Buddhist Stereotypes

 

Citation

This is an image of Buddhist monks meditating.  I think that Western culture believes that all Buddhists do is practice meditation for hours after hours and nothing else.  They don't eat the same way the rest of the world does, nor do they sleep or behave the same way as everybody else.  Also, I feel that people view meditation as just sitting in silence with your eyes closed when in fact, it is much more complex.  The goal of Buddhist meditation is to explore other phenomena using your mind.  It teaches you about mindfulness and how to gain insight, rather than concern yourself with worldly matters.  I believe there's even a stereotype that all Buddhist monks are vegetarians.  This is not true, because from what I've read, about half of all Buddhists are vegetarian or vegan and the other half eats meat.  Also, though I don't have any proof of this, I am pretty sure that not all Buddhists are boring and don't know how to have fun.  People believe that they just sit there and meditate all day long, but  I think that they do try to enjoy life as much as they can, but they make sure to not get attached.

In Brad Warner's Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate, he writes:

"When I say that Buddhism worked, I don't mean that it was a magic solution to my problems.  Nor do I mean that any miracles happened or that I was able to erase all doubt and fear from my mind through some kind of special power.  What I mean is that Buddhism, especially Dogen's Buddhism, provided the most truly realistic and practical way of dealing with life.  It isn't spirituality, but it isn't materialism either.  It bridges the gap between these two forever mutually opposing ways of understanding reality.  It negates both spirituality and materialism yet simultaneously embraces them (5)."

From this statement, I feel that Warner is saying that because he follows Buddhism doesn't mean that all the issues in his life were fixed and he was happy 24/7.  It didn't make his life perfect and free from everyday problems everyone deals with either.  It did, however, help him choose a better way of living his life and understanding it.  Buddhism helped him maintain a better state of mind.  He wasn't obsessed with spirituality, but he wasn't obsessed with all of the worldly and materialistic affairs of this world.  He was somewhere in between.  Choosing Buddhism, or any other religion, won't make your life perfect, but it will help you see life in a new way and may make it a bit easier for you.  Warner's view goes to further prove that Buddhism is not all about living life how you assume the monks do--through vegetarianism, meditating for long hours, and living a strict life.  Instead, to him it means finding a balance between living life as a Buddhist and living life in the practical world.  In the real world, you have to have money, transportation, clothes, food (which can all be considered materialistic), so it is important to live moderately, by not obsessing over the fanciest cars or the designer clothes.  By finding this balance, one can better gain insight and become more aware of themselves, others, and the natural world (which is something we lose when we concern ourselves with materialistic objects.