One of the many rules of writing is to have a provocative title, luring your readers into the bed of words you lay down for them. So, how’s that one? I hope it doesn’t attract the attention of the FaceBook Police, who live in financial fear of any controversy. I don’t think I can get deported, although my father was born in Russia and fled to Palestine, before Israel was carved into existence.
Actually, I can’t think of any more benign statement, the ultimate truth for us all. I don’t consider myself a morbid individual, a dressed in black, nihilistic pretender. Although, I do like to wear black at times, because it does stand out and offsets my white hair, at worst a silly moment of vanity. I confess to thinking about my mortality quite often, more so as my hour glass is running out of sand, an inevitability of the good fortune to be quite ambulatory and in my mid-seventies. Certainly, the younger you are, the less weight it has on the scale of what matters most.
Every morning, when I check into the latest news, the mortality reality rockets into my consciousness. One of today’s stories was about Boko Haram, an ugly group, whose mission is to purify Islam by killing thousands and thousands of people in Nigeria and several neighboring countries. Most of us haven’t heard of them or give a shit about what goes on in countries that hardly ever surface in the mainstream news of the moment. El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH do come to mind, at least for this week, until the next tragedy in places and for reasons more familiar to us.
The vast majority of us, regardless of geography, culture, skin color, religion or language seem to be very comfortable mistreating others for no other reason than their differences. The reaction of choice by so many of us is violence, including governments in power or those thirsting for supremacy.
When I was decades younger, I read this supposed, true story of a guy named Siddartha, who lived some 2,500 years ago. In India, it seems his family was part of the .001% back then and this kid was living large, shielded from anything remotely unpleasant. He was kind of held prisoner in the palace, so he would grow up to be somewhat like the Trump offspring of today. He left home at around 19 and his life and the lives of millions of people right up until this moment, were changed forever.
He was a guy in the right place at the right time, kind of like Elvis, one of destiny’s messengers. Like so many famous people, before and since, he changed his name and became The Buddha for all time. The story goes that he was flooded, nearly to the point of drowning, by all the suffering he witnessed outside the high walls of his palace. Right there, he made it his life’s mission to get to the core of our nature as sentient beings. Supposedly, he tried every spiritual and physical discipline, dedicating his life to finding out why we all suffer the way we do.
After years of looking outside himself for answers, he gave up and parked himself under this big tree and just sat. Every now and then and quite infrequently, God taps certain people on the shoulder and they are anointed with a holiness that is without flaw, like the perfect sunrise. This guy sat for forty-nine days and don’t ask me how he did it. One day, at sunrise, he saw the Morning Star and he became the truth of all of our existence. I mean this in a purely philosophical sense and will leave the whole religious business to people who give a shit.
The ray of light shone deep inside the Buddha and he saw that our suffering was caused by our refusal to own our impermanence. Our mortality seemed to be more than we could handle and it got even more difficult to swallow, because each of us was a myth, self-created to give ourselves a sense of true substance, a sense of hope. The Buddha was struck by the reality that not only are we passing through this life, there is no enduring self to cling to. We live in an infinite state of change, from one second to the next, deluding ourselves into believing we will live forever, as the person we think we are.
I know, I know, this can be way too big to swallow, getting stuck in our throats and unable to chew it, we just spit it out. Imagine if the vast majority of us believed this to be true? It would completely scramble our sense of self-importance, the need to hurt other people, when all of our fates are the same. Why would one religion be more important than another? Why would it be necessary to accumulate more wealth than you could spend in 100 lifetimes? Why would we destroy our planet and all its inhabitants for a few extra dollars? Compassion would vanquish violence as a solution to our differences.
The Buddha was not naive, as evidenced by one of the very important Four Vows: “Greed, Hatred and Ignorance Rise Endlessly. I Vow to Abandon Them.”
I am under no illusion that we will all miraculously see the Morning Star, but a guy can hope, can’t he?