Giving Up on People

There is a member of our Sangha here in Washington— lets call him “Mark,” not his real name— with whom I have an ongoing dialogue about human nature and compassion and the Bodhisattva path. Mark is a pretty neat guy. He is a professional Biologist, and has first-hand experience working with and handling animal species from all over the world. In his long career, he has travelled all over the world in order to study and work with wildlife. In this capacity, Mark has seen first-hand the gradual and callous degradation of wildlife habitat and its effect on the animal species he has devoted his career to. He knows, better than most people, that it is humans who are responsible for the destruction of the natural world he loves so much. Returning home to Washington, Mark has witnessed the selfish and cruel ways in which people behave towards one another, whether it is bad behavior in heavy traffic on the Interstate, or the back-stabbing office politics that seem to universally plague every workplace. Or almost any news story on the evening news—war in Iraq, famine and genocide in Africa, predatory corporate greed, and so forth. It is safe to say, that Mark is pretty disgusted with the human species right now.

Mark and I share something in common: we are both very close to giving up on the human race. In my case, the revulsion I feel towards the behavior of our species, has been reinforced by the time I have spent with the books of Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers. However, unlike Mark and I, Kurt Vonnegut— who only recently passed away— actually crossed the line from almost giving up on the human race, to actively turning has back on our species. In his last book, “A Man Without a Country,” Vonnegut wrote this:

“Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn’t even seen the First World War… Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people too. I am a veteran of the Second World War and I have to say this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine. My last words? ‘Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.”

The revulsion I feel towards human behavior, as a whole, is the central conundrum I face in my practice of the Dharma and the Bodhisattva path. I have discussed this many times with Monshin Sensei. Our conversation usually goes back and forth around the Bodhisattva Vows (“Sentient Beings are numberless, I vow to save them,” etc.), eventually reaching the central question that reflects my true feelings: “But Sensei, how can I save them when I'm constantly outraged by people?”

Monshin says that the way people behave towards one another, is a reflection of their own suffering. Reading between the lines, I understand that this means that the way I feel about the human race— and thus the way Mark or Einstein or Twain or Vonnegut also feel, or felt— is therefore a reflection of our own suffering as well. This is not a very comforting insight, but at least intellectually, I accept the truth of it.

Monshin Sensei clearly shares much of the revulsion concerning human behavior which Mark and I experience. Unlike us, however, he is much better at cultivating patience and compassion towards human folly, than we are. And that is really what it means, to be on the Bodhisattva path. The Buddha-Dharma is nothing if not a systematic and logical response to human suffering and discontent. Moreover, compassion without patience is not really compassion, it is merely low-level tolerance— a grudging attitude which lacks empathy.

And so I actively resist my natural tendency towards nihilism, and I do my best to transmit the Bodhisattva perspective not only to Mark, but also to the other members of our Sangha as well. However imperfectly, we practice the Bodhisattva Path, and thus must not surrender to despair. We must resist the temptation to give up on people; we must pause and breathe deeply when confronted with human stupidity and cruelty, and then go to work for the salvation of humanity, and all sentient beings, and help them attain Liberation from the suffering and discontent that we humans multiply for ourselves.

So, despite my admiration for Vonnegut, I pity his ultimate rejection of the human race. In spite of everything, I choose not to give up on people, even when I wrestle with the almost-overwhelming temptation to do so. But I still admire his writing, and the deeply human sentiments which motivated his perspectives. And so I will now give Kurt Vonnegut the last word, with this Requiem from his final book, which I know Mark will appreciate:

“When the last living thing
has died on account of us
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps,
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.”