Is Buddhism a Cult?

Is Catholicism? Is Celebrity?

On the urge to Hero Worship.

I grew up Buddhist. In Colorado. In a little community that had lots of strange things going on. We liked to wear fancy pins on our lapels. Sake was the drink of choice, not beer or whiskey. We (the adults, not we children) practiced ancient Buddhist meditations that had funny-sounding lines in the chants or hymns—“killing the enemy and burying him upside down” was a favorite with us young folks. We had thangkas, or Tibetan paintings, all over the place depicting Buddhist weirdos having sex or having six arms or both. We bowed to the guru. The guru drank sake and wore lapel pins and slept with some of his students, which at the time wasn’t verboten, but was…interesting.

So yeah, a lot of my normal friends and acquaintances asked me, is Buddhism a cult?

I usually offered something along the lines of, how do you define a cult? If it’s just a small community or weird to you because it’s foreign, that doesn’t mean it’s a cult. After all, Catholicism is huge and more familiar to most of those in the West, and yet it’s chock-full of weirdness and faith and belief without evidence and trust and ritual and rigamarole and dogma and…yeah, corruption and abuse…but most folks, even while lovingly (or hatefully) criticizing Catholicism, won’t call it a “cult.”

So just because something’s “Asian,” or a small community, or weird to you…doesn’t mean “it’s a cult.”

A cult, in my view, implies that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Power dynamics are off. Hero worship is riding high, unchecked. Spirituality is being used—not to wake up, but to satisfy some very base desires—in the way musical artists use fame, too often.

As Scarface put it, “first you get the money [or fame], then you get the power, then you get the sex.”

By any fair-minded definition, I’d say Buddhism is not a cult.

By any fair-minded definition, I’d say that my particular Buddhist “sangha” or community was a cult, in many ways. In other ways, it was wonderful, honest, self-correcting, earnest, boring, imperfect and transparently so.

It was cultish in that it had

1) effed-up power dynamics, and we were high on our own supply (we thought we were special, which we were; and better than others, which we weren’t) and

2) teachers who had sex with students (sure, things were viewed differently in the 70s and 80s, and they were generally open about it), and

3) students who worshipped their teachers (despite being told not to, repeatedly, as I was, and we all were, when taught about non-theism—ie, don’t put teachers or anyone on a pedestal, we’re all human, we all poop [that’s actually a Buddhist teaching], we’re all imperfect, we’re all fundamentally okay, but our neurosis can cloud over our okay-ness).

(Did that parentheses ever wrap things up?)

Now, today, I’d say my community is not a cult. We formally separated, for better and worse, but mostly better, with Buddhist guru who hurt some people.

We’re back to being a disorganized religion. We have clear codes of conduct. We’re newly humbled, and broke—both healthy signs.

We depend on thoughtful, honest communication. We depend on being honest with ourselves, first, about our own insecurities and tendencies to worship. For too often we blame the leaders, up there, and pull them down here and step all over them and burn them in effigy—and while that might be understandable, we need to hold ourselves to account, too, so we can learn from it all and so that the next generations can be spared similar abuse.

That’s non-theism: accountability. Self-respect. A refusal to close our eyes and grovel when we bow to another. We bow as equals.

So now that we’ve used my community as an example, let’s focus on non-theism itself.

‘Cause it’s good stuff and a vital teaching not only in the Buddhist tradition, but in…reality. In any tradition, in any religion, and even for the non-religious, it’s important both in relationships, work life, and in our attitudes toward therapists, parents, celebrities, musical artists.

So: Is there a God? Maybe. The Buddha didn’t really care.

He reminded us that what’s more important is being present, genuine, and kind to self and others.

So what do Buddhists believe in? That’s a trick question. We don’t “believe” in anything, particularly. But we also don’t “disbelieve” in things.

Trungpa Rinpoche always described Buddhism as “non-theistic” because we Buddhists aren’t meant to be a-theistic—we don’t not believe in God, or gods. We only believe in things that we can find to be true. That said, if God or gods show up, we’ll be happy to change our minds.

Non-theism is taking the joy and love and relief we find in spirituality and doing the hard work of finding it in ourself. Non-theism is about self-love, self-friendship, self-respect.

Worshipping others is lazy in the way drugs is lazy—it’s a shortcut to the experience of enlightenment. Genuine spirituality doesn’t do shortcuts.

Non-theism commands you: always retain your critical intelligence. Trust the principal one (that’s you). Do not place others on pedestals. Do not kick others off of pedestals that you put them on, then blame them for falling. Do not look for divine satisfaction outside of one’s own holy heart.

Don’t impute deep meaning into things that you don’t understand. Don’t chant holy things in a lanague you don’t understand because it “sounds spiritual.” Don’t put too much thought into reincarnation. Or karma. Same goes for astrology, for ghosts who may or may not go bump in the night, for gnomes and faeries, for woo-woo, for love affairs…for any set of expectations we take and throw against the wall of reality.

Same goes for Buddhism itself. Don’t put too much faith in it. As the Dalai Lama famously reminds us, if Science and Buddhism conflict, we ought to go with Science.

When the Buddha himself was asked if he was enlightened, he didn’t show up for create a rainbow aura or levitate or whatever. He touched the earth. Reality is like that. It’s just there. First we chop wood, carry water. Later, we chop wood, carry water. In between, we’re confused and entertained and speedy and miserable and lonely and, if we’re lucky, we meet the Buddhist teachings and actually listen to them and get ourselves on a meditation cushion and, if we’re really lucky, we meditate.

“When we tell ourselves and others that our heroes are inhuman and on a pedestal that is not just high but unattainable, we are actually pushing ourselves down rather than climbing.” ~ Katrina Honigs

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Enjoy this? You might like to add a gap to your day with a little more Buddhist wisdom. On our Walk The Talk video and podcast series, Waylon tackles the topic of Theism: