A New Buddhist Path: Enlightenment, Evolution, and Ethics in the Modern World

by David R. Loy

Engage with a new vision of Buddhism and the modern world with the bestselling author of Money Sex War Notes for a Buddhist Revolution .

David R. Loy addresses head-on the most pressing issues of Buddhist philosophy in our time. What is the meaning of enlightenment--is it an escape from the world, or is it a form of psychological healing? How can one reconcile modern scientific theory with ancient religious teachings? What is our role in the universe?
Loy shows us that neither Buddhism nor secular society by itself is sufficient to answer these questions. Instead, he investigates the unexpected intersections of the two. Through this exchange, he uncovers a new Buddhist way, one that is faithful to the important traditions of Buddhism but compatible with modernity. This way, we can see the world as it is truly is, realize our indivisibility from it, and learn that the world's problems are our problems. This is a new path for a new world.

Genres: Buddhism, Religion, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Spirituality, Zen

176 pages, Paperback

First published February 3, 2015

About the author

David Robert Loy is an American author and authorized teacher in the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Japanese Zen Buddhism.

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book around the Christmas holidays and even though it’s about Buddhism, really found that it kept me in perspective at a time when we tend to get materialistic. I loved the concept of the cosmic creativity and being the eyes the universe created to look at itself. Don’t be threatened by the content, it’s a pretty easy read!

[Natú · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book did a lot that I was looking for in Ecodharma, and in fact, improves the latter in hindsight. For those interested in reading both, I would certainly recommend reading this first. I have not read Money, Sex, War, Karma yet, so I can't speak towards that one yet, but I'm excited to read it.

A New Buddhist Path's purpose, if I had to nail one down, is to establish a foundation within Buddhism itself to integrate Buddhist practice with social activism grounded in the need to replace the fundamentally exploitative and alienating present socioeconomic status quo with a more equitable and democratic order. I felt that this kind of cohesive integration is something that has been lacking in the Engaged Buddhism movement which, while not remaining silent on apparent contradictions between such change on the one hand and the dharma and Buddhism's historical role—being at times a religion of radical equitability within profoundly unequal societies, and at others an integrated part of hegemonic regimes—on the other, Loy's project seems novel to me in how it strives to find an intellectual coherence within Buddhism itself, rather than trying to (occasionally clumsily) join two disparate social traditions.

In the first part, Loy problematizes a key point of contention between the various Buddhist traditions, namely, the nature of nirvana as transcendence from one realm and admission into another, or as a fundamental shift in one's understanding of and integration into the universe:

His apparent reticence leaves us with the important issue of whether nirvana involves attaining some other dimension of reality that transcends this world, or whether it describes an experience that is immanent in this world—a state of being that might be understood more psychologically, as (for example) the end of greed, ill will, and delusion in our lives right now. Surely nirvana must be one or the other?

The issue is a relevant one, because, as Loy points out, one understanding emphasizes a path of individual liberation from a reality of suffering and transcendence into some other realm separate from this one, while the other emphasizes the non-duality between the self and the rest of the universe, i.e. the realization of the lack of any discreet self or soul, and the reality that the self is merely the construct of perception resulting from the confluence of an infinity of dialectical processes of change. This latter understanding, far from isolating the self from the "worldly realm" and the people in it, naturally brings one closer to the rest of the universe, human or otherwise, through a sense of responsibility to a greater dharmakaya:

Another aspect of cosmological dualism for these traditions is that my individual salvation or personal liberation is independent of yours. As Loyal Rue implies, aspiring to attain a nirvana that transcends this world of samsara may divert us from the ecological and social challenges that confront us right here. Why worry about what’s happening now if our ultimate destiny is elsewhere? But if our fundamental dukkha is due to the delusion of a self that feels separate from the rest of the world, then enlightenment should not be understood as that self attaining some other reality. As we will see, another way to understand awakening is that it involves what Dogen describes as “forgetting” oneself—letting go of the sense of self—and realizing one’s nonduality with the world. This realization naturally galvanizes a sense of responsibility for the world, because then the well-being of “others” can no longer be detached from one’s own.

The opposite end of this problematic of transcendence/returning-into, is the very real risk of the (currently in progress) weaponization of Buddhist or other mindfulness practices to actually reinforce the status quo:

While a stripped-down, secularized approach—sometimes disparaged as “McMindfulness”—often makes it more palatable to the business world, decontextualizing mindfulness from its original liberative and transformative purpose, including its foundation in social ethics, can lose sight of why it is so important. Rather than mindfulness as a means to awaken individuals and organizations from the “three poisons” that the Buddha identified—the unwholesome roots of greed, ill will, and delusion—it is sometimes refashioned into a technique that can indirectly reinforce those roots. Most scientific and popular accounts circulating in the media portray mindfulness in terms of stress reduction and attention-enhancement, yet mindfulness, as understood and practiced within the Buddhist tradition, is not merely an ethically neutral practice for reducing stress and improving concentration. Rather, it is a distinct quality of attention that depends upon many other factors: the nature of one’s thoughts, speech, and actions; one’s way of making a living; and one’s efforts to avoid unwholesome and unskillful behaviors, while developing those that are conducive to wise action, social harmony, and compassion. For Buddhism the practice of mindfulness is an integral part of the ultimate goal, which involves seeing through the delusion of a separate self and learning to live in a way that is consistent with such a realization...In the business world, mindfulness meditation is often marketed as a method for personal self-fulfillment, a reprieve from the ordeals of corporate life. Although such an individualistic and consumer orientation to the practice may be effective for self-preservation and self-advancement, it is essentially impotent for mitigating the causes of collective and organizational dukkha. After a mindfulness program, individual employees in a company may feel that their stress, unhappiness, and doubts are entirely self-made. Such training promotes a tacit acceptance of the status quo and becomes an instrumental tool for keeping attention focused on institutional goals. When mindfulness practice is compartmentalized in this way, however, there is a disconnection between one’s own personal transformation and the kind of organizational restructuring that might address the causes and conditions of suffering in the broader environment. Such a colonization of mindfulness reorients the practice to the needs of the company, rather than encouraging a critical reflection on the causes of our collective suffering, or social dukkha...Cloaked in an aura of care and humanity, mindfulness can be refashioned into a safety valve, as a way to let off steam—a technique for coping with the anxieties and tensions of corporate life.

In short, Loy argues for an understanding in which we neither transcend this reality into another, nor do we use mindfulness practice as a way to cope with the status quo. Rather, mindfulness practice is a way of understanding non-duality precisely in order to address socially encoded causes of suffering.

In the second part, Loy focuses on something he brings up in Ecodharma but does it in a more satisfying way; namely, the alienation caused by the shift from a cosmology of a coherent "mechanistic" universe—mechanistic because of a supposed intelligent design and/or a fundamental order and role of all things—to one in which evolution pulled the rug out from under people (at least in the Abrahamic world) and left people purposeless, unintegrated into the whole in a meaningful way. Loy's point is that a re-evaluation is necessary, and the metaphor he uses is mechanism vs. organism:

Our whole scientific concept of nature as a mechanism was derived from a Cartesian scheme that was logically complete because it included God as inventor. But to maintain that nature is mechanism after repudiating God and purpose constitutes a severe logical flaw at the heart of Western science. Think of a machine, any machine. . . What makes it a machine? In analyzing an organism into its component parts, and then trying to explain its functioning as if it were a machine, we overlook the fact that our conception of a machine presupposes a machine-maker: an intelligence and intentionality distinct from the machine it designs and constructs. That made sense as long as God was understood to have created the universe according to his own plan and purposes. Without God, however, the mechanistic model of explanation breaks down. Any machine that constantly reorganizes itself, creating more complex structures as evolving parts of itself, is not a machine. It is better understood as an organism.

The relevance of this metaphor is that it would lead us to an understanding of the cosmos as a self-organizing organism, with humans as a way the universe knows itself:

A self-organizing cosmos would shed light on some age-old Buddhist questions. If enlightenment involves realizing that there is no self, who (or what) becomes enlightened? For that matter, if (as Buddhist teachings claim) there has never been a self, then who is it that wants to become enlightened? Can my subjective desire to awaken be understood in a more nondual way as the urge of the universe itself to become self-aware, in me and as me?...Awakening, then, involves realizing that “I” am not inside my body, looking out through my eyes at a world that is separate from me. Rather, “I” am what the whole universe is doing, right here and now.

This section honestly felt a little woo-woo to me, and chopping up the section for a few blockquotes honestly does it a disservice by making it seem more so; it has plenty of compelling points. However, I found it valuable in Loy's acknowledgment of how the void in human meaning left by scientific advances in our understanding of the functioning of the universe has allowed for the post-facto justification of domination of humans by other humans and "nature" by humans through the appropriation of Darwinism.

The final section attempts to bring these arguments together:

[T]he highest ideal of the Western tradition has been the concern to restructure our societies so that they become more socially just. The most important goal for Buddhism is to awaken and (to use the Zen phrase) realize one’s true nature, which puts an end to dukkha—especially that associated with the delusion of a separate self. Today it has become more obvious that we need both of these aspirations, not just because these ideals complement each other, but because each project needs the other.

Loy makes the argument that traditional emphasis in the Buddhist tradition on personal transcendence and liberation has failed to address social systems which codify the three poisons of greed, ill will, and delusion, resulting in inevitable social dukkha (another interesting characteristic of Loy's work which integrates the dharma into social investigation), while activist and revolutionary movements have often failed to address the personal causes of dukkha which can sabotage even the highest points in attempts at equitable social organization. He appeals to the bodhisattva ideal of personal transformation for the benefit of all sentient beings through the conscious deconstruction of the delusion of the self and its reconstruction in the form of a non-dualistic understanding of the universe, in order to fight for social change in this reality, because a) this reality is the reality, so we should not ignore it expecting transcendence into another, better reality, and b) because non-duality implies that combatting the suffering of others, both personal and social, requires equal urgency to combatting our own, and that this process is not extraneous to a broader universal project, but an inherent part of it.

I will leave out the interesting points Loy makes about karma and rebirth in the conclusion, both because they are predictable enough (as he points out) if we have thought about the arguments made elsewhere in the book, and because they are brief and worth reading by oneself. I will leave off with a lengthy quote that sums up Loy's hope, that Buddhist practice can be one (not the) force in achieving a better world, without forgetting the historic pitfalls of organized religion, misplaced efforts, or failures to understand the difference between causes and symptoms of suffering. I very much enjoyed and got a lot out of this book, and am happy Loy wrote it.

Historically, churches and churchgoers have played an important part in many Western reform movements—for example, in antislavery and civil rights campaigns. Nevertheless, much of the impetus in the West for deep structural change originates from socialism and other leftist movements, which traditionally have been suspicious of religion. Marx viewed religion as “the opiate of the people” because religious institutions have often been complicit with political oppression, using their doctrines to rationalize the authority of exploitative rulers and diverting believers’ attention from their present condition to “the life to come.” As we have noticed, this historical critique applies to some Buddhist institutions as well, yet a main concern of this book has been to demonstrate that at its best Buddhism offers an alternative approach: the path is really about personal transformation, about deconstructing and reconstructing the sense of self, not to qualify for a blissful afterlife but to live in a different way here and now...Without denigrating in any way the importance of such practice, we also need to remember Slavoj Zizek’s criticism that Buddhism can be practiced in ways that reinforce the current social order. Is Western Buddhism being commodified and co-opted into a self-help stress-reduction program that adapts to institutionalized dukkha, leaving practitioners atomized and powerless? Or is modern Buddhism opening up new perspectives and possibilities that challenge us to transform ourselves and our societies, so that they become more socially just and ecologically sustainable? Among those who recognize the importance of social engagement, there is another distinction to be made. My sense is that most Buddhists understand social engagement as serving the underserved, as directly responding to those who need help, such as homeless people, those who are terminally ill, or those incarcerated in prisons. This seems consistent with Buddhist emphasis on letting go of abstractions in favor of immediate experience: attending to the needs of that suffering person on the sidewalk, right here and now, rather than becoming involved in a more abstract and sometimes confrontational movement for social change. Again, without disparaging in any way the importance of helping those who urgently need it, we must also ask: if we share the basic concern of the Buddha to end suffering, don’t we also need to understand and address its social causes? As we pull drowning people out of the river, shouldn’t we consider why there are an increasing number of people floundering in the water? Who or what is pushing them in upstream? Today it’s not enough to help that homeless person in front of us. We also need to consider why, in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in human history, the number of poor people is growing so quickly.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that I have been anticipating for several years. I have been longing for a new perspective on Buddhism and my own personal path, I have been wanting a clear examination of Western Buddhism and its many schools, free from the religious aspects of Asian Buddhism. This effort by David Loy, is a hard look at the evolution of Buddhism since it came to western shores. Loy is helping to write a new story for how we are to interpret Buddhism in the Postmodern era. This book has been a welcome elucidation of what has always seemed a mystical, closely-held secret on what actually constitutes Enlightenment. I am grateful for a larger, wider, more comprehensive picture of what we can expect of Buddhism in the age of commercialization of meditation, mindfulness and a watered down Buddhism. Is there hope for the Dharma in the West where most everything gets trivialized in a culture of cafeteria religion and New Age nonsense? I have experienced a revitalization of my meditation practice and see a inspiring progression and evolving direction to the Buddhist Path.

[Avery Marz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite religious differences, I recommend this to everyone who is seeking an understanding of the meaning of it all: the economic and ecological challenges we are facing, the suffering we all feel and the pivotal time period, that is now. Loy highlights what Buddhism can bring to a modern society, rooted in materialism, sinking from anxiety and searching for an explanation. He acknowledges that al religions need a contemporary perspective, while society has to accept the need for individuals to change their motivations.

Loy also used the contributions of other psychologists and writers. A nice addition to the pace of the story- Loy realizes others may summarize his thoughts better than himself.

“Our practice is not to clear up the mystery. It is to make the mystery clear.”

-Robert Aitken.

[IAO131 · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting tour of Buddhism-meets-Modernity. The first part focuses on enlightenment and nonduality in a modern-scientific. Part two discusses evolution as our current cultural "myth" or story and how Buddhism's ideas of emptiness/impermanence factor in. Part three argues for a dual approach to awakening, both personal (achieving enlightenment/emptiness) and socio-political (fighting for social justice in society at large).

[Viki Sonntag · Rating 5 out of 5]

What might collective awakening look like? David gives meaning to the mystery. A story for our times.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A succinct, level-headed idea of what a globalized, modern Buddhism could look like & the role it could play in making the world suffer less

[Sonstepaul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't give this anything less than a perfect score because of how I responded to it every day while reading it. Anyone who has been interested by secular Buddhist practice or has encountered similar theses in Batchelor's Buddhism Without Beliefs will find this book enriching.

For myself, what this did was fill in the cracks. How to approach the loss of one's self in a real and tangible way. How to see that non-self as interconnected to a world with climate change, huge disparity between rich and poor, and existential questions that have continued to haunt us for, well, existence.

A very compelling perspective on Buddhism in the present, and arguably the only present there is.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

promises to make Asiatic Buddhism palatable to western spiritual seekers. index and bibliography worthy. one cannot help but wonder though, maybe westerners should be more Asiatic and less of a materialistic consumer.

[Ellen Keener · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't stop reading. Full of wisdom and insights accessible . The best I've read on how to integrate western ideals with Buddhism.

[Craig Bergland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tedious, repetitive, and a continual rehashing of largely old material. A huge disappointment.

[Chad Kohalyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review: https://chadkohalyk.com/2017/05/31/ac...