It's not personal: a Buddhist response to a claim of absolute power

Trying to get a perspective/John Barrett

It’s not personal, unless we let it be: dealing with the political scene from a Buddhist perspective

Today, the President took another step toward authoritarianism by declaring via Tweetthat he has absolute power to pardon himself. Let’s stop there for a minute. He followed this with additional words that rendered his whole tweet somewhat silly.

What I want to examine, for the moment, is this idea that our President believes he has absolute power to do something. He does not, but this won’t stop him from saying he does and acting as if he does. What makes this pronouncement extremely problematic, if not outright dangerous, is that the assumption of any absolute in leadership capability paves a path to corruption and, well, dictatorship.

I’m not going to weigh in right now on the administration in great detail; I’ll save that for later. What I do want to look at are the consequences of personalizing enmity against a person or persons who hold views one finds problematic or, well, dangerous, and what Buddhism tells us about such views.

It’s not the person; it’s circumstances

I don’t want to get into the more abstruse arguments of no-self (anatta) encountered throughout Buddhist literature and pedagogy. I think more to the point is that our choices and actions arise out of pre-existing causes and conditions too numerous to count. This may sound like Buddhists side with determinism in the free will v. determinism argument, but it’s a bit subtler than that. At any given point, if you’re practicing meditation and understand the ethical underpinnings of the Buddhist precepts (at least the five of no killing, lying, stealing, nonconsensual sexual relations, intoxication) and the four brahmaviharas (of happiness for all beings, freedom from suffering, boundless joy, and equanimity), then you’ve got a good leg up on understanding that whatever occurs in the world can be met with generosity, kindness, and fearlessness.

Once these are understood, and even internalized to a small degree, something significant happens; one’s sense of self is rendered more dynamic; less of an “I” to cling to or as a bundle of neediness and aversions than as a fluid event aware of its own nature. And from that comes an awareness that others are innately similar. Thus, whenever something adventitious occurs at the hands of another, it is more readily apparent that such actions proceed from a place of ignorance.

It can be argued that this doesn’t absolve a wrong-doer of responsibility but I’m not arguing that (just yet, maybe later or in another post); I want to examine a little more the place that ignorance holds in our make-up and how it continues to render us, in this world, in this shared experience, subject to events.

If I cling to a belief in a self as a static, fixed thing that needs to be protected, this seems reasonable. No one wants to not exist (unless life becomes so unbearable and painful); but rarely are we taught to examine this “self”. The “I” grows out of a series of experiences and relationships forged early on. We discover we like certain things, are attracted to them and don’t like other things or are repulsed by them. I’m choosing these words carefully; we encounter the worlds as welcoming or hostile to us. At least, at first. If this persists, we feel the world “owes us a living”; our happiness is deserved, our suffering not.

But what goes overlooked is that this is not the case. At a certain point, we realize that by being decent to other people, people are decent back to us (in most cases). If we act meanspiritedly toward others, we can pretty much expect the same. It seems apparent that actions have consequences, but we often absolve ourselves from taking responsibility for those consequences because we can’t see how far down the line the ramifications will trend. Fair enough, but let’s get back to actions.

If we respond to circumstances with a contracted emotive reaction, this can and perhaps will, explode later into additional negative circumstances. If we take a different approach and see the situation for what it is, neither “good” nor “bad”, but simply an existing set of conditions that we can respond to in a more genuine, less reactive manner; then the engagement with the world becomes more interesting and even more fulfilling.

In other words, circumstances may seem to determine who we are at the outset, but as we grow, we learn that we’re not separate from those circumstances and with diligence and watchful awareness, we can be less buffeted about by those circumstances emotionally.

This does not mean we won’t get upset, frustrated, or even virulently angry, but we will be less led around by our upset, frustration or anger in proportion as these are seen what they are in themselves. There’s nothing wrong with begin upset/frustrated/angry unless we identify with them or cling to them.

It’s difficult to cling to circumstances when these are always changing. It is likewise difficult to cling to a false sense of self. Yet, in both situations, we often do. “This is going of forever!” we sigh in exasperation. “This is just how I am”, we declare as a reason or excuse of behavior (“good” or “bad”).  Neither of these are true or meaningful, though.

Buddhism states throughout all its traditions that circumstances are impermanent and so, too, is the self that responds to them. It’s not enough to say that the self doesn’t exist, thus negating the idea that there needs to be any requirement to react to circumstances, just as it is erroneous to claim that there is a fixed, eternal self that stands as an immutable identity in the face of circumstance. The actuality is more dynamic.

The point is that how we deal with and react to circumstances is less dependent on the circumstances themselves than an admixture of personal history and the degree to which we understand the metamorphosing aspects of that history that seems to comprise the self we are.

Politics

Man is a creature of the polis, if I recall Aristotle correctly. This is often quoted as “man is a political animal”; both work here. We are not separate from other human beings. We can’t be. Even if you retire to a cave for a lifelong retreat, you’re doing so as a human being either reacting to something in your experience or because of something that’s inspired you in your experience. But you wouldn’t have come to that decision without interacting with other human beings in society, the polis.

I’ve taken flak over the years for stating that everything we do is political. Not voting is as political as voting (if an abdication of the participation in the democratic process, but there may be good reasons for abstention); saying you’re apolitical is nonsense – you just took a political stance. It’s here, though, that Buddhism can point a way to dealing with political situations in a more or less harmonious manner.

1)     There’s a good reason to not take stances as personal affronts; if we realize that we’re all coming from points of view of various levels of information, experience, and personal observation, we can open ourselves up to make ourselves available to listen to conflicting points of view and more productively entertain other solutions to a problem.

2)     When we encounter policy enactments that remove or deny the rights of others, we can check our personal animosity toward those who effected those policies and focus more on the substance of what needs to be done to reinstate previous policies or enact new legislation to correct the wrongs propagated by the more restrictive/oppressive measures.

3)     On a deeper level, upon recognizing the fluid nature of the world of causes and conditions and the interplay of our tentative, ever-growing localized experiences-as-selves, a more spontaneous playing field opens up in how to move with this shifting display of events. I’m thinking very much of the Tibetan ‘khrul-pa or “magical display” of samsara. This doesn’t negate that something is still appearing but it very much establishes a ground from which to work and by which to contextualize events and circumstances with a significant degree of latitude for responding authentically.

Now what?

Now – and there’s often only “now” – we can view the President’s declaration from several different perspectives. One is that we can impute a certain degree of desire from his side to consolidate a measure of power. We can expand on this in the context of previous events and decisions in the past year and a half and detect a trend to what might be perceived as “power grabs” across the board.

We can also determine that there is much that needs to be thought about; the President’s power to pardon is not absolute; or if this is a hint that the administration is attempting to render presidential power and the role of president in general, more absolute, this requires reflection, discussion, and action. We can also widen the scope and see it in terms of a limited human being grasping after a greater degree of control and agency and we can also see it as the result of a longer-term trend that has existed since an earlier president once declared that “it’s not illegal if the president does it”, if not earlier. Indeed, the seeds for all such desire and chasing after such absolute power stems from attachment, aversion, and ultimately, ignorance.

What to do

First, let’s work on not demonizing another human being. This doesn’t do anyone any good; if we look at people who seem to be causing us pain and grief, it’s up to us to see that they’re often motivated by their own limitations and clinging to the causes of their own suffering. Second, we can choose to be angry, frustrated, and so on and cling to these or acknowledge that those are present in our minds now and move on to generating a more expansive and compassionate approach.

Next, we can join with others in discussing next moves; talk to our representatives about this; organize, vote, etc. We can also do nothing; however, it’s important to ask what the benefit of doing nothing will accomplish.

What would the Buddha do?

In any event, it’s important that we acknowledge that while a situation may seem clear-cut to us, it may not be seen that way by others. Don’t cling to views.

It may be that something genuinely positive will grow out of discussion and this whole situation may lead to a better result. Don’t cling to outcomes.

Actions should be based on a degree of meditation, reflection and deep listening motivated by wish to benefit all who are involved. Do act out of wisdom and compassion.

Next from me

I’ve decided that after a lot of consideration, I’m going to be engaging in a bit more political analysis. In large measure, this post is hopefully going to set the tone for how that analysis and the resulting posts will be expressed.

I want to ensure for myself (at the very least) that I don’t devolve into responding to what I find extreme or outrageous with equally extreme words or outrage. I let fly with enough of that for effect and admittedly, for catharsis, but in the long run, all it does is stir the pot. It’s too easy to say “so and so is an idiot” or “morally bankrupt”. If this is the case, present the supporting documentation and build your case from there. What you might find (I might find) is that flawed human beings empower other flawed human beings and they speak and act out of ignorance, greed, or anger.

I won’t be posting politically exclusively, but whenever I find a sequence of events that I respond to, I want to examine them and ask what is required as a response, as a guideline for reaction, and what can I do.

It’s this last that I’ll focus on later and in more concrete terms.