In the land of self-imposed ignorance
Under the bewitching power of ignorance we always tend to look here rather than there or the same, focus on the wrong things. Our ignorance is often lead by our habits: habits we believe to be authoritative when in fact they are assumptions which often have no real basis.
We don't want to admit it, but most of us are terribly ignorant about almost everything. The fact is, we cannot study everything so as to become consummate experts. We cannot be all at once an expert carpenter, automobile mechanic, physician, economist, and educator. Often, we have to rely on experts. But then how do we know our experts are all that reliable? We really don't. We just assume they are experts and leave it at that.
In all of this, what we don't want to recognize is our own laziness when it comes to getting ourselves out of the morass of our self-imposed ignorance. We would rather argue fallaciously the rest of our lives, defending our turf of ignorance, than change our nescient opinions. It is almost as if we are saying, "I wish not to be informed of the facts."
On the subject of modern Buddhism, the average Buddhist who attends their Dharma or Zen center has full confidence and faith in their teachers. But are their teachers really experts? What do they actually know about the Pali canon or the Mahayana canon? Are their teachings even in line with the canon? How close to the original discourses of the Buddha, for example, are the teachings of Stephen Batchelor who wrote the book, Buddhism Without Beliefs? Why should his interpretation of Buddhism be believed which is laden with modern prejudices even going so far as to suggest that Buddhism is a form of agnosticism?
When Bernie Glassman who is a Zen master and founder of Zen Peacemakers, writes in The Huffington Post (February 17, 2011 10:10 p.m.) that the emptiness of the five skandhasin the Heart Sutrameans emptiness as "the oneness of life, which means life! as it i s, without any distinctions," how do we know he is correct in saying this? Commentarial literature specific to this Sutra says otherwise. According to Vimalamitra emptiness of the five skandhas points in the direction of an illusory like the emptiness in the example of a dream or the moon in the water (cp. ed. Lancaster, Prajnaparamita and Related Systems, p. 142). The Buddha never regards the skandhas as otherwise than something to be rejected. They are suffering; they are Mara, the killer, etc. Their emptiness is not the oneness of life but, instead, the hollowness and emptiness of illusion, itself.
I find one of the most remarkable things about the 20th and 21st century is how people are kept ignorant while believing, at the same time, they are really gaining knowledge. In Buddhism this phenomenon is quite astonishing given the fact that much of the Buddhist canon is accessible to anyone. The problem is, the Buddhist public prefers to be kept in the darkignorance is bliss, in other words.
