Buddhism for Non-Buddhists

Copyright © 2005 by Jim Mahood. All rights reserved.

Like many of the world’s great religions, Buddhism is poorly understood in the United States. If you want to read just one book about Buddhism for a basic understanding, then What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula is a good choice. It’s widely regarded as “the standard work.”

For more than a century, non-Buddhist Westerners have been drawn to Buddhism’s meditation technology for ending human suffering. The word technology is deliberately chosen because the advances made in Eastern religions are broadly comparable to the advances made in Western science and engineering.

For probably thousands of years, Asians have focused their intellectual and creative energies inside themselves, developing techniques appropriate to the exploration and development of mental and spiritual realms. By contrast, Westerners have focused their intellectual and creative energies outside themselves, developing technologies appropriate to the exploration and development of the material world. Asian discoveries in mental and spiritual worlds are as detailed and sophisticated as Western discoveries in science and engineering.

Eastern and Western cultures can therefore be seen as complementary--as completing each other--for neither seems complete without the other. Asians have suffered from ignorance of discoveries in Western science and engineering just as Westerners have suffered from ignorance of Asian discoveries in mental and spiritual realms. As a result, Asians are flocking to Western colleges and universities to study science and engineering, and countless Westerners are studying Asian religions and attempting to learn and practice Eastern meditation and yoga technologies.

What the Buddha Taught provides a useful introduction to Buddhist meditation technologies as they have evolved within Buddhism since Buddha’s day more than 2,500 years ago. Anyone may try meditation regardless of religious affiliation. It is possible to meditate and to study Buddhism for an entire lifetime without ever “becoming” a Buddhist and without ever relinquishing a non-Buddhist religious orientation or affiliation.

If we meditate, we may come to see, really see, that personal suffering results from the human tendency to attach to fixed ideas about people and situations despite the fact that the nature of people and situations is constantly to change. Through meditation we can trace suffering back to this contradiction in such realms as drugs, politics, relationships, sex, and even religion.

Does that realization turn meditators into uncaring nihilists who believe in nothing and do nothing in the world? The answer is NO! Meditation is directed toward ending attachment and clinging to people, ideas, and opinions. Consider the misery and violence that attachment and clinging to religious and political ideas have inflicted upon the world! As enslaving attachments are discarded through meditation, suffering diminishes.

Buddhism says we can continue to work diligently to see our ideas and beliefs realized in the world, but through meditation we can learn to do so without attachment and suffering. Some meditators find it extremely difficult to distinguish between holding an idea and clinging to one, but meditation eventually clears this confusion. Even our death grip on life itself may be understood, transcended, and redefined in a way that both ends our fear of death and reinvigorates our zest for life in the present moment.

Meditation is an extremely powerful tool, and it can deeply affect some practitioners in profound and unpredictable ways. So be warned: Anyone not mentally healthy and stable should not attempt it. Meditation should follow or accompany psychotherapy, not precede it, and beginners should be guided by more experienced practitioners.

Where is God in all this? Buddha told his followers not to waste time worrying about whether God exists. Buddhism is not a God-oriented or God-seeking religion and that’s why some folks consider Buddhism more of a psychotherapy than a religion--a technology for the inner development and self-actualization of mentally healthy individuals.

Originally published by Grove Press in 1959 and revised in 1972, What the Buddha Taught is still in print. You can probably borrow a copy from your local library or purchase one from your favorite online or brick-and-mortar bookstore.