122: Zen versus Daily Life part 6

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Change the World
I would change the world —
If I could figure out how.
What is wrong with it?

Eric Clapton’s version of the song, “Change the World” — made popular on the soundtrack of the 1996 film “Phenomenon” — is mainly about personal relationships, as are most country-western or rock-and-roll songs. But we can take a larger view of the same idea. What if you could actually change the world, and to a substantial degree? What would you make different? In other words, what is your definition of the problem?

As a person trained in design-build processes and the philosophy of design thinking, which, again, is basically the practical application of problem-solving to daily life needs, I would like to think that I could improve things. But as a current trope reminds us, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi. So — what, exactly, is wrong with the world? And — what can be done about it?

Zen Buddhism’s Four Great Vows lay out some hopeful aspirations in this regard:

Beings are numberless I vow to free them

Delusions are inexhaustible I vow to end them

Dharma gates are boundless I vow to enter them

The buddha way is unsurpassable I vow to realize it

Rendered in various translations and phrasings, these statements are defined as the vows of bodhisattvas, which means something like “enlightening beings.” Bodhisattvas are not limited to Buddhism, but include such luminaries as Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, et cetera. Those who dedicate their lives to helping others.

We may regard Buddhist bodhisattvas as a special breed of change-agents. They volunteer to be reborn again and again, endlessly, as often as needed to help all other beings cross over to the “other shore of Nirvana,” defined as complete liberation. And there are a lot of other beings, counting only the human species. This stands in contrast to the imputed goal of Buddhists to avoid being reborn. These amount to timeless vows, then, embracing the really big picture: the infinite and eternal life of the universe.

It might be a worthwhile exercise to consider those things that we tend to criticize in everyday life as being unsatisfactory, if not dead wrong. Unsatisfactoriness is one of the many meanings of Buddhism’s dukkha; “suffering” is the more common translation. But for example, how can death be “wrong”? The fact that everything that is born inevitably dies, cannot really be wrong, in any absolute sense. Murder, accidental deaths owing to drunk driving, and all manner of injustice visited upon innocent victims are, of course, wrong. But how can natural death be wrong, even when massive, such as in natural disasters? We grieve and mourn when death takes our loved ones, friends, and even our family pets. We can agree that it is not right, but can we really say that it is wrong?

Master Dogen admonishes us to “think neither good nor evil, right or wrong,” when doing zazen.

If you could fix it so that no one near and dear to you ever died, what would that look like? In my case, by now I would have a household of about a half-dozen dogs and maybe two dozen cats, all aged and infirm, feeding and cleaning up after them. But “Aha!” you say, “What if they never aged?” We could fix that, too — in the best of all possible worlds — thank you, Pangloss. Then I would have a menagerie of canines and felines all at each other’s throats. Or, perhaps, one permanent cat, and one forever dog.

I came across one answer to what is wrong with the world in a recent New York Times column titled “Who Truly Threatens the Church?” by David French; it begins:

There’s a popular story in Christian circles that’s literally too good to be true. According to legend, in the early 1900s, The Times of London sent an inquiry to a number of writers asking the question, “What’s wrong with the world today?” The Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton responded succinctly and profoundly: “Dear sirs, I am.”
The real story is just as profound, but less succinct. In 1905 Chesterton wrote a much longer letter to London’s Daily News, and that letter included these sentences: “In one sense, and that the eternal sense, the thing is plain. The answer to the question, ‘What is wrong?’ is, or should be, ‘I am wrong.’ Until a man can give that answer his ideation is only a hobby.”

Chesterton is sounding like a closet Buddhist here. Those of us who take up the way of the ancient Sage of India take full responsibility for our lives, in particular what we do, or fail to do, with the opportunities life as a human being presents. The monastic model is one lifestyle variation on this theme. The householder track is another.

Setting aside the legendary versus the actual circumstances of this incident — which, by the way, is always a major consideration in contextualizing ancient teachings, Buddhist or otherwise, making them “relatable” to today’s context — it is clear that taking personal responsibility for the “full catastrophe” of our lives is not an exclusive premise of Buddhism. But it is definitely the starting point on the path of Zen.

In The Dhammapada, “The Path of Truth,” a pocket-sized book published by Parallax Press, 423 verses attributed to Buddha include inferences related to both lifestyles:

[20.15.] Death carries the unaware man away while he is still busily acquiring children and animals, much as a rampaging flood engulfs a sleeping village.
[16.] When death comes, [17.] neither children, father, or other loved ones can offer refuge. Aware of this, the wise behave well. Don’t postpone right action, but clear the path to Nirvana.

Note the implicit pejorative, “the unaware man.” It begs the question, “Unaware of what?” Which in turn recalls the old standard, “Where Do I Begin?” There are admittedly an infinity of things of which we are all unaware, in contrast with those we acknowledge. But I think Buddha is more pointed than that, indicating what Master Dogen later referred to as “the most important thing in Buddhism”: clearing the Path to liberation.

Somewhat eerie, his choice of analogy to a rampaging flood, especially in light of the recent cascading, catastrophic effects of climate change. Some things never change. But they can, and do, get worse.

Note also the peculiar expression, “acquiring children and animals.” This is a counter-cultural turn-of-a-phrase in today’s environment, where both Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino recently fathered children, while enjoying a ripe old age of octogenarians, like myself. In the agrarian context of Buddha’s time, if is doubtful that there was such a thing as “childhood” as we conceive of it, in the post-industrial, and post-Piaget, era. Children, like animals, were likely conscripted into the labor force, tasked with producing enough food to feed everyone. Which is still a worldwide problem. Not much progress there.

But there is also an implicit insinuation that having children, and thus preserving the human species, may not be the highest aspiration in life, as some would have it today. We are constantly entreated to remember the children, that we want to leave the next generation a better world than that in which we grew up. If this is truly a worthy goal, or one of the most worthy of many goals, I think we have to admit that we have failed, dramatically. If world peace is the true goal of Buddhism and world religions, we must confess that they have failed. After 2500 years of influence, Buddha’s prescriptions for the fundamental ills of the world have not been preventative, like a failed vaccination.

Not only have we failed to control population to any significant degree, we also have not managed to prevent wars between nations, which I suppose the cynic might point to as the ultimate form of population control. If these humanistic ideals comprise the reason-for-being of the world’s great religions, they have all failed, in spite of the fact that many of their ostensible believers hold positions of power around the globe. We may also say the same of leaders of science and philosophy, minus any positions of great power.

This rather overwhelming and oppressive picture may suggest, to some, a return to the perspective attributed to early Buddhism, where the big idea was to get off of the wheel of birth and death altogether, the ideal of the “never-returner.” To others, it may trigger the survival instinct, leading to a survivalist lifestyle, the dystopian determination to be the last person, family, or community alive on Earth. Back to the caves, squirreling away as many provisions as we can muster.

To the practitioner of Zen — as would be the case with Buddha himself, if he could time-travel to the present — it is hard to be surprised by the chaos we see erupting around us, as we have watched it accumulate inexorably for several decades now. But we may be forgiven for being aghast at the vast scale and scope of it. Anyone paying attention is beginning to sound like Chicken Little, because the sky is actually falling, all around us. It reminds of the surprisingly prescient old gospel song, “O Sinner Man — where you gonna run to, all on That Day?” Amongst other nightmares, the “rock was a-meltin’” and the “sea was a-boilin’.” At 90-degrees plus, the Gulf has become the bathtub of Mexico.

Turning, or returning, to our cushions in this scenario may look like the height of irresponsibility, but it may be our last resort. If it is too late to do anything to hold off the onslaught of Armageddon, the best strategy may be to prepare to face the inevitable. I wish I could shine some sunny optimism on the scene, but I am afraid it may no longer be “Morning in America,” ironically floated as a campaign ad in 1984. You can’t get any more Orwellian than that. More on what the future may look like in the next segment. Stay tuned.