Buddhist Spirituality vs. Buddhist Religion


Spirituality and Religion


    For present purposes, the word "spirituality" refers to ideals and disciplines having to do with internal transformation, bringing a person to a higher state of being.  Unlike some usages, the word "spirituality" as used here has no necessary reference to connection or union with a higher being.  Such a belief plays no part in the spirituality of the Pali Canon or Theravada Buddhism.
    The word "religion" when used in contrast with "spirituality," refers to "religions" as social institutions, consisting of things that can be observed and tested from the outside: What does a person publicly profess to believe or not believe? What rules does she regard as obligatory rules for external behavior? What rituals does she regularly attend? What history does she identify as the history of her religion? What human authorities does she regard as authoritative representatives of this tradition? What religious books does she regard as sacred or authoritative? All these are issues that can be made into publicly testable membership requirements deciding who does and who does not belong to a particular religious institution.

"Religion" is also usually connected to a person's sense of identity.  "Are you a Catholic?" means, "Do you identify yourself as a member of a particular community of people who call themselves 'Catholic'"?  Similarly, if a person raised as a Catholic is asked "Are you a Buddhist now?" they usually mean, "Have you converted from Catholicism to Buddhism?"  -- i.e. have you ceased to identify yourself with a group called "Catholics" and now identify yourself instead with a group called "Buddhists"?
    "Religion" and "spirituality" are of course not necessarily opposed, or mutually exclusive. Many of the world's long-standing religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism) have highly developed spiritualities associated with them. In traditional times most individuals practicing these spiritualities were also members of religious institutions, considered it important to adhere to all the membership requirements of these institutions, and frequently served as authorities in these institutions.
    Nonetheless, religion and spirituality are separable, and often do exist separately from each other. For example, in my past experience, most American students entering this course have been familiar only with Christian "religion" -- most are unaware that there is such a thing as Christian spirituality, and even fewer have ever studied Christian spirituality or read Christian spiritual classics.  On the other hand, Americans and Europeans who become interested in Buddhism become interested in Buddhist spirituality, with very little knowledge about, or interest in, Buddhist religion as it exists in Buddhist communities in Asia.  Many Americans seem to be under the mistaken impression that, unlike Christians, all Buddhists in Asia are highly spiritual people, because they think Buddhism is a spirituality, not a religion like Christianity. By contrast, many students of Asian descent raised in Buddhist families are familiar mainly with Buddhist religion, and have slight knowledge of Buddhist spirituality. Much of what is studied in this section of the course will be unfamiliar to them.
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    This unit on Buddhism will focus almost entirely on Buddhist spirituality, not on Buddhist religion. There are several reasons for this:
    First, we are studying Pali Canon Buddhism from a Platonist point of view. Earlier essays showed that the essence of what makes a person admirable must consist in something internal to that person. Things externally observable, including the external elements of religions, are always ambiguous with respect to goodness, since it is possible for a person to exhibit these external signs and not be an admirable person.
    Secondly, Buddhist spirituality is the part of Buddhism least connected to very specific social customs in particular cultures existing in Asia, therefore something more easily adaptable to a wide variety of cultural and social conditions. Anyone anywhere can practice Buddhist spirituality without significantly altering their lifestyle, belonging to a Buddhist organization, or even changing their self-definition from "Christian" or "Muslim" to "Buddhist."
    Finally, Buddhist spirituality is the primary focus of the Pali Canon. It is the topic to which most attention is given, the subject of the most extensive theorizing and thought-development, and the most unique contribution Buddhism has to make to world culture. The Pali Canon does also contain a lot of advice and encouragement to morally decent behavior. But what it has to offer here either belongs to commonsense notions of morality common to most cultures (don't lie or steal, be kind to others, etc.), or else is so specific to conditions in ancient India that it is irrelevant to other societies.
    Studying Pali-Canon spirituality from a Platonist point of view also means that this will be a study of the Buddhist ideals presented in the Pali Canon, and will be apply Socratic/Platonic reasoning to formulate concepts of what these ideals would be at their very best -- the "Platonic Form" of Pali-Canon spirituality.  This is very different from trying to understand what actual Buddhist persons are actually like, or even what any actual Buddhist persons actually think.  One cannot know this by studying the Pali Canon, just as rationally-oriented study of the Bible would not inform us about what actual Christians are actually like or actually think.  Even among those Buddhists (Theravadins) who take the Pali Canon as their "Bible" there is bound to be great diversity in the way they interpret the Pali Canon, and even greater diversity in the actual way of life they lead.  The only way of knowing what a specific individual is actually like or actually thinks is talking to them and getting to know them.
In sum:
    There are communities of people in Asia identified as "Buddhist communities," belonging to the Buddhist "religion."  Membership in Theravada Buddhist communities in Southeast Asia generally requires, at a minimum, respect for and support of Buddhist monks and nuns residing in a local temple/monastery. Being a member in good standing of these communities also requires keeping the five precepts (no lying, stealing, killing, no sexual misconduct, and no drunkenness), frequenting Buddhist temples, and participating in Buddhist ceremonial occasions.  It is possible to "be a Buddhist," recognized as such by Buddhist communities, without studying or practicing Buddhist spirituality, although the majority of people (mainly monks and nuns) who do practice Buddhist spirituality also identify themselves, and are recognized by others, as respected members of the Buddhist religion and the Buddhist religious community. 
    Thus it is possible to belong to the Buddhist religion, a member of a Buddhist religious community, and not study or practice Buddhist spirituality.
    It is also possible to study and practice Buddhist spirituality without "being a Buddhist" or "belonging to the Buddhist religion" -- i.e. without belonging to a Buddhist community, supporting Buddhist monks and nuns, identifying oneself as Buddhist, or being recognized by as members of a concrete Buddhist community by others belonging to that community.   Among Americans and Europeans who study Buddhist spirituality and practice Buddhist meditation, probably the majority fall in this latter category.  (The majority of those who practice aspects of Buddhist "religion" outside of Asia are Asian immigrants.  Non-Asian American practitioners of Buddhist spirituality generally do not identify themselves as members of such communities, do not attend Buddhist community-temples, and are not generally recognized by members of these communities as members of the Buddhist "religion" as a social institution.)
    To anticipate later essays, what is said here about Buddhism can also be said about Christianity.
    It is also possible to "be a Christian," belonging to a Christian religious community and so recognized by others, without studying or practicing Christian spirituality.
    It is also possible (though more rare) to study and practice Christian spirituality without identifying oneself as a member of a Christian religious community, recognized by other Christians as belonging to the community of Christians.  (Dag Hammarskjold is an example of such a person, whose diary will be the focus of later essays.  There are also so-called "culture-Christians" in contemporary mainland China for whom Christian theology and spirituality is central to their worldview and way of life, even though they do not belong to any Christian organization.)
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Some History

    The fact that the Pali Canon focuses so heavily on spirituality is partly due to the circumstances in which the earliest Buddhism arose.
    Earliest Christianity and earliest Islam, for example, both arose from the very first with the intention of being mass movements, having the ambition to transform entire societies, if not the entire world. The writings contained in the Christian New Testament and the Q'uran were addressed to the general public.
    By contrast, earliest Buddhism arose among small groups of men (and a few women) known in ancient India as "samanas," who had become dissatisfied with ordinary family, business, and social life, and had therefore "wandered forth from home into homelessness." They wandered about in uninhabited areas at the edge of towns where they begged for their food -- on this account they were called in the Pali Canon bikkhus (fem. bikkhunis), "beggars."  They were following already established traditions of other samanas before them, sharing some version of common ideals regarding internal transformation, the life-purpose for which they had left comfortable life in society.  (Note that similar wandering-beggar monks were common at several points in Christian history as well.  St. Francis of Assisi [1182-1226 a.d.] was one of the most famous.  His followers were known as the "mendicant friars" from the Latin word mendicare, to beg.  In most cases in all religious traditions, most of these freely wandering monks eventually settled down in highly organized and structured monastic communities.)
    The Pali Canon pictures Siddhartha Gotama, the traditional founder of Buddhism, as only one among many respected teachers around whom pupils would gather to learn their particular spiritual ideals and techniques for internal transformation. Typical writings in the Pali Canon introduce a sermon of the Buddha by picturing a particular individual, awakening under a tree where he or she had slept the night, thinking, "I will go visit Gotama (sitting under another tree in the vicinity) and ask what he thinks about...." Then follows a sermon by Gotama the Buddha.
   Gotama's main teaching was therefore initially directed to a relatively small group of dropouts from ordinary society, voluntarily engaged in an idealistic spiritual quest to raise their lives above the level it would be if they only conformed to ordinary social standards. His teaching addressed topics and interests not of great interest to the majority of people in ancient Indian society, and much of it requires familiarity with very technical concepts and vocabulary not familiar to most people not regularly engaged in the conversations of the samanas. The Pali Canon pictures a time before the development of Buddhist monasteries, to say nothing of Buddhist temples, or of larger scale Buddhist organizations involving the masses of the people in local society.
    "Householders" do appear in the Pali Canon, almost always as supporters of Buddhist bikkhus and bikkhunis. They offered them food when they came begging. Wealthier patrons set aside groves on their property specifically for their use as resting places. (Many sections of the Pali Canon name the particular grove where Gotama was residing while he gave some particular sermon.)  This probably followed already established traditions in India, of admiration and respect for samanas in general and a desire to be associated with them and support them. Buddhist samanas also gave moral advice to householders, and one writing in the Pali Canon consists of a long sermon to a householder Sigala, on how to lead a good life. It contains a lot of commonsense moral advice concerning good and bad behavior (together with other puzzling concrete advice such as avoiding "pot-blowers," the reason for which now escapes us at this cultural distance). Notably absent in lay sermons like this is any reference to internal transformation or to the more technical concepts of Buddhist psychology meditation practices related to internal transformation.
    Here we do have the beginnings of Buddhist "religion," with a particular social structure common to Theravada Buddhism, the sect that takes the Pali Canon as sole authoritative scripture. Most bikkhus and bikkunis eventually left the wandering life and gathered predominantly in monasteries and convents where their lives were regulated by numerous rules. In traditional times, individuals who wanted to learn and practice Buddhist spirituality entered monasteries or convents, where (ideally) they would learn to read and study Buddhist scriptures, study difficult Buddhist psychology and philosophy, and engage in intensive meditation exercises aimed at internal transformation.  (I say "ideally," because one should not suppose that all monks and nuns inhabiting Buddhist monasteries actually lived up to these monastic ideals.  An anthropologist interviewing monks in Myanmar in 1961-62, found that less than one third of the monks he interviewed reported that they actually meditated.  See Melvin Spiro. Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and Its Burmese Vicissitudes. 1982.)
    But monks and nuns were seldom more than a tiny minority among those people who identified themselves as Buddhists. The vast majority were essentially "householder Buddhists," who held certain Buddhist beliefs, followed Buddhist rules, attended Buddhist ceremonies, and supported Buddhist monks and nuns, but did not study the difficult parts of the Pali Canon, meditate, or take the fundamental internal transformation described in the Pali Canon as a major life goal.
    Monks and nuns played an essential role -- one could not really have a proper Buddhist community without a monk or nun at its center, or a proper Buddhist temple without a properly ordained monk or nun inhabiting it. Monks and nuns gave moral advice and upheld traditional community standards.  Monasteries often served as the main social-service agencies in a given society, settling disputes, teaching reading and writing to those who wanted, caring for the sick and travelers, taking in orphans and widows who had no one else to care for them, and so on. But there was a notable difference between the monastic ideals proper to monks and nuns, on the one hand, and the ideals proper to the masses of Buddhists living outside monasteries. (This of course, was also true of the difference in Medieval Christianity between the monastic ideals of monks and nuns, and the ideals of the masses of Catholic Christians living outside monasteries.)
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    All this is important to correct some typical mistakes made by US students, when they compare the "Buddhism" they learn in books or college classes like this, to the "Christianity" they know about through the way Christianity has been publicly presented in the US, either through religious instruction, or through exposure to Christians personally or through the media.  Roughly speaking, the mistakes are due to the fact that,
    - rather than comparing Buddhist spirituality to Christian spirituality, and Buddhist religion to Christian religion,
    - they are unconsciously comparing Christian "religion" (the only Christianity they know about) to Buddhist "spirituality" (the main part of the Buddhist tradition that has been presented to the American public.)
    To understand this mistake in more detail, it is helpful to reflect first on some aspects of the history of Christianity in Europe and the US, compared to the history of Buddhism in Europe and the US.
    Very early in its history, Christian missionaries took on the ambition of converting the entire known world to Christianity.  This was an ambition largely fueled by the belief that being a Christian is universally necessary for "salvation," and (as St. Augustine put it around 400 a.d.) "outside the church there is no salvation."  Medieval Europe came close to realizing this Christian ideal -- a society in which the general populace consisted entirely of members of the Christian church.  This necessarily meant that the prime concerns of Christian leaders became tied up with maintaining the strength of the Catholic church as an institution, trying to make sure that the entire (mostly illiterate) populace understood and adhered to certain minimum requirements of church membership, promoting Christian "religion" among the general populace, leaving advanced Christian theology and spirituality to monks and nuns living in monasteries and convents.
    The 16th century Protestant revolt against the institutional Catholic church eventually gave rise to an era of competition between a great number of different Christian sects and church organizations, most of which retained the ambition of recruiting all members of society to become members of this "true church" rather than of other false churches.  This inter-church competition reinforced the focus of leaders in all churches on formulating very clear versions of doctrines, rules, and institutional forms -- understandable to children and taught to all members --distinguishing the true Christian religion taught in this church, from all the false versions taught in other churches.  In more recent times, these battles between different Christian churches have been partially replaced by the battle between the Christian religion -- members of Christian churches -- and the non-religious "secularism" of non church-goers. 
    All this means that public presentations of Christianity, both to church members and the general public, are heavily geared toward the interests of strengthening individual church organizations as social institutions among the populace at large, expanding church membership through "conversion" (understood as joining a church), teaching all church members the minimal essentials of true beliefs, and enforcing some kind of church discipline.  This in turn means that, although there is a very rich tradition of Christian spirituality and college-level Christian "theology," embodied in a large and still growing body of Christian literature, these figure hardly at all in the public presentations of Christianity familiar to the general public in the US, Christian and non-Christian.  So long as the ambitions of the main Christian leaders are focused on Christianizing the general public by making them good church members (including especially instructing children), their efforts are bound to focus on promoting a kind of Christian belief that makes little demands on intellectual understanding (few Christians have read a college-level book on Christianity), and a form of Christian morality that consists of following rules for externally observable behavior rather than internal spirituality.
    Contrast this with the public presentations of Buddhism available in the US.
    There exists Buddhist "religion" -- properly speaking, many Buddhist religions -- familiar to the masses of the general populace in several Asian countries, comparable to the Christian religions familiar to the masses of the general populace in the US.  Until very recently, not many books in English existed describing Buddhist religion as it actually exists in Asia, and so knowledge about it was not widely available to English-speaking people who had not traveled to Asia.
    Those Buddhist teachers most successful in spreading knowledge of Buddhist teaching among non-Asians in the US did not generally think of themselves as recruiting new members of Asian-Buddhist organizations, and did not generally try to get people in the US to adopt customs associated with Buddhist religion in Asia.  The typical Buddhist institution connected with their efforts is not (as in Asia) the temple or monastery, but meditation-centers, or Buddhist retreat centers, where anyone interested can come to learn about Buddhist spirituality and learn Buddhist meditation practices, without being required or expected to join a Buddhist organization, support Buddhist monks, officially identify themselves as "Buddhists," or alter their lifestyle in any other way.
    (Note that this contrasts with the Buddhism of communities of Asian immigrants to the US.  For many such communities, concrete features of Buddhist religion (robed monks and nuns, temples, rituals, observing Buddhist rules, holidays, and other Buddhist customs) are often regarded part of ethnic or national identity.  Accordingly, the Buddhism taught and practiced in such communities is largely oriented to recreating features of popular Buddhist religion as practiced in Asia, transporting these to the US as far as possible.  Very few non-Asians frequent Buddhist temples in these Asian communities.  And on the other hand hand very few first- and second-generation Asian immigrants frequent the Buddhist meditation centers popular among non-Asians.)
    Writings about Buddhism widely available and most popular in the US have not generally been written by leaders of Buddhist organizations trying to recruit members, strengthen Buddhist institutions, or define "orthodox Buddhist doctrine" in contrast to rival "false Buddhisms."  They are also not written to inform Americans about the practice of Buddhist religion as it exists in Asia.  They are not written to preserve traditional Buddhist lifestyles in opposition to changes brought about by modernity.  They are written mostly to show how key principles of Buddhist monastic philosophy and spirituality can be generalized and adapted in such a way as to address some central problems felt by many people in advanced modern societies -- reducing stress, adapting to constant change, cultivating internal spirituality as an antidote to materialism and consumerism, etc. 
    Their attraction to Americans often consists in a perceived contrast between Buddhist spirituality the Christian religion known to the majority of Christians.  Two examples of this contrast:
    - To many Americans, Christianity appears essentially authoritarian -- to be a Christian necessarily involves becoming a member in good standing of a Christian church, including unquestioning belief in church doctrine (understood or not), and unquestioning submission to church authorities, enforced by the threat that those who do not do so cannot be saved, but are condemned by God.  Buddhism by contrast is presented to Americans in such a way that they feel they can take from it whatever they feel in helpful in their personal lives.  Profiting from Buddhist spiritual teachings does not require joining a Buddhist organization or even "becoming a Buddhist" -- taking "Buddhist" as one's main identity, in contrast to thinking of "Christian," "Jew" or "Muslim" as central to one's identity.
    - Buddhism appears to have a highly sophisticated philosophy and spirituality, understandable and acceptable to highly educated rational minds, and adaptable to almost any modern lifestyle.  By contrast Christianity appears to consist almost entirely of particular external forms simple enough to be taught to children.  These forms consist of particular doctrines, rules, rituals, and authoritarian church organizational forms, designed mainly to create a "Christian lifestyle" distinguishing true Christians from false Christians, or distinguishing Christians from their secular contemporaries.   Often efforts to promote a Christian lifestyle appear to be attempts to preserve some premodern Christian customs -- associated in the Catholic case with medieval Christianity, or in the Protestant case with 18th century Calvinist and Puritan Christianity -- in opposition to modernity.
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    All this is important because essays in this unit of the course belong in general to the kind of literature on Buddhism described above, teaching Buddhist spirituality as something separable from Buddhist religion. They will attempt to present some basic principles of Pali-Canon Buddhist spirituality, separable from Buddhist householder religion, though of course compatible with it.  They will present these principles in rationally understandable and generalized form, and give examples of what it would mean to adapt Pali Canon Buddhist spirituality to life in the modern world.
    The main intent of the above remarks about religion and spirituality, Christianity and Buddhism is:
    -- To avoid the impression many Americans seem to have, that studying Buddhist philosophy and spirituality in books or college courses like this gives one a key to understanding the Buddhist religion familiar to the general populace in Buddhist countries or communities in Asia, or Buddhist immigrant communities in the US  (Contrary to the impression of many Americans, the majority of Asians are probably no more spiritually inclined and less materialistic that the majority of Americans, and it is no easier to practice Buddhist spirituality in Asia than it is in the US.)
    -- To avoid misleading comparisons of Buddhist spirituality with Christian religion. The essays on Christianity in the unit to follow this, centering on the letters of Paul in the Christian New Testament, will show that Pauline Christianity can be treated in the same way (1) as a spirituality dealing with a person's inner life, separable from institutionalized church-Christianity though of course compatible with it, and (2) as a spirituality that can be adapted to modern conditions and lifestyles, and (3) as a set of ideas rationally understandable, though (like Pali Canon Buddhism), it is not easy to understand.