Doing Spiritual Practice In Asia

I came to travel here in Asia for a bunch of reasons. I realize now that many of these reasons were not even conscious to me before I got here. But, as many of my friends know, the biggest motivation for this journey I am on is and has always been to experience "spiritual practice" (mostly Buddhism, but yoga/Hinduism too) here in the old countries. I mean, it stands to reason that, if you want the authentic, deep, true experience, you head to the point of origin, amirite?

Gil Fronsdal - one of my main Buddhist teachers, who has decades experience on the Buddhist path, many years experience in monasteries in Asia, and a PhD in Buddhist studies - once said something interesting about this subject. He said, back in the fifties and sixties, when the first Westerners were coming to Asia to practice Buddhism/Hinduism (Gary Snyder, Richard Alpert/Ram Dass, Franklin Jones/Adi Da, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Robert Aitkin, Richard Baker, etc), the situation was different. Not only could you *not* find authentic, deep, profound Buddhist/Hindu teachers and experiences in the West, but the societies of Asia were also more traditional, more rooted in those spiritual traditions, the lineages had more vitality. Now, however, you *can* find the genuine blow-your-mind's-ass deal in the West, and, as Asian societies have modernized and Westernized, there has been, perhaps predictably, a correlated decline of genuine spiritual centers and teachers. So, Gil said, the depth that a Westerner used to have to come to Asia to find, now, you can usually now experience without leaving your home country.

I heard something similar from a friend of mine who has for years been a successful world-traveling hatha yoga teacher, and who recently came to Rishakesh (India's "yoga capital") for a month of training. He told me that, although he liked and respected many of the teachers whose classes he visited in India, more of the teachers seemed to be more semi-charlatans just playing on Western traveler's ignorance of what true yoga teaching should be like. When I asked him if their was a teacher training program he recommended in Rishakesh, and he wrote back something like, "Ehh, for teacher trainings, honestly, stick to the West - we've got programs like that set up in a more organized fashion."

Having been in Asia for five months now, I have to say, I am inclined to agree with these sentiments. Yes, Asians are grounded in thousands of years of history with Buddhism/Hinduism/Sufism/Taoism/etc, and yes they live in a culture that is saturated with the symbols and stories of these traditions. It's always charming to me when some barely educated taxi driver or someone brings up a Hindu story that he's known since childhood and that I found so illuminating when I heard it in my thirties. And I have encountered much deep and true spirituality since I have gotten here.

But, it also seems to me, Westerner convert teachers and communities often approach practice with an enthusiasm, freshness, sincerity, and urgency that can sometimes be lacking in the old country populations. I was at one Thai monastery, and the grouchy old abbot said that he preferred giving lectures to Westerners over Thais. That, he said, is because Westerners listen carefully to his teachings and then seem to try to actually apply them towards making genuine life changes. In contrast, he said, the Thais mostly sit there attentively and piously listening to the master, as their culture tells them to, as they have since childhood - but then they act like they never heard a word, the instant they leave the temple gate and go back to their daily, drama-filled lives.

Perhaps I have yet to meet some super-dazzling spiritual teacher who is the real deal, and who I could have only met here in Asia - some Hindu sadhu, Tibetan lama, or Japanese Zen Roshi with the infinite light of infinite infinity shining from their infinite eyes. But, I have to say, the most "enlightened" (by the classical Buddhist/Hindu definitions of the term) people that I have met so far all teach in the US, and deepest temples and meditation halls have all been in the US.

Bottom line : after five or six decades of doing it ourselves, there really is deep wisdom of Asian religious practice to be found in the West - maybe, possibly, "as" deep as in the old countries.

On a related topic - I think that there are different levels at which I (we) as visitors can approach spiritual practice here in Asia. There is, of course, just wanting to have a feel for the place - like I have done at many places in Asia - see it, feel it, be nourished by it, have a sense of the spirit of the place, but not necessarily sit down and do any intensive all-day meditation practice or puja or anything. Then there is arriving at an Asian temple and engaging in actual practice - but engaging just deeply enough to get a mind-opening sense of how it is done here, how it is different from practice in the West (i.e. "In Thailand, the monks actually do *walking* meditation for about half of their meditation time - and, when doing sitting meditation, they don't really sit on cushions the way we do"), how it is the same, and letting that new perspective inform one's practice back home.

And then there is, of course, the deepest level of engagement - seeking actual transformation, being willing to engage to the point of arriving at that sometimes frightening or disorienting mind-melting "self"-melting edge.

To be honest, I am wary of hitting that final level here in Asia. I consider actual growth-edge disorienting experiences ones that I would rather have back home with teachers and spiritual communities that I am familiar with and have chosen as my own, rather than here in Asia, at places where the people may be good people but where they are unknown to me, and where the language, customs, food, cultural assumptions, etc are also all unfamiliar. I mean, who wants to be cosmically freaking out about one's place in infinity, only to have the teacher completely fail to console you with his enigmatic comment that "tomorrow Sun rise twice in West", before heading to the dining hall for a bowl of pig's brain soup (or whatever).

Which is not to say that I have not chosen to engage in genuine, challenging transformational experiences while here. I have now done four five-to-fifteen-day genuine meditate-all-day intensives, with all the transformative challenges inherent in that - I was "up against it" for real. And, I am happy to say, it all worked out, I was glad for the experience. And I have some more experiences (for both meditation and yoga) planned that I imagine will be similarly intense. We'll see how it goes ...