Quitting

"I am not a quitter." Hillary's oft-repeated words of defiance begin to sound increasingly hollow as her hope of winning fades, and her actions look more and more futile, even absurd. Is it a peculiarly American credo, I wonder, that one should never admit defeat; that it's somehow, well... unmanly to leave the field with as much grace and good timing as one can muster? We teach our kids, sternly, not to be quitters, as though this were the ultimate shame. We admire tenacity as a necessary corollary of the "American dream" and treat those we judge to be quitters with scorn.

Don't get me wrong: Tenacity is certainly an important quality, and one to be respected. Without it, much that is truly worthwhile would never be achieved. It's a sad--and somewhat pathetic--mistake, however, to treat "not quitting" as an absolute. An understanding of the art of quitting, I believe, is as important as knowing how to win and when to declare victory. (An example of when not to declare victory: "Mission Accomplished"!) I checked in Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" to learn from this ancient and still unparalleled source of wisdom on the subject of human conflict, and found this quotation: "Winning one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not real excellence, winning a victory and subduing the enemy without fighting is the highest excellence." Sun Tzu adds, elsewhere: "Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across."

There's wisdom for both Hillary and Barack here. For Hillary, it suggests that winning victories is not enough in itself, and that fighting against all odds is not the only way to win. There's a bigger picture than the one she has recently been looking at, and in that picture the victory of the Democratic party in November is infinitely more important than a couple more senseless, ego-saving skirmishes between now and the Democratic convention. In this light, "quitting" could be seen as an act of selfless generosity, a victory for the many over the victory for one.

On the other hand, I trust that Obama is already working on that golden bridge for Hillary to retreat across. It's vital for her to be able to make that transition with dignity, and with the sense of having accomplished something important in her struggle. It's also vital that there be room, on that golden bridge, for those who worked and voted for her, with passion. In this case, the act of quitting might be seen not as surrender but as the better part of valor.

Tattoos

I can't pass up the chance to talk about tattoos again! I mentioned the other day that I'm preparing a new podcast in my Art of Outrage series--one that will focus on a current exhibition called "Inner Battles of the Imaginary Male" curated by John Souza at the Andrew Shire Gallery. There will be more, certainly, about this show in a later entry, but for today I just want to report on an intriguing interview with one of the participating artists, Kip Fulbeck, whose contribution is a selection from a series of photographs published recently in book form under the title Permanence: Tattoo Portraits. The book includes photographs of both men and women with tattoos, with handwritten comments by the subject of each picture. The selection for the exhibition, of course, includes only male subjects and their comments.

The pictures are enormously powerful and revealing--portraits plus, if you will, because it's not only the photographic image of the person that speaks to us, but also the nature of their chosen body art and the comment that they choose to make, not to mention the affective quality of their handwriting. Here's Chuck Liddel, kick boxing champion:


(*images reproduced with permission from the artist)

The tattoo, by comparison with others in the series, is a very modest one, but his defiant comment is plenty powerful beside it. The artist told me, in our interview, that Liddell had been surprised by its frankness: he had never admitted to anyone before that his tattoo was a "fuck you" to the karate community.

Perhaps the most powerfully moving of these portraits is that of a New York firefighter who was reluctant to be photographed, and who agreed only on learning that Fulbeck, too, had been a brother firefighter. The artist flew to New York for the occasion, and the resulting picture (I have been unable to locate it in downloadable form) is guaranteed to grab you by the heartstrings: the subject's entire back is tattooed, on the right, with the image of the World Trade Center under attack and, on the left, by the names of his fellow firefighters who lost their lives. His handwritten comment is a terse "PAIN THERAPY", along with the number of his fire company. It took him quite a while, I understand, before he could commit to even this brief comment.

Tattooing is, as Fulbeck told me, in part about the pain. He sees it as a form of initiation and revolt, as well as an assertion of individual identity--something he should know about, having submitted to the tattooist's needle himself, with work by the Japanese master Takahiro Kitamura. Here he is, a handsome chap, as you'll agree:



You'll find out more about him here. I learned a great deal from him about tattooing in the few short minutes we spent together on the telephone. A poet, writer, performance and video artist as well as a photographer, he brings a depth of intellectual insight to the subject that gives context and breadth of meaning to the experiential. I'll be sure to let readers of The Buddha Diaries know when the podcast is posted, and I'm sure that you will enjoy the chance to hear this artist speak in his own words.

That Bunny...

(This piece is posted a day later than it might otherwise have been. I have the good fortune to be enjoying an unexpected visit from my son, who lives in Iowa and whom I have not seen in several years. I plan to spend as much time with him as possible while I have the chance.)

Following Tuesday's election results, it now seems that the indefatigable Hillary will keep running until her Energizer batteries expire. Who knows when that might be. You have to admire her energy. And so long as her determination does no harm to others, I say let her run--and to judge by the tenor of her "victory" speech after that narrow win in Indiana, it would seem that she may well intend to tone down her attacks on Obama. It also seems that, at this point, finally, the affair is settled. Run as she may, there's barely the remotest possibility that she could catch up, no matter how her people seek to move the goalposts.

I think it worth noting the dignity and restraint with which Obama, first, responded to the attacks that sought to bring him down over the past few weeks. He was able to absorb the punches Hillary and her gang delivered without responding in kind. He refused, generally politely but with firm insistence, to jump on the idiotic gas tax bandwagon, even at the risk of sacrificing votes. And his own victory speech in North Carolina eschewed any temptation to crow in favor of a return to the soaring rhetoric that earned him his following in the first place. Good to do that, now that he has established his credentials on the where's-the-beef front. As for those to accuse him of political naivete, I think that the history of his campaign is evidence enough of political competence.

To prevail, as he has done, with calm, consistent integrity to his own vision and with respect for the intelligence of the voters, is no mean achievement. No doubt the Republicans will find more mud to sling at him come the national campaign, but his performance to date suggests that it will be met with a similar ability to pursue his path unfazed by petty and irrelevant distractions. In this sense, Hillary has done him no small favor: she has given him every opportunity to show his strength and resilience under fire, and he has emerged from this battle victorious, and with his dignity intact. Good for him. May he continue to find the right way to speak to that vast majority of Americans who realize that their country has long been headed town the wrong path, and who seek to find a new and better one.

Von Boeselager, Revisited

You may recall that I was writing the other day about the Count von Boeselager, who died last week. Von Boeselager was the German officer who, in 1943, stood two feet from Adolf Hitler with a loaded gun and the assignment to assassinate the dictator. The assignment was called off at the last moment because the second target, Heinrich Himmler, failed to show up at the meeting as planned. But I was asking myself, with the teachings of the Buddha in mind, what I would have whispered in the ear of this man--who was already in the know about the death camps and the atrocities on the Eastern front. (It was not, then, as I posed the question to myself, about historical revisionism, but rather about the morality of taking life.

Having brought the question up on Sunday in our meditation group, I received a link from one of our members to this site, where precisely this issue is discussed by one much more learned in the Buddha's teachings than am I. It's not only a discussion of this single issue, in fact: the essay is an extraordinarily fine encapsulation of Buddhist thought and practice, well worth reading for that wisdom alone. Here's a sample:

The path the Buddha taught is a deepening realization, without reduction to doctrine. Experiential apprehension of nonviolence replaces mere moral adherence to it. In the depth of realization of personal impermanence, certain truths become self-evident. All things are impermanent; all beings are transient; all beings suffer the common experiences of loss, decay, death. While each person, plant, or animal, has its own causes, its own seeds, that brought it into being, all share the bond of birth and death. Ultimately, nonviolence is a recognition of the simple facts that the quality of our life is the same as the quality of our moment-to-moment thoughts and feelings, and that enmity, hatred, and violence never improve our state of mind. Just as a man would not seethe with violence against his own body, he wouldn’t harm himself by seething with violence...period. Liberation means nonviolence.

The Buddha’s path begins with behavioral acquiescence to vows not to kill, but it culminates in an identification with nonviolence as the essence of what liberates the mind and heart from hate, fear, and self promoting delusion. "All fear death. Comparing others with oneself, one should neither kill nor cause to kill." [Dhammapada 129] Nonviolence is the essence of what the Buddha taught. Nonviolence is liberating because in each and every moment that it suffuses one’s mind, in that moment the mind feels compassion, identification, and empathy with other beings.

More specifically, on the subject of taking life, the author recounts this story:

In a poignant conversation that occurred when both the Buddha and King Pasenadi were eighty years old, the king praises the Buddha, his teaching , and the conduct of his followers, while describing himself as “... an anointed warrior-king, able to have executed those who should be executed...” After the king departs, the Buddha comments to the meditators around him that the King’s insights were “monuments to the Dhamma’ that should be learned and remembered as “fundamentals of the holy life.” [Majjhima 89] This passage clarifies that the Buddha neither condemned nor even rebuked the king for his fulfillment of the kingship, with its dire responsibilities.

I'm grateful to my friend for pointing me to this passage, because I was feeling very unsettled about my own conclusion, that I would have counseled von Boeselager to go ahead and shoot. It seems that the Buddha's wisdom and compassion embraces even those whom duty may compel to kill.

Burma

In view of the disaster in Burma and the worsening world-wide food crisis, please consider making a donation to Save the Children or another charitable organization. Your generosity will return to you multiplied.