It may seem strange, but I am a lawyer who is also becoming a Buddhist. My interest in Buddhism is rooted, I suppose, in the fact that I lived in Asia for awhile and have an advanced degree in Asian Studies. More importantly, however, Buddhism seems to me to be a more in line with my view of spirituality than my Catholic upbringing.
As I "review the tape", so to speak, of the blogosphere and the reaction to the inevitable elevation of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court, I am reminded of the
Four Noble Truths. In many respects, the Four Noble Truths have quite a bit to say about the way we have acted and reacted to the Alito nomination. And a post-mortum in relation to the Four Noble Truths may be in order, so that it better prepares us for future political endeavors.
Let's start with the First Noble Truth:
The first sermon that the Buddha preached after his enlightenment was about the four noble truths. The first noble truth is that life is frustrating and painful. In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, there are times when it is downright miserable. Things may be fine with us, at the moment, but, if we look around, we see other people in the most appalling condition, children starving, terrorism, hatred, wars, intolerance, people being tortured and we get a sort of queasy feeling whenever we think about the world situation in even the most casual way. We, ourselves, will some day grow old, get sick and eventually die. No matter how we try to avoid it, some day we are going to die. Even though we try to avoid thinking about it, there are constant reminders that it is true.
Not much commentary is needed here, I think. If you are a member of this community, we are overcome by the realization that the world is indeed frustrating and painful. I would imagine that most Kossacks have already a pretty deep understanding of the First Noble Truth.
The Second Noble Truth, however, may be a little more difficult to explain:
The second noble truth is that suffering has a cause. We suffer because we are constantly struggling to survive. We are constantly trying to prove our existence. We may be extremely humble and self-deprecating, but even that is an attempt to define ourselves. We are defined by our humility. The harder we struggle to establish ourselves and our relationships, the more painful our experience becomes.
This may not seem obvious at first, but a deeper reading definately reflects upon members of the liberal blogosphere. We are constantly trying to prove our existence to the Democratic leadership. We are constantly trying to demonstrate our "power" to that leadership. We are searching for our identity and defining that identity to the rest of the world.
The attempt to filibuster Alito, in that respect, was a defining moment, as Buddha acknowledged, the more we struggled to establish ourselves and our relationships, the more painful it got for us. We wanted a filibuster, hopefully a successful filibuster, and many of us, despite knowing how the world worked, despite knowing it was a losing battle, struggled harder to tell those of our leaders that Alito's defeat was important above all else. And when it was clear we had lost, the pain got greater because of our attempt to define ourselves.
The Third Noble Truth will be very hard for some of us to swallow:
The third noble truth is that the cause of suffering can be ended. Our struggle to survive, our effort to prove ourselves and solidify our relationships is unnecessary. We, and the world, can get along quite comfortably without all our unnecessary posturing. We could just be a simple, direct and straight-forward person. We could form a simple relationship with our world, our coffee, spouse and friend. We do this by abandoning our expectations about how we think things should be.
Many of us will have trouble with that last sentence. After all, we are all here because we have an expectation of the way things should be. And right now, that expectation is not being met, either by those in charge (the Republicans) or select members of our party.
But to me, it's obvious we need to end our expectations on how we think things should be, or the way we think things are going to be. Another precept of Tibetan Buddhism, based on the First Noble Truth, is that one should dwell on their impermanence. To take this a step further, please remember: everything we deal with here is impermanent, good and bad. Samuel Alito will not be on the Sumpreme Court forever. He doesn't know, and nor do we, how long he will be there. And the decisions of the Court will not live on forever. Everything will change, everything will die, as will all of us.
Part of our refusal to accept our impermanence, and the impermanence of our lives and politics, in a way, led us to this situation. For some, it meant that Roe v. Wade would be with us forever. So our expectation that Roe will be shattered because of Alito's presence on the Court makes us suffer even more. The way to end that suffering, though, is to abandon that expectation.
What's left, then? The Fourth Noble Truth tells us:
This is the fourth noble truth: the way, or path to end the cause of suffering. The central theme of this way is meditation. Meditation, here, means the practice of mindfulness/awareness, shamata/vipashyana in Sanskrit. We practice being mindful of all the things that we use to torture ourselves with. We become mindful by abandoning our expectations about the way we think things should be and, out of our mindfulness, we begin to develop awareness about the way things really are. We begin to develop the insight that things are really quite simple, that we can handle ourselves, and our relationships, very well as soon as we stop being so manipulative and complex.
Now, I'm not imagining a group mediation by the blogosphere, here. But I do think Buddha provides us all with a way to cope, and more importantly, end our suffering.
If we reflect, if we think, if we "meditate" (for lack of a better term) about ourselves and our expectations, we can break those expectations apart and begin to see the true way of the world. And perhaps a better way to end everyone's suffering.
At least, that's what I'm going to do.