Twenty-First-Century Buddhists in Conversation by Melvin McLeod

Author:Melvin McLeod
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

HARVEY ARONSON: I like to look at this whole issue from a cross-cultural perspective. In traditional Tibetan Buddhism, for example, there was a lot of cultural stability. There was an extended family system with extensive contact between child and parent. Buddhism worked extraordinarily well in that context, and in terms of spiritual life, it did what it needed to do. But when we try to transplant the traditional Tibetan approaches to spiritual life into the West—which is dramatically different in terms of values, language, child rearing, ideals, expectations, and so forth—we almost certainly run into difficulties. There are a host of problems that individuals have that Buddhism was never designed to address, including the whole spectrum of mental illness, from anxiety to depression to psychosis, and to the nuts and bolts of couples’ issues.

When Buddhism came to the West, we injected it into our culture under the rubric of mental health, and that was to some extent an arbitrary injection. It could have come in under religion or philosophy, but there was a lot of interest in Buddhism in the mental health world. As a result, some of us probably carried a misguided expectation that Buddhism would offer everything to everyone. I’ve heard Buddhist teachers say, “Take care of meditation and it will take care of you,” with the implication that it will cure everything by itself. But I have seen students of these teachers suffering from psychosis, and the teachers didn’t know what to do with it.

Buddhism is a system that is full of techniques and wisdom. It is a path that leads successfully to liberation—that is clear. But it is also clear that there are people practicing these paths who have medical, emotional, and mental health issues that few, if any, Buddhist teachers can address.

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