When someone asks me if I’m “spiritual” I always think that what they’re really asking is if I have beaded curtains in my apartment,  or if I adorn my walls with thin abstract tapestries, perhaps subscribe to some kind of new age practice, enjoy incense more than anyone who isn’t a Buddhist really should, or whether or not I am totally 420 friendly.  They probably don’t mean that, but that’s where my head goes.  A spiritual person in my mind is forever going to be that dreadlocked hippie who thinks that every religion says the same thing and whose religious convictions don’t flow much deeper than the discount rack of the closest second hand bookshop.  Granted I live in an area that proudly displays leaflets for meetings with gurus, has no less than half a dozen spiritual centres, and I live just a block away from a metaphysical bookstore called Abraham’s Books.  So maybe I’m in the area of “spiritual” but I’ve never identified with the term.

Calling myself “religious” really doesn’t do it either, it’s all on the other end of the spectrum, someone who reads their holy book every day but doesn’t read New Scientist, who lives a life regimented by a text several centuries out of date when it comes to social laws.  It’s all church groups and inward thinking, and while I’ve experienced a lot of that and it’s often quite pleasant, that isn’t who I am either.

But all that is just an aside about what I really want to talk about.  Today I picked up one of the free papers we have circulating around the city, and what caught my eye was a section on ‘Spirituality.’  Amidst all the advertisements were two articles: a short piece by a local psychotherapist and an excerpt from Eckhart Tolle’s book “A New Earth.”

The first is, well… I’m not sure what that has to do with spirituality.  It’s about racism and how we are all so much better than that.  Pretty much nothing is said about the difficulty of the subject, about it’s history and how it takes it’s form today.  Just, “aw shucks, shouldn’t we all just get along.” Fluff.  But with Eckhart Tolle there was some meat there.

I have avoided this guy’s books and teachings because it sounded like every other self-help, new age, “spiritual” title that comes along every few years.  After reading this small portion, entitled “The Ego is not Personal” I feel safe saying that that is exactly what it is.

All I could see in his words was the stuff he probably cribbed it from- Buddhism, Taoism, a little bit of basic psychology, maybe even a little Dianetics.  At one point he even rips off Nietzsche:

“In certain cases, you may need to protect yourself or someone else from being harmed by another, but beware of making it your mission to “eradicate evil,” as you are likely to turn into the very thing you are fighting against.  Fighting unconsciousness will draw you into unconsciousness yourself. ”

“Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you,” has a much better ring to it.  Granted it may just be a coincidence, but coming from a couple hundred words which sound like Buddhism for dummies makes it all the more suspect.

When I see stuff like this I get agitated, and I can’t really tell whether or not that is deserved.  It could very well be that all Mr. Tolle is doing is re-contextualizing the stuff he studied in college, packaging it for a broader audience.  Buddhists have a word for this- upaya, meaning skillful means.  It means that Buddhist practicioners should recalibrate their message to fit their audience.  Talking to a Muslim about Buddhism can be a lot different than talking to a Christian or an atheist, and so Buddhists can be free to use their own means and skills to introduce different people to the dharma.

Eckhart Tolle’s message is essentially that thoughts and the mind get in the way of our own happiness, that we spend so much time thinking about other things rather than being present, therefore real contentedness eludes us. Instead we should, through various means like meditation, do our best to ignore those thoughts and centre ourselves in the now, in the present moment, and we will discover that that moment can be just as fulfilling and enthralling as that distant goal we are always hoping to achieve.

This isn’t news to anyone who has taken a basic introductory course on eastern religion and philosophies.  This is Buddhism, this is Hinduism, this is Jainism, it is Taoism, heck it could even be Confucianism.

Tolle and I both seem to agree that the point of religion should be the cesation of suffering.  If his books has managed to do that for even a few people then fine.  But people keep calling this guy a spiritual master as if he invented something new, and I haven’t seen any evidence of that.  Further investigation is required, I think.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’m getting sore about this because I saw two pieces in a paper dedicated to “spirituality” that could have been written by someone in highschool, and damnit I could rock that job.

Time to write a proposal.