The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God (30 page)

COUNSEL: This full Enlightenment - does it mean shedding your humanness and putting on (or revealing) your divineness? So that you emerge as some sort of a god, or the Buddhist equivalent of God?

WITNESS: Buddhism recognizes no God. No, the Buddha is a perfect human.

COUNSEL: Which of the Buddha’s merits does the Accused notably lack, in your experience of him?

WITNESS: I get the impression, though I can’t prove it, that at times he’s worried, tired, cross, bored, petty, irritated, fed up to the gills. Certainly I know him well enough to assure the court that he’s a million miles short of Buddhahood. Nor is this surprising: the long haul to perfection doesn’t interest him. Several times I’ve heard him say he can’t be bothered with the rigours of what we Buddhists call the Eightfold Noble Path, which combines moral discipline with a variety of meditational practices. He maintains that these are, at best, optional extras, so many arbitrary hurdles set up for training purposes. Publicly and tirelessly, he says he’s arrived at Buddhism’s goal of perfection in no time at all and on his own; and to blazes with the endless foot-slogging, the numerous stages and the hard going between stages, that Buddhists have, over all these centuries, found unavoidable. Which is like supposing that, because you happen to be quite exceptionally handy with a penknife, you can not only operate on yourself for appendicitis, but get yourself elected to the Royal College of Surgeons; and moreover, talk a lot of other far less skilled penknifers into following your example.

COUNSEL: How do regular Buddhists react to the news that they themselves are setting up formidable barriers and hazards, to lengthen out a fifteen-second sprint into an age-long obstacle race?

WITNESS: Some admire and are puzzled. Some are indifferent. Some are shocked. A few are very angry. But most are confused, because at times John a-Nokes seems to be a species of Buddhist, at other times not a Buddhist at all, occasionally an anti-Buddhist; and, increasingly of late, some kind of Christian, one gathers.

COUNSEL: Is it true that not a few Buddhists think he’s poking fun at what they hold sacred, and pouring contempt on the Blessed One? Committing what amounts to blasphemy?

WITNESS: Well, yes. But I think -

COUNSEL: I gather that aiming to become a Buddha - or is it the Buddha? - isn’t quite the same as aiming to become Almighty God? In which case, what’s the difference?

WITNESS: There’s all the difference in the world, most experts would say. Buddhism can fairly be described as an atheistic religion. It denies the existence of an individual self, let alone a Universal Self. However, for the profoundest Christian mystics (such as Meister Eckhart), the Godhead is the absolutely impersonal and ineffable Source and Reality and Truth behind appearances; and as such isn’t all that different from what we Buddhists call our Buddha Nature. On the other hand, Theravada Buddhism, with its principle of karma and reaping what you sow, is poles apart from Christian dogmas about guilt, vicarious suffering, and salvation.

COUNSEL: So, in conclusion, you regard the Accused’s claim that he stands on the topmost spiritual peak - call it Full Enlightenment, or Nirvana, or Buddhahood, or Godhood, or what you will - as a false claim? And moreover, one that scandalizes followers of a great and ancient but very alive religion?

WITNESS: I have to agree. Though -

COUNSEL: And you agree that to induce others - particularly the easily-led young - to follow him is to mislead them? Corrupt them, even?

JUDGE, going red and pounding away: Even in this Trial there are limits to how far I will allow the leading and the gagging of witnesses. You’re putting your words into the Witness’s mouth and stopping his words coming out.

COUNSEL, between his teeth, his voice reduced to a stage whisper: Your Honour pleases to instruct the Crown how to conduct itself?

JUDGE: Precisely! [Counsel flings down his brief, pushes back his wig, and mops his brow...]

WITNESS, in a marked manner, all Buddhist calm: I’m quite sure of three things, Your Honour. That John a-Nokes stands way above the pea-soup fog that most of us are groping about in. That, in so far as I’m clear of that mental and spiritual miasma, it’s because he showed me the way up. And that both of us have a lot more climbing to do before we get to the topmost peak where the mountain air is perfectly healthy and transparent. Let me add that, if he’s held up temporarily, that’s his own affair. Let’s say he’s having a rest and a nap, and pleasant dreams about what lies at the end of the climb.

COUNSEL, a little more calmly: I turn to you, members of the jury. The Witness’s concluding tribute to his one-time friend (should I call it his last-minute attempt to make amends?) may be praiseworthy but is certainly irrelevant, and should be ignored.

It doesn’t erase a syllable from his statement that the Accused is by no means the exalted Being he claims to be, that he misleads the young into making the same claim, and that he publicly outrages some Buddhists by perverting and putting down what they hold sacred.

The relevance of this testimony to the charge against him will not be lost on you.

As for the Witness’s high opinion of the Accused personally: it only lends weight to his evidence against the man, to the effect that he is indeed guilty as charged. Once more, the adverse testimony of a witness like this - one who’s prejudiced in favour of the Accused - is worth that of two neutral witnesses

Defence:
Paths to Perfection

MYSELF, to Witness: Buddhism, I think you’ll agree, is a vast umbrella sheltering hugely different varieties of itself. For brevity let’s label them the popular or folk Buddhism of the East, evangelical Pure Land Buddhism, zany or baffling Zen, ultra-puritanical Theravada, ultra-relaxed Tantra, the miscellany of picturesque and fantastical cults comprising Tibetan Buddhism, and so on - to say nothing of their countless subdivisions. Instead of ‘varieties of itself’ I could almost have said ‘parodies and contradictions of itself.’

WITNESS: You are about right. All the same, there are common factors.

MYSELF: We shall be glancing at one or two of them. Meantime, surely, room can be found under that marquee-like umbrella for the odd new development?

WITNESS: It had better be. Buddhism is a living religion.

MYSELF: Well, then, in the course of my cross-examination I hope to persuade you that my own variety of Buddhism (I never did belong to the Aching-legs School) is by no means so far out that it couldn’t possibly nose its way under that umbrella. Moreover, I hope to prove - what’s very much to the point in court here - that it deserves to be included without exciting any more scandal and accusations of blasphemy than other varieties of Buddhism excite. Varieties whose age conveniently masks their quite amazing boldness and oddity - including calculated insults to the Buddha - and lends sanctity to what it can’t hide.

WITNESS: Well, I’m open to persuasion.

MYSELF: Let’s go straight to the heart of the matter - to the Void or Emptiness that you and I find to be nearer than near. Isn’t it also - I ask you - clearer than clear, perfect from the start? You implied that it gets more lucid with practice. Surely you didn’t mean that?

WITNESS: I must admit that, looking within, I can never see a hazy or spotty Void, or a mere profile or feature of what the Zen people call my Original and faceless Face. No - it’s an all-or-nothing sight. Yet, mysteriously, there seems to be a steady brightening and clarification over the years. More likely it’s the associated feelings, the meaning, above all the steadiness and continuity of the seeing, which mature with practice. Not the vision itself.

MYSELF: We are agreed, then, that the first sighting of one’s Void is the same as the last; and that, if there’s a race on, it’s one in which the starting line and the finishing line obligingly rush together. But of course, as you insist, there’s a sense in which they stay far apart and there’s much effort to be put in, stern discipline to be subjected to, regular meditation to be practised. Now you’ve said in evidence that I don’t meditate. That’s libel, and you know it! What did you mean? What
is
meditation, anyway?

WITNESS: Don’t give me that one! Why, the very first time we met, you said that meditation - sitting meditation, with folded legs and straight back - was not for you. Well, I never held that this or any other posture is absolutely essential for spiritual growth, but only that it’s a great help for most of us. Buddhism, as you know, isn’t any kind of body-training or physical yoga. It’s the practice of mindfulness, being awake to what’s going on. Normally we’re out to lunch, wool-gathering, in a coma, and a lot of practice is needed to snap out of it at will. More, to stay out of the coma. This is the discipline of Buddhism, and sitting in the right fashion helps it along.

MYSELF: It's in detail that my practice differs from yours. You sit still for hours daily in the lotus position, being mindful. I sit around in any old position, stand around and walk around and lie down and get up, as impulse and occasion demand, being mindful. You reserve a part of each day for formal sitting in the quiet of the meditation hall. I don’t divide my day into a sacred and a secular part: all of it is sacred, all of it is secular - and as mindful or attentive as I can make it. So now I find the commotion of the city is just as conducive to attention as is the peace of the countryside or my own room. The roaring world is my meditation hall.

WITNESS: We both aim at full wakefulness, but go about the training differently. However...

MYSELF: However, we come now to a huge, perhaps insuperable difference between us. Many, if not all, Theravada Buddhists assume - and you as good as stated outright - that a human being can be perfected, and hasn’t made the grade to Buddhahood till he is indeed perfect. Repeat, perfect! I say that no human being can ever, ever be radically reformed, let alone perfected. And anyway doesn’t need to be, seeing he’s absolutely perfect anyway - as the non-human Being he really, really is. I say that my Enlightenment is my ceasing to look for and to cultivate perfection in the wrong place, out there in my human region, and instead to find it shining brightly in the right place, here at my Centre. From where it lights up the world.

This issue between us is crucial. In fact, it’s what this Trial is all about. As we look into it together now, let’s keep in mind Santayana’s warning: ‘Nothing requires greater intellectual heroism than willingness to see one’s own equation written out.’

WITNESS: You can have your intellectual heroism. I’ll content myself with men and women as they are - and
as they could be.
You are going by the folk you know. Prove to me that they could never, given the time and the training, become Buddhas. Which is to say perfect.

MYSELF: I’ll do so twice over. Here’s number one: The notion that human nature is a sow’s ear you can make a divine silk purse out of is so ridiculous, when you come to think of it, it’s not worth refuting. Why, the mere fact that it’s
human
nature - and not also lion nature and dolphin nature and hummingbird nature (to say nothing of bedbug nature and so on
ad infinitum)
- means that it’s only a tiny fragment of Nature!

And here’s number two: Just think of a man without desire, without any weaknesses, thinking only perfect thoughts and feeling only perfect feelings! What sort of fairground monster would he be, for Buddha’s sake? A man with no shadow side to him at all! I, for one, would run a mile from such a freak. It’s a man that has failings and limitations and doubts and a silly side to him, and is honest about it all, who warms and moves my heart. One who hasn’t, and isn’t, leaves me shivering and stone-cold. And incredulous. He’s no more real than a tentacled robot escaped from a horror movie.

WITNESS: A Buddha is a perfect human in the sense that a
perfect
rose is a perfect
rose.
Neither pretends to a perfection that lies outside its own nature.

MYSELF: You’re tying yourself in knots, Venerable Sir. First you say that Buddhahood is freedom from all limitations. Now you explicitly admit innumerable limitations. Besides, if you now define perfection as excellence of one kind as against excellence of countless other kinds, why then you strip the word of all meaning. Buddha Nature is perfect Buddha Nature. Wonderful! But equally, Devil Nature is perfect Devil Nature. Wonderful! And filth is perfect filth - perfectly filthy. Wonderful! And blasphemy is perfect blasphemy - perfectly blasphemous. Wonderful! All true, but not helpful!

Of course, like you, I would just love to straighten out and polish up my human self. It's God-awful! But, unlike you, I propose to do so by resting in my God-lovely non-human Self, in the expectation that perhaps a little something may rub off the latter on to the former. In which case the improvement, however marginal, will at least be real and not phony. Why? Simply because I shall be living from my true and central Buddha Nature into my peripheral human nature. Remaining a vulnerable man out there, I shall become a more natural man, poles apart from that monstrous (and, happily, quite mythical) creature who is invulnerable and perfect man. I shall be as truly human as a human can be.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, if you will please refer once more to Diagram No. 15, you will see at once what I mean [see Witness 15 The New Apocalyptic].

The two versions of oneself which it clearly distinguishes - the peripheral and the central - are in all respects diametric opposites. To merge them is nonsense and blasphemy and endarkenment. To distinguish them - and to go on to live that distinction - is Enlightenment, and also plain horse sense.