Reading the newspaper this morning I learnt of yet another wicked and divisive thing Donald Trump has initiated. It seems that he is now ordering staff within the Veterans Affairs Office to report any instances of ‘anti-Christian bias’ among their colleagues. He has demanded names, dates, and locations.

A part of me immediately wants to send this up for the nonsense it is. Remember Monty Python’s ‘You never know when to expect the Spanish Inquisition,’ – whereupon a group of men in skirts and funny hats rush in? However, this is also a slide into something much darker, something that panders to the worst parts of our nature and will, as with everything Trump touches, increase human suffering.

So where is Buddhism in the midst of all this? Initially I felt rather superior on the topic. And then I remembered a Tibetan teacher called Geshe Pabongkha who was active during the early part of the last century. While stating that those involved in the Dharma should disavow politics, he nonetheless forged an alliance with a Chinese war lord in his attempt to make his own school of Tibetan Buddhism dominant in the eastern province of Kham. He also declared that the other schools, Kagyu and Nyingma in particular, whom he saw as rivals, were bound for hell. And he actively attacked their more liberal and inclusive understanding of Buddhist teaching.

Sound familiar?

Pabongkha was finally recalled to central Tibet where he was censored by the Abbot of his own monastery and by the thirteenth Dalai Lama. He duly accepted this admonishment and apologised. Too late; he had let the devil out of the bag, and the sectarian hatred he had unleashed continues in some circles even to this day.

What’s interesting about Geshe Pabongkha is that he was something of a paradox. While being a bigot and capable of cruelty, he was also a great Buddhist scholar – famous, interestingly, for his teachings on the bodhisattva’s compassion and wisdom. How are we to understand this? My only explanation is that, like all of us, his personality was compartmentalised so that the different parts of him were not fully connected and integrated. While he claimed to eschew politics he was deeply political; while he taught kindness he also employed ugly forces to prosecute his will. The Self that Buddhism goes to such lengths to challenge is not only illusory; it is also complex and multifaceted.

What then is going to happen in the Veterans Affairs Office? Plainly a lot of score-settling. This could be a field-day for envy, malice and spite. My own understanding of the Dharma is that we should not be surprised when we find these dark things alive in ourselves. But neither should we be ashamed of them. This could all too easily lead to being in conflict with a part of ourself that we then try to kill or destroy – so more of the same.

Better than this is to take responsibility for our emotions and know that we have choices. So: What do I encourage and what do I let go? Can I move towards having an open heart and being less driven by fear?

And if this leaves us feeling better than Trump – possibly even a tiny bit smug – then we can also feel it (and let it go) in a Buddhisty sort of way.

NIGEL WELLINGS

As a professional psychotherapist and someone who has had a long-term engagement with the Buddhist teaching of Dzogchen, I’ve become used to wearing two hats. In fact, I can hardly remember a time where I have not been a fence-straddler.

It’s a trait which shows up in this book. The two hats in this instance are those of someone who is writing about the tradition to which they have been devoted for almost fifty years, and someone who has discovered the value of Buddhist academic scholarship for – surprisingly – the cultivation of faith.

In the first section, Who’s Who within the tradition’s lineage, I have not only retold the legends but also – and this is a little unusual for books written for those practising the tradition – revealed in some cases where the legends have come from. When I do this it is immediately apparent that most were written many hundreds of years after the events they recall, and that they are certainly not histories as we would understand the word, but rather narratives whose intention is to teach and evoke devotion.

Similarly, in the section on ideas, What’s What, I have occasionally stepped out of the box of simply representing the tradition, and have instead written about it from slightly outside. The origins of this are actually quite straightforward. Over the many years of my engagement with the Dzogchen teachings there have been a number of things that I could not understand and which did not seem to me to add up. This is where I have turned to scholars of the tradition. Buddhist scholarship can sometimes appear obtuse and opaque, but it is more than often clarifying. I have discovered repeatedly that when something does not make sense it is because layers of Buddhist thought have become compressed together. Knowing something of this history helps to tease things apart; what we are left with is an appreciation of a thousand years of yogic experience that repeatedly attempts to express what is ultimately ineffable.

And this neatly takes us back to the cultivation of faith. If the life stories of the saintly and wise are all made up and the ideas just a ragbag of Buddhist bits and bobs how could one possibly be so devoted? For me the answer is simple: this is not just a handbook for a rather esoteric form of Tibetan Buddhism. It is a demonstration of how such a tradition may make the transition into a secular society that, while it no longer believes in fairy tales, is able to appreciate deeply the value of human creativity when it is for the good.

Nigel Wellings