

"At this point, nine years after taking refuge, my belief in the basics of the Buddhist worldview -- of those metaphysical doctrines I had first imbibed at Kopan, and sought for a decade to comprehend -- had almost completely evaporated. Logically, I should have stopped being a Buddhist. But I did not. I reached the end of my long skeptical inquiry and found that my sense of "being Buddhist" was nearly as strong as ever. How could this be? Shouldn't my painful awakening from religious dogmaticism have spelled the end of my relation to Buddhism? That it did not is due, I believe, to at least three separate factors, which may not be entirely idiosyncratic to my own personal history.

First, while over the course of time my confidence in the literal accuracy of metaphysical Buddhist claims weakened, other aspects of Buddhist doctrine and practice continued to seem irrefutable. In particular, I still found utterly compelling, and endlessly fruitful, (a) the central Mahayana philosophical claim that all entities and concepts are empty of self-existence because they are dependently originated; (b) the basic Mahayana ethical injunction, that one ought to be a compassionate bodhisattva, working as much as possible for the benefit of others, and; (c) the basic Buddhist claim that meditation -- whether concentrative or analytical, complex or formless -- is the best tool yet developed for disciplining one's mind, hence of altering one's way of seeing the world and living within it. All three of these perspectives, it seemed to me, were valuable quite independently of whether there are or are not multiple lives, does or does not exist a universal karmic law, is or is not a transcendent perfection like that ascribed to buddhas. In certain respects, to focus on emptiness, compassion and meditation, while letting Buddhist metaphysics go, is to make a move very much like that chosen by many Christians in the last two centuries: demythologizing one's tradition, and selecting from it certain doctrines that, whether or not they can be upheld in a traditional manner, seemed existentially meaningful and useful, regardless of one's historical or cultural situation. The advantages of such a demythologized, bare-bones Buddhism is that is allows one to preserve a core set of Buddhist beliefs and practices without having to subject oneself to the cognitive dissonance involved in trying to subscribe to "medieval" beliefs while living in a world shaped by modernity; its disadvantage is that it threatens to deprive Buddhism of the majesty of its vision, the mystery of its great narratives, the resonance of its art and rituals. Indeed, bare-bones Buddhism has little to differentiate it from secular humanism; one may as well read Camus as the Dhammapada.

There was, however, a second, crucial dimension to my sense of being Buddhist in a post-metaphysical mode, which put some flesh back on those bare doctrinal bones. Not only had my confidence in certain key perspectives survived my skeptical inquiry, but so too had my "feel" for the myths, symbols and metaphors, the sights, sounds and sensations of Buddhism. Subtly, inexorably, years of exposure to and internalization of these "aesthetic" aspects of the tradition had brought me to a point where they became the most powerful, single lens though which I viewed the world, a paradigm to which I had grown so accustomed that it seemed to form an a priori condition for much of my experience. So, my confidence in emptiness, compassion and meditation was not deprived of its rich, surrounding context; indeed, such doctrines and practices were for me quite inseparable from the scent of juniper incense on a cold morning, the sense or rightness I felt when prostrating to an image or circumambulating a stupa, the shiver sent through me by the very word shunyata, the sweet possibilities conjured by certain ritual songs, the mystery contained in the smile of a Buddha statue from Borobudur. Nor, despite my skepticism, did I separate those basic doctrines from the rich vision and language of traditional Buddhist metaphysics: I still could recite the Buddha's life-story, Mara and all, though I knew it bore little relation to what historians accept; could praise enlightened beings for qualities I doubted they, or anyone, literally could possess; could vow to liberate sentient beings in future lives I was not certain they would experience; could contemplate as primordially pure a mind I was not convinced was more than a byproduct of the brain. This "aestheticized" but non-metaphysical Buddhism has an advantage over the demythologized version of thoroughly engaging not just the intellect but all of one's imaginative and sensory powers, thereby providing a fuller context and greater incentives for belief and practice (see, e.g., Guenther; Trungpa). It is possible, on the other hand, to interpret such an aestheticized Buddhism as a mere exercise in nostalgia and self-delusion, a predictable by-product of the perpetual human need to create a vision, with reinforcing experiences, that will help make sense of a chaotic world. On such a view, an aestheticized and non-metaphysical Buddhism is the result of a cowardly compromise, in which one has the courage neither to accept traditional metaphysics in the face of modern doubts, nor to rest satisfied merely with those doctrines that stand up to the rigorous empirical and logical tests to which they, like all truth-claims, must be subjected.

The inadequacy of this critique of an aestheticized Buddhism lies, I believe, in a third factor of which I had become aware by the time I had finished my dissertation: the postmodernist discovery of (a) the impossibility of determining finally the "truth" of any particular worldview or vision, whether traditional or modern and (b) the inadequacy of defining religion on the basis of primarily core metaphysical doctrines, or determining the meaningfulness of a religion on the basis of the "correspondence to reality" of those metaphysical doctrines..." (pp. 223 - 225).