I guess the place where tensions and internal contradictions meet is the place where the rubber hits the road. Psychologist Marsha Linehan developed a therapy called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. Borrowing from Hegel, she thought that all forward progression involved the synthesis of opposites. In therapy that meant telling patients that they were “fine just as they were” and they “had to change”. Fritz Perls thought the same thing – that opposites were really polarities in need of integration. The trick is figuring out how to do that in a way that enlarges oneself and doesn’t simply tie oneself into knots.

Now, I have to ask, what is there that does not have some internal contradiction, some tension? Is there no tension in Shakespeare? How about existentialism? No tension there? Any internal contradiction in modern science?

You do have a point about the nirvanic ideal. It’s definitely oversold. And it’s not just in the Pali Canon, it’s all over Zen and the Mahayana canon, too. They all say pretty much the same thing, which is that desire etc. can cease to arise completely, permanently and irreversibly. So, are we to take that literally, or view such statements as spiritual metaphors?

The bodhisattva vows is a good example. The first vow is to save all living beings, and the fourth is to attain complete enlightenment. It’s said that if a bodhisattva fails to achieve the first vow, then the fourth one can never be realized. But how can ALL livings beings be saved? Do we just say well, that’s no good and forget about it? Or, should we try to capture the spirit behind the thought of saving all beings?

This is what I think so many people miss. I really kind of hate to give Nichiren kudos, but he was right on about this point: it is the spirit behind the words that are more important than the words themselves.

Sure the sutras were misogynistic. It was a pretty misogynistic world back in the day. We don’t to carry that forward. Puritanism? I don’t know if I’d agree. Detachment is good. Celibacy, overrated. And a constricted range of human experiencing, I completely disagree with.

I suspect the early Sangha promoted this image of the perfectly peaceful, non-threatening Buddhist as a political expedient, to provide protection from governments and others that might be hostile to Buddhism. It’s also worth noting that this ideal is not that different from the ideal of the sage in Daoism, and that having an ideal, something to strive toward, is not altogether a bad thing, when tempered with some reason.

If we interpret the teachings in such a way that we feel we’re being asked to become something inhuman or to turn ourselves into a sort of Stepford Buddhist, then that’s our mistake. Realistically, I think all that’s asked of us is to try, to strive. That’s why Shantideva wrote, “To unify and discipline my spirit I will strive.” And why Nichiren wrote, “Austere practices are for saints and sages, but not for ordinary people. Yet even common mortals can attain Buddhahood if they cherish one thing: earnest faith. In the deepest sense, earnest faith is the will to understand and live up to the spirit, not the words, of the sutras.”

If Buddhahood is a process, then the ideal, or “end state,” can never be fully realized. But then ideals are merely archetypes, examples – something to strive for. The sky above looks blue, but that’s an illusion. Yet we like lotus flowers that can only grow in the mud, nonetheless rise up, and strive to reach for that lovely halcyon and wild blue yonder.

I agree that being open within oneself and becoming more compassionate of others are not mutually exclusive goals. Carl Rogers may have been the first to posit that people who are more accepting of their own internal experience are more accepting of others as well. I certainly embrace both polarities within my own practice.

My biggest issue is what the “end state” of Buddhist practice is. [If there is an "end state" -- I don't personally believe there is, but 2,500 years of Buddhist doctrine asserts its existence.] The Pali Canon model — as best as I can interpret it — which may be closest to what the Buddha actually taught — doesn’t stir me these days. The end of desire and aversion and preternatural calmness doesn’t seem all that attractive. My practice seems much more alive and vital and, dare I say it, human. I worry about practitioners who in trying to live up to (or pretending to live up to) that goal may be sacricing their own humanity and aliveness in the process.

But yes, being open to and connected to all of life is not incompatible with being a more decent human being.

Thanks for this thoughtful, probing essay. Perhaps the tension between the ideals of openness to experience and the perfection of a compassionate self might best be resolved in action, which is to say, in meditation followed by acts of compassion. Thich Nhat Hanh has often remarked that we must address our own suffering before we can address anyone else’s. As he puts it in Living Buddha, Living Christ, “we have to dissolve all prejudices, barriers, and walls and empty ourselves in order to listen and look deeply before we utter even one word.”

I’m not so sure that the “notion of being present for all of life” is unique to “Western Zen” or is even a defining attribute. Versions of that “notion” appear widely in Buddhist texts, many of them Theravadan, and though the idea of being open to it all may seem to be at odds with cultivating a more loving or compassionate self, in practice that need not be the case. Perhaps you are pointing to an underlying tension between Buddhist meditation as mental cultivation (bhavana) and meditation as awareness (djana). Even so, I think that the same person can practice both, if not necessarily at the same time.

Stealing is taking what is not given. It doesn’t say to go ahead and take without consent because you think it is justified. Just as much of the stolen money has been used for evil – used to prop up dictators and much more etc.