KJ
Selections
GETTING
BEYOND GOOD vs EVIL
A
Buddhist Reflection on the New Holy War
David R.
Loy (from
KJ #51)
If only
it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously
committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from
the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil
cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy
a piece of his own heart?
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
In his autobiography
Gandhi writes that "those who say that religion has nothing to do with
politics do not know what religion means." 1 Perhaps
this is more obvious to us after September 11th, but it should always
have been obvious: religion is about how we should live, and politics
is about deciding together how we want to live. The main reason it has
not been obvious is because most modern societies have been careful
to 
distinguish
the secular public sphere from the personal, private world of religious
belief. This has been essential for creating a multicultural climate
of religious tolerance, but at a price: such tolerance effectively "displaces
morality" by "asking you to inhabit your own moral convictions loosely
and be ready to withdraw from them whenever pursuing them would impinge
on the activities and choices of others."2 Many people would
prefer that Osama bin Laden inhabited his moral convictions more loosely,
but the downside of loose convictions has been an increasingly amoral
public sphere.
In two other ways, however, Gandhi's comment
seems especially important now.
First, the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon were engaged in a political act that was religiously
inspired, however badly they may have misunderstood their religion.
In fact, it is difficult to think of any other motivation that can inspire
people to sacrifice themselves, and others, so willingly. (The kamikaze
pilots of World War II were not an exception, for at that time the Japanese
emperor was considered a god, so he was a religious leader as much as
a political one.) Although they left no suicide notes, the September
hijackers seem to have understood themselves as engaged in a jihad
defending Islam against the globalizing West.
And that brings us to a third aspect of Gandhi's
statement, the one that I wish to focus on — the intersection of religion
and politics in the way we comprehend good and evil. Our understanding
of good and evil cannot be simply identified with any religious worldview,
but the two are intimately related. The new war against terrorism, like
the long-standing tension between Israel and the Palestinians, and like
many earlier conflicts among Jews, Christians and Muslims, can be viewed
as an Abrahamic civil war. These encounters are so violent and so difficult
to resolve not only because they draw on old historical tensions, but
because the opponents seem to share some very similar views about the
struggle between good and evil. This essay originates in the curious
fact that the al-Qaeda understanding of good and evil — the need for
a holy war against evil — is also emphasized by the administration of
George W. Bush. Three days after the September attacks,
President Bush declared that the United States has been called to a
new worldwide mission "to rid the world of evil," and two days later
he said that the U.S. government is determined to "rid the world of
evil-doers."3 America, the defender of freedom, now has a
responsibility to rid the world of its evil. We may no longer have an
"evil empire" to defeat, but we have found a more sinister evil that
will require a protracted, all-out war to destroy. Later Bush unwisely
referred to this war as a "crusade," and in his 2002 State of the Union
address he identified a new "axis of evil," especially Iraq, Iran and
North Korea.
If anything is evil, the terrorist attacks on September
11th were. That must not be forgotten in what follows. At the same time,
however, we need to take a close look at such rhetoric. When Bush said
he wants to rid the world of evil, alarm bells went off in my mind,
because that is also what Hitler and Stalin purportedly wanted to do.
What was the problem with Jews that required a "final
solution"? The earth could be made pure for the Aryan race only by exterminating
the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally-defective, etc. — all the impure
vermin who contaminate it. Stalin needed to exterminate well-to-do Russian
peasants in order to establish his ideal society of collective farmers.
Both of these great villains were trying to perfect the world by eliminating
its impurities. The world can be made good only by destroying its evil
elements.
In other words, one of the main causes of evil in this world has been
human attempts to eradicate evil, or what has been viewed as evil. In
more Buddhist terms, much of the world's suffering has been a result
of our way of thinking about good and evil.
On the same day that Bush made his first pronouncement
about ridding the world of evil, the Washington Post quoted Joshua
Teitelbaum, a scholar who has studied the al-Qaeda movement: "Osama
bin Laden looks at the world in very stark, black-and-white terms. For
him, the U.S. represents the forces of evil that are bringing corruption
and domination into the Islamic world." 4
What is the difference between bin Laden's view and
Bush's? They are opposites, of course — in fact, mirror opposites.
Let's look at that Teitelbaum quote again, changing only a few names:
"George W. Bush looks at the world in very stark, black-and-white terms.
For him, al-Qaeda represents the forces of evil that are bringing corruption
and domination into the Western world." You're either with us or against
us.
What bin Laden sees as good — an Islamic jihad against
an impious imperialism — Bush sees as evil. What Bush sees as good —
America the defender of freedom and democracy — bin Laden sees as evil.
That makes them two different versions of the same holy-war-between-good-and-evil.
This is not to equate Bush's actions with those of
bin Laden (although I can appreciate why such an argument might be attempted,
because of the large number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan).
Rather, I am making a point about our ways of looking at the world,
at the spectacles bin Laden and Bush — and we — use to understand what
happens in it. From a Buddhist perspective, there is something delusive
about both sides of this mirror-image, and it is important to understand
how this black-and-white way of thinking brings more suffering, more
evil, into the world.
This dualism of good-versus-evil is attractive because
it is a simple way of looking at the world, and I will have more to
say about that later. Although it is certainly not unique to the Abrahamic
religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) I think this dualism is
one of the reasons why the conflicts among them have been so difficult
to resolve peacefully — believers tend to identify their own religion
as good and demonize the other faith or its adherents.
It is difficult to turn the other cheek when the
world is viewed through these spectacles, because this rationalizes
the opposite principle — an eye for an eye. If the world is a battleground
of good and evil forces, the evil that is seen in the world must be
fought and defeated by any means necessary.
I am not saying that this attitude represents the
best of the Abrahamic religions. There is another way to understand
the war between good and evil: to internalize it and psychologize it,
as the struggle that occurs within each of us when we try to live up
to the ideals of our own religion. This is the "greater jihad" or "internal
jihad" that most Muslims emphasize more than any externalized one. Nevertheless,
it is a tragic fact is that many religious people — or many people who
believe themselves to be religious — have objectified and projected
this struggle as a struggle in the external world between the
good (most of all, their own religion) and evil (other religions and
atheism).
The secularization of the modern West has not eliminated
this tendency. In some ways it has intensified it, because we can no
longer rely on a supernatural resolution. We have to depend upon ourselves
to bring about the final victory of good over evil, as Hitler, Stalin
and Mao Zedong tried to do. It is unclear how much help bin Laden and
Bush have expected from God.
Perhaps the basic problem with this simplistic good-vs.-evil
way of understanding conflict is that, since it tends to preclude further
thought, it keeps us from looking deeper, from trying to discover causes.
Once something has been identified as evil, there is no more need to
explain it; it is time to focus on fighting against it. Bin Laden and
Bush seem to share this tendency. This is where we can benefit from
the different perspective of a non-Abrahamic religious tradition.
For Buddhism, evil, like everything else, has no
essence or substance of its own; it is a product of 
impermanent
causes and conditions. Buddhism emphasizes the concept of evil
less than what it calls the three roots of evil, or the three
causes of evil, also known as the three poisons — greed, ill will and
delusion. Let me offer what may be a controversial distinction: the
Abrahamic religions emphasize the struggle between good and evil because
the basic issue is usually understood to be our will: which side are
we on? In contrast, Buddhism emphasizes ignorance and enlightenment
because the basic issue depends on our self-knowledge: do we really
understand what motivates us?
One way to summarize the basic Buddhist teaching
is that we suffer, and cause others to suffer, because of greed, ill
will and delusion. Karma implies that when our actions are motivated
by these roots of evil, their negative consequences tend to rebound
upon us. That is true for everyone. However, the Buddhist solution to
suffering does not involve requiting violence with violence, any more
than it involves responding to greed with greed, or responding to delusion
with delusion. From a Buddhist perspective, one cannot find justice
for the deaths of some three thousand innocent people in New York and
Washington with a bombing campaign that leads to the death of an even
larger number of innocent Afghanis. Rather, the Buddhist approach involves
breaking that cycle by transforming greed into generosity, ill will
into loving-kindness, and delusions into wisdom.
What do these teachings imply now, in the aftermath
of the September attacks?
To begin with, we cannot focus only on the second
root of evil, the hatred and violence that were directed against the
United States. The three roots are intertwined. Ill will cannot be separated
from greed and delusion; another's ill will toward us may be due to
their greed, but it may also be a result of our greed. This points us
toward the essential question that many of us have been wanting to ask,
but that others prefer to brush away or evade: why do so many people
in the Middle East, in particular, hate the United States so much? What
has the U.S. done to encourage that hatred? This is a crucial question
that all the simpleminded rhetoric about "evil" has tended to ignore
or downplay. Undoubtedly, some fundamentalist versions of Islam are
also important factors; yet they are not the only ones. We Americans
usually think of America as the most ardent defender of freedom and
justice, but obviously that is not the way many Muslims in the Middle
East perceive us. Are they misinformed? Are we? Or are both of us?
"Does anybody
think that we can send the USS New Jersey to lob Volkswagen-sized
shells into Lebanese villages (Reagan, 1983) or loose 'smart bombs'
on civilians seeking shelter in a Baghdad bunker (Bush, 1991) or fire
cruise missiles on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory (Clinton, 1999)
and not receive, someday, our share in kind?"5
More precisely, how much of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has
been motivated by love of freedom and democracy, and how much by need
— or greed — for its oil? (How did "our" oil get into "their" wells?)
If the main priority has been securing oil supplies, and if the U.S.
has sacrificed other, more democratic concerns for access to that resource,
does it mean that our petroleum-based economy is one of the causes of
the September attacks?
Buddhist teachings imply that we should focus especially
on the role of delusion in creating this situation. Delusion has a special
meaning in Buddhism. The fundamental delusion is our sense of separation
from the world we are "in," including our separation from other people.
Insofar as we feel separate from others, we are more inclined to manipulate
them to get what we want. This naturally breeds resentment: both from
others, who do not like to be used, and within ourselves, when we do
not get what we want... Isn't this also true collectively?
The delusion of separation becomes wisdom when we realize
that "no one is an island." We are interdependent because we are all
part of each other, different facets of the same jewel we call the earth. 
This
world is a not a collection of objects but a community of subjects,
a web of interacting processes. Our "interpermeation" means we cannot
avoid responsibility for each other. This is true not only for the residents
of lower Manhattan, many of whom worked together in response to the
WTC catastrophe, but for all people in the world, however hate-filled
and deluded they may be... including even the terrorists who did these
horrific acts, and all those who support them.
Christians are urged to distinguish the sinner from
the sin. This attitude is also quite Buddhist. I do not know how greedy
bin Laden and the other al-Qaeda leaders are, but they certainly seem
to be extreme examples of how ill will and delusion can overwhelm the
mind. Nevertheless, from a Buddhist perspective they still have Buddha-nature,
which means that they still have the capacity to understand how evil
their actions have been, and to try to atone for them. We know that
such an awakening is unlikely to occur, and in fact bin Laden and most
of the other al-Qaeda leaders may well be dead by the time you read
these words. That fate, however, is not something for Buddhists to celebrate,
but will be yet another occasion to mourn, in that case for the karmic
consequences for themselves, too, of their ignorance and deadly hatred.
Do not misunderstand me here. Of course those responsible
for the attacks should, indeed must be caught and brought to justice.
That is part of our responsibility to those who have suffered, and we
(not only U.S. citizens, but the global community) also have a duty
to stop all other deluded and hate-filled terrorists. If, however, we
want to stop this cycle of hatred and violence, we must realize that
our responsibility is much broader than that.
Realizing our interdependence and mutual responsibility
for each other implies something more than just an insight or intellectual
awareness. When we try to live the way this interdependence implies,
it is called love. Such love is much more than a feeling; perhaps it
is best understood as a mode of being in the world. Buddhist texts emphasize
compassion, generosity, and loving-kindness, and they all reflect this
mode, being different aspects of love. Such love is sometimes mocked
as weak and ineffectual, yet it can be very powerful, as Gandhi showed.
It embodies a deep wisdom about how the cycle of hatred and violence
works, and about how that cycle can be ended. An eye for an eye makes
the whole world blind, but there is an alternative. Twenty-five hundred
years ago Shakyamuni Buddha said, as quoted in the Dhammapada:
"He
abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me" — for those who
harbour such thoughts ill-will will never cease.
"He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me" — for those
who do not harbour such thoughts ill-will will cease.
In this world hatred is never appeased by ill-will; ill-will is always
appeased by love. This is an ancient law.6
The present Dalai
Lama emphasizes the necessity for "internal disarmament."7
For genuine peace — which is much more than the absence of overt violence
— such internal disarmament is as important as external disarmament,
and this involves taming the greed, ill will and delusion in the minds
of all those involved, starting with ourselves. It is not possible to
work toward peace in a confrontational, antagonistic way.
Certainly, this insight is not unique to Buddhism.
It was not the Buddha who gave us the powerful image of turning the
other cheek when we have been struck. In all the Abrahamic religions
the tradition of a holy war between good and evil coexists with this
"ancient law" about the power of love. That does not mean all the worldÕs
religions have emphasized this law to the same extent. Maybe this is
one way to measure the maturity of a religion, or at least its continuing
relevance for us by how much the truth of this transformative law about
love is acknowledged and encouraged. Given our much greater technological
powers today, our much greater ability to destroy each other, we need
this truth more than ever.
What does all this imply about the new situation
created by the terrorist attacks? We are at an historical turning point.
A desire for vengeance and violent retaliation has arisen, fanned by
a leader caught up in his own rhetoric of a holy war to purify the world
of evil... Now, please consider — does the previous sentence describe
bin Laden, or President Bush? The Al-Qaeda network, or the response
of the U.S. government?
Many people wanted retaliation and vengeance — well,
that seems to be what the terrorists also wanted. If we continue along
the path of large-scale violence, bin Laden's war and Bush's war will
become two sides of the same escalating holy war.
No one can foresee all the consequences of such a
war. They are likely to spin out of control and take on a life of their
own. However, one sobering effect is clearly implied by the Buddha's
"ancient law": it is already apparent that massive retaliation by the
United States is spawning a new generation of suicidal terrorists, who
will be eager to do their part in this holy war.
Yet widespread violence is not the only possibility.
If this time of crisis encourages us to see through the rhetoric of
a war to exterminate evil, and if we seek to understand the intertwined
roots of this evil, including our own responsibilities, then perhaps
something good may yet come out of this horrible tragedy.
Good vs. Evil
More or less everything
above is from a "Buddhist response" I emailed to many people a week
after the September 11th attacks. Afterwards I found myself reflecting
more generally on the problematic duality between good and evil: first
considering how that way of thinking deludes us, and then asking what
alterative perspective might give us better insight into the cycle of
suffering, ill will and ignorance.
Because Buddhist enlightenment or "awakening"
requires mindfulness of our ways of thinking, Buddhism encourages us
to be wary of antithetical concepts: not only good and evil, but success
and failure, rich and poor, and even the Buddhist duality between enlightenment
and delusion. We distinguish between such opposing terms because we
want one rather than the other, yet psychologically as well as logically
we cannot have one without the other because the meaning of each depends
upon the other. That sounds abstract, but such dualities are actually
quite troublesome. For example, if it is important for me to live a
pure life (however purity is understood), then my life will be preoccupied
with (avoiding) impurity. If becoming wealthy is the most important
thing for me, then I am equally worried by the prospect of poverty.
We cannot take one lens without the other, and such pairs of spectacles
filter and distort our experience of the world: since we focus too much
on some aspects, we are unable to perceive and appreciate others. If
"wealth/poverty" becomes the most important category I use to understand
and react to the world, I tend to see all situations in those terms.
What does this mean for the duality of good versus
evil? Perhaps the most important way the interdependence of good and
evil shows itself is that we don't know what is good until we know what
is evil, and we don't feel we are good unless we are fighting against
that evil. We can feel comfortable and secure in our own goodness only
by attacking and destroying the evil outside us. St. George needed that
dragon in order to be St. George. His heroic identity required it. And,
sad to say but true, this is why so many of us like wars: they
cut through the petty problems of daily life, and unite us good guys
here against the bad guys over there. There is fear in that, of course,
but it is also exhilarating. The meaning of life becomes clearer. The
problems with my life, and yours, are now over there.
That is one of the main reasons why the end of the
Cold War created a big problem in the United States, and not only in
the military — once Reagan's "evil empire" was history, people whose
"goodness" depended on its "badness" felt adrift. A new enemy was needed,
but Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War didn't really fill the shoes. This
new holy war on worldwide terrorism is much more promising, especially
since it seems that we won't ever be able to tell when or if weÕve
won.
In mid-October 2001 the U.S. Secretary of Defence
Donald Rumsfeld said that the fight against terror:
"...undoubtedly
will prove to be a lot more like a cold war than a hot war. If you think
about it, in the cold war it took 50 years, plus or minus. It did not
involve major battles. It involved continuous pressure. It involved
cooperation by a host of nations. It involved the willingness of populations
in many countries to invest in it and sustain it. It took leadership
at the top from a number of countries that were willing to be principled
and to be courageous and to put things at risk; and when it ended, it
ended not with a bang, but through internal collapse."8
Am I the only one who detects some nostalgia in this comparison? Despite
all the problems involved, it is reassuring to return to the good old
days. Now we know what needs to be done — to be courageous and aggressive
attacking the evil that is outside and threatens us.
Everyone loves this struggle between good (us) and evil (them), because
it is, in its own fashion, quite satisfying. It makes sense of the world.
Think of the plot of every James Bond film, every Star Wars film, 
every
Indiana Jones film, etc. The bad guys are caricatures: they're ruthless,
maniacal, without remorse, so they must be stopped by any means necessary.
We are meant to feel that it is okay — to tell the truth, it's pleasurable
— to see violence inflicted upon them. Because the villains like to
hurt people, it's okay to hurt them. Because they like to kill people,
it is okay to kill them. After all, they are evil and evil must be destroyed.
What is this kind of story really teaching us? That
if you want to hurt someone, it is important to demonize them first:
in other words, to fit them into your good-vs.-evil script. Even school
bullies usually begin by looking for some petty offense (often a perceived
insult) that they can use to justify their own violence. That is why
the first casualty of all wars is truth: the media must "sell" this
script to the people.
As this suggests, such stories are much more than
entertainment. In order to live, we need air, water, food, clothes,
shelter, friends — and we need stories, because they teach us what is
important in life. They are our myths. They give us models of how to
live in a complicated and confusing world. Until the last hundred years
or so, the most important stories for most people have been religious:
the life of Jesus or the Prophet or the Buddha, and the lives of their
followers, etc. Theologians and philosophers may like arguing over concepts
and dogmas, but for most people it is the stories that are important:
the Easter passion, the Prophet in exile, the future Buddha deciding
to leave home...
Today, however, the issue is not usually whether
a story is an ennobling one, a good myth to live by, but the bottom
line: will it sell? You don't need to be religious to wonder how much
of an improvement that is.
Disney's very successful — that is, very profitable — Lion King
film contrasts the noble ruler of the animals, his loving wife and their
innocent cub Simba, all on the good side, with Simba's evil uncle. The
uncle hatches a plot to kill the king and eliminate Simba, who escapes
but eventually returns to fight the uncle, etc. All very predictable
and boring, although often beautiful visually.
In Japan Lion King was featured in cinemas
at the same time as Princess Mononoke, an animated film by Miyazaki
Hayao. (Princess Mononoke turned out to be more popular, breaking
all attendance records.) One of the striking things about this film
— in fact, about many of Miyazaki's wonderful films — is the way it
avoids any simple duality between good and evil. In Princess Mononoke,
for example, people do bad things, not because their nature is evil,
but because they are complicated: sometimes selfish and greedy, and
sometimes just so narrowly focused on what they are doing that they
do not see the wider implications of their actions.
I do not know if Miyazaki considers himself a Buddhist,
but his films seem to be so. Compare the following passage from the
Sutta Nipata, an early Buddhist sutra, where Ajita asks of the
Buddha, "What is it that smothers the world? What makes the world so
hard to see? What would you say pollutes the world and threatens it
most?" Notice that his response makes no reference to evil:
"It is
ignorance which smothers," the Buddha replies, "and it is heedlessness
and greed which make the world invisible. The hunger of desire pollutes
the world, and the great source of fear is the pain of suffering."
"In every direction," said Ajita, "the rivers of desire are running.
How can we dam them, and what will hold them back? What can we use to
close the flood-gates?"
"Any such river can be halted with the dam of mindful awareness,"
said the Buddha. "I call it the flood-stopper. And with wisdom you can
close the flood-gates."9
A Better Duality?
What alternative
is there, if we try to avoid the simplistic duality between good and
evil as our way of understanding and evaluating the world? Is it enough
to talk about the three roots of evil, or can we say something more
about their origins? If greed, ill-will and delusion can be transformed
into generosity, loving kindness and wisdom, it seems to suggest that
these two ways of living are different angles on the same thing, divergent
responses to the same situation. What is that situation?
I think we do better to distinguish between two basic
modes of being in the world, two different ways of responding
to the uncertainty — the death-haunted insecurity — of our life in the
world. This insecurity involves not only the impermanence of our circumstances
(the fact that everything is changing all the time) but the fragility
of our own constructed identities (that "everything changing all the
time" includes our sense-of-self).
One mode of being in the world involves trying to
stabilize ourselves by controlling and fixating the world we are in,
so that it becomes less threatening and more amenable to our will. The
other mode involves a very different strategy, giving priority to opening
ourselves up to the world and a greater acceptance of the open-ended
impermanence of our existence. That means not allowing our concern for
controlling the world to dominate the way we respond to
the world.
Both of these involve a quest for security, but they
seek it in very distinct ways, because they understand the nature and
source of security differently. Security is from the Latin se
plus cura, literally "without care" ? that is, the condition where
I can live without care, where my life is not preoccupied with worrying
about my life. We can try to achieve such a condition by completely
controlling our world, but there are other ways to be "without care,"
which involve a greater trust or faith in the world itself. The first
way is more dualistic: I try to manipulate the world in order to stabilize
my situation, including my own sense of who I am. The second way is
more nondual: greater openness to the world is possible because that
world is perceived as less threatening and more welcoming, so my own
boundaries can be more permeable.
The best terms that I can think of for these two
modes of being are fear and love. Notice that, despite
the tension between them in our lives, they are not antitheses in the
way that good/evil, rich/poor, high/low, etc., are; the meaning of each
is not the opposite of the other. Fear and love are not a pair of spectacles
to be put on or taken off. If I am right that these are the two most
basic modes of being in the world, the choice between them, or proportion
between them, is the basic challenge that confronts each of us as we
mature. This choice is nothing new to psychologists, of course, and
a contemporary psychotherapist, Mel Schwartz, has expressed it better
than I can:
"Contrary
to what we may believe there are only two authentic core emotions; they
are love and fear. Other emotions are secondary and are typically masks
for fear. Of these, anger is very common. Although we may have come
to regard anger as a source emotion, it is really a smokescreen for
fear. When we look at our anger, we can always find fear buried beneath
it. In our culture we are trained to believe that it's unwise to show
fear. We erroneously believe that expressing such vulnerability will
permit others to take advantage of us. Yet the fear is there nonetheless."10
In the film Princess Mononoke the main protagonists display plenty
of greed, ill-will and delusion, but it is not difficult to detect the
fear that underlies them. The major conflict is between two powerful
women, both attractively presented, who want to kill each other. Lady
Eboshi, the benevolent ruler of Irontown, is destroying the forest to
mine the iron ore she needs for making muskets and bullets; these weapons
are both Irontown's source of income and its means of defense against
predatory warlords. Young Mononoke, raised by an enormous white wolf,
wants to kill Eboshi to defend against the rape of the forest. Each
side fears what the other side is trying to do to them. Like Bush
and bin Laden, the hatred and aggression of each is a mirror-image of
the other. During the climax, an extraordinarily violent battle between
them, another warlord also attacks Irontown, encouraged by the Emperor,
who craves the head of the Great Forest Spirit, because a legend says
that head can confer immortality on whoever gets it. This last motivation
is not much developed in the film, but it reminds us of perhaps our
greatest fear, and perhaps the one that interferes most with our ability
to be open to the world.
How much better it would be if, for example, the
Israel-Palestine conflict were understood in these terms! Not as a holy
war between good and evil, but as a tragic cycle of reciprocal violence
and hatred fuelled by a 
vicious
cycle of escalating fear on both sides. Israelis fear that they will
never be able to live at peace, believing that Palestinians are determined
to destroy them. Palestinians, impoverished by Israel's U.S.-supplied
military, and fearing that they will never be able to control their
own destiny, strike back with suicide bombers.
Needless to say, Schwartz's point about anger as
a smokescreen for fear is also very pertinent for understanding the
aftermath of September 11th. The United States is not used to being
attacked, and the disempowering fear that ensued was not something most
people were prepared to cope with. In such a case, the collective conversion
into national anger, and a reciprocal act of aggression against Afghanistan
or some such country, was not surprising. We knew somebody was going
to get bombed.
And what is al-Qaeda's anger a smokescreen for? What
fear cowers behind their horrific desire for violence and mass destruction?
It has been widely reported that bin Laden is offended by the U.S. military
presence in Saudi Arabia, Islam's holy land, yet that is only the tip
of a much more problematical iceberg. Al-Qaeda has widespread support
among poor Muslims — now more than ever — because it is seen as defending
Islam against the globalizing West.
Although the relationship between Islam and Western-led
modernity is a complicated issue, it is difficult — for those raised
in the West, at least — to avoid the conclusion that Islam needs to
reform in order to become more compatible with the contemporary world.
That is not the only conclusion to be drawn, however. Of all the major
religions, Islam is probably the most concerned with social justice,
and therefore the most sensitive to the great social injustices of Western
colonialism and domination. Allah is a merciful God but He is also a
God of justice and will judge us harshly if we do not accept personal
and collective responsibility for the less fortunate. The third pillar
of Islam is zakat, alms. Zakat is not so much charity as an essential
expression of the compassion that all Muslims are called upon to show
to those who need it. Islam believes that everything really belongs
to God, and material things should be used as God wishes them to be
used. This means not hoarding but sharing with others who need them.
That is why the capitalist idea of using capital to gain ever more capital
— you can never have too much! — is foreign, even reprehensible, to
many devout Muslims.*
By adapting so well to the modern world of
secular nationalism, capitalism and consumerism, the West has learned
to finesse such concerns. The Bible tells us that the poor will always
be among us. And in any case we must accept what the "social science"
of economics tells us are laws of supply and demand, the importance
of free trade, etc. Admittedly, the main effect of transnational capitalism
so far has been to make the rich richer, but we must have faith that
a rising tide of worldwide wealth will eventually lift all boats.
Islam is less willing to accept such equivocations,
because it recognizes no God above Allah. And recent controversies over
the World Trade Organization and other institutions of economic globalisation
remind us that the era of colonialism is far from over. Bin Laden's
own Saudi Arabia is a good example: created by the British after the
first world war, now in the U.S. "sphere of interest," it has one of
the most oppressive, undemocratic and hypocritical governments in the
world — but people living in the U.S. hear almost nothing about that
reality, and apparently never will, until the day the U.S. government
decides it is necessary to replace that government to keep the oil flowing.
So do poor Muslims around the world have reason to
fear and hate the U.S.? Of course they do, and all the more after the
aggression in Afghanistan. That military reaction to September 11th
invites the same response as in the Middle East, where every Israeli
assassination invites a Palestinian suicide attack, and vice-versa.
Needless to say, viewing the conflict in these terms
— not good vs. evil but reciprocal cycles of escalating fear and aggression
— does not offer us any simple solution. Mutual fear and hatred between
Israelis and Palestinians has been brewing for generations and will
not easily be defused. Yet this perspective offers us the hope for a
solution, which present policies of mutual retaliation obviously do
not. What has been created can be undone, if each side makes efforts
for "internal disarmament" and also accepts responsibility for addressing
the fear in the heart of the other side.
The same is true for the new holy war between aggrieved
Muslims and the United States. In this case, I think it will become
necessary to address the even larger issue of social justice around
the world, and whether the United States is going to be part of the
solution rather than part of the problem.
We may wonder if this is a realistic possibility
in the foreseeable future, especially given the quality of leadership
on most sides. From a Buddhist perspective, then, the first issue becomes
whether the duality of good vs. evil can be more widely perceived as
delusive, and whether the more insightful duality between fear and love
can become more widely acknowledged.
Does this choice between fear and love provide us
with a modern vocabulary to express the basic message of both Christianity
and Buddhism?
The sangha community of monks and nuns founded
by Shakyamuni Buddha were originally a motley crew of wandering mendicants,
with almost no possessions except robes and begging bowls. The Buddha
sent them out one by one in all directions to preach the Dharma, in
a manner strikingly reminiscent of the way Jesus charged his apostles
to go out and preach that "the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand": "Take
nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, and
do not have two tunics" (Matthew 9:3). What were both teachers saying?
Don't worry about yourself, about how you will live, what you will eat;
just do the best you can spreading the word and have faith that you
will be taken care of. In other words, let go of your fears about yourself.
Instead, open up to the world and live a life of love focused on giving
to the world rather than taking from it, trusting in the world rather
than always trying to protect yourself from it.
There are many such passages in the gospels, especially
in the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps the most remarkable passage of all,
from a Buddhist perspective, elaborates upon this teaching of salvation
through insecurity. Jesus declares that any disciple who loves his father
or mother or son or daughter more than him is not worthy of him; even
family attachments should not keep us from following the path. (Becoming
a monk in Buddhism is also known as "leaving home.") This apparently
cruel verse is immediately followed by one of the most wonderful verses
of all: "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life
for my sake will find it" (Matt. 10:37-39). This encourages us to follow
the personal example of Jesus, who "emptied himself" (kenosis,
Phil.2:5-11)**.
There are different ways to understand that emptying,
but as a Zen Buddhist I am reminded of the 13th century Japanese Zen
master Dogen, who wrote something that resonates in much the same way:
"To study Buddhism is to study yourself; to study yourself is to forget
yourself; to forget yourself is to be awakened and realize your intimacy
with all things."11 The fruit of the Buddhist path, the antithesis
of a life organized around fear, is to lose and empty yourself by forgetting
yourself, which is also to find your true self: not an alienated self
threatened by the world and trying to secure itself in defence against
those anxieties, but a nondual self that knows itself to be an expression
or a manifestation of the world.
Both religious traditions encourage us to live in
this way, and not necessarily because of what will happen to us after
we die. This encouragement is often understood in terms of some heavenly
reward that we can get in an afterlife (better karma in a future rebirth,
or an eternity with God in heaven), which caters to our fear of mortality.
But there is another way to understand both nirvana and the kingdom
of heaven if, as Augustine put it, God is closer to me than I am to
myself. Then forgetting/losing myself is a way to realize the Buddha-nature
or divinity at the core of my being right now, so that "not I but Christ
lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). From the usual perspective obsessed with securing
ourselves, forgetting myself or losing myself seems the supreme foolishness;
but from a more spiritual viewpoint it can lead to the greatest security,
a life "without care" because if we have truly emptied ourselves and
died to ourselves then there is no longer anyone left to die, no longer
any alienated self to worry about death.
Then we should live a life of love, not because of
hope for some afterlife reward (though I do not mean to deny the possibility
of survival in some form), but because, as Spinoza would put it, a way
of life oriented on love is its own reward. Both modes of living — fear
and love — involve reinforcing feedback systems that tend to incorporate
other people. The more I manipulate the world to get what I want from
it, the more separate and alienated I feel from it, and the more separate
others feel from me, when they recognize that they have been manipulated.
This mutual distrust encourages both sides to manipulate more. On the
other hand, the more I can relax and open up to the world, trusting
it and accepting the responsibility that involves responding to its
needs — which is what loving it means — the more I feel a part of it,
at one with other people; and consequently, others become more inclined
to trust and open up to me.
The final word I have to offer on this choice is
neither Christian nor Buddhist, reminding us that no religious traditions
have a monopoly on this wisdom. It is an uncredited story (I could not
trace its source) that was included in an email I received after September
11th.
A Native
American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt about
the tragedy on September 11th.
He said, "I feel as if I have two wolves fighting
in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, angry, violent. The other wolf is
loving, forgiving, compassionate."
The grandson asked him, "Which wolf will win the
fight in your heart?"
The grandfather answered, "The one I feed."
References
1 Gandhi, Mohandas
K. (1957) An Autobiography. Boston: Beacon Press, p. 370.
2 Fish, Stanley (1999). The Trouble with Principle. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p.41.
3 Associated Press, September 14 and 16, 2001.
4 This article was reprinted in the Daily Yomiuri, September
16, 2001.
5 An email I received attributed this to the social critic Micah Sifry,
but when I contacted him to confirm this, all he would say is that this
sounds like the sort of thing he would write (personal communication).
6 Dhammapada, The (1976). Bombay: Theosophy Company. (vv. 3-5,
trans. altered).
7 Gyatso, Tenzin, the 14th Dalai Lama (1999). Dialogue on Religion and
Peace. In Chappell, David W. (1999). Buddhist Peacework: Creating
Cultures of Peace. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, p. 190.
8 Time, October 15, 2001, p. 17.
9 Sutta Nipata, V. 1, Ajita-manava-puccha "Ajita's Questions,"
vv. 1032-1036. See http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/khuddaka/suttanipata/snp5-01a.html
10 Mel Schwartz, from unknown source.
11 Dogen, Genjokoan
*For example, the
often-quoted Surah 102:1 of the Qur'an declares that "The mutual
rivalry for piling up (the good things of this world) diverts you (from
the more serious things)" and Surah 92:18 praises "Those who spend their
wealth for increase in self-purification." See also Surahs 9:103 and
63:9.
** Islam also makes
similar points. For example, one traditional hadith says "Die before
you die." Abu-Yazid Al-Bistami, a ninth-century Persian sufi, said "I
sloughed off my self as a snake sloughs off its skin.Then I looked into
myself and saw that I am He. Forgetfulness of self is remembrance of
God."
David
R. Loy teaches at Bunkyo University in Chigasaki, Japan. He is the author
of Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy, Lack and Transcendence:
The Problem of Life and Death in Psychotherapy, Existentialism and Buddhism,
and A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack. His article
"Buddhism and Poverty" appeared in KJ#41.
Copyright
held by the author
Back to Selections
Subscriptions
