God, The Buddha, and The Joker
How many mass shootings have occurred since the one in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater that first inspired this post some five and a half years ago? How many lives have been violently snuffed out? How many families have been destroyed? How many people have been forever scarred by the trauma that they were lucky enough to have survived, but not so lucky as to have avoided altogether? Some brave individuals are counting, and trying to do what they can to persuade hearts and minds to embrace meaningful change. Many others seem to have just grown weary of the reality of massacre after massacre, and the repetitive and ineffectual discussion that ensues. I'm updating this post in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Perhaps I want to ascertain which group I still belong to, the one trying to affect change, or the one that has grown numb. Has the worldview that I articulated below changed at all? Do I have anything to add?
God, The Buddha, and The Joker
I’m usually not into seeing violent
films. However, I did make an exception in the case of The Dark Knight – the first in this modern Batman trilogy – for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’d heard
that Heath Ledger had done such a phenomenal job playing that embodiment of
pure evil, The Joker, that I simply
“had” to go see his performance for myself. Second, I’d heard that the plot
encompassed a very timely and important exploration of how we, in our self-righteous
zeal to eradicate evil, risk sinking into the very depths of evil ourselves. No
doubt, Ledger’s performance is a chilling one, bringing to life with incredible
realism his character’s embrace of chaotic violence for the sheer love of
chaotic violence itself. The most chilling moment for me, however, occurs the second time we hear The Joker “reveal” to a prospective victim how it was that he’d
obtained his jagged scar of a smile. On the first occasion we might be inclined
to feel at least a little bit of sympathy for an individual who’d been so
deeply wounded as a child – thereby explaining, at least in part, how he’d
become the wretched individual that he’d become. Ah, but when we hear him tell
an entirely different story the second time around, we come to see with stark
clarity the dark depths of The Joker’s
coldly manipulative mind! It is then that we “know” that he is pure evil,
unconditioned – without cause and without cure.
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| Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight |
It is at times such as this, after the
murder of 12 people, and the wounding of 58 others, by a copycat Joker at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises (the final film in
the Batman trilogy) that we are
reminded just how bizarre this world can be – filled with beauty and love in one
moment, brutality and heartache the next. How do we even begin to make sense of
a tragedy such as this? If only there were some rhyme or reason to it all. If only
we could point to something in particular that could have made each of those
people “deserving” of such a fate, as if anyone can possibly deserve such a
fate. If only we could learn what it was that led a reportedly quiet young
man to meticulously plan out such an act of violence and mayhem. Maybe then we
could find some measure of solace. Quite to the contrary, it is the seemingly
random nature of life and death that has us plumbing the depths of our being
and gazing up into the heavens in search of meaning. To think that our world
could really be so cold and chaotic is almost too unsettling to contemplate.
And so it is that each of us comes to construct a worldview – one that
incorporates our lived experience and whatever presumed metaphysical reality
makes sense to us – one that allows us to advance through this human existence with
some sense that our life in ‘the grand scheme of
things’ has value and won't be snuffed out for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
But, how can such killings ever make
sense? What worldview can possibly incorporate such a violent, cold-blooded, and heinous act as this without us screaming at the top of our lungs that
something is wrong? Sadly, though, if you think that this happened
because we’ve turned our backs on God, then you’ve already begun to make sense out
of senselessness. If you think it happened because some force of evil exists
“out there” in the world that is forever in dynamic conflict with the force of
good, then these killings will likely make some semblance of sense to you. If
you think this all happened because the unknowable plan of some higher power is
being acted out from moment to moment on this earthly plane, or because the
victims had some karmic debt to atone for, then this massacre presumably makes just
a little bit of sense. If you think that these killings occurred because there
are just too damn many guns in the hands of undeserving people, or because
there are simply not enough guns in the hands of deserving people, or because
violent movies and video games are driving people to act out in real life the
digital slaughter contained therein, or because our mental health treatment system
is so underfunded, disconnected, and inadequate that it can’t possibly provide
the safety net that it should when mental illness manifests as florid
psychosis, then you’ve already made some sense out of what is otherwise utterly
incomprehensible.
Despite the efficacy of these
various worldviews in helping their respective owners go out and face a brand
new day, they’re either so clearly not held by any super-majority, or they’re
so clearly incapable of being acted upon in any positive way, that they would
seem to be of no real use whatsoever – save for the very personal utility that they
provide. And so it is that we remain locked in this bizarre cycle in which
senselessly violent acts seem to be perpetrated with ever-increasing frequency
and severity, but nothing is ever done about it beyond our collective
hand-wringing and our news-cycle spanning period of national mourning. Nothing
is ever done about it because our various perceptions of reality are too firmly
rooted in our irreconcilable worldviews for us to ever come to agreement regarding
how we might best proceed. Has there ever been a time in all of history when it
was so routinely the case that two people could look upon the same color with
one calling it red and the other blue? Perhaps that fact alone is evidence of
how very far we’ve strayed. Ah, but what have we strayed from? Well, that
depends upon your worldview!
As I began to make “sense” of the
news that I was hearing of the Aurora ,
Colorado
When we went back
to New York
Some of you, I’m sure, will
recognize this passage from Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. But will you
be surprised to learn that, with only a modicum of interpretive flexibility,
this Buddhist shares the worldview of that young man who would one day become a
Trappist monk?
Do I believe in souls? Actually, I try to not believe in much of anything at all. But I do
believe that we are a seamlessly integrated collection of ‘selves that are not
other’ – each of us working in some way toward creating the entirety of the world
in which we live. Have we “given our minds and wills up to be raped and defiled”?
In myriad ways I believe that our living in this modern world has us doing just
that. For instance, I recall feeling rather disoriented for some time after
seeing The Dark Knight. It’s how I often
feel after seeing violent films. And yet, despite my knowing that to be
so, I went and saw The Dark Knight, anyway.
I brought that upon myself and now it has become me. Do we not allow ourselves
to be so defiled on umpteen occasions on any given day? I think we do. We
Buddhists are just not all that inclined to consider it sinful when we do. But
let’s not get all hung up on that word, sin,
simply because it reminds us of a religion that we might have left behind. Indeed,
to a Christian, sin refers to a separation
from God, but it might also be meaningful for a Buddhist to think of sin as separation from their so-called Big Self or True Self .
Allow me, please, to make this next
point in no uncertain terms. Yes, I believe in karma. Yes, I believe we’ve each
played some role in creating this violent world. Sure enough, our contribution
might be a small one – a minor act of commission, or perhaps one of omission –
but it is a contribution, nonetheless. That notwithstanding, I still
emphatically contend that those who were murdered or injured or traumatized in
that Aurora, Colorado theater were no more responsible for their fate than you
or I. Karma simply refers to habit energy – patterns of thought, emotion, and
behavior. Yes, we have our individual habit energy, the karma of the self that
is not other. Far more applicable in this case, however, is our collective
karma, the habit energy of our social order and our nation. No matter how much we
might purify our own patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, we are still living
in community. We cannot escape our collective karma, and, unfortunately, it
reeks of violence.
For instance, think of the violence that we
perpetrate against the farm animals in our care. We don't so much kill them out of necessity, because we need to eat so much
meat in order to survive; rather, we kill them because we want to, because we enjoy
the taste of their flesh. We kill them not with any sense of gratitude, but
with a sense of entitlement – a sense that they exist only to fulfill our
needs. But the violence is not merely a matter of killing them in numbers far
surpassing that which is necessary. There is violence as well in how we force them
to live out their lives in torturous factory farming conditions until such time
as we do see fit to kill them. And it’s not even a matter of us not being able
to afford to treat them humanely; it’s a matter of us wanting what we want on the
cheap.
Then, with our bellies full of
mindlessly eaten meat, we retire to our living rooms where we immerse ourselves
in reality television shows that glorify our most petty of self-interested
desires and celebrate those who can manipulate others more skillfully than
anyone else. We play video games that engage us in virtual fights to the
death in which living things are unceremoniously blown up, ripped to shreds,
and incinerated. And, yes, we go to the movies where we revel in blockbusters
chock full of gunfights, explosions, mayhem, and annihilation.
Speaking of annihilation, how many
generations have now grown up with the specter of nuclear annihilation hanging
over their heads? We raise our children not with the idea that such massive
violence is inconceivable, but with the idea that it is very thinkable indeed.
In fact, it is so eminently thinkable that we can even incorporate it into a
strategy – one of mutual assured destruction – the strategy under which most of
us have now lived our entire lives. But even conventional war has become so
much more thinkable. We don’t just engage in it because of any sense of life
and death necessity. We go to war in order to protect our interests. War is no longer a last resort; it is something that we engage
in so as not to be inconvenienced.
But I think that even the most
ardent believer in the rightness of our government to wield such incredibly
violent power secretly harbors the fear that that power might one day be used
against him or her. And so we stockpile weaponry of our own while harboring
dark fantasies of black helicopters dropping jackbooted government soldiers
into our back gardens. We gleefully contemplate what actions we’ll take if
anyone even tries to step foot in our household. Yes, the second amendment has
become our most sacred creed, and the gun has become our talisman. Occasionally, though, we are called upon to harvest the bitter fruits of such a worldview. For to live in a society governed by such a violent creed and deadly talisman, we must also accommodate the violent temper tantrums of those deeply wounded human beings that its twisted nurturance inevitably gives rise to.
I could go on, but I think I’ve said enough to convey that, if there was any merit at all in what Thomas Merton was thinking during the years prior to World War II, there is certainly merit in those thoughts today. Yes, Merton’s thoughts are but another worldview, and so are mine. But I think that they are both worldviews that transcend surface appearances and cut straight to the heart of the matter. Besides, if a Trappist monk and a Buddhist can somehow find common ground, perhaps all of us can find it as well!
References
Merton, T.
(1948, 1976) The seven storey mountain: An autobiography of faith – Fiftieth
anniversary edition. A Harvest Book. Harcourt, Inc..
Image Credits
Heath Ledger as
The Joker by Danel torres via:
Copyright 2012 & 2018 by Mark Robert Frank
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