Buddhist Monk vs. Capitalist Pig
Or, How Modern Society has Perverted the Pursuit of Happiness
Or, How I Unraveled the American Paradox on the Bus Last Thursday
The following brief essay is only the seed of what I hope to be a larger, more in depth essay. It’s quite subjective and lacks any references and backup. In other words, it’s a rough draft.
The core idea and argument, however, should be quite clear. What I’m doing here then is presenting a foundation and making sure it weathers the first storm. So, please have at it.
The following thesis came to me recently sitting on Bus 104 on my way to work. I had – and have – been trying to come to term with a fundamental tension in my life: pursuing philosophical and spiritual enlightenment on the one hand, and paying the bills on the other. It seems to me that you have to be fairly dedicated to either to be successful; exhibit laser focus to make progress. If you don’t really start obsessing about your job, for example, you won’t ever really take off. Instead, swimming in a cesspool of mediocrity is the more likely scenario. In the same vein, you have to really dedicate much of your time to studying philosophy, religion, and how meditating might lead to ego loss – the ultimate gateway to happiness. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
There seems to be a tradeoff for me in life between material wellbeing and deep happiness. And by material wellbeing I include the ability to pay off debt. After all, it’s a matter of honoring the word you’ve given at the time of taking the loan on yourself, however young, naïve, and just stupid you may have been at the time. The pursuit to lend money to the weak willed, ill informed, or plain undisciplined is another topic unto itself; suffice it to say that the current sub-prime loan crisis and the ensuing Wall Street volatility should be a wake-up call.
But no, if you want to honor the word you’ve given, you pay up, no matter how the deep the manure. This invariably entails finding a job that pays enough: thus you enter the system – no, you’ve already entered it when you signed the dotted line to borrow money, you’re just now waking up to the fact. By system I don’t mean to conjure up images of a dark ominous force that consciously destroys all that’s good. It’s merely the organization that we have in place that governs our interactions on a large scale… ours happens to be capitalism. Now, if you want to do well in this game of ours, you really have to buy into it. I mean, embrace it. Nobody buys a half-hearted effort. So what begins with honoring your word for a mistake you’ve made a long time ago (and spending money you don’t have is a mistake, period), you pay for through bondage to a system that starts consuming you if you give in.
Now, it’s not like the game doesn’t reward those that try hard… it does. You make money, pay your bills, live nice. But how you will not be rewarded is with happiness. And therein the dilemma: The game, the system, will feed your ego as much as you give into it. It will fatten your ego to no extent and you will be ever more successful… you’ll realize your American Dream. Tailored just to you, however you like. And why not? That satisfaction that the fat wallet will give you is easily confused with happiness, so why not? Nice food, nice clothes, very nice! Who doesn’t like to pamper themselves, or better yet, be pampered, catered to.
As the years pass and habits harden, you slowly make your way to that transcendent moment of financial independence: free at last! But at this point the price you’ve paid is already steep: an ego the size of Texas, and no clear way of getting rid of it, if you’re even conscious of it at all at this point, and don’t totally identify with this illusion.
Which really brings me to the first premise of the argument I’ll put forth: everyone has an ego, and this ego is what stands in between you and true, profound happiness, joy, and bliss. It should be noted that the temporary realization of a given desire or goal and the ensuing pleasure is not what I would describe as happiness. Semantics plays a big role here, because I don’t believe that what is commonly referred to as happiness is actually what it is really supposed to describe. Instead, it’s used to refer to ephemeral pleasures induced by feeding and giving into your ego. However, keeping up with the desires of your ego is a never ending quest: it wants more and more of it.
This is the second premise: that the meanings of the words liberty and happiness have been perverted and are no longer used to describe what is really and truly meant by them. Happiness is the satisfaction of wants and desires and liberty is the ability to do so unhindered: The freedom to pursue your addictions, as long as they’re sanctified by the state.
The Declaration of Independence, a profound document not only, as the name implies, declaring our independence from the British crown, but also laying the foundation for how we as Americans view the world, states:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Powerful words. Woven into our collective conscience and a beacon of what America stands for. Unfortunately, as you can guess by now, I believe these words have been twisted into something which resembles a grotesque semblance of the truth.
Let me back up and apply the premises to these words. Pursuit of Happiness: in modern society, it is the quest for a Hummer and McMansion; flat panel HD television and state-of-the-art surround sound; to feed your ego. Liberty: the ability, the right, to this pursuit, with nothing standing in the way. The American Dream: If you want it bad enough, if you work hard enough, you too can have a slice of the apple pie. But you need to earn it first.
Contrast this then to what I have previously stated, that the only thing standing in between you and happiness is you yourself, that is, your self, your ego, your dreams and desires. Overcome these, and you will find true happiness. Liberty then, should be the ability, the right, to pursue this quest of ego loss, without government persecution and interference. Religious persecution was after all a driving motivator for the settlers to colonize this part of the world to begin with.
This then, is the American paradox: in our pursuit of happiness and liberty as an ideal, we have perverted those two ideas to an extent that we now live in a society which actively promotes the ego so successfully and to such an extent that the goal of happiness for most is too remote and far off to be even conceived. The “Governments instituted by Men” “to secure these rights” has been actively doing the opposite. After all, what else is unfettered capitalism than hosing the fires of desire with gasoline? No, I’m no socialist… in fact I think capitalism as a system is quite a beautiful, organic construction. If, however, we measure how it promotes the “pursuit of happiness,” it fails miserably.
In life, you can be either a Buddhist monk or capitalist pig. Be either with conviction – or both at the same time (the ultimate accomplishment). Be neither and sign off to a life of unfulfilled desires and no happiness.
Lee,
I agree with your recognition of the fundamental tension that exists within a ’spiritually aware’ person as a member of a modern capitalist society. I think this tension goes beyond being a personal tension, and with societies seen as organisms, humanity at large is suffering the tension as well.
Our quest for ‘true happiness’ (in my mind: peace and understanding) has been purposefully perverted in order to justify materialism and corporate dominance.
In our nature, we are thirsty creatures, and we have been tricked into drinking from the fountain of desire, instead of the fountain of awareness.
Fundamentally, we all seek purpose. A way of rationalizing why we are here. We, as beautifully evolved beings capable of self-awareness, need to somehow fill in the blank that is “I”.
The path to peace and understanding would fill the the blank with “awake”. This is all we need to be. Truly awake and aware of our place in reality; as a manifestation of the infinite nature of the cosmos, and a creator of our own future (free-will). THIS is freedom, freedom to create reality as an outgrowth of divine spirit.
The path of modern capitalism would fill in the blank with “inadequate”. This sets up a situation where we begin to define ourselves (what we were innately driven to do anyway) by accumulating objects, seperating ourselves from others, and justifying the facade that is the ego. We are also seen as inadequate in terms of governing ourselves. We become convinced that we need big government and large institutions to take care of us and provide our basic needs because we could never do it ourselves.
Luckily, I think one can be both pig and monk. One can realize the power of the system, play the game to meet their needs, give in to desire, yet never truly define one’s truest ’self’ by any corporate/institutional titles. Its like a lucid dream, you are deep in it, but aware of its illusion. When the time is right, you awaken.
I’m waiting for the cosmic alarm to go off too..
Ha, cosmic alarm to go off… I like that imagery.
I was thinking earlier today about what has been offered as the ultimate validation of one’s own existence: “I think, therefore I am.” After a quick trip to the wikipedia entry on “Cogito, ergo sum” (the Latin version), it seems that Descartes later refined this statement to “I am, I exist,” this expression being expressed at all making it self-validating. If nothing else exists, he cannot doubt his own existence in light of the statement he’s made.
What I’ve wondered about then, is the state of thoughtlessness… pure meditation, nirvana, whatever. If one becomes pure awareness, does one cease to exist? Or, as I suspect, does one melt from the separated illusion into the cosmic whole? Essentially, what is the “I” in the statement, “I am, I exist”? As you say, it is the blank that we seek to fill… or is it the whole, the all encompassing, which cannot be filled? Or both.
I’ve had a brief discussion recently from the guy running doesgodexist.com. This conversation has led me to think about singularity, which is, if I understand correctly, a point of no volume with infinite density… The all encompassing blank. Everything and nothing.
Hmmm.
About your question:
“If one becomes pure awareness, does one cease to exist? Or, as I suspect, does one melt from the separated illusion into the cosmic whole? Essentially, what is the “I” in the statement, “I am, I exist”?”
Like you suspected, I think the “I” dissolves. The statement “I AM” becomes more of a single verb than a declarative subject-verb statement, more like “am-ness” or “existing”. A state of realization that goes beyond declarations, beyond the necessary constraints of language, into a form of present-being-cognition. A mental process that only accepts the stimuli that is present internally and externally, does not categorize or judge, does not induce emotions. the mind becomes like a mirror, radiant and reflecting. certainly the mirror of the mind exists, the elimination of conscious awareness is not the end goal, but the mirror is clear, it is itself as pure and divine as the light which it reflects.
“I” is a filter, a way to distort the light for ego-needs. Through the process of self-reflection we clean the filter. Isn’t it funny how words like ‘insight’, ’self-reflection’, ‘enlighten’ all give us the clue to our true nature as light energy?
and in a very real physical sense, we are stardust. all of the heavy elements like carbon and iron which we believe to be at the root of life, were created in cosmic supernova explosions!
I have to post this link into this topic. The perversion of the capitalist system is more atrocious than I even imagined.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173
I watched about the first 40 minutes yesterday, and was equally shaken by the possibility that the federal income tax is a giant fraud. However, the article on Wikipedia (Tax protesters constitutional arguments) clearly displays the other side, which makes me unsure what to believe. Just to name a few counterarguments:
“One argument that has been raised several times (and always ruled meritless) suggests that the Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified. This argument is based on the fact that the legislatures of various states passed ratifying resolutions in which the quoted text of the Amendment differed from the text proposed by Congress in terms of capitalization, spelling of words, or punctuation marks (e.g. semi-colons instead of commas).”
The court struck down this argument, and I would completely agree that this is idiotic.
“Another argument made by some tax protesters is that because the United States Congress did not pass an official proclamation recognizing Ohio’s 1803 admission to statehood until 1953 (see Ohio Constitution), Ohio was not a state until 1953 and therefore the Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified. The earliest reported court case where this argument was raised appears to be Ivey v. United States, some sixty-three years after the ratification. This argument also has been uniformly rejected by the courts. See, for example, Knoblauch v. Commissioner.”
Again, a far-fetched argument in my opinion.
Also countered is the often cited argument, “based on language in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co.,[15] to the effect that the Sixteenth Amendment “conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged [. . . .]”"
I’m not going to copy the entire counter-argument, but it is worth reading.
While the movie is indeed interesting, what troubled me about it was the underlying current of “we should not pay the federal income tax.” I thought, if anything, the argument should be exclusively about whether or not there was a law from which the IRS draws it power. To me, this question is different from whether there should be such a law or not.
I’m clearly no law expert, but the 16 amendment, which reads:
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
… seems to me to spell out the power to collect taxes on income pretty clearly.
But then again, who knows.
How sad is it that we have to be so unsure of these kinds of things. We expect now for the goverment to be against us instead of for us.
I think that one compelling argument is that the “income” that the 16th amendment allows to be taxed is corporate gains, not compensation for work. The compensation for labor would not technically be a ‘gain’, more like an even trade for your property, which labor is considered to be.
And the other most frightening thing is that after all the interest that government has to pay to the federal reserve, none of the income tax money actually goes to any services that we expect to be funding.
Again, I really don’t know much about the legal definitions of wage or labor. However, check out Taxing labor or income from labor and more specifically Cases where wages and labor ruled taxable. These probably delve into the logic of this argument better than I can at the moment.
I was quite impressed by the bus thoughts and its conclusion. However I was quite irritated inititally be the expression “cesspool of mediocracy”. I like to remind people here of the LUCK of BIRTH:
do the following people really have the same shot at happiness, i ask here:
1)a white, male, goodlooking and brainy, born in Europe/USA versus
2)a brown, female, ugly, low-intelligence person born in India???
Please think about this, and kiss your parents and be HAPPY about the luck you had for being born as a number 1 species.
Mediocracy is not always a choice.
And another point:
There are most certainly Buddhist PIGS out there and it is not impossible to be a capitalist MONK. Even monastaries have to survive these days, and they are quite good in making wine and cheese and what not. But I still believe that it is possible to be a soft capitalist who is not exploiting the people and is so greedy for more and more over the top profits as we see it so often today.
Best wishes from TINA
Hello Lee,
Interesting debate.
The interesting thing is that we in india have been witnessing this debate for last 100’s of years. There are different school of thoughts working on it. One school has divided human life into 04 Ashrams or stages of life - BRAHMCHARYA - first stage of life ie a student, GRIHASTHA - 2nd stage of life ie a householder, VANAPRASTHA - 3rd stage of life ie retiring & SANYAS - 4th stage where you renounce. So as per this school there is a time and a place for everyone to become a Capital Pig and a Buddhist monk at different stages of life and he should make the most of it
The other school talks of CO-EXISTENCE of both the personalities within maintaining a nice balance or HARMONY
still another school of thought renounces both the approach and going in for the BUDDHA’s MIDDLE PATH.
I am so appreciative of you thinking on these lines - i mean it is so easy for a poor person to be a monk as he is not loosing much. But for someone like you to sit in a materialistic consumer world and yet think, THINK It is really worthwhile.
Forever Thinking
Global Guru
In a conversation with Mariano recently, we again came to the conclusion (one of the infinite conclusions you can reach I guess), that in life, you can either try to get in touch with your mystical inner self through disassociation with your body/ego, or lead a “rich life.” I did occur to me that leading a kind of self-denying, introspective life, while honorable, rejected human being (read as verb here), which after all is our current lot here on earth. In other words, that mystical self happens to be being human. So leading a full human existence isn’t necessarily a bad thing, although it sometimes or often is. Mariano related an interesting story that those souls / spirits after having achieved release from Dharma, or the cycle of birth and rebirth, and were in fact in union with God, got board and decided to return to human being.
Anyway, what I’m really trying to post here is that while looking for first editions of Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy, I came across this quote hidden in the book which, I think, points to the same kind of choice in life that I was trying to get at with title and image of “Buddhist Monk vs. Capitalist Pig:”
“Human individuals possess the momentous power of choosing either selflessness and union with God, or the intensification of separate selfhood.”