My faith in poetry

When I was in my early twenties I began searching for greater meaning to life. My wife, who had yet to turn into a witch, was expecting our first child, and it was the wonder of this above all else that convinced me there had to be more to life than was presented to the senses. And it was the birth of the child, my daughter Heather, and the heavy societal expectation she would be baptised, that delivered me into the hands of the Church of England.

I tried to be a Christian, I really did. I got up on Sunday mornings and attended mass, shook hands with other worshippers, wishing them the peace of the Lord with my sincerest smile, knelt for wafers and cloying wine, went to tea parties, invited all my friends and family to my confirmation. Jesus, I even tried bell ringing. I turned a blind eye while my parish priest got his bishop to sanction his marriage to a divorcee. (I was later, after my divorce from The Wicked One, denied the right to remarry in the Church of England.) And all the while I tried to persuade myself that, if I just persevered, I would come to believe there was a god.

My poem "The great key" tries to capture that burning schizoid desire to believe in things my senses told me were utterly false, to persevere with patterns of behaviour and speech that felt, even at the time, dishonest and debasing. Ironically my behaviour became more devout and evangelical the stronger my doubts grew. And if "schizoid" seems strong, let me tell you a year after I first walked into a church I was on medication for anxiety and depression, so it's not a million miles off the mark.

(Incidentally "The great key" is based on a true story. I recently decided to visit the parish church in the village I have lived in for sixteen years. I had never been inside it, but when I went I found the door locked.)

My recovery from Christianity was effected not by medicine, but by philosophy. Plato's Symposium was my starting point, but I was subsequently counselled by Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, Locke, Hume, Nietzsche  Marx, Mill, Sartre, Russell, Dennett. And Voltaire, oh Voltaire. I learned that there are no right answers, or at least there is no one right answer (but no unanswerable questions either), I learned to appreciate the rich and unfathomable complexity of the world, and I also learned to tolerate, even to embrace, ambiguity.

One day I read an article in New Scientist about the beneficial effects of Buddhist mindfulness meditation, which it claimed induced neurological changes that made practitioners happier and more focused. I didn't know how to meditate, but I live quite close to the headquarters of the Buddhist Society in London, so I decided to go to one of their courses to learn more. By the second week of the course I was so fascinated by Buddhism itself that I completely lost sight of my original aim, and by the end of the course was willing to call myself a Buddhist.

• I do not believe there is a god, nor that there being one would explain anything.
• I do not believe in an afterlife, nor do I feel any need to believe in one.
• If there is a heaven or a hell, I believe this is it.
• I believe we are reborn every moment we live, that everything that happens happens now.
• I feel no need to explain how this world came to be, nor how it will end.
• I believe that what we do is more important than what we believe.

This is not an exhaustive statement of my beliefs, but just enough, I hope, to explain how my predisposition to religion and immersion in philosophy and science perfectly readied me to accept the Buddhist view. For all of these "beliefs" are compatible with, if not fundamental to, Buddhism. I say "beliefs", but the it would be more accurate to say I considered them as propositions and found them to be either true, or at least helpful as heuristics, useful ways of dealing with the world. I put my faith in them in the same way as I put my faith in my senses.

And of course this new faith has found its way into my poems, too. A poem like "Waiting for the R Train", for instance, which deals with the real-life horror of facing imminent death, illustrates how it is the burdens our past regrets and hopes for an imagined future that prevent us living fully in the present. No one ever experiences their own death, of course, in the present, but only ever through anticipation. "Maiden flight" explores the same idea in a different way, its subject once again death but this time suicide, and once again we experience the liberation from casting off attachment - to mistakes from the past and to shattered hopes for the future. It's not quite nirvana, but doesn't suck.

In fairness to Christians let's remember that Jesus' parable of the birds said much the same thing.

Peace to all beings!

(c) 2013 Andy Hickmott

Beating up on the Buddha

I was saddened recently to learn that 'Buddha' could be a term of abuse. One can not imagine British newspapers using ‘Jesus Christ’ or ‘the prophet Muhammad’ in a derogatory sense, but, over the Easter weekend, at least 500 news stories appeared in the press or online using the term 'little Buddhas' to depict spoilt children, whose character flaws include laziness, hedonism and an inability to concentrate at school.

As a Buddhist my first reaction was sorrow that so many prominent voices could be attached to such ignorant minds. The very essence of Buddhist teaching — Buddhism 101, if you will — concerns training the mind to concentrate effectively on what is important. This Buddhist practice of mindfulness is empirically proven to improve concentration. As taught by the Buddha some 2,600 years ago, it would seem to be of great value in addressing some of the very flaws the so-called 'little Buddhas' are said to exhibit.

If such ignorance among journalists is saddening, a similar level of ignorance among scientists - scientists who purport to be experts in the origins of religious experience and thought, no less - is quite shocking, particularly disappointing to my rational mind.

S. Jay Olshansky, writing in New Scientist (7 April 2012), professed that the wellspring of all religions is a quest for immortality. He (the ‘S’ is short for Stuart) goes on to laud a new book by a fellow scientist, Stephen Cave, which asserts, in true reductionist style, that all societies rely on one of four narratives to assuage their fearful knowledge of their own mortality. Among these 'narratives' are plans ‘B... resurrection’ and ‘C... the soul’. Since plans ‘A’ and ‘D’ are not applicable to religion, and given the reviewer’s own expressed views and professed expertise, one must deduce that one or both of plans ‘B’ and ‘C’ are supposed by Olshansky and Cave to apply to Buddhist societies, which have existed for over half of man’s recorded history, and to Buddhists of today whom number some half a billion people (and ought therefore to be a touchstone for any credible theory).

I am well aware that such assumptions are commonplace, though most people who hold them would realize that that is all they are: assumptions. Let us restate them baldly: the quest for immortality, the desire to be reborn, the possession of a soul.

Now let us look at what the Buddha actually taught. The ultimate goal of Buddhist practice is nirvana (nibbana in Pali), which is a condition in which one ceases to be ‘reborn’, by which the Buddhist means that one's previous actions no longer control (or 'condition') one's life. Buddhist philosophy is emphatic that there is no soul, no permanent ‘self’ that experiences life and could live on after the death of one’s body. In fact, Buddhism insists that nothing can be permanent (impermanence in Buddhist philosophy is one of the three signs of existence, and therefore applies to all conditioned things). Buddhists aim to achieve peace in this life, not any other, by following a sensible ‘middle path’ between extremes, and by concentrating on what really matters.

Perhaps Buddhism is misunderstood because it does not seek to evangelise. Compassion and tolerance are central to the teaching, for the simple reason that hatred and intolerance are harmful to oneself. Perhaps it's because I'm quite new to the religion that I still care a little what other people think. I hope that this explanation improves people’s knowledge and understanding, and is helpful to them to this extent.


(c) 2012 Andy Hickmott