In one of the myths surrounding the birth of the Buddha, it is said that the newborn baby immediately stood, took a step in each of the four directions, and with one hand pointed to the sky, the other pointed to the earth, he proclaimed, Below the heavens and above the earth, I alone am.
However we want to understand it, such a thing is, metaphorically, perhaps a picture of absolute subjectivity. Just this is all there is. It offers us a picture of absolute autonomy and independence as the attribute of this baby. There’s of course no mother anywhere in sight. This baby is not dependent or needy in any way. The baby is already born as the ruler of its universe. As we’re further told in the stories about Shakyamuni, he was raised as a prince, in other words in circumstances in which his every desire could be fulfilled. He had everything he could want when he wanted it.
The crisis in his life comes when he encounters sickness, old age, and death, things that are suddenly presented to him that are out of his control. It’s interesting the kinds of things that are presented to embody this lack of control. Still, he’s not dependent on other people. Being a prince means that all his needs are gratified. Somehow that takes care of the whole interpersonal realm, and it presents a sort of existential crisis in the problem of time and aging and physical vulnerability. When these are supposedly seen for the first time, they cause a terrible shock to his system. How could it be that I’m not the master of everything? How could I be vulnerable? And we’re told that he said, These things must be rejected. I must find a way to escape the power of sickness, old age and death.
We’re told that he embarks on a series of ascetic practices, all geared towards mastery or domination, although the domination here is perhaps first a domination of the body as the seat of need and vulnerability and desire. I will totally master my body so its needs do not determine or have control over me. I'll go without food, I’ll go without sleep, I’ll go without sex. I will completely dominate any kind of physical dependency I might have and extinguish it. But we’re told that when he took that as far as humanly possible, and he was still not free, he then attempted to completely dominate his mind, completely control his thoughts, his emotions. He can’t tolerate the idea that even that is not under his control. And we get a sense that all these things get pushed to the utmost limit of what humans are capable of doing, until there’s a way in which the project just has to be given up, and he sits down, finally, to be himself. Looking up at the morning star, he said, I’m that! And we of course are often given perplexing interpretations of what was supposed to have happened in that moment. What was he released from? What was he released to?
Unfortunately, it’s very easy to take the story and see him released into a kind of transcendent oneness. I am one with the star. I am one with the universe. And if we’re not careful, that kind of picture of enlightenment is just a kind of spiritualized extension of what he had been trying to do: overcome dependence on his body, overcome his mind, be completely free of everything that makes him mortal. If you're one with the universe, how can you have any needs? How can you be dependent? So I think that there are layers and layers and traps within traps, and now we hear these stories and imagine what it is that we’re trying to overcome. What do we imagine we’re going to achieve? What are we free from?
Now, again, in that kind of story of spiritual freedom, it’s a kind of one-person’s story. Buddha’s struggling with himself, with his own frailty and desire and attachments. Other people don’t seem to be part of the story, the problem or the solution. After his enlightenment, his engagement with others is simply as a teacher.
Now, as we read through Bonds of Love, we’re asked to use the metaphor of infant development to rethink these issues of autonomy and freedom and dependency, and realize that unlike the baby Buddha, we’re born into a state of absolute dependency that we necessarily struggle to come to terms with as part of normal development. The issues that arise in the normal course of differentiation and the development of agency and identify, are going to be played out one way or another in our later relationships that are going to inevitably feature different forms of interconnection, of dependency, which run the danger of being degraded into relations of dominance and submission, master and slave.
What we need to do as we grow up is come to terms with what it means to balance my own identity, my own agency, with the inevitable dependence I have first on my mother and then on others in my life. Can I hold those two things in balance or does one side come to totally dominate the other? If I feel insecure in my attachment, if dependency seems like too vulnerable and frightening a possibility, I can pursue a kind of curative fantasy of independence and autonomy. Either I will not need anyone at all, or if I need someone, I’m going to put them under my absolute control so that I never risk their not being there and doing exactly what I need.
And there, you see the kind of origin of domination in that kind of fear of dependency on another reliable other. I need complete control in order to be able to trust. On the other hand, if I feel inadequate in my own sense of self or my own agency, if I need to be kept in a dependent and vulnerable state, and I’m not given any encouragement to differentiate and develop and find my own way in the world, I may come to think that the only security is in a kind of submissive attachment to a powerful idealized other. I won’t try to rule the world. I’ll let that person do it by being completely submissive or devoted or attached, I will be secure in my connection to the powerful other, and I will do all sorts of self-sacrificing things in order to secure that attachment.
The Bonds of Love introduced the story of O as a kind of extreme case study in dominance and submission. What was in many ways startling or controversial about that story at the time, was not just the pornographic depiction of sadomasochism, but the emphasis on the fact that the female protagonist, O, chooses this, and in every step of the way gives her consent to what is being done. It makes us confront the problem of masochism. What do we think is going on? An early picture of masochism imagined that a person somehow desires pain or finds pain pleasurable, a paradoxical notion it would seem, on the face of it. But that sort of keeps it within the bounds of a one-person explanation. What’s going on inside that one person? It’s not looking at it relationally. What is the person doing by submitting to another person and establishing a certain kind of relationship?
What Jessica laid out there was how the search for recognition and acknowledgment, and a certain kind of secure attachment, leads to someone choosing submission as the seemingly only viable pathway to recognition. Now, I think when we look at the analogies to what happens to people in certain communities of spiritual practice, it’s not hard to make that leap, especially as we’re told that O is taken to a castle where there are strict rules and procedures all designed to eradicate her own sense of self and agency. And there’s even that one line where one of the masters tells her that the pain and suffering that will be inflicted on her is not being done for the master’s pleasure, but for the sake of her enlightenment. That’s the word they use. And it’s not far to create analogies to all the kinds of practices from what we read about Buddha engaging in up to modern day, in which asceticism, submission, obedience, are all elicited in the name of breaking the ego, of taking a person beyond attachment to their own likes, dislikes, comfort, discomfort, and leading to some longed for release or surrender. But into what?
In our practice, we necessarily engage in all varieties of dependency and idealization, and our question is always: Is there a healthy way to be dependent? Is there a healthy way to be in relation to an idealized figure that isn’t masochistic? Joko used to talk about the students who were like baby birds, passively keeping their mouths open, waiting to be fed, for something to be dropped in by the teacher. They had no agency. They were just there to receive. Utter devotion can be a kind of learned helplessness.
Again, there’s the question of whether the idealized figures, the masters in charge, are simply operating out of selfless compassion. Is that really all they get out of it? Isn’t the need for recognition two-way? How can that be acknowledged in a healthy kind of way? I’m going to leave some of these questions hanging. I don’t want to try to give Jessica’s talk for her, although of course that's tempting. I will leave it here and we’ll have a period of dokusan and Jessica will speak at 11:30 and then we’ll go into a question and answer session with her and the whole group after she speaks.