reincarnation

Recently, I read a column on Slate.com (I think) critical of how Buddhism has unfolded in modern America.  Pretty much everyone I know has been influenced by the rise of interest in Buddhism, plus I have found myself close personal friends with a chick Zen Buddhist priest with her own little zendo/church. One of my current best friends has considered herself a Buddhist for almost forty years, although recently she has started going to weekly mass at an Episcopal church.

Everyone I know, just about, espouses rhetoric that is definitely Buddhist influenced, such as the belief that each human is totally responsible for creating their own experience. Or equanimity.  Everyone I know uses the word equanimous, typically when they are telling me I am not being equanimous enough, which is not, um, very Buddhist of them. What happened to their self responsibility? If we are completely self responsible for our own experience, we aren't, in a logical belief system, responsible for other people's experiences.  But what about the Buddhist attitude of affirming happiness for all beings? That can be interpreted as influencing another person's experience, right? Maybe it is okay, for a Buddhist and, maybe, non-Buddhists, to have positive wishes for others but to be equanimous about whatever happens to others and ourselves?

I am not presenting Buddhism accurately, I am sure. I don't want to.  I am not a Buddhist. I have not studied Buddhism. But I have been to lots of Vipassana ten-day silent retreats, which are definitely Buddhist.

And that reminds me of another thing about Buddhism. There are endless streams of Buddhism, just like there are all kinds of permutations of "Christian". There are Roman Catholics, there are Southern Baptists, there are Seventh Day Adventists.  I have heard, from the Showtime television comedy show called 'Big Love', which is about a polygamous family with one husband, three (and sometimes four) wives, three houses, lots of kids and complexity. Polygamy is not 'allowed' in Mormonism anymore but it used to be and I guess some folks still practice polygamy, although they aren't allowed to consider themselves, technically, Mormons. It's bad PR for Mormons to allow polygamous families to say they are Mormon, plus they aren't Mormon if they are polygamous. Anyway, I am aware, honest, that a television comedy is not a good source for my knowledge of Mormonism but I don't want to invest any of my life force in learning more.  My silly point, which I base on a TV comedy, is that, based on episodes in the comedy show that presented some details of Mormon faith, is that Mormons consider themselves Christian. I guess they believe Jesus Christ existed and had some good ideas but then the Mormon founder came along and enhanced on JC's work? There is some very crazy shit in Mormonism but they present themselves as Christians.

And what about Scientology?  One thing I like about Scientology -- I know more about Scientology than Mormonism because I have been proselytized by some fervent Scientologists plus when Tom Cruise flipped out on Oprah about Katie Holmes, some news stories mentioned weird aspects of Scientology. And then there was Tom Cruise's weird insults to Brooke Shields who said in a tv interview that she used antedepressants for her post-partum depression. What business was it of Tommy's to lecture Ms. Shields to not use drugs for depression? And then, still with Tommy, I read that Scientologists are not allowed to use any pain killers while giving birth. So I know weird shit details about a weird shit religion.

And then there are cults that fly below the mainstream media radar, like the John Rogers cult, which is still going. Ariana Huffington used to be one of John Rogers' top followers. Her involvement with that cult damaged her gay husband's campaign to become a U.S. Senator. The Rogers cult sounds a lot like science fiction.

And we all know, or we all can know if we care, that Scientology was 'founded' by a guy who started out writing science fiction. Then he realized he could get rich quicker with religion.

Hey, I am not saying that the wild explanations for life that Scientology or Mormons or Buddhists or Catholics offer are wrong. Nobody knows this shit for sure.  Humans long for explanations to the meaning of life. Nobody knows what's going on, why we are here. Why are we here individually and collectively?

The column on Buddhism upset me because the writer was very critical of Buddhism. I am not a Buddhist. I am not anything. But I have grown attached to the idea of reincarnation. Reading one short column critical of Buddhism, I felt a wave of despair. I don't remember anything the column said but I guess I got the impression the writer was skeptical about the idea of reincarnation.

I think this life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and way too fucking long, to paraphrase Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.  I think life sucks. I can also think life is magical, majestic, reverent, celebratory, loving and gobsmacking gorgeous.

But when I read that 'column', which was not even as long as this blog post I am writing, and I read skepticism about reincarnation, suddenly I believed in nothing. I reverted to the atheist I believed myself to be for several years in my early twenties. Back then, I believed I was a meaningless speck of matter in a meaningless, albiet sometimes incandescent, cosmos.

I don't want to be a meaningless speck in a meaningless universe. I want life to have meaning.  I want life to be about love. Mostly I want to be loved and to be loving. Nothing is stopping me from loving but being loved seems like an elusive, impossible magic that other people get but I don't. Even as I write these dreary thoughts, I am thinking of people who love me.

Life is hard.  My life sucks. Let me have reincarnation.