Track Mangoes

Once I thought everyone I had ever dated was steadfast in their beliefs and that this typified the lot of them. A dancer, an artist, a business man, a dentist--I thought they all knew, to some modicum of accuracy, how their lives would play out and what they wanted to "do" with their lives, a question I am being tired of asked by people who I know don't actually care. What I discovered however, was that I have always seemed to fall in love with people who pretend to know, yet always change their mind in private.

My favorite story of a private change of mind is Devadatta’s, the tormented cousin of the Buddha. Having tried to kill the Buddha twice and creating a schism in the Sangha (the community) once, he traveled to the Buddha’s monastery to make an apology. However, at the precise moment he internalized the error of his ways the ground opened beneath his feet and he was killed.

Every preacher’s dream.

I once composed a submission to a literary magazine in Minnesota. The submission contained over 13 poems and prose works, one of which was entitled “Hartford Jew,” an epic song that really had nothing to do with Judaism and everything to do with problems of race. When I finally received word from the magazine my heart jumped. However, it wasn’t an encouraging word. “Hartford Jew,” they said, on top of being poorly written, was racist, and they weren’t going to grace the pages of their magazine with a single thing I’d written. In the following nights I fantasized that the editor would send me a retraction letter that read something like this: “I never understood the complexity of race until I read your poem. Please forgive me for everything I’ve written. By the time you read this I’ll be dead.” And that, of course, is the only letter any writer ever wants to receive.

Later I put my feathered poetry pen back in the inkwell and decided to continue working on my novel, something I had been procrastinating on. I had crafted a novel about kids and their relationship to religion; and during what I believe is called “the writing process” I began to think about resentment. This comment is not as jejune as it might seem; A Serious Man may be a charmingly artsy film, but it isn’t about Judaism. But my novel was about resentment, which is to say the polemic between persons of varying ethos. What I then realized was that the central problem of the novel was not one of my own but that of my sister. Having watched her spiritual growth closer than any other human being I know I can quickly sum her dilemma up in the inability to reconcile the two chief ways of approaching religion: that being the faithful approach and the perfectionist approach.

Do we change our ways to accommodate the times, or do we buckle down and get traditional? This is the same question as should your church have a webpage? It is the same problem the Buddha faced during the vassana, or rainy season: while the sangha wanted to travel from place to place in India, expounding the Dharma, they quickly realized that it was more difficult to do so during a rain storm without stepping on submerged animal life. The perfectionist response, at the time, was philosophically utilitarian: it will do a lot of good if we spread the dharma, so we should temporarily suspend our belief in non-violence to do that. The faithfuls scoffed back: your willingness to suspend your faith highlights just how unfit you are to teach the dharma. Luckily the sangha had the Buddha, who was a moderate. His solution? If people want the dharma they can come to us.

The first Vassana retreat was held in Varanassi. We still have them today.

So now I wonder, how the Buddha so magically intertwines the liberal and conservative modes of thinking and how I could reflect that and, more importantly, how I could communicate that which I had no clue how to do to my spiritually struggling sister. The split seemed stark. You can be a perfectionist liberal and think people are basically good at heart or you can be a faithful conservative.

This time I turned to Devadatta. It didn’t really matter whether or not Devadatta was good at heart or not, because he was still a member of the sangha who wanted to kill the Buddha. That liberal view of human nature is not wrong: people probably are good at heart. It just doesn’t matter.

This somewhat dry view of existence has prompted my writing ever since I started. I think that people, in circumstances of stress (read love and death), can behave like rats and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but also the only subject of all art.

How could I not know that religion wasn’t all peaches and cream? The realization seems boggling to me now. After learning about how Catholics burned Christians, the Christians killed the Jews because the Jews killed Christ, and eventually the Pagans killed all Romans anyway, with that history in mind you will say “DUH” and you are right in doing so.

But my intention in writing this essay was not to simply posit “we’re all human.” I wanted to point out that Buddhist philosophy, rather than suggesting that we all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will sabotage even themselves in order to peruse what they see to be their proper interests.

To that end the teachings of the Buddha have been neatly parsed into four noble truths, which are the only things I have retained from 13 years of schooling in Buddhist Philosophy at KCC and a three month stint at Bokar Monastery in Mirik India. (That is not to say that the rest is scintilla, but merely to point out that I’m burning out quicker that I thought I ever would).

In a nutshell, the four Nobel truths are, like the Constitution, a system of checks and balance. “The Turth of Suffering” (Dukkha) is that it wants to be king, just like the executive branch of government. “The Truth of Why We Suffer” (Samudaya) is like the legislative branch, that “representational” system of governance that tells you that, indeed, the problems of the world are your own damn fault. You voted them into office, didn’t you? So even though it may not seem like your fault, it really is. “The Cessation of Suffering” (Nirodha) is like the judicial branch, everybody resents them, but when you can’t work it out yourself you have a system of monarchic rule to lead the way. Those three truths—Dukkha, Samudaya, and Nirodha—are pitted against each other. You are sad, it’s a fact. It’s your own fault, it’s a fact. There is a way out, it’s a fact. In the mean time we have the eightfold path, which is the village that Hilary Clinton said it takes. The eightfold path is the relative truth, the way to live a life day to day if you can’t, which we can’t, understand the first three truths, simple as they might seem at first.

One last story: Chenrezig, vowing never to rest until he had freed all sentient beings from samsara, despite his most honest attempts, he realized that many unhappy beings were yet to be saved. After struggling to comprehend the needs of so many, his head split into eleven pieces. Amitabbah Buddha, seeing his plight, gave him eleven heads with which to hear the cries of the suffering of all the people he had yet to save (one wonders why). Upon hearing these cries and comprehending them, Chenrezig attempts to reach out to the suffering, but in doing his two arms shatter into pieces, like tubes of glass. Once more, Amitabha comes to his aid and invests him with a thousand arms with which to aid the suffering.

Now I ask: is any religious institution free from maladroitness?—no, but neither are you and I.

As to the role of religious institutions in the cessation of all suffering, answering that question is like asking what the role of government is in the individual’s search for life, liberty and the mythical pursuit of happiness.

I’m a conservative. I believe that the there have been few instances in history in which the government has intervened and the whole shin dig hasn’t gone up in flames. The same goes for art: I find that the characters in my novel are most happy when I don’t write them. (Yes, it’s true, the production of art is essentially an act of coercion). In this way, religious institutions have seen a long history of injustices to the truth: indulgences, crusades, violent physical jihad, cleansing, and even my beloved Tibetans have a history of being bullies. So the list goes on. But if the government is not to intervene then how will we go on? If religious institutions have no role in finding the “truth” then what are we to do?

Well, I have absolutely no idea, but I am overcome with a feeling that we just will. We need the government, if only to say “FUCK IT.” We need our institutions, if only to say “you are in the wrong.” So, taking the tragic view, as my sister and I both did, the question does not become “Is everything perfect?” but rather “How could it be better?” You can go on and on about faith, or perfection. Either way, you still have to sit in the same pew.