Are Half Truths OK?
Surfing the Himalayas: A Spiritual Adventure
by Frederick Lenz
St. Martin's Press
A much-hyped book raises questions about the transmission of Tantric Buddhism to the West.
There is more than one Buddhist vehicle to enlightenment, and Frederick Lenz in this heavily-promoted book offers a new one: a snowboard, the flexible plank that is now terrorising North American ski slopes. It is a tribute to readers´ good sense that the publisher´s promotional efforts have not pushed Surfing above 146 on the New York Times bestseller list.
In January, the Washington Post ran a long expose on the dalliances of the author, a rich and dangerous cult figure with mansions scattered around North America. So, this is who South Asia and the Himalaya get as their latest representative in North America´s mass media. And it is clear that Lenz is using the medium of a book supposedly on Tantric Buddhism to push through his own agenda.
The nameless protagonist in Surfing is a young snowboarder who needs no name because he represents the West, the Occident. He acts as a primitive device for the monologue of the book´s spiritual guide and only other character, Master Fwap Sam-Dup, "the last master of the Rae Chorze-Fwaz School of Tantric Mysticism and Buddhist Enlightenment." They meet when the snowboarder runs over the master on a mountain near Kathmandu. Master Fwap´s own guru had prophesied that a tall young man on a snowboard would "bump into" Master Fwap. This is how Eastern dharma is transmitted to the West.
While Master Fwap, in mystical tones, explains his brand of Tantric Buddhism to the snowboarder, I found myself searching for evidence that the author had travelled to Nepal, as he claims in the epigraph. In Kathmandu (which is misspelt in the book) he stays in a "youth hostel" on a cot, and eats hard bread and gruel. The next morning it snows as he rides a yak-drawn cart across the city. Overlooking an elevation problem there, I wonder whether a yak would ever submit to such a device.
The master—swathed in the robes of an omniscient Tibetan guru, except that they are the wrong colour—conveys opinions that are frequently more Western than ´Eastern´. Conveniently, he has learned about modern science and society, which facilitates his conspiracy with the author´s wide-ranging philosophy agenda. "Without my knowing how or why," says Master Fwap´s disciple, bathed annoyingly in waves of kaleidoscopic golden light, "I simply ´knew´ that what he had told me was true." The young snow surfer has blindly caught the wave of Eastern Mysticism, and though he doesn´t know where it is going, he doesn´t want to get off.
Master Fwap´s pronouncements are improperly described as "Tantric Buddhism" and "Buddhist Yoga," and his discourse mostly meanders through an agglomerated mystical landscape of Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, common sense, contrivance, Chinese feng shui, the "Atlantean Mystery School," something Egyptian I´d never heard of, and New Age nonsense such as "vibratory soul types," "auric patterning," and "psychic pollution of the earth´s aura." Master Fwap says, "You must look beyond my words in order to know what 1 am talking about."
"Fwapism" would be. a more appropriate title for this discipline. No known Tibetan traditions or sects are referred to, and Master Fwap is the sole source of the book´s ancient wisdom. But Buddhist philosophy isn´t copyrighted, so I wonder why Lenz borrows and invents when the real Tibetan Buddhist concepts work just fine.
Master Fwap correctly identifies karma as quite simply the law of cause and effect, sometimes realised over a period of many lifetimes. Later, he slips into the stereotypical and incorrect sense of karma as ´fate´, "…the winds of karma change direction, and we are blown into yet another life… And if you don´t follow your karma, if you try to avoid it and run away from whatever your karma happens to be, you will never be happy…" Sounds good, but unfortunately, that isn´t karma.
Master Fwap claims to have been enlightened in dozens of past lifetimes, which defies a core Buddhist belief that nirvana liberates one altogether from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. He confirms that humans are habituated, indeed slaves to the "weather" of our transient emotions. He also touches on Buddhist emptiness, but in doing so fuels numerous myths: that Buddhism is largely mystical; that meditation is a means to stop one´s thoughts (Buddhists observe the mind, they don´t control it); that enlightened masters always tell the truth (not necessarily); that Tibetan monks aren´t ordinary people (really?); that "To suffer because of anything you see, feel or experience here in the world.is a mistake." One of Buddhism´s most practical lessons is that the experience and understanding of suffering is our greatest source of compassion.
Surfing raises questions about the introduction of Tantric Buddhism to the West. Are half truths better than nothing? Might this book actually impair a proper understanding of Buddhism? I don´t know. Perhaps simply inspiring readers in the West to regard the world differently, while providing them a narrow glimpse of emptiness and the transitory nature of existence, is good, especially if this leads them to further inquiry.
Surfing can be looked at as humorous, I suppose. The protagonist says, "I had been sitting in meditation for several hours, even though it had only seemed like seconds to me." He ascribes this to the higher pranic currents of the valley where he is sitting. Real Buddhist masters recognize this state of mind as sleep.
Those interested in learning about Buddhism would be better off snowboarding past the poorly-researched crud of Surfing and start with any of the readable, clear, consistent, humorous books written by the Dalai Lama.