We also do not believe in prayer for in our belief there is nothing with which to communicate. But we do believe in meditation, reflecting upon our position within God, as part of God. There is no ‘them’; on this very small planet we are all ‘us’. I remember Mahendra saying once ‘Who is my neighbour? I am,’ and I asked him what he meant.
‘If I treat other people badly, I defile myself,’ he replied.
People are not inherently good or bad, sinners or saviours; there is no such concept as evil or hell and there are no such things as spirits, ghosts - holy or otherwise - devils or demons. People are people, bearing the capacity to do good or bad and the eightfold path of rightful living is sound – if we strive to follow that path how can we be other than fulfilling our roles as human beings in a godlike way? So, people who are holy, in whatever walk of life they may find themselves, are those whose conduct reflects that. That also means that we should not defile our planet because that is the environment in which we demonstrate our conduct. God is certainly not a humanitarian phenomenon either, because humanitarianism is focussed on humanity and humanity is a drop in the universal ocean.
The God in which we believe is not responsible for suffering, for dukkha – how could the force in which we believe be responsible for it? Suffering is part of nature and chance. Tsunamis happen in the natural world – your death happened. The human body is not made to last. Cancer is not sent as a punishment for sin and prayer will not cure it. We believe that suffering, however, does lead to two other things. Responsibility and choice. The plague of locusts may not be sent by God but when it descends it is the responsibility of those who are unaffected to help those who are - a test of aid and agricultural policy rather than a condemnation of the poor people who are affected. The same with famine. The same with tsunamis. The same with sickness. As to choice, we see this as collective choice. No one person can mitigate the effects of nature but collectively people can choose to support others through their suffering. It is a matter of choice whether we do so and each person can contribute to collective choice through individual example.
Third, that it doesn’t matter what you call your faith. You don’t need to force your personal belief into a compartment marked Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism or any other given title. Faith is personal. What does matter is that you have faith and understand your faith. It also matters that you understand that faith is not static and will constantly be tested by new ideas and experiences; that means that the maintenance of faith is a constant struggle - it certainly was for us. It means that faith must be kept alive in each of us not by dogma or by fear but by rational and constant thought and, for us, meditation but for others, prayer. In that constant struggle we also learned to accept that today’s truth may feel, tomorrow, like yesterday’s immaturity.
That’s where it took us and it was a relief to find what we found because we both let go of so much fear by doing so. What is more, Josh found Christ again, through that door, and took me to understand him too. We believe that Jesus was not God incarnate but achieved unity with God through the life that he led here. The example to us all of how we should live.
Educated as we both are in western tradition and culture, it has been easier to turn to Christ’s teachings than to those of other holiest of people like Siddhartha, the Buddha. Because religion is not static we were still on a life’s mission together when Josh died, so who knows what our perception of truth might have become in twenty, thirty or more years’ time. However, one thing I do know, we could never have lost our God again because our pact, our commitment to understanding our lives, was too far advanced for that. We had travelled so far along the journey of faith that any land of atheism was both so remote as to be beyond view and also lacking in any purpose, definition or appeal. If I deny my faith now, I deny Josh.
Josh and I did think through the question: what if we are wrong in our faith? What if our ideas about God, our faith, are wrong? The answer to that, we decided, was simple, as many answers within religion are - it doesn’t matter.
First, it doesn’t matter because we believe it and have tried to live by it. It has been our faith and we did everything that we could to understand it. Our faith is personal to us. You and me.
Second, if we are wrong and if, contrary to our beliefs, there is not a God at all, then our faith has done no wrong to anyone or anything and our conduct to other people and the environment has a moral basis which, we hope, is beyond reproach in its intentions.
Third, if there is a distinct entity called God in the form that Christians and Muslims believe, then I hope that He will see that we tried our best and, what He makes of that and of the faiths of the millions of people who believed differently will be God’s business; but I don’t think we could have tried harder. If that is where Josh is, please look after him.
But, what is important, surely, is to identify the similarities between the great religions rather than the differences. For instance, is not the concept of sin founded on man’s craving? To our mind the greatest similarities of all within the religions lie in the expectations that they make of our conduct and in the belief that they each engender that there is a force of unity that is greater than we are and for which we should all strive. On that basis there are very many similarities between Buddhism and Christianity, as we discovered. How easily would the compassionate Buddha understand the message in the beatitudes that the meek are blessed?
And now I want to write about how it was that we found faith and how much I owe to the people here and to this country for their teaching.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The people in the camp at Galle knew what suffering means. Everyone there had suffered loss but the poorest had lost even the meagre things that they had before and were left without the very basics of life. People who had claimed social status before were brought down to a level of which they had no experience and which they found intolerable, dirty and demeaning, as if they had become untouchable.
Many people had lost family members of all ages and were beaten down with grief. At the camp everything was a struggle – food, water, hygiene, health, the lot - and nothing was private. Social and ethnic groups were all mixed together. When it rained tents leaked and the ground turned to mud. There was nothing for kids to do and it was dark by six o’clock in the evening and light twelve hours later, so the days started and ended early.
I suppose it is not surprising, therefore, that many people at the camp turned to religion. For some it seemed to give a sense of congregation, a common cause, that helped them to work together with each other to try to make things better. For others it meant they found comfort in an unseen and all powerful force because nothing that could be seen could possibly provide any comfort or justification for the misfortune that had befallen them. For others still it seemed to add a further sense of resigned helplessness in their plight - life is about suffering, you should not crave for more, so just give up and accept your lot. Whatever may be the reasons for people turning to faith, or adhering to the faith that they already had, faith provided purpose and truth.
Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama in North Eastern India about 2,600 years ago and is said to have first spread to Sri Lanka from India about 200 years later, swiftly becoming the predominant religion here. In the world as a whole it is said to be the fourth most followed religion and to have over 350 million followers who, in my experience at least, believe what they are saying.
Like many other religions, Buddhism has various fundamentally differing branches, such as the more traditional Theravada philosophy practised here and the more progressive Mahayana philosophy which is practised in parts of China, Tibet, Japan and elsewhere. Within those differing branches there are many shades of belief; for instance, some followers are atheistic and see the purpose of life as no more than escaping the cycle of rebirth, whereas other followers, who share aspects of Hinduism, are polytheistic and see the ultimate purpose of life as being the achievement of a place in a
celestial paradise.
Are the beliefs that you and I found faith or philosophy? We thought about that a lot and decided the issue was no more than an academic play on words. It is what it is. But since at the heart of it is the belief in God we regard it as faith and we are hardly unique in that view.
An essential aspect of all branches of Buddhism is the desire for nirvana, the state of final liberation from the cycle of mortal life and, therefore, an end to all suffering. For most, the breaking of that cycle, the achievement of nirvana, meant the ending of the process of death followed by re-birth, the constant refinement of the individual until he or she abandons all craving and becomes as one with God. For us, the achievement of nirvana is different. We believe that this life is our one chance, in our current identities, of fulfilling our purpose of being as one with God. We, Josh and I, think that that philosophy or faith is not so very different to the Christian concept of joinder with God in heaven on death through the redemption of sin achieved only by Christ’s suffering.
The most obvious differences between the Christian and Buddhist religions, as we understood them to be, though lie in what God is – a separate entity or not – and also in whether we remain identifiable entities after death. And, we think, there is another big difference. Christ suffered death on the cross and the death that he suffered affords Christians, it is said, with the opportunity for redemption. We witnessed the Buddhist community suffering extreme hardships, some at least as painful and drawn out as crucifixion, and saw how each individual’s response to individual suffering is seen among them as the way to nirvana, the Buddhist equivalent of redemption. We learnt to share the views of the Buddhist community - that it isn’t Christ’s suffering that affords redemption; it is our suffering in this life, and how we each respond to it, that unites us with God. So, our behaviour in this life is definitive and there is no redemption after death. There is only redemption in life and that depends on how we each behave and what we contribute. Status and possession mean nothing. And yes, I realise that does not say much for me and the way I lived and behaved in London.
Our understanding that we do not remain separate entities on death was easy, although I want to say more about that. The concept of rebirth was anything but easy for us to understand and, in the end, we couldn’t accept it. That, I suppose, means that many would think we are not true Buddhists. It was Mahendra, our guru, who helped us with that and put it into very simple context.
However, we do believe the essential tenet of Buddhism that we all belong to one whole, that we are defined by our contribution to that whole, to God. The belief that we held seemed to lie at the heart of the four noble truths - that all life involves dukkha or suffering, that the origin of suffering is attachment or craving for worldly phenomena, that if we rid ourselves of attachment and craving we end our suffering and that the route to rid ourselves of that is to follow the eightfold path of rightful living. All that we did believe – all that I do believe still.
The Buddhist monks in the camp taught the message of tolerance and compassion which so underlies the eightfold path but also, we realised, typified Christ’s teachings. The monks’ practise, in Buddhist terms, ‘drupai chopa’ which means the setting of example by living your life according to principles of someone you revere – that the best thing you can do is to set an example of how a principled life might be led, even though recognising the quality of other argument, principles and beliefs. In that way it didn’t matter what followers of other religions might believe and, for instance, what better example is there of a principled life worthy of being revered than that of Christ?
The tolerance that the monks showed to other religions was visible at the camp because most religions were to be found among those who helped there – charity tends to attract religion. As one monk explained to me: in a world where there is so much diversity of culture and history, why should there be any expectation that all people would find and observe one universal religion? Why should Buddhists not also revere Christ, who bore and accepted so much suffering so as to lead others to the path of rightfulness or enlightenment through the redemption of sin? Why should Mohammed not be revered for his godliness and principles of right thinking? Unlike the Christians, and other religious followers at the camp, Theravadan Buddhists did not see the quest for conversion to their way of thinking as being their hidden or overt duty - why should conversion to another’s beliefs be the right thing?
Before Josh came back to Sri Lanka I had met Mahendra at the camp. I kept getting his full Sri Lankan name wrong so, in the end, it was me that gave him that name after the monk who is said to have brought Buddhism to Sri Lanka over two thousand years ago. He is the wisest and holiest man I have ever met. He wore a purple civara which he somehow kept immaculately clean, must have been aged about fifty, was incredibly thin and seemed to smile constantly. He is a very clever man, a committed monk, who speaks English very well. In those first three months here, I only spoke to him occasionally but I had seen him speaking to other people, so I knew what he was like. Therefore, after the conversation between me and Josh on the benches in September, I asked Mahendra whether we could also come to see him because we needed help on matters of faith and he agreed. Typically of the Mahendra that we both grew to know so well and admire so deeply, the way forward for us that he suggested was challenging but simple.
‘Why don’t you help me teach the children about Buddhism?’ he asked. Mahendra was not only clever but he knew how to work people. He realised that by teaching others we would have to learn ourselves. Teaching can be the best way of learning.
‘But neither of us knows enough about Buddhism to teach it. We are not Buddhists,’ Josh told him.
‘Then teaching will help you learn and you can also teach them about Christ.’
‘But surely it would not be right for us to do that. Surely, if anything, they should learn about the Tripitaka and other sutras?’ Josh knew his religions.
‘What the sutras teach about the right way of life and what Christ taught about rightful living are not so very different. They are just expressed differently and bear different traditions. Maybe we should work together to teach the children about what is the same within the two great religions, rather than emphasising the differences.’
‘But I have lost my faith in the Christian religion, so how can I teach them about Christ?’ Josh said.
‘Then who is Christ?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Was Christ a real person?’
‘Yes.’ Josh was finding this uncomfortable.
‘Then, maybe, we should all listen more carefully to what he said.’
‘Well both of you are streets ahead of me’ was the best I could contribute. Beyond that I kept out of it.
‘And, maybe, if we work together, I can help you to find the path to faith once again and maybe you can learn from the children that you teach. Maybe you need to find a new road to faith,’ Mahendra smiled.
Mahendra did not give way when faced with difficult conversations. He had a way of keeping them on the agenda and getting us to think about them ourselves without providing us with answers.
‘Think about it. Meditate on it, my friends. And please let me know.’
After Mahendra had left, Josh and I discussed what he had said.
‘This is more your province than mine,’ I began.
‘No it isn’t. I am not doing this on my own. The kids would eat me alive.’
‘And me? Anyway, I would like to try it. Only I don’t have the first clue how to go about it.’
So we talked about it between ourselves and kept turning to Mahendra for help. Although we both read everything that we could about Buddhism, it was Mahendra who taught us about the meaning of Buddhist philosophy. I think that he enjoyed escaping into our intellectualised rationalisation of faith which amounted, for him, to a break from the demands of his other work at the camp. Over about two months in the autumn of 2005 we spent at least one evening a week with h
im talking and he listened and listened as we edged our way forward.
‘It’s a bit like confirmation classes,’ I joked at one point.
‘Reminds me of being back at university.’ That’s very much how it felt. The stillness of academic challenge, being with someone who knew so much more than we did and looked at things with a much broader mind than either of us had experienced before.
Try as I might, I could not cope with the obscurity of some of the doctrines and language of Buddhism which often left me frustrated and distant. The words felt alien. But Mahendra made it simple and explained things with infinite patience. It was Mahendra who showed us both that God is a concept, not a separate or definable being. That God is love. God is compassion and God is tolerance. God is everything and so God is great because nothing can be greater.
He also taught us that human nature is more disposed towards compassion and affection than towards anger. Anger is destructive to human nature rather than a reflection of it, it is loss of control; that is why religious wars are a denial of their own stated purposes. He showed us that all human beings share the same nature and capacity for rightful living, whatever their circumstances might be although the more possessions people have the more difficult it is for them to abandon suffering – the more you have the harder it is to lose it.
The Water Is Warm Page 27
