The Buddha

Why do American Buddhists act so blissed out? Asians can talk about emptiness and the Noble Truths without looking high, so what's our problem? It's fucking annoying, and you know what, Buddhists, it really doesn't help your image. The last thing you guys need is people like me watching Jane Hirshfield dissolve in ecstasy every time she mentions lotus flowers. Her cosmic kindergarten-language hands us bigots all the proof we need to write off your faith forever as so much word- and idea-weed. And hiring Richard Gere as narrator? Are you trying to make me hate you? Asking him to tell the Buddha's story is like bluffing a bad hand by trying to buy the pot. To anyone with half a brain it's an insult. Whatever the Buddhist equivalent of the Bible is, I would rather have had that signed to me by apes than to have listened to Gere's embalmed larynx coat religion like a child's chewable medicine. And you know how repetitive ape language is. Buddha. Polite. Tickle. Buddha sit. Tickle. Nirvana.

Not that everything about this special is bad. At unexpected moments W.S. Merwin pops up like a wise old whack-a-mole to remind the audience that smooth, civic-minded intellectuals also endorse Buddhism, not just vagabonds and Pink Floyd fans. But the pothead cartoons and the soundtrack from Buddha for Babies make for an altogether too irritating experience, one better suited to hyperactive little shits who need their minds blown than to adults searching for a reason to think Eastern philosophy less precious. D

Slothrop: What is a common response to the teachings of Christ––the stuff about loving the poor, commiserating with and healing the sick, renouncing gold? Is it to buy a Benz, bugger a boy, belt a bitch, barter a better business, look away? Approximately? But how easy it is to wear the cross! The danger of Buddhist teachings is likewise the seeming palliative nature of the message but the subtlety and extraordinary difficulty of going the whole hog. It is much, much easier, in other words, to sit cross-legged with lotus flowers behind one’s ears than it is to become aware of the ways in which we escape from the discomforts of everything that comes our way, all the time, non-stop. The teachings of Buddha require big brass balls and the process requires commitment, discipline, and doesn’t promise any reward. That in fact might be the greatest American misconception about Buddhist practice, which makes sense as it takes place within a capitalist ethos: if you work hard, you will be rewarded with a bliss-like state. Which is just about the opposite of what the Buddha taught and perhaps Kurt Cobain's Nirvana was a rare instance of a popular American group that understood the genuine meaning of the word, judging by their songs' content and texture.

Being in a blissed out state, according to Big B, is equal to being in a state of anger or fear; it is a cover-up from what is really going on, a shield. Rather, the goal is to drop the protective layers and expose ourselves to the rough and the smooth alike. (Should lotus flowers come our way, that’s excellent, but there are, still, the roses! Should Richard Gere come our way, well, fuck. There's no way out of that debacle.) Our American culture has an inconceivably difficult time not-commodifying everything, and Buddhism is low-hanging fruit for the masses of people that feel deeply inside that they’re not fully there, which is why popular Buddhism gets transmogrified into a self-help product at tremendous odds with the original teachings. And which is why I propose we start educating young people fortunate enough to get to college using a methodology of inquiry similar to Buddha's––focusing on the process of insight without reward, without false promise. Am I wrong?

Koko: Wrong? No. Just an asshole, Walter? No.