I wrote about why Trump might have won the election in the last post, nothing at all to do with Buddhism, just reading up and passing on some theories. It's funny that subject isn't dropping off. More theories crop up about the role Facebook played (people see feed posts of only like-minded individuals, or even fake news), or blaming media sources for being biased (they were, just different sources for both candidates).
I was also just talking with a friend about the relation of Buddhism to this issue, about how non-attachment relates to potential stress.
His point: we live in an imperfect world, and trying to experience it differently than it actually is isn't useful, or pleasant. According to the teachings of Buddhism we need to live directly in the moment, which involves accepting things as they are. So no freaking out, even if someone doesn't like the election result, or even in cases of real crisis. I guess that could even extend to something like 9/11, so that a truly enlightened person might just think "we live in that kind of world now," but really how that reaction would work out sort of depends on interpretation. Getting upset might be in order.
It sort of works, the extended "keep calm" take. Sometimes it seems like freaking out is normal, maybe even for the best. My grandmother died last year and I think it was healthy to be quite upset. The King of Thailand died last month and this whole country was upset, and I think they should have been, that it may have been a healthier reaction than just saying "all things are impermanent" and moving on. Buddhism has nothing to do with being emotionless, to me. Of course that is just an interpretation, and I'm not claiming I've got it all figured out, that my take is just what the Buddha would have said.
This might be a good place to go a little deeper into what that friend was saying, which I'll quote:
The best thing is to not conceptualize your experience. Things are as they are. The interpretation that you conceptualize after the fact is totally subjective and not factual or even necessary. It is something to come to terms with, not the fact that Trump won or the King is dead. It is an indulgence of the world of ideas which have no basis in reality. Being in the here and now is the only antidote to this.
It sort of works. This sort of abstract take on things can also part ways with a practical, normal reality. If I had no attachment to my grandmother then there wouldn't have been anything to be upset about, but I did, and that attachment was a good thing. Now I'm mixing terms, since caring for my grandmother and the form of attachment Buddhist theory is talking about are almost certainly two different things. The Buddha wasn't saying that people shouldn't love their grandmothers, and if he was then he was a jackass. But I've spent a lot of time reading direct teachings from the Buddha, and interpretations, and it can all really make sense, and it's useful. He was no jackass.
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no need to let dying get you down, for some |
It's hard to say if the Buddha transcended the normal experience of human emotion from the mix of old stories, if he would have seemed anything like us, or quite different. It seems conceivable he was serene and transcendent in nature, but so much spin gets added to those stories that what is in them now hardly seems to be clear on that. Teachings and descriptions say he did, essentially, that he was fundamentally quite different. Per some stories he also did magic tricks and talked to deities, and in others he seemed to reject things like magic tricks and talking to deities (not completely unlike Christianity, although that is a different story).
I'll edit down my response a little, in which I embraced that line of thinking, discussing the normal experience of emotions to what might be a reasonable interpretation of applied Buddhist non-attachment. The discussion was between three people, so the response might seem odd. My ideas were positioned against two different kinds of response, that Zen-like-state version and another friend's more typical take, a bit shocked. Then again, a Trump supporter wouldn't be shocked, but no need to go into that tangent here, all of this applies more generally than to someone just being upset about that one thing.
I get it about making peace with the result and our own reaction to the result. Trump as President is the new reality, in January, and only limited forms of rejecting reality make sense (eg. taking actions that actually do change it). At the same time grief is natural, and loss of a person and loss of an understanding of reality and a set of expectations aren't so separate, in this case.
An emotional reaction is in order; this is human nature. Moving to acceptance is a process, and negative emotions are part of the process. Or potentially even moving through denial and anger phases, then onto depression and acceptance.
I cope through discussion, and a little writing. For someone else they might just flip a switch, and say this is now, that other set of circumstances was then, and all is well. Things are just as they must be, a mix of external events and whatever response we naturally take. I've only lost the idea that Americans would have better judgment, not a reality where they actually did. That was always only an expectation. It's nice philosophizing about loss.
Don't do anything crazy, although marching around and showing public disapproval seems harmless enough, if one felt inclined. That really is feedback, likely not so functional, but it's a real thing. I do the same online, move some ideas around a little. I share the experience with friends and talk it through with others that don't share perspective as well.
It might seem like I'm taking it a bit personally, more as a tragedy than necessary, or compared to people I've talked to back in the States not so much at all. I guess I see it as move back to the perspective of the 1950's, one in which men are better than women, whites are better than minorities, and religious tolerance and tolerance for people that see gender differently are non-issues; it's normal to be straight, and not really ok to be Muslim. And I don't want to go back to that. I don't want to be better than Mexicans for being white, I want all people to be created equally, like it says in the Constitution. But all that is tangent. We could almost as easily be discussing my reaction to 9/11 here instead, any change or event that's hard to accept.
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he can't be that bad |
Engaged Buddhism versus a less active take on Zen
There are two different takes on Buddhism that map onto two reaction patterns, which may not be familiar to everyone. Zen would be, in general, one interpretation of which that friend is advocating. It's all about equanimity, dispassionate acceptance, staying at the center. How to take that related to immediate experience and what we should do or not do could go in different directions. Here I'm sort of condensing it to mean inactivity, although it typically wouldn't be equivalent to doing nothing. That friend isn't saying "do nothing," he's saying don't get upset, because the cause for being upset is only the way you position the ideas.
The story about the one founder spending nine years facing a wall indicates otherwise, that inactivity is just fine, or even great practice, but even that circumstance was probably not exactly like that. Maybe that guy (Dogen) meditated part-time, and was socially engaged otherwise, although that's not how that story typically goes. "Real" Zen may be more like a second pattern I'm going to discuss, about a way to be active, to not get away from emotion or doing things.
It's about Engaged Buddhism, a variation of Zen teachings taught by Thich Nhat Hanh. Sound familiar? He is a pretty big name, still with us, but getting up there in years now. To be clear, he is teaching Zen, part of that tradition himself, and there surely isn't a lot of discontinuity between what he is saying and some other very inactive-oriented form. Zen is zen; a direct experience of reality, and people are just describing it differently, or different but related means to the same end. Here is a website about his community and teachings. Here are some related points from his 14 Precepts of Engaged Buddhism:
Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world...
Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry.... Do not maintain anger or hatred...
Do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings. Practice mindful breathing to come back to what is happening in the present moment. Be in touch with what is wondrous, refreshing, and healing both inside and around you....
Do not utter words that can create discord and cause the community to break. Make every effort to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.
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Thich Nhat Hanh (photo credit) |
So he is teaching others to be active, but to change perspective. The same ideas about letting go of attachment are there, common to all types of Buddhism, just stripped of any directive to not experience certain kinds of things. We suffer to learn not to suffer, to get to the root of what it is, then the form of experience can change so we aren't adding that to it.
One point in there is interesting, about not just avoiding staying inactive in meditation, but also about not losing your self-awareness to activity, described more clearly here:
Buddhism has to do with your daily life, with your suffering and with the suffering of the people around you. You have to learn how to help a wounded child while still practicing mindful breathing. You should not allow yourself to get lost in action. Action should be meditation at the same time.
Interesting! He's not really saying we should do a certain kind of activity, again more related to perspective in general, really in this all a "being in the moment" theme. More about a specific crisis event helps clarify that:
John Malkin: When the World Trade Center was destroyed, you were asked what you would say to those responsible. You answered that you would listen compassionately and deeply to understand their suffering. Tell me about the practice of deep listening and how you think it helps in personal situations...
Thich Nhat Hanh: The practice of deep listening should be directed towards oneself first. If you don’t know how to listen to your own suffering, it will be difficult to listen to the suffering of another person or another group of people.
I have recommended that America listen to herself first, because there is a lot of suffering within her borders. There are so many people who believe they are victims of discrimination and injustice, and they have never been heard and understood...
If America succeeded in that, she could bring that practice to the international level. The fact is that people know America has the capacity to hit. To hit very hard and make people suffer. But if America does not hit, that brings her more respect and gives her more authority...
Violent action creates more violence. That’s why compassion is the only way to reduce violence. And compassion is not something soft. It takes a lot of courage.
So it would seem his advice is for people to understand why they feel as upset as they do about any changes, to make peace within themselves, and then apply the same process to others.
An interesting question: would Thich Nhat Hanh still get angry? On one read, no, he would be past that. A philosophy and religion professor of mine once told a story of being at a function where Thich Nhat Hanh spoke, of being involved with the organizers and presenters, and conveyed how at one point someone in the crowd interrupting and asking questions that weren't relevant was throwing off the communication. Thich (a bit much always writing all that) went in the back at one point to cool off a little, and expressed that the disruption was making him angry. He was still human; he still experienced the normal range of emotions. Some might say "he's not a real Buddha then" but I'm not sure he would claim to be one. Emotions aren't a bad thing, but keeping a balanced perspective is still better for us.
Of course America isn't going to turn into a country full of millions of Buddhas. This is intended as practical guidance, though, nothing abstract. He thinks we can make peace within ourselves, and then make peace with people we would ordinarily consider our worst enemies.
It's odd thinking of a Trump supporter as an enemy in the same sense as a terrorist, but the dynamic is playing out that way this week. Violence and hate is occurring on both sides. Compassion and understanding won't work like flipping a switch but there is something to this, it's practical, or at least potentially so.
Of course we can't take "the other side" with us, completely. If someone absolutely hates minorities and they don't want to change, or can't find influence to shift that perspective, then there is only so much that can be done. Talking ISIS or Al Qaeda out of conducting terrorism seems a stretch. But Thich Nhat Hanh is saying we can more or less break that cycle, bit by bit. Or at least that's our best chance, not success through being the last one standing through successful application of violence.
Our President-elect isn't much of a Buddhist, but the rest of us can do better, and even he can. A simple part of shifting perspective might just relate to giving him the benefit of the doubt. When he says "illegal immigrants from Mexico are criminals and rapists" he is more or less expressing racist views, but it might be better to accept that as rhetoric aimed at coordinating shared views about concerns over the impact of illegal immigration with other Americans--his supporters--than jumping to the conclusion that we've elected a new version of Hitler. The KKK supports Trump, and is happy he was successful, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he or his average supporter shares most of their views. These teachings from Buddhism apply to trying to understand the most extreme opposing perspectives, to try to sort out the roots of views that seem clearly wrong by relating to them.
My friend's point was more about our own initial reactions, something much easier to control than to actually conduct peaceful relations with ISIS and white supremacists. Our family is Buddhist--we live in Thailand--and although my own beliefs and background aren't so simple in terms of alignment I try to teach my kids to apply the most practical aspects, and then it's their mother's job to enforce the religious ritual aspects. As I tell my son, if you can't control yourself then you don't stand much chance of controlling anything else. Of course this isn't folk wisdom from my own tradition, in which righteous indignation is quite acceptable, it's from Buddhism. On that subject, I'll add a little more about my own take on Buddhism related to everyday experience here.
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looks cool, might be functional |
Buddhism and everyday experience, some of my own thoughts
This subject naturally drifts into review of the related Pali terms, and parsing out roles of teachings and meditation, and separating mental faculties, etc. I'll try to simplify beyond all that, of course limited to describing a very rough version of my own take. Per the Buddha, we make life worse than it is, through mistakes in our take on perception and self, or even related to how we deal the past and future. Accepting present reality as it is really is a lot of the message. That doesn't mean dropping out our role in possibly changing it; our own activities and intentions are part of that present, as much as external factors are. But we can't change the past of the future, and suffering over what happened or being stressed over what might don't really make sense; we only exist in this present.
Suffering is used in an odd way. It's really a translation, and as with a lot of language translation the original range of senses doesn't match the translated version. Even within one language, tradition and worldview a concept like "self" may not be pinned down as well as it initially seems, but when a concept is at the core of an unusual model of reality things really get unusual. As I'm describing I see this as prescriptive as much as descriptive; it says how we can do better for perspective, just as much as it describes what people ordinarily do, mentally, in terms of context of perspective.
It matches everything my friend said, and what Thich Nhat Hanh is saying, it's just not as clear as it could be what those really mean. According to a bad read my friend might be saying "just get stoned and let it all drop," and Thich Nhat Hanh might be saying "just try to be open and understand everything, and be compassionate, but not necessarily do anything." Those aren't the point, although they may overlap with some of the ideas, and just miss the proper end point, the right view.
Suffering--in the one special sense--isn't being used as pain, or even mental anguish, but in a special sense. It's about things being unsatisfactory for being different than they "should" be. Everything really should be exactly as it is, in this present, because there is no changing the present, at all. We can act, but then that's part of the present moment too. To some extent sadness is still a reaction about a change that is natural, a carry-over from the past, but we can only part ways to a limited degree with normal human experience. Maybe the Buddha had moved on, or maybe he didn't, but in a sense we don't need to worry so much about that. If anger moves us to violence we have went way too far with embracing normal human nature, or if being upset takes us over, but to some extent reacting through emotions is fine.
Where is the right balance? Hard to say. It's potentially problematic to put ourselves on a scale of irrational / emotional up to Zen-line Buddha state, because we might just experience gap. The idea is to improve over time, to personally benefit from a perspective shift, and to use that to help others. Meditation is described as one tool for doing so, or the teachings are another, with mindfullness emphasized more than both in some traditions (conditioned momentary awareness). So there is no magic bullet, along with there being no clear end state.
As with any subject someone claiming to be an expert is a bit of a red flag, although some others have varied experiences and perspectives. I was ordained as a monk here in Thailand for two months once, and it's odd how that shifts things, someone being an authority based on wearing certain clothes, being in a formal role. Lots of monks could be a lot more familiar with these basic ideas. We learn from whoever or whatever is a good teacher, and someone in a formal teacher role might have the most potential, or they might not.
Really personal experience itself, our own momentary perspective, is the best grounds for learning. In a limited sense it's the only basis for it; no one can pass on their perspective to you. A teacher can lay out examples, or advise about practices, or explain teachings, even hit you with a stick if that somehow seems relevant, but everyone takes the steps for themselves, or else doesn't. You either notice all this works and experience changes in perspective or you don't.
Unpleasant experiences can be quite useful, although again conventional suffering and our reaction to that suffering as a different kind of suffering are quite different. Dissatisfaction with very uneventful experience could also be instructive, or maybe physical pain could be, or fear of the future. Proper perspective of those would be critical, which typically wouldn't stem from just experiencing them, some guidance on how to take them would really make a difference. Contemplation of death and impermanence as a means to learn is commonly referenced. In a sense I'm really talking about un-learning, removing parts of ordinary experience that aren't useful, assumptions that relate to self and point of view.
And all that is kind of the simple version, as far as I might go without going on and on. I like to discuss philosophy (and tea) so if I can help further with discussion I'd be happy to; just look me up. Of course I'm no living example of these practices completely extended; I'm an ordinary person. I feel all this works because following it to a limited extent seemed to help, and it has seemed accurate based on introspection. It might be as well to close by noting this isn't really tied to any particular belief system, to reincarnation or making wishes, or separated from others, although lots of people would certainly take it that way.
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