Buddhism? No, thanks!

The Buddha never was a Buddhist. That’s the way it is, surprising as it may sound. Over the forty-five years of his teaching there were no images or statues of the Buddha, no great temples, rituals, or ceremonies, nor almost any of the highly picturesque paraphernalia people associate with Buddhism nowadays. All there was, instead, was a true tribe of people bonded by camaraderie and solidarity under his guidance and committed against many odds to a common search for the same truth he claimed to have found. It is quite possible that even in the master’s lifetime the original core of disciples expanded so much that its initial spirit was diluted and weakened; at any rate, shortly after the master’s death, this double-edged sword appeared as a compensatory mechanism: Buddhism. It is not the only or even the first time in history when, perceiving they have stranded from the essence of things, men generate idols to worship so as to mitigate the painful or even guilty conscience of their loss. But that is no good, as ancient wisdom warns us: “The Dao (Tao) gives rise to all forms, yet it has no form of its own. If you attempt to fix a picture of it in your mind, you will lose it. This is like pinning a butterfly: the husk is captured, but the flying is lost. Why not be content with simply experiencing it?”

Buddha called his teachings “the Dharma”. What exactly is that? Dharma is a Sanskrit word meaning “law” or “way”. It stems from the Indo-European root *dher- (related to the Latin firmus), whose basic sense is “to support” or “to hold”; hence the noun dharma, meaning “that which keeps everything as it is”, or “that which makes it all the way it is”; in plain English, the truth of things. In ancient India, from that basic sense of “principle or law regulating the universe” a secondary meaning was derived of individual conduct in accordance with this principle. Thus, the Dharma represented each individual’s obligation, according to the Hindu caste system, with regard to social mores and civil and religious law: one modelled his/her personal life following the pattern of the universal law expounded in the ancient sacred texts of the Vedas as interpreted by the priests. Almost by osmosis, that same distinction was passed on to early Indian Buddhism: the Dharma was thus not only the teachings of the Buddha but also the duty to adopt the conduct advocated by him as a path to awakening.

But what is the problem if we understand it that way? That the Dharma becomes a closed and finished personal product, like the work of a dead artist which can be possessed and administered as if it was private property –the very attitude the Buddha objected to in the Brahmins who kept the Vedas in their charge. The truth of Dharma is not the exclusive asset of any one person or group. The Buddha himself understood his discovery as part of a collective enterprise: “I saw the ancient path, the ancient road traveled by the Perfectly Enlightened Ones of the past. Like a path overgrown by vegetation and long lost is what I found again”. After his awakening, he spoke and debated on several occasions with other masters who expounded different ideas from his own; often he would ask them to explain their dharmas first, only to show them that his was superior –not because it was a truth revealed by a god, but because it was the most effective and straightforward method to experience the truth of the human predicament firsthand. In that sense, the Dharma belongs to all humanity, free of anyone’s ownership; it has much more to do with truth as understood by science –something empirical, subject to debate and confirmation, and pertinent to all, regardless of beliefs– than with any religious dogma held by tradition, no matter how venerable it may seem.

Why is it preferable to use that odd word, “Dharma”, instead of “Buddhism”? Because the truth neither admits nor requires any “-isms”; it is what it is. The Buddha said he taught the Dharma and we hold that the Dharma represents the truth of the natural law governing all beings; it has no need to seek out converts or to pit itself against other “-isms”. If we insist on using the term “Buddhism” –which, of course, is most practical if we want to avoid long-winded explanations– we should be fully aware of the paradoxes it entails: for example, that Buddhism predates the Buddha, and that the innumerable natural beings peopling our planet who live and die according to natural law are also Buddhists. In that case, any snail or elephant, any lichen or cypress is as Buddhist –or more, indeed– as the thousands of people who have embraced the formalities of the Buddhist path without really understanding what it is about or where it leads.

So, let others visit the great temples decorated with Buddhist statues, dress up in colored robes, and recite litanies mechanically. If you are able to grasp the mystery of a butterfly on the wing, you are closer to the Dharma than all of them together.