CAESAR's DUE:

Caesar’s Due: a Very Long Paragraph in Defense of Christ, Buddha, and Karl Marx.

In my research into the Latter Day of the Law, specifically in search of Buddhist iconography with which to illustrate the concept of spiritual decline in modernity, I happened to stumble upon an ironically appropriate symptom of decline, as represented by a leading figure in the Church of Latter Day Saints (as I had feared that my search would produce something from that most peculiar of American cults).

The gentleman, balding, wearing a red tie under a suit and a dreamy look in his eyes, argued thus: that “The government will take from the ‘haves’ and give to the ‘have nots’. Both have lost their freedom. Those who ‘have’ lost their freedom to give voluntarily of their own free will and in the way they desire. Those who ‘have not’ lost their freedom because they did not earn what they received. They got ‘something for nothing’, and they will neither appreciate the gift nor the giver of the gift.”

Of course, the poster who contributed this farce to Pinterest.com had spaced upon the entire irony of the dogma, judging by the fact that quote is labeled “AWESOME”, in all capital letters. It’s left to me to elucidate this irony accordingly.

The religious underpinnings of reaping the fruits of one’s own actions have always sat in troubling counterpoint to the condemnation of avarice, yet if one studies the history of the Christian Church, especially against the backdrop of more subtle and less authoritarian Eastern traditions, at least the existence of the contradiction, if not its validity before God and man, may be accounted for. Let us begin with the Protestant Reformation, the result of which this country was founded. The premise of Protestant thought was initially that one attains salvation not by good works but by one’s faith alone. This was so stirring a sentiment to come out of such a conservative institution that even Karl Marx quoted Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran Church and catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, in one of his many brilliant footnotes in his later works on Capital. The idea is simple, especially when observed in the context of rebellion against a corrupt institution of profiteering such as the Catholic Church prior to the Council of Trent. “The world is full of great, excellent daily services and good deeds,” concludes Luther ironically after reflecting upon adultery, extortion, (usury,) robbery, torture, imprisonment, and the Devil himself. Doing good things “of one’s own free will” is in fact to predispose one’s self to sin, not only because the human being’s will can be easily led astray and perverted without guidance, but also because it is most likely to be perverted by the desire to aggrandize one’s self through false charity. True charity must be born out of a genuine, selfless interest in the Other, irrespective of that Other’s qualities or “qualifications”. For Luther, only faith in God and Scripture (admittedly, one’s own interpretation of Scripture, or perhaps just Luther’s interpretation, though one can see very quickly how so nebulous an episteme would lend itself far less to tyranny, since faith cannot be measured in the way that deeds and money can) can bring one’s Soul closer to God, and if this is a God who requires us to love our neighbours, then it is not merely by giving to them “in the way that [we] desire” (in other words: through the filter of self-interest and egocentric worldviews, based on merit and the quest for status) that we serve God, but it is by having faith in THEM, sufficiently to take their own needs and their own perspectives into consideration in our actions towards them. In theory, all enlightened, “holy” beings will not only value their neighbour’s perspective but, recognizing the clarity of his point of view and its validity as it is represented, will side with it. Such is the religious vision as it is depicted by Martin Buber in his text on I and Thou, and it is practically universal in Hinduism and Buddhism as well. While the ego may be exceptionally cunning in avariciously protecting its own feelings of entitlement, especially to atone for that work which it only weathered for its own sake, the mind of the Buddha is one that sees the Other as being no different from one’s “self” in quality, except that extent that the other is also afflicted with egoism. While enlightened men and women, and in some cases animals, can read the characters of those who come to them with precision, many people sadly cannot do so, and their own self-interested imagination fills in the gaps in genuine knowledge. It follows logically that every religion has a clergy that mediates conflicts, not only between practitioners and their own spiritual attainment, but also, amidst practitioners, between one another. Charity is a tricky thing when in the hands of the sinner (who is apparently everyone, however we may deplore being fallible), especially when employers abuse their power to such an extent that even a man as notoriously areligious as Karl Marx would appeal the ethos of Martin Luther in protesting this. The prostitute, of course, must “earn” her money from her “generous” clients and “discerning” employers, and there is nothing in the Christian faith that would totally condemn her, especially considering that the Lord and Saviour himself traveled with Mary Magdalene, no doubt enjoying her company, if only to that extent that we would considerable commendable in a Son of God. Prostitution is only one example of some very non-Mormon practices which are not only brutal but protected by both Scripture and the Church. While the contradictions in the Bible seem so daunting that they would cast doubt upon Martin Luther and thereby empower the perception of the Catholic Church’s necessity, is it not possible that, by extension, the State must be likewise empowered? This much is clear: in Eastern religions, contradictions in text become less problematic for two reasons. One is that the text is seldom taken literally. The other is that the text is always open to interpretation, by anyone, on principle, so even an orthodoxy avoids the risk of blatant hypocrisy and public outrage, especially because rage itself is considered a form of Hell and the well-being of All Beings is the essential and ultimate goal of Spirituality. Altruism FOR THE SAKE OF altruism, and especially for the Other, thereby becomes not only crucial but a matter of common sense. Buddhism does not appeal to people living at the bottom of Kohlberg’s Moral Hierarchy by threatening them with damnation or incentivizing them with passage to Heaven, all to be delivered in the Future, as salesmen often promise. It rather appeals to people living on the Sixth stage, recognizing the well-being of all beings as the only ultimate good, its fulfillment to be experienced in the Present. This was also what the Greeks meant by “virtue as its own reward”. It’s also why Hindus sought liberation from karma NOT simply by doing good works and collecting the rewards, but rather by RENOUNCING THE FRUITS OF ALL THEIR ACTIONS, in effect putting an end to pragmatism, to the past and future, and to the wheel of birth and death. This is in fact what the term “yoga” used to signify, and an entire half of one’s life was devoted to it. In context, the idea of “earning” anything seems absolutely arbitrary and in fact laughable, until one’s laughter turns to shock at the extent to which the joke becomes cruel mockery at the expense of the innocent and the unassuming, who would gladly settle for the sort of life that both Jesus and Buddha lived, which is so typical of the religious individual: a life of RECEIVING ALMS. When men TRULY give “something for nothing”, with total faith in both their neighbours and their God (who are of a common character to the religious mystic who always somehow manages to find God in the face of his neighbour), there is nothing left with which they might judge their neighbours for receiving “something for nothing”. Whereas capital is oriented in respect to the ego, and giving something results in one’s having nothing, religion, in its purest practice, understands what physics understands: energy is neither created nor destroyed, and, if we are careful, environmentalism tells us that neither is wealth. Things pass from one form to another, from one being to the next, and the only true freedom is in this process of passage. Whether or not this is supervised by a State makes not the slightest difference, unless the State becomes corrupt and falls short of this task. It is quite apparent that where the critic is himself corrupt, there is no reason to value his criticism above the State itself. The goals of the State were never antagonistic to our most fundamental Nature and our highest moral goals; in fact, we needed the State in order to attain those goals most efficiently, for any saint must at some point acknowledge the tragedy of human ignorance, and if that saint too had to live off of “your tax dollars” in order to adhere to her own view of God, rest assured that she is probably on her way to becoming a great Bodhisattva, just as the holy men of old were. If one worries that the recipient will not be “appreciative” of the gift, then simply renounce the praise, and your love for the receiver will leave little room for judging him. If you are no longer seeking profit, that great parasite, either in this World OR the Next, then simply creating a World that wherein suffering is forestalled by your example will satisfy you in the moment that you give, and when others take from you by force you may very well forgive them, even to the point of trust, for you know that they are holding others to not only that example which you would have gladly set, unmoved by provocation, but that example upon which they would have come to depend, granted they were not proud in poverty, had fate, which is often outside of the control or interest of God, even in many interpretations of Christianity, chosen for them to be the sacrifice. Faith in one’s Government is crucial to justification by faith alone, for even Jesus advised us to give unto Caesar Caesar’s due, NOT because Caesar’s rule is absolute, (since the Son of God knows better) but rather because God Himself wills for those who CAN pay their taxes to the beggar to do so, even if only that more beggars might become holy men. The goal of Enlightenment is so fervent in Buddhism that Christianity even pales before it, especially when leading Christian figures simply use Scripture to serve themselves. It is telling that the pathos of the miser is this: the fear that the beggars we are universally compelled to feed “will neither appreciate the gift nor the giver of the gift.” The last word is of course supposed to be decisive rhetorically, and it establishes the motivation of the speaker: to be regarded as a great giver, much as Satan took pride in being God’s favourite Angel. “The devil himself [truly] does his servants a great, inestimable service”, as Luther put it. As for the concept of a corrupt State that falls short of its own altruism, rest assured that even a theocrat such as the Dalai Lama will speak out against this, as he has done on behalf of his own people, not in the spirit of competition for salvation but rather in terms so much in accordance with the individualism of Thoreau, Emerson and the founding fathers that one may be surprised to learn he is a Marxist. The mainstream media reported this in early 2015, as though it were news, but in fact I was already discussing it with a hitchhiker and fellow Buddhist back in 2013; it would not have been in news to me in 2015, and had it been news I would have certainly remembered it, though admittedly at that time I expected all people to be Marxists, just as I tried to see all people as Buddhas, and entirely for the same reasons. At any rate, I recall having known this and discussed it for the longest time, but one can’t expect the media to. Even back then, it bothered me that a Marxist would speak out against Communism, but now it makes sense: the Dalai Lama was not criticizing what the Chinese government was supposed to be, either in terms of what it claimed to be or what it ought to be. All of those are good ideals, and they are indispensable goals. He simply spoke out against what they WERE. Yet to dismiss the possibility that such a State could work at all is to turn one’s back on both spirituality and government, and the Dalai Lama can afford neither. Nor should he. This much is certain: the Dalai Lama does not mistake egoism for freedom. Unlike SOME religious leaders, he understands that freedom does not belong to you, like a possession that the State can take away; the failures of the State are not in their Orwellian mind control but in their actual, physical human rights abuses, and capitalism is no better. WE belong to FREEDOM, and ours is a common freedom that cannot be destroyed but that is only expressed when we give. Being compelled to give is only problematic once we have FAILED to give freely, and to defend those who wish not to give is to predispose us to tyranny, which simply becomes necessary when people are systematically deprived. Deprivation by force of Nature is understandable; deprivation on principle is atrocious, since all human beings ought to become Buddhas. So it is that if we wish to know God, we must have faith in our neighbours and our Government, and if our Reason challenges this faith, that much more sacrifice may be required of US, which condescension to the poor does not compensate for. It is all our karma; we either advance towards enlightenment freely or we are dragged forcibly, either by the force of Nature or by the force of State, but until we stop blaming either Nature or the State for our own miserliness we cannot be free of it, since we have not sought TRUE freedom for our neighbours but only advantage for ourselves. I do not doubt that this is all very contradictory to you. But this is my advantage, if I may aggrandize myself for the sake of argument: that so long as those who “have not” are permitted to “have”, in accordance with nothing save for their own needs and views, then no single interpretation of any single religious discipline, biased by pride and avarice, as well as fear, to the exclusion of that message which ALL religions have in common, can allow Evil to work its magic upon the World of Men. So tyranny will be assuaged through faith in liberal government.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]