The Truth

I saw this bumper sticker on a car yesterday:








"The truth will set you free": this, of course, comes from the Christian Bible, specifically the Gospel According to John, 8:32. It is a saying that has meant a lot to me over the years, from the time of my upbringing in a Congregationalist church. One thing it has said powerfully to me is that to embrace what is really going on brings freedom and life; hiding from and denying what is really going on brings pain and suffocation. No wonder Buddhism felt like home, once I found it.

But my idea of the "truth" in question has always been quite different from what the "truth" has traditionally been interpreted to be. The context of this verse is an argument between Jesus and the chief priests and Pharisees, and phrases from this chapter have been used to justify persecution of the Jews. John is my least favorite among the gospels, as it seems to be written as a polemic against all who reject this Jesus who proclaims himself Christ-as-Savior; to me, this telling of Jesus' life and teaching paints him as a raving narcissist. (He does go on and on about his wonderful self.) But I am sure that some of the potent sayings are indeed authentic; to give voice to them, the writers of the Gospel created a Jesus character who served their purposes. (As did the writers of each of the Gospels, and of all scripture, and the creators of any kind of literature or art).

But I digress. Seeing this bumper sticker got me thinking about what variety of truth the bumper sticker refers to, and what variety of anger. The car also featured a "Quakers!! Where? Quakerfinder.org" bumper sticker, so I assume that the car belongs to a Quaker. If this is a Quaker of the universalist, New York Meeting stripe, the sticker is probably pointing a bit ironically to the truth-of-Christ-as-savior concept. It points more wholeheartedly to the truth-of-God-as-justice notion, which springs from the powerful message of the Hebrew prophets. The prophets such as Jeremiah, Isaiah, Micah, and Amos.

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4)

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

And so the truth that sets you free, but first makes you angry, is the truth of power, of seeing who has power and who doesn't, and who is using that power in self-service. Once you see how the game is really being played, you are free from delusion. One could say that it is the truth of suffering, of the First Noble Truth: Suffering exists. And perhaps seeing the causes of that suffering, the endemic injustice within human society, is an echo of the Second Noble Truth, that suffering has discernible causes.

And those aspects of truth are enough to make anyone angry. As angry as the prophets of old.

But what do you do with that anger? Because feeling angry is not enough. Just as suffering is not enough (as Thầy says), anger is not enough. The Dharma teaches us to see ill-being for what it is, and to transform that ill-being into freedom -- freedom from the delusion that traps us into reenacting the causes of ill-being. How are you going to use that energy of anger in a way that will not simply perpetuate these causes?

I know I'm asking a lot of a bumper sticker, but I wish it had said something about love. Because our society has a very distorted view of anger. We conflate the energy of anger with the expression of anger. Many interpret the Christian tradition as teaching that we should never feel angry, that we should turn the other cheek, forgive immediately, and to someone who takes our cloak, give our coat as well. On the other hand, we're taught how important it is to express your feelings, to vent rather than to hide your feelings. So we have a victim mentality mixed with self-righteousness mixed with entitlement. What's missing is an alternative to so much self-involvement. What's missing is the idea of expressing your angry feelings in a way that shines a light on the situation that triggered the anger, without exacerbating it. You do that through love, through compassion.

In his book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, Thầy writes:

You have the duty to tell [your beloved] when you suffer. When you are happy, share your happiness, with her, with him. When you suffer, tell your beloved one about your suffering. Even if you think your anger was created by him or her, you still have to keep your commitment [to support each other]. Tell him or her calmly. Use loving speech. This is the only condition. (p. 57)

We have the duty (elsewhere, he says we have the right) to communicate our anger. But we must do so calmly and lovingly. Here he speaks of anger between family members, but because of inter-being, this teaching must extend to anger between constituents and governments, and to anger between nations.

Martin Luther King, Jr., worked hard to channel the energy of anger into prophetic, powerful, loving action. So did Gandhi and Dorothy Day. And Thich Nhat Hanh.

I would like to see a bumper sticker that reads:

The truth will set you free.
So that's what that funny little half-smile is all about!

A bit more about the Society of Friends:

During the two years or so that I attended the Brooklyn Friends Meeting, I learned that many of my assumptions about Quakers were wrong, or incomplete. The Brooklyn Meeting is unprogrammed, meaning that there is no pastor and no liturgy -- the meeting sits in silence, listening for leadings. But there are other types of Quaker meeting, more common in the Midwest and West (apologies for over-generalizations). Roughly speaking, the Quakers stream into four branches: Liberal, Conservative, Pastoral, and Evangelical.

Click to read about Liberal, Conservative, Pastoral, and Evangelical Friends' beliefs and customs.

Attached to Tea

Or perhaps I should say, "attached to caffeine."

I've been thinking about the connection between Buddhism and tea, or caffeine. It goes way back. All the way back, it seems (i.e. according to Alan Watts and many web-sources which may all be pointing back to Watts, for all I can tell), to Bodhidharma, the monk from India who brought Buddhism to China.

Bodhidharma is traditionally portrayed with brooding seriousness, but without eyelids. According to legend, he spent nine years staring at the wall of a cave, intent on piercing his way through to enlightenment. At one point, frustrated that his tired eyes kept closing, he tore off his eyelids and tossed them to the ground. They sprouted into tea bushes. What he saw as the problem became the solution for his drowsiness.

The solution was caffeine.

I wonder how this fits in with the Five Precepts, in particular with the fifth precept, which translated from Pali reads: "I undertake the training rule to abstain from fermented drink that causes heedlessness." In Thay's tradition, the fifth "mindfulness training" expands the rule to avoiding the consumption of anything that contains "toxins," from alcohol and drugs to certain movies and conversations. This training has been very helpful for me, supporting me for instance in my decision to skip much of the current cinema, which I consider too violent, and current television, which I find completely vapid. I summarize the training for myself as avoiding the consumption of things that cloud the mind, one way or another. My aim is clarity of mind.

It just bothers me that in the morning, I don't have much clarity of mind before I have my tea. It used to be coffee -- over the years, I've cut back from two strong cups of coffee, to one cup, to three cups of black tea, to two, and now just one. I'm down to one cup of tea in order to combat anxiety and sleeplessness. But the idea of leaving behind that one cup makes me pretty unhappy. PLEEEEZE don't make me give up caffeine entirely!

(No, green tea in the morning just won't cut it. And don't even mention decaf. The pleasure is in the taste AND the kick together, don't you see?)

I think that I am a little attached (okay, addicted) to caffeine. And yet I feel justified in holding on to it, because caffeine seems to hold a sanctioned, if not sanctified, position in Buddhist practice. I've many times seen mention, in the American Buddhist magazines, of bringing oneself right to the cushion in the morning, after rising and making oneself a cup of coffee. I know that coffee is a daily ritual for many members of my sangha. I have heard that at least one monastic in our tradition starts the day with a cup of coffee, and another with tea. And there is the whole Zen tea ceremony thing.

Thay even has a gatha for drinking tea:

This cup of tea in my two hands -
Mindfulness held uprightly!
My mind and body dwell
in the very here and now.

But I suspect he is speaking of green or white tea, not strong English Breakfast tea, dark enough to need milk.

At least I try to be mindful as I make the tea, try to enact the ritual as just that, a sort of ceremony for starting the day, and not as merely a set of actions I find myself doing yet again, wishing someone else had already cleaned out the tea ball. Maybe mindfulness makes the attachment part okay. Or, at least makes it part of the path. But I don't think that awareness of attachment is the goal of the path. Mindfulness of addiction is not what the Buddha meant by freedom. Just being aware of an attachment is not enough to free yourself of the suffering caused by the attachment. Especially if you don't really want to free yourself of the suffering caused by the attachment.

Well, I do want to be free of the suffering (the pre-tea grumpiness, the headache). I just don't want to be free of the cause of the suffering. Because I really like my one cup of caffeine ... er, tea.

I'm reminded of a story I heard the year I attended Quaker meeting. William Penn, governor of Pennsylvania, had befriended George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, and had just become "convinced" -- that is, converted. Quakers, of course, were committed to plain dress and non-violence, in contrast to Penn, who, as befitted his rank and station, dressed finely and carried a ceremonial sword. Penn was loathe to give up his sword. He asked Fox what to do, and Fox answered, "Wear it as long as thee can, William."

As for my tea?

"Drink it as long as thee can, Lauren."

It's all part of the path, right?

(Please stop glaring at me, Mr. B.)