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In the Superman comic books of the 1950s and 鈥�60s, Bizzaro was a sad, sometimes sympathetic, but always dangerous Superman doppelg盲nger, a distorted double, like Howdy Doody鈥檚 evil twin Double Doody. (The Jungian shadow was ever present in the American 1950s; Compare Richard Nixon鈥檚 five o鈥檆lock shadow to fresh-faced JFK.) Bizzaro was a sort of Frankenstein figure, not so much villainous, like his creator Lex Luthor, as tragic. In more recent decades, American Buddhism has encountered its own disturbing double, what we might call a 鈥淏izarro Buddha.鈥� It鈥檚 a Frankenstein stitched together from corporate greed, secular resentment, and science delusion, an American version of what the Buddha defined as the 鈥渢hree poisons.鈥�

Is this hyperbole? Perhaps, but the situation is basically this: There is an American version of Buddhism that has been removed from its proper spiritual context; grounded in the sciences, especially neuroscience; and then made useful to a predatory techno-capitalist economy. This secularized Buddhism has no shortage of apologists. As B. Alan Wallace writes in Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground, 鈥淏uddhism, like science, presents itself as a body of systematic knowledge about the natural world. 鈥� Buddhism may be better characterized as a form of empiricism rather than transcendentalism.鈥� Or, as Jack Kornfield of Spirit Rock Meditation Center remarked tersely in a recent talk, 鈥淏uddhism is not a religion. It is a science of the mind.鈥� This is also the conclusion of Google鈥檚 Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, which offers mindfulness training 鈥渂orn at Google and based on neuroscience.鈥�

Tell that to the workers in Amazon warehouses who have repeatedly complained of dangerous and stressful working conditions but have been offered only the cold solace of a 鈥溾�� (or 鈥渄espair closet,鈥� as some have called it) where employees can go to 鈥渇ocus on their mental wellbeing.鈥� Amazon鈥檚 AmaZen program is just one instance of a broader strategy to use yoga, meditation, and mindfulness to limit damage to the corporate brand and improve productivity. It may be based on science, but it is also thoroughly hypocritical.

Our triple-headed corporate Buddha is not about theology. It is about ideology. There is a liberating adage on the left that says, 鈥淐apitalism understands that it will have enemies. But if it must have enemies, it will make them itself, and in its own image.鈥� In other words, when confronted with a social movement that is hostile to its interest, capitalism will simply co-opt the movement. And so, when the hippie lifestyle presented a threat in the 鈥�60s, corporations turned it into a style, a fashion commodity. It鈥檚 鈥渢he conquest of cool,鈥� as Thomas Frank wrote. This conquest is achieved, in Steve Bannon鈥檚 terms, by 鈥渇looding the zone,鈥� so that there is water (or Buddhism) everywhere, and yet there鈥檚 not a drop to drink.

It is shameful to use something as noble as Buddhism for something as ignoble as workplace stress relief, especially when it was the workplace that caused the stress in the first place.

As Tricycle editor Andrew Cooper and I argued in Salon in 2014: 鈥淏uddhism has its own orienting perspectives, attitudes and values, as does American corporate culture. And not only are they very different from each other, they are often fundamentally opposed to each other. Indeed, one of the foundations of Buddhism is the idea of right livelihood, which entails engaging in trades or occupations that cause minimal harm to other living beings. And yet in the literature of mindfulness as stress reduction for business, we鈥檝e seen no suggestion that employees ought to think about鈥攂e mindful of鈥攚hether they or the company they work for practice right livelihood. Corporate mindfulness takes something that has the capacity to be oppositional, Buddhism, and redefines it. Mindfulness becomes just another aspect of 鈥榳orkforce preparation.鈥� Eventually, we forget that it ever had its own meaning.鈥�

The confounding thing is that when Buddhism spread beyond Asia and Asian American communities in the 1950s and 鈥�60s, it was associated not with mammoth corporations and neuroscience, but with the counterculture. What was it within the counterculture that made it so receptive to Buddhism? The answer, I would suggest, is that the West had already been preparing to embrace Buddhism as far back as the late 18th century through Romanticism鈥檚 dissident culture of art, music, literature, and philosophy. In the 1950s, Beat poets, writers, and jazz musicians made Eastern philosophy and spirituality a public part of their artistic practice, in works like Jack Kerouac鈥檚 Dharma Bums and Allen Ginsberg鈥檚 鈥淲ichita Vortex Sutra.鈥� Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and Sun Ra brought jazz and spirituality emphatically together. 

These art scenes hearkened directly back to Romanticism鈥檚 anarchic tradition of nonconformity: the poet visionary, the dandy, the bohemian, the mystic, and the utopian, misfits all. It was German and English Romanticism that first suggested that humanity did not stand opposite nature as Cartesian dualism had insisted. It didn鈥檛 even suggest that humanity was a part of nature. It said humanity was nature, 鈥淩olled round in earth鈥檚 diurnal course / With rocks and stones and trees,鈥� as Wordsworth wrote in 鈥淎 Slumber Did My Spirit Seal.鈥� Put differently, the Romantics discovered that there is no self and no nature, there is only change, what they called 鈥渕utability.鈥�

The counterculture鈥檚 confidence in art and spirit was intended to open upon possibility, the possibility of other possibilities, counter-worlds. Unfortunately, it is capitalism鈥檚 purpose to limit the possibilities on hand to one: You are a labor commodity, and your proper place is the labor market. From a corporate perspective, the counterculture and its alien religions were enemies in need of secularization鈥攁nd brother, that was swiftly on the way. The counterculture and Buddhism needed to be managed. All that was required was an inspirational manager. As if on cue, along came Steve Jobs in 1976 with his omnivorous Apple I microcomputer. Jobs adapted both Zen and the counterculture to the purposes of a cutthroat corporate monopoly, co-opting the name of The Beatles鈥� production company, Apple, in the process. 

If thinking about American Buddhism鈥檚 problems as ideological has a Marxist air to it, that shouldn鈥檛 be surprising. Marx鈥檚 criticism of capitalist exploitation proceeds from his assumption that there is a human requirement for compassion and generosity that is more important than profit. Marx was not really much of a political activist; he spent most of his waking hours studying philosophy (his dissertation was on the Greek philosopher Epicurus) and, later, working in the Reading Room of the British Library. In Buddhism鈥檚 terminology, Marx was not a 鈥渨orldling鈥�; he was an 鈥渋nsider,鈥� a contemplative. 

For me, Marx is the books he wrote: the early essays on alienation, and then his life project of describing the mechanisms of exploitation in Capital. For both Marx and the Buddha, the goal was liberation from what constrains us, and openness to the possibility of what Marx called 鈥渁 higher form of society, a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle.鈥� Like the Buddha, Marx鈥檚 only god was liberation from a world of self-inflicted suffering, liberation from what humans do to themselves. 

Bizarro Buddha is a strange destiny for something as simple as Buddhism. The purpose of Buddhism is not to offer plugged-in therapy for the technologically addled. It offers something more humble, a three-legged stool. It offers ethics first (蝉墨濒补), then meditation/mindfulness (the calm of 蝉补尘腻诲丑颈), and lastly wisdom (辫补帽帽补), all thriving within the healing context of family, the sangha, Buddhist community. 

Of course, it is shameful to use something as noble as Buddhism for something as ignoble as workplace stress relief, especially when it was the workplace that caused the stress in the first place. But in the end, Buddhism is Buddhism, whatever the billionaires do. It cannot be harmed, never mind the hot mess that is this world. As Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of God鈥檚 grandeur, 鈥淣ature is never spent; / There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.鈥� Buddhism resides in its hard-won wisdom, always available to any of us in yoniso manasikara, the womb of attention, our awakened minds. This womb is not something that constrains us. Rather, it is something that liberates us so we can go forth and, like Marx, speak truth to power. 

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