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 the ABC's gateway to religion The Ark Encounter The Spirit of Things The Religion Report |
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with Rachael Kohn
on Sunday 20/07/2003 Spiritually Incorrect - Religion and Satire Summary: Part 1 - Buddhism, with Alan Clements You don’t have to be glum to be godly, and you don’t have to be stern to be spiritual. That’s the message from The Spirit of Things’ new three-part series, Spiritually Incorrect. Each episode will highlight satire from a particular religious tradition and will feature believers with a well-developed funnybone. In part 1, we meet Alan Clements who was the first American to become a Buddhist monk in Burma, where he lived for ten years. Details or Transcript: Rachael Kohn: Hello. Welcome to Spiritually Incorrect on The Spirit of Things, ABC Radio National. I’m Rachael Kohn. We’re going to have some fun in the next three weeks, with a series on religion through the eyes of people who aren’t afraid to poke fun at sacred cows. But that’s not to say they aren’t serious. MUSIC This week Alan Clements tells us what’s wrong with Buddhism. He should know, he trained in three different traditions, and lived as a monk for five years in Burma. Next week we’ll hear from two Melbourne men who always wanted to be rabbis and comedians, and not being able to choose, they became comedy rabbis. And bringing up the rear of the series is a good Christian, Robert Darden, editor of The Door, the world’s longest-running religious satire magazine. MUSIC Rachael Kohn: There’s no other way to describe him: Alan Clements is a spiritual maverick. But he’s much more, and now that he’s chucked in Buddhism after 25 years, he’s a kind of anti-guru guru, who likes to compare our innate capacity for spirituality, with sex. Which brings to mind a recent film about a man who decides to become a guru of sex. MUSIC Man: The guru of sex. MUSIC Rachael Kohn: Alan Clements welcome to The Spirit of Things. Alan Clements: Thank you, Rachael. Rachael Kohn: Alan, you started out as an artist, you became a Buddhist monk, you endured all kinds of suffering, and you left the monastery and emerged spiritually incorrect. Alan Clements: As a sexual being, definitely. People often ask me why did I leave the monastery, and I always say the one reason, it’s women, and sex, and when you’re 27 for five years of your life essentially without sex, without intimacy, without masturbating, you can be sure that by that five-year period being over, you’re ready to re-emerge as a sexual human being again. Rachael Kohn: But the whole idea of entering a Buddhist monastery is generally to overcome desire. Alan Clements: That was the pathology that I bit, and that was the sadness of that dogma is that somehow I was frightened enough to believe that my genitals were a problem, and that they demonise desire and attachment somehow as if this is the root problem for human life. And I believe that the best life was a transcendent experience where one Nirvana fits all, and I did not realise that Buddhism, unlike a lot of other religions, is built upon a fundamental lie, that the Buddha knew the totality of the universe. And that’s a fundamental lie; no-one’s omniscient and no-one’s omnipotent. Rachael Kohn: Now hold on, are you saying that the monks in the monastery were not blissfully happy? Alan Clements: Ah, blissfully drunk, probably on their dogma. I think most people, most religious zealots, including myself, cannot understand the difference between dogma and pure experience. For example, I often think of Buddhism, fundamentally at its core, to be a metaphor for radical authenticity. What that really means in experience is that the wind, being free, as soon as you box it, you destroy it. And so as soon as you put an ‘ism’ upon the wind, fundamentally you lose its very essence. And that’s what often happens within orthodoxy, within the Al Qaeda movement, within the Taliban, within the Catholics, they build an infrastructure called dogma and they call that dogma truth, and it fundamentally misses the beauty of the metaphor of freedom. Rachael Kohn: Hold on a second, I mean Buddhism sells itself very much as the religion of compassion, and indeed being spiritually incorrect about it is most unheard-of. Alan Clements: They’re a beautiful tradition, and I think within their own beauty there is a degree of ignorance. You know, for example, who in the world, and you probably know many more spiritual people than me, they tend to stay away from me, I’m kind of allergic to spiritual people. But why would a teacher or why would a student or a person or a practitioner, or a human, every invite a guru or a rimpoche or a lama or a meditation teacher, a life coach, or a psychotherapist into your bedroom and suggest that there’s a better way to do it. What does it mean to have a spiritually correct orgasm? Should it be Buddhist, should it be Catholic, should it be Jewish, should it be Taliban? But the bottom line is there shouldn’t be anything that comes between you and your idea of intimacy, and fundamentally, no-one can interpret beauty for you. God is God, open the window, look at the stars, and fundamentally realise there’s one way to do life: the way you kiss. Rachael Kohn: The way you kiss! Now just a minute – Alan Clements: You think that’s simple? Rachael Kohn: Well it could be that simple. Look, you say that spiritual people stay away from you, but I know that you give retreats, so what are you giving them? I mean are you the guru of kissing? Alan Clements: I’m the guru of anti-dogma, and definitely I’m a bullshit detective for people who need to wake up out of the trance of their own fear. And so essentially what I’m trying to communicate, well, let me say it this way: when people often ask what do you teach, I say Nothing, how can you teach sex? Fumbling, idiotically, into the beauty of your own erotic bliss is really about the best that we can do. And again, when people ask me who is my teacher today I hold up my right index finger and say Listen, the last time I looked my fingerprint was unique among all fingerprints in the world. The same thing with our mind prints, our heart prints, our soul prints, our physical prints, why would we think that one religion fits all? And so fundamentally religion by the nature of itself is arrogant and preposterous, that there is one way to kiss. And some people find that very liberating. When some people find it very frightening. It’s like where George Orwell said, When Fascism comes to the West, they’ll call it freedom. Be careful of gurus, head shysters, lamas, monks, priests, nuns, theologians, they want to sell you mind-share. Rachael Kohn: When you stand before an audience of 300 people, they’re looking at you, possibly as a guru. You sound a bit like Bhadwan Rajneesh, I mean he also... Alan Clements: Gasp! You’re going to have a heart attack here. Rachael Kohn: Well he also – Alan Clements: Are you a student of Rajneesh? Rachael Kohn: No. But you know, Rajneesh, Krishnamurti, they were always saying that they were not the teachers, they were not the final truth, you’re the truth, etc. Alan Clements: Go to any high school, elementary school in the world, and generally the way you see people holding hands is fundamentally the same thing that I’m saying. We get indoctrinated by the broadcast, the symbol, the images, the ideas of what we think we should be, and often we perform against these shadows that we incorporate and project from outwards so that you can be who I don’t want you to be, so you can be what you want to be, so we can live in a fraudulence, called lying to each other and fall in love. It’s all double-speak, and when you really undress and you’re naked and raw as you are, do you think you can have a Buddhist text next to you when you make love with a lover? No. Rachael Kohn: It may be the Karma Sutra. Alan, does this mean we should all be kind of walking around in a Garden of Eden without any clothes on, the way William Blake did with his wife? Alan Clements: If you are attracted, get naked, otherwise keep your clothes on. I mean why not? What’s wrong with being a beautiful human being, fragile, mortal, finite, organic, erotic. Rachael Kohn: Now you know, you sound like a recovering Buddhist to me, somebody who needs to recoup all the stuff he wasn’t allowed to do for ten years. Alan Clements: Maybe it’s your projection. Rachael Kohn: Could be. Alan Clements: I’ve played out my sexual fantasies, if that’s what you’re asking, long before I became a Buddhist monk. What I’m in recovery of is my human-ness, and that’s the thing that I’ve seen in war zones, is that religion is the fundamental problem, and so many men and women try to uphold this deranged dogma called My Truth, with a capital-T, and impale people with this absolute folly. And I think that fundamentally, at this day and time, we need to come out of the trance of thinking that we’ve got a hold on infinity and come back to the naturalness of being human beings together, and break bread. We need to be human above all, and realise that we don’t know the answers of this cosmos. There’s a great beauty in being uncertain about life. It’s called the invulnerable. And religion, as far as I can see, tries to assuage the existential anxiety about being in an out-of-control universe that we don’t have a clue about. Rachael Kohn: Alan, in your book, Instinct for Freedom, it’s obvious that you learnt a lot from Buddhism. Alan Clements: I have no misgivings. I fell in love with my teachers, fellow nuns and monks, it was a beautiful experience, and a lot of what I’m saying right now is fundamentally I think, probably the most traditional form of Buddhism found. I mean when I look at the Buddha’s life, from what we can gather, there was no book that was written until 400 years after his death. If his freedom was anything like the way that I feel freedom, that essentially he came out of his enlightenment and said No two of us will do freedom the same way. And the reason why I hold up my right index finger is, again, it’s a very important point, and it may save someone having to spend $30 to buy my book, just by hearing the fact that you are a unique human being, and that no two people will do freedom the same otherwise just live your dream. The Buddha was a metaphor for radical authenticity, not for conformity, and I think a lot of people, probably the forefathers of Microsoft, got the Buddha when he was young and developed an infrastructure called commercial spirituality, whereas his experience was just like the wind. He woke up one day and said, Wow, just the way that I kiss is my relationship to God. Rachael Kohn: People look at the world and they see a lot of suffering and they see things they want to make better, and they look for solutions. Were you looking for a solution when you were young? Alan Clements: To be smarter, more intimate, more alive, more liberated, I was not unlike a lot of people of my generation; I felt very confined by my fear, by my anger, by my lust, it was a wonderful relief not to masturbate for five years. I could see energies that I never dreamt possible. But fundamentally, one has to really deeply inquire into the matter and discern the difference between what liberates and what confines. For example, a popular cliché today is being present, and I often say that now is not large enough for me. There’s so much more to life than being present. What about the Truth Council in South Africa, where they spent three years, testimony after testimony, talking about the atrocities of the past, is that being in the now? Is that being present? And what about the children ten generations from now screaming out at us here in Sydney, Hey you guys and girls, stop being so present and in the now, what about us? Why weren’t you thinking about us in the future? And so really what I’m after is a degree of intelligence, not peace. Freedom, not happiness. Rachael Kohn: That’s really interesting, because of course Buddhism and what it offers to so many people, is that promise of happiness. Don’t people always look for the one truth that is going to make life better? Alan Clements: Beautifully said. This is the most spiritually incorrect thing I could possibly say, that probably the highest teaching today is for the Pope to denounce Catholicism, for the Dalai Lama to give up Tibetan Buddhism, and for all of us in the world to begin to celebrate the fundamental music called freedom: human rights, and those freedoms and human rights, and otherwise see that there may be universal principles that transcend their own theology and let us seek those higher stars, rather than staying confined in the dogma, in the narrowness, in the myopia of my special Taliban. Rachael Kohn: Well in your book though, you do offer up the teaching of love in a way that makes me think I’m reading 19th century Romanticism, you know if we all get back to ourselves, and we all love each other, the world will be better. Alan Clements: I think it’s beautifully said Rachael, I’m going to stay with that. Rachael Kohn: You honestly believe it though? Alan Clements: Yes. I mean you’re beautiful to look at, why wouldn’t I think if I felt that some beauty that I feel for you, towards people that I don’t like? It couldn’t transform them into beautiful people. Rachael Kohn: I’m not sure if I understood that. Alan Clements: It’s called seduction. No, I’m saying that love is the answer. Rachael Kohn: A lot of people talk about love being the answer and just loving your enemy and loving everybody who makes you upset and angry and everything will be OK, but is Saddam going to love us? Is Osama going to love us? Are all sorts of other people going to love us? Alan Clements: Well that’s a – Rachael Kohn: Or does it not matter? Alan Clements: It does matter, I can’t say that John Howard should eventually just like take a meditation retreat with me and to quiet his fear and angst, but it might be a good start, and it’s either that or thinking that we ultimately own the truth and the best way to control that truth is to kill people who oppose it. Play it out philosophically, the end point in military aggression is to blow up the earth; why don’t we just put a big fuse on it and light it right now and be done with it? Rachael Kohn: We’ve always lived with wars. Wars have never been absent from human history. You talk about history. Alan Clements: And that’s why I say today that we must recognise, I feel that we are trying to recognise, I plead that we recognise that we are mere infants in this cosmos. And just as you may have a child, or that if I had a child, I would hold those places in me that were completely confused and uncertain like I would my own child, give birth to those children inside and begin to grow our idea of self, and community and of cosmos and begin to cultivate a peaceful field rather than an aggressive militarisation of the planet. This is why I really feel that there should be a massive moratorium on male politicians. We have failed the mission of leadership. It’s high time and I really stand behind this, that’s one of the most politically correct things I could say, is that it’s time for women to take the rein and lead the world into a more peaceful expression of itself. Rachael Kohn: Was goddess religion quiescent and sweet and loving? Alan Clements: It’s a good start. It’s a really good start. I really feel that there’s a time when we can learn from the mistakes of the past, and open up to a new possibility. This is why I stand so firmly behind the Nobel laureate in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, the book that we did together, and here we have a woman standing in her own sovereignty, independent at the same time fighting for the independence and sovereignty of others. And it may be an old-fashioned thing to say, but we have a person there that’s setting an example, using the power of love and compassion as her weapons of choice, to confront military aggression, which is firmly rooted in male testosterone ignorance. Rachael Kohn: Maybe the Buddhists were right about not masturbating. Alan Clements: Not my Buddhists. Rachael Kohn: The unrepentant Alan Clements, whose book is Instinct for Freedom: Finding Liberation through Living. Now as Alan makes perfectly clear, there are a lot of ‘head shysters’ around, and most of them need an agent. Agent: The goal here is to separate you from all the other self-help spiritual types out there, so you’re not just another Indian, or excuse me, Native American, because what you’ve going for you is God, and by the way, by the way, God is big. You mention God, people pay attention. God, the man’s attention, and what can I say, we want to be there with God. But, what do people want to pay attention to more than anything else? Sex. You know, people think about both, which is brilliant. Rachael Kohn: You’ll have to see the movie to find out. That’s from the film, The Guru. Despite being an anti-guru guru, former Buddhist monk, Alan Clements, dispenses a lot of advice about true spirituality, which he does to considerably bigger crowds than our studio audience. MUSIC Rachael Kohn: Alan, do you ever have to stop yourself from being spiritually grandiose? That is to say I mean like you’re just spelt out a whole program that the world should follow. Alan Clements: I like that. Rachael Kohn: And everything will then rectify itself. I mean that sounds pretty grandiose. Alan Clements: Am I a little crazy? Rachael Kohn: You might be a little crazy. Alan Clements: I feel very sane. I feel breathless. Rachael Kohn: You definitely feel on a higher plane than some of the gurus in the past who made extraordinary claims for themselves. Alan Clements: I claim the territory of stupidity. I really don’t have a clue. That’s my girlfriend, she’ll confirm that. Rachael Kohn: That’s a change. Alan Clements: What I do have is my heart and soul, my courage and my vulnerability. See I was enlightened in three separate Buddhist traditions. It might not show, but it’s true. And even those enlightenments didn’t correct a very primordial extravagant dysfunction, or I got dysfunctional forms of enlightenment, because I’m more neurotic, more dysfunctional than I ever have been, at the same time I’m happier, more joyful and more sane. And I don’t know what to say about that kind of apparent contradiction because it’s not double-speak, but it really is true, but no-one’s speaking this way, that spirituality will screw up your head if you take it down the wrong mouth. And I took it in the mouth of my own ignorance rather than seeing that spirituality is innate to the human experience, and get on with living a remarkable life. For example, people have asked me How did you survive years of being a monk for so long, meditating 20 hours a day, day after day, week after week, month after month. Year after year, not month after month, year after year. I signed up for a 10-year program. What is meditation? Watch your breath, in-breath, out-breath, in-breath, out-breath. Ten years went by. What’s the insight? Hey dude, you’re breathing. Wow, and I said that’s a really profound insight. I signed up for another 10-year program. In-breath, out-breath. Ten years went by. I was looking for the next insight. What was it? You’re alive. And that might be funny to some people, but for me it was like Wow, imagine right now, Rachael, if we understood, really understood this was our final moments on earth in that we really did embrace the sensitivity of being fragile, moral, loving, confused, mysterious, brilliant human beings, and this is it. This is it in its totality. What would that do to the space right now? Do you think we would be pretending to be something that we’re not? We would be the most open and real that we could ever imagine. So I got so turned on by that insight, I signed up for another 10 years. In-breath, out-breath, in-breath, out-breath. You can save yourself many years of meditating by listening to this one insight. So after 25 years of ardent meditation, what did I finally come away with that was the most enlightening thing I’d ever imagined knowing? Well now that I’d established that I was breathing and that I was alive, now the insight was, Hey, get up off your butt and do something with what a full breath affords you, and live a remarkable life. And that to me is really where all roads lead when you really take to heart how precious it is to be a human being in this world. You want to do something while you’re still able to move your hands and your mouth and body. Rachael Kohn: And yet so many people have been told to live a remarkable life, and there are so many people neurotically going to workshops and retreats to find out how to live a remarkable life. Alan Clements: Those are the seven steps to neurotic conformity. And this is what I say, that there comes a time in life when you really are pointed back to yourself and said Hey, the way you are, the way you look in the mirror right now, the way you dress, the way you stand, the way you think and smell and taste, everything about you is as good as it gets. And move on from that. It’s like my teachers in the monastery among all of their other things that they did, they taught me one very precious lesson. They said, Look at your life and look at human consciousness as a flower. And they said, Would you be able to open that flower by investigating the darkness between the petals, or would you be able to open that flower by understanding what nurtures its opening? The soil, the air, the light. And so do what you can to nurture your strengths, not overcome your weaknesses. And that to me is the power of the spiritual life, is how to understand really your God-given strengths, and to go with those strengths and lead yourself into the light. Rachael Kohn: People always want to be led into the light by somebody else who’s done it, and proved that there is light there. Alan Clements: Well blessed are there for good friends. I have no trouble with that. Rachael Kohn: Is it important for you to be with really powerful, enlightened, realised beings? Alan Clements: Enlightenment is a lie, Rachael. It does not exist. I feel that people have to get over the adolescent belief that there is a finality to existence. That’s part of the problem, that’s the most rigid form of totalitarianism that enlightenment propagates spiritual fascism. No-one has figured out the totality of the cosmos. We are just beginning to explore the nature of this eternity. We just got up off our fours 300,000 years ago. Rachael Kohn: So it’s good to be on the path, right. Alan Clements: We have to deal with uncertainty and live with ambiguity, and love the question rather than seek so much a final projected answer. And so many teachers and gurus want us to believe that there is a finality to existence. One Nirvana fits all. This is the end-point. And I like to play on the dance floor infinite moves. If there was a Nirvana, it is just one beat on the dial, and there are lots of different radio frequencies on this thing that we haven’t even begun to understand. Even super-strength theorists today talking about the new physics are telling us of 10-dimensional universes. What we’re thinking, even within this 3-pound brain is just being filtered through this little tiny grapefruit in our brains. Who knows what’s on the other side of a world that isn’t encapsulated by physical form? I wouldn’t be surprised that a million years from now, the human being outgrows lungs, outgrows the body, we become hydroponic humans. Rachael Kohn: Somebody’s got to tend those hydroponic humans you know. Alan Clements: There’ll be hydroponic gurus. If anything that’s come out of my spiritual life that really confirms the fact that I’ve done it right, I can cry. And part of crying today is that I’m in awe that we are part of this ambient universe that is so spectacular, and equally so mad. I’ve been the witness to two tragic, beautiful genocides. I use tragic and beautiful because who could ever speak about the horrors of genocide. The beauty is that it broke my heart from the cult of certainty and opened me to serve human existence with all of my heart and soul. And so when I’m in this universe and I see the madness of men and women deranged by concepts and war and politics and nationalism and xenophobia, and all forms of racism, I realise that human beings can overcome these strange phobias that we’re bred to believe as truths, and relax our attachment to these strange inner things that we think are right, and begin to embrace our fragility and our openness. And part of it is just what you said: is recognising that we’re in an awesome universe. And that to me is a hard-earned insight. Rachael Kohn: Is it also why humour is important? That whole idea of fragility. Alan Clements: We have to laugh at our own stupidity, otherwise we’ll take ourselves seriously and write a spiritual book on how to get enlightened. Rachael Kohn: Which you’ve done. Alan Clements: No I didn’t. My book is anti-enlightenment, my book is anti-method, anti-guru, anti-follower. I’m not into a cult of sheep. I have no shepherd, I am absolutely a freewheeling individual who is essentially just trying as best as I can to find my place and to leave some little contribution to the kids. I really care about the kids. Rachael Kohn: So the end of it, I mean is there a Yellow Brick Road? Where does it go at the end of this anti-enlightenment? People always want to know, OK, what next? Where do we go? Alan Clements: Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful question; I couldn’t ask for a better question. My best friend in Burma, an 80-year-old gentleman who’s leading the non-violent revolution, we were monks together a long, long time ago. He was released from prison, he joined Aung San Suu Kyi. Together they led the country into this nationwide revolution of the spirit. Back in ’89 he was incarcerated. In ’96 he was freed. I met him, Aung San Suu Kyi and did a book together. My last day in Burma I asked him a question. I said, Sir, how do you survive all those years in solitary confinement, how do you keep your sanity? Among many wonderful things that he shared with me, along with my people were starving, I decided to abstain from food after 12 noon, the solidarity that I felt with the suffering masses gave me more nurturing than the food itself. A beautiful expression of activism while jailed. My jailers snuck in verses of Jesus, I didn’t know much about Jesus as a Buddhist. I began to feel a sense of forgiveness to my jailers, because they too were suffering. They were indoctrinated in the belief, in totalitarianism. I relaxed my bitterness to them. But still, he said, Alan, it gets really tough in prison. It’s really alone in there. And eventually at the end Rachael, he was holding my hand really tight, and he closed his eyes and he said, Alan, what you do to get through in the darkest moments of solitary confinement, is you remember the memories of love. He said, I remember my moments with my wife and my daughter, or my children or with my friends. I’d recall those moments as if they were happening in the moment, right now. I would smell the moment, I would taste it, I would hear the words, I would see their laughter, and I would bring that past experience of love into the present. And he looked at me with his opened eyes. He said, It’s human touch that gets you through the darkest moments. It’s warmth. And that’s really the highest teaching that I can see today. We may not ever understand who we are as a human, what we’re doing in this universe, but we do know one thing, that even the most tyrannical dictator in their moments of vulnerability, will reach out and hold someone’s hand when they’re in need. Human contact is the ultimate God, and I think that’s what’s going to heal the earth, is warmth. Rachael Kohn: That’s Alan Clements, former Buddhist monk, and collaborator with Aung San Suu Kyi on her quest for Burma’s freedom. Well it was time to turn Alan Clements over to the audience, which by that stage was pretty aroused. Woman: Hallo Alan. What I’d like to ask, I’d like to clear something up. Am I right that you are claiming that Buddhist monks don’t masturbate, and that led you to your initial problems? Alan Clements: Buddhist monks don’t masturbate, and as a monk I didn’t masturbate. But it could very well be that Catholic priests are predator paedophiliacs and don’t admit it, it could very well be that Buddhist monks masturbate and don’t admit it. It could very well be that Islamic priests are closet suicide bombers and wouldn’t admit it. Anything’s possible. I didn’t masturbate though. Woman: Well I’ve just got a supplementary here because you do say that it was matters of the flesh that drove you away from the monastery, and we all know that when we thirst for things we can over-react when we’re free. So I mean, did you ever feel like you’ve overdone it on the sex and matters of the flesh when you got out? Rachael Kohn: True confession time. Alan Clements: This is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but to overdo it, I think I’ve overdone it. I often say, quite humourously and tragically that I’ve been addicted to more things than anyone I’ve ever met, and too I’ve been addicted to more things simultaneously than anyone I’ve ever met. And I wouldn’t be surprised that sex was one of them. But I consider every addiction I’ve ever had to be a tremendous force of joy, because as a Buddhist I understood how to balance addiction with pleasure. Woman: I have to confess that I meditate, and so perhaps I’m coming from a bit of a biased perspective. But what interests me about what you say is that there seems to be for me, quite a contradiction, because Buddhism allows you to stop listening to other sources, or other gurus, or what other people tell you you ought to do in order to reach a new way of being. And I think that what you’re doing is telling people in a different way, and why would people listen, how would that actually help them? Alan Clements: How would it help people to hear about being independent and thinking for themselves and being less dependent on other people to fulfil their needs? Woman: The listening. Because I think that the whole thing of Buddhism is that it’s an act and not a process of listening. Alan Clements: I can’t speak for Buddhists around the world, but when you examine it systemically, there’s what? hundreds of different traditions and sex of Buddhism. In Burma alone there’s dozens and dozens of different groupings that claim to have the more original or unique or orthodox with clear or pure understanding of the original Buddha’s teaching. You have Tibet adjacent to Burma, Laos and Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand all adjacent to Burma and to Tibet, and within all of these different traditions that you get all the honchos together from each of these different schools of thought, it’s been my experience in studying in their words, they often contradict and disagree with one another about Buddhism really is, and who understands fundamentally what is true Buddhism. And it’s a strange kind of tradition, because its led very much by a hierarchy of men. And at the same time, although I think it attempts to support nuns and women, it’s very misogynist, and so I don’t fully agreer with what you’re saying, at least it wasn’t my experience, but I can’t say with what form of Buddhism that you’re studying, or who you’re studying with. But again, I studied in a very pedagogic way. I went to a Buddhist monastery that was kind of the Oxford of South East Asia, had a very traditional training and I was a monk within a tradition of other monks, all of them based upon a hierarchy of other monks, all roads in Tibet lead to the Dalai Lama. There is a very distinct hierarchy of, it’s like that John Cleese thing, have you ever seen Monty Python the Movie? The Life of Brian? There’s one scene in it if I remember it correctly, it’s been some time, where John Cleese is playing Jesus, and he’s given a huge rave for thinking for yourself and the beauty of autonomy and under no circumstance should you follow a saint or a teacher or a guru, and he just all of a sudden at the end says, ‘Think for yourself. Don’t follow me!’ Remember that? And all the men of course, all men are created equal and all of a sudden all the men look around at each other, all of his disciples, and they go ‘Yes! Think for yourself. Don’t follow me!’ and it’s like in unison, the whole group is going ‘Think for yourself. Don’t follow me!’ and he gets angry and he says, ‘Hm, did I do something wrong here? I said think for yourself, don’t follow me.’ And they go ‘Yes! Think for yourself, don’t follow me’, and that’s the kind of Orwellian statement that when fascism comes to the west they’ll call it freedom, because it’s so easy to mimic in the name of liberty. You can even use the words Don’t follow me. Look into your own mind. At the same time, it plays into a very deep infantilising pathology that a lot of humans have. And all of a sudden you think that you’re thinking for yourself, all the while you’re being obedient to your teacher. It’s very insidious. So the best form of spirituality to follow is none. And a recognition that we are innately spiritual, born equal, in dignity and rights, and get on with living your dream, whatever that may be. And to me, living that dream is really allowing ourselves to flourish as unique creatures in delivering something creative, original, or even just something that’s humble as being a shoemaker, or a carpenter or a father, a veterinarian. Contribute to the world by giving something back called your best. And to me that best is being independent, being creative, being original. For example, how often I would hear about being present without thought. Where would we be today if Einstein didn’t daydream? The whole Theory of Relativity came from his active imagination, with letting his mind just wander into these phantasmagorical places of dream and fantasy. And so my encouragement today with people is Let go! And not to be so afraid of ourselves, to think that we have to get it right. So we have to really think critically, not just think for ourselves. Man: I’m glad you said about not getting it right, because I don’t know if this is going to be a question or not, but it’s just the timing is pretty perfect for me. I had my five-year-old daughter this morning say to me, Is God a Christian? And I’d just gone through this thing where she’s gone to school and they said, I’m Jewish, my partner’s Christian, and we’ve been asked which religion do you want her to be taught in? And I’m just thinking Where does this start for a little five-year-old, where does this whole process start? I want her to love God and not to deny a knowledge of God, but it occurs to me that you’re up against it here, at such a young age, at five years old, so many people indoctrinated into one religion or another, I’m thinking How do I go to the school and say that you should be teaching that all religions, and follow what you’re saying, because very much along your lines. Alan Clements: The front-lines of activism is wherever you find yourself up against an edge that compromises your dignity, your integrity. I met political prisoners after they were released and said How do I introduce my values into confinement? How do I bring spiritual activism to the forefront of torture? And it’s the same question, philosophically Buddhism is the same issue. How do I effect positive change. And some of the most breathtaking responses I received is where is truth when you’re being tortured? Where do you find your refuge? Where do you find your strength? And so many prisoners would say although they choose to confine us behind the iron bar, my freedom isn’t theirs to take. And so often I would hear comments that my freedom isn’t rooted in Buddhism, it isn’t rooted in Christianity, it isn’t rooted in Islamic faith, it’s rooted in a love of human rights, and a love of the freedom that includes your freedom as equal to my own. And so they would say that we would fuse our dignity with our conviction of the experience of being free. For example, that old adage, or was it lyrics by an Irish singer, I’m not sure whether it was Van Morrison, or maybe even Bono or someone where they said something along the lines ‘The bird that is caged dreams of freedom. The bird that is free just flies.’ They would bring the sense of flying freely into prison, and would fuse their dignity with that recognition, the innateness of my liberty. And from that, they would often ward off starvation and overcome the bitterness of even being tortured. At the same time they had the courage, they would tell me, to say the unspeakable. But they would often say it without the outrage of being violated. And so many prisoners found refuge in that level of immediacy to the value of freedom, fused with their dignity, and being proactive enough to say the unspeakable, because it was coming from the level of self-respect. And so that’s the spiritual challenge of being a Dad or a Mum, or whatever. It’s how to be as wise as I can, and to me, all religions, all philosophies, all great psychologies, all races, all nationalities, I would hope that all things converge in a love of freedom. That to me is the lesson of 9/11, is that freedom is a universal quality, and we need to come off of thinking that it’s best protected by being democratic, or American or Australian or British. We need to see something larger than our own nationality, our own religion. And so when you’re pointing to your daughter’s edge of what is God, it comes up right against your own interpretation of what is freedom. And that to me is the metaphor for a living God, how to express liberty through living. That’s why I subtitled my book Liberation through Living. Does that touch anything? Man: I was actually shocked to find that there was this rigidity, and I was told that this was a New South Wales education doctrine, and I just think we’re meant to be a multicultural society, and here’s somebody at five years old being straight away pushed along these rigid lines. And I just find that, I was very disturbed by it. Alan Clements: Terrible. I’m American, and I just came from an 18-city book tour of North America, and being a single guy, somewhat tall, dark skin, brown eyes, travelling on a one-way ticket, I got double profiled, one being what looks like an ageing Columbia cocaine cartel CEO, and No.2 being kind of a sleeper cell overseer. And so they look in your passport, they see Bosnia, they see Burma, they see Iran, they go like Oh shit, red lights go off, no fly, no fly. They ask you What do you do? I say, I write books. The smarter you are, the worse it gets. What do you write on? Freedom. Tell-tale sign. Block his passage. And they start asking trick questions. This is true, by the way and I won’t rant on about it, but they ask OK, what is your mother’s maiden name? And I’m actually Arab-American, and her maiden name is Canaan. My grandparents were from Lebanon, Lebanese Christians, and they went, Canaan, and literally it rhymes a little bit with Qae’da. My first name is Alan, so al Qae’da. Like that. Literally, it’s something like trick word you’re trying to say. And I say it’s Al Canaan. And literally at one point actually visiting my parents, it came down to a discussion, and I said, No. My mother’s name is Canaan, my first name is Alan, and I don’t like Al. And they for sure thought that they had a terrorist, because I travel with my microphone, my tape recorders with a videocam, because I’m on tour. They thought for sure that they had one. It’s diabolical today, the edges that you press up against, whether it be racism, nationalism, religion, what is God, what isn’t God. We’re in a huge imprisonment today with projections on truth, fortified by fear. And so this non-demonising of people is so important to the spiritual path today. So wherever I confront people who seem to be steeped in ignorance, to me it’s an opportunity to really be at my best. Rachael Kohn: In the 1960s and ‘70s, we were all looking to the east because we were quite convinced that a higher spiritual truth was found in the East, and it had left the West. Where are you now with that kind of question? Alan Clements: I don’t find that there are any answers to be found personally in the East or the West. It’s wherever the individual chooses to go. But there’s so much that the East offered in terms of an alternative to abject, banal Western materialism, at least the way that I was being steeped in it. And I went to college to study law on a scholarship, and at that time during the Vietnam War I saw that I didn’t want to become a lawyer to essentially learn how to lie, to live an affluent lifestyle. So the East both an alternative to being slotted into the technological economic machine of America and there was something very beautiful about the metaphor of meditation as a means to discover states of consciousness. But within that process, insidiously I downloaded an entire religion, resplendent with karma, rebirth, heaven, hell, perfection, Buddhahood as a metaphor for perfection, and being driven by perfection, always comparing your face to Cindy Crawford, always, always, always. Can you imagine how mad that is? This is really kind of an interesting reprieve from the madness of economic America, but now that I’m 32 what about my life, I said, what about my body, what about children, what about creativity, what about a job? And I realised, My God, I’m a perfectly programmed orthodox Buddhist, because now I believe in heaven and hell. And I feel that today, and I’ve been calling for it all over the world, is the spiritual disobedience campaign to all nuns and monks all over the world who espouse hell. And I think it’s a very, very bad thing. It’s naughty, naughty, naughty, for teaching us about hell. And I talked with my Editor about this. Why can’t I put in my book that people who teach hell are essentially sexually repressed beings. Somehow they weren’t potty trained perfectly, and that they got a little cock hard in their fingers and decided to go up a whole religious theology based upon going to hell because I touched my little bummy. And really, where do they get off on teaching hell. And of course you get those others who espouse heaven has all these wonderful virgins in heaven to overcome all these diabolical cauldrons in hell, and what happens is human life becomes hell. And so we have enough hell, there’s a much better way to control human beings. It’s called living as a free human being and respecting the freedom of others. Full stop. All Buddhists in Asia believe if you don’t become a really good, perfectly correct Buddhist, you will be reborn in hell, and again, I didn’t say this earlier, but perhaps the most far-reaching, spiritually incorrect thing I could say is for the Dalai Lama to give up Tibetan Buddhism and really absolutely embrace, which he does so beautifully, the universal principles of human coexistence. Rachael Kohn: Do you really think that in your lifetime, or even in your children’s lifetime, or in your children’s children’s lifetime, that religions could deconstruct. Is that a reality for you? Alan Clements: Rachael, if this program gets aired, we will have contributed to the evolution of the human species. And I think the best religion is no religion, and the most pure religion is the love of freedom. That to me is the highest God. Rachael Kohn: Thanks so much. Alan Clements: Thank you. Rachael Kohn: That’s Alan Clements, with his scatological take on the origins of Hell. I think some psychoanalysts would agree. Alan was a practising Buddhist for 25 years, including five years as a monk in Burma. But now he calls himself a spiritual maverick. His book is Instinct for Freedom: Finding Liberation through Living, a Book on the Dharma of Life. He lives in Vancouver. Production this week was by me and Geoff Wood, with Andrei Shabanov. Next week, don’t miss Part 2 of Spiritually Incorrect, when it’s Jewish humour down under, courtesy of two comedy rabbis on The Spirit of Things. Till then, so long from me, Rachael Kohn. Guests on this program: Further information:
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Presenter & Executive Producer: Rachael Kohn Producer: Geoff Wood Back to the The Spirit of Things homepage Visit The Sacred Site, the ABC's gateway to religion online | |
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