I think American Buddhists are missing in action.

They are missing in action in relation to an almost overwhelming contradiction with their teaching that exists in common public culture today.

I am talking about the notion of “narrative”.

“Narrative” is the word for a “story” — the usual term for it in mindfulness therapy — that collects the different realities in your life into one basket. Story, or narrative, is an attempt to understand as a single whole the different experiences you have in life. It is almost invariably imposed, or deduced, rather than discovered, and induced. According to many today, your life has to have a narrative (i.e., imposed upon it by your mind, or by someone else’s mind) in order for it to have meaning. You almost become one with your narrative.

Buddhism teaches something different.

I wish that Buddhists, who are pretty popular in a lot of circles by comparison with Christians, of whom I am one, would “come out” on this subject. Recently, I asked a Buddhist teacher whom I admire, “Why doesn’t anyone from your community ever challenge the prevailing ‘narrative’ about narratives? You disappoint me.” The teacher hung his head, literally.

This cast draws on two R & B ‘Soul’ ballads that, were they recorded today, would probably invoke a “narrative” to explain the voice — and problem — of the singer. But they weren’t recorded today. They understand the suffering they relate, and the deliverance from that suffering which both songs celebrate, in a different way.