At the Crossroads

Nagarjuna's significance was twofold: first, he went back to what he understood to be the central teachings of the Buddha; and second, it was the first time since the Buddha that a recognizable individual rearticulated the teachings in his own voice. Nagarjuna opened up the possibility of Buddhism's diversifying beyond the early schools into what have come to be known as the Mahayana traditions. Yet although Mahayanists consider Nagarjuna a founding figure, I find him interesting precisely because he belongs neither to the camp of early Buddhist traditions nor to the schools that follow him. He's a transitional figure; he stands between the past and the future, and that gives him a freedom to speak his own mind without defending an orthodoxy or establishing a new one.

Are we at a similar crossroads today? Is it our collective challenge to "reinterpret" the dharma, using our own idiom?

In a sense, yes, but as soon as you set out to reinterpret the teachings, you risk putting a distance between yourself and the dharma. That's a danger. It is important both to be firmly grounded in the dharma and to respond to the challenges in the world in which you live. This has been the challenge every time Buddhism has gone from one culture to another: to be truthful to the sources of the tradition while articulating them in a way that meets the needs of one's time.

Is teaching from multiple traditions one of the ways you face that challenge?

Perhaps. Each tradition has something to offer that the others don't. I'm attempting in my teaching to find a coherent model that draws equally upon the Tibetan teachings I received as a monk-philosophical, psychological, and doctrinal-together with the practice of mindful awareness, or vipassana, with all of this then being shot through with the quality of perplexity, curiosity, and questioning that Zen koan practice engenders.

Studying in more than one tradition is common in the West. Why do you think that is?

With some exceptions, you can't always expect a Westerner to identify fully with and take on a given Asian orthodoxy. When we look at Buddhism historically, each of the traditions has developed in response to the needs of people in particular cultures at particular times, and each has left parts of the tradition in the shadows. In the West we're exposed to all of the different schools, which is unprecedented; we've also come to Buddhism with a whole new set of questions. Many of us are more committed to the questions than to the givens of a certain orthodoxy. Inevitably, we draw from different Buddhist traditions.

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