Be warned! This is another one of those religious/philosophical articles. Oh noes, head for the hills, plug ears with cotton and slap hands over eyes! If you don’t want any of Usually Dead’s attempts to pierce the meaning of life, stop reading now. The disclosure of intent is given!
So, as I’ve often mentioned elsewhere, I’m a born, raised and practicing member of Christianity. (The practicing part is only in the loosest and most basic possible sense. Believe that Christ died for our sins? Try to emulate his ascension from mortality into immortality? Work to become a good, wise and noble person? You betcha. All good stuff. But what about church every Sunday afternoon? Partake of blessed food and drink as sacrament? Humanity’s other attempts at expressing spiritual truths in mortal form? Yeah, sorry, no. In shameful irony, all those deeds make me a good church-goer but a poor Christian.)
Though, of the many valuable lessons life has taught me, one important lesson was the danger of brand loyalty. I should never blindly devote myself to, dedicate myself to, or identify with a title, a label or a set of ideas. We see this operate in the business world, where customers attach themselves to a company in thoughtless loyalty. “I love XXX company! I’ll never leave them in a million years!” Even when that company charges more and produces a product inferior to its competitor’s. The reasons for brand loyalty are numerous, but also meaningless. In the end, all brand loyalty is a form of roleplaying. You like this company, and are plenty vocal about the preference, because it’s part of the image you wish to be.
This applies not only to the companies we patronize, but also our belief systems. When I say that I’m a Christian, I run the same risk of brand loyalty and roleplaying. Because I’m a Christian, I do these things, and I say those things, and I practice some stuff! Because I’m a Christian! That’s who I am, sonny! And don’t let no dirty nonbeliever tell you otherwise, or good ol’ Jesus’ll smite you down, amen!
But Christianity is not who I am. No religion is ever the person. The person is a force of life, purely beyond any title, label, brand, roleplay, or idea that we mortals can intellectually perceive. The person’s very existence is far outside the mind’s ability to understand or accept. No religion, no matter how good its teachings, has ever changed that. We don’t know the depth of life, because it’s something impossible to know. It simply is.
In my own efforts for self improvement, I’ve looked beyond the teachings of Christianity. Not because I disbelieve Christ. I still love him and respect him as a role model. But Jesus doesn’t want me to stagnate in misery and stupidity because I can’t see beyond the imperfect belief system mortal men constructed around him. He wants me to grow, and he’s not so proud as to restrict that growth to Christian teachings. He’s a bigger man than that, and he’s also the ultimate pragmatist. Whatever works, go for it.
I’ve recently studied the basic concepts in the religion of Buddhism, and I’m impressed with it. Both it and Christianity have their problems. Both religions suffer confused teachings from obtuse complications designed by mortal people, surrounding core kernels of truth. And, surprisingly enough, those core truths aren’t so different from one another. I could easily see Jesus practicing Buddhism, and just as easily see the Buddha sitting down beside Christ to share a drink and big-bellied laughter.
The mortals who practice these religions have much to learn from each other. Being that I’m a Christian looking into Buddhism, I can best see what Christ’s followers have to learn from Buddha’s students, so I’ll expand on that here.
No sane and objective person could call Christianity, as practiced in its current form, to be the “one true religion.” Not if we judge by deeds. We Christians, especially of the Western world, have some disturbing behaviors. We’re quick to judge the world as either “good” or “bad” (which, in this context, is interchangeable with “what we like” and “what we don’t like”). If we see something as “good”, we either build it up or leave it alone. If we see something as “bad”, we either buy it out or bomb it into submission. We leverage our considerable power of money and military strength to change the world into our vision of goodness. After all, we have to! If we let evil exist in the world, we’re no better than it! March to the Crusade! Onward, Christian soldiers!
Buddhists take a different approach. They’re slower to judge, slower to slap labels and brands onto things. They look at a thing, become aware of it, and accept it.
Of course, there’s a balance between these two. Be aware of the truth, without your own mind forcing it into a name, a category, a stereotype, a role. Then, let Life itself (or God, as Christians call it) give you the strength and motivation to act if possible or necessary. If it’s not possible or necessary to act, then accept the situation as it is. Even if your mind yells and cries and screams that it’s wrong. You are more than your mind, and you can do what’s right despite its complaints. I believe that both Buddha and Jesus would agree on this balance.
Now, let me switch conversational gears. In our modern world, few places give more opportunities for the application of religious truths than the workplace. If you’re reading this, you probably already know my daytime job. I work tech support for a cell phone company. It’s a job that pays well and stresses much. I don’t want to complain about the job. No one, least of all myself, is interested to hear whining of the sort that comes from call centers. What’s so tough about your job? Why do you dread going into work every day? Because (gasp!) someone might yell at me! Oh dear!
But anyone who works over-the-phone customer service will agree with me. The job is hard. And it’s not just because we get yelled at by angry customers (though that is part of it). More to the point, the job is hard because of the stresses it puts on our Western-developed minds. We have to swallow our pride, endure insults and abuse while responding with calm professionalism, support a company we don’t always agree with, and compromise our morals on a daily basis. But again, I don’t mean to complain. My job pays well and the benefits are fantastic. Rather than complaining, I want to find a way to cope. Ever since starting customer service work six years ago, I’ve always wanted to cope.
But I didn’t always act as though coping was my foremost motive. Here the assumptions of Western Christians clash with the wisdom of Buddhism. In the workplace, I see many things easy to call “bad” and “wrong.” I see customers treat my co-workers unfairly. I see my co-workers treat customers unfairly. I see my company enact harsh policies that punish many for the deeds of the few. I see customers who exploit loopholes and toe the line of criminal fraud. I see the company treat its customers like hostile irritants to be controlled, rather than customers to be served.
By the mental/emotional environment I grew up in, I’m conditioned to act certain ways in response to the workplace. I should try to fix it. Every wrong I see should be righted. Customers need to know their place. Employees need to work harder and be nicer. The company should be more altruistic and less greedy. An obvious problem pops up here. I see all these wrongs, and cannot right them. I’m one man. I don’t have the power to change the world. The company doesn’t do what I say. Neither do the customers or my co-workers. I’m just an insignificant voice, drowned out as I scream my moral objections into the static-filled world.
(Some men see this lack of power, this impotence, and refuse to accept it. They run for political office, try to get promotions at work, or act as demagogues at political rallies. They have a vision! They can change they world, if they try hard enough! If they get enough people on their side! Some men succeed at this, but never those who try for it. Those who succeed are those who let life act through them, those who did what was right after accepting the wrongness of the world. But those who try to change the world, for change’s own sake, inevitably fail. Life lives itself, and God keeps the world spinning. We mortal humans are only players in the drama, and accomplish only our own destruction when we jump off stage and scream into the audience that it’s all wrong, it’s all wrong, bad things shouldn’t have to happen.)
I see so much evil in the workplace, and I have no power to right the wrongs. What can I do? I can’t accept it, can I? Heavens no! That would just be foolish! I mean, there are things wrong in the work world. If I accept those wrongs, I become every bit as wrong myself! Allowing evil to exist is effectively becoming the evil! So, if I can’t change things, I settle for complaining about it. I weave stories that I tirelessly tell over and over to my friends, to my family, to myself. This one customer was so stupid, he did this and said that. That one co-worker was so mean, she did this and said that. My company is so evil, they’re doing this new thing and forcing that new rule on us.
I complain, complain, complain. I complain to cope with my own impotence, to reconcile my own inability to right the world’s wrongs. I complain because it’s all I can do, because the workplace is bad. My friends and family and myself all need to know that it’s bad, and that I don’t for one instant approve of it.
This habitual complaining immediately causes a chronic problem. A complaint is a verbal representation of a negative thought or emotion. It’s effectively a vocal manifestation of negative energy. And when I make complaints part of my life, I feed on that negative energy, make it part of myself. I become the complaining. I move ever further from being a God-loved human, and move ever closer to being a God-hating wretch whose only thoughts are of what isn’t and what should be.
For several years, I’ve been aware of this dysfunction. I’ve long known it’s not healthy to complain. I’ve known that it drags us away from peace, into dissatisfaction, despair and depression. More recently, inspired writings helped me to realize the mechanics of the dysfunction. I’ve learned that complaining doesn’t fix the world’s problems, and I’m not evil if I don’t complain about it. I can say what I think is right without putting my very identity into the assertion, and I don’t lose my identity if others ignore me. I understood how to gain peace.
This is all well and good, but one key component was missing. Though I knew how to achieve peace, I wasn’t convinced that it was morally right. When Buddhists describe enlightenment as the “end of suffering”, they omit a crucial point. Western Christians see the omission of this point, and they promptly write Buddhism off as some silly mystic’s religion and ignore the rest of it. The point is this: Buddhism promises that enlightenment is the end of suffering. It doesn’t mention whether it’s the right thing not to suffer. We Christians are more concerned with doing what’s right than with avoiding pain, as shown in the idol of Christ on the cross. The Crucifix is a more powerful symbol than most Christians realize. We assume it’s a representation solely of our Savior’s sacrifice to save the world. It is that, definitely. It’s also become a symbol of the Western mindset, the endless drive to push, push, push ourselves and the world endlessly to gain salvation. Only if you exert yourself, up to and including death, are you worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. Only if you try so hard that it kills you.
The fallacies of this mindset are obvious. If we are truly God’s children, how can we be worthy of him through effort? Put simply, we can’t. Put even more simply, there’s nothing at all you can do to be a morally good person. This is the trick of mortality, especially in the Western world. We live in a society where everything is a matter of doing, where goodness and self-worth are all based on what you do. And while deeds are a good yardstick by which to measure, the yardstick isn’t itself the object being measured. In the end, you can be morally good only by being. Moral goodness can’t be done. It just is. Good deeds, if they come, come from from morally good being.
For several months, understanding the mechanics of gaining peace but being unable to reconcile the moral correctness of it, I was in a state of flux. I knew how to be calm, to have that comforting feeling of “everything is okay, no need to worry” that we all secretly crave. But I feared that feeling. For most of my life, (again, conditioned by my environment and upbringing) I thought that constant fretting was the way to be morally good. I had to be on guard against sin slipping into my life. Every thought, feeling and deed was a portal through which evil could enter. Every second of every day, I was thinking, “Am I good enough? How can I be better? I didn’t do well enough. I’m not good enough in that part of my life.” These thoughts suck my strength away. They hook into me like parasites, drain my energy and hurt me, and I suffer.
There was another moral compulsion that kept me from peace. Bad things happen in this life. Every failure and every sting of pain may occur for a higher purpose, but bad stuff still happens. Sometimes, very bad stuff happens. Natural disasters wipe out whole cities. Wars destroy whole countries. Injury takes our body, our beauty, our mentality, our very life. Loved ones die. In the face of these horrible events, how can we possibly have peace?
The Buddhists claim that even these events have no power but that which we give them. Even the loss of life, limb, love, or country hurt us only when we had unhealthy attachment to them. You gain peace when your only attachment is to the omnipresent force of Life (God). You gain peace when you be.
The Western mindset cries out against this. How can you possibly have peace when hugely bad things happen? Your house just burned down! Your car just got stolen! Your son was just murdered in a gang war! You can’t be at peace after your son was killed! If you can be at peace, you must not have loved, you horrible bad person!
The Western mindset expects us to panic, to fret, to fear and worry. It praises these traits, even as they inspire our own self-feeding insanity. And, to address a misconception, I’m not trying to say there’s anything wrong with hurting or grieving when bad things happen. There’s no sin in crying over the death of a loved one. The sin is making that pain into yourself, in mistaking that pain to be who you are. When you say, “My parents died, and I am an orphan,” or, “My husband died, and I am a widow,” you turn the negative event into an identity. You become the pain, and thus suffer it forever.
If we can allow pain be without either pushing it away or holding it tight to the chest, then it will pass naturally. It will end when its ready, and leave us whole. This applies to all levels of pain, to all intensities. It applies to the pain of losing your spouse in a car wreck just as it applies to stubbing your toe, and even getting yelled at by angry customers.
We can have peace against all levels of pain, and we needn’t constantly worry in our efforts to be good. How then, if we are at peace, can we know if we’re morally good or bad? How can we measure our personal worth if not for the crack of God’s whip snapping its unforgiving morals on our backs?
This question has nagged at me for months, but now I have the answer. The question assumes that I have no way to measure my moral goodness but the pain I suffer from each sin, and that I can only be good by fearing the pain that is each sin’s punishment. This fear was a constant worry that I might slip into complacency to evil. That complacency would be the truest form of evil, for the worst tyrants in history believed they were doing the right thing in their own twisted ways.
But what about those tyrants? Could we honestly say that the Hitlers and Husseins of the world were at peace? Absolutely not. Hitler swallowed his own pistol at the end of World War II’s European campaign. Hussein was found squatting on a giant pile of money after his regime crumbled around him. These men were not at peace. On a smaller scale, we can see how this works with the evils of daily life. When a customer yells at me over the phone, my proud ego demands that I strike back. I should insult, call names, give the customer what they’ve given me. If I indulge the ego, I deny myself peace. If I’m a man who gives into all his egoistic impulses, I’m never at peace. I’m too busy worrying about my how shiny my car is, how much money is in the bank, how handsome I am compared to other men. There’s no room for peace when my psyche is full of the anxiety of getting caught doing bad things, of not being better than other people, and anger when I am caught or when I’m not better than others.
This brings home a powerful truth. Not only can we be morally good when at peace, but being at peace is the only way to be morally good. Peace necessarily implies the absence of fear, anxiety, anger and hatred. This isn’t to say that you’re automatically a saint the instant you feel comfortable with yourself, with life and with fellow man. You’re still a weak mortal human with faults and flaws, but those are less important than having peace right now. God will work on your imperfections. Being at peace will give him room to work on you, and it’s the morally best thing you can do.
And, in sheerest irony, having peace isn’t something you do. It’s something you let happen. It’s something that you are. In this way, there is nothing you can do to be at peace, to be content, to be happy. These things only are when you be. God, Life, Buddha, whatever you want to call the universal power that runs the world, will take care of the rest.