Enlightenment is the stated goal of Buddhism, possibly the only doctrine all denominations share, though variously defined.
As far as I know, all Zen lineages, diverse though we are, uphold the conviction that enlightenment is possible in this life; that it comes irrespective of social and material distinctions; and that meditation is the fundamental discipline of enlightenment practice.
In theory, we also hold our leaders to a "maximum illumination" standard; that is, the teacher must be the most enlightened person in the zendo. The old Chàn chronicles preserve accounts of itinerant peasants summarily unseating exalted abbots in dharma combat. And if that martial art has now mellowed to ritual sparing between genial sanghamates, in those old Chinese records it's presented as deadly earnest.
All of this goes to the strength with which the Ancestors cleaved to a central principle. To wit: if we're going to dropkick the Buddha's explicit orders for an egalitarian sangha, then the brother or sister monk we perch precariously on that perilous peak must at minimum embody awakening.
And it's at this point that we slam smack into the Christian concept of antinomianism.
For among the many commonalities our two religions share is an insistence on the possibility – nay, obligation – of attaining a superior spiritual state in this life. We call it enlightenment, they call it salvation, but though our understandings of those states differ in important ways, our certainty that they exist prompts coreligionists to announce themselves special and demand extra-scriptural privilege.
Specifically, they declare themselves leaders.
And this is where the antinomianism comes in. Because upon their ascension to secular power, two unproductive phenomena abruptly co-arise:
1. Their conduct becomes demonstrably unenlightened.
2. They insist this unenlightened conduct is in fact the height of enlightenment; it's just that the sangha are too pedestrian to grasp their higher wisdom.
And that second one is antinomianism. You see, it's really very simple: treating others like doormats is the soul of bodhisattva practice. It's just what arhats do, and if you were one, you'd get that
And there-in lies a crisis. Because it's not.
Not that defining enlightenment isn't hard. How can you tell if a person has attained a state that can't be comprehended, or even defined?
As the ancient Zen joke would have it: how do you eff the ineffable?
I've thought about this a lot. I've scrutinised my own experience; what's happened on the cushion, where my heart moves during and after kensho, what's changed in my personality in two decades of mindful practice.
I haven't become enlightened, but I've grown measurably, and the Buddha said that's evidence of nascent awakening.
So becoming a better person than you were pre-zazen is the test. Are you less judgemental now, more empathetic? Less uptight, more patient? Calmer? More loving, less ambitious?
Has your ego diminished, or inflated? Are you supple or brittle? Do you fret more in social contention, or less?
How do you measure up on the 8 Worldly Dharmas Illumination Indicator?
If these lights aren’t green, why waste your life becoming an even bigger ass than you already are by being boss?
In the end, I've gained one practical insight into the quandary of human limitation:
–––> It's what you do with it.
(NB: Not a new concept on these pages, but a new application of it.)
Annoyance, impatience, disappointment, despair, frustration; what do you do when they happen?
Do you use or manipulate others? Do you make cutting remarks or determine to get even?
Do you apologise when you've behaved in an ignorant, superior, or abusive fashion?
These are universal human challenges, but a moral authority must own and publicly grapple with them. And by this standard, you can see the risk you run to your own practice when you set yourself up as a guru.
Which is why my brotherly counsel is not to.
Of one thing I'm sure: selfish, inconsiderate, preëmptory behaviour is not a sign of enlightenment. And refusing to confess, apologise, and atone afterward indicates you're not even on the road.
It's not that I don't yet know enough about enlightenment.
I'd been a hermit monk for 5 years when I heard on my truck radio that after the news the host would speak with a US Army chaplain just back from Iraq.
I have a tetchy relationship with military chaplaincy. At best it enables sin. At worst it weaponises it. None of the planet's mainstream religions endorse collective destruction, no matter how vociferously their institutions argue otherwise.
On the other hand, the war industry mass-produces humans badly in need of refuge, which makes military chaplains a very good thing. It's just that I doubt that's the reason they were commissioned. But some do it anyway – help the exploited survive hell – even though it contradicts the larger mission, which is to exploit those people
Still, when the radio presenter announced her upcoming guest, I instinctively moved to change stations.
Then I thought, hold on. Don't I sell myself as a Zen monk? Haven't I taken a precept to strive after an ideal that rejects otherness and recognises that we're all the product of forces beyond our control?
Haven't I myself committed acts of great hypocrisy? And aren't I now poised, finger on trigger, to commit another one?
Bodhisattvas test your sincerity before they offer their gifts.
So I stood down. If this guy started selling partisan pap, I could always press the scan button later.
And that's how I received one of the central tenets of my monastic practice.
In the interview, the officer was asked for an example of the sort of ministry he provided. He related the story of a young soldier who came to him after smashing into a private Iraqi home and spraying the entire weeping family with automatic weapons fire
As they huddled on the floor of their own living room.
It's to the young man's enduring credit, and that of those who raised him, that this atrocity took him to the brink of suicide. Decent people aren't able to do this sort of thing. No matter what kind of clothes they're wearing or what they've pledged to whom.
This one couldn't stop putting himself in the place of that Iraqi father. Seeing himself through his target's eyes. The complete absence of justice or justification. Who he was in that scenario
Ha!, thought I. Get yourself out of this one, warrior preacher.
The chaplain's response was notable first for what he didn't say. He didn't talk about orders, patriotism, or service. He didn't present excuses or greater-good defences, or displace blame onto the soldier's government or superiors. There were no references to geopolitics or God's will.
He simply asked the broken man what his victim's duty was.
I can imagine the man was taken aback. I certainly was.
"If matters had been reversed," said the Army chaplain, "and he'd killed your family, what would your duty to him be?"
"I… I guess, to forgive him," the soldier stammered.
"Then that's his duty to you as well."
I've been meditating on this koan ever since.
We're taught early on that forgiveness is next to godliness, that we must do it. And that's certainly correct.
But what we're not told is that we also have a right to demand it. Because it's also everybody else's unshirkable responsibility. This was the Buddha's teaching to Aṅgulimāla: when you're no longer the person who committed the crime, atonement, not condemnation, is your burden.
I'll warrant readers who were offended by my criticisms of military chaplains are little mollified by my chastened gratitude to this one for his insight.
But I suspect the man himself will forgive me.
Deep bow to all who labour honestly for higher ground.
(Photo of US Army Buddhist Chaplain insignia courtesy of Ingrid Barrentine, the Northwest Guardian newspaper, and Wikimedia Commons.)
We live in apocalyptic times. We're not the first; there have been many other apocalyptic moments in human history (the armistice decades of the World War, the run-up to the American Civil War, the Revolutionary period in France, probably a hundred more), but none of those were as apocalyptic as these, because those dysfunctions were purely behavioural. Today we're floundering in that same full-spectrum meltdown of morality and reason, at the precise moment we're also contending with the literal full-spectrum meltdown of our habitat. AKA, the thing we must have to live, without which we will die.
All of us.
I've commented before on a Zenner's responsibility in such times.
It's crucial to understand that the Stupidity Pandemic isn't just "their" problem. Our side – however we each define it – is just as fully implicated in the impending doom. I'm particularly discouraged by the social justice movement, one I've adhered to all my life, but which has recently collapsed into the same lynch-mob gutter as its presumed enemies. All the symptoms Bonhoeffer catalogued – inability to overcome conviction with logic, meeting substantive challenge with violence, thinking in slogans and catchphrases, reacting to vocabulary rather than statements or actions, and, I would add, simple crass bigotry shopped as virtue – are fully in evidence.
It's become impossible to advocate against racism or sexism anymore. Not truly. If you try, you'll first be smeared by your right wing opponents as a leftist lunatic, given the frankly crazy rhetoric of the most vocal elements of your side. Then, if you're old, white, and/or male, you'll be attacked by your theoretical allies for speaking at all.
And as Bonhoeffer pointed out, this weaponised hypocrisy can't be overcome with reason. Debate is worthless, to say nothing of common cause. The mob wants blood, any blood, and its formula for determining whose is forfeit is racist and sexist. (Note that ostensibly approved race or gender won't shield you, either. Anybody's killable. The Reivers just find another alibi on their infinite list – wealth, prominence, profession, perceived privilege, regional origin, academic record, alleged or immaterial past conduct, and on and on.)
I'm at a loss to understand how these bad-actors can possibly confront the Right with a straight face, now that they've joyfully incarnated all the very worst of it. The karma debt such behaviour incurs defies imagination.
As for me, I'm not going to shut up about it.
In this environment, if Zen is worth a damn, it's to keep us clear and independent of the generalised depravity. Let us all endeavour to look deeply, hold ourselves to a demanding standard of non-hypocrisy, and act in measure of acquired insight.
Because if our practice can't get us that, it can't get us anything.
I'm just catching up with David Hayward, a cartoonist who has published under the provocative nom de guerre of The Naked Pastor for at least 10 years. His work, which draws on the inconsistencies of Christian practice, is refreshingly unblinking. It's also entirely transferable to Zen, and perhaps one or two other religions.
But what makes David's thoughts truly unique is his insight into the fundamental potholes encountered along everyone's road to enlightenment
Witness above illustration.
In this panel, ostensibly fingering Pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church [godhatesfags.com - yes, really], we see a scowling human brandishing a sign that reads I HATE. Religious affiliation autocorrects this to GOD HATES, as indeed it always does, from which it's a short jump to GOD HATES FAGS, because malevolence can't exist without a target.
Ha-ha! Take that, Christians!
But wait… We're not done?
Nope. Could the sign now – just two hops in – say GOD HATES FRED PHELPS? Why yes, it seems to. And in case we thought we'd found a back-door out of this embarrassing development – maybe God just hates Fred Phelps because Fred promotes self-righteous Christianity – nope again. GOD HATES FRED PHELPS WHO HATES FAGS.
Well, crap. Turns out we (I mean God) hate Fred Phelps only because Fred annoys us. Now see here, sign person! You're clearly part of that big ill-defined group of people who are destroying humanity and making these the most immoral times in all history, from which we can never be saved!
Which is apparently exactly the case, because now we're carrying a sign that says GOD HATES EVERYONE. (Hold up… how did we end up carrying the sign?? I thought this was about Christians!)
OK, we've done it now. Unless we're psychopaths we can't help but realise, whether we admit it or not, that going around with a metaphorical bomb vest on is the off-ramp to Hell. And that means, of course, that GOD HATES ME.
Which, since those two are really the same person, means I HATE MYSELF.
Basically, that's all I am now: I HATE.
That is, GOD HATES.
And now He needs someone to hate. Let's see who's available…
And you're going to keep going around and around like that until you get down off the basswood horse and step off the carousel. Simply changing horses won't do it, nor will riding on the parental benches. (Side note: are there still carousels out there, with gilt and mirrors and calliopes and parental benches? Or are they all passed on to the Allegorical Hereafter?)
It's these cartoons that raise David above other internal critics of hypocritical churchmanship. Aside from the fact that most of his Jesus cartoons work just fine if you make them Buddha cartoons, he occasionally reminds us outright that he's not necessarily talking about Christians at all.
Which probably means that at this very minute one of us is out there printing GOD HATES DAVID HAYWARD on a sign.
I've been rereading The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, the succinct little Thich Nhat Hanh book that amounts, so far as I'm concerned, to our Bible.
Non-Buddhists may be astonished to learn we lack one of those. Instead, we maintain a libraryful of sutras – pamphlet-sized documents that more or less quote the Buddha – along with three or four additional libraries of epistolary commentary. And we Zenners tend to bust even that down to the Heart Sutra (a short summary of the Buddha's insights), four koan anthologies, and, in Soto, Dogen's Shobogenzo. (Other schools swap that last out for their own founders' teachings.)
But for my money, Heart satisfies the hunger for a source of record, something to tell us in no uncertain terms what we're supposed to be doing here. Heart was the book that made me a monk, and the one I return to in moments of despair and confusion. And it never lets me down, though each time I find I've never read it before.
Among insights gained this time is TNH's reference to "Source Buddhism", one of three streams he sorts modern Buddhism into, by way of understanding the differing perspectives. The other two are Many-Schools Buddhism, notable for its didactic nature, and the Mahayana, which emphasises the responsibility of practitioners to their species and world (the famous "bodhisattva principle").
And though my own tradition – Zen – sits squarely in that last camp, I find I'm a bit of a Sourcer.
Quite a Sourcer, really.
Source Buddhists insist on the primacy of the Buddha's teaching over all other authorities. What he said, is Buddhism. Anything else… might not be.
I think this is an important fixation, because humans compulsively pile everything they like under the rubrics they've already adopted. If they're pacifists, they define even their most bellicose conduct as perfect pacifism. If they're conservatives, each innovation they make becomes the soul of conservatism. If they're feminists, their every impulse reflects pure disgust for sexism – highest of all, their purely sexist ones.
Nowhere is this fatal flaw more evident than in religion.
And in no religion is it more evident than in Zen.
So it's comforting to know that in my instinctive sourcery, I'm paddling an Original Stream – perhaps the original stream – of Buddhism.
Because the path of the Buddha isn't always the smoothest, but I do believe it's the most effectual.
And in case you're wondering: yes. My own meandering improvisations thereupon do constitute "original Buddhic teaching".
Seriously; have you ever met a human?
(Photo of the 6th century Teaching Buddha in Ajanta Cave 16 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
'Way back in March of 2012 CE (how strange to have such a deep vault) I reviewed Zen at War, Brian Daizen Victoria's exposé of Japanese Buddhism during the Second World War.
And now, these many years gone, while looking up the book's Amazon link for a friend, I happen to glance at the reader reviews.
Some of them are disheartening.
While most commenters shared thoughtful, supportive responses, I rate it worthwhile to meet two others, not by way of defending Daizen's work – it's self-defending – but to survey some dangerous internal trends in our incipient Western religion. Especially here, where our grasp of Buddhist history (and our own) is tenuous.
First to catch my eye was a one-star rating entitled "Very disappointing":
This guy [Daizen] must have a terrible background, probably tried to escape all that trauma by moving to far east and becoming Buddhist etc., the classic story. It's ok as long as one does not try and contaminate beautiful Zen with a messed up mind. Avoid this book especially if you're a new Zen learner as it will ruin the whole experience for you.
There's something simultaneously amusing and infuriating about a self-professed Zenner who has no idea what a human being is. While I assume First Honoured Sangha is a sojourner, I've also met so-called "masters" who lack any greater insight.
So to protect any fragile new Zen learners who may stumble upon such spluttering, Ima lay down some tough-dharma. (Ten thousand apologies, pro forma trigger warning, how's your father.)
1. First Honoured Sangha has no calling to judge others or analyse their lives, or to declare their fate foregone. (Gotama; Dogen; Jesus.)
2. First Honoured Sangha knows nothing about Daizen's "classic story". We all have classic stories. Even First Honoured Sangha. (Gotama; Claude Anshin Thomas.)
3. First Honoured Sangha has no authority to give permission, or withhold it. (Gotama; Jesus.)
4. First Honoured Sangha has not been asked to guard the supposed "honour" of Zen. Zen is clean by its nature. Others soil it. (Bodhidharma.)
5. If First Honoured Sangha can't put down the burden of piety, then First Honoured Sangha can haul his or her prodigal backside back to the Church. If we must speak of contaminating Zen, piety is certainly the ultimate pollution. Mindless fear and shame are what authentic Zenners strive to overcome.
In an oddly similar vein, consider this (ostensibly favourable, five-star) review:
The shock value is not so great, as I've been aware of the basic contents for sometime. Japan is an island and the Japanese are an insular people. The emphasis in their culture is group conformity. Zen is not the transformer of personality as it was once marketed, and it should not surprise us to learn that Zen leaders in Japan followed the lead of the Japanese government and Army into widespread war.
The endemic racism and ethnocentrism of Western Zenners never ceases to dumbfound me. It's not just that we dissuade those of African or Hispanic or Arabic origin from joining us; we even freeze out Asians! With the exception of a dwindling handful of deified Asia-born teachers, you see damn few Asian faces in Western Zen centres.
Seriously, brothers and sisters. We have a problem.
One that won't go away until we drive it bodily from the zendo and kill it with ferocious blows from our monk sticks.
Apart from the sort of blanket condemnation First Honoured Sangha called down on another entire vaguely-defined demographic, Second Honoured Sangha neatly excuses Westerners from suffering any angst over Daizen's thesis. The demon, we're assured, isn't the Sangha; it's the Japanese.
With respect, Second Honoured Sangha is mistaken.
The demon is the Sangha. All of us. Then and now. There and here. Present and future.
You and me.
Nor am I alone in my discomfort with the unBuddhic habit of associating practice with submission to dictatorial authority – and then absolving ourselves of the evil we do under it. Thus, Third Honoured Sangha:
What I don't like, is the way it is almost impossible to discuss [enthusiastic Buddhist participation in Japanese fascism] in the Zendo, and I've tried.
Word.
And a final Fourth:
As a Buddhist, it was a reminder that we must be ever looking at our own practice. Do read this book.
Zen is important. We must resist the urge to turn it into a church.
(Photo courtesy of Serg Childed and Wikimedia Commons)
First a plague swept the planet, laying waste to technocratic pretentions of invulnerability.
And now, the global stampede to busted old right-wing pipe dreams has metastacised in the States into an actual overthrow of constitutional governance, complete with federal troops moving on citizens.
It's not just the National Guard (which would be dystopian enough). We're talking the straight-up foreign-country-occupying US Army. Which has already put boots on the ground to occupy its own.
To me, the most telling point in all of this is the fact that the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on it.
Some of those men might have had reservations. One hopes that at least one heart under that oppressive weight of medals was deeply conflicted.
But not enough.
Even Communist China has produced one general who wouldn't march, under identical circumstances, against the civilians he'd sworn to protect.
“I’d rather be beheaded," he said, "than be a criminal in the eyes of history."
And yet the Americans, who love a uniformed sound-bite as much as anybody, have yet to present such an officer.
At times like this, I'm always taken aback by my own disappointment. I like to think I'm over the human race. I've witnessed so much empty posturing, so much crass and conspicuous hypocrisy, that I cannot, in good faith, pretend to have any faith in my species.
The fact is, these things go deep. The beliefs you were taught as a small child, the history your elders spun into your bones, are pernicious. You can outlearn them, but you can't unlearn them. Not at the endocrinal level.
In such moments, I meditate on the words of Lily Tomlin:
"No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up."
The call to activism is one I don't feel qualified to discuss; I'm torn between two valid positions on that. However, on another point I rest solid.
When we sin, human beings tell each other "such is the way of the world".
That's a lie. The world is faultless. Such is the way of people, who remain in full possession of their moral autonomy and the necessity of applying it.
We're not like other animals. We're not mindless slaves to nature or instinct, and therefore each of us is empowered to "be another way" at any time.
Which is the flywheel of karma.
As we enter this era of radical – if ironic – unmasking, I would ask the Sangha to consider the following suggestions:
Live in the light of things as they are, as they really are, now and for the rest of your life, and refuse all stories.
Look deeply – and courageously – with every breath.
Remember what you see, permanently, after everyone else has moved on.
This is what you owe yourself.
(Photo courtesy of Vasil Šelechaŭ and Wikimedia Commons.)
Events this week have me thinking about my favourite Zen teaching story. (I say that about all of them, though my very favourites are the ones I take the piss out of in this journal.)
The gist goes like this:
A bandit army descended on a town, causing all the monks in the local monastery to abandon it, except the master.
Bursting into the zendo, the pirate general was enraged to find the old monk calmly dusting the altar, not even deigning to bow.
“Do you not realise,” he shouted, “that I would run you through without a second thought?”
“And do you not realise,” said the master, “that I would be run through without a second thought?”
At this the general bowed and left.
This is one of those tales we Zenners like to exchange with pious smiles, certain of its allegory, and that we'll never be held to the conviction it implies.
And now here we are.
The plague our species is currently facing puts me in a surrealistic place. Whenever I've imagined myself in an apocalyptic scenario – which is frequently, given my culture's obsession with it – I've seen myself meeting the aftermath of war, natural disaster, or economic crisis beside my neighbours, pooling our skills, standing firm against the selfish and the predatory, guiding our community to peace, promise, and security.
But in an epidemic, you have to board yourself up in your house, see to your own needs, and avoid catching or communicating the sickness to others.
And so stillness and acceptance must be the discipline, in full knowledge that very bad things might happen. And you must not go out and do combat with them, or call for help from others, or even, God forbid, open the door to curse at them.
Instead you must remain heroically immobile. To borrow an image from Thich Nhat Hanh, you must be "lake-still, mountain-solid".
In other words, I am now living the worst nightmare of all religiosos: actually having to practice what I preach.
The death and mortal-threat fables that abound in our religion distinguish it from other faiths. (Some may quibble that traditional Christianity, with its endless recitations of gruesome martyrdom, takes this laurel, but I would counter that those are journalism, placing the listener outside of events. Our tales make him or her inhabit the dying character.)
Such stories as The Tiger and the Strawberry, or The Mother and the Mustard Seed, exist for a pedagogical purpose. They remind us of the knife-edge we walk, that we must walk, and the impermanence of all things, including ourselves. The intent is to jangle us out of the chains of our dread, and into the freedom that acknowledgement confers.
We are not the universe. We are not the most important thing in the universe. It was just fine before we got here, and it will be just fine after we leave.
And so will we.
Because this life is not the goal of this life.
Understanding that, and practicing it, is the origin of strength.
There is no "state of emergency" in Buddhism, aside from the one we were born into and can't resolve without practice. There's no Buddhist constitution that can be suspended when it becomes inconvenient. The law is immutable.
And that's a gift.
So now is the time to do all that stuff we've been saying we do.
Now is the time to practice Zen.
In taking the cushion, let us cleave to our humanity, care for our fellow Earthlings, and maintain our grasp of reality.
Because we have no alternative.
(Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com and a generous photographer.)
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got came from my dad. I was in high school, and on the horns of some dilemma.
For some reason, my dad – whose counsel trended to the brief and prescriptive – heard me out this time, as I explained my choices and why I feared I might be censured either way.
My dad nodded a few times, and after a brief silence, said:
"Well, in the end, it doesn't matter."
I hadn't expected this.
"What? Why not?" I asked.
"Because you're always going to get criticised. No matter how carefully you choose your course of action, someone's going to call you an idiot, or a jerk, or a traitor. There is literally no decision a man can take, about anything, that isn't morally reprehensible to somebody."
"Great," I said. "So what do I do?"
"You choose your critic," he said.
I raised an eyebrow, and he continued.
"Suppose you're walking down the street and a panhandler asks you for spare change.
"If you give it to him, I guarantee you somebody will say, 'Nice going, you jerk! You know he's just going to spend that on booze. You're keeping him addicted, undermining the economy, making it possible for freeloaders to live off society. People like you make me sick!'
"On the other hand, if you don't give it to him, someone else will say, 'You selfish bastard! You wouldn't go hungry tonight without that 75¢, but he might! You can't spare a handful of coins for a brother who's down on his luck? Even drunks have to eat. You're the reason life is so lousy!'
"So that's the choice: which gripe can you live with?"
In my life I've consistently found that this formula busts up ethical logjams like nobody's business. It doesn't always lead to the safest decision – to put it mildly – but it does generally reveal the one I'm least likely to be ashamed of later, even in the face of inevitable criticism.
My dad's gone now; he died in September. And since I don't have any kids of my own, I figured this was as good a time and place as any to pass on his thunderously effective mindfulness tool.
In these morally challenging times, when even the citizens of heretofore principled societies face dubious and potentially dangerous demands on their allegiance, this is the sort of advice we can all use.
In the blogosphere, no-one can see your hypocrisy.
The fact is, I have a warrior spirit. I want to horse up and ram a swift lance through as many jerks as I can jab before one of them takes me out. Call it an ethnic weakness, but I am by nature a doer, a get'er'doner, and especially a defender. When arrogant pricks start kicking folk around, my first impulse is to cut them off at the knees.
Literally, if possible.
Which means that recent events have handed the monk I decided to be fourteen years ago a steep challenge. By way of meeting it, I've largely withdrawn into meditation and monastic discipline these last weeks, to sit with my conflicting values. If you were to ask me what honour demands in these times, depending on time of day you'd either hear, "Look deeply, understand, and proceed like a grown-up," or "Behead the mofos."
I'm working on that second thought.
And in that task I've greatly been helped by this Vox interview with Pháp Dung. As a senior student of Thich Nhat Hanh, he's received a great deal of training in mindful activism (a concept that conventional Zen considers oxymoronic, but one that Thich Nhat Hanh founded a lineage upon), as well as holding his ground under fire.
As I've found the student as lucid as the teacher, I pass his teaching on here to brothers and sisters who find themselves in the same dilemma.
I guess anybody can be a Buddhist when it's easy, eh?
(Photo courtesy of Moyan Brenn and Wikimedia Commons.)
We're hearing a lot these days about patriotism and national greatness and ideological purity and economic theory and cold dead fingers. The speakers seem to take it for granted that their convictions are honourable, simply because they are convictions.
I've encountered this misconception again and again in my half-century walkabout, first as a historian and then as a religious man. Faith is sexy. It's dramatic and macho and you get to make stirring speeches with lots of sanctimonious platitudes, like a movie hero.
But take it from me: given enough indulgence and half a chance, believers will destroy the world.
Just being embattled doesn't confer honour. Bad causes are a giant waste of time and life, to say nothing of the mountain of karmic debt. Shall we free-associate a few examples?
the Southern cause in the American Civil War
the Third Reich
Soviet Communism
All three demanded utter allegiance, promised endless glory, and made sacrifice a virtue. They were also pointless, stupid, and evil, and if there's a judgement at the end of this life, those who devoted their lives to them are unhappy now. Their unshakeable faith is worth exactly nothing.
Yet people continue to insist they can skip the humility, self-examination, and moral courage required of competent adults, and make a thing right by sheer force of conviction.
I know what that's like. I was a revolutionary myself. I clung tightly to a list of high-minded principles. That made me angry, which I took for a mark of righteousness. And that anger made me hypocritical, untrustworthy, and ultimately counter-revolutionary. I could – and did – turn on others for the slightest imagined shortcoming. (Worst of these: not being as angry as I was.)
Let's be clear: belief itself is the problem here. We're taught that it's the soul of decency, but it's not. Belief is meant constantly to be raked: kicked around, wrung out, scraped clean, tuned up, and thrown out entirely when broken. If you're rushing around this rock "knowing" stuff, you're morally out of control, and that makes you the problem here.
The following, in no particular order, are some of the questions I pitched myself during the gruelling Dharma combat I undertook when I became a monk. As the assiduous practice of zazen shifted me out of lawyer mode, things that had previously remained invisible – by slyly standing right on my chest – became clear.
Self-Interrogation
(Tying yourself to a chair and shining a bright light in your face is optional. But it worked for me.)
Do my convictions make me a builder, or a predator?
Do I applaud others who call for insight and solution, or judgement and reaction?
Am I embattled because I'm right, or because I'm wrong?
Is my strategy "bold advance", or "dogged defence"?
Am I fighting ideas, or people?
When I'm conservative, what am I conserving? Is my position rational, or emotional?
When I'm progressive, what would I impose on others? Would these measures eliminate suffering, or just redistribute it?
Do I count a victory when my actions result in more resentment, or less? When the right people suffer, or no-one does?
Do I abandon comrades accused of wrongdoing, or take a public stand for fairness and forgiveness?
What about opponents?
Do I practice realpolitik, or morality?
Do I speak louder while attacking, or defending?
Thanks to such questions (which in Zen practice are not directly answered), I sloughed off a lot of convictions that had accrued over the years by static cling. Now I have a core of well-vetted convictions that pass muster. (Mind: I don't say that I pass muster. I still have to hurl these challenges daily, and I'm daily shamed by the results. But that shame is productive.)
So give it a shot. See what you come up with.
It's the 1 Habit of Truly Decent People: they demand more of themselves than they do of others.
(Photo courtesy of John Pavelka, Wikimedia Commons, and the Democratic People's We Totally Are Guys Just Look At The Strength Of Our Conviction Republic of Korea.)
As a writer on Zen practice, and more generally on ending suffering, I often need to express the concept of not-being-a-hypocrite. And therein lies a quandary: we have no word for that in English. Try it: finish the following sentence with any of the fourteen suggested antonyms in my online thesaurus: "The behaviour of an enlightened person is..."
forthright
frank
genuine
honest
humble
open
real
truthful
actual
authentic
just
reliable
righteous
sincere
Not one of those attributes, laudable though they be, means "not hypocritical".
Let's try again. Given that "hypocrisy is the opposite of faith", its essence must therefore be:
fairness
frankness
honesty
openness
trustworthiness
truth
truthfulness
uprightness
forthrightness
righteousness
sincerity
Again, none of those means "the character trait of not doing the opposite of what one insists others do."
And finally: "A true man of no rank is first and foremost not a hypocrite." He is therefore… a what? My online thesaurus refuses even to try on this one; it doesn't list a single antonym for "hypocrite", weak or otherwise.
I smack into this wall every day. I can exhort the reader (and much more often, myself) not to be a hypocrite, but "Be a… um… person who reflexively and instinctively monitors his or her behaviour and speech for consistency with the teachings he or she espouses!" does not fit on a rubber bracelet. In English, there is no positive exhortation; we can only condemn. And you know what that makes us. (Hint: "ironic" is only the beginning.)
This is a serious problem, not just for our language, but for our minds and souls. Even etymology abandons us here; hypocrite literally means "one who criticises (him- or herself) too little", but the opposite ("hypercrite") would mean "one who criticises others all the time," as in the adjective hypercritical.
And that isn't the opposite of hypocrite. It's a synonym.
Wu Ya's commentary: "Solve for X."
(Bandage of Faith [artwork] courtesy of Danny Sillada [artist], Wikimedia Commons, and a generous photographer.)
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