The Life Of Flies

Some time ago I used to frequent a certain online Buddhist forum *cough E-Sangha cough*. While there are certainly some people on the net that have genuine knowledge and experience to share, the majority of people tend to be Buddha-Freaks or just dogma-walking (I'm not trying to be pejorative, it's just the truth). I don't mean that E-Sangha is the only place like this, or even that the Internet is. No matter the situation, we tend to give off an image of how we wish we were, and we want others to buy into that image. The anonymity of the Internet just happens to draw out these extremes in people, or it exacerbates whatever particular insecurity drives us to act like this. Sometimes it just gives us a forum to go wild, where identity is not an issue and conflict is indirect at best.

One particular discussion from E-Sangha stands out in my mind, both because of the person asking the question, and because of how one of the other posters specifically replied. A woman, Jane, posted a heartfelt plea for advice. Her workplace had an issue with flies, especially in the break-room area. She took great offense when co-workers would kill flies, and even more when fly-paper was hung. She expressed fear in speaking up about the issue because she didn't want people to harass her over her spiritual beliefs. Several posters commiserated with her and there was plenty of Sutra quoting. The Metta was everywhere, dude! One particularly sharp poster said, "Miss, someone who goes through such lengths to save the life of a fly would be wise to wonder if she would give up hers to do so?"

It would suffice to say that the woman completely misinterpreted what the poster meant. She replied with something along the lines of how she would endure the oppression of her gestapo-esque employer and co-workers to single-handedly save the flies from their sticky doom. Flabergasted, the poster had to explain what he had meant, that perhaps she should examine her reaction to the situation instead of just the situation and the other people surrounding it.

I think a lot of the time when we're confronted with something that we don't like, we tend to act like Jane. We start hemming and hawing because we feel our toes are being stepped on, but we end up missing the real issue. Namely that the toes we so carefully protect don't really exist. We get offended when someone insults us or questions our competency, but what are they really insulting? Where is that enduring entity that has perpetual pit sweat and a cheese-like odor? Buddha taught that we are merely the sum of our parts, namely the five skhandas: form, feelings, perceptions, impulses towards action/action itself, and consciousness. There is no soul, or personality, or spirit, that continues after death. We just dissolve into our relative parts and they go on their merry way.

Sort of depressing, huh? The media and society paint Buddhism as being sunshine and rainbows, a sort of eclectic new-age fad where anything goes and people are just chock full of loving kindness. But then when you take even a cursory glance at some actual "Buddhist scripture" (har har) it can come off as being really depressing stuff: life is suffering. There is no God. There is no soul. When you die, you rot. Even the whole reincarnation shtick is crap. People have accused Buddhism of teaching that the phenomenal world as we know it is an illusion we create. But any basic understanding of the main tenets of Buddhism will show you that this doesn't even make sense to say. There is no personality or entity that could have created said illusion, just as there is no personality or entity to experience or be fooled by that illusion. The only thing experiencing reality is reality itself. Now that's some quantum shit right there, Douglas.

Bottom line, smokers are smokers, life is life, and flies are flies. They get into the pantry, they can make people sick, and they breed like crazy. Flies can be pretty bad too. But they are just doing what flies are meant to do. They are acting out their fly-ness, for lack of better words. That's exactly what we need to be doing, but with human-ness! While I think it's fantastic that not everyone just hauls off and smacks the buggers, there's such a thing as putting too much thought into it. That fly on the wall is no more your great grandmother reincarnated than you are his reborn great uncle twice removed. I am as sure of this as I am of anything and everything else (read into that however you want). I think the best way to sum up this post, as well as the most Buddhist answer to Jane's quandary, is an anecdote I once heard about the Abbot of the Zen Mountain Monastery in NY. It should be pretty accurate since it was told to me by a friend of his, but take it how you want. It goes like this:

The Abbot was sitting in his office one day when a resident of the monastery informed him that the compost pile out back seemed to have a rat problem, as a few were seen rummaging in it. The Abbot thanked her and said he would handle the matter. Not two minutes later the entire monastery could hear banging sounds out in the composting area. When some of the students ran out to the field they found the Abbot shooting at rats on the compost pile with a pistol. Not even knowing the Abbot owned a gun, one of them shouted, "What the hell are you doing?!"

The Abbot calmly replied, "Shooting rats."

Compassion

"A chilly emptiness in the water reflected the terrible emptiness in his soul."
-Siddhartha


A short post tonight. Maybe it will be eloquent in its brevity.

As I'm sure everyone knows, there was a particularly violent shooting at Virginia Tech last week. I'll spare you the details, as they're all on cnn. Something that touches me, though, is that it seems a very human reaction to feel empathy for those killed, and the families of those killed. But we're all very quick to forget (or scorn, as the case may be) the killer.

As detestable a thing it is that he did, he is no less a human being. In no way do I condone what he did, nor am I attempting to shift the blame away from him. But I cannot imagine the emotional or mental pain that he must have endured daily to have put him in such a place to kill 31 of his peers and teachers, as well as himself. It is very easy to point the finger, and say that this man alone was a monster and the only one responsible. But every one of us is a steward of this universe and there is not a single event that occurs, large or small, that we don't have a hand in. So as you keep the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting in your thoughts or prayers, consider numbering Cho Seung-Hui among them.