Essay

BUDDHIST CANNIBALS

Buddhists are cannibals. My best friend from childhood told me so. Her place in my life is such that I was stunned, acutely aware of the August heat bubbling the blacktop where we stood as if it were a foretaste of Christian hell. I asked Kay where she’d learned  Buddhists are cannibals. Her minister had made it plain in a Sunday service. I gave up any thought of educating her about Buddhism. I learned long ago that for some, including Kay apparently, pastor equals man of god equals word of god equals no questions, not ever, so help me god and gesundheit. Our conversation stalled. I said good bye and hied my damned self away.

When I was a teenager, I was receptive to Kay’s evangelical fervor. She seemed calm and secure. Those were things I desperately wanted then and I hoped to find them in one more Bible reading, one more church meeting. It would answer every question, ease every pain. I knew I’d miss out if summer Bible camp held the answers I sought. My brothers, my sister and I spent summers picking berries and beans for new clothes and supplies for school. I was never dedicated enough to earn much as a picker and when I discovered alcohol, both my clothes fund and church attendance suffered. In alcohol I found oblivion, which I mistook for calm.

Fast forward many years of oblivion and otherwise, past Kay and I in the parking lot, I am wondering why that moment with her sticks in my memory like a flag. What about that brief, near-conversation holds me, do I hold onto? The answer seems important. Kay called me a cannibal indirectly. I don’t think I’m bothered by that particularly; I know more about Buddhism and myself than Kay does. To take offense is to waste energy, just as working to change her mind would have been. Buddhism, at least in my understanding, is not an evangelical faith. People seek it or they don’t and either way is just fine. In any case, cannibalism seems antithetical to proselytizing, an odd twist of the idea of reincarnation. Such an odd twist, I can’t help but wonder who thought of it. Neither Kay nor her pastor, I think.

My inventive mind suggests the idea came from some higher authority. Not God. Someone in a suit working at the head office of that denomination -- an administrator telling the coaches (pastors) what truths to share with the team (parishioners). This administrator, or maybe it was a committee, hears about reincarnation. It doesn’t fit in the evangelical Christian world view, which makes it dangerous. It must be made to fit, it must not challenge. So, if a.) Christ died and rose again, which is reincarnation and b.) only Christ was divine enough to reincarnate, therefore c.) any claims to reincarnation by ordinary mortals is blasphemous. The Papists, those blasphemers, drink the blood and eat the body of Christ. That’s a kind of cannibalism. Buddhists believe in reincarnation without the blood and body of Christ, therefore they must be cannibals in a more direct way. That’s my thought about how Buddhists became cannibals and is probably wrong. Yet the twist is so odd to me, I keep trying to make sense of it, to understand what is otherwise incomprehensible. In this, I am not so different from Kay or her church.

This effort to understand is itself not Buddhist. It is the effort of a western mind firmly grounded in Judeo-Christian ethic. Mine is a mind that will invent where answers are beyond it. A human mind. I am grateful to Kay (and her pastor) for making me question. Perhaps  that’s why that chance meeting remains with me. Questions are necessary things. 

Paradoxically, answers are not necessary. James Hollis, a Jungian psychotherapist, argues that acceptance of dogma, of received truths, is inauthentic to true spirituality. He notes that “mature spirituality already lies within each of us, in our potential to take on the mystery as it comes to us, to query it, to risk change and growth, and to continue the re-visioning of our journey for so as long as we live.” (Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: Gotham Books, 2005) 

Hollis does not say that questions will bring either answers or peace. In fact, the chapter of his book that addresses mature spirituality is immediately followed by a chapter entitled ‘Swampland Visitations,’ in which he explores the idea of the demons and monsters within each of us that may present obstacles to authenticity and growth. In short, there are alligators in the swamp, but it is essential to drain that swamp question by question regardless of the fears we have or the challenges we face. 

What has that to do with Buddhist cannibals? Only that the juxtaposition of cannibal and Buddhist means I continue seeking. The four Noble Truths of Buddhism are: 1. life is suffering; 2. suffering is due to attachment; 3. attachment can be overcome and 4. there is a path for accomplishing this, dharma, the middle way. (‘The Basics of Buddhist Wisdom,’ Dr. C. George Boeree, Shippensburg University.) 

None of the Noble Truths suggest that Buddhists aren’t cannibals. That comes by way of the eightfold path, the fourth of which, rightful action, is to avoid hurtful behaviors such as killing. The fifth part of the path says that right livelihood is making a living in such a way as to avoid dishonesty and hurting others, including animals. If Dr. Boeree is correct, these two tenets of Buddhism argue against Buddhist cannibals.

Boeree’s article also notes that right mindfulness means focusing attention on body, feeling and thought in such a way as to overcome craving, hatred and ignorance. To concentrate rightly, one engages in progressive meditation to realize understanding of imperfection, impermanence and non-separateness and right aspiration is the true desire to free one’s self from attachment, ignorance and hatefulness. The Noble Truths and the eightfold path provide only  reasons for and ways of negotiating the swamplands Hollis described. 

Are there Buddhist cannibals in the swamplands? Good question.