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.
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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