Buddhism, by way of Saiyuki
The Buddha awoke from the sleep of existential confusion. So shocking and unexpected was this experience that he initially assumed that were he to speak of it, no one would understand him. A person who is asleep is either lost in deep unconsciousness or absorbed in a dream. Metaphorically, this is how the Buddha must have seen his previous self as well as everyone else he had ever known: they were either blind to the questions of existence or sought consolation from them in metaphysical or religious fantasies. His awakening, however, brought both the questions and their resolutions into vivid and unanticipated focus.
The Buddha woke up to the nature of the human dilemma and a way to its resolution. The first two truths (anguish and its origins) describe the dilemma, the second two (cessation and the path) its resolution. He awoke to a set of truths interrelated in the immediacy of experience here and now.
[...]
When asked what he was doing, the Buddha replied that he taught "anguish and the ending of anguish". When asked about metaphysics (the origin and ending of the universe, the identity or difference of body and mind, his existence or non-existence after death), he remained silent. He said the dharma was permeated by a single taste: freedom. He made no claims to uniqueness or divinity and did not have recourse to a term we would translate as 'God".
[...]
Historically, Buddhism has tended to lose its agnostic dimension through being institutionalized as a religion (i.e. a revealed belief system valid for all time, controlled by an elite body of priests). At times this process has been challenged and even reversed (one thinks of iconoclastic Indian tantric sages, early Zen masters in China, eccentric yogins of Tibet, forest monks of Burma and Thailand). But in traditional Asian societies, this has never lasted long. The power of organized religion to provide sovereign states with a bulwark of moral legitimacy while simultaneously assuaging the desperate piety of the disempowered swiftly reasserted itself -- usually by subsuming the rebellious ideas into the canon of a revised orthodoxy.
-- Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs
I fell completely in love with Saiyuki on pg. 161 of volume 1, when Sanzo tells off the monks. Saiyuki (Kazuya Minekura, English translation 2004, TokyoPop) is a manga that retells the old folk tale Journey To The West in a setting that mixes the mythical past with the 21st century and stars four very pretty, very tormented young men.
One of the young men is Genjyo Sanzo, a smoking, drinking, gambling, pistol-packing, sarcastic misanthrope of a Buddhist priest. He also happens to be the appointed guardian of one of Buddhism's five most sacred sutras. One night he and his three equally snarky and carnal friends seek refuge in a temple. The monks there alternate between sucking up to Sanzo and being horrified at his friends' imperfections until Sanzo finally snaps and tells them what his widely-revered master used to think of them: that their temple is a joke, just a way for old men to live in denial of their mortality.
Okay. Why was *this* the moment for me? What's so powerful about what he said? This will take some explaining, but I think it's worth it (for me, anyway) because it centers on what makes Buddhism so beautiful and useful.
What are Buddha's four truths, referred to above?
Futhermore, the Buddha describes that path as an eightfold path: there are things that you should or should not do in eight different areas of life if you want to become more skilled at seeing the truth and finding peace. Those eight areas have often been translated as Right Action, Right Speech, Right Thought, and so on. But there are wildly different visions of the world inherent in that one word, "right". What does right mean? Does it mean approved of by some authority like God or the Buddha? Does it mean moral according to some universal standard? Or does it mean appropriate for a particular goal? Some modern translators use "skillful" instead (Skillful Action, and so on), reminding us that only one of those meanings is central: that certain things are recommended and others not *if* you are interested in facing the truth of life in a clear-headed way.
So what will humanity do when faced with a philosphy that says, in essence, "Shit happens, and you'll be happier if you don't try to pretend that it doesn't"? Why, of course, we'll try as hard as we can to turn it into its opposite, a philosophy that says "If you do what you're told, then you're a good person, and shit will not happen to you."
What a waste! But it's a universal human failing. Batchelor (and Sanzo) indict traditional Asian societies for doing it, but contemporary Americans (who nearly always encounter Buddhism first in its practice & philosphy format) also can't resist the temptation to turn it into a religion of dogma. I was reading a readers' debate column in a Buddhist magazine, on the topic of alcohol (the Buddha said to avoid intoxication). Various people were debating whether or under what circumstances alcohol might be harmful, helpful, or neutral to the path, and one guy was like, "Why are we even discussing this? The Buddha said not to drink. If you want to be a Buddhist, you have to do what he told you." (I guess he missed the part where Buddha says, "Do not be led by reports or tradition or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts or by the idea: "this is our teacher". Only when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome, and wrong, and bad, then give them up.")
People just can't resist the temptation to define an abstract right, and then align themselves with it, to hold off their fear that impermanence makes everything meaningless.
Genjyo Sanzo refuses to do that. This is not to say that he's an ideal Buddhist -- but then he never claims to be. Even though the Buddha and Kanzeon Bosatsu (the bodhisattva Kwan-Yin) communicate with him regularly, it not clear that he even understands what the core of Buddhism is; he seems to think it has something to do with believing in God or worshipping Buddha (vol. 2, pg. 142). But his beloved master, the priest Koumyou Sanzo, saw something in him even as a child that made him appoint him as his successor.
About Koumyou Sanzo: he's the perfect expression of everything that I love about this story. He floats by in flashbacks, warm and wise and funny, and so poised. It's something about the way he's drawn, there's always this happy stillness about him. He's the perfect counterpoint to the murder, incest, zombies, and barely-subtextual slash of the main storylines. And I do mean counterpoint: wisdom is fine on its own, and murder, incest, zombies & slash are fine on their own, but there's just something about the combination. It's like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I can't resist it when someone manages to weave together that raw, crazy, florid power of story with the more delicate threads of insight. It makes them both more beautiful.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
-- Zen koan
There is nothing not practiced by those inspired by the Buddha. When skilled in living this way, there is nothing without value.
-- Shantideva
Just as the dawn is the forerunner of the arising of the sun, so true friendship is the forerunner of the arising of the noble eightfold path.
-- The Buddha
I saw that koan on someone's Sanzo icon and I squealed with delight; it's so freaking perfect for him. Turns out that he quotes it in volume 4. A koan is a paradox. It's not a riddle to be solved; there is no secret meaning, although many possible meanings might be assigned to it, some of which might be useful on the path. But the real point is just to exist fully in the impossibility of it, letting it strip away all your preconceptions and your filters of habitual thought until you see the world exactly as it is in each passing moment. That is enlightenment.
Sanzo is a paradox: so many things that a Buddhist should never be, and yet somehow the destined master of a sacred Buddhist scripture. Or *is* there, on second thought, anything that a Buddhist should never be? And just what is a Buddhist? The Buddha recommended one path to enlightenment, but throughout the writings attributed to him he insists that ultimately each individual must seek and experience enlightenment on his or her own terms. Is Sanzo on his own path already?
My unfamiliarity with Japanese modes of story-telling has certainly removed a lot of *my* preconceptions and habitual filters when it comes to Saiyuki. I really have no idea where these characters are heading (other than, y'know, westward). Maybe enlightenment has no relevance to the story. I don't care -- I'll still stick around for the matricide and the hermaphrodites. And for the pretty boys, and their lust and their pain and their compassion. But I really do suspect that the compassion is leading them somewhere.
The Buddha woke up to the nature of the human dilemma and a way to its resolution. The first two truths (anguish and its origins) describe the dilemma, the second two (cessation and the path) its resolution. He awoke to a set of truths interrelated in the immediacy of experience here and now.
[...]
When asked what he was doing, the Buddha replied that he taught "anguish and the ending of anguish". When asked about metaphysics (the origin and ending of the universe, the identity or difference of body and mind, his existence or non-existence after death), he remained silent. He said the dharma was permeated by a single taste: freedom. He made no claims to uniqueness or divinity and did not have recourse to a term we would translate as 'God".
[...]
Historically, Buddhism has tended to lose its agnostic dimension through being institutionalized as a religion (i.e. a revealed belief system valid for all time, controlled by an elite body of priests). At times this process has been challenged and even reversed (one thinks of iconoclastic Indian tantric sages, early Zen masters in China, eccentric yogins of Tibet, forest monks of Burma and Thailand). But in traditional Asian societies, this has never lasted long. The power of organized religion to provide sovereign states with a bulwark of moral legitimacy while simultaneously assuaging the desperate piety of the disempowered swiftly reasserted itself -- usually by subsuming the rebellious ideas into the canon of a revised orthodoxy.
-- Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs
I fell completely in love with Saiyuki on pg. 161 of volume 1, when Sanzo tells off the monks. Saiyuki (Kazuya Minekura, English translation 2004, TokyoPop) is a manga that retells the old folk tale Journey To The West in a setting that mixes the mythical past with the 21st century and stars four very pretty, very tormented young men.
One of the young men is Genjyo Sanzo, a smoking, drinking, gambling, pistol-packing, sarcastic misanthrope of a Buddhist priest. He also happens to be the appointed guardian of one of Buddhism's five most sacred sutras. One night he and his three equally snarky and carnal friends seek refuge in a temple. The monks there alternate between sucking up to Sanzo and being horrified at his friends' imperfections until Sanzo finally snaps and tells them what his widely-revered master used to think of them: that their temple is a joke, just a way for old men to live in denial of their mortality.
Okay. Why was *this* the moment for me? What's so powerful about what he said? This will take some explaining, but I think it's worth it (for me, anyway) because it centers on what makes Buddhism so beautiful and useful.
What are Buddha's four truths, referred to above?
- That nothing in life is perfect or permanent.
- That desiring things to be perfect or permanent only brings you suffering.
- That letting go of that unfulfillable desire brings peace.
- That letting go is a path that can be practiced and cultivated.
Futhermore, the Buddha describes that path as an eightfold path: there are things that you should or should not do in eight different areas of life if you want to become more skilled at seeing the truth and finding peace. Those eight areas have often been translated as Right Action, Right Speech, Right Thought, and so on. But there are wildly different visions of the world inherent in that one word, "right". What does right mean? Does it mean approved of by some authority like God or the Buddha? Does it mean moral according to some universal standard? Or does it mean appropriate for a particular goal? Some modern translators use "skillful" instead (Skillful Action, and so on), reminding us that only one of those meanings is central: that certain things are recommended and others not *if* you are interested in facing the truth of life in a clear-headed way.
So what will humanity do when faced with a philosphy that says, in essence, "Shit happens, and you'll be happier if you don't try to pretend that it doesn't"? Why, of course, we'll try as hard as we can to turn it into its opposite, a philosophy that says "If you do what you're told, then you're a good person, and shit will not happen to you."
What a waste! But it's a universal human failing. Batchelor (and Sanzo) indict traditional Asian societies for doing it, but contemporary Americans (who nearly always encounter Buddhism first in its practice & philosphy format) also can't resist the temptation to turn it into a religion of dogma. I was reading a readers' debate column in a Buddhist magazine, on the topic of alcohol (the Buddha said to avoid intoxication). Various people were debating whether or under what circumstances alcohol might be harmful, helpful, or neutral to the path, and one guy was like, "Why are we even discussing this? The Buddha said not to drink. If you want to be a Buddhist, you have to do what he told you." (I guess he missed the part where Buddha says, "Do not be led by reports or tradition or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts or by the idea: "this is our teacher". Only when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome, and wrong, and bad, then give them up.")
People just can't resist the temptation to define an abstract right, and then align themselves with it, to hold off their fear that impermanence makes everything meaningless.
Genjyo Sanzo refuses to do that. This is not to say that he's an ideal Buddhist -- but then he never claims to be. Even though the Buddha and Kanzeon Bosatsu (the bodhisattva Kwan-Yin) communicate with him regularly, it not clear that he even understands what the core of Buddhism is; he seems to think it has something to do with believing in God or worshipping Buddha (vol. 2, pg. 142). But his beloved master, the priest Koumyou Sanzo, saw something in him even as a child that made him appoint him as his successor.
About Koumyou Sanzo: he's the perfect expression of everything that I love about this story. He floats by in flashbacks, warm and wise and funny, and so poised. It's something about the way he's drawn, there's always this happy stillness about him. He's the perfect counterpoint to the murder, incest, zombies, and barely-subtextual slash of the main storylines. And I do mean counterpoint: wisdom is fine on its own, and murder, incest, zombies & slash are fine on their own, but there's just something about the combination. It's like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I can't resist it when someone manages to weave together that raw, crazy, florid power of story with the more delicate threads of insight. It makes them both more beautiful.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
-- Zen koan
There is nothing not practiced by those inspired by the Buddha. When skilled in living this way, there is nothing without value.
-- Shantideva
Just as the dawn is the forerunner of the arising of the sun, so true friendship is the forerunner of the arising of the noble eightfold path.
-- The Buddha
I saw that koan on someone's Sanzo icon and I squealed with delight; it's so freaking perfect for him. Turns out that he quotes it in volume 4. A koan is a paradox. It's not a riddle to be solved; there is no secret meaning, although many possible meanings might be assigned to it, some of which might be useful on the path. But the real point is just to exist fully in the impossibility of it, letting it strip away all your preconceptions and your filters of habitual thought until you see the world exactly as it is in each passing moment. That is enlightenment.
Sanzo is a paradox: so many things that a Buddhist should never be, and yet somehow the destined master of a sacred Buddhist scripture. Or *is* there, on second thought, anything that a Buddhist should never be? And just what is a Buddhist? The Buddha recommended one path to enlightenment, but throughout the writings attributed to him he insists that ultimately each individual must seek and experience enlightenment on his or her own terms. Is Sanzo on his own path already?
My unfamiliarity with Japanese modes of story-telling has certainly removed a lot of *my* preconceptions and habitual filters when it comes to Saiyuki. I really have no idea where these characters are heading (other than, y'know, westward). Maybe enlightenment has no relevance to the story. I don't care -- I'll still stick around for the matricide and the hermaphrodites. And for the pretty boys, and their lust and their pain and their compassion. But I really do suspect that the compassion is leading them somewhere.