Smugness and Karma

Saturday Night Live’s opening sketch was a lampoon of last Tuesday’s first Presidential debate—an easy target for humor after some of the frustration and anger passed. Jim Carrey played Joe Biden to Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump. Toward the end of the sketch, Biden (Carrey) says that he believes in science and karma—a clear jab at the President’s current condition as having COVID-19—which the President may or may not have had at the time of the debate, but clearly did have by the time the sketch was written. It was all quite funny. And also satisfying in a disturbing way.

Ever since I learned of Trump’s illness on Friday, I have had many different emotions. Yesterday, someone asked me if, from the Zen perspective, it was OK to feel smug. I said ‘No.’ Of course we all feel and think many different things in response to any event. But when we actively take pleasure in the suffering of others who ‘deserve it’, we put ourselves on shaky ground.

The blindness of us human beings appears endless. I can think of many times I have been filled with righteous clarity only to later become aware how partial my view and my actions were. Again and again, I need to ask for forgiveness from myself and from others. And that’s just on the personal level. When I look in a larger frame, I can see that though my intentions may be good, I am enmeshed in systems that have done and continue to do horrific things to people who are just like me. The color of their skin and their circumstances may be different, but their hearts beat like mine and they love their children and grandchildren just like me.

‘The Zen perspective’ does not actually divide the world into good and bad. While the ten precepts of the Zen tradition sound very similar to the Judeo-Christian ten commandments, they function in a very different way. Rather than moral requirements, the precepts are teachings on how to align our lives more closely with what we love. Buddhism does not hold that there is some external being who is sitting in judgment on us and our actions. But the teachings of karma say that there are innumerable consequences to our thoughts, words and actions. Karma is not something you have to ‘believe in.’ Rather, like all Zen teachings, it is a description of what others have found as they have looked closely into what it means to be a human being.

One of the precepts is about speaking truthfully. This is not something that any of us ‘have’ to do, but most of us find out that when we do not speak truthfully, there are consequences that lessen the fullness of our lives. When we don’t speak truthfully, those around us may get angry or withdraw or become less reliable in their actions toward us. Or a host of other responses, both external and internal—most all of which will diminish our lives in some way. The teaching of karma is simply an observation of the surprising power of what we think, what we say and what we do.

President Trump is a pathological liar. He sows distrust and escalates fear wherever he goes. His actions have greatly divided and diminished our country both internally and internationally. I think he is unfit to be President and I am actively working to ensure that Joe Biden becomes our next President.

AND, I too am incapable of always speaking the truth. I too am blind. My actions (and inactions) are the cause of suffering that I cannot even imagine from my comfortable warm room this dark October morning.

Wishing harm to someone else, harms me. Of course it is natural and understandable – a mind-state that arises out of our frustration, anger and fear. Martin Luther King Jr., however, was clear in his great struggle against injustice that if we become like our enemies, if we fall into hating them as they seem to hate us, then they have won.

So let us all continue to work with renewed energy toward a brighter future where the President of this country sees their job as serving and works to unite ALL people in confronting the complex and dangerous issues we face.