This Is This

or:
The Fundamental Precepts Of Buddhism Explained
Using A Classic Punk Rock Dilemma

“Should I stay or should I go now?”

It’s a tough one, and well put in The Clash song of almost the same name.

Generally, I think if you have to question your presence in a situation you probably shouldn’t be there. But it’s not that simple here, given the consequences, as the lyrics continue:

“If I go there will be trouble. If I stay, it will be double.”

So we’ve got the first of the Four Noble Truths:

1. Suffering exists.

Shit happens, bad things take place, to live is to experience hardship. Whatever you want to call it. In all life, there is the inevitability of dukkha, or suffering. If it’s not bird flu, it’s earthquakes. You win 5-0 and your striker gets injured. The sun’s shining and you stub your toe. There’s one in every box.

If this guy stays there will be some kind of suffering and if he goes, that hardship will be twofold. Karma means that us that the suffering we create through negative action affects us ourselves.

Buddha said, as recorded in the Dhammapada:

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.”

So you do no harm, right?

WRONG!

No one, no one at all, can do no harm. Vegetarians kill worms, pacifists get invaded. Suffering, or trouble, just happens.

2. The origin of suffering is attachment

Clinging, desire, craving - whatever you want to call it - is the tinderbox of hardship. In this case it’s the craving to do the right thing. That’s what’s eating this guy up. To be honest, it’s not a bad place to be, which is why he already wants to fix it.

3. Suffering can be overcome by practicing non attachment

There is a way out. The best efforts of human endeavor can remove the causes of suffering by being free from delusions, craving. Take away the foothold and the basis of any trouble. This guy is not quite there, and I always find the third truth a kind of half-truth in a literal sense. It’s a means to an end, a Get Out of Jail card, because the last truth tells you how to do it.

4. Do the right thing

Suffering can be overcome by doing the right thing. There’s a little more to it that that, a whole Eightfold path based on right speech, right intentions, right thought, etc, but there’s no time to go into that here, because there’s the more immediate need of the stay/go thing.

By staying behind and the hardship being double, he would be making it worse, but at least he has the chance to fix things. It’s better to give things a go and try and make things right than to bugger off, leaving single trouble behind.

Isn’t it? Maybe going and opting for single trouble is an act of compassion for those you are leaving behind. I think he should face the music and dance unless this guy is such a dufus that the others are all thinking: “Seriously dude, please leave. We don’t want any double trouble.”

So anyway

Trouble, double trouble, either way, there are always problems. No one can do no harm. Do the right thing. “Hang on, didn’t Spike Lee say that?” Dude, everyone’s said that. It’s not rocket science. Actually it is rocket science, but it’s everything else we set out to do. It doesn’t mean we all have to be driven, striving personalities and do gooders and annoy people. It’s not saying “do good”, it’s saying do what is best. If you have to cut down a tree to stop it falling on your house, then that’s what you do.

He should stay. If it’s all the same to the others, he should stay - double trouble be damned.

Never give up, stick around, do your dangdest and give it what you got.

“You get the best information, you consider all your options, you look at the potential good … and you do what you think is right.”
Leo McGarry - The West Wing, S.6:Ep.1

Next week
Teenage Kicks - A Non-Violent Approach
Plus - Miami Sound Machine’s “The Rhythm Is Gonna Get You”: The jihad of the mambo

Also on This Is This
“Any idiot can face a crisis. It is the day to day living that wears you out.”
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