The Buddha's Hopeful Invitation to Our Human Family

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By Yūho Dick McMullen

Thanks to Koji Acquaviva's recommendation, I’m listening to a series of talks by John Peacock who is an English scholar of early Buddhism and a colleague of Stephen Batchelor.  In his fifth talk, he offers an insight into the Buddha’s teaching on suffering that offers a compassionate counterpoint to White conditioning and our political moment.

Consider first the teaching of John Calvin on humanness which flavors our Christianized and/or White self-images to this day. Calvin’s first principle was that humans live in a state of “total depravity.”  (Calvin (1509-1564) was perhaps the most influential Protestant minister of the Reformation in Europe after Martin Luther. Some Protestants still revere his teaching today.)  In Calvin's view, we inherited our physical and spiritual fall from grace from Adam and Eve, and so we suffer.  Importantly, we also have inherited their guilt.  Our human bodies are not gifts in which to find joy and inspiration but rather have become depraved sources of darkness and sin. In Calvin's time, a vociferous critic of the Christian doctrine of original sin (our original guilt) was burnt alive for heresy.

Today, many years later, we still live with this inherited sense of lack, of imperfection, and of guilt. Christianity, of course, offers divine atonement for our guilt and suffering.  Surprise, surprise, the Buddha thought differently about our suffering than we do.  In the early Pali texts Peacock explains, the Buddha never blamed his listeners for their suffering. The Buddha offered no “finger wagging” or moral tongue-lashing. There is no word in the early texts for guilt. Shame? Yes. Guilt? Never. Our suffering simply arises within our causes and conditions. The Buddha’s model of humanness offers us a balanced self-image and some real hope.

But what of Whiteness?  If humans are totally depraved and we, the Civilized White Christians of the Reformation, form the community to which God has vouchsafed truth and holiness, then how do we feel about everyone else?  Here lies the theological heart of European Whiteness and racism: all other human cultures and human persons are spiritually guilty and need conversion (read: colonization) or should receive punishment. Even the natural world is trapped in our guilt-saturated darkness and needs civilizing. Indigenous peoples whom we have historically associated with wilderness have been deemed doubly guilty: unchristian and "wild." We justified pushing Indigenous peoples off their "uncivilized" land by asserting we would civilize it and Christianize them.  This is Manifest Destiny's racial cruelty, theologically justified.

The contrast could not be more stark. In the Christianized West, we have inherited a lifeway of guilt, competition, and control. The Buddha taught us to turn towards each other with compassion, openness, and inclusivity. We can choose between guilt needing atonement and suffering begging for equanimity. What better message for our current political contest? What better message for White nationalism and White masculinity?

The Buddha is inviting the human family to come together.  Let's do it, starting right here.

With love for all of you, my friends in our sangha,

Yūho Dick McMullen

P.S. If you’ve read this far, you can find Peacock’s lectures here: AudioDharma - Buddhism Before the Theravada from Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. John Calvin’s life is described here: John Calvin - Wikipedia.

P.P.S. Some branches of Christianity understand the cruelty of Manifest Destiny and are actively working to repair it. See Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery – The Episcopal Church. Also, Doctrine of Discovery and Rights of Indigenous Peoples | Doctrine of Discovery and Rights of Indigenous Peoples | UUA.org.

Yūho Dick McMullen (he/him) arrived at Clouds in Water Zen Center the first Sunday of November, 2017 a stranger to Buddhism but with an intention to find a life-way rooted in goodness. Since that Sunday, Yūho has attended classes and meditation retreats, found friendships, served in volunteer opportunities, and received the precepts in Jukai from Sosan Theresa Flynn. Yūho served for a short time on our Ethics and Reconciliation Committee. Yūho is currently a member of the Temple Stewards ryo and volunteers during Sunday morning services. Yūho is also a member of one of the Racial Awareness Groups for White practitioners formed by Clouds in Water members and others after Ruth King's visit to Hamline University in 2019.