Post #97: The Arctic Darkness and the Common Cold

18 Feb. 2024

     In the same week when a heroically courageous man about my age succumbed, in the darkness at noon of the Siberian winter, to the relentless persecutions of the Gulag redux, I’ve been finding myself undone, mind and body alike, by nothing graver than a common cold. Here a paragon of Stoical high principle (“You can destroy my body, but never my spirit”), there a petulant wretch whining his way through the days in the very bosom of peace and prosperity. An unedifying contrast.

     Looking from this unflattering, nay mortifying, angle into the mirror, I am nearly overcome with self-revulsion, flooded with the Stoical shame of knowing myself to be grotesquely inferior as I wallow in my unworthy state, a feeble contender, a man of infirm principles who lacks the will, or even the desire, to get his convictions into more rigorous, or vigorous, shape anymore. It is less a matter of deserving one’s sufferings than of inviting them, the Stoics and Buddhists would agree; either way, one cannot complain when one persists so willfully in one’s attachment to those things of the senses that subject one to the powers of others, and of circumstances, instead of cultivating the prescribed detachment.

     It is with some relief, in view of the doleful reflections thus suggested to me, that I remind myself of my own declared, diminutive status as a mere Beggar’s Buddhist—as a self of no substantial consequence, either in worldly or metaphysical terms. I am glad, at the end of this trying week, that there is no persistent I to settle scores with; it would not be a pretty reckoning. Not that I propose to use the self-no-self conundrum to absolve myself of the above embarrassments; no-self is not meant to serve as an excuse, especially where rights and wrongs or faults of character are concerned. The karmic bill for one’s failings always comes due in suffering. But it is soothing, in this case, to be a nobody, in every sense; it allows me to shrug sadly but resignedly at amounting to so little, then to shelve the disgust I might otherwise feel towards myself, and to bow all the more deeply before the memory of the stalwart figure that has just been taken from us.

     The Stoical sage blames nobody, not others and not himself. Needless to say, that is not me. Beginners get to blame others for fun, the kindergarten stage; slightly more advanced students in the spiritual middle school grades may blame themselves all they want. True Buddhists are taught to feel compassion for themselves as much as for others. Meanwhile the Beggar’s Buddhist finds himself in his usual muddle—not devoid of compassion, but also nowhere near to rising above blame or fretting, or to making peace with the paltry, puny thing that he must appear beside demonstrable stature, moral, spiritual, or worldly. He may not outright despise himself, or hate others on a good day; but he rarely finds himself impressed with either.

     But why, why so sorry a showing? What is behind it: lack of comprehension, of moral fiber, of resolve, of the right stuff? Is it faulty brain chemistry, bad programming or wiring, inadequate character, or an inferior constitution? Perhaps all of the above in conjunction? Yikes. But seriously now: how can one hear the lofty messages a thousand times, acknowledge them again and again, and yet continue to fall so pitifully short, year after year? I cannot say; I don’t understand the deeper, the truly underlying issues nearly well enough. I can only say how it looks to me, not why it is so, and since I do not properly comprehend karma any better, I cannot point to it by way of explanation either. Not that “poor karma” would be a good apology for anything.

The cold will pass, I mean my wretchedly petty one in the tropics; the cold and darkness in the hearts of men will not lift so easily. It doesn’t matter much whether I keep puttering on a little longer or not; what matters is that we have lost another remarkably brave and righteous man (not the first and not the last in this long, distinguished line) who would not back down before a thuggish and unscrupulous regime. He has made his sacrifice and is done with our cruel world; it is up to us to decide what to do with his memory and his example. May he rest in peace, where the goons can no longer reach him, only our prayers. Here’s to you, Alexei Navalny! I wish I had a worthier tribute to give you.