I wish I could adequately express the exhilaration I felt whilst reading this path-clearing book, or perhaps more accurately, path-returning book. Brazier is concerned about the current movement towards a secularized Buddhism, evident not only in the popularization of various mindfulness practices, but also in the work of scholars who seem to want to purge the Pali Canon of all its transcendent aspects, such as karma and rebirth. The danger is that Buddhism could become just another form of psychotherapy, a stress-management technique, or an intellectually deft way to minimize our suffering and disregard, or be tortured by the suffering of others.
Brazier points to the aridity of this emerging view in Western Buddhism and makes a compelling case for what is unmet by it: our longing for devotion. Our need to devote ourselves to something other than ourselves is profoundly addressed in the Pali Canon which makes no bones about how limited our everyday view of ourselves and the world is. As Brazier emphasizes, the Buddha spoke of many worlds, countless aeons, miracles and many things unseen; he obviously had a very big view of what is going on.
However, scientism has gradually eroded any big religious view, and now we are left with mindfulness and meditation as the booby prizes, and a Buddhism reduced to techniques to cope with busy lives. The casualties of this watering-down are the thorough-going ethical discipline and the breathtaking cosmic expansiveness of Buddhism.
But, as Brazier suggests, our deep need to know who and what we really are can't be forever satisfied by the substitute states of relaxation or spiritual peak experiences in meditation, as helpful as these might be during the earlier stages of our healing process. Eventually we will have to come to meet that which is greater than ourselves and ask for help, in all humility. If not, we will be humbled some more, or put more gently, gradually softened up until we are open enough to turn to the heavens and know our blessed part thereof.
It is then that the Buddha's promise of liberation becomes a reality; when we are willing to entertain the possibility that our lives are not about us, but about everybody, and nobody; and the transcendent perspective begins to come into view. And it is this view that Brazier hopes to bring alive again, and with it, our hope and our faith. Regrettably, faith has become a taboo word in modern Buddhist teachings which prefer the Buddha's dictum "Be a lamp unto yourself." Nothing wrong with that, if it gets you to ask some hard questions in order to plumb the truth of things, but very bad if it gets you to believe that you are ultimately the only judge of the truth of things.
Brazier uses the example of Dogen speaking of "flowers appearing in the sky" to highlight how our supposedly common-sense view of the world is deeply flawed, since it simply cannot allow for something to come out of nothing, which may be true for scientism, but is not so from the transcendent viewpoint, where anything can happen, and then some more. The transcendent knows nothing of humans' physical laws, and will not obey our pathetically limited understandings and caveats. It has its own ways, and human beings are one of its ways, but it also includes goddesses, spirit beings, time warps and creations beyond all imagination. "Flowers appearing in the sky" is small fry; just go out and look at the stars afresh tonight.
It is this perspective which Brazier is bringing back to Buddhism and for this I am profoundly grateful; it is high time. The chapter in which he describes a deeper understanding of mindfulness is alone worth the price of the book. This chapter, in particular, makes it clear how sadly bereft Buddhism has become of its rich transcendent heritage, and it helps to restore the practice of mindfulness to its bigger place again.
If you have been meditating for decades and you're wondering why you're not enlightened yet, this book might begin to help you to understand why, and to encourage you - as it has me - to trust that longing in your heart to truly be at one with all that is and to get to know your real self, play amongst the gods, and create miracles - as crazy as that sounds to our over-sophisticated minds.
Added some months later:
It saddens me that this very worthy book has bombed. A sign of the times, perhaps. Looks like we are going to take the long way round, folks! ;-)
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Top reviews from other countries
Sbo
Une bonne remise en question de la vision occidentale dominante du bouddhisme, mais avec quelques excès
Reviewed in France on August 5, 2015