Prosperity Dharma?

One of the great contradictions in our country's religious life is how a get-up-and-go culture like America so wholeheartedly embraces a give-it-all-up faith like Christianity. We're steeped in the teachings of humility and voluntary poverty found in the Bible - yet we're the richest and most powerful culture in the world.

There are a lot of explanations for why this happened historically - see Max Weber's theory of the "Protestant Work ethic", where Calvinists and others made hard work - and not necessarily gain - part of the road to salvation.

But there have been many other attempts to more nakedly rewrite the poverty message of Bible. They go loosely under the name of "Prosperity Gospel," and in many ways try to make this claim: the closer you are to God, the better you'll do in this world, in health, wealth and happiness.

Even a cursory reading of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament makes this a little hard to swallow. Those closest to God tended to end up exiled, stripped of their posessions or painfully tortured to death. But this hasn't stopped generations of pulpit preachers and theologians (most notably in America the enviably named watchmaker Phinneas Quimby) from claiming that the wealthy and powerful are beloved in the sight of God - and that, if we behave ourselves, we too can have an easy, fat life.

So much for beholding the lily. The REAL cultures of renunciation - Buddhists, who see this whole world as Mara, illusion - must be laughing up their non-existent sleeves, right? Wrong. Leave it to an American Buddhist to write a best-selling book about the material benefits of renunciation.

Not so with Nichiren Buddhism. Says author Woody Hochswender in USA Today,

"...you'll see immediate benefits, produced by you, proof in your own life now. Buddhism doesn't ask you to believe in God. Buddhism asks you to believe in yourself."

Practitioners include actor Orlando Bloom, musician Herbie Hancock, singer Tina Turner and U.S. Rep. Henry "Hank" Johnson Jr., D-Ga. In the biopic What's Love Got to Do With It, Turner is shown learning to chant, and she gains the strength to flee her abusive husband.

Expounding on his book in a cavernous Manhattan cafe, Hochswender's ice-blue eyes are aglow, and he sounds like a health-and-wealth televangelist, in tone if not message. "You can realize your enlightened self almost from the first day. And you can become enlightened exactly as you are.

"No matter what your goal is in chanting, at the very least you will become a more disciplined person," he says. "All of us want to be more disciplined."

The article uses the phrase "prosperity dharma." I love it. Lemme run this one the Tibetan monks. I'll get back to you.