Everything Matters

The Buddha Said Do Nothing?  Where Was That?

The most recent New Yorker includes the Ian Parker profile of Yuval Harari, author of such bestsellers as Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century, all of which take an immensely broad look at history.  I haven’t read the books, but my impression is that Harari is saying that, in the broad view of the created universe, if homo sapiens (a recent arrival) disappears from this very small part of it, it won’t be that big a deal.  I’m not sure that’s what he says, but it’s the impression I get from the profile.  Harari has been profoundly influenced by Buddhism, and by the practice of vipassana meditation (at his first retreat, he “was told that he should do nothing but notice his breath, in and out, and notice whenever his mind wandered. This, Harari has written, ‘was the most important thing anybody had ever told me’”), and when Parker asked him to sum up the Buddhist message, he said the following.

The Buddha “’taught that the three basic realities of the universe are that everything is constantly changing, nothing has any enduring essence, and nothing is completely satisfying.’ Harari continues, ‘You can explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy, of your body, or of your mind, but you will never encounter something that does not change, that has an eternal essence, and that completely satisfies you. . . . ‘What should I do?’ ask people, and the Buddha advises, ‘Do nothing. Absolutely nothing.’”

To say the very least, that last statement brought me up short.  I wasn’t sure whether it was meditation instruction or advice about life, but in the context of the piece it sounds like advice about life, because Parker reports that Harari—who lives in Israel—resolutely refuses to get involved in politics; that the problems he diagnoses in the modern world cry out for solutions, but he has no particular policies to recommend; that his primary audience is males from the age of 25 to 35, and Parker guesses that his “typical reader may be a young person grateful for permission to pay more attention to his or her needs than to the needs of others.”

Parker ends the piece with some words of a female follower of Harari’s named Hannah Hrabarska, who says she found “‘Sapiens’ overwhelming, particularly in its passages on prehistory, and in its larger revelation that she was ‘one of the billions and billions that lived, and didn’t make any impact and didn’t leave any trace.”’ Upon finishing the book, Hrabarska said, ‘you kind of relax, don’t feel this pressure anymore—it’s O.K. to be insignificant.’ For her, the discovery of “Sapiens” is that ‘life is big, but only for me.’ This knowledge ‘lets me own my life.’ . . .

“Hrabarska has disengaged from politics. “I can choose to be involved, not to be involved,” she said. “No one cares, and I don’t care, too.’”

Whew.  That’s the message of Buddhism?

I know it’s very possible that—in all good faith—Parker may have misrepresented Harari’s message and the impression he tries to give.  It’s also true that Harari’s followers may have drawn conclusions he didn’t intend, though it’s fascinating to see what effect an author has on people, intended or not.  Harari has found a profound peace from meditation that transcends anything else in his experience; he says it is “so profound that those who spend their lives in the frenzied pursuit of pleasant feelings can hardly imagine it.”   It’s as if he’s saying, you discover that peace and nothing matters anymore.

My impression from the teachings of the Buddha is just the opposite.  Everything matters.  It matters how you drink your coffee in the morning.  It matters how you talk to your spouse.

It’s a little iffy, of course to speak about the Buddha’s teachings.  Some people believe they are found only in the Pali Canon, and maybe not all of that, because they were written down years after his death, while other traditions assert that he left behind sutras to be “discovered” by other people (scholars might say instead that the later sutras expound on things that were implied by the Buddha, or expand and deepen his teachings).  People often talk about what the Buddha taught when, frankly, we’re not sure what the hell he taught, and the tradition as it stands includes a lot of other things.

The term Buddha means awakened one, and there have been various Buddhas throughout history (also various teachers who were not awakened).  I think we should judge all teachings by what the Buddha said in the Kalama Sutta: when you know by your own experience that something is true, believe it.  Until then, don’t.

So I’m open to the whole tradition.  But I don’t swallow any of it unreservedly.

And I don’t think the Buddha advised us to do nothing (unless that is meditation instruction, in which case I heartedly concur, do nothing.  If you can figure out how to do that).

My first objection is that the Buddha himself spent his whole life very much doing something.  From the time of his enlightenment, in his mid-thirties, the Buddha taught the dharma tirelessly, until he died at the age of 80.

He did, in the legendary story of his life, contemplate doing nothing.  When he realized enlightenment, he saw not just that he had enlightened nature, but that all beings did; he hadn’t discovered something about himself, but about everyone.  He also had the feeling that, unless someone had had his experience under the Bodhi tree, they wouldn’t be able to understand what he was saying.  Supposedly he sat for a week just enjoying the bliss of nirvana.  But eventually, according to the story, a god came and begged him to teach, because beings—and not just human beings—were suffering because they didn’t understand the truth of existence.  The Buddha agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to teach, knowing that he would often be misunderstood.  He also taught his disciples a way of living that would show them what he had learned.  He wasn’t just teaching where he’d arrived, but how to get there.

Harari is correct when he talks about the three characteristics of existence.  But he doesn’t mention that the third characteristic, dukkha—which he correctly sees as unsatisfactoriness, though Parker later uses the more common translation, suffering—is part of a larger teaching, the Four Noble Truths, which indicate that life may be characterized by dukkha but that there is a way of liberation, through the Eight-Fold Noble Path.  If we live a certain way, we find liberation from suffering.  That’s the thing the Buddha was actually teaching, not that life is suffering, but that there is liberation from it.  The article doesn’t mention liberation anywhere (although the peace that Harari describes sounds a lot like it).

The article is also somewhat deceptive about another basic Buddhist doctrine, shunyata, often translated as emptiness.  Again, Parker doesn’t bring up the term, but alludes to it in discussing the other characteristics, that all things are impermanent and that they have no essence.  Those things are true, but the other side of that truth is that everything is inter-connected.  Nothing has independent existence because everything is connected to everything else.  Once you see that, compassion naturally arises; as my teachers have often said, compassion and wisdom arise together, because once you realize the nature of existence, you feel compassion for your fellow beings.  Whatever you do profoundly influences all of them.  It isn’t that you’re only concerned about yourself.  You’re concerned about everyone.

I have a feeling that Harari understands all that.  His mission statement includes the words “Care about suffering.”  But I’m not sure his followers understand, or that he’s gotten that point across.  And I definitely don’t think Parker gets it, or if he does, he’s trying to sabotage his subject by the way he portrays him. There’s a slight feeling of that about the article.  Parker is criticizing Harari by describing his followers.

In any case, the Buddha’s message isn’t that nothing matters.  Quite the opposite.