During his recent visit to Los Angeles Lama Jampa Thaye sat down on Monday November 2 to reflect on more than twenty years of teaching the Dharma in America. He offers a candid look at the unique opportunities and cultural hurdles facing practitioners today, from the allure of reinvention to commercialization. Ultimately, he shares clear guidance on cultivating authentic, traditional practice within modern Western life.
Are there ways in which America is especially well placed for the Dharma to become established, compared with elsewhere in the West?
In some ways, yes, because one of the big impulses for Dharma in the West was the literary movement of the 1950s known as the Beats. That meant America was seen as a place where Dharma would flourish extensively, and would even influence people in Europe towards an interest in Dharma. Of course, there was another impulse for Dharma in America: the existence of Chinese and Japanese immigrant populations from the late nineteenth century onwards. So there was, in a sense, some ground already prepared for Dharma.
But equally, in Europe there was quite a lot of scholarly interest in Buddhism from the nineteenth century onwards, in places like Russia, Germany, France and even Britain, which wasn't really paralleled here. So I think you could say that both places had some positive features in their background, in the run-up to Asian Buddhist teachers coming to teach Western disciples in America and Europe. So I'd say it evens out, really.
And conversely, are there particular challenges here in the US that you don't see elsewhere in the West?
To a degree, many of the challenges are common to the modern world. I was going to say ‘the Western world’, but it goes beyond that with the spread of technology and certain modern social attitudes.
But if one can speak in such generalities, despite what F. Scott Fitzgerald said, there are many second acts, third, fourth, twentieth acts in American life because of the American genius for reinvention.
So on the one hand, that makes them, perhaps from time to time, interested in Dharma; but equally, the capacity for reinvention can lead them to reinvent themselves out of Dharma after a brief romance with it.
So I'd say that kind of rootlessness, which characterises quite a lot of American life, is both a plus and a minus for Dharma, really. And so it is a challenge, yes.
Not to mention, of course, the fact that, like most Westerners coming to Dharma, people have not sufficiently disentangled themselves from their basic cultural roots. Now, once upon a time, that would have meant particularly Christianity, in its Catholic and, to a lesser extent, its Protestant forms, and Judaism.
But now the dominant cultural assumptions seem to be post-Christian, and instead a kind of mixture of radical self-centredness and atheism which seem to be, for many younger people in particular, the default positions — all likely served with a helping of liberal values.
All these make for difficulties for Dharma, because people have to unthink them to approach Dharma in a fresh and clear way, responding to the actual words of the Buddha, not what we might project and wish the words of the Buddha to be.
And in terms of these challenges, are there particular remedies you would advise for people who want to overcome them?
Yes, I think people need to ask themselves deeply: what do they want in this world? How do they want to live, and how do they want to die? Then they will turn to something such as Dharma, whose answers are incredibly fundamental about who we are as human beings, and at the same time lead us beyond the mere circumstances of our society and our temporary ups and downs. But that means deep, deep questioning of oneself.
You've been teaching in America for over 20 years now, alongside many other places. Have you noticed changes over that time — anything that has changed for the better, or for the worse?
It's hard to say, really, because I'm still an outsider to American society, and so I don't want to be impertinent and claim to really understand it all that well. I think the fact that quite a lot of the earlier involvement in Tibetan Buddhism, from the 1970s, was quite superficial and fashion-driven means that there is some kind of staleness and disappointment about quite a lot of Buddhism in America.
But this is also allied with a steady and relentless commercialisation of Buddhism — particularly assisted by the internet and other such things. There are many more people who seem to call themselves Dharma teachers in America, per capita, than there are in Europe, where there are such people too, of course. But in general, I think in Europe Tibetan Buddhism, for instance, is a little bit more connected with the traditions in India, Nepal and elsewhere.
And maybe because of the vast distances, American Buddhism is not so connected. Some of it claims to be, but a lot of it is quite detached. So there is much more space in American Buddhism, so-called, as a social phenomenon, to invent yourself as a teacher. And this, of course, will only lead to disappointment and confusion in the long run.
There are many good people in American Dharma, too. Many sincere people and there are many positive factors in the American ‘I can do it’ attitude. That's good. That has, after all, led to a lot of what the world admires in American culture.
But America's big. Everything is bigger here.
And finally, turning to America itself — do you think there is anything special about this place, California, where our Sakya temple was established in 2010?
Yes. The Sixth Gallery reading in 1955, in San Francisco — Jack Kerouac there, with Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg and Philip Lamantia. That, the beginning of the Beat Generation, was for me the sign that Dharma can work in America. Beyond that, I can't say anything. So that's my very personal take on it.
Can one be fully American — or English, or French — and at the same time a traditional Dharma practitioner? What would you say to someone who wants to do that?
Well, I think the main thing is that those Americans who want to practise Sakya and Kagyu and Nyingma and Geluk should, I'd say, find good traditional teachers. And consider yourselves to be the Dharma brothers and sisters of the men and women who practise in Asia, and the men and women who went before us.
But at the same time, you're American, or you're English, or you're French, and so value the beauty and the wonderful things in that culture, while being, spiritually, internally, and most rootedly, a Dharma person. Why can't you be a Dharma person? Why can't a traditional Kagyupa be an Italian, or French, or a Sakyapa be a Canadian, or American, or an English person?
They can, just as Tibetans became authentic Buddhists, even though Buddhism started in India. They had the modesty and the common sense, and the diligence to work at receiving the Dharma properly over several centuries.
We can do the same.
There's nothing more worthwhile in the world, in our lives, than to engage with the Dharma. But we must engage with the Dharma with our whole being.