Hi all. I had an assignment for my Buddhism class which asked us to compare our journey to The Taft School with that of the protagonist of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and also with the Buddha himself. Anyhow, here's a little summary of my adventures in American prep-school through the lens of Buddhist philosophy. Have fun.
An Adventure with the Buddha in
Connecticut.
I.
“We know that egotism is a bad thing;
we know that all the great world traditions- not just Buddhism- urge us to
transcend our selfishness. But when we seek liberation- in either a religious
or a secular guise- we really want to enhance our own sense of self.” – Karen Armstrong, ‘Buddha’
Now
that it’s started snowing, I’ll go ahead and tell you about my little journey
here and somehow link it to The Buddha. Before I begin, I have a thousand
apologies to make but I’ll just mention two of them. One: I’m sorry for the
horribly colloquial tone of this paper, but the assignment called for a
personal response- and, unfortunately, what I feel is far less nuanced than what I think. Two: this assignment also asked about our goals and I’m
sorry to say that I’ve already failed in fulfilling the goals of my little
journey here... But that’s okay. It’s started snowing and that means I can
finally get around to talking about my little journey here, so-
Here
we go.
II.
“Then he suddenly saw clearly that he
was leading a strange life, that he was doing many things that were only a
game, that he was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that
real life was flowing past him and did not touch him”- Hermann Hesse, ‘Siddhartha’
My
favourite poets used to hang around in New England, especially at Harvard- and
so did a few of my favourite scientists and philosophers. So when I, a
Lower-Sixth Form student at Maru-a-Pula School, was selected as part of the US
Scholars to come to Taft, I relished my luck to pursue the footsteps of my
American legends. I saw it as my great chance to chase the legacies of
Cummings, of Eliot, of Ashbery- and even Thomas Kuhn- the radical philosopher
of science who graduated from both Taft and
Harvard. This may sound all terribly simplistic and hackneyed and
pretentious but this was essentially what I thought the purpose of my life to
be: just like every other one of my peers that I have learned to criticize for
sharing such similar, basic fantasies: go to college, get my degree, pursue a
career that I can be violently successful in. For a long time, I deluded myself
with thinking that my version of this surface goal-chasing was deeper than
everyone else’s- after all, I was dreaming of getting a PhD in physics and/or
philosophy and/or literature and becoming a poorly paid academic who would
write books and give lectures and be well-known for looking like Cornel West
but instead be from Africa. There were a few rare moments where I would pause
to think that I was, perhaps, being a raging hypocrite. I figured that craving
for success was lofty and admirable because my desires lay in books and art
rather than in money and land. I became very good at ignoring the fact that my
desperate wanting, my lusty craving to be ever-more intelligent was
essentially and fundamentally the same as buying individually tailored suits and
trading stock prices. But still! I was coming to the land of Big Dreams, to
America itself, and Taft was my orgasmic green light at the other side of the
world; the Daisy to my Gatsby and that was all that mattered.
The
really sad part is that I knew all along that I was full of it.
III.
“Without knowing it, he had endeavoured
and longed all these years to be like these other people, like these children,
and yet his life had been much more wretched and poorer than theirs, for their
arms were not his, nor their sorrows his... Were they not playing a game
without end? Was it necessary to live for it? No. This game was called Samsara,
a game for children, a game which was
perhaps enjoyable played once, twice, ten times- but was it worth playing
continually?” –Herman
Hesse, Siddhartha
Underneath
my excitement for America was a dark sense of unease. In the land of dreams,
people who looked like me were being shot for looking like me; people who
didn’t look like me were losing their jobs because other people who looked even
less like me were controlling the economy; on the TV screen a president who
almost looks like me was wrinkling and greying because all these people still
can’t get over the fact that they don’t look like each other. Meanwhile the
Harvard website spoke of this strange oddity called ‘opportunity’ while their
acceptance rates plummeted annually. I spent more than a few hours refreshing the
Taft website wondering whether their words had double-meanings as well and
further wondered about the casual messiness of the world around me. In Botswana, I
was beginning to hear hints of the same globalized double-speak of
‘opportunity’ as the wealth-gap between citizens increased. I was moving on
from one private school to the next, one ‘opportunity’ to the next; and the
only thing that I started appreciating about my opportunities was the fact that I
only had to theorize about the casual messiness of the world around me rather
than directly experience it. But still, even at a distance I could tell
something was off with the reality I was living in. Was I so special that I
deserved to be given a scholarship to Taft while some of my friends wondered and still wonder how
they’ll pay for university? Was I so special that my parents were able to
afford the tuition of my old private-school in Botswana which led to my
scholarship to Taft when my government’s educational funding becomes
increasingly out-of-reach for my friends? And then the biggest questions of
them all- my little brother and my high school poetry-prodigy friend both died
before they had the chance to be further offended by the ugly suffering of this
reality: does my survival make me more special than them? Obviously not- so why
the hell am I here in Connecticut watching snow fall on the ground when they
aren’t? And how the hell am I supposed to continue living in the nonsensical
pain of this meaningless world?
Why
is it that we call samsara ‘opportunity’?
IV.
“...he was still plagued by desire and
still immersed in the toils of consciousness. He had begun to wonder if the
sacred Self was a delusion. He was, perhaps, beginning to think that it was not
a helpful symbol of the eternal, unconditioned Reality he sought. To seek an
enhanced Self might even endorse the egotism that he needed to abolish.” – Karen Armstrong, “Buddha”.
I
mentioned earlier that I failed in fulfilling the goals of my journey here.
While my goals changed shiftlessly in the murky wind of my mind, I still failed
to reach any one of them. The most obvious (and most pathetic) goal was to get
into Harvard. The other goal was then not to care about getting into Harvard or
not (ongoing; also pathetic). Another was to make High Honors. Yet another was
to finally finish my first collection of poetry, ‘First Adventures in
Adolescent Heartbreak’ (also pathetic). Yet another goal was to learn how to
forgive myself for harbouring such awkwardly elitist goals while being a
self-proclaimed humanist. And then there
was the goal to finally kill of my awkward elitist goals so I could become an
actual humanist, rather than a self-proclaimed one. I was also supposed to call
my mother every Sunday and stay in contact with my friends. Write delicate,
philosophical and self-effacing poetry about the trees in New England. Do my
physics homework. Hand in assignments on time. Go the gym. Find myself. Love
myself. Try not to get over-involved with the black struggle.
All
of them: failed.
V.
“But today he only saw one of the
river’s secrets, one that gripped his soul. He saw that the water continually
flowed and flowed yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every
moment it was new. Who could understand, conceive this? He did not understand
it; he was only aware of a dim suspicion, a faint memory, divine voices.” –Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
There’s
one more goal that I want to talk about. It was the reason I signed up Honors
Humanities, for Philosophy and eventually, for Buddhism. Also, this is the part
of the essay where I actually relate my experience to Siddartha and the Buddha.
I didn’t mention this goal earlier because I would be lying to you if I said
that I came to America with the explicit purpose of fulfilling this particular
goal in mind. Rather, I became very skilled at convincing myself that the
reason I came to America was for the sake of adventure. Adventure. That’s the
word I had in my head when my visa came through and when my Taft acceptance
letter came through and when it started snowing. It’s the same word I’ve had in
mind with every conversation and every book I’ve read here. I’ve referred to
adventure in various forms, all awkward and needlessly intellectualized to make
it seem like a bigger deal that it actually is. Last semester, in our
Philosophy classed I called this adventure the ‘space between the physical and
the metaphysical realms’. This semester, Siddhartha calls it ‘Atman’ and Gotama calls
it the ‘Self.’ I chose not to include this goal in the preceding sections of
this essay because I earnestly believe that the quest for this mysterious
adventure is separate from the samsara I’ve
been trapped in since birth- much of these entrapments of suffering being self-constructed.
And I really, really, really do believe that this is the case otherwise I
wouldn’t have saved this section for last. I wish I could give a better reason
than that, but, like I said earlier, what I feel
is far less nuanced than what I think.
Yet even if feeling is less nuanced than thought (which you know I think I know
is true), the unfiltered quality of feeling can be nurtured into thought. The
depthlessness of my academic success-chasing still could not kill this implicit
and fundamental goal of adventure that I had in my mind when coming to Taft.
Even if my philosophical ponderings about the nature of life and being are not
the actual occupations of my feelings- for I have spent a great deal lying to
myself thinking that they are- they, in essence, remain the true occupation of my feelings; for it
is these same ponderings of faith and wonder that have kept me alive in the
shameless samsara of America. I don’t
know how else to unpack this argument, but this simplification might help: I
came to America saying that what I wanted was adventure; but what I really
wanted was a Harvard acceptance later; but
what I really wanted even if I thought I was lying to myself about it
was actually the adventure because
that’s the only goal that survives failure because it never ends.
VI.
“He had begun to wonder if the sacred
Self was a delusion. He was perhaps, beginning to think that it was not a
helpful symbol of the eternal, unconditioned reality he sought. To seek an
enhanced Self might even endorse the egotism that he needed to abolish.
Nevertheless Gotama had not lost hope. He was still certain that it was
possible for human beings to reach the final liberation of enlightenment.” – Karen Armstrong, ‘Buddha’.
I
don’t expect to ever reach Nirvana and
I’m not trying to. I am, however, curious about whether such a thing exists or
not. Does Nirvana look like Plato’s
World of Ideas? Does Nirvana have shape or form? Does the
‘Nothingness’ of Nirvana constitute Somethingness?
You see, unless I stop asking these sorts of questions, and I promise I won’t,
I’m probably not going to experience the brilliant hyper-consciousness hiding
away in the folds of space-time. That’s fine with me- I think too much and I’m
happy with that. My fundamental disagreement with The Buddha thusly lies here: I
don’t want the experience of Nirvana,
I want the proof of Nirvana. But then again, that’s what I think; not what I feel.
What
if...
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