The Best Buddhist Writing 2010 - Melvin McLeod [136]
The cultural challenges I see in North America are not so different from those I find in Europe, Asia, or the Himalayan mountain communities where traditional Buddhist values are most closely preserved. Because of their power for good or ill in our lives, we need to look sincerely at our cultural traditions and the place we give them in our society. On the one hand, there are cultural forms that retain the wisdom of previous generations and function as important sources of knowledge for us. On the other hand, there are cultural forms that don’t retain any of the wisdom they may once have held and that are utterly lacking in compassion. From the notion of untouchable castes in India, to the feudalistic rule of nineteenth-century Tibet, to the burning of witches in Europe and the slavery of Africans in America, painful and unjust practices devoid of sense or wisdom survived unchallenged for too long. When our thoughts and actions are dictated by powerful pressures from unreasonable social, religious, or cultural values, we can become stuck in a joyless place where we know nothing but suffering and further bondage. True wisdom is free of the dramas of culture or religion and should bring us only a sense of peace and happiness.
However, we’re often addicted to our dramas and fearful of the truth. If you want to see real drama, you don’t need to turn on your TV—it’s right there in your life, which is full of emotions, anxiety, and depression. And if you want to gossip about drama, you don’t need to go to a chat room. It’s happening right there in your thoughts. Even in this day and age, when we have so many material resources, comforts, and entertainments and distractions available 24/7, we find that we can’t get through the day without feeling a little bit depressed, and we don’t know how to enjoy ourselves without feeling guilty. Even when we have an almost perfect day, we find ourselves asking, “Do I really deserve this? Did I work hard enough to earn it?” Wherever there is ego-centered drama, there is suffering. It goes on and on until we see beyond this drama to the dharma of our true selves.
NOTHING HAPPENS
When I was studying at Columbia University and my teachers asked me to introduce myself to my classmates, I was speechless. I wasn’t sure who I really was. Was I Tibetan simply because of my parents, or was I Indian because I was born on that continent? Or was I neither—a stateless person without any citizenship? Having immigrated first to Canada and then to the United States, now when I go back to India for visits, everything seems a little foreign to me. My conversations with friends and former colleagues are different. We don’t always share the same sense of humor or everyday references anymore, and our values seem to be shifting. Here I go again; I am a foreigner in my own birth country and a stranger to my old friends. While it’s not surprising that I’d feel like a stranger at a county fair in the midwestern United States, it is surprising to feel like an alien in the place where I grew up. Now the only places I feel unnoticed and normal are on the subways and streets of New York City; in my first home in North America, downtown Vancouver; or in my Seattle basement apartment, where my day begins with a cup of coffee and ends with the Colbert Report in the evening. Who am I now, really? And what has happened to me? As the Sixteenth Karmapa once said, “Nothing happens,” so perhaps nothing has really happened