When Things Fall Apart, A Review

I wish I were more impressed with this book. It has a good reputation. Krista Tippett adores it. And it has helped a lot of people. I also have great respect (though not without reservations) for Buddhism. I find it very attractive, like I find Christian monasticism attractive. So why am I not more impressed with this book? Two things, one of which emerges from place to place throughout at least the first half (all I've read to this point). That one is a current that undermines the main point--as if she keeps forgetting her main point of acceptance and really wants acceptance to be a kind of winning. It reminds me of the pervasive use of monetary metaphors in so many texts that otherwise belittle the value of money. The riches and the gold standard and the mansions you get for self-denial. As I've been listening to the book on Audible I can't easily quote my support. But you can listen for it, almost as though Buddhism served as a means by which the author can get back at the world for what it took from her like Granny Weatherall. The second--and I don't know which is more disturbing--is the dismissal of the rich, subtle, profound traditions of theism as "babysitting." She takes on, but not seriously, the whole Western tradition of theism, compares it to "nontheism" (she won't say atheism), and waves it away. There is really no reason to do this. And there's no benefit. Not all theists expect God to help them find their car keys. The most profound Buddhist writers--the Dalai Lama is the obvious example--understand that spiritual insight does not require the dismissal of traditions of which one is not or no longer a part. "Nontheism" is not better than theism. Chodrom seems to prefer it because it's more true--an idea that sets her back in the Enlightenment tradition she should know better than invoke. She does not know that it is more true, that because the God of prosperity theology or the most superficial or shallow manifestations of theism conceives badly of God that God does not exist. And no matter how deeply she hold this conviction, it's not a place she should go. I find her frequently missing her own best points and cannot enjoy (if that matters) or always profit (the old monetary metaphor again) from her best. And that's too bad, because a lot of what is in here is in fact good.

Reading further, I realize that where this book fails itself is when it declares itself to be true. Chodrom doesn't just want her systematized representation of the world to work, she wants to to be true--and therefore all rival systems to be either false or less true. Less true. You can't call a spade a spade, because a spade is a spade and the word spade is not one. I think there are Buddhist teachers who do not make this mistake. I think Buddhism works extraordinarily well for a lot of people. What I mean by that is the Buddhism accomplishes its goal of making life bearable, giving it meaning (we can't live without meaning), allowing the practitioner to escape suffering. The Buddha was actually quite clear about what he wanted his teaching to do. It will do those things. But it is not true. It does not reflect reality as it is. 

Christianity also wants to be true. C.S. Lewis called it a true myth--the realization in reality of what myth projected only in part in fiction. But what does Christianity say is true? That God is one and three, that Jesus is one and two--wholly God and wholly Man. At the heart of Christianity are statements that taken literally cannot be true and yet are presented as literal truth. St. Paul admitted he sees only in part, as through a glass darkly. Christianity knows that it can only approach truth, point to truth. It cannot in its theology or anywhere in its language BE true. This may be the principle teaching of Christ--that the statements of scripture are expressions of love not of truth. 

Chondrom's Buddhism works. It works because it approaches truth (what approaches truth always works better than what does not). But not because it is true. Buddhism tends to fail, I think, when it posits suffering as always bad, which leads it to proclaim desire as bad, as an impediment to enlightenment. The best Buddhism, I hope, understands that desire is neither good nor bad, nor pleasure nor suffering. Suffering is just suffering. Good and bad are add-ons that become represent on in the presence of actual suffering, not in general (as there is no such thing as suffering in general, suffering in itself). Today my lover died. I suffer. That suffering will be good or bad--in fact that suffering will be good and bad unless I choose to make it all bad. I cannot make it all good.