Q. I wanted to bring something up; a few calls ago we talked about 'Buddhists' who don't follow a vegetarian regime and you commented that you would say 'they aren't really Buddhists'. This is a sentiment I concur with, but I was wondering why most people don't see this kind of connection? The question arises because if someone says they are a piano player one infers that they regularly play the piano. If someone says they play poker, we assume that means that they sit down with others and play poker. If someone says they are a gardener, again we assume that they spend time planting, trimming, and cultivating plants.
So why do people not assume that there is a specific behavioral component when it comes to following a spiritual tradition? When it comes to spirituality people do not infer that there are specific behavioral commitments that they follow. Your view that unless someone is a vegetarian they are not really a Buddhist is similar to saying that unless someone actually plays a piano they are not a piano player.
In the realm of spirituality it seems that people consider spirituality to mean only dealing with the realm of ideas; it would be like someone saying that they are a baseball player because they like to watch baseball games. Such a person is a baseball fan, but not a baseball player. Similarly, someone who does not enter into the behavioral component of Buddhism might be a 'fan' of Buddhism, but they are not a Buddhist.
In Platonism, almost all Platonists today are what I would consider to be 'fans' of Platonism, but not Platonists. They might accept the view of actually existing ideas, but unless they instantiate behavioral components I would not consider that to be sufficient. I base that on the necessity of purification for experiencing higher hypostases.
I'm not sure why this kind of separation exists in religion, philosophy, and spirituality and I wonder if others have observed this dichotomy. Perhaps it is a feature of modernity. I'm not sure.
A. I have certainly also observed the same peculiar phenomena that you wonder about. I believe that the observation you refer to was actually made in the context of discussion of people who profess to be Buddhists but don’t abstain from alcohol, but, of course, it applies equally well to vegetarianism and other required behaviors. (Somewhat related, you will recall that just recently I wrote that I couldn't understand how people could profess to adopt the weltanschauung of one or more of these systems and read all the time about it, but not establish a meditation or sadhana practice--not to mention making the necessary behavioral changes.) I don't really know if it is worse or more common in modernity than in traditional times (though it wouldn't surprise me--everything being worse and more adverse in modernity), nor can I necessarily off hand identify any particular circumstantial factors. Really, though, whether proximal environmental factors can be identified or not, I think it is the nature of samsara and the cause is ultimately the deluded souls of most people, the obscuration of their knowing, wisdom, and vision by being sunk in the body and "matter" (hule or, as the Greek is more often incorrectly transliterated, hyle), and their heavy karma. Your analogies are quite good, and I have used similar ones myself in the past in trying, futilely, to remonstrate with silly pseudo-Buddhists and the like, but perhaps it is not surprising or is only to be expected that people, deluded beings/souls, would have more clarity regarding such worldly activities and things that are only the pursuit of worldly desires--after all, their darkened, twisted souls are already turned entirely in that direction, towards the darkness of the sensory world and worldliness--than they do about spiritual matters and what it means to understand and embrace and practice them. To understand and implement these latter requires turning their souls at least a little towards the light and reality, which is just the opposite of how they are turned now, and requires resisting and loosening from their heavy deluded karma and the bodily and material obscuration of their souls. The dim eyes of their soul can better see the darkness of worldly desires and activities, but are quite blind when trying to look at the light of spiritual matters in the direction of actual being and reality. Such, again, is the nature of samsara. To understand what it means to be a piano or baseball player doesn't require much more than looking at and guessing about the shadows on the cave wall. To understand what it means to be a Buddhist or Platonist--let alone to do it--requires at least a little start to loosening of the bonds and turning the head towards the light. To understand about worldly matters and activities only requires deluded base worldly cleverness. To understand about spiritual matters requires lightening of karma, depends on the closeness or distance of the soul from the Good, regardless of mundane logic or reasoning, even though it seems so clear to us. Since, in general, most souls are more deluded and have heavier karma now in modernity, which is essentially for most people a rebirth in one of the lower sub-human type realms, it may be then that perhaps this weird phenomenon is more common now than in the past.
I hope this helps at least somewhat with your wondering about the issue. Alas, as I always lament, for me at least, our circumstances being alone or so few among all these crazy deluded vulgar worldly souls is really scary, like the human being fallen in among wild beasts in the analogy in Book 6 of the Politiea.
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