October 5, 2020  In America we like to talk about equality and human rights, but this country was founded on violence and oppression. Our forefathers stole this land from the native peoples, waging war on the rightful inhabitants of the continent. The history of slavery and racist oppression toward each newly arriving ethnicity on these shores has left us with a legacy of ignorance. Although some of the outright bigotry has lessened in our recent past, racism is still the substratum of our society’s structure. This is not just an American phenomenon of course; in fact, our classist, sexist, and racist culture is quite similar to the ancient Indian society that the Buddha was born into. Ignorance is not just Western or Eastern; it is human. For the awakened revolution to take root, the pervasive racist structure of society has to be dismantled. This is what the Buddha began to do way back in the day, through nonviolent defiance and compassionate engagement with the system of oppression.

There is nothing incompatible between defying the lies of human ignorance and serving the truth of enlightened human potential. Defiance is renunciation: the effort of avoiding and speaking out against the causes of suffering is always going to be part of the path to spiritual awakening.

Religion, which was obviously created to give meaning and purpose to people, has become part of the oppression. This is true in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. The Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad were all revolutionaries who critiqued and attempted to dismantle the corrupt societal traditions of their time. Yet their teachings, like most things in human society, have been distorted and co-opted by the con- fused and power-hungry patriarchal tradition. What were once the creation myths of ancient cultures have become doctrines of oppression. More blood has been spilled and more people oppressed in the name of religion than for any other reason in history! Although faith and religiosity are central to human history, it may be time to reject all forms of organized religion and to begin afresh with practical, applicable, and experiential philosophy. I would reject so-called Buddhism along with the rest, because much of what masquerades as Buddhism today is in direct opposition to what the Buddha actually did and taught.

The Buddha was insistent on questioning and defying the religious structure. He urged everyone he came into contact with to find the truth for themselves, not based on faith or tradition, but out of their own direct experience of wisdom and compassion. So the spiritual revolutionary must defy the religious structures as well as the material world.

We can look to religions and spiritual teachings for the tools of awakening—the truth does reside in most of the religions— but we must understand that all religions also contain confused traditions and lies that need to be destroyed by clear under- standing and our own direct experience of awakening.

Defiance means standing up for what you know is right, rejecting patriarchal human dogma, and embracing the search for meaning with a steadfast engagement with reality. It means seeing clearly our mind’s fears and attachments as impersonal, conditioned phenomena and destroying the misidentification with the mind’s confusion. Beneath the confusion we will find the heart’s natural wisdom and compassion.

The spiritual revolutionary defies both the internal and external forces of oppression.

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