America Needs a Buddhist President

Back in the Duhbya years, a little book called America Needs a Buddhist President appeared on bookstore shelves. It consisted of a poem by Brett Bevell, illustrated with whimsical drawings. (The author's spoken word performance of the poem can be found here, though some of the humour is lost without the cartoons.)

It's light entertainment, but I thought about the premise a lot when it came out. The text plays on Buddhist stereotypes (that we're martial artists, that we're vegetarians, that we eschew contention), often for laughs. But not always; some assertions ("America needs a Buddhist president whose mind is free from desire") are downright revolutionary. And correct.

But the self-congratulatory aspects of some lines brought to mind the claims of Christians in this society where they dominate. That they worship the Prince of Peace. That they're forgiving. That they protect children.

Anyone not completely craven instantly sees through these lies.

And that's why I don't think a census-form Buddhist would make America a better place, either. A real Buddhist, now… But let's face it, a real Buddhist wouldn't even enjoy the support of fellow Buddhists, let alone voters of other confessions. Because a real Buddhist would fail to endorse cynical alibis for unBuddhist ambitions. And that would make us hate her.

But the greatest opening I had, meditating on Bevell's thesis all those years ago, is that I don't even want a Buddhist president. I'd be ecstatic – in tears, even – if America had a Christian president.

I mean an actual Christian. Not a marketplace Christian, or a dog-whistle Christian, or a church-going Christian, but a genuine contrite, practicing Christian.

If such a Christian presented himself for office, I would drop everything and volunteer for his campaign full-time. I'd doorbell tirelessly. I'd hand out leaflets 16 hours a day. I'd say to everybody I met: "Look at me! I'm a Buddhist monk, and I'm volunteering for this guy full-time! You need this guy! We need this guy! VOTE FOR THIS GUY!"

'Course, if a Christian ran for President of the United States, he'd almost certainly be assassinated before he even got out of the primaries.

Because that's what happens to real Christians.


(Graphic of undetermined provenance.)

WW: Spinning wheel

(I have a good friend my age who is, among other things, a Sikh and a former airborne commando. One of those other things is spinner and weaver. This is his axe.

How nuts is Ajai about his pastime? He has his own flock of sheep, so he'll never have to depend on wool pushers for his fix. [I assume wool is sold by pushers. I don't really know; I'm just guessing by the persistence of Ajai's textile compulsion.]

In his own words: "I believe I was an old Irish woman in a past life."

Well, there are less constructive karma debts. And more destructive addictions.)

Fetters

“The Bible was telling me every day: 'Sell all that you have and give to the poor.'

"So I sold it."

Abba Semperion, The Paradise of the Desert Fathers


(Photo of Syriac Gospels courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum, Wikimedia Commons, and a generous photographer.)

The Psychopath Koan

We Buddhists like to think nobody wants to be evil. We prefer to imagine that evil is learned, a product of environment, and not in anyone's true nature. It's one of the Buddha's foundational teachings: all sentient being progress through multiple migrations to eventual enlightenment.

Sadly, research has confirmed that it's not always so. Psychopaths – individuals born without bodhisattva nature – are all too real. In fact, we now have the technology to identify precisely which circuits in their brains aren't firing, under what circumstances, and map it reliably.

In other words, these people are born with a physical, irreversible intellectual dysfunction, the medical (but not at all the moral) equivalent of Down's Syndrome or FAS. They lack the fundamental faculty of human decency.

And they're not even rare. Researchers suggest 3% of us suffer from this condition. (Or more accurately, the rest of us suffer from it.) That puts one in every classroom, one on every bus, one or more in most businesses, government offices, political caucuses, and religious communities.

And I suspect that number's low. From my vantage, psychopathy is certainly a spectrum, like autism. If 3% of us are outright monsters – serial killers, torturers, financial predators – many more are apologists and opportunists, profiting from serendipitous weaknesses, getting off on less theatrical violence. But whether in whole or in context, none are biologically capable of conscience.

The Buddha didn't know that. The Ancestors didn't know that. But we know that.

So, what do we do?


(Photo courtesy of John Snape and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Autumn colours

(Rubus ursinus, or tripwire blackberry, is one of the few North Coast natives that put on the dog for autumn. What we lack in quantity we make up in quality.)

The Mountain Wins Again

I recently happened upon an interesting moment in Season 6, Episode 4, of Gimlet Media's Startup podcast. (Transcript here; download podcast from iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.)

At issue is Jia Ruhan, a Chinese opera singer groomed to become her country's Céline Dion, with hopes she would put it on the international pop music map. Things didn't work out – such outcomes are hard to plan – and now she lives in self-imposed seclusion, having heeded a spiritual call.

At one point the interviewer asks:

"So as a kid, at first you wanted to be a dancer and then a musical star. Then the government has this goal to make you like a global star. What do you want to be now?"

To which Jia replies:

"I want to be a hermit. Truly, exactly, I really want to be a hermit."

A statement of which the young American reporter appears entirely to miss the import. Her voice takes a quizzical tone, as if Jia were joking. The interviewer then exposits:

"After Ruhan left the [pop music] project, she went through some big life changes. She made another album on her own, but after that, she realized she was burnt out and needed a break. She got really into Buddhism and silent meditation. Our two-hour phone call was the longest conversation she’d had in six months. So the state-backed pop star who was supposed to help China become cool… for now, she wants to be a hermit."

That last line is delivered with an ironic inflection, as if Jia had silently added "... or whatever."

I like this podcast. And nobody can know everything. But in this case, the production team dropped the ball. Jia Ruhan comes from a nation with a millennia-old continuing tradition of literal hermits: individuals who retreat to the Zhongnan Mountains to practice eremitical monasticism.

So she wasn't being cute when she referred to herself as a hermit. In point of fact, she aspires, or at least wishes, to be a hermit nun: a monastic practicing alone, under her own rule, almost certainly in the Zhongnans.

I had to smile at the reporter's reaction. It's a true cross-cultural miscue, turning on the fact that Anglophones currently use the word "hermit" pejoratively. ("Don't be such a hermit! Come out and talk to our guests!") In fact, we've used the term sardonically for so long that many of us can no longer define it; for most, it's become a synonym for recluse.

Which doesn't actually bother me. But I do get a little frosted when the Western Zen establishment calls hermits fraudulent and heretical – when not flat-out calling us extinct. Zenners should know better. Or hey, maybe just practice their religion.

Interested parties may wish to consult Assignment Asia: A modern-day hermit in China. It may be a bit precious, but that's to be expected from a government production.

It does seem that if a Communist dictatorship can accept, and even boast, the ur-monks in its midst, it's not too much to ask the rakusu set to back down a peg.

Anyway, I nodded while listening to Jia Ruhan talk about her ambitions. To say I totally get it would be an understatement.

Peaceful path, sister.


(Panel from Fan Kuan's Travellers Among Mountains and Streams courtesy of the National Palace Museum, Taibei, and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Six-legged seastar

(This is good old Henricia leviuscula, the blood star, but with an experimental enhancement. Happens sometimes. Reminds you how elementary the genetic situation is in this ancient phylum.)