Despite all the controversy around it ,I like the term “fake news”. However,there is not only political fake news.There is also medical and spiritual fake news as well.This article addresses the latter type.We may well address the other types and many more in future articles.

Since Buddhism, especially the Mindfulness type, has become the lingua franca of  “progressive” spiritual seekers -many of whom refuse to entertain the notion of a Creator-I think it is especially important to underline the mythology that accompanies it-what we are referring to here as “bubbameises’-the tales of grandmothers- in our title.

Now,the first myth promulgated by the Buddhists in the last century was that Buddhism is not a religion.One of the primary culprits in this marketing scheme was the Dalai Lama himself. The Buddhists being”clever ones’ no doubt,understand that much of the West has turned against its religious authorities and institutions and therefore are adverse to any notion of religion.There is an interesting precedent for this kind of salesmanship in the history of religion and that is the approach of Paul of Tarsus.He understood that the Romans and Greeks all around them would never accept Mosaic law ,which was the religion being practiced by Jesus and his apostles.So he declared that it was enough to accept Jesus Christ as saviour and thereby threw overboard the entire Judaic legal tradition.I will allow the reader to draw the appropriate conclusions as to what that might mean for Christianity and its relationship to the tradition of Judaism from which it sprang.

So the Dalai Lama and many other Buddhists tell us that Buddhism is not a religion and the progressive liberals, liking the sound of this atheistic statement, swallow it “hook,line and sinker’. But is it true?!

Even without a degree in theology or Comparative Religion it is easy to understand that religion is not only a belief in God.Religion has institutions,beliefs,a hierarchy, a set of practices,moral teachings,people who self-identify as Buddhists. etc.,etc.So Buddhism,in fact,has ALL the characteristics of a religion-its particular theology aside.Even at the level of concepts there are several that come very close to the idea of God.Enlightenment itself-‘nibbana’ as the Buddhists call it can be translated as God-consciousness as can Boddhicitta(Buddha-Consciousness).So they do frequently refer to an Ultimate Reality but do not like calling it God. With a little reflection, there should be little doubt in peoples’ minds that Buddhism is a religion by any sensible definition of the term and has always been considered as such.

The second mythology is that Buddhists are universally gentle people who do not harm anyone.I think the current situation in Burma and the treatment of the Rohingya Muslims should disabuse anyone of that notion quickly.It always seemed to me impossible that one group of people,religious or otherwise,could remain consistently non-violent.It doesn’t correspond to any historical evidence about humanity anywhere.In fact,the violence and murders perpetrated in the Sri Lankan civil war were mostly done by the Singhalese who are also uniformly Buddhists.But somehow that passed under the radar and the Tamil tigers got most of the blame.Another good marketing job!

This being said,my real purpose and the trigger that provoked this article was a conference I attended this week given by a monk in the Kadampa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism entitled “Meditation and Anxiety”. The ‘hal’ (spiritual state) in the conference room was pleasant and peaceful.The people involved appeared sincere and had a certain luminosity about them.And I generally enjoyed the presentation.The only thing I felt called upon  to pursue with the presenters was the translation of the word ‘mind’ in English to ‘esprit’ in French =-a translation I thought somehow inadequate.So I talked about it with one of the organizers-an intelligent fellow with a good command of both languages.The discussion was civil but not really clarifying.In any case,this is a point of semantics and not that relevant.

However,as the week drew on, I began thinking.”One minute,here”. There was almost nothing in the presentation about anxiety.Yes they talked a lot about inner peace and the importance of the inner state for happiness but the question of anxiety was never raised directly.I happen to know that there are specific teachings about this by Buddhist teachers like Jack Kornfield and Jon Kabat-Zinn but nothing was said about that.(These were Tibetan teachings and the other mentioned authors are more in the Vipassana lineage so perhaps there is a sectarian divide-even within the Buddhist tradition itself.)

So one moment,here.If the talk is entitled “Meditation and Anxiety” but there is no mention of anxiety ,what is going on?There is only one possible answer I believe to that question.More marketing! Many,many people are struggling with anxiety in modern times so anything suggesting a possible solution would be attractive.In fact one of my motivations to attend the conference was to help out a neighbour’s boyfriend who was struggling with anxiety but there was no material in the conference which would have been of help to him unless he wanted to become a Buddhist monk-highly unlikely I figured!

There was another bit of bit of “fake spiritual news”in the conference that was working on my Truth detector.They repeated on several occasions the idea that”happiness can only come from a peaceful mind”. That sounded very obvious and unobjectionable until I thought about it some more.One minute here! That’s not true either!Happiness is one thing and ‘peace of mind’ is another.I think for the moment of those tennis players whether Federer or Djokovic or Serena Williams and how absolutely tense and anxious they look during the game and then how happy they are if they win.No correlation between peace and happiness.I,myself,when I examine my own experience, have been happy at times while feeling agitated and I have been peaceful but bored at other times .Happiness is one thing and peace is another.

So why are they making this statement? Because they know that Westerners are obsessed with “being happy.”There are even              University departments like at Harvard devoted totally to studying happiness( The Happiness Project).The marketers are hot on our trail once again!

But there is an even deeper problem in Buddhism and that involves the relationship between the inner and the outer.The theme repeated over and over again in the conference was that what really counts is the inner state.There is an irreconcilable cleavage between the two in Buddhist philosophy-an absolute dichotomy.This involves an incomplete conception of reality which does not acknowledge the interaction between the two and therefore the need to act in both dimensions not just one.Interestingly ,we can see a connection here between the lack of a Creator-God and this disconnect.If there is no Creator-God,then there is no Creation or created things per se.In fact the Buddhists claim there IS no reality to this world .It is only sets of aggregates like sensory perception and physical sensation and thoughts.For them ,the reality of this world is an illusion of the mind.In this way, there is no interaction,no dialectic between the outer and the inner.A truly bad place to begin if we want to manage our lives properly!

So the Buddhists who are so proud to claim The Middle Way,the Way of Balance, are actually in a state of serious imbalance.And you can see the manifestation of this all the way back to the beginning of the tradition when the Buddha left his family, never to return, to do intense meditative practices.Is that a balanced example for all of us?! If we think it’s all about the internal,we might accept that.But if we are truly aiming for balance in our lives,this cannot be the way, Think about it in your contemplations. Not in your meditations- where thought is dismissed lol.Salaams,Sufi Ibrahim