Recently, I had an uncomfortable exchange on Facebook with a follower of Eckhart Tolle. He was defending his guru after I made a comment. The exchange was uncomfortable for me, because I could clearly see that the man was brainwashed. He was spewing nothing but dogmatic jargon that he’d either read in one of Tolle’s books or heard him say in a lecture. What’s more, he was extremely arrogant about his regurgitated comments.
He’s not the first brainwashed cult member I’ve experienced since I left my cult. As a cult survivor, I can instantly spot a brainwashed person. They are so enamored with their gurus, they can’t even hear themselves as they parrot their “masters.” Once you know the truth about how cult members’ minds are distorted and fixed on whatever their gurus teach them, it’s very easy to spot them. Of course, a key reason why it makes me uncomfortable is that I used to be a brainwashed fake-guru follower myself spouting my ex-gurus’ words. It all makes me cringe now.
After the exchange, I did a Google search of Tolle and, sure enough, many ex-followers are sharing their truth about his spiritual empire. Some are finding it’s not so great to be stuck in Tolle’s version of the “now,” after all. (Author’s Note: My instincts tell me that the great revelation while sitting on a park bench in this origin story was not about the “power of now,” but about the power of a great way to brand a new spiritual con game.)
Among the comments I found scattered across the internet, I found something truly valuable: A commentary by a Zen Buddhist on what the “now” really means, how it’s only a starting point on a spiritual journey, and what souls actually need to do to take meaningful steps on their spiritual journey — beyond the “now.” Rather than the “power of now,” he said we need to follow the “power of one.”
What’s this “Power of Now” Anyway?
The commentary I found was inspired by someone asking this question on Quora: “What are criticisms of Eckhart Tolle?”
Several people replied (often in support of Tolle). But one man, Vince Cheok, retired lawyer and accountant, and Zen Buddhist, gave a powerful answer. His answer highlighted an important aspect of spiritual enlightenment. I’ll share some excerpts from his response here. You can also read the whole thing online. I want to stress that the point of this post is not to criticize Tolle’s teachings. Instead it’s to learn from Mr. Cheok — and gain the actual Buddhist perspective on this issue, which he so generously shared with the world.
If you’re not familiar with Tolle, here’s an example excerpt from his book, The Power of Now: “I heard the words, ‘resist nothing,’ as if spoken inside my chest. I feel myself being sucked into a void. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I felt myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.”
Mr. Cheok’s describes him thusly: Tolle’s “foundation for his spiritual thesis is the focus on now, for that is the whole of our being — the experience of each moment of our ‘now.’ Tolle asks us to simply focus and accept what appears to us in our ‘now.’ Similarly, Eckhart gives the clear impression that we should watch and ignore our fickle minds, and it is in this sense that Tolle again fails to explain that this ‘watcher’ in us is also an illusion.”
Bringing the Light of Truth to the “Now”
According to Mr. Cheok: “The one major defect (with Tolle’s thesis) however is that in the emptiness or magical illusion or phantasm that the Buddhists refer to as ‘sunyata’ (which is almost impossible to translate into English), the ‘now’ itself is an ‘illusion.’
“In solving life’s vagaries, what is the utility of the mind to simply focus on the now that is already past when we experience it as our present. For how long does it take for our senses and mind to perceive, register, and compute, and then generate the mental imagery of what we see and what we hear?
“Practitioners should instead be taught not to ignore what their minds tell them … (but) instead to train their minds by putting each thought under active surveillance to vet them as to whether they are mindful, thoughtful, and wholesome, so that any resulting action of karma will be mindful, thoughtful, and wholesome. It is only through changing our karmic residue and consequences that we can change our life situations!”
In Buddhist terms, it is just ‘sunyata’!
“The mind is sunyata, the ‘watcher’ that Tolle refers to is also sunyata, the entire experience of the phantasmagoria of the phenomena in our existence are all sunyata. Sunyata is not nothingness or inert void or ephemeral visage of an illusion per se. Sunyata is very real. We are sunyata, but when we pinch ourselves we are very real — we are born, we eat, sleep, fall in and out of love, hate and get angry, etc., and we die! Our worldly reality is nonetheless sunyata in the sense of emptiness of sunyata because our life, our existence has no permanent meaning, is permanently empty of meaning, is permanently illusory of any meaning!
Not Illusion, but “Phantasmagoria”
“We all sooner or later become in this incessantly unrelenting changing phantasmagoria — history! But our very lives, our very being, when we are alive as animated phantasmagoria, is not an illusion! So, the first thing that Tolle should do is to dispel this nonsense that we and our being and our lives are an ‘illusion.’ They aren’t! They are just the magical phantasm that is sunyata, like a magic show that is so realistically enthralling that it brings tears of joy and laughter to our eyes, and might even have us on tenterhooks of fear and trepidation!
We are animated on a stage and the show must go on until we have finished with our role and our parts in this virtual reality soap opera, where the plot lines and dialogue are improvised as we act along impromptu!
“There can never ever be a permanent substantive identifiable graspable ‘now.’ The whole thing is phantasmagoria of an illusion! This is the disease we call in Zen, the ‘pointing to the moon’ syndrome. When we point to the moon, we are just replicating pointing to the reflection of the moon on the surface of the pond; except we do not see the invisible surface of the pond in our mind!”
“The answer … can never be found in the now … but to be found in the beginning. And what was and still is the beginning … the pure luminous acumen of mind-consciousness — the empty glass before we filled in the potion of consciousness of a false ego of self.
“From the Zen Bodhisattva point of view, when we get back to our original Bodhi-nature … we must then make the next quantum leap … so as not to linger at that transcendental state. Why do we do so? because when we are back in the pure luminous acumen of mind-consciousness, which at this point of our conversation, we can conveniently describe it as being “at one with the now of the ‘the power of one.’” If we were to stay on and linger when we are still in fact mortal beings, we undeniably possess an attachment and have also an illusion or delusion as to the possibility of such a permanent state of rest (Author’s note: aka, “stuck in the now”).
(As such) “Tolle is never going to lead you to the liberation from the endless cycle of rebirth from the immutable law of karma, of cause and effect that is inherent in the suffering that is samsara. Isn’t that what spiritual practice is all about — the end of suffering! How can Tolle honestly believe that he can come up with the shortcut answer and solution, when even the Buddha had to revert to what he called the ‘ancient path’ to nirvana?
Don’t Sit in “the Now” — Leap into Your Karmic Flow
“How then do we escape the grasp and snare of the immutable law of karma? Answer: We do so by coming back to conventional reality to lead the deluded out of their worldly illusion that there is samsara or nirvana, or for the less developed in spiritual insight to lead them to the liberation that is the end of suffering …
“Let me explain this by way of a syllogistical argument or proposition. If there is nothing and we ourselves stay in or at nothing, doing nothing, we achieve nothing but will still be subjected to and impacted by the immutable law of karma. But if from nothing we get people out of something, which is actually nothing, then we achieve something out of nothing, and generate good karma in the event!”
(In other words) “Tolle is bringing truth seekers to the starting block in the Olympics field … You are then at one with yourself. You are on your own. It is all up to you ‘now’! … he has not explained that when you leave the starting block, you should throw yourself to the wind, have totally no self-consciousness at all, even of the now — that there should be no consciousness of ‘I am off, I am off and running. Am I leading? Who is behind me? Who is about to overtake me?’ Nothing. You have to let go and lose your ‘self’ totally in the race. That flash or bolt of lightning should have a life and essence of cosmic energy of its own.
The ‘now’ has no meaning when it is predicated on self-consciousness. The ‘now’ in the dynamics is when there is no self-consciousness when caught up in the Qi of the flow. The egoless Qi flow itself is the ‘now’! All is engrossed and absorbed and comprised in the Qi flow.
“The equanimity, the ‘middle path,’ that in Buddhism is neither to resist nor not to resist. Nor to accept nor not to accept. It is about experiencing the now of the present, of the moment, for what it is, as your karmic consequence or destiny without judgment, without attachment or clinging, without aversion or fear. Just let it be as far as how you have drawn your lot or straw in this rebirth. Just go with the flow, the Qi or the Tao. But you still have to navigate and manage the flow, the Qi or the Tao of your current life stream … You have a game of life chess to play! You cannot not resist because the essence of Buddhism is about managing the immutable law of karma, about managing and improving on your karmic profile.
(In conclusion) “Our personal karmic journey is unique. Do not be besotted with ‘the now.’ It is like seeing a sign pointing to Mount Everest at the foot of the Himalayas and you think you have climbed Mount Everest! … do not be imprisoned or captivated by any tenet or dogma or word or label or signpost whatsoever. Nothing is absolute. All is provisional and relative. In a changing landscape all signs and pointers are themselves changing phantasm.
On your karmic treadmill keep moving and alert and animated until your time is up. Not resisting is not the answer! You must adjust your rhythm of life to your fated karmic treadmill!
“Learn to adjust your personal karmic treadmill, so that the karmic residue or speed comes to the very nought of a standstill. That is what nirvana is — when you get off your karmic treadmill through your own self effort — the eradication all karmic residue! Never to be reborn in samsara ever again!”
