The Temple Dog Barks at Interpreters, Translators, and Followers by Doug Rose

        
 I’m writing this in the company of Buddhist Monks and Nuns in a Southeast Asian Temple. As well as being surrounded by Nuns and Monks, I am also surrounded by several dozen dogs of all sizes, colors, and breeds. My robed room mates have rescued these animals and me, from the intense cruelty of steaming Asian streets. These dogs, and of course the Temple folks themselves, are a joy to be with. They never blame the society, their moms, the government, the Boogeyman, or the anti-Buddha for any of the problems that they may suffer. They accept personal responsibility for their thoughts and actions.
         
Buddha himself was not a member of any of the many schools of Buddhism. Jesus was neither Catholic nor Protestant. The following inscription was on the hilt of Mohammed’s sword: “Forgive him who wrongs thee. Join him who cuts thee off. Do good to him who does evil to thee, and speak the truth although it be against thyself.”
   
Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and others like them were damn fine people and exceptional examples of productive spirituality. I have no quarrel with anyone’s God, teacher, or prophet, but followers can be fairly dangerous people at times. Translators or interpreters can be even more so.
 
Everybody talks about truth as if it is Ramen noodles, and they have a case of it in the kitchen cabinet, but the truth is that what we tend to call truth is usually defined by whose truth it is. The mundane truth by which we judge the world is subjective. It is dependent upon the angle from which it is being seen by the person who is seeing it.   
           
Symbolic references are often used in spiritual teachings. That’s no problem. The problems arise when interpreters and translators concretize those symbols into material “truth” or “fact,” and followers then treat that information as unbendable law. Many followers pay more attention to the illusory benevolence of inherited superstition than they pay to foster a functional benevolence within themselves.
   
For the first five hundred years of Buddhism, there were no material images of the Buddha—no statues, no paintings. There were good reasons for this.
           
Historical, literal, fundamentalist, concretized interpretations of symbols make it too easy for us to abuse spiritual mechanisms, and to escape responsibility for our own development and the well being of the world. This attitude ends badly. For yea, no lord can keepeth dry that person who will pisseth into the wind.
   
Translators and interpreters often reconfigure great wisdom teachings to fit their own ignorance and selfish motives—or the ignorance and selfish motives of the political and economic forces that ally with and employ them. Darkness sometimes co-opts the light. What we have inherited as “the will of God” may have as little to do with any God’s will as Wall Street has to do with integrity in finance, or snack cakes have to do with nutrition.
   
The term “spin doctors” may be a recently invented one, but the concept of readjusting the truth is nearly as ancient as the wisdom these vipers disassemble—and then rebuild to fit their own purposes. Many of today’s interpretations of “The Way” and “The Truth” resemble the originals about as much as the Christianity of Hitler, or the Spanish Inquisition resembled the original doctrine. Some of the people who know Christ is the answer must have forgotten what the question was. This forgetting-the-question syndrome is certainly not exclusive to Christians who have gone astray. Many followers of every faith on Earth have been way too trusting of the dogma presented them and some of the people who present it.
 
Interpreters package and then sell, rent, or impose upon us artificially flavored illusions of truth, salvation, enlightenment, and happiness that are built upon their goals. That twisted information and those errant goals are often very different from those of the original teachers from whom these interpreters borrow their moral authority.
          
Following our own inner guidance will yield better results than following the village idiot. Neither Buddha nor Jesus was waiting for a Buddha or a Jesus to come solve their personal problems or those of humanity. Whatever we need is within us. The job of uncovering and constructively using it is ours to do.
   
            
Ripe for spiritual paths that fit neatly into our fast food/consumer mentality, so-called civilized humanity is glad to pay the bill that its false prophets have presented us with. Many people believe that we can rent an available-on-demand and conveniently disposable synthetic substitute for decency and wisdom instead of working towards those qualities, earning them, sustaining them, and then constructively implementing them. The interpreters, the translators, the forces that ally with or employ them, and the enforcers that protect those interests continue to collect the rent for themselves while they return hollow benefits to us.
   
There are people who will tell you that they are on a fast track to Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, or Wherever. They may want you to pay for more information from them, buy certain products, fight “holy” wars at their request, or donate other parts of your mind and life to them. We all know of televangelists and politicians who make a robber baron’s fortune by convincing some of us that giving them money can buy us love and happiness—but a few greedy clowns on TV are just the tip of the iceberg.
          
We are the iceberg. The world might be full of Mother Teresas and Einsteins if the best of humanity’s notions were given proper attention by most of us. Many folks that wouldn’t trust an average stranger with a single dollar don’t mind trusting a politician or preacher full of vacuum-packed hope and bullshit with serious money and even their lives. Many people are too tired, misinformed, or stressed out to access on their own psychospiritual existence. Others are convinced that their personal spiritual maintenance is a job beyond their ability—so instead of working at it themselves, they trust TV personalities who they will never meet with that responsibility. The result? Instead of a world full of Mother Teresas and Einsteins we have an overabundance of dull, warped, frustrated spiritual slackers that never bothered to research where the road is, but are nonetheless pissed off about not reaching the destination! Go figure!
   
I have to say it again. Following our inner guidance would certainly yield better results than following the clamor of our village idiots.
        
Yes, it does require less strength to trust or blame something outside of one’s self than it takes to recognize one’s own responsibility, find one’s own faults, and change a detrimental emotional flaw. Unfortunately, this easy-road approach is bullshit.

Whatever that Bigger Spiritual Something Else out there may be if we are distracted by a biased dogma and the hidden agendas of the greedy interests that hide behind lies, concretized symbols, and rusted metaphor, we will never get in touch with that Something Else.

The move toward being at home with our unstained intelligence may be as simple as making a clear-minded decision to do so. Making the effort to be more aware of what we do and don’t want our brains to absorb and act upon has to yield results. Anyone consistently moving in the direction of clarified intelligence (or anything else, for that matter!) will have to reach it eventually. Try it! Point yourself somewhere, start moving, and don’t change direction. You will get to that somewhere. The mind moves toward the destination we plan for it just as surely as feet move us across the room.
  
The greatest purpose of our greatest teachers may be to show us how, in the long run, to be our own greatest teacher.
  
Does all this sound abstract, contradictory, weird, un-interpretable, obtuse, un-translatable, and maybe even bizarre? I hope so. I planned it that way. I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a fucking interpreter or translator myself!
God Forbid! I’d rather be a dog.

“The common error of ordinary religious practice
is to mistake the symbol for the reality,
to look at the finger pointing the way
and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it.”
Alan Watts

 “Having failed to distinguish thoughts from things,
we then fail to distinguish words from thoughts.
We think that if we can label a thing we have understood it.”
Maha Sthavira Sangharakshita

“You can tell you created God in your image
when it turns out, God hates the same people you do.”
Anne Lamott