Something for today
by Matt May
I don’t want to talk about politics today, so I’m going to talk around politics. I’m writing this particularly for those of us in the United States, who are going to have a hard time today, and in the days that follow. I’ll have a hundred posts to write about the individual political realities of the next several years, but today, I want to show you how I try to process it all, in the hope that it will be of help to someone.
I’ve mentioned before that on Sundays, I’m technically Rev. Matt May, an ordained Jodo Shinshu Buddhist minister, serving as an assistant at a local temple. As it happens, this Sunday it’s my turn to give a sermon, and this is the preview. (Religious disclaimer: this post is about 20% about Buddhism and 80% about getting by from day to day. Evangelism isn’t a part of my tradition, and this isn’t meant to convert anyone. Besides, nobody can become a Buddhist without memorizing the complete secret handshake and… oops, I’ve said too much.)
Buddhist teaching doesn’t have a lot to say about democracy. Śakyamuni Buddha, born a prince of the Śakya clan, lived around 2600 years ago, at roughly the same time period the term "democracy” was coined in Greece. While it’s unlikely he was ever aware of the Athenian experiment, scholarly work suggests that his own nation-state was effectively governed by an assembly of its citizens, complete with its own speaker.
That said, representative democracy is a rarity in history, and Buddhism is rife with stories about rulers—kings and queens, princes and princesses, generals and warlords. They murdered their fathers, invaded rival territories, conscripted firstborn sons. Even those who are praised, such as the emperor Ashoka, who first spread the teachings of Buddhism throughout much of south Asia, were dictators, not presidents or prime ministers. And when it comes to suffering, well, they were the cause of a lot of it.
So naturally, there’s very little first-order material in Buddhist canon about participatory democracy. There are no guides on how to vote, or what happens when your candidate loses. Instead, there’s a lot about how to live a good life when your rulers don’t care that you exist, or see you as cannon fodder, or would like to wipe you out because you’re a different clan, or color, or creed. To think about what democracy and this particular moment means for us, we have to read between the lines.
When we talk about the Dharma (with a capital D) in Buddhism, we are talking about what is always true, everywhere, no matter who or where you are. I’m not going to get into a big metaphysical knot talking about this either here or next Sunday, for any number of reasons. But at the very core, Buddhism teaches that our lives are impermanent and interdependent with all other life, and that suffering is an unavoidable part of the package. It’s how we deal with that suffering which determines, in one of my tradition’s readings, “not only my happiness or unhappiness, but also that of others.”
The last nearly 20 years of my life has been a struggle to ensure that the peace I gain from my religion isn’t lost to our politics and a now-endless election cycle. The political sphere is in a lot of ways the opposite of the big-D Dharma. It’s dishonest, volatile and divisive. It prefers easy wrong answers over hard right ones, and individual egos and possessions over collective compassionate action. Impermanence is explicit in policymaking; it is implicit in policymakers.
(I don’t get to say this part on Sunday so we don’t get in trouble with the IRS.)
We must remember now, and after every election, that no candidate or official determines the truth for us. Humans have lived under dictators and despots for millennia. Millions who are alive today have never known another way. And still, one can hold fast to the truth as one sees it.
I once visited an underground city in Türkiye. Tens of thousands of people lived in this warren of caves and tunnels on and off for over a thousand years, while the region was conquered by one invading force or another. At one point, 150 feet underground, our tour guide told us something I’ll always remember.
There are three things you need to survive when everything is against you. Food, water, and a reason.
What matters, what animates us as human beings, is the hope of something better tomorrow. But if we want good things to happen, we cannot live in hope. We must do what we can for ourselves and others, in any political season.
For those of you who believe that we all deserve a roof over our heads, a full belly, and a fair shot at all the opportunities life may provide, I can understand if this will be a hard day for you. It is for me. As we get through this next phase, I will still get good and mad with you, I will strategize with you, and maybe I’ll even egg you on.
Right now, we may know some of what’s going to happen, but we don’t know it all, and a lot of us are perseverating over things we cannot foresee. We want to Do The Right Thing, before the moment reveals itself, but the fact is, we can’t do that. What I know, at least for myself, is that I cannot react to everything. When I last had this feeling, I tried to fight it by staying on top of all things political, thinking that I could somehow help stop what was already rolling down the mountain. All that did was make me tense, angry and sad. My reacting to everything a politician said meant that what I actually did was next to nothing.
Living in a democracy means you are neither fully impotent nor all-powerful. Voting is only a tiny part of your participation. You have one little voice in a sea of voices. If you want your voice to be stronger, you have to find others you can sing along with.
Watching and reading and panicking and rage-posting is not going to help you right now. There will very likely come a time where your voice may rise up with others. But for now, if you want to get through this, you need to find something to do, somewhere, that you can see the good in. You need something that can lift you up, and hopefully, lift others as well.
(Okay, the rest of this is safe. Don’t @ me, revenuers.)
I want to share my core value: the most basic thing I can do to be a moral being in any situation.
Be kind, help others, seek truth.
You can be mad, sad, giddy, confused or stoic while you do this. When you feel like you’re about to lose it, when you’re about to get sucked into another useless comment war, you can take a deep breath and think about who you want to be in that moment. In the end, we really don’t control a lot of what happens in our lives; we just think we do. What really matters is how we chip away at the un-repayable debt we owe to all those around us.
What did I try to do during the last administration? Be kind, help others, seek truth.
What will I do during the next one? Be kind, help others, seek truth.
What will I do when we’re taken over by hundreds of millions of heretofore-undiscovered Greenlandic cave dwellers? Be kind, help others, seek truth.
Kindness does not have to mean submission or acquiescence. When someone is out to hurt you, it’s not your responsibility to let them. But every day, you will have a chance to be kind to someone. I hope you keep doing that. That’s what lets the light in.
Office hours
My office hours are open this Thursday for people who want to talk.
That’s all. Be well.