Chapter 18 progress and innovation

JEAN FRANCOIS - There is another divide between Buddhism and Western civilization, both in the behavior of the individuals who make it up and in the intellectual orientation of those who think about it middle.This is because Western civilization turned completely to history.It believes in the development of history and believes that time can create everything.It believed in progress, according to a phrase that was especially used in the nineteenth century.This belief in progress is often said to be naive.Faith in progress is, in fact, the conviction that history can only bring about improvements in the human condition through technological innovation, science, increasing moral refinement, and the spread of democracy.Pascal compares human beings to a person who has always existed and who has been learning from century to century.

We now know that this belief, not in progress, but in the automaticity of progress, was refuted by events, especially by the rather bleak history of the twentieth century.The same is the value that the West holds dear, which is innovation.When Westerners compliment something, they say "this is a new idea".In science, it goes without saying, this is a discovery, then science is new.In art and literature, innovation is necessary to survive.The greatest accusation one can make in order to belittle a book, a picture, or a composition of music is to say: "These are outdated, out-of-fashion forms, this is stereotyped, this has already been created." ’” It’s the same in politics, you must have new ideas, you must update your own ideas.Western society is thus in time, in the use of time as a factor of permanent transformation, which is regarded as an indispensable condition for the improvement of the human condition.The act of moving toward perfection is itself judged to belong to the process of historical development, to the ability to create new realities and new values.In your view, does this general state of mind that I have just outlined very briefly coexist with Buddhism and its engagement with the Western world?

Mathieu - It doesn't make much sense to think that a truth is no longer worthy of interest because it is old.The hunger for innovation often leads to a loss of some of the most fundamental truths.The antidote to suffering, to the attachment to self, is to go to the source of all thoughts and realize the ultimate nature of our spirit.How can such a truth age?What innovation could make a teaching that reveals the mechanism of the mind "out of fashion"?If we let go of this truth in pursuit of countless fleeting intellectual innovations, we will only be doing farther away from our purpose.There is a positive side to the appeal of innovation, and that is the legitimate desire to discover fundamental truths, to explore the deep nature of the spirit and the beauty of the world.But in an absolute sense, innovation that is always "new" is the freshness of the present moment, freshness that neither activates a clear awareness of the past nor imagines the future.

The negative aspect of innovative interest is the futile and disappointing pursuit of change at all costs.The enthusiasm for "new" and "different" often reflects an inner poverty.Unable to find happiness within ourselves, we look desperately outside, in increasingly exotic objects, experiences, modes of thought or action.In short, people keep away from happiness by looking for it where it is not at all.The danger in doing so would be to lose all trace of him.At its most banal level, the "soif de nouveaute" (soif de nouveaute), born of a love of the superfluous, erodes the mind and endangers its peace of mind.People increase their needs instead of learning to eliminate them.

If Buddha and many of those who followed him had actually achieved Ultimate Realization, what better and more "new" thing could we hope for?The innovation of the caterpillar is the butterfly.The purpose of every being is to develop this potentiality of perfection which he has in himself.To do this, it is necessary to draw on the experience of those who have walked the path.This experience is far more precious than the invention of countless new ideas. Jean-François - Yes, but anyway, there is a disproof, an antithesis.In Western civilization, it has been noticed that there are actually two tendencies.On the one hand, one sees a considerable number of thinkers attempting to develop an intelligence whereby each individual, at any time, can establish for himself an acceptable form of life, usually by means of an appreciation of the passions, The detachment of envy and arrogance, which our philosophers also struggled with, comes to fruition.At the same time, one notices the conviction that the path to happiness—not absolute happiness, but rather happiness relative to the past—is in the course of a coherent or incoherent process of general improvement in the lot of mankind. , and this improvement depends on numerous innovations in the field of science and technology and in the fields of law, human rights and political institutions.We are constantly participating in these innovations.We live today in a sea of ​​computers, which regulate almost every behavior in the private life of all individuals and the collective life of all societies, something that no one could have imagined thirty years ago.And all this is due to technology.This is the most obvious manifestation.

In other fields, especially in the political field, such as the transformation of society, the adjustment of social organization according to the needs of an increasing number of individuals, Westerners also believe that it is actually something determined by the development of time. goals and processes.Let's take culture as an example.It is believed that the only true artist is the one who creates new works.The very thought of copying medieval works is met with scoffing, as many copying techniques exist for this purpose.But that's not all.For fifty years, especially in the developed world, policies have been created to make the pleasures of literature, art, and music available to ever-increasing numbers of individuals.And all this was reserved for a rather narrow group of people in the past.I think about what it was like to visit a museum or see an exhibition in those years of my youth.At that time, people had as much space as they wanted, and they could enter at any time they wanted, and they never suffered crowds just to see paintings.Today, it is sometimes necessary to stand in line for hours because there are so many enthusiasts interested in the exhibition.In Paris or New York, people even have the habit of reserving seats or ticket rights, just like going to a theater.So the idea that culture, on the one hand, is a permanent revolution, and on the other hand must be extended to an ever-increasing number of individuals, is a very strong feature of the Western attitude.Temporary substances are employed to effect improvements, while increasing numbers of individuals participate in this general improvement.In other words, happiness is in time and not outside of time.

Mathieu—Happiness in time, this is the "Bodhisattva Vow", that is, the wish to strive to free all beings from suffering and ignorance.The Bodhisatta does not lose courage, does not abandon the responsibility he feels towards all beings, and must engage each of them on the path of knowledge and attainment of awakening.Buddhism, on the other hand, fully subscribes to the existence of specific kinds of education in various periods of humankind, from ancient societies all the way to the more materialistic modern societies.Some aspects of these educations are more or less utilized according to the degree to which these societies are inclined to spiritual values.However, the essence of awakening, which is the essence of spiritual knowing, has always been outside of time.How can the nature of spiritual perfection change?

Also, the notion of "innovation," the desire to keep inventing out of fear of not duplicating the past, seems to me to be a gift people give to "personality," to the individuality that desperately wants to express itself in novel ways. Pay attention to the malignant development.This pursuit of novelty appears at least superficial if one is trying precisely to dissipate attachment to this all-powerful self.The idea that an artist must always strive to let his imagination run wild is clearly not part of a traditional art, a sacred art as a vehicle for contemplation or reflection.Western art often strives to create an imaginary world, while sacred art helps people enter the essence of reality.Western art aims to arouse emotion, sacred art is to calm emotion.Sacred dance, painting, and music are about establishing an alignment with spiritual wisdom in a world of shapes and sounds.The purpose of these arts is to connect us with an epistemic or spiritual practice by their symbolic appearance.The traditional artist puts all his skills at the service of the quality of his art, but he does not indulge his imagination in order to invent some entirely new symbol or form.

Jean-Francois—here is obviously an art concept that is completely opposite to the Western art concept, especially the Western art concept since the Renaissance. Mathieu - Still, this art is not frozen in the past.Spiritual masters are constantly enriching it with new elements gained from their own meditative experiences.There are some brilliant expressions of sacred art in Tibet; the artists have contributed a lot of heart and talent to it, but their individuality has completely disappeared behind the work.Tibetan painting is thus essentially anonymous.Art was also a form of exchange between monastic and secular groups.Several times a year, the monks perform some very beautiful dances in the square in front of the monastery, which correspond to the various stages of inner meditation.Local people never miss such festivals.Art is present in the same way in all households in Tibet, for each household asks painters and sculptors for icons, mandalas, and Buddha images.The people are not divorced from art at all, but an artist who allows himself to fantasize about tradition will not achieve much.In the West, when some artists paint faces that are all blue, and because of the "personality" of these artists, their paintings are admired so much that they are exhibited in museums, I think the only problem is that no one Shout "the king is naked"!

I recently read in a weekly newspaper that the Museum of Contemporary Art in Marseille had exhibited an artist's work, which consisted of thirty or so stolen objects, officially labeled to show their provenance.In the end, the "artist" was arrested and the museum was charged with concealment.I have had several opportunities to visit museums with some Tibetans.They appreciate ancient paintings that show a high degree of skill, often acquired through years of hard work.However, the ease with which certain artworks, such as showing some crushed objects, some ordinary objects arranged or packaged in unusual ways, reminded them of Tibetan spiritual masters and those who teach spirituality today difference between.Tibetan spiritual masters teach from an experience gained through years of reflection and contemplation, while the latter class has no deep experience at all, and their talk is more like babbling nonsense than a genuine understanding. Express.

Not pursuing innovation does not mean being inflexible and not ready to face various new situations.In fact, by keeping those fundamental truths in our minds, we are better prepared than anyone else to face changes in the world and society.The first thing that is indispensable is to recognize these truths, to delve into them, to make them real inwardly, to "realize" them.What's the point of trying to invent something new if we ignore this step?In conclusion, I think that, contrary to the quest for innovation, the spiritual life enables us to rediscover the naivety of which we have lost interest.It enables us to simplify our existence by avoiding exhaustion to acquire what we do not need, and our spirit by avoiding constant rumination of the past and imagining the future. Jean-François - I believe you don't have to be a Buddhist to make these kinds of insights.Many people in the West, including those who pay close attention to the development of art and even the latest situation of art creation, also know that an important appearance of Western art is that it is an art that deceives the public and confuses naive people!But luckily that's not its only appearance.True invention prevails.If I insist on emphasizing this tendency, which is so deep in the West, it is that those areas of Western life which ought to appear least immune to this desire for change have also succumbed to it.For example, religion is in principle linked to dogma.A revealed religion is associated with a definite dogma, so that we may conceive that its adherents practice it because it provides an unchanging element which expresses an eternity. , that is, supernatural, otherworldly, divine eternity.Thus, this aspect of the history of human consciousness should normally not be governed by the dictates of change and innovation that characterize activities in the world and in the context of time.However, this is not the case at all. Let's take the archbishop as an example.I talk about Catholicism detachedly because I'm not a religious person.The Catholic Church is constantly being attacked by some modernists who say to it, "You haven't updated yourself enough! We need some Reformed theologians! The Church should bring itself up to date!" Well, in this case , people will consider, what is the use of religion?Religion is precisely an attribute of human consciousness which insulates this consciousness from the changes of the development of the times and the necessity of self-renewal.If not, what good is it? Our drive to innovate is so strong that some would ask God to keep renewing himself too.At least those who believed in him did.There was constant conflict between the Vatican, the defenders of theological orthodoxy, and those avant-garde theologians who argued for innovations in theology, as in other fields one could argue for innovations in painting, music, or haute couture. The very notion of an "avant-garde" theologian is laughable.In what sense can permanence be avant-garde or rearguard?The Vatican thus found itself confronted with a new dilemma.If it accepted these new theologies, it had to accept modifications to some fundamental principles of doctrine.If it does not, it makes itself known as obsolete, a reactionary, a nostalgic clinging to some outdated form of divinity.Will the influence of Buddhism in the West join this growing desire for reform, or, conversely, will Buddhism be a refuge for those who resent the tyranny of this innovation? Mathieu - I was thinking of this second option, of course.Principles cannot be changed because they correspond to the true nature of things.If one analyzes the urge for innovation a little further, it appears that it arises from a neglect of the inner life.People stop going back to the source and think that by trying all kinds of new things we can fill that gap. Jean-François—I still say that what has always watched over the human spirit is conservatism and rigidity.If such an ambition—not content with entirely ready-made ideas—want to filter the ideas handed down to us by our predecessors, not to credulously believe them but to rethink them, to see what, according to our own inferences and our own experience, we What should be retained and what should be rejected—without it, the human mind would be but a lazy lethargy. Mathieu—Of course, dedicating one's life to a spiritual pursuit does not mean rigidity, but a strong effort to blast the veins of illusion.Spiritual practice is based on experience, and to the extent that science can advance discoveries in the outer world, one can also advance discoveries in the inner world.This experience is always fresh and constantly renewed.It also presents people with tons of obstacles and adventures!The point is not to refer to some perfectly ready-made sentences, but to experience the teachings in the present, to know how to take advantage of good or bad circumstances in life, to face the various thoughts that appear in our minds, to learn by ourselves. Understanding the ways in which thoughts bind us and the ways in which we can free them.True innovation is knowing how to use every moment of your life for the purpose you define. Jean-François – If only personally, I tend to agree with one aspect of what you just said.But, on the other hand, how to deny it?Quite a number of questions about humanity, posed against the backdrop of life, history, and the phenomena around us, fall into the category of what I would call temporal creation.However, especially since the eighteenth century, in order to solve all human problems, the West has indeed put too much faith in the progress of history and the efficacy of innovation.The West believes that all questions concerning man, including questions about his personal happiness, his full development, his wisdom, his capacity to suffer or be free from suffering, all of which can be resolved by historical dialectics, as Hegel and Marx put it like that.In short, all problems with inner life, with personal perfection, are ideological fantasies, the dregs of illusions that lead to the belief that man can achieve happiness and balance for his own personal good.This abandonment of individual intelligence for the sake of collective transformation reaches its extreme in Marxism.But if man cannot create anything without time, time does not create anything by itself.For two centuries the West has hoped to derive human happiness from historical and collectiviste solutions.This stubbornly dogmatic attitude, this extreme belief in collectivist and political solutions brought about by simple historical developments, is perhaps what the predominance of this ideology underlies, and which is felt everywhere today. reason for satisfaction.The entry of Buddhism into the West is probably mostly due to this lack, the vacuum left by the loss of personal ethics and wisdom, no matter what the entry is. Mathieu - In order that relations with others are no longer primarily driven by egocentrism which only creates friction and discord, each individual must be able to give his existence a meaning and to achieve a an inner all-round development.Every moment of this spiritual transformation process should be done with the thought that those qualities one will develop will help to better help others. Jean-François - The conditions for the enduring success of Buddhism in the West depend on two factors.First, Buddhism is not a religion that demands blind devotion.It does not require anyone to reject or condemn other doctrines.It is a wisdom, a philosophy marked by tolerance.This condition is fulfilled from now on.The second aspect, but in this respect, the condition is not fully met, Buddhism must be able to coexist with the huge investment made by the West in scientific understanding, in political thinking and political action for nearly 2,500 years.That is, in this phenomenal world, investment in the improvement of human life through the improvement of society and the improvement of various relationships in society.I believe that if Buddhism cannot coexist with this second condition, it will not have lasting influence in the West.Anchorages are extremely hard to anchor in what I call the realms of scientific, sociopolitical, and historical thought. Mathieu – Again, Buddhism is not in principle opposed to scientific knowledge, since its aim is to know the truth in all respects, both external and internal.It simply establishes a hierarchy among the priorities of existence.Material development without spiritual development can only lead to the kind of misery we know.So in a society built on wisdom education, the orientation is very different.One can simply say that the one is centered on being (etre) and the other is centered on having (avoir).The mania to always have more and the flattening of knowledge keeps us from inner transformation.Since people can only transform the world by transforming themselves, it doesn't matter that there is always more.A Buddhist practitioner believes: "A person who knows how to be satisfied with what he has has a wealth in his own palm." Dissatisfaction arises from the habit of treating superfluous things as indispensable things.This way of looking at things was applied not only to wealth, but also to comfort, pleasure, and "useless knowledge."The only thing that one should never be dissatisfied with is knowledge; one should never think enough effort is an effort for the spiritual advancement of others and the realization of the good. Jean-François - I would like to conclude by quoting Cioran, a writer who is my favorite, because he clearly shows how Buddhism is often a reference or anxieties in the works of Western writers.This is a paragraph in the preface he wrote for a "Selected Descriptions of French Literary Portraits".In this preface he was asked to speak of some of the French moralists, of La Rochefoucauld, of Chamfort, etc., and of course of some of the portraitists who, through the portraits of famous persons, depicted the eccentricities of human nature.Cioran puts it beautifully when he puts Pascal above and above the moralists when he says very aptly: "The moralists and portrait painters paint our miseries, and Pascal You paint our weaknesses." Then, surprisingly, he makes reference to Buddhism.These are the few lines he inserts in this essay for the French classics: "When Mara, the god of death, tried to wrest the world empire from the Buddha by temptation and threat, the Buddha, in order to make him confused him, and diverted him from his purpose, and asked him many things, one of which was: Are you suffering from knowledge?" Cioran went on to write, "This question cannot be answered by demons, when people People use this question forever when trying to gauge the exact value of a spirit." What is your interpretation of this quote? Mathieu——The demon is the personification of the ego, because the "demon" (Demon) is nothing but the attachment to the "I" regarded as an entity that exists in itself.When the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree at dusk, on the verge of attaining perfect knowledge, that is, awakening, he vowed not to stand up until all the pretense of ignorance had been torn off.The demon, the ego, first tried to instill doubt in his mind, asking him, "What right do you have to achieve awakening?" To which the Buddha replied, "My right is based on the fact that I have In the knowledge I have gained; I am witness of the earth." It is said that the earth trembled at this moment.The demon then tried to seduce the future Buddha, sending his very beautiful daughters, symbols of various desires, in an effort to distract him from his final meditations.But the Buddha has completely got rid of all greed, so the daughters of the devil have become wrinkled old burdens.The demon then tried to stir up hatred in the heart of the Buddha.He made manifest visions of many monsters and terrible weapons that shot arrows and uttered insulting cries.It is said that if the slightest thought of hatred arises in the mind of the Buddha, he will be pierced by these weapons, and in that way self will triumph over knowledge.But Buddha is only love and sympathy, weapons are turned into rain of flowers, and insults are turned into hymns.In the morning, when the last fragments of ignorance collapsed, Buddha fully realized the unreality of the human body and all things.He understood that the phenomenal world manifests itself through interdependence, and that nothing exists inherently and permanently. Jean-François—But what strikes me most in Cioran's quote is his reminder to the West that knowledge is pain, or that knowledge can at any rate be attained only through pain.And it is on the condition of accepting this fact that people measure the value of a spirit.It seems to me that this is a salutary reminder for Westerners, who increasingly believe that man is free from suffering from the very beginning, that everything happens in joy through dialogue, exchange, criticism, and especially that education And learning can also be done without effort and pain. Mathieu - that's how people describe the spiritual path.Worldly pleasures are very alluring at first contact.They're luscious, they're sweet to look at, and they're easy to throw yourself into.They bring a fleeting surface satisfaction at first, but gradually one finds that they do not fulfill their promise, and eventually become a painful disillusionment.The spiritual pursuit is just the opposite.In the beginning, it was hard: one had to work on one's self—one had to face what Cioran called "the pain of recognition," or "the severity of asceticism."But as one perseveres in this process of inner transformation, one sees the emergence of a kind of wisdom, a kind of tranquility, a kind of happiness that permeates the whole being, and which, unlike the previous joys, cannot be externalized. harmed by the environment.According to an adage: "In spiritual practice difficulties arise at the beginning, but in worldly affairs they arise at the end." It can also be said: "In the beginning nothing comes, in the middle nothing remains, in the end leave nothing at the time.” I would add that this kind of diligence necessary to understand the process of acquisition is not actually “pain” in the strict sense, but rather “pleasure in the form of effort” that we define.