More on Why I'm a Half-Buddhist

What's the nature of love? Should we have desires or not?

Photo by Monil Andharia on Unsplash

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‘Do I have any more to say about Buddhism? I’m glad you asked.’

‘Once again, I didn’t ask. I never ask. Because I don’t value anything you have to say.’

‘Your problem is you’re too passive. If you’re terrified of something — let’s say “the prospect of me talking” for the sake of argument — you should voluntarily seek that thing out. Then you own the pain rather than just letting it happen to you.’

‘I can’t believe you just admitted that listening to you causes intense suffering.’

‘Almost everything does, according to the Buddha. Anyway, I should be talking and you should be listening.’

‘“So what else do you like about Buddhism?” I asked, expecting the answer “some long answer”.’

‘Let’s see. I love the insight that we aren’t our thoughts, but the thing that observes the thoughts.’

‘I’m currently observing many thoughts along the lines of “I’m in agony and I’m dying for the noise to stop so I can do literally anything except remain hopelessly subjected to it”.’

‘Sounds like a destructive thought. There are two mistakes we make with destructive thoughts. One is to forget that we have the freedom to separate ourselves from them: the thought “The world is against me” enters our heads, and before we even realise it we’ve agreed completely with the statement and let it swallow us up! “Come in, harmful thought, I’ve laid out the welcome mat and broken out the good china! Stay as long as you like!”’

‘“And the second mistake we make with harmful thoughts?” I asked, sensing that I wasn’t going to get a word in for a while.’

‘The second mistake occurs at the meta-level. You’ve separated yourself from the thought enough to take a step back and evaluate it, but you still identify yourself with it enough to blame yourself for having it. “I keep having these “victim mentality” thoughts, what the hell is wrong with me? Clearly I’m a very victim-type person. Other people don’t have these thoughts. I’m stuck with them because I’m basically defective. And I’m basically defective because the world is against me AAGH I JUST DID IT AGAIN.”’

‘You know, that happened to me just the other day — ’

‘I’m sure it did, you seem like the type. As I was saying, taking a step back from your thoughts and watching them is only the first step — the next step is accepting them. You don’t condemn them, you don’t condemn yourself for having them — as if you can help what flies into your head, as if you’re responsible for your genes and upbringing — you just say “Oh, there’s a thought”. Nothing more. Just “Oh, there’s a thought”. Don’t catastrophise about it, don’t treat it as important, and whatever you do don’t investigate it to see if there’s any truth to it. You know what happens when you pull at a ball of wool.’

‘Very bad things.’

‘Yes. Very bad things. We’re used to thinking of egotism as being full of yourself, but shame is egoic too: pride and shame, arrogance and self-doubt are two sides of the same coin. So don’t trust any thought about yourself that makes you feel either proud or ashamed of who you are. Better to look at your personality as a bunch of raw materials, and see yourself as what you do with those materials.’

‘Related to that — remember how last time we were talking about loving others in the sense of being fully open to them — approaching them with a sort of emptiness, rather than projecting all kinds of expectations and defence mechanisms onto them?’

‘I do.’

‘Well, the highest form of self-love — maybe self-acceptance is a better word — is just as “empty”. Less about saying “Aren’t you great, you should be proud of yourself” and more about taking inner states as they come, with total openness, non-judgement, a let’s-make-the-best-of-what-we’ve-got-in-here attitude. Ultimately you want the best for yourself and others just because you’re all thinking, feeling beings — there’s no more to it than that.’

‘Right.’

‘Seems a bit cold though, doesn’t it? Loving everyone just because they’re alive sounds noble, but even Jesus had a particular disciple that he loved more than the rest. He also cried at Lazarus’ funeral even though He knew He was just about to reverse his death.’

‘Yes, He was swept up in how sad the scene was.’

‘So you can say we’re all one, kinship ties are arbitrary — the Buddha famously abandoned his wife and son — and there’s no reason to be any more attached to one person than another, so that you needn’t cry at a relative’s funeral or care about what your friends think of you. But I’m not sure most of us are designed for such an everyone’s-interchangeable attitude.’

‘Is that a harsh way to put it though? The trouble is that so much of what we think of as love is bound up with narcissism, attachment and the selfish grasping of the ego. It’s about what specific individuals do for you rather than helping everyone as best you can. That’s why Thich Nhat Hanh talks about sacrificing sexual love in favour of a higher love that embraces everyone.’

‘But that’s just the problem. Maybe that way of thinking suits monks, but if everyone tried it they’d get hopelessly frustrated. Plus the species would go extinct.’

‘You seem to get that monk-vs.-laity tension with a lot of religions, come to think of it.’

‘I want to love the other for themselves, not just because they’re there. Or say I’m dealing with someone who’s toxic beyond redemption — in that case I want to not open myself up to them. When you’re dealing with utterly egocentric, manipulative, abusive types your only job is to protect yourself.’

‘OK, I hear what you’re saying: nonattachment is lofty — it’s the way you imagine God loving us — but it sounds cold when you apply it to humans. Well, let’s do a bit of steelmanning. Say you’re looking at the Eiffel Tower through fogged-up glasses. It doesn’t look very exciting, does it? Doesn’t look like itself at all. It just looks like fog. Or say you’re looking at it through rose-tinted glasses. It might look exciting, but it still doesn’t look like itself. You’re doing its actual wabi sabi beauty a disservice if you ignore its actual colouring, all the parts that are scuffed or rusting, all the flaws. Real love means looking at the tower without any glasses on.’

‘Let’s assume for the sake of the analogy that you have 20/20 vision and decided to buy glasses for no reason. Obviously the fog symbolises fear, aggression, insecurity etc, and the rose-tint symbolises…well, we know what that symbolises. So the upshot is — ‘

‘The upshot is that the more clearly you see the tower the more it looks like itself. In all its glorious individuality. Nothing abstract or mystical about it. If you fully see someone then you know exactly what they need. True love for yourself or someone else means seeing exactly what they’re like now, sensing exactly what their best self would look like if all that sin and ego wasn’t in the way, and realising exactly how many of their worst aspects are just warped versions of their best qualities.’

‘And if you like what you see enough, you proceed to relate to the person in some way — whether that means saying “Nice weather we’re having” or asking them to marry you and bear your children.’

‘And if you don’t like what you see you choose to love the person from a distance, praying that one day they’ll deal with their toxicity for their own sake and that of everyone they come into contact with. Forgiveness doesn’t mean reconciliation, and love doesn’t mean having anything to do with someone who’ll end up destroying your life.’

‘Now that you’ve brought up praying: people say Buddhism is compatible with theism, but I can’t help feeling it basically isn’t. Hardcore Buddhism demands total independence, total self-reliance, the total rejection of all beliefs and concepts in favour of direct experience. You find everything you need within. For Buddhists, that’s how you become a full adult. But for Christians humility means accepting that adults have everything backwards.’

‘In that sense at least, you could say that Christianity is even more Buddhist than Buddhism: you let go even of the idea that you’re supposed to save yourself. You give up control, even self-control. You ask for help.’

‘I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that Buddhism works better if you’re intelligent, subtle, determined and strong-willed. I’m not sure it fully reckons with just how lost, confused, broken and helpless so many of us are. How doomed we are by the genetic lottery. How much we need that hand reaching down to save us — how profoundly good it feels to be forgiven.’

‘Well I don’t want to cast aspersions, but if anyone needs to be forgiven it’s you. Speaking of letting go, acceptance is a pretty major part of the Buddhist deal, isn’t it? Letting go of the past — existing in the moment and accepting it for what it is — not losing yourself in wanting more or hoping for a brighter future.’

‘No hope eh? Sounds pretty nihilistic.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. More like you stop worrying about outcomes. Buddhist acceptance doesn’t mean resigning yourself to injustice and not doing anything about it. There’s a huge distinction between accepting in the sense of “I won’t bother changing anything” and accepting in the sense of “Even while I do something about this, I’m not going to let it rob me of my peace of mind. And if my efforts get frustrated somehow, that’s not going to rob me of my peace of mind either. Life is more than this problem”.’

‘Sure. But I have to wonder if anyone’s ever actually managed to let go of all their beliefs, all their concepts, all their attachments and all their hopes in order to perceive reality “directly”. Can any human being attain the highest view which is “no view at all”? Surely our very nature as conditioned, physical beings stops us ever seeing anything without a hundred or so filters in place? And it seems to me that even the most flexible Buddhist has beliefs, models, aims, a certain view of reality. Biases. Emotional preferences. Even political leanings.’

‘My political opinions aren’t opinions by the way, they’re objective truths.’

‘Good for you. Anyway, the “no view at all” principle reminds me of the “loving everyone equally” principle: it sounds like a lofty goal (can having no goal be a goal?), but I wonder if it’s possible or even desirable.’

‘You’re probably misinterpreting things again. Anyway, I did say I was a half-Buddhist. I don’t have it in me to look at the world and accept it completely. I’m with the Bible when it says “You know what, this isn’t good enough. Everything’s in such bad shape that you can’t resign yourself to it outside of the context of a loving God and a hope for a new heaven and a new earth”.’

‘Isn’t it nobler to say with Hamlet that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”? Isn’t calling the world “not good enough” a recipe for needless suffering?’

‘Well, maybe life is supposed to be full of suffering. I certainly don’t think most of us have the time or the ability to achieve a state of perfect equilibrium towards it. And even if you manage to liberate yourself from all attachments, judgements and woes, what about all the people who don’t have it in them? I know the bodhisattva’s job is to help them as much as possible, but the more we learn about genetics and especially personality disorders the more we realise just how deeply trapped in their pain people are. And what about all the children who die in agony before they even get the chance to learn about enlightenment? What about all the animal suffering that you can’t do anything about at all?’

‘That’s where karma and future lives come in, I guess. They’ll get their chance.’

‘I thought we were talking about secular Buddhism this whole time. The Buddha himself may or may not have believed in reincarnation and multiple worlds, but a lot of his present-day followers don’t.’

‘Fine. So is Christianity’s answer to the problem of evil any better?’

‘Well, it agrees with our basic intuition that this stuff isn’t good enough, and promises it’ll all be made right some day. If it isn’t made right some day — if all the reassurances in the Beatitudes are meaningless — then I don’t see how it’s possible to accept immutable suffering. Even if we put an end to all human misery tomorrow, we’d still have done nothing to help the billions of people who’ve already lived and died in misery. I just can’t resign myself to something so outrageous and horrifying.’

‘You sound angry. Don’t you realise anger is an unwholesome root, one of the Three Great Poisons?’

‘Once again, I settle for half-Buddhism on this one. There’s no one view of anger in the tradition — I’ve read various things about it — but I get the sense that it’s generally seen as an unhelpful emotion. Not that you should judge yourself for being angry, but I don’t think you’re supposed to express the emotion outwardly — it’s an internal matter. You either perceive your circumstances more clearly and realise there’s no need for anger, or you embrace the emotion until it’s transformed. What you don’t do is yell at the person who made you angry.’

‘Right. Self-control is everything. Unpleasant feelings are to be processed, not inflicted on others.’

‘And obviously there’s a lot of wisdom to that. But I think anger does need to be expressed sometimes. That’s not about blaming the person who hurt you for your reaction to their action, or not forgiving them, or trying to get revenge on them, it’s just about respecting yourself. And I’d question whether you’re supposed to be 100% in control of yourself all the time either. Obviously you shouldn’t lash out at people vindictively or harm them physically, but I think the “five things to consider before speaking” are more excellent rules of thumb than things to impose on yourself every time you open your mouth.’

‘Again, even Jesus got angry. Very angry.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, any concluding statements?’

‘Well, you’re probably wondering whether it’s possible to be a half-anything.’

‘I wasn’t, no.’

‘I mean, they say “Better not to start, once begun better to finish”, don’t they? But they also say to test everything against your own experience. And my experience is that being a half-Buddhist has improved my life. Maybe I’ll come around to more of it some day, or maybe I’ll resonate with even less of it than I do now, but all I can do is keep doing what I’m doing and see what happens.’

‘Fair enough. Incidentally, I notice it’s not OK to be a half-Christian.’

‘No. Impossible to count the number of Bible verses ruling that out. But supplementing your faith with Eastern traditions is no different to Aquinas borrowing from Aristotle or a psychologist using modern advances in neurobiology to supplement his understanding of sin.’

‘Is it possible to be a confused Christian?’

‘Yes. There’s no law against that.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘Amen to that.’