What Makes You Not A Buddhist

The following is an extract from Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche's book "What Makes You Not A Buddhist"

(i might post some in days to come from other wonderful Tibetan teachers like Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, and HH Karmapa Ogyen Trinle Dorje
- despite 4 or 5 years in the Zen tradition which is my home, i still find my roots in the Tibetan tradition very nourishing. After all there are innumerable dharma gates...How wonderful!)

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CAUSES AND CONDITIONS: THE EGG IS COOKED AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

When Siddhartha spoke of "all assembled things," he was referring to more than just obvious perceptible phenomena such as DNA, your dog, the Eiffel Tower, eggs, and sperm. Mind, time, memory, and God are also assembled. And each assembled component in turn depends on several layers of assembly. Similarly, when he taught impermanence, he went beyond conventional thinking about "the end," such as the notion that death happens once and then it's over. Death is continuous from the moment of birth, from the moment of creation. Each change is a form of death, and therefore each birth contains the death of something else. Consider cooking a hen's egg. Without constant change, the cooking of an egg cannot occur. The cooked-egg result requires some fundamental causes and conditions. Obviously you need an egg, a pot of water, and some sort of heating element. And then there are some not-so-essential causes and conditions, such as a kitchen, lights, an egg timer, a hand to put the egg into the pot. Another important condition is absence of interruption, such as a power outage or a goat walking in and overturning the pot. Furthermore, each condition-the hen, for example-requires another set of causes and conditions. It needs another hen to lay an egg so that it can be born, a safe place for this to happen, and food to help it grow. The chicken feed has to be grown somewhere and must make its way into the chicken. We can keep breaking down the indispensable and dispensable requirements all the way to the subatomic level, with an ever-increasing number of forms, shapes, functions, and labels.

When all the innumerable causes and conditions come together, and there is no obstacle or interruption, the result is inevitable. Many misunderstand this to be fate or luck, but we still do have the power to have an effect on conditions, at least in the beginning. But at a certain point, even if we pray that the egg won't cook, it will be cooked.

Like the egg, all phenomena are the product of myriad components, and therefore they are variable. Nearly all of these myriad components are beyond our control, and for that reason they defy our expectations. The least-promising presidential candidate might win the election and then lead the country to contentment and prosperity The candidate you campaign for might win and then lea4 the country to economic and social ruin, making your life miserable. You may think liberal, left-wing politics are enlightened politics, but they may actually be the cause of fascism and skinheads by being complacent or even promoting tolerance of the intolerant. Or by protecting the individual rights of those whose sole purpose is to destroy other people's individual rights. The same unpredictability applies to all forms, feelings, perceptions, traditions, love, trust, mistrust, skepticism-even the relationships between spiritual masters and disciples, and between men and their gods.

All of these phenomena are impermanent. Take skepticism, for example. There was once a Canadian man who was the very embodiment of a skeptic. He enjoyed attending Buddhist teachings so that he could argue with the teachers. He was actually quite well versed in Buddhist philosophy, so his arguments were strong. He relished the opportunity to quote the Buddhist teaching that the Buddha's words must be analyzed and not taken for granted. A few years later, and he is now the devoted follower of a famous psychic channeler. The ultimate skeptic sits before his singing guru with tears running like rivers from his eyes, devoted to an entity who has not a scrap of logic to offer. Faith or devotion has a general connotation of being unwavering, but like skepticism and like all compounded phenomena, is impermanent.

Whether you pride yourself on your religion or on not belonging to any religion, faith plays an important role in your existence. Even "not believing" requires faith-total, blind faith in your own logic or reason based on your ever-changing feelings. So it is no surprise when what used to seem so convincing no longer persuades us. The illogical nature of faith is not subtle at all; in fact it is among the most assembled and interdependent of phenomena. Faith can be triggered by the right look at the right time in the right place. Your faith may depend on superficial compatibility. Let's say that you are a misogynist and you meet a person who is preaching hatred against women. You will find that person powerful, you will agree with him, and you will have some faith in him. Something as inconsequential as a shared love of anchovies might add to your devotion. Or perhaps a person or institution has the ability to lessen your fear of the unknown. Other factors such as the family, country, or society you are born into are all part of the assembly of elements that come together as what we call faith.

Citizens of many Buddhist-ruled countries, such as Bhutan, Korea, Japan, and Thailand, are blindly committed to the Buddhist doctrine. On the other hand, many young people in those countries become disillusioned with Buddhism because there is not enough information and too many distractions for the phenomena of faith to stick, and they end up following another faith, or following their own reason.