The Ten Fetters: #3, Rites, Rituals, Magic
Is the Buddha saying that magic and ritual are meaningless or ineffective? No, and...
What they are is part of the material world, the world of desire, the world of success and failure, the world of relationship. We need all sorts of tools to negotiate the complexity of this world, and magic and ritual are some of our deepest and most ancient.
What the Buddha is saying is that like all of the tools we use to deal skillfully with the world, no matter how effective they may be, they are still not liberating. Liberation is not healing, and it is not success. It is transcendent in the sense that it does not participate in the dualities that define our work in the world. (And it's NOT transcendent if that suggests to you that you won't have to deal with the world—that's just bypass.)
Delusion about rites and rituals is a fetter because believing they can do what they cannot is a subtle form of wrong view that takes our personal responsibility out of the path of practice, projecting it onto external forces that can do much for us, but cannot do the intimate work of liberating the heart.
Tonight we look at our relationship to magic and ritual, including how it is used in all Buddhist traditions, what it does well, and what it cannot do.
