Lamentations
For Susan Gilpin
Margaret Barragato
September 14, 2005
Light and Darkness are not one, not two,
Like the foot before and the foot behind in walking.
From The Identity of Relative and Absolute by Shitou Xiqian
On beginning this paper, I was reminded of two events in my life: one from many years ago and one very recent. I first began doing AIDS care at a time when the disease was poorly understood and when there were no treatments available, but there was a great deal of public terror and emotion in the face of it. I went to a conference at which one of the panelists, a pediatrician, said, I dont understand why AIDS stirs up so much emotion. It is just another disease, just another way to die. Someone in the audience, outraged, stood up and shouted, But innocent children are dying of it! The pediatrician answered, But theyre also dying, in far greater numbers, of many other diseases, as well as of abuse and neglect.
The second event was just last week. The Womens Prayer Group at the Newman Center has been reading the book Practicing Our Faith by Dorothy Bass. We were discussing the chapter Dying Well. Several of the women related accounts of the deaths of family members which had been good deaths, peaceful and grace-filled. Then one woman had the courage to speak of the death of her mother a death in the hospital, with a code team trying to resuscitate her, while they yelled at this, then young, woman and her father to get out of the room. Not a good death. My own feelings about my fathers death welled up feelings which I hadnt previously allowed to surface. He was killed in a head-on collision with a logging truck. Also not a good death. But after I had spoken, a conversation that Stef and I had a few days before came to mind. Stef was expressing annoyance that people get so worked up by the marquee catastrophes, such as the recent hurricane disaster, while forgetting the much greater human tragedy that surrounds us all the time. Stef said, Do you know that 18,000 children die of starvation daily. Daily? We did the math. Thats over six million children every year. I brought this up in the group and suggested that it is really a luxury, afforded an elite few, to die what we call the good death, at home, surrounded by loved ones. This led to a remarkably deep discussion of what we call a good death and how rare that is. But why is only this face of death called good?
The
recent destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina has left many Americans
desolate, moved to despair by the horror of this form of death. We are
terrified that it could happen to us. There are many parallels that can be
drawn between what we have seen of this tragedy and the descriptions of the
plight of the people of Jerusalem given in the book of Isaiah and of
Lamentations. But the images of
death in Lamentations are even more horrifying: for me the most awful and yet
the most poignant was, The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children;
they became their food. (Lam 4:10) In New Orleans, it appears that the land
itself has become so polluted with toxic waste that it may not be habitable for
years. But Isaiah also says, The land mourns and languishes. (Is 33:9) Even
the land is destroyed by our sinfulness. The tragedy of New Orleans was
partially caused and much compounded by the exceptional corruption and
ineptitude of our current administration, which has left many of us also angry.
But Isaiah also reports a similar-sounding state of affairs: for those who
lead this people lead them astray, and those who are led by them are swallowed
up. (Is 9:16) And we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have
taken shelter. (Is 28:15) Plus
a change, plus cest la mme chose.
We
all feel fractured, dislocated, dissatisfied much of the time. We all suffer
from what is called the human condition. In contemporary Western culture, we
are encouraged to overcome our suffering by consumerism. If you feel bad, buy
something! is our motto. We are frightened by death, particularly by a death
that isnt orchestrated as we would like it. We fill the void, drown out the
fear, with entertainment and ever more elaborate toys.
Shakyamuni
Buddhas great insight into the nature of human suffering is encapsulated in
his most famous teaching: The Four Noble Truths. These are: There is dukkha. There is a cause of dukkha. There can be an end to dukkha. The way to ending dukkha is The Eightfold Path. Now this word dukkha is interesting. It is usually translated as suffering,
but it is a much broader term than that, although it does include suffering as
we ordinarily understand it. That is, it includes birth, sickness, old age and
death, having to be around people you dont like, being separated from people
you want to be with, not getting what you want, and so on. But it also refers
to the impermanence, insubstantiality, imperfection, the emptiness of all
things. In effect, it says that life even the most wonderful experience of
life is profoundly unsatisfying. Even if life fills our hunger for the
moment, the satisfaction doesnt last. Our suffering, our dukkha, is caused by our grasping. We want to hold on to things;
we dont want things to change. Most importantly, we want to hold onto
ourselves; we dont want to die; we want to be immortal in some form. But the
nature of life is that it is always changing and that whatever is born dies.
The way to end our suffering is to stop our grasping, to
release our attachment. The path to ending suffering is summarized in the two
great teachings of Buddhism: anatman
and anicca. No-self and impermanence.
Impermanence, anicca, is fairly easy to
realize. All we have to do is observe the world around us. Everything is in
constant flux. Even those things that seem the most permanent mountains, say
are slowly eroding and evolving. The hard one to grasp is anatman: there is no abiding, permanent, or essential self. In our
day-to-day experience it feels like our selfness is a continuous stream; we
have had an awareness of our self since we can first remember. It seems to be
the same self, carried forward through time. Yet, by careful analysis, we come
to see that I am not the same person I was when I was three or ten or twenty,
or even five minutes ago (although not very much has changed in the past five
minutes). I no longer look the same, think the same, believe the same, act the
same as I did when I was three. Probably most of the atoms in my body are not
the same atoms that were there when I was three. Even my atoms are constantly
changing.
When
Westerners first encounter the teachings of anicca and anatman, they often find them unsettling or even depressing. If everything is
always changing, if nothing is permanent, and there is truly no self, what is
there to hold onto? they ask, despairingly (or disparagingly). The great,
liberating answer is, Nothing! Realizing non-attachment and non-self provides
unanticipated freedom. Unanticipated and joyous. There is nothing to be
attached to. I dont have to spend my energy defending my possessions and
myself. Each moment is fresh and new informed by the previous moment,
perhaps, but new nonetheless. It provides the freedom to be open to what is, in
place of the captivity of lamenting what is not. This is the heart of all
Buddhist teaching.
In
North America, it seems that most of us are refugees from somewhere; first by
our history, but even within our own lives. The members of our little Sangha
are also refugees. They have all come from traditions that didnt work for
them. And they are all hard at
work, exploring anicca and anatman, whether they know it or not. Over time, the changes
in them are noticeable: they tend to relax, become more open, become more
comfortable with themselves, and they become, yes, more joyful.
Last week,
Stef gave a workshop on enlightenment, in which he handed out various questions
about enlightenment and asked the students to write out their answers. This
paragraph written by one of the students, Mike Worboys, gives a glimpse into
the arising of joy in studying the Dharma. Mike is responding to the questions,
What is enlightenment and how long does it last?
Enlightenment is not a state to be attained. It is here, now, in you, in me, in this oak tree, sunlight, sound of falling acorns, warmth of the deck on my feet in the universe. In the myriad things of the universe and in the one at its heart. My heart. Me. Enlightenment is also realizing enlightenment. Far from all delusion, enlightenment is already here.
I am human, most of the time in varying states of greed, anger, and delusion. Awakenings from these states provide moments of enlightenment lightening up of darkness and lightening the heavy load I am deluded enough to think I carry. These lightenings come and go in a flash of lightening but can have a lifetimes effect. Enlightenment with a capital E lasts as long as the universe lasts. How long is that? Right now!
Also
present in Mikes writing is a sense of the other great Buddhist teaching: One
Body. Everything that is or was or will be is all connected. It is all one
giant living, breathing organism. Everything any one member does affects the
whole. If I am angry, the furthest star feels my anger. If I am joyful, the
heavens rejoice. The Jewish people also seem to have great insight into this
teaching. In Isaiah, there are several references to the earth languishing
under the burden of human sin. And there is a sense of the whole of the Jewish
people being one body. Consider, for instance, this passage by Rabbi Arthur
Green:
The souls of Israel are viewed from within our tradition as one single great soul. All of us stood together at the mountain; all of us were there in the soul of Moses as he entered the heavens. To see so many Jews alienated from our Torah is to lose a part of ourselves, to know that we are less than whole. (Green p 236)
The joy of one person is
the joy of the whole community and the suffering of one person is the suffering
of the whole community. This teaching both enjoins great responsibility on us
and it liberates us.
It
is this One Body that Parker Palmer writes about so movingly in the chapter
Knowing in Community. He states: community is the nature of reality, the
matrix of all being we know reality only by being in community with it
ourselves. (Palmer p 97) He goes on to
present his concept of The Grace of Great Things. What Palmer does not state,
but would probably not disagree with, is the Buddhist teaching that each thing
reflects every other thing in the universe. All things are contained in each
thing. It is a perfect hologram. We can see the whole universe, the Unborn,
God, completely manifest in a blade of grass. Thus, every thing is a Great Thing, for each thing is a
reflection, an expression, of the Unconditioned. Whether we are awake to it or
not, as members of the One Body, we perforce live in community and communion
with all that is.
Although
we often do our best to not be aware of it, we are surrounded by suffering at
all times. But that is not reason for despair. The author of Lamentations, in
the midst of his heart-wrenching cries of agony, suddenly says:
The
steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his
mercies never come to an end;
they
are new every morning;
great
is thy faithfulness. (Lam 3:22f)
Since everything is
contained within everything, suffering also contains liberation, contains joy.
Light and darkness are not one, not two. Suffering and joy are not one, not
two. In fact, suffering is often the goad that drives people to look within, to
seek liberation, to seek God. And it is often in and through suffering that
people come to awareness of their own spirituality, of the goodness of the
universe, of God. This is not to say that suffering is a good thing. Indeed, it
is not. It is the brokenness of our world. It can crush beings beyond all enduring.
I no
longer believe in a God who meddles in human affairs, who comes down from
heaven and makes things right. Yet there is a luminous, beneficent, wise
compassionate nature that gives rise to and sustains all that is. It permeates
all that is. It is in you, in me, in hurricanes and gentle breezes. It is that
which Buddhists call the Unconditioned or Unborn. Sometimes it seems that it is
only when we are wounded enough, torn open enough, that we are able to
experience It within ourselves. It often seems to come from outside, unbidden.
But if we seek It, we come to know that It was there, within ourselves, all the
time. Out of suffering transcendence can be born.
References
Arthur Green To Learn and to Teach: Some Thoughts
on Jewish-Buddhist Dialogue
in John Keenan et al eds Beside
Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of
the Buddha. Boston. Wisdom Publications 2003.
Parker J. Palmer The Courage to Teach: Exploring
the Inner Landscape of a
Teachers Life. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass. 1998.