What Makes You Not a Buddhist by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse (2007)
I already know what makes me not a Buddhist, so let me begin with that.
This book isn’t written for me, though. It’s written mainly for those religious Westerners who think they’re Buddhists because they like the idea and the symbolism and some of the practices of Buddhism—but they don’t fully understand the four key truths of Buddhism. Without belief in and pursuit of these “Four Seals” or truths, a person is simply fooling himself, living selfishly, and not doing his next life any favors. As the author states:
You might read about these four truths for the sake of entertainment or mental exercise, but if you don’t practice them, you are like a sick person reading the label on a medicine bottle but never taking the medicine. (124)
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I’ve met the kind of people Dzongsar is writing to here. While in Bhutan last Fall, I watched a small group of California hippies climb to the Tiger’s Nest in their long, unwashed hair, their filthy parkas, and their bare feet. Together in a temple dedicated to a deity of wealth, they chanted a song that embarrassed not only themselves and us foreign tourists who had to hear it, but the monks as well. I even saw two monks share incredulous looks and laugh as the hippies left. My Christian group prayed silently inside that same temple for the souls of those lost in Buddhism, and one monk complimented our guide for having a group of Americans that knew how to pray for wealth!
This book serves as an excellent—and well-written—introduction to Buddhism and would in fact help people like those hippies become better Buddhists. For someone like me, however, it holds a different appeal. Far from encouraging me towards Buddhism, this book instead lifts the veil to what makes the Buddhist mind work and its faith so unique.
Brief Summary of What Makes You (not) a Buddhist
According to the flyleaf, Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse is head of the Dzongsar Monastery and Dzongsar College among several other organizations. His writing is clear and provocative, and his focus in this work is simple: If you think you’re Buddhist because of the clothes you wear or decisions you make, you’d better think again.
Specifically, he emphasizes the four pillar-truths of Buddhism that each true Buddhist must believe and pursue. I’ll list them each here as defined in the chapters, but then I’ll also quote Dzongsar’s questions from page 4 regarding their opposites.
- All compounded things are impermanent. “If you believe that there is some essential substance or concept that is permanent, then you are not a Buddhist.”
- All emotions are pain. “If you believe that actually some emotions are purely pleasurable, then you are not a Buddhist.”
- All things have no inherent existence. “If you believe that certain things do exist inherently, then you are not a Buddhist.”
- Nirvana is beyond concepts. “If you think that enlightenment exists within the spheres of time, space, and power, then you are not a Buddhist.”
For the rest of the book, Dzongsar dissects each of these seals one-by-one in an almost sermonic manner, sharing an account from Siddhartha’s life and teachings, then offering an application. I have so many highlights from my reading, I honestly don’t know where to begin. But let tackle each in turn, responding of course from a Christian perspective.
Seal 1: All Compounded Things Are Impermanent
Contrary to what Buddhism teaches, I do believe there exists some essential substance or concept that is permanent—namely the Only Wise God who has glory forevermore through Jesus Christ (amen, Romans 16:27). Of course Buddha disagreed, not necessarily disputing that God exists, but that if He did exist, He too would be impermanent (17) and unable to reverse our path towards death (16):
God—necessarily abides by the laws of time [so] he too must be subject to change… But as long as God’s actions are an assemblage of beginnings and ends, he is impermanent, in other words subject to uncertainty and unreliable. (18)
To Buddha, this was good news, for without hope in someone greater than himself, he couldn’t be trapped and therefore couldn’t be disappointed (16). Then after making a decent point about the inevitability of death—that if we’re more aware of change/impermanence (i.e. death), we’ll be less likely to worry over small things and “drama” (19-20)—he once again attacks the idea of God by writing that:
Fabricating concepts such as ‘eternal love,’ ‘everlasting happiness,’ and ‘salvation’ generates more evidence of impermanence. (20)
Overall I found this chapter difficult to swallow, due to Buddha’s unproven assumptions about God’s limitations. Simply stating something to true doesn’t make it truth. Certainly, if God were limited by time and space and had no power over life and death, I’d go looking for something better too! But His Word (and my faith in His Word) tells me the opposite—not only that He created (and is therefore outside) time and space, but also that He is all powerful, everywhere present, righteous, good, loving, just, etc. etc.
Seal 2: All Emotions Are Pain
In this chapter, Dzongsar tackles what might be the most famous—if not least understood—teaching of Buddhism. The whole point of emptying oneself, it seems, is to rid one of emotions and therefore pain so that one can transcend daily drama and hiccups and focus on the reality that none of this actually exists.
Of course, my initial response to this (and I think most non-Buddhists are the same) is to ask: “What about love? Peace? Tranquility? Harmony? Friendship? How in the world could these emotions mean pain?” Dzongsar clarifies that, since these emotions depend upon factors outside of our control, one misstep out there means pain in here:
All the emotions we think are good are still dependent on other factors outside of our control, and they therefore lead to pain: “basically we can’t be 100% prepared all the time. Therefore our obstacles and opponents need to be successful only 1% of the time to do all their damage. (53)
What he calls for, then, is an awareness of this fact and distance from all emotions (even the “good” ones). He writes of the Buddha:
Through his tireless contemplation, Siddhartha discovered that at the root, it is our emotions that lead to suffering. In fact they are suffering.… If you seriously wish to eliminate suffering, you must generate awareness, tend to your emotions, and learn how to avoid getting worked up. (40)
While this viewpoint (that everything is outside our own control) contains some element of truth, it suggests that all things outside of myself is evil, or at least have an evil bent. That means even if only myself and Buddha existed in the world, we would eventually come to blows. In fact, I love this Bhutanese proverb:
Even if you were only in the company of the Buddha,
You would probably quarrel sometimes.(The Bhutanese Guide to Happiness, 102)
The problem of course is the Atheism from which this viewpoint stems—that even if there is a God, He is limited in his capacity and tainted in his perfection. Even if He is good, He cannot be fully good. If He were righteous and pure, He couldn’t be completely righteous or completely pure.
Of course, this makes perfect sense to a Buddhist, because Seal 3 teaches that everything is emptiness—”of course there is no God: nothing actually exists!” Which is why I can’t wrap my mind around an illustration like this:
It’s hard to remember that…the self is assembled, doesn’t exist independently, and is susceptible to change. (46-47) … Awareness doesn’t prevent you from living, it makes living that much fuller. If you are enjoying a cup of tea and you understand the bitter and the sweet of temporary things, you will really enjoy the cup of tea. (54)
It’s such nonsense! What kind of living is “fuller” living when nothing—including life itself—exists? What does “enjoy” mean if emotions are pain?
It’s as if Buddhists talk in circles, yet when caught in a logical fallacy, they fall back on the idea that nothing actually exists. Easy to say; harder to experience; impossible to prove.
Thank God (who exists) that He has provided at least one perfect emotion: Love. Read this from 1John 4:7-16 —
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
Seal 3: Everything Is Emptiness
The heart of this seal is that nothing actually exists, and if we think hard enough, we’ll realize that the things we see and experience are nothing more than thoughts or dreams. He gives several example, but I’ll just share these of the river and the sandwich:
A river flows with freshwater, always changing, and we still call it a river. If we visit that place a year later, we think it is the same river. But how is it the same? If we isolate one aspect or characteristic, this sameness falls apart. The water is different, the Earth is in a different place and its rotation through the galaxy, the leaves of fallen and been replaced — all that remains is an appearance of a river similar to the one that we saw last time. “Appearance” is quite an unstable basis for “truth.” (61-62)
If analysis leads to a comfortable answer, if it gives us what we want, we do not go beyond that. Is this really a sandwich? It taste like a sandwich, so I will eat it. Analysis stops there.… Siddhartha’s analysis kept going further and further until the sandwich…[was] just atoms, and finally even the atoms could not hold up to his analysis. Finding nothing there, he was free from disappointment. (62)
Dzongsar says that our inability to see this way stems from a lack of courage (and I would ask: isn’t courage pain?). It was courage to see that allowed Siddhartha to experience Enlightenment:
Having the courageous spirit to wake up and examine is what Buddhists call “renunciation.” Contrary to popular belief, Buddhist renunciation is not self-flagellation or austerity. Siddhartha was willing and able to see that all of our existence is merely labels placed on phenomena that do not truly exist, and through that he experienced awakening. (63)
So if you’re keeping score, to be a Buddhist, you must be an atheist, free from emotions, and (painfully) confident that nothing (even yourself, your confidence, or your ideas) exists. To which I would ask: Then what’s the point? Buddhism is Annihilationism in a bathrobe. If this were truth, why would you respond with asceticism and not debauchery? Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die (Luke 12:13-21)!
Dzongsar then says that Buddhism actually does teach about an afterlife, but admits that it doesn’t really exist, though some people are “idiots” and still need to cling to ideas like Heaven and Hell:
Jack is an idiot…Buddha teaches that there is an external hell and that in order to avoid going there and being boiled in molten iron, Jack must stop entertaining his non-virtuous, negative actions and emotions. (75)
You might think this is a paradox. Buddha contradicts himself, saying that he doesn’t exist, that everything is emptiness, and then teaching morality and salvation. But these methods are necessary in order not to scare people who are not ready to be introduced to emptiness. (77)
Seal 4: Nirvana Is beyond Concepts
With “the afterlife” in mind, Dzongsar then takes us to the fourth and final pillar-truth of Buddhism, that Nirvana (what some might call Heaven or the Afterlife) is beyond Concepts, meaning we can talk about it, but we cannot understand it. This is a very convenient truth, because it not only needs no proof, it blatantly states there is no proof—”and yet it’s true.”
The most striking line from this chapter was almost a throw-away line, one offered whilst sharing a story from Siddhartha’s own life. Dzongsar writes:
For many lifetimes [Siddhartha] had never told a lie, and because of his merit, he had earned the power of persuasive speech. (89)
So the one person who discovered this faith eventually told his followers not only that he had never told a lie, but that he hadn’t told a lie in many of his previous lives. And they believed him. He also admitted that he’s wily, able to convince anyone of anything with his persuasive speech. And again, they believed him. I don’t know about you, but this sure reminds me of John 8:42-45 when Jesus said to the unbelieving Jews:
If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.
A Few Positive Notes
There were moments in this book where I noted some positive findings. For example, in answer to the common query about why there are so many variations of Buddhism out there, Dzongsar clarifies:
In fact, there are tens of thousands of paths to follow within Buddhism. So why not simplify it into one method? The reason is that, like the variety of medicines needed for different diseases, a variety of methods are needed for different kinds of habits, cultures, and attitudes. (74)
He also clarifies that he is not the kind of person who thinks that all religions lead to the truth. Instead he states that all religions differ based upon their “view”:
The view is the core of any religion. At an interfaith conference we may have no choice but to be diplomatic and agree that all religions are basically the same. But in fact they have very different views, and no one but you yourself can judge if one view is better than the other. Only you as an individual, with you own mental capacity, taste, feelings, and upbringing, can choose the view that works for you. Like an abundant buffet, the variety of approaches offers something for everyone. (108)
While I don’t agree with his argument that we can self-prescribe our religion based on our own tastes or desires, I appreciate the admission, essentially, that not all roads lead to the same destination. Of course, from a Buddhist perspective, if a “person” has an endless number of lives to get things right, it really doesn’t matter at all what a person believes this time, does it? To which again I would respond: then what’s the point?
I also appreciated these two teachings, which are very similar to truths found in the Bible:
Hardly anything we do in the course of a day – neither in our thoughts nor in our actions – indicates that we are aware of how fragile life is…As we sit watching commercials, waiting… [while] our time in this life ebbs away. (10-11)
[Buddha] advised that if they want to be rich, first be content; and if they want to conquer the enemy, first conquer their own anger. Ultimately he taught that suffering can be cut at the root by dismantling the self, for it there is no self, there is no sufferer. (99)
Regarding the first, it’s a good perspective, knowing that life is short (a.k.a. impermanent), so how I spend my time matters. Paul says something similar in Ephesians 5:15-16 —
Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Regarding the second, it’s also important that I deal with the issues in my own heart before I begin seeking external improvements in my life or before I start dealing successfully with my enemies. This is not far from Jesus’ own teaching to believers about removing the log in my eye before I try fixing the speck in my brother’s eye (Matthew 7:1-5) or Paul’s teaching about money, that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1Timothy 6:6-10). Not the exact same teachings, but similar, because Truth is Truth, and it can found in even the most inconceivable of places.
Conclusion
I am not a Buddhist, and I already know “what makes me not a Buddhist.” This book was a solid introduction to the core tenets of Buddhism, though, like a 4-part Podcast-style Beginner’s Course in the religion.
From a Christian standpoint, this book has provided me with topics of conversation for times I meet someone who thinks he’s Buddhist but isn’t really, and it also provides some fodder for deeper conversations for those who truly are Buddhists and know precisely why. There are enough logical fallacies and “What’s the point?” opportunities in Buddhism to engage in meaningful dialogue.
In evangelism, though, planting seeds of doubt can never be the ultimate goal. The only thing that can battle counterfeit-truths and lies is Truth—and Jesus tells us in John 14:6…
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through me.
©2026 E.T.
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