In Eight Steps to Happiness Geshe-la says "'Self' and 'other' are relative terms, rather like 'this mountain' and 'that mountain ... 'This' and 'that' therefore depend upon our point of reference. This is also true of self and other. By climbing down the mountain of self, it is possible to ascend the mountain of other, and thereby cherish others as much as we presently cherish ourself."

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Saying "No"

A companion post to Saying "Yes" ...
I say "yes" to Buddhism, but as a Buddhist I say "no" to samsara, the ongoing cycle of suffering in life after life after life, which is renunciation.

My friend of the "yes" said the ultimate "no"- she killed herself, in her early 30s, after surviving the most horrific childhood I have ever heard of. Kerry was a close friend, and we often talked about her wish to kill herself. This was B.D. (before Dharma). I wish I had some Dharma wisdom then - maybe I could have helped her. How do you convince someone it's worth sticking around when their life is so painful? She rarely slept because she feared the traumatic dreams that left her soaked in sweat. I knew that she had a lot of trouble imagining hope for herself, so I tried to get her to rely on my hope for her.
She was a Religion major, and her favorite religion was Mahayana Buddhism, because she loved the idea that you weren't just trying to get into Heaven for yourself and then, as she said, pulling up the ladder behind you. Unfortunately, her intellectual knowledge didn't lead to believing.
She was an amazing person, working with the homeless when she could have been a professor, as many of her own professors encouraged her to be. Bloomington, Indiana gave her a key to the city for her work. When I visited her there, she couldn't walk down the street without being greeted by people she had helped: an alcoholic who almost froze to death in his car who was working for the parks department, a schizophrenic who had gotten Section 8 housing thanks to her, a father who'd regained custody of his kids.
One of her intellectual interests was the idea of ''action at a distance,'' which I thought of at the time as history but now see as karma (even though you could say history is a subset of karma). I think she lost hope when she found out that geographic distance from her family wasn't enough.

Later I met a psychiatrist friend who's had this suicide conversation with too many of his patients. He's deeply influenced by Buddhist thought and believes the best answer is impermanence. He thinks that depressives have a strong sense that nothing will ever change.

When I find myself tempted by worldly pleasures, I sometimes think of Kerry. There is nothing that is going to make up for that loss - there is no lemon tart, no sunshine on the beach, not even a true heart-to-heart conversation with a good friend is going to come even close to balancing that out. Not just her dying - the fact that any of us has to die. That there's war, and addiction and famine and disease and depression and ... I could go on and on, and it could get really depressing listing all the sorrows we have to experience.
Do you ever feel like our situation is unacceptable?
Samsara is a losing proposition. It's a con game. They say you can only be conned if you want to be. I don't necessarily believe that, but to the extent it's true, it applies to samsara. Switching analogies: I don't want to play anymore. You cannot win. To  keep betting is to put yourself deeper and deeper in the hole. The house will let you win just a little to keep you in the game (those small, temporary pleasures we think of as happiness), but the odds are not in your favor. The only sure thing is that you will lose, and the longer you play, the more you will lose.
Samsara is like being constantly lured into an ambush, with shiny gee-gaws as bait, which turn out not to be the precious jewels we imagine but worthless plastic trinkets.
We are fools. I am a fool for thinking any of these things can really make me happy.

2 comments:

  1. Wow! Great article!

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  2. I really like your analogy of samsara with gambling - the house letting you win a little so you'll keep playing. "The only sure thing is that you will lose, and the longer you play, the more you will lose." So true! Thanks, Mimi!

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