A Buddhist appreciation of the Pope

This morning, I was reading the first major publication of the wonderful new Pope, Francis, his Apostolic Exhortation entitled "Evangelii Gaudium" meaning "The Joy of the Gospel." While, obviously, his text is thoroughly grounded in Christian ideology--that is, in biblical allusions, the notion of Christ as Redeemer and as Son of God, and references to "Christians" etc.--I nevertheless took great joy, as a Buddhist, in reading it, for it was, notwithstanding, pure Dharma. Here is but one example from the opening invocation:

Original:

The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who ac­cept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew. In this Ex­hortation I wish to encourage the Christian faith­ful to embark upon a new chapter of evangeliza­tion marked by this joy, while pointing out new paths for the Church’s journey in years to come.

 

With a few minor changes, a Buddhist would feel perfectly comfortable with the following translation:

 

 

The joy of the Dharma fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter it. Those who pursue the path of enlightenment are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Practice, joy is constantly born anew. In this Ex­hortation I wish to encourage all seekers to embark upon a new chapter of Dharma practice marked by this joy, while pointing out new paths for the Human journey in years to come.

 

The sole difference is the terminology; Christian terminology is exclusive; Buddhist terminology is not. In other words, the Christian terminology excludes all who (1) do not believe in the absolute truth of "the gospel";  (2) cannot relate to the idea of Jesus as the sole redeemer of all humanity; (3) are not committed into converting everyone else to believe as they do ("evangelization"); (4) do not limit their appeal to "Christians" alone; and (5) don't limit this journey to one particular "Church."  Yet the common themes of Pope Francis and Dharma practicitioners everywhere else--especially Gaian Buddhists like myself--become even clearer in the subsequent passage:

 

Original:

 

 

The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and an­guish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades. This is a very real danger for believers too. Many fall prey to it, and end up resentful, angry and listless. That is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life; it is not God’s will for us, nor is it the life in the Spir­it which has its source in the heart of the risen Christ.

 

Translation:

The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and an­guish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. Our inherent Buddha nature is no longer heard, the quiet joy of love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades. This is a very real danger for practitioners too. Many fall prey to it, and end up resentful, angry and listless. That is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life; it is not Bodhichitta, nor is it the life in the Spir­it which has its source in our hearts.

 

As we can see, when the Pope (Peace be upon him) gets seriously down to business, the differences between his Christian teachings and my Buddhist translation become fewer and farther between, and more trivial as well. His message rings true and clear.

 

My fondest wish for world peace lies in a realization I would hope to make available to everyone:  that all (authentic) religious traditions worldwide are nothing but retail outlets for Truth--that they all consist of two elements: Dharma and identity politics. Dharma refers to the inner truth that transcends all ideology--the wisdom and compassion we know in our hearts, to which all authentic teachings point, with their various, culturally based metaphors. Identity politics refers to all those superficial elements of language and doctrine that distinguish one faith tradition from another--all the signs by which people recognize others as "one of us" or"one of them." And the core teachings of every authentic tradition all point beyond identity politics to true Dharma: "Love God and that which is like unto it, Love your neighbor as yourself."

 

Unfortunately, since we all cultivate an (ultimately illusory) sense of self, we are pretty much stuck with identity politics--with labels, whether "Christian," "Buddhist" "Muslim" "Jew" or what have you...But Gaianity--my own "label" for collective enlightenment--involves cultivating the ability to look beyond our personal labels, to embrace our Oneness with each other and with all life.  This entails, among other things, the willingness to let go of the urge to convert--to make others "see like me, feel like me, and be like me" in the words of Bob Dylan. Rather, we need to cultivate the ability to live and let live--to love others as they are, no matter which label they feel most comfortable affixing to themselves.  The Pope is a Catholic; I am a Buddhist. But I honor him as a true Dharma teacher, a true Bodhisattva.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watching my mind

This afternoon, as I was grading papers,  I noticed, yet again, how often some aspect of my consciousness subverts my determination to stay focused and on-task. There are many times when I am gripped by this temptation to get distracted--whether by trips to the refrigerator for...whatever presents itself to eat, or by various thoughts, obsessions, or fantasies, or--even worse--the temptation to simply google something for the hell of it, and get drawn into the endless, often craven distractions of the Internet or YouTube. Often after indulging in such idle and pernicious distractions, torpor sets in, tempting me to go take another brief nap, which often--despite setting the alarm--ends up being anything but brief. And so important tasks get postponed, again and again.

While I am by no means alone in this tendency to give in to distractions, I may have it worse than many, for--had the diagnosis existed when I was young--I would most certainly have been labeled "ADD"--Attention Deficit Disorder. (When I mentioned this to my Dean one time, she--in her unflappable coolness--said "Of course; I knew that.")  I generally don't go in for such labels--they seem inherently abusive and simplistic, reducing a complex personality to a mere set of symptoms, assumed to be genetically embedded and hence inescapable.

Buddhist teachings suggest otherwise. The Buddhist texts list and classify these as "afflictive emotions" personified as Mara, and their antidote is, as always, neither to repress them nor to indulge them, but simply notice them as they arise, and practice simply acknowledging their existence, and then (when you are ready) letting go of them.  These afflictive emotions include also the feelings of self-loathing and self-flagellation that often arise in the wake of getting seized by a distraction or temptation and lured away from our responsibilities--we can simply observe and let go of those feelings as well.

This is not easy, of course; if it were, we would not have anywhere near as many crazy, screwed up, neurotic, self-destructive, demoralized people walking around out there.  But nor is it impossible. Like everything else in Buddhism, it takes practice, and we can always start over, no matter how times we have failed or relapsed into bad habits.  No matter what happens in our interior weather--even in the tornado-like vortex of despair and self-loathing--we can always start over--by breathing, observing, and letting go.  This is, for me, one of the greatest gifts of Dharma practice: our ticket out of Hell.  The minute we return to focus attention on our breath, we are no longer in the grip of distractions or afflictive emotions--we simply can observe them like a movie--watch the mental impulses toward distraction arise and dissipate, neither acting on them nor wishing they were otherwise, but simply watching our own minds with the same patience and compassion we aspire to extend to everyone else--and then, when ready, returning to doing good work and keeping in touch.

Over the Rainbow

Lately, my good friend and office-mate Michael Tarpey, a philosopher, and I have had a grand time discussing all sorts of philosophical questions. In the context of these conversations, mostly focusing on the perennial question, as Bob Dylan put it, of "what's real and what is not,"  I observed that certain things we take for real are merely artifacts of perception--that is, things we perceive, whether with our eyes or our mind, and therefore assume to be real, but which in fact, are simply a virtual reality,  a consensual concept which we have agreed upon to be "real" in order to better organize our experience and behavior. As an example of such a perceptual artifact, I cited the rainbow--something we can see, but that isn't really "there" because it is simply the perceptual consequence of a temporary convergence of sunlight, rain, and point of view--that is, only those who stand between the sun and the sheet of rain perceive a rainbow, opposite the sun, and everyone's rainbow is in a slightly different place from everyone else's, depending on where they are standing. (Therefore, Dorothy could dream all she liked about "somewhere over the rainbow" but she'd never get there--since the rainbow would move with her!) In this way, a rainbow, though it appears to be "real," is in actuality no more real than a shadow or a heat mirage (both likewise artifacts of perception).

Looking more deeply, we find that artifacts of perception can be found not only "out there" in the world, but also in our minds. By this I refer not only to dreams or mental images, which are obvious examples of insubstantial perceptions, but also to a whole array of concepts that most people take to be, in some sense, real, and which form the pretext for many of our actions, but which on closer examples are no more "real" than a rainbow, a shadow, or a mirage.

Here are a few noteworthy examples: money, the past, the future, and the United States of America. We all assume money to be real; we can, after all, buy real, tangible things with it. But money is, in actuality an empty, arithmetical signifier, whose value depends entirely upon a shifting consensus within a community of buyers and sellers.  It is, as Gregory Bateson might have said, a transform of information about the relative value of commodities in the market. And "commodities" themselves can often be quite virtual, quite nebulous. What, for example, is an "insurance policy"? A legally binding agreement between insurer and insured. But if the insurer goes belly-up, what happens to that contract? It becomes a worthless piece of paper.

But surely, you might argue, the past and future are real; we have artifacts to prove that the past in fact actually happened, and we can make reasonably accurate predictions about the future--weather forecasters do it all the time.  While I agree that the past and future can be useful concepts, whether for reflection or planning or imagining, they still lack any substantive reality. The past is gone an irretrievable; the future hasn't happened yet.  All we actually have is the ever-shifting present moment. Both the others are imaginary constructs.

We can take this further, of course. While the past is gone and irrevocable, the future can be influenced, up to a point, by our actions (or inactions) in the present moment.  But it is still an artifact of our imagination, for no matter how carefully we plan, something could happen in the next moment to completely eradicate those plans, or at least require a major change in them. Or, of course, we could die--at any time--rendering all such plans and dreams null and void.  That notwithstanding, our actions today will still influence the shape of the future, with or without us. And if the Buddhist teachings are right about a continuum of mind that pre-exists our birth and transcends our death, then we--or some version of ourselves--will reap the karmic fruits of our actions anyway.  But even that, if or when it happens, will not be "real" knowable until it becomes the Present Moment, whether for ourselves or for another "self" we cannot even imagine. After all, this concept of "self" we have and cherish is yet another perceptual artifact, no more real than a rainbow.