Not the Final Interview With the Buddha:
anachronistic fiction

by

James Joaquin Brewer

Daniel Rooks

Prof. Seiden

Journalism 301, Optional Assignment

1 April 1999                                                         

[Note: I found the Blessed One sitting under a Douglas Fir tree behind the University Theatre. I approached him as respectfully as I knew how. Upon assuring him of the sincerity of my motives, I was fortunate to be granted the following interview. By the way, Professor Seiden, he is not nearly as fat as the statues make him out to be.] 

Mr. Gautama, at the risk of reducing complex spiritual ideas to misleading oversimplifications, may I express in skeletal form my apprehension of your essential attitude toward that eternal question “How should one lead one’s life here on Planet Earth?” Then I would request that you tell me of any ways I have seriously misrepresented it.

Sure. Why not?

Thank you. I would boil it down to this: “By being born, we enter the experience of suffering; suffering results from frustrated desire; by abolishing desire, one would abolish frustration and thus abolish suffering.” Is that a reasonably acceptable summary of your essential attitude?

Close—for a college student who thinks he alone understands the notion of “reasonable acceptance.” [sound of chuckling]

Okay. Good enough for now. First off, I should emphasize that of all the perspectives touted as bulwarks and buttresses of religion, that one impresses me as the most technically rational. So much so that I have considered committing the course of my life to it—if, that is, I can resolve a few logically sticky conundrums it raises. May I be so candid as to highlight such puzzles with you?

Better with me than with your high-school football coach.

Thank you and right on! Now, then . . . it seems that the entire issue is based upon two premises, the first of which I accept as axiomatic, but the second of which I do not so accept. I do believe that to be born, to be alive on Planet Earth, is to suffer. I am not as convinced that everyone should attempt to abolish his or her suffering. The “Harvard Six-Foot Shelf” would have been reduced to a few measly inches if our great Western writers had abolished their sufferings by abolishing their desires.

Which would make it easier for college English majors to prepare for their final examinations, wouldn’t it?

Well . . . perhaps so, Your Enlightenedness, but also more boring. Would we—and I suppose I refer to the majority of Western readers of literature—prefer a tradition in which Shelley had disciplined himself to blot “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”?

Or his succeeding reference to being chained by a “heavy weight of hours”?

Yes, I guess . . . that fits almost as well.

I suggest, regardless of selective quoting out of context, Percy need not have bled. He needn’t have fallen on those thorns. Life is already thorns—there is no requirement to fall to experience them. But regarding his Ode to the West Wind, I guess you hadda be there . . .

It’s just that Shelley had such an emotional appetite that one might call him accident-prone to things like falling upon thorns of life.

He could have slimmed-down his emotional appetite and therefore become less susceptible. That’s what my teaching is all about.

Maybe falling onto thorns was what Shelley was all about. Take away his bleeding and you take away much of his identity.

Could be. But if it is a suffering identity, taking away his tendency to fall and bleed would be a compassionate thing to accomplish. Of course, he would have had to take it away for himself. As he did, at least partly, in other writings.

But if one’s identity is a suffering identity, what is one left with if it’s taken away?—compassionately or otherwise.

Ah, such an identity is a mask. It can be discarded. Or traded for another type.

And what lies underneath such a mask?

Possibly peace.

And poetry?

Possibly poetry, too—of a healthier kind.

Yeah. I can imagine: a happy re-masked Shelley composing detached haiku. How disorienting! How dispiriting! He would never make it into the Norton Anthology that way!

It’s too long as it is. You can never cover it all. Even in two semesters. Always end up cutting Joyce or Faulkner. Or someone just as worthy. Woolf, maybe. You have be careful before finalizing that darned syllabus. [more chuckling] Mr. Rooks, may I outline my apprehension of your implied attitude and then ask you to correct any of my distortions?

Turnabout is fair play.

Your previous premise seems to be that the greatest good in Western Culture is the literature springing from souls of people in conflict. I do not use Percy Shelley as an especially representative example—oh, he’s good for your limited point of view, I suppose—but there are others: how about Melville and his whales, Hemingway and his bulls, even Sylvia Plath for Chrissake! If their lives had been characterized by peace rather than frustrated desires—of one kind or another—you imply that they would likely have left unwritten the notable works for which they are known, depriving you, the cultural consumer, of an evening’s reading pleasure.

Depending on the connotations of “pleasure,” of course.

Of course. But is it not possible that these admittedly great writers, had they chosen to focus more on peace and less on conflict, would yet have provided readers such as you satisfying works?

Possible? Likely.

In any event, surely you don’t believe that given a hypothetical choice between a life of personal unhappiness that produces great works of art and a life of personal happiness that produces no—or merely “adequate”—works of art, a man or woman writer would choose the first? Why would one choose devoting one’s most-frequent thoughts to suffering instead of to peace?

Excuse me, Mr. Gautama, but aren’t you presenting our hypothetical artists with a false dilemma?

Certainly—one suggested by your comments about Mr. Shelley. To go further, weren’t you implying that Shelley’s achievement of personal peace would have conflicted with your personal pleasures? It’s a short step from there to claiming that one person’s happiness depends upon another person’s unhappiness.

Okay . . . I am definitely not entirely comfortable with that premise. It represents some version of exploitation. I should not be happy at an “innocent” other’s expense.

And let’s not debate what makes an “other” “innocent.”

Agreed. Perhaps there are artists who can fulfill their natures—and thus find happiness—only at the expense of their own peace. For some, peace and suffering may be complementary.

Or just supplementary?

Uh . . . maybe . . . but more to my point, maybe Shelley was destined to articulate desire, to embody emotional excess, so that others could gain a . . . useful . . . perspective.

Oh, so, you would truly exploit him? You would deny him his own valid peace so that you could look for yours? Wouldn’t it be more compassionate to wish him contentment—even at the expense of his art? How can we promote suffering, whether our own or another’s?

Hmm . . . it’s just that the literature of happiness is less interesting than that of recurring conflict.

Is the purpose of life the creation of interesting literature? Would the actually intelligent artist prefer the illusion of fulfillment that a “successful” public career can bring over the reality of fulfillment that a peaceful personal life can bring?

Do you believe, then, that the two are always opposed?

No. You, however, seem to.

I wish they weren’t. I hope they are aren’t. But I’m now left with the challenge off disentangling the knotted threads of my attitudes toward the act of creation: perhaps the really peaceful person has no need to create works of art.

Why can’t he or she create peaceful works of art?   

Because contentment is not as interesting as perplexity, at least as far as enduring literature goes.

That appears to be true because you, the enduring reader, remain perplexed and, thus, find perplexing writing interesting. Must we be limit our interests only to what reminds us of ourselves?

Maybe too much peace becomes boring.

Too much? Ah, Danny, the world has never witnessed too much peace.