The Virtue of Cruelty (Part 2): Buddhism, Karma, and 'Idiot Compassion'

In the comments section of my last post (‘The Virtue of Cruelty’), one of my Tibetological peers made the following request: “I would love to see an equally critical analysis of the role of "compassion" in Buddhist authoritarian morality, politics, economics and philosophy that similarly draws on Žižek's insights on Tibetan Buddhism in particular. Compassion is perhaps the übervalue here, but still there are steep hierarchies, and so on. Curious what you would come up with!”

I was very glad to see this comment, as these are questions that I have thought a lot about, especially over the past few years. So let’s get into it.

Buddhism, Religion, and Buddhist Modernism

Buddhism is a fascinating religion for many reasons. Even calling it a ‘religion’ has become somewhat of a faux pas, as it has become immensely fashionable to categorise Buddhism as something other than religion. Apologists often prefer to characterise it as a philosophical or psychological framework, a contemplative spiritual ‘lifestyle’, or even a ‘science of the mind’. While a sufficiently nuanced discussion of the complexities of the term ‘religion’ is necessarily beyond the scope of this article, it is important to clarify that—insofar as the word ‘religion’ has any authentic purchase in the study of human culture and systems of knowledge—Buddhism is, without a doubt, a religion. In fact, it was the very first non-Christian religion that 19th century European philologists included in their emerging category of ‘world religion’. In addition to making normative claims about reality (which immediately distinguishes it from the descriptive nature of ‘science’), it is replete with deities, myths, rules, rituals, hierarchies, sacred texts, magic, historical revisionism, and unfalsifiable dogmatic truth claims. Even though it doesn’t posit the existence of a supreme creator god—which is one of the things that first attracted me to it—this is not, and has never been, the primary litmus test for religion.

I often refer to the ‘secular’ characterisation of Buddhism as an intrinsic part of the ‘bait and switch’ of Buddhist Modernism. Of the many non-Asian spiritual seekers who end up converting to Buddhism, many are attracted to its purportedly ‘secular’ and non-theistic orientation. They are told (often by Buddhist teachers and lamas themselves) that the practice of Buddhism is entirely devoid of religious ‘belief’, eschewing truth claims for ‘rational’ hypotheses about reality that can be verified through direct experience. Science, we are told, has even corroborated many of the fundamental theories of Buddhist philosophy—quantum physics (which Buddhists love to reference) is supposed to verify Buddhist theories of the universe, while neuroscience supposedly confirms Buddhist theories of non-self.

But having been baited by these promises of an exceptional path of rational spiritual inquiry, Buddhist converts (especially in traditions like Tibetan Buddhism) quickly discover that Buddhism is not so dissimilar to any other faith system, including those that they may have left behind in their pursuit of something ‘different’. The threat of hell, for example, actually has a longer pedigree in Buddhism than it does in Christianity. While the Buddhist hell(s) may not be eternal, there are cases (especially in Vajrayana/tantric Buddhism) where rebirth in particularly egregious hell realms—namely ‘Vajra Hell’—are reserved for those who have dared to transgress against the tradition and its ‘masters’. Whistle-blowers in cases of sexual abuse (which is rampant) are very much included in this. If one speaks out against a lama accused of sexual impropriety or exploitation, this is routinely regarded as a breakage of ‘samaya’ (tantric commitments), which is punishable by no less than an aeon in the most miserable hells imaginable. Very much like Christianity, the threat of hell is used to keep people ‘in check’, but punishment is not the only strategy employed to achieve this aim.

In tantric Buddhism, it is frequently and explicitly stated that absolute devotion and subservience to a spiritual master is the only method by which a practitioner can attain liberation in this lifetime. The lama is positioned as the source of all blessings. If one follows them without hesitation, then they will lead the practitioner to awakening (or at least a heavenly ‘Pure Land’ after death). But if one dares to transgress against them, then they are fated to wander helplessly in Samsāra forever. In hopes of gaining ‘freedom’ from an endless cycle of misery, Tibetan Buddhist converts wilfully relinquish their agency to a ‘master’ who claims to hold the keys to their existential prison cell. This is, of course, not a ‘modern’ innovation, and it is quite strange that it has found such a strong foothold in Buddhist modernism.

What it ‘Buddhist modernism’? I first encountered this term in the work of Evan Thompson, who describes it as an orientation to Buddhist ideologies which position them as being closely aligned with contemporary ‘modernist’ values like reason, secularism, and scientific inquiry. It is largely founded upon the notion of “Buddhist exceptionalism”, which Thompson describes as “the belief that Buddhism is superior to other religions in being inherently rational and empirical, or that Buddhism isn’t really a religion but rather a kind of ‘mind science,’ therapy, philosophy, or way of life based on meditation” (Thompson 2020, Why I Am Not a Buddhist, p. 2). As Thompson notes, Buddhism is certainly unique—as are all religious and cultural systems in their own ways—but it is not an exception to some kind of rule. But importantly, Thompson’s position is not strictly antagonistic to Buddhist philosophy. Rather, he argues that a rejection of Buddhist modernism and claims of exceptionalism are advantageous if Buddhism wishes to “take its rightful place as a valuable contributor to modern cosmopolitan community” (Ibid.). As a fellow ‘friend’ to Buddhism, I whole-heartedly concur.

Of course, modernist approaches do not exhaust the possible paths of engagement with Buddhism—there is also Buddhist fundamentalism, which eschews empiricism to position Buddhist systems of knowledge as intrinsically superior to other more ‘mundane’ forms of human inquiry. If Buddhism and science disagree about something, then a modernist might seek to decontextualise or rework Buddhist teaching to align with empirical truths (for instance by reducing them to allegory), while a fundamentalist might simply write the science off as being mistaken or deluded. In some cases, a Buddhist might even concede that a traditional teaching is fundamentally incorrect. But in these cases, the falsehood is usually positioned as a later corruption arising from unenlightened systematisers. To place falsehoods into the mouth of a buddha would undermine the very legitimacy of ‘buddhahood’ as a perfected state, so this is avoided at all costs.

But back to ‘Buddhist modernism’, it is valuable to understand a bit of its history in order to make sense of the unique position that Buddhism holds in contemporary society. While some may estimate that this is a recent development, Buddhist modernism actually has its roots in the 19th century, when Christian missionaries and European colonists sought to ‘civilise’ Asian communities by indoctrinating them into what they believed to be the supremely ‘enlightened’ religion of the West. Despite many centuries of social and intellectual regression through the Middle Ages, the recent explosion of scientific and technological progress in the European Enlightenment era was positioned as a direct result of Christian supremacy. But as Thompson notes, “Asian Buddhist intellectuals and reformers figured out how to turn the argument around” (Ibid., p. 26). Pointing to Buddhism’s lack of a creator god, the humanity (rather than divinity) of its founder, and its supposed reliance on reason and personal insight rather than faith, Buddhist apologists made the rather compelling claim that it was actually Buddhism, rather than Christianity, that best exemplified the values of progressive modernism. In this spirit, numerous ‘Buddhist modernist’ movements sprung up across Asia in places like Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Japan, and by the early 20th century they gained a significant foothold in Western philosophical and spiritual circles as well.

Fast-forward a century, and ‘Buddhist modernism’ is more popular than ever, seemingly providing a method of ‘being spiritual’ without succumbing to the manipulations and lunacy of religious ideology. It is, perhaps, possible for some to engage with Buddhism on these terms. Just as we might read Aristotle without tacitly accepting anything he wrote as absolute truth, there are many who approach Buddhist teachings as interesting (but imperfect) propositions, and engage with Buddhist practices as tools for self-development, introspection, or gateways to an experience of awe. But positioning such approaches as fundamentally more ‘authentic’ than cultural and religious approaches to Buddhism is dangerous for a number of reasons. For one, it stinks of cultural appropriation. Watching White Europeans lay claim to ‘authentic’ Buddhism while denigrating Asian Buddhist cultural practices is unavoidably cringey. But equally, it leaves spiritual seekers vulnerable to the ‘bait and switch’ of Buddhist modernism. Believing that empirical truth and rationality lie at the heart of Buddhism, converts and dabblers may seek out ‘traditional’ teachings under the presupposition that they are bolstered by scientific veracity. What’s more, being convinced that Buddhism is firmly rooted in compassion, basic goodness, and the pursuit of peace, seekers may lower their guard with teachers who use their idealised appearance to exploit and manipulate their followers. This is a function, of course, of Orientalism. But we’ll return to that later.

Karma and Buddhist Ethics

Ethics are presented as a big topic in Buddhism, and indeed there are many interesting and compelling ethical frameworks found in Buddhist traditions. The guidelines laid out in the Vinayapiṭaka (the ‘Basket of Discipline’), which principally presents the rules of conduct for Buddhist monastics, is often positioned as a repository for Buddhist ethical principles, but it is in fact just another set of rules prescribed ‘from above’ in order to encourage social order. It is, much like the Ten Commandments, dependent upon a vertical system of morality, even if its charter myth differs from those found in monotheistic religion.

In any case, Buddhist approaches to ethics do have a lot of offer, namely in the centring of suffering as a rational baseline for identifying an action as virtuous or non-virtuous. But in practice, this emphasis serves more as an ideological justification than an actual practical consideration. Certainly not all vows are focused on alleviating suffering. For instance, a monk is prohibited from accepting a floor carpet which is more than 50% black wool and 25% white wool. Likewise, there are many rules surrounding dining etiquette: a monk should never speak with his mouth full, make sounds when he eats, open his mouth before the food is at his lips, inflate his cheeks when eating, toss pieces of food in his mouth, or put any part of his hand in his mouth. While some of these rules may have some correlation with rules of politeness (at least in some cultural contexts), they have very little to do with ethics.

On a more practical level, the negotiation of Buddhist ethics is usually closely connected to the doctrine of karma. Karma (or las in Tibetan) simply means ‘action’, and refers to the notion of ‘cause and effect’. This, of course, has presumed correlates in logic and science, which Buddhist modernists use to position the karma doctrine as a fundamental empirical concept. But karma is not the same thing as Newton’s Third Law of Motion, as it is intrinsically connected to Buddhist metaphysics and soteriology, positing a system of universal justice which somewhat resembles the television show ‘The Good Place’.

In keeping with the modus operandi of Buddhist modernism, one of the more popular ways of speaking about karma is to focus on the conditioning effects of behaviours on the mind. If someone commits violent actions, for instance, it is believed that these actions will gradually cause one’s mind to become conditioned to violence, leading to further violent acts in the future and, furthermore, the potential to fall victim to violence. Our ‘view’ of the world (literally our ‘karmic vision’) is therefore tied to our behaviour: if we condition ourselves to engage with others in a loving fashion, we will naturally perceive more love in the world; but if we engage in a hateful fashion, we will perceive more hate in the world.

This, we might say, is the ‘psychological’ explanation of karma. But it does not exhaust the applications of this term in Buddhism. There remains a highly supernaturalist dimension to the concept, whereby one’s actions are believed to create the conditions of future experiences in our present and future lives. If someone commits a murder, then it is believed that they will either: a.) be murdered in this or a future life, or b.) take rebirth in an alternate realm of existence which is replete with violent suffering. The ‘effects’ of ones actions are not restricted to their direct impact on others, nor even to the formation of neural pathways in one’s brain—there is a deeper ‘energetic’ level of impact which is believed to fundamentally augment the fabric of our reality and our ‘fate’ across multiple lives.

The same would be true in cases of rape, theft, and other morally transgressive behaviours. While it is natural for humans to desire such a system (we are generally hard-wired to desire fairness and justice), it does not stand to reason that a theft committed in one’s life should logically lead one to become a victim of theft in this or a future life. Much like the concept of Heaven and Hell, this is simply another reward/punishment paradigm designed to scare people into doing the right thing, even if we think we may evade legalistic consequences in the short-term. The doctrine of karma depends on multiple truth claims: namely a belief in serial incarnations, a belief that actions leave subtle energetic imprints with no physical correlates, and a belief that some form of cosmic justice is intrinsically present in the universe. Importantly, these claims are unfalsifiable (we cannot, as a rule, know whether or not there is life after death), making them quite useful in religious contexts. But without them, the veracity of karma is quite impossible to substantiate. After all, it is quite clear that committing atrocious acts does not always lead to observable negative consequences. In fact, in a capitalist system, the exploitation and abuse of others is often rewarded with exorbitant wealth and power (just look at the president of the United States).

Unlike Christian conceptions of sin, there is no judicial divinity ‘in charge’ of the workings of karma. There is no score-keeper in the clouds tracking our actions and doling out consequences in accordance with divine law, which is the main argument made by Buddhist apologists who seek to position this as a ‘natural’ law rather than a religious belief. But the doctrine of karma is nevertheless a faith-based system for enforcing adherence to prescribed moral standards. This is, at the end of the day, a stopgap for preventing folks from transgressing against a vertical system of morality, not a method of encouraging ethical behaviour in a horizontalist worldview.

As Buddhism evolved over the centuries, the concept of karma became increasingly complex, placing special importance on ‘intention’ as a key factor in determining the karmic weight of an action. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, in particular, it is believed that karma is comprised of multiple factors: namely intention, action, and satisfaction. Sometimes other factors are taken into consideration, like consciousness of one’s actions, but let’s focus on these three. If someone intends to cause suffering, proceeds to perform an action which causes suffering, and subsequently feels satisfaction at the success of their action, then this qualifies as a fully negative karmic act which will certainly lead to future consequences. However, if one of these factors is absent—for instance, if someone intends to do something malicious and acts upon it, but subsequently feels regret and remorse—then the karmic weight of this act is significantly lessened (albeit still warranting some form of consequence). And if two factors are missing—for instance, if someone accidentally hits a deer with their car, but they did not intend to do so and felt bad afterward—then this is deemed to be karmically inconsequential. Again, this system may feel very attractive, fulfilling our psychological desire for cosmic justice without the risk of being punished for accidental mistakes, but it remains dependent upon supernaturalist truth claims which can never be verified ‘scientifically’, and thus it remains a matter of faith.

Of greater concern to me, however, is the way that this paradigm augments our negotiation of ethics in relation to the experience of others. Regardless of the absence of a judicial god, this remains a punitive system. Through it, the main deterrent for causing harm to others is the fear of having harm done to oneself in the future. There is, within this system, simply no need for empathy. All one needs is a strong sense of self-preservation to motivate ‘good’ behaviour and discourage ‘bad’ behaviour. Pragmatically speaking, this may very well be for the best—if a fear of punishment is the only thing stopping someone from causing harm, then it may be best that this fear remains. But this is far from a perfect ‘ethical’ system, and like any human system of the sort, there is a dangerously high potential for magical ‘loopholes’ to emerge—and indeed they have.

Threefold Purity and Other Loopholes

Take, for instance, the treatment of non-human animals. Buddhists believe strongly in the sentience of (at least some) non-humans. It is often said that every being, from mosquitoes to gods (who do very much exist in Buddhism, just not as omnipotent creators) to “have been our mother in a past life”. This belief is meant to inspire a sense of compassionate concern for the welfare of all others. When coupled with a presumed ethic of ‘non-violence’, Buddhists are expected not to cause suffering to any being, human or non-human, in their pursuit of awakening. The karmic mechanics would seem to be relatively clear in this case: if we become desensitised to the exploitation and slaughter of ‘mother’ sentient beings, this would theoretically create the causes for us to become the victims of exploitation and death in this and future lives. For this reason, it would seem inevitable that Buddhists should strive, at the very least, to avoid killing animals for consumer goods like food.

Not so fast. While other Indian spiritual movements like Jainism demanded a strict adherence to at least a vegetarian diet, Buddhism developed a neat karmic loophole known as the rule of ‘threefold purity’: so long as an animal was not killed by one’s own hand, in one’s presence, or specifically for one’s own consumption, and as long as the flesh passed through three hands before reaching one’s own plate, it was determined that eating an animal’s flesh has no karmic consequence whatsoever. For early Buddhist monastics, this mostly manifested through the practice of begging for alms. A monk or nun was expected to eat whatever was offered to them with total indifference, and why should they be strapped with moral consequence if they are simply accepting that which is offered? This is fair enough, since the monastics were functionally removing themselves from the agricultural complex altogether. But for laypeople, it often looked quite different. By leaving the ‘dirty work’ of animal husbandry and slaughter to others, a good Buddhist could safely procure and consume animal flesh without any concern that their karma would be impacted by the practice. Buddhists systematisers, in essence, removed a significant roadblock in the pursuit of ‘goodness’.

This was quite helpful in places like Tibet, where plant crops were (and often remain) both rare and highly vulnerable to failure. But in the Tibetan case in particular, this loophole became somewhat more extreme. Rather than viewing animal consumption as an amoral act (i.e. lacking moral weight), the introduction of tantric magic created a paradigm by which the consumption of animals could actually be transformed into a beneficial act. The idea arose that tantric Buddhist practitioners, being fully empowered into the mandala of an enlightened deity, actually have the magical power to liberate other beings through consumption of their flesh. Originally this magic trick was restricted to the context of tantric feast offerings (Tib. tshogs, Skt. ganapuja). If an animal’s flesh was offered during a tantric feast, then it was believed that this creation of a Dharma connection would lead the animal to take immediate rebirth in a Pure Land and attain liberation. But over time, this feat became decoupled from the ganapuja context, and it became widely believed that any animal consumed by a tantric practitioner would attain liberation, thus eating meat became a mark of compassion.

While it is certainly true that Tibetans needed to find some way to negotiate their need for animal-based foods in a Buddhist philosophical context, this paradigm is problematic for multiple reasons: for one, it arises from the classical Buddhist notion that non-human animals exist in some kind of alternative mode of existence wholly suffused with the suffering of ignorance. An animal’s life is, unlike that of a human, fundamentally meaningless, since they cannot become awakened in an inferior animal body. The only way for them to escape the cycle of samsāra is to take rebirth in a human body and receive Dharma teachings, which itself requires a ‘karmic’ connection to the Buddhist teachings. Thus it became reasonable to believe that the best fate for an animal is to be killed and eaten by Buddhists.

Secondly, the matter of animal slaughter remained a taboo issue. While it was deemed compassionate to eat an animal as a Tibetan Buddhist, killing them was quite another matter. Some animals, like the takin of remote Pemakö, were believed to be placed on the Earth by past tantric wizards specifically to be killed and eaten by Buddhists with impunity. But in most cases, killing a livestock animal for food remained a transgression of the first Buddhist precept. One of the most common workarounds was to pass off the work of animal slaughter to non-Buddhists (especially Muslims), so that they would be strapped with the bad karma instead of pious Dharma practitioners. This approach stands in stark contrast to the strategies employed by many indigenous animistic societies, who simultaneously acknowledged the intrinsic value of non-human animal life and negotiated their need for animal-based foods to survive. In such contexts, hunting and slaughter were executed ritualistically, and great care was taken not to exploit animals or undermine the health of their communities in the process. By ‘staying with the violence’, many indigenous societies were able to grapple with the ethical complexities of animal slaughter without depending on metaphysical pivots that undermined the value of animal’s life.

While this Buddhist loophole certainly stinks of both ethnocentrism and anthropocentrism, it’s important to reiterate that, for Tibetan and Himalayan peoples living in some of the harshest environments in the world, eating animals was not a choice, but a need. Even per the established philosophy of veganism to “exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose”, it could be argued that this was indeed a case in which it was neither possible nor practicable to avoid the exploitation of animals for food.

But things become much trickier in the Tibetan diaspora. In the West, where many lamas make a rather handsome living teaching and spreading Buddhist teachings, these same ‘needs’ are simply not present. It is perfectly possible and practicable to observe a mostly or entirely plant-based diet in places like America and Europe, and indeed even in India, where vegetarianism is profoundly common. Regardless, I can count the number of vegetarian lamas I have met on one hand, and I don’t believe I have ever met a vegan lama. Even at Buddhist retreat centres which serve a strictly vegetarian menu to their participants, it is customary for meat to be offered to the lamas at meals behind closed doors. When pressed on this, most Buddhists will reiterate the belief that the best thing that could ever happen to an animal is to be eaten by a lama.

Even when taking ethnic Tibetans out of the equation, it is phenomenally rare for Western Tibetan Buddhists (or even Western Buddhists more broadly) to observe a vegetarian or vegan diet. Many of their justifications are the same as in general society: some will claim that they cannot meet their nutritional needs without animal protein, or that it is financially unfeasible for them to attempt to do so. I will avoid responding to such claims to avoid going too deeply into vegan polemics (this is not the point of this article). But one factor is nearly always present: the Buddha’s notion of ‘threefold purity’. “The Buddha said that it’s not bad karma to eat meat”, so there’s no reason to avoid it. This really underlines the main point: Buddhist morality, in practice, has virtually nothing to do with the causation of suffering. It is not about the real, measurable impact of one’s actions on others, but rather the potential future (and supernatural) impact of one’s actions on oneself. Much like Christians, Buddhists avoid committing negative actions because they fear supernatural punishment, not because they genuinely want to limit the causation of suffering.

Again, it may very well be that this is pragmatically sufficient for encouraging moral behaviour in a society of imperfect people. But it is a far cry from the compassionate idealism that has come to be associated with Buddhism in modern discourse. A truly ethical approach would pay primary attention to the ways that one’s actions impact others. One would avoid causing suffering strictly because they don’t want others to suffer, not because they fear the potential future ramifications for themselves. And magical loopholes for avoiding responsibility would not even be entertained, since they would do nothing to limit the primary causation of suffering to begin with.

There are, of course, inherent frameworks for encouraging such conduct in Buddhism, namely through practices like the ‘four immeasurables’ (Wyl. tshad med bzhi), based on the classical Indian brahmavihārās. This is a classical ‘preliminary practice’ in Buddhist meditation, meant to inspire the cultivation of ‘aspirational’ bodhicitta (the altruistic ‘mind set upon the path to enlightenment’). In it, one actively works to cultivate feelings of love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. For instance, in the mind-training practice of tonglen (Wyl. gtong len), or ‘giving and receiving’, a practitioner imagines that they are breathing in the sufferings of others and breathing out joy and peace. By ‘exchanging oneself and others’ in this fashion, the practice is meant to inspire a deep sense of compassion for the sufferings of other sentient beings. But this practice is intentionally restricted to the internal experience of the mind—it is not positioned, even in tantric Buddhism, as a magical or supernatural process of alleviating suffering. ‘Active’ manifestations of bodhicitta require more pragmatic dimensions of engagement. Whether or not this is effective at actually motivating such behaviour (it would seem that it often misses the mark), it is notable that Buddhism does possess frameworks for inspiring ethical conduct beyond the paradigm of karmic retribution. But it is rarely used in this way, and once the meditation session is over, the baseline for ethical conduct generally returns to a vertical system or morality and the threat of bad karma.

Idiot Compassion

Virtually anyone who has spent some time in Western Buddhist circles—especially those with a Tibetan Buddhist focus—will have encountered the term ‘idiot compassion’. Popularised by Chögyam Trungpa (though originally coined by G.I. Gurdjieff), this is described as a kind of compassion which is fundamentally egoic in nature, being secretly motivated by a fear of conflict, a basic discomfort with the sufferings of others, or the desire to be viewed as a ‘good’ person. This fundamentally reactive form of compassionate behaviour is contrasted with ‘wise compassion’, which is conversely grounded in wisdom, selflessness, and a vast perspective.

Pema Chödron describes ‘idiot compassion’ as enabling: we may, due to our discomfort in seeing someone struggling, enable unhealthy or destructive behaviours to provide short-term relief, without acknowledging the long-term damage that such behaviours might produce. It is also used to describe behaviours that might allow one to be taken advantage of, with Trungpa himself using the example of a shopkeeper who intentionally short-changes you: if one allows them to do so, then “that doesn’t seem to be a very healthy thing to do for others”. Another manifestation of ‘idiot compassion’ could be a philanthropist who donates a great deal of money with the expectation that it will provide them with praise and notoriety—rather than arising out of a desire to be of benefit to others, it is primarily a manifestation of our own egoic self-interest.

Essentially, if our compassionate conduct is motivated by a fear of conflict or a desire for acclaim, then it isn’t true compassion. Fair enough! Though it feels strange that such teachings would come from a figure (Trungpa) who spent his life abusing women, animals, drugs, and alcohol, amassing tremendous wealth and power, and creating a cultist empire. Pema Chödron (rather famously) implicitly endorsed these endeavours, helping to cover up cases of sexual abuse by blaming Trungpa’s victims instead of the ‘perfect’ master to whom she had dedicated her life. Who knows where ‘empathy for victims of abuse’ would have fallen in their delineation of the different kinds of compassion?

The notion of ‘idiot compassion’ is, importantly, not a traditional concept. Indeed there are countless examples of bodhisattvas going to intensely self-destructive lengths to alleviate the sufferings of others. I wouldn’t personally condone such behaviours, but that’s neither here nor there. What does exist in a more traditional context is a conceptual divide between active expressions of bodhicitta rooted in an awareness of emptiness, versus expressions of altruistic conduct which are not rooted in such an awareness. In essence, behaviours like generosity are believed to have the potential to be expressions of awakened mind, as long as they are performed with a conscious recognition that the offerer, the recipient, and the act of offering itself are all ‘empty’ of self-nature. If one were to ‘reify’ the concrete existence of the recipient in the process, then it would fail to meet the standards of a ‘perfected’ act of generosity.

This is important to grasp because, in practice, this paradigm creates the space for certain kinds of compassionate (i.e. empathic) impulses to be dismissed as overly “attached” to the appearances of Samsāra. “It’s all empty” is the classic refrain—one which has enabled no small amount of abuse over the years. If augmenting one’s actions to avoid causing suffering is even mildly inconvenient for a well-intentioned modern ‘bodhisattva’, then it is perfectly reasonable to revert to ‘absolute reality’ and dismiss the impulse altogether.

To provide a noteworthy example:

A lama acquaintance of mine was preparing to give teachings on a special tantric practice which requires participants to use a strand of natural (undyed) red coral prayer beads. A prospective student, worried about diminishing coral populations and the demonstrable suffering that the poaching of natural coral causes—both to the coral and their sea-dwelling kin (not to mention the oceanic ecosystem as a whole)— asked whether it was ethical to use such objects. The lama’s response was as follows:

“There is a colony of coral in the ocean somewhere. Their lives, like all sentient beings’ lives are a mixture of pleasure and pain, but, because this is samsara, actually all conditioned existence is, by its very nature, suffering. So we can’t say their lives are all happiness and bliss. The colony lives and dies as all sentient beings do. But, without a connection to the Buddhadharma, there is no guarantee they will ever come of (sic) Enlightenment. As we say, samsara is endless. However, if these sentient beings’ bodies are used to make some sort of Samaya implement, they are now absolutely assured to achieve Enlightenment. This is a huge benefit, a wondrous, totally supreme benefit. As Vajrayana practitioners, we must think this way.”

I have no doubt that, if pressed on the topic, the lama in question would have framed concern for the welfare of the coral as an example of ‘idiot compassion’—a form of compassion which is rooted in mere mortal empathy, rather than the ‘supremely wise’ compassion of a religious zealot dedicated to the truth claims handed to them by their superiors. While the concept of having compassion informed by ‘wisdom’ is perfectly reasonable, it remains unavoidable that ‘wisdom’ is a subjective notion. Christians would equally claim that empathy for queer people is ignorant because it lacks the ‘wisdom’ of Yahweh’s supposed restrictions on human sexuality. Much like Trungpa and Chödron, they might very well claim that compassion for homosexuals is simply a form of enablement—encouraging their wicked actions in order to avoid conflict, while tacitly allowing them to propel themselves into the fiery pits of hell.

On a strictly secular level, it certainly makes sense to engage with empathy in such a way that our actions motivate an authentic alleviation of suffering. But once religious truth claims get stirred into the ontological mix, things get irredeemably sticky. The aforementioned lama seems convinced that, as per Buddhist scripture, the lives of animals and other non-human beings are meaningless cesspools of suffering. The only way for ‘suffering’—as a religious concept—to actually be eradicated is for Buddhist awakening to occur. And this can only happen through 1.) a human life, and 2.) exposure and adherence to Buddhist dogma. Thus the moral paradigm at play is inextricably linked to Buddhist soteriology, which creates a special space for religious practitioners to transcend the standards of Buddhist ethics in service to the tradition.

Needless to say, these Buddhist definitions of ‘suffering’ and ‘compassion’ are quite different from those used by secularists and non-Buddhists, because they are scaffolded by dogmatic truth claims that are wholly disconnected from the immanent facts of life. From a Buddhist perspective, one might reasonably conclude that it is more ‘compassionate’ for a Buddhist to kill and consume an animal than it would be to allow them to live, since an animal life is suffused with suffering and ignorance, and dying in service to the “supreme Dharma” is ultimately preferable to living out one’s inferior life without molestation. Likewise, it has very much been argued that victims of guru sexual abuse only suffer because of their lack of “pure view”—in other words, their inability to recognise an unwanted sexual encounter as a sacred transmission from an enlightened being—is the root cause of their trauma, not the abuse inflicted upon them by the guru in question.

This last point, while undoubtedly triggering for many people, is as relevant as ever in modern Buddhist environments. Based on my 20 years in Tibetan Buddhism, I would estimate that sexual abuse from men in positions of religious authority is more common, per capita, than it is in the Catholic Church. Trungpa was merely the tip of the iceberg. And in all cases that end up coming to light, there is always a hefty faction of devout Buddhists who run to the defence of the perpetrator. In some cases, the victims are painted as being mentally unstable, deceptive, or even covert Chinese agents. But in many others, they are simply accused of having inferior faith. Having been trained to perceive anyone with the title of ‘lama’ as an infallible and enlightened ‘master’ whose every action can only ever result in the benefit of beings, the cognitive dissonance that arises in such situations is simply brushed under the rug. In essence, a guru is not ‘good’ because their actions exemplify ‘goodness’; rather, a guru’s actions are automatically ‘good’ because the guru is ‘good’ by default.

This points to one of the most problematic elements of Buddhism—the amorphous and undefinable nature of ‘enlightenment’. Even in early forms of Buddhism, there was never any single definitive description of what comprises the ‘awakened state’. Is buddhahood an unconditioned experience of the absolute nature of reality, or is it a strongly conditioned state which is gradually refined through decades of practice? Is it devoid of any qualities or cognitive content, or is it replete with past-life memories and insights into every aspect of the universe’s function? Is it a product of the brain’s cognitive functions, or is it distinct from neurology altogether? The truth is that nobody knows, but Buddhist apologists will generally resort to whatever description suits them in the moment.

What is generally universally accepted, however, is that it is impossible to know for certain whether someone is enlightened or not, because ‘awakening’ can manifest in many different guises. This is particularly problematic, because it completely decouples the ‘awakened’ archetype from the actualities of human behaviour. Figures like Trungpa are widely believed (among their followers) to be fully awakened masters. Thus every word, every action, and every thought is entirely pure and perfect. Every lie is a teaching, every act of abuse and violence a blessing in disguise. Even the death of such a being is regarded as an intentional display of impermanence, contrived as a pedagogical tactic for the benefit of their students. Because of this, a claim to ‘enlightenment’ becomes wholly unfalsifiable. As an unenlightened being myself, how can I possibly claim that Trungpa was not a buddha? Just because he raped women, abused animals, and died of alcohol-related liver failure? Maybe those were just teachings, and it’s merely because of my deluded and impure mind that I fail to perceive his perfect conduct for what it is. This is the kind of cognitive dissonance that often plagues the Buddhist mind.

I would venture to say that the rather slippery characterisation of ‘idiot compassion’ is very much akin to the Christian ‘sin of empathy’. While there are certainly some cases in which a display of compassion or empathy can be self-destructive or self-serving, the very existence of such a phenomenological category leaves open the space for empathic care to be discredited or discouraged if it challenges the dogmatic truth claims of the religious institution. Compassion may be a Buddhist ‘value’, but only if it is underpinned by Buddhist soteriology.

Mindfulness and the Fetishisation of Buddhist Ideology

‘Mindfulness’ is everywhere. It is, perhaps, one of the most ubiquitous features of modern ‘wellness’ culture, even making its way into pop culture ‘mantras’ like “very demure, very mindful”. But what is it, and how does it contribute to the fetishisation of Buddhist ideology?

‘Mindfulness’ is a translation of the Pali term sati, rendered in Sanskrit as smṛti and Tibetan as drenpa (Wyl. dren pa), which simply mean ‘memory’ or ‘recollection’. In a Buddhist context it originally referred to the ‘bearing in mind’ of either an object of meditation or philosophical or ethical principles. In the context of meditation, one might be instructed to become ‘mindful’ of the breath, a mantra, or a sacred image. In daily life, one might seek to be ‘mindful’ of one’s moral commitments. In this early context, mindfulness was intrinsically discerning—through recalling teachings or doctrinal principles, one could distinguish between virtuous and non-virtuous actions, or mind-states which are conducive to liberation versus those that are counterproductive.

But over time, two distinct approaches to ‘mindfulness’ began to emerge: the more classical approach viewed mindfulness as above—a kind of recollection of Buddhist values, either in meditation or in daily life—but a ‘non-dual’ approach also emerged, which began to characterise mindfulness as a naked and undistracted ‘awareness’ of the present moment. These are two very different cognitive processes: one is fundamentally discerning and judgmental (not necessarily in a bad way), while the other is entirely indiscriminate. In earlier schools of thought, an experience of rage might be remedied by becoming ‘mindful’ of teachings on nonviolence and compassion. But in the ‘non-dual’ approach, one may simply be called to become indiscriminately mindful of the experience of rage itself.

Naturally, this latter ‘non-dual’ paradigm is the primary inspiration for modern approaches to ‘mindfulness’. Especially in contexts where mindfulness techniques are decoupled from their doctrinal or philosophical bases, mindfulness is simply positioned as a depth ‘experiencing’ of the present moment without judgment. This has been, particularly in Buddhist modernist circles, increasingly associated with the study of the brain, reducing an experience of ‘mindfulness’ to a particular neurological state which can be isolated, tracked, and understood in empirical terms. Such efforts arise from the Buddhist modernist desire to ‘confirm’ Buddhist teachings through modern science, despite the fact that this is both impossible and misguided since, as discussed above, Buddhism makes soteriological and normative claims about how things should be, while science uses empirical processes to make unbiased descriptive claims about how things are.

The basic notion of ‘mindfulness’ as a personal and private experience of naked attentiveness is tremendously attractive in the modern spiritual marketplace, enabling a deeply solipsistic and self-oriented interface with the world. With it, the apex of spirituality is not the way that one engages with others, but rather the kinds of thoughts that one has in the intimate spaces of one’s own mind. It is a commodity, plain and simple, used for cultivating inner peace, not a method of transforming the way we engage with the world around us.

A great example of this is the notion of ‘mindful eating’. In most modern contexts, mindful eating consists of slowly macerating and tasting one’s food (perhaps drawing upon the tantric principle of ‘one-taste’), remaining fully within the experience of eating instead of casting judgment on the experience. In a Vajrayana Buddhist context, such practices are designed to condition the practitioner to treat all phenomena in like fashion—to immerse oneself in the dynamic display of reality without falling into the trappings of judgment, dividing up likes and dislikes, etc. But in its more mundane forms, mindful eating might be ‘prescribed’ for someone who is prone to overeating—a practice designed to help folks lose a few pounds by allowing them to focus on the experience of eating rather than scarfing down a meal while scrolling on their phone.

Notably, I have only very rarely encountered descriptions of ‘mindful eating’ that venture into any sort of discussion surrounding what we’re eating, or the ethics of food procurement. Such trivialities may even be deemed superfluous or ‘idiotic’ in the context of the modern mindfulness movement. Much like the breath, we are told to observe and experience, but not to judge. This is, quite clearly, a departure from the original intent of sati as a spiritual technique.

Things are much the same in contemporary Buddhist circles, which regularly eschew complicated discussions of ethical conduct in lieu of teachings on mastering the mind. From Vipassana to Vajrayana, Western Buddhists generally seem to be far more interested in controlling and mastering their minds (even to the point of gaining supposed magical powers) than they are in shifting their behaviours and conduct in the world. It is ironic that many people will spend years in solitary retreat, reciting tantric rituals day in and day out, in hopes that they might gain the magical powers necessary to alleviate the sufferings of sentient beings, but when it comes to making choices as a consumer that might minimise the harm done to sentient beings (or even the planet itself), this is simply going too far.

As Slavoj Žižek once wrote,

“Although Buddhism presents itself as the remedy for the stressful tension of capitalist dynamics, allowing us to uncouple and retain inner peace […] it actually functions as capitalism’s perfect ideological supplement […] The ‘Western Buddhist’ meditative path is arguably the most efficient way for us to fully participate in capitalist dynamics while retaining the appearance of mental sanity.”

In a recent article in Tricycle magazine, John Peacock refers to this tendency as an ‘elephant in the Dharma Hall’—an unavoidable truth that we nevertheless fail to see. By focusing primarily on inner individual experience, Buddhist contemplative traditions can be quite attractive to those who wish to lessen the pain—to silence the troubles of living in the modern world and make life bearable. But at least in its most popular forms, it seems to fall short of providing strategies for inspiring action. While we are repeatedly told that humanity’s problem is our tendency to seek happiness outside instead of creating it inside, I would argue that we are actually far more comfortable focusing on our own happiness than we are in striving to create a world where it organically occurs.

Doing this doesn’t only benefit us—it also benefits those who thrive on our exploitation. This is undoubtedly why so many companies invest in ‘mindfulness trainings’ for stressed out workers. They want us to stay complacent. They want us to be mindful and productive, not mindful and disruptive. This ‘elephant’ is present in many areas, including approaches to social and political issues, but also with matters of the environment. We might shake our heads and bemoan the ‘degenerate age’, but unless a ‘vast view’ is grounded by the authentic cultivation of compassion and a concern for ethics, it will only lead us deeper into complacency with our most exploitative and destructive modern systems.

This is where Buddhism really falls into the trap of Žižek’s ‘fetishisation of ideology’. We may regard Buddhism as a peaceful, compassionate, and wise religion unburdened by the trivialities of dogma, but it often facilitates the very same kinds of dissociation and cruelty found in Abrahamic religion. Because of the insidious ‘truth claims’ that are slipped under the door, Buddhists training in mindfulness and the cultivation of compassion often simultaneously desensitise themselves to the sufferings of others. As another lama acquaintance once said, in response to a comment made about seeking to minimise suffering through consumer choice:

“One can never, in any circumstance, mitigate the suffering of others. To think one can do so means one has not integrated the three kinds of suffering in one’s practice. One can only mitigate one’s own suffering. One the other hand, one can create causes for others to meet the dharma, and allow them to mitigate their own suffering.”

Ironically, the lama who said this is also a practitioner of Tibetan Medicine (and, famously, one of the most self-obsessed human beings you could ever hope to meet). If there were ever an example of one’s conduct alleviating the sufferings of others, medicine would seem to be the most obvious. But he is speaking here not of the actual mundane ‘sufferings’ of ordinary beings—for practitioners of his lofty calibre, such concerns are trivialities (a matter for ‘idiot compassion’). Existential suffering is all that matters, and that can only be mitigated (in a Buddhist context) through religious indoctrination. Thus the fetishisation of Buddhism reaches its perfection. One can ‘don the robes’ of compassion and wisdom, claiming the ideological high ground while still living one’s life entirely by the rules of the capitalist zeitgeist. With Buddhism, there is no need to get wrapped up in the trivialities of ‘idiot compassion’, because at the end of the day, “it’s all empty”. One can be hypercritical of modernity, even slipping into conservatism and regression, while still positioning oneself as a bastion of ideological and ethical purity. In its modernist forms, Buddhism is indeed “the perfect ideological supplement” of capitalism.

The Question of Orientalism

For all of the talk about ‘Buddhist Modernism’, I do want to be careful not to create a false dichotomy between Western/Modernist/“bad” Buddhism and Eastern/Traditional/“good” Buddhism. The issue here, as discussed by Evan Thompson in his book, is the notion of “Buddhist exceptionalism”. The very idea that Buddhism is some unique repository of benevolent spirituality and deep wisdom that is wholly distinct from other more perverse forms of religion is, of course, misguided. All religions are ‘unique’ in their own particular ways, but none (including Buddhism) is wholly exceptional. They all have their potential value, but they all also have their limitations and shortcomings.

It is worth noting that the Western obsession with Buddhism is very much an Orientalist phenomenon, and it always has been. In the British colonial era, Buddhism was positioned as a more philosophically mature alternative to the ‘heathenry’ of ‘Hindooism’, with animal-headed gods and archaic rituals seemingly switched out for quiet introspection and the sophisticated pursuit of ‘enlightenment’. Indeed, the use of the term ‘enlightenment’ to translate Bodhi was an ingenious pivot (popularised by Max Müller) to align Buddhist philosophy with the philosophical ideals of the European Enlightenment.

At the same time, India had long been perceived by Europeans, at least since the days of Marco Polo, as a mystical land of magical yogis, miraculous wonders, and esoteric knowledge. It was a land where spiritual masters ate mercury and levitated, where speaking trees could tell the future, and where all of the mysteries of the world might be solved once and for all. But in order for British colonisation to be justifiable, such perceptions simply could not persist. Instead, Indians became characterised as backwards, regressive, and desperately in need of ‘civilising’ by their benevolent European counterparts. Thus the land of magic turned into a land of depravity, and the European imagination shifted to the Himalayas and beyond.

Tibet became a new focal point for European spiritualists during the 19th century, who likewise perceived it as a magical land of hidden wisdom and spiritual wonders. Many such figures, like Madame Blavatsky (founder of the Theosophical Society), even manufactured entire corpuses of ‘Tibetan teachings’ which had absolutely nothing to do with actual Tibetan ideas. Some claimed to receive downloads through visions of enlightened masters, while others claimed to have visited Tibet despite never actually having done so. This was far more common that one might think, and after all, who was there to doubt them? Until the Tibetan diaspora of the mid-20th century (triggered by the Chinese occupation of Tibet), Europeans had very little access to actual Tibetan texts or teachings. All they had was a fantasy. But even once Tibetan teachers began venturing out onto the world stage, this fantasy endured.

The result is that the ‘Tibet’ of the Western mind is largely a fantasy. It did not, and does not, exist in the ‘real world’. It is dependent upon Orientalist tropes that position actual Tibetans as perfect embodiments of wisdom and goodness. They are reduced to archetypes, rather than three-dimensional humans. While we are quite willing to look at the ‘great thinkers’ of Europe’s past with a critical eye, our Orientalism and subtle ethnocentrism prevents us from applying the same critiques to equivalent Asian systems of knowledge. This is a grave disservice, not only to the global progression of knowledge but also to the very cultures that are being idealised in the process. If Buddhism is going to take a seat at the table of global discourse (as well it should), then we need to learn to become comfortable with the fact that it is, much like the manifold cultures who have practiced it, both very human and very imperfect. Tibet has been host to many phenomenal developments in human knowledge through the centuries, but it is not some ideal ‘Shangri-la’. There are elements of Tibetan religious culture, in particular—like the tulku system and the heavily patriarchal culture of abuse—which deserve to be ruthlessly criticised.

Conclusion

This rather long post may be perceived by some as a mere airing of grievances, but it is very much not intended in such a spirit. If we were to take a level-headed approach to Buddhism as a ‘world religion’, the kinds of problems that so many people encounter in Buddhism would likely be far less common. For this reason, it is important to try—as best as I can—to drive home the fact that Buddhism is a religion, and like all religion, it has its inherent risks and shortcomings.

But back to the main question, it is evident that the Venn diagram of ‘Buddhist compassion’ and ‘Christian empathy’ has more overlap than many might think. In both cases, a fundamental valuation of empathic care is often superseded by religious doctrines that prioritise transcendent soteriology over the practical minimisation of suffering. And in both cases, ethical conduct is primarily conceived through vertical systems of morality handed down from holy patriarchs, rather than through horizontal negotiations between persons. ‘Goodness’ is that which is aligned to the standards of the religion, not that which alleviates or minimises suffering—and while even a broken clock is right twice a day, this is an insufficient foundation for authentic ethics. If Buddhist ‘masters’ were to decide en masse that homosexuality is evil and causes bad karma (which would not be entirely unfounded, as there is no shortage of scripture that suggests as much), then compassionate concern for the legal rights of queer people would surely end up in the bin of ‘idiot compassion’. This has already long been the case in Asian Buddhist countries (Bhutan only decriminalised homosexuality in 2021), but Buddhist teachers have (usually) avoided perpetuating such ideas in the West. But is this truly an exemplification of superior Buddhist care, or is it mere pragmatism? Perhaps it’s a bit of both, but given the pervasive homophobia I have encountered and witnessed among many Tibetan lamas over the years, the pragmatic impulse should not be underestimated.

Ultimately, compassion in Buddhism—despite its idealised representation as an unambiguously benevolent ‘übervalue’—remains deeply embedded within complex religious hierarchies, metaphysical beliefs, and cultural contexts that often subvert its supposedly altruistic aspirations. Buddhist modernism, with its emphasis on rationalism and secular appeal, masks many uncomfortable realities intrinsic to traditional Buddhist institutions, just as Christianity’s emphasis on love and empathy can obscure the authoritarianism embedded within its doctrines. To approach Buddhism responsibly, we must engage critically, pushing beyond the fetishisation of exoticised spirituality toward an honest reckoning with the ways its ethical paradigms both inspire and constrain compassionate action. Only then can Buddhism genuinely contribute to a global ethical discourse that transcends dogma, grounded instead in an uncompromising commitment to the real, measurable alleviation of suffering.