186. The Dalai Lama And The Genius Of The West: The Underground History
of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org
The
Dalai Lama And The Genius Of The West
Some time ago, I found myself on a warm
evening in June in Boulder, Colorado, sitting in a big white tent on a camp chair. Directly in front of me
was the Dalai Lama, who sat about
fourteen feet away with nobody between us.' As he spoke, our eyes met now and then, as I listened
with growing delight to this eloquent, humorous, plain-spoken man talk about wisdom and the world. Most of the
things he said were familiar: that love and compassion are human necessities, that forgiveness is
essential, that Western education
lacks a dimension of heart, that Americans need to rely more on inner
resources. But some of his
presentation was surprising — that it is better to stick with the wisdom traditions of one's own land than to
run from them pursuing in exotica what was under your nose all the time. At one point, with what looked to me
like a mischievous gleam in his
eye, he offered that he had always been made to feel welcome in Christian
countries, but
Christians were not so welcome in his own country. I suspect that many who
were there primarily to add to
their Buddhist understanding missed this pointed aside.
It was only when Tenzin Gyatso,
fourteenth Dalai Lama, spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people, came briefly to the
structure, goal, and utility of Buddhism — a location he spent no more than five minutes visiting — that
I was able to see in somewhat
sharp perspective where Christianity had taken a different path, and
American Christianity a very different
one. The goal of Buddhism was "happiness," he said, happiness was the key. The Dalai Lama
divided major world religions into "God- religions" and "God-less" religions, with
Buddhism in the latter category. 2
His Holiness seemed to focus marvelously
when in response to a question from the
audience about how wealthy people and countries could find spirituality,
he replied (again, I think, with a
mischievous smile) that Buddhism, with its orientation toward comfortable situations, found it easier
for rich people to be spiritual than poor ones! Tenzin Gyatso also tossed another bitter herb into the pot
for those romantic souls who
expected a continuous sweet presence in their lives from imported
religious teaching which they felt
lacking in their own, [saying, "Better not take someone else's
religion, plenty wisdom in your
own."] The Dalai Lama said at another juncture, as if talking to himself, that religion was not for
every day; religion was for times of pain. As I recall, his exact words were, "Religion
something like medicine, when no pain no need medicine; same thing religion."
The next morning, it
was my turn to speak, and with the Dalai Lama's words fresh in mind, I framed the Christian road as
one whose goal wasn't happiness in the usual sense. It was a road where wealth can be an obstacle to the ends of
obedience to God, to loving
neighbors as you love yourself, and to redemption through
self-transcendence. Unlike Tibetan
Buddhism, Western religion has no ultraspecific application, so it can't
be compared with medicine.
According to Christianity, religion is not a sometimes thing when you need it but a medium in which
we act out our lives. Nothing has any meaning without religion. Remember, even if you violently disagree
with what I just said here, it
isn't relevant to this discussion. I feel no urgency to convert you to
anything. My purpose is only to
show that the wisdom tradition of American Christianity has something huge
to say about where we've
misstepped in mass compulsion schooling.
The neglected genius
of American Christianity has taken on greater urgency for me — a lapsed Roman Catholic — as I enter old
age because it doesn't take much wisdom to see that Americans have been substantially broken away from
their own wisdom tradition by
forces hostile to its continuance. No mechanism employed to do this has
been more important than the
agency we call public schooling. In neglecting this wisdom tie we have gradually forgotten a powerful
doctrine assembled over thousands of years by countless millions of minds, hearts, and spirits, which
addresses the important common
problems of life which experience has shown to be impervious to riches,
intellect, charm, science, or
powerful connections.
Wherever I go in the
United States these days I hear of something called the crisis of discipline, how children are not
motivated, how they resist learning. That is nonsense, of course. Children resist teaching, as
they should, but nobody resists learning. However, I won't dispute that schools are often in chaos. Even ones
that seem quiet and orderly are in
moral chaos beyond the power of investigative journalism thus far to
penetrate. Disconnected children
underline school's failure as they come to public attention, so they must be explained in some way by
authorities.
I don't think it's
off the mark to say that all of us, whatever else we disagree upon, want kids to be disciplined in the sense of
exercising self-control. That goes for black mothers in Harlem, too, despite the scientific religion of schooling
which believes those mothers to be
genetically challenged. But we all want something besides just good behavior.
We pray for discipline in the more
specialized sense of intellectual interests and skills well enough mastered to provide joy and
consolation to all our lives — and maybe even a buck, too.
A discipline is what people who drink
vermouth cassis instead of red whiskey call a field of learning, like chemistry, history, philosophy, etc., and
its lore. The good student is
literally a disciple of a discipline. The words are from the Latin
disciplinare and discipulus. By
the way, I learned this all from a schoolteacher in Utica, New York, named Orin Domenico, who writes me, and
I pay attention. In this discipline matter, I'm Orin's disciple.
The most famous discipline in Western tradition is that
of Jesus Christ. That's true today
and it was true fifteen hundred years ago. And the most famous disciples
are Jesus' twelve apostles. What
did Christ's model of educational discipline look like? Attendance wasn't mandatory, for one thing. Christ
didn't set up the Judea compulsory school
system. He issued an invitation, "Follow me," and some did and
some didn't. Christ didn't send
the truant officer after those who didn't.
Orin tells me the first characteristic
of this model is a calling. Those who pursued Christ's discipline did so out of desire. It was their own
choice. They were called to it by
an inner voice, a voice we never give students enough time alone to
possibly hear, and that's more
true of the good schools than it is of the bad ones. Our present system of schooling alienates us so sharply from
inner genius, most of us are barred from ever being able to hear our calling. Calling in most of us
shrivels to fantasy and daydreams as
a remnant of what might have been.
The second characteristic of Christ's
discipline was commitment. Following Jesus wasn't easy. You had to drop everything else and there was no
chance of getting rich. You had to
love what you were doing; only love could induce you to walk across deserts,
sleep in the wilderness, hang out
with shady characters, and suffer scorn from all the established folks.
The third characteristic of Christ's
model of discipleship was self-awareness and independence. Christ's disciples weren't stooges. They had
to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions from the shared
experience. Christ didn't give many lectures or handouts. He mostly taught by his own practice, and
through parables open to
interpretation. Orin, my coach, personally doubts Christ ever intended
to start an institutional religion
because institutions invariably corrupt ideas unless kept small. They regiment thinking and tend toward
military forms of discipline. I don't think he's right about Christ's intention, but it's hard
to disagree about institutional pathology.
Finally, Christ's model of discipline
requires a master to follow — one who has himself or herself submitted to discipline and still practices it. The
way Orin puts it is this: Christ
didn't say, "You guys stay here in the desert and fast for a month.
I'll be over at the Ramada. You
can find me in the bar if you need help." He didn't begin his own
public life until he was almost a
rabbi, one fully versed in his tradition.
One way out of the fix we're in with
schools would be a return to discipleship in education. During early adolescence, students without a
clear sense of calling might have
a series of apprenticeships and mentorships which mostly involve
self-education. Our students have
pressing needs to be alone with themselves, wrestling against obstacles, both internal demons and external barricades
to self-direction.
As it is, we currently drown students in
low-level busy work, shoving them together in forced associations which teach them to hate other people,
not love them. We subject them to
the filthiest, most pornographic regimens of constant surveillance and ranking
so they never experience the
solitude and reflection necessary to become a whole man or woman. You are perfectly at liberty to
believe these foolish practices evolved
accidentally or through bad judgment, and I will defend your right to
believe that right up to the
minute the men with nets come to take you away.
1.
The occasion was a Spirituality in Education conference at the Naropa
Institute, Boulder, Colorado, in 1997. The gathering, at which 1 was asked to speak, was non-sectarian. "The reader is expressly
cautioned not to infer that I mean to imply Buddhism is either hedonistic or
with- out moral foundation.
Religion And Rationality
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