I have written a new article about sunyata, emptiness. This was inspired by comments to recent posts in which people expressed resistance to the "no self" thing.
One of my concerns about Buddhism in the West is that most of us get a kind of hit-and-miss education about dharma. This is partly because most of us don't have the advantage of being taught in a traditional, systematic way.
Instead, mostly we read books and articles that we find on our own. There are now oceans of books in western languages about Buddhism. Many are excellent. Many are dreadful. But even the good ones often focus on a particular aspect of dharma and don't give an overview of the whole thing.
Some college courses on Buddhist studies aren't much better. Of course, some college professors teaching about Buddhism are long-time practitioners who have good understanding. But I've run into enough "scholarly" papers on Buddhism by religious studies professors to persuade me that a large part of them don't know sunyata from Shinola.
Even if we are able to attend an occasional retreat, workshop, or lecture by a master teacher, we are likely to be shown just one piece of the puzzle, with little explanation of where that piece fits and how it relates to everything else. Some traditions for centuries have presented the teachings in a particular order, so that� the student isn't given teaching D until she has mastered A, B, and C. But for western converts to Buddhism, that order has largely been tossed out the window.
Some of us eventually get enough pieces of the puzzle that we can put some of the "picture" together ourselves. But I think it's more common for people to latch onto whatever they were first taught and assume that's all there is. So you find all kinds of people who are certain Buddhism is just about compassion, or mindfulness, or meditation.
The parts most often left out are morality and wisdom. Wisdom, of course, is anatta (Theravada) or sunyata (Mahayana). As comments to the recent "Buddhism in One Sentence" post revealed, there are people not getting that piece of the puzzle at all.
As for morality, my understanding is that in Asia, lay Buddhists are mostly taught the Precepts and encouraged to follow them. Traditionally, receiving and keeping the Precepts and supporting the monastic sangha are the primary focuses of lay Buddhism. Here, it's possible to stumble around in Buddhism for quite some time, reading books and going to lectures, and not hear much about the Precepts.
(I once ran into a website about Buddhism maintained by a self-appointed expert who proclaimed that Buddhism doesn't have much to say about morality. That's a bit like saying geometry doesn't have much to say about shapes.)
I was more fortunate than most, since from the beginning my studies were directed by a good teacher. A good teacher is one who shows you that is still something you don't understand, so you keep going. Even then, it was a long time before I appreciated what a vast treasure of teachings I had found, and how all these teachings fit together and support each other. And, believe me, I am still learning.
One of my resolutions for the new year is to be a little more comprehensive and systematic in what I write about here. I'm planning articles on all of the Six Perfections, which tie together a lot of things. If any of you can identify a particular area where you think you are missing pieces, please speak up.
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