Interconnectedness: A Buddhist or Romantic Concept?

Anonymous asked you:

Hi, I was hoping you could help me. I read “The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism” by Thanissaro Bhikkhu and was a little confused. Is he saying that the idea of interconnectedness was not a part of the Buddha’s teachings originally? Thank you.

Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. I was in the midst of finals when your question came through and I didn’t check out the essay until after I was done. Now I’m disappointed I didn’t sooner because it would have been fodder for one of my papers!

Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff), for those who don’t know, is an American-born (1949) monk in the Thai forest tradition. He was ordained in 1976 in Thailand and is currently the abbot of Metta Forest Monastery near San Diego, CA.

To answer your question most simply I believe that he is saying that our understanding of the Dharma is filtered through and deeply influenced by our particular lens, in this case, the European philosophical tradition of Romanticism. Specifically, Thanissaro Bhikkhu argues that the ideas of the Romantics have lived on in American culture through psychology and psychotherapy (a key bridge being the work of William James, then Carl Jung and Abraham Maslow), which have been shaped by the Romantic tradition.

A key point in the essay comes when he says:

Asian teachers — many of whom had absorbed Romantic ideas through Westernized education before coming here — found they could connect with Western audiences by stressing themes of spontaneity and fluidity in opposition to the “bureaucracy of the ego.” Western students discovered that they could relate to the doctrine of dependent co-arising (Pali: paticcasamuppada) when it was interpreted as a variation on interconnectedness; and they could embrace the doctrine of not-self (Pali: anatta) as a denial of the separate self in favor of a larger, more encompassing identity with the entire cosmos.

He furthers his argument saying: “In fact, the Romantic view of religious life has shaped more than just isolated Dharma teachings. It colors the Western view of the purpose of Dharma practice as a whole.” While he concedes that there are similarities between Romanticism and Buddhadharma, he stresses that “they disagree sharply not only on the nature of religious experience, but also on the nature of the mental diseases it can treat and on the nature of what it means to be cured.” Because of this, he says, it is crucial that we understand and critically examine how Romanticism shapes our understanding of Buddhist practice. He goes on to detail the differences in religious experience, spiritual illness, and spiritual cure in the two traditions.

Fundamentally, Thanissaro Bhikkhu contends that the Romantic lens limits our understanding of Buddhism. Arguing from a more traditional Theravadan perspective, he says that “true happiness has to go beyond interdependence and interconnectedness to the unconditioned (Pali: nibbana)…[and the] radical areas of the Dharma designed to address levels of suffering remaining even when a sense of wholeness has been mastered.”

Back to your question: Is he arguing that the concept of interconnectedness was not a part of the original Buddhist teachings? Maybe. Certainly, interdependence and interconnectedness are more often found in Mahayana teachings, and I am not enough of a Buddhist scholar to be able to demonstrate how these more Mahayana concepts pre-dated Romanticism. However, I have to presume they did. Further, a more nondual understanding of the Dharma which you find in the northern Buddhist countries could just naturally be more consistent with a Romantic interpretation than a Theravadan one.

Is there some truth to the fact that we are culturally conditioned to such an extent that we cannot interpret Buddhism entirely independent of that conditioning? Yes. But I don’t think that Thanissaro Bhikkhu is arguing that; rather he wants us to critically reflect on how we are conditioned by our philosophical ancestors (again, in this case, Romanticism—arguably, not everyone’s ancestors!) and how that might limit our understanding of the Buddhadharma. Whatever the case may be, I think we should be critical ourselves in reading this essay, recognizing Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s particular conditioning as an American, educated at a liberal arts college (Oberlin), and someone of European heritage.

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Reference: Thanissaro Bhikkhu. ”The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism.” Access to Insight, 13 July 2012.

See also: Dhamma Talks & Writings of Thanissaro Bhikkhu 

Lost in Quotation: What do we miss when we don't read the whole sutta? Thanissaro Bhikkhu | Tricycle

fyhdkkha:

But if you look at the entire passage in the Kalama Sutta, you discover that these quotes give only part of the picture. The Buddha’s skepticism toward reliable authorities extends inside as well as out:

So in this case, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, “This contemplative is our teacher.”

Notice the words in italics, the ones that usually get dropped from the quote or sloughed over when they’re included. When the Buddha says that you can’t go by logical deduction, inference, or analogies, he’s saying that you can’t always trust your sense of reason. When he says that you can’t go by agreement through pondering views (i.e., what seems to fit in with what you already believe) or by probability, he’s saying that you can’t always trust your common sense. And, of course, you can’t always trust teachers, scriptures, or traditions. So where can you place your trust? You have to put things to the test in your own thoughts, words, and deeds, to see what actually leads to suffering and what leads to its end.

When you know for yourselves that “these dharmas are unskillful; these dharmas are blameworthy; these dharmas are criticized by the wise; these dharmas, when adopted and carried out, lead to harm and to suffering”—then you should abandon them.

When you know for yourselves that “these dharmas are skillful; these dharmas are blameless; these dharmas are praised by the wise; these dharmas, when adopted and carried out, lead to welfare and to happiness”—then you should enter and remain in them.

The word dharma in these passages means three things in one: teaching, mental quality, and action. Teachings are naturally related to the mind states and actions they inspire, so they should be judged by the results they give when put into action. True dharma is what works in leading to genuine well-being. False dharma is what doesn’t.

…As with any skill, your inner sensitivity and assurance as to who’s truly wise in the skill grows only through your willingness to learn.

…

A person worthy of respect, he says (Anguttara Nikaya 7.64), should have a sense of seven things: the dharma, its meaning, oneself, moderation, the right time and place, social gatherings, and how to judge individual people.

What’s striking about this list is that only the first two qualities deal with verbal knowledge. Having a sense of the dharma means knowing what the Buddha did and didn’t say; having a sense of meaning means knowing how to explain the dharma’s difficult concepts and ideas: the general principles that express its values, and the basic techniques for implementing them. These are things we can pick up from dharma talks and books.

But the Buddha didn’t teach a one-size-fits-all-in-every-situation technique. Even his seemingly abstract principles are meant for particular stages in the training. “Not-self,” for example, is useful in some instances and harmful in others. This is why the Buddha added the last five members of the list: the sensitivities that turn the techniques and principles into genuine skills.

Having a sense of oneself means knowing your strengths and weaknesses in terms of conviction, virtue, learning, generosity, discernment, and quick-wittedness. In other words, you know which qualities are important to focus on, and can assess objectively where you still have more work to do.

Having a sense of enough applies primarily to your use of the requisites of life—food, clothing, shelter, and medicine—but it can also apply to intangibles, such as when you need less desire, effort, concentration, or thinking in your practice, and when you need more.

Having a sense of time means knowing when to listen, when to memorize what you’ve heard, when to ask questions, and when to go off into seclusion and practice on your own. Having a sense of social gatherings means knowing how to speak and behave with people from different backgrounds and classes of society.

Having a sense of social gatherings means knowing how to speak and behave with people from different backgrounds and classes of society.

Having a sense of individuals means knowing how to judge which people are worthy of emulation in their pursuit of the dharma and which ones are not.

Even though we can talk about these last five qualities, we can’t embody them through words. They’re habits, and the only way to pick up good habits is by being around good examples: people who’ve already been trained to embody these qualities in the way they live.

This is why the Buddha—in trying to establish the dharma for future generations—didn’t just leave a body of teachings. He also set up the monastic sangha and organized it to carry on the tradition of all seven of these qualities: his habits as well as his words.

Three teachers on atammayata (non-fashioning)

Buddhadasa Bhikkhu:

Literally, atammayata may be translated as “the state of not being made up by, or made up from, that (thing or condition).” A mind that relies upon things is fabricated or concocted by those things [is a slave to those things]. Human beings instinctually feel and perceive all experience as either positive or negative. This leads to evaluating and judging those experiences, which turns into liking and disliking those experiences, which in turn fosters craving, attachment, and selfishness. Thus arises dukkha (misery, pain, dissatisfaction). The mind that has gone beyond positive and negative cannot be pulled into the conditioned arising (paticca-samuppada) of dukkha. Thus, atammayata in this, its most proper sense, describes the state of the Arahant, the perfected, liberated human being.

Ajahn Sucitto:

To quit suffering, you have to stop searching for the ‘right’ perception. And therefore, in meditation, rather than sustain perceptions even of formlessness and space, it’s wiser to relax the intention to acquire (or to assume one has acquired) anything.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu:

But when discernment is sharp enough to see that even this equanimity is fabricated and conditioned, something that’s done (see MN 137 and 140), any passion for it can be undercut as well. When passion is consistently offered no place to land, there’s no nucleus for a “place” of any sort: no “here,” no “there,” no nucleus for a sense of identity to be constructed around anything anywhere at all. This explains why the state of non-fashioning is expressed in terms devoid of place: “When there’s no you in that, there’s no you there. When there’s no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two.”

See also: Atammayata - Pali Word of the Day

  • 50 Plays
  • Wide-open AwarenessThanissaro Bhikkhu
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Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff), “Wide-open Awareness” (16:46)

And this is not just a mental openness; it’s a bodily openness, too. This is why we work with the breath, so that this openness seeps down into the body as well. All those subconscious roots that can give rise to these walls in the mind get saturated with the breath, saturated with knowledge, saturated with awareness.

The conscious area of the mind gets larger and larger; the unconscious activities get pushed off into smaller and smaller and smaller corners all the time, so that it’s harder and harder for them to take over.

So when we’re meditating, it’s not as if we’re clamping down and shutting
things down. We are simply keeping tabs on this one level of awareness, this one level of energy here in the body, and we allow everything on this level to connect. Once it’s connected, there are no areas where you can hide from yourself.

Now, some people find that scary . They’re used to being in denial. But when you learn how to bring some compassion to the whole process of opening up to yourself, when you learn how to bring some understanding and maturity and equanimity to the process, you find that you’re much better off working through these things than you were when you tried to keep them hidden. You’ve now got the tools where you can work through them. You don’t have to be overpowered by these things. You’re more and more in control.

[…]

[We] get in touch with the level of breath energy that’s already there in the body but gets squeezed off when we don’t want it to distract us from our thought worlds. We’re now turning our priorities around, dropping the thought worlds and getting more and more interested in this energy field here in the body. Let it open up. When you let yourself open up to it, it opens up as well.

And you find that it gives you a grounding, an undertone that permeates
everything in your awareness, saturates the whole body with awareness, so that whatever is going to come up in the mind comes up in an open field of awareness, rather than springing at you out of the dark.

When you learn to be open with yourself in this way, you find that there’ s
nothing really threatening in there because you know where it all comes from.

You’ve seen it arise; you see how it passes away. And you realize that no matter what, your range of awareness is larger than it is. Once you get used to this broadened field of awareness, you don’t want to let it narrow down ever again.

You realize that as soon as anger comes, things narrow down. When greed comes, when lust comes, when fear comes, everything gets narrowed down. It’s like having lived in a large house and suddenly being squeezed in to a tiny, tiny cell.

And then you realize you don’t have to squeeze yourself in there. It was your choice. When you realize that you’ve got the choice, you want to stay in the broadened awareness all the time.

Source: dhammatalks.org

[T]he best way to repay a teacher is to take the Dhamma to heart and to practice it in a way that fulfills his or her compassionate purpose in teaching it.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu in No Strings Attached: The Buddha’s Culture of Generosity

The article criticizes teachings for pay, which is particularly relevant to how Buddhism is manifesting in the West. For more on dana or generosity, see here. What do you think?

(Thank you Laura!)