Post #23: “Thank You for Being”

21 May 2023

I'm not one to scorn gratitude in any form, but there is something missing here: Thank you for being ... what? For being my friend, for being there or coming through for me on some occasion, or for being thoughtful in your actions—for something that makes the expression more than yet another vacuous sentimentalism of the sort in which our age seems to be specializing. That the dubious phrase is meant to express friendly intentions, I understand, and I grant that the consideration should probably override everything else. But finding the right words matters because they are not just empty hulls to be filled with anything one pleases, but carriers of meaning or confusion, as the case may be. A Buddhist perspective, which is nothing if not sharp-witted (and sharp-tongued) about the fundamentals of existence should leave us especially attentive to choosing our expressions a little more carefully.

So I don't mean to depreciate the appreciation, which in this case came from a dear friend (thank you, Chris!), and which I’ve heard from others of a similarly sympathetic disposition (may they not take these reflections amiss, please). I just think that such phrases needs to be given a bit more shape and substance if they are to be more than cloudy effusions of undifferentiated good-will and nothing more—like the utterly debased “How are you?” for example, which practically never expresses any real interest in someone’s well-being, and even less in his or her troubles. When the Zensters speak of emptiness, they are not denying the need for pointedness and contours: look at their gardens and paintings, which are the very antitheses of fuzzy-feely blobs.

Uncomfortable as it may be, given how much we like to pride ourselves on our human lives, there is nothing meritorious or admirable about existence itself from a Dhammic perspective; the Buddha even likened it to feces, as I've already mentioned in an earlier post, because it is so tainted by the three poisons of ignorance, craving, and aversion. To be more precise the Teaching goes even further and insists that all existence is never more, if one looks closely enough, than Dukkha arising, that is, suffering or at least dissatisfaction, however subtle it may be. Of course a human birth is still said to be enormously fortunate, as the Pali scriptures stress with all kinds of extravagant metaphors; but that is not because our state is so enviable per se, but because it compares so favorably with being born into one of the millions of hideous insect species on our planet, for example, or even with the lives of the gods who get their curious cameos in the Pali scriptures and who, in their aloof Olympian grandeur, remain preoccupied with their endless games of beach volleyball until, at long last, their time too comes to an end according to the Buddhist cosmology. Unlike the wretched animals and the complacent gods, we are just comfortable enough to make a sustained push for liberation possible, while we remain miserable enough to spur us on towards finding a way out of the maelstrom maze of Samsara.

We none of us choose to come into this world, but we do decide to stay. So one could take the expression as thanking someone for sticking around—in the lofty signification, a bodhisattva remaining in Samsara to help others find a way out, in a more everyday sense, an ordinary worldling continuing to shoulder the burdens and responsibilities of existence, to keep rolling the bolder up the hill time and again rather than opt for a violent exit. Only I doubt that the sentiment above is often meant quite that way: “Thank you for not hanging yourself when there is such ample cause and occasion for it!” Well...

Another variation on the theme is the even more deplorable “Thank you for being you.” Who else am I supposed to be, pray tell, if not myself? You? Frank? Chopped liver? And what cause for celebration could there be in this rather unremarkable state of affairs, I being I, at least in the mundane sense? But the real meaning of the phrase, you may protest, is to express fondness for me and my personality! Very well, then, and thank you very kindly, but I would still like to know what part of me deserves such commendation.

To suggest that all of me is equally praiseworthy and likable betrays either woeful ignorance of who I am in fact—defined as much by my shadow side as by anything bright and beautiful about me—or abject flattery, or else a disregard for the human condition so blatant and fatuous that one can only shake one’s head at it in sorrow. Such wishful thinking, or rather, such delusion in the face of the harsh facts of life, gets us nowhere, and it looks especially ill-considered from a Buddhist perspective, which insists that we get reborn on account of our unresolved karmic business, not because we are such finished and compelling beings. The rebirth part may be doubtful, but the terrible flaws in our makeup are not, and anyone who has trouble seeing them may need to take a closer look at himself, at his neighbors, and at the history books. Yatha-bhuta: like it or not, we must face things as they are, not as we want them to be.

The task that is being evaded here, friendly intentions or not, is that of thinking sufficiently about what sets someone apart from others to find something praiseworthy that is not trivial or tautological, and not true of everyone. (Or would you glow with pleasure at being told that you are wonderful for being just like everyone else, even if it is true, or perhaps especially then? Right, and nobody else would either.) The upshot, then, upon a very little reflection, is that the kind of pleasantry we are dealing with here is not very charming and thoughtful at all if one tugs a little at its masquerade. The road to hell, when it comes to wretched expressions, can be paved with good and bad intentions alike.

These unavailing turns of phrase seems to be connected to a more general trend in our age towards a single great aspiration, almost to the exclusion of everything else, common sense included, namely that of becoming perfectly indiscriminate even at the cost of being inarticulate and blurry, and not saying anything of substance because it might—horror of horrors—give micro-offense to someone's overactive (and overly reactive!) grievance radar. Under mortal dread of not being found inclusive enough—as if that were the only good in the world, and not just one among many others—things turn ever more vacuous and banal until, in the end, even when you are trying to say something kind it turns out to have no substance left.

Alas, as our brave new world will discover sooner or later if it is not going to sink into total incomprehension and oblivion, where we fail to make adequate distinctions, we fail to give adequate meaning also, and where the avoidance of all possible offense becomes the measure of all things we will soon find it impossible to communicate anything of real value as well. As we lose what remains of our capacity for intelligent discrimination in the sense the word originally carried, we will be choked by the hot winds of confusion and inanity, and our mental landscape will become covered not in the lush greens we may hope for, but by the arid sands and monochrome hues of the desert, the pretense of the rainbow spectrum held up outwardly while inside the heads a disturbing uniformity prevails on all sides, at least insofar as they have any claims on social respectability.

Mind you, I am no more fond of reducing everything to black and white, nor of screaming reds, blues, and yellows clashing violently over every issue under the sun; nonetheless, almost anything seems better to me, or at least less dispiriting, than the drab and flabby folly that is fast becoming the signature of our age. What is the use of salt if it does not sting? (The fact that Luther said it does not make it right, but it doesn't make it wrong either.) But sting it must not, so we eliminate it from our official diet, as not being good for our blood pressure anyway. Only the sugars remain, for now, or rather the saccharine substitutes with fewer calories, though they don't seem to do much for keeping anyone in better shape. Bon appetit. Or better still, Non merci, l'addition, s'il vous plaît.

The dawning age of the bland and inoffensive at any cost bodes ill not only for the culinary arts and the refinements of taste more generally, it threatens the very salt of the earth. The one-eyed man, in such a world, will not be made king over the blind, as Erasmus hopefully anticipated, he will be hounded as a dangerous deviant, shunned and shamed, and above all, shut up. Just how bad the situation has already gotten is not easy to say; there can be islands of calm even in the midst of a raging storm, and it is anyway not always possible to judge the true state of things when the sound and the fury is so deafening, even if it may not signify much in the end.

Adam Smith used to tell the doomsayers who saw calamity behind every corner that there was much ruin in a country, and by extension, there must be much more ruin still in the world at large. But mental culture is a more tender plant than we may think; it requires much watering and can wilt in a single generation if the ancient springs are neglected and allowed to dry up, let alone when they are willfully destroyed and the vital lines of transmission blocked or cut that have served and sustained us for centuries, sometimes millennia. Yes, it may still be possible to restore some of the lost splendor later, even much later, so long as the seeds are preserved, but that is a risky wager indeed. In the meantime, and in our day, cultural revolutions can do enormous damage and leave the fields of the spirit barren indeed.