First day of 10th grade Geometry class, true story, teacher walked up and down the aisles handing out the textbooks to everyone. Eccentric guy, liked him right away. As chance unfolded my copy was partially ripped in the binding. He noted this a moment and looked at me, and I read his thought somewhat: “Oh well, thus crumbleth thy cookie.” And then he moved on. But directly he’d gotten two desks away he turned and rethought things. Made eye contact and said “Actually, Why suffer?” Then he trundled off to the back closet and got a brand new book to replace it. Little did I know this question would morph into a lifelong philosophical riddle touching all areas of my life. And everyone else’s.

Siddartha Draws Back the Veil

Whoever is familiar with the basic lore of Buddhism knows the story of The Four Sightings, the second of which, the young prince coming upon a dying man with naive shock and horror on his very first excursion outside the curated grounds of his palace, is devotedly depicted above on a sculpted stone wall at Borobodur, Indonesia. (The sick figure is at the extreme left.) The pre-Buddha’s father had confined his son to the palace grounds until age 29 determined that he should come in contact with nothing imperfect or unbeautiful as a preparatory measure for his eventual kingship. Leaving the debate as to the wisdom of this approach aside, the point of the tale is that the direct witnessing of human and worldly suffering and degradation made such a profound claim upon the young Gautama’s soul that he at once vowed to wander the country in search of wisdom and renounced his silver-spooned upbringing. To condense the matter without mercy, what eventually took place is that the prince-cum-mendicant consulted ancient India’s many wise ascetics looking to penetrate the mystery of unjust calamity plaguing the world and humankind until eventually, having reached the age of sixty, achieved enlightenment while sitting under the branches of a banyan tree. After this he began teaching, the gist of which is described next.

Buddhist doctrine is comprised of several broad aspects: an analysis of the problem (of the human condition), a pretty deep ‘psychology’ formulated around how the human mind operates, including which of these elements are influencable by an aspirant’s efforts and which aren’t, and a fairly detailed roadmap describing the proposed solutions. For present purposes let us stick to the first item, how Buddhism analyzes the human problem. (I am abbreviating drastically here — please don’t imagine a slight against the Buddha.) The root causation of human suffering is cited as perpetual desiring, or craving, as well as spiritual ignorance. If you want to put some real-world meat on the bone for this concept, just think of the most constantly unsatisfied striving individual you’ve ever met. (My apologies if the image that arose is yourself — although some would cite this as the first step towards liberation.) My favorite contemporary celebrity example is Donald Trump. I know some folks associate him with the anti-Christ but for my money he is much closer to the anti-Buddha! Just picture yourself inside his head for a moment. A constant whirlwind of ephemeral needs and passions to the extent that he seems unable to focus upon anything, saving perhaps revenge and monetary cons, for any length of time. A true prisoner of his own endless stream of whims. But, as suggested above, one can find traces of this tendency within one’s own psyche, even within the continuous dreamlike chaotic parade of thoughts and sensations which ceaselessly occupy us while usually seeming to be largely involuntary.

A fundamental diagnosis within Buddhist salvation can be thought of as follows: to escape suffering by rooting out desire. I am no expert in esoteric Buddhism — I know enough to get into trouble. Honestly I expect Siddartha Gautama had a far deeper and richer overview of things. But it cannot be denied that in terms of the received latter day wisdom, the exported practitioner dogma of things, that the basic plan is to free oneself from the unending cycle of desires and its necessary consequence: suffering.

Wheel Of Existence

At this juncture it is interesting to note that Indian culture at the time of Buddha’s life, so about 2500-2600 years ago, had a general acceptance of the notion of recurrent human lifetimes. The esoteric adepts would even say awareness and perception rather than acceptance. It was not viewed as a theory. This idea or recognition dovetailed with that of endless suffering roughly as follows. Time in the macrocosmic view within Buddhist thought is seen as cyclical, depicted in the illustration above which is very popular in Tibetan Buddhist temple locations. Sentient lives circulate around this endless wheel. The quality and nature of these sentient existences participate in the overall chain of causes and effects, the causes being the mental images and emotional doings in our lives and the effects being the character and limitations bounding our subsequent sentient states. These sentient states are viewed more expansively than in ordinary Western theologies in that (1) they also include more noble (dewas, gods, demi-gods) and less noble (animals, etc.) sentient lives and (2) encompass past and future stages of existence beyond present lifetimes.

In the Tibetan painting, the innermost of the four circles depict the three negative sentient conditions which drive the entire inescapable wheel of causes and effects. They are spiritual ignorance, intemperant anger, and scheming desire, as symbolized by the pig, the rooster, and the snake. (Animals in general are seen as caricaturized expressions of specific desires in which the imprisonment within an emotional state is crystallized into an actual imperfect or less noble physical form.) The second outermost circle of the wheel depicts various virtuous (‘right’) and deleterious, colored in black, deeds or response actions to the three central poisonous states. Exterior to this circle is one representing six different forms of existence, or lives ’caused’ by the summation of the prior inner deeds. Let’s agree for now to bypass discussion about the fact that the entire wheel of time is in the precarious clutches of some devouring lizard deity 🤪.

The takeaway I’m after is that the human situation is one of condemnation to an interminable cycle of lives featuring varying but mostly high levels of suffering. Time is thought of as cyclical rather than historical or evolutionary. The antidote exists but is difficult and obtuse: “In order to escape death, escape rebirth.” Meaning exit the wheel into Nirvana. As a measure of one’s liklihood of success on the Buddhist redemption path one could look at the the fact that the last known transition from human to Buddha, Gautama, was about five and half centuries before Christ and the next heralded one, Maitreya, is still a few thousand years hence. There do exist the Boddhisattvas however, a kind of intermediate phase. Human life does not seem accorded a particularly bright reputation within Buddhist thought; it is something to escape. And time or the prospect of future goodness is not promoted either since the stream of repeated earthly lives have a hopeless ennui and progressless feel about them.

The Paradise Bandwagon

Anyone who knows me well or reads me after a while knows that I maintain a serious distinction between the outer dogma-laden and church-mediated versions of a given ‘religion’ and their original inner more esoteric cores. They are really two completely separate things and the amount of distortion or corruption which accumulates over centuries between the original revelation and the current doctrines or pronouncements are massive and can be entirely in conflict. While I am not a big fan of the latter I do find inspiration and truth in the former, the origins. I do not have a deep grasp of esoteric core Buddhism, but I have devoted a decent amount of time and energy to looking at esoteric Christianity. As it happens, both the analysis of the human life or condition and the recommended remedies diverge considerably within esoteric and orthodox Christian theology. As a preliminary step one has to understand or at least hear told that the traditional conception and way of seeing what Christianity was about lasted for approximately three centuries after the original revelation. By the late 3rd and early 4th century Church leaders began to impose serious interpretations and strictures upon how the masses should view their creed. This divergence reached a kind of culminating point in the year 869 AD (although it certainly extended afterwards) with the event of the 8th Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople.

One outcome of this council, officially listed in Canon #11 out of a published set of 27, was the declaring of a state of heresy associated with the so-called doctrine of human Trichotomy, which held that people consisted of three components, a body, a soul, and an imperishable spirit. This was also often expressed as the belief that people had two souls, one embodying the everyday mind or intellect and the other containing a spark of the divine. Philosophically this concept can be traced all the way back to Aristotle (thus more than halfway between Christ and Buddha) who spoke of the threefold division soma, psyche, and pneuma. The deeper one goes back into antiquity the more pronounced and universal is the notion of body, soul, and spirit, though one must try to penetrate myth to see this. The aim of the council was to eliminate spirit and reduce human nature to simply body and soul. There have been lasting and incisive implications of this seemingly blithe decree 1200 years ago. First off, it is the spirit only which can possibly function as the vehicle for a past or future life, not the body or the psyche. The body is contingent upon heredity as modern biology and Darwinism broadcasts while the psyche is heavily shaped by social and physical environment and cultural happenstance. If one wished to gradually over the course of generations relegate the idea of reincarnation in the West to the wacky fringes, what better means than to legislate against the very thought of spirit-pneuma under threat of excommunication and eternal damnation?

I do not think that the idea of a vast sequence of earthly lives is in any way foreign or inimical to core Christianity, and began showing why in an earlier essay about Mark’s gospel.

The second and more horrific implication of Canon #11 was that it opened the floodgates for the tragically over-simplified idea of an endless paradise “salvation” solution to the human suffering problem if one simply follows the dictates of Church-interpreted Christianity and gives one’s inner life (psyche) to Jesus Christ. (As if one acculturated within the precepts of the available contemporary theologies had the slightest clue what it actually means to gift one’s soul to God). Well, rather than bite my tongue, let me say what I think it means. It means giving up the necessity and moral duty of elaborating one’s individuality and divine spirit via engaged thinking and judgement against the tangible crises of the time (all due to worldview confusions), which I would not regard as an un-Christian path, in the cozy certitude that Faith in Jesus has saved one, that fortunately during this single accorded lifetime, one, personally, is one of the lucky few to have purchased a guarantee of eternity in goodness in the hereafter regardless what level of suffering must be endured in the earthly life. How? Cause Jesus died for our sins or something like that. The details do not matter because also given up in this bargain is the value of any sort of deeper ethical investigations into the particular theology or even a curiosity about what Salvation might consist of. Deeper questioning is at best cute or mollifying or interesting. At worst devil-flirting. Because Faith needs to be utter and independent human thinking or questing is potentially Faith-piercing. The artificial deadline of the present human lifetime to achieve X is an institutionally imposed lie designed to forestall independent thinking, a divine gift, until some future authority has time to craft a doctrinal expansion which fits well with the orthodoxy and explains away any perceived fresh inconsistencies. Only Faith is important.

Logically it should be evident enough from what I’ve written that no argument is being made here against devotedly applying one’s soul life to Christian percepts as can be found, more or less untarnished, in contemporary versions of the gospels. Still, somehow I feel the need to point it out explicitly. What is being disputed is the widely held view that Christian creed should hold that something as simple as mere acceptance of Jesus into one’s souls has saved one from the otherwise inevitable human perdition, forever. And further, that this acceptance resolution must take place within this, our only alloted lifetime, regardless of circumstance. This idea of what Christ wants is borderline evil and does not fit with my picture in the least. The subconscious realization of the truth of these kinds of arguments is the real reason that organized religions are disintegrating in present western culture, not a systemic deviation from morality on the part of the populace. It is actually a needed thing. So that people can more easily take the needed paths, those of individualized but caring and open investigations into Spirit. I would add to this that revelation needs to be re-imagined as an ongoing alive thing, not something frozen in the past and available in immutable form in somebody’s version of the Bible. New revelation can be had now and should be sought after, could we but develop the means. It is not something which should be clamped off as absolutely bequeathed for all time, two millenia ago, to be spoonfed to us by clerics.

Human Dignity and Cosmic Dignity

In Luke’s gospel there is a moment involving the two criminals and Christ; it occurs near the end. The criminal on the cross to Christ’s left is disparaging him and wanting to know why a miraculous escape is not imminent. The one on the right, having assessed the situation, accepts the suffering and sees who Jesus of Nazareth is. He simply asks that Christ remember him when all this is concluded and he returns to his ‘kingdom’. Christ replies along these lines: “Verily I say unto Thee, this day Thou will be with me in Paradise.” I wondered about this and did a little simple research and learned that translation of the ancient Greek word as used here — paradise — was also employed to describe Adam and Eve’s condition in Eden. But the Genesis paradise condition is quite different from the generally conceived eternal Salvation afterlife. Right? I have written elsewhere about the characteristics of this Eden condition more from an esoteric Christianity vantage point. I would say paradise more describes a spiritual non-physical state of existence which in no way is implied to be permanent, unchanging, or eternal. Upon death we leave the travails of physicality and Earth-ness behind and the release must feel liberating indeed. But unless one has achieved Buddahood, not forever. There is work to do. We obtain a more objective view of our psyche and moral quality literally because our insides (psyche) is turned outside temporarily becoming our cosmos, and we are impelled to redeem it, our purgatory. Christ can be the intimate helper in this.

“If one wished to gradually over the course of generations relegate the idea of reincarnation in the West to the wacky fringes, what better means than to legislate against the very thought of an imperishable spirit-pneuma under threat of excommunication and eternal damnation?”

The early 20th century spiritual teacher and controversial seeker of wisdom, Gurdjieff, hailing from the frontier regions of present-day Turkey and Armenia, had an interesting Christianity-tinged take about suffering. He admitted that suffering was more or less a pervasive existential human reality but saw a crucial distinction in whether one’s suffering was intentional or unconscious. In Gurdjieff’s system of personal development the emphasis was not upon overcoming suffering but instead employing it as conscious tool by marshalling and directing it towards specific chosen aims. Suffering is not to be avoided (it cannot be, in fact) but it takes on a transformational function. Humans are thoroughly polluted by egoity and at present lack the will capacity, in general, to stand with their ethical character against the ever-increasing temptations of ease, pleasure, and technology. The cosmic law of Karma is provided by the wise gods as a means to soften this. We periodically return to the earthly battlefield to work out specific inner transformative opportunities, our individual life conditions meticulously crafted upon a heavenly loom we cannot grasp. But human freedom is sacrosanct. Christ will never violate human freedom. The chosen sacrifices must be completely uncompelled in every lifetime. Think about the sun. Imagine it as a being. What does this being do? It ceaselessly sacrifices its own life and substance outwards, permitting the entire lengthy theatre of the human drama. This is a picture of the true ideal in the cosmos as beings evolve. Renunciation, service and sacrifice. But out of the being’s own free choosing. The idea of resting joyously forever in the divine bosom because one accepted Jesus during a single lifetime and can stop striving makes an arrogant deluded mockery of this. Something certain people do not like to hear. But the times being as they are, is it not something which absolutely has to be said, and said out loud?

_______RS

Note : The third image above is an excerpt from a depiction of the Council of 869 AD made in the 16th century by Italian painter Cesare Nebbia. The conference took place in the amazing Hagia Sophia cathedral, turned into a mosque and kind of museum in later centuries in present day Istanbul. I do not know if it was removed since, but in 1994 the second floor featured a gorgeously moving enormous tile ceramic image of the head of Christ gazing right at you, composed of tens of thousands of little tiles, many of which were sparkling golden in color.

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