The Who of What I’m Not Pt. 2

Seeking relief for anxiety, I tried anything I thought would be a quick fix, from EFT Tapping to numerology, to Transcendental Meditation. Nothing worked. Given my familiarity with meditation, a friend suggested Buddhism, the philosophy of self-determination. I glanced at a few books and even attended a couple of talks.Turned off by what I perceived as mumbo jumbo, I decided it wasn’t for me. However, years later, my traumatic divorce pushed me to a breaking point with no clear answers as to what to do with the rest of my life. Frightened, I dragged a box of books from under the bed and randomly selected An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World by Pankaj Mishra. The basic philosophy of Buddhism is as follows :

"To control the mind is to radically change one's relation to the world. You don’t need to reform society to achieve happiness …You can train your mind to experience things in a certain way, and you don't actually have to surrender to these emotions of anger and hatred….”

The world is a mess. We can’t change it, but we can change our attitude toward it by accepting the duality of the human condition: oppression, subjugation, freedom, and independence. The Buddha posed one question: How should I live? Our job, according to Mishra, is to straighten our own lives and, “...thereby, create conditions for the happiness of other people around you.”

A blueprint for personal spiritual development, Buddhism employs methods such as meditation to broaden awareness. Abiding by a moral code of ethics transforms self-centeredness into selfless service to others. With practice, we learn to shed what is false and live our truths, awakening to our highest human potential. This is a critical step towards attaining a consciousness in which external circumstances, in my case, racism, has no power. Surprisingly, Mishra’s explanations made sense to me. Buddhism was indeed a path to self-empowerment.

As if this revelation weren’t enough, I stumbled upon two quotes by African American writer James Baldwin. This passage brilliantly encapsulates my parents repression:

“You’ve been taught that you’re inferior, so you act as though you’re inferior. And on the level that is very difficult to get at, you really believe it. ... You’re playing the game according to somebody else’s rules, and you can’t win until you understand the rules and step out of that particular game, which is not, after all, worth playing. People make the unconscious assumption that they were born knowing what they know, and forget that they had to learn everything they know.”

Racism teaches you to see yourself through the eyes of the people who hate you. The story of who you believe you are is fabricated within lies. Dialogues on white supremacy rarely highlight the manipulative aspects of racism. But freedom is a state of mind, and Baldwin presents a bold challenge to individuals: Do not allow people to define you. Unlearn what has been taught. Become an independent thinker. He argued that racial categories be eliminated in favor of a vocabulary which includes the human race. I doubt that my parents would’ve believed such a thing was possible. Unlike Baldwin, they did not possess the awareness or critical thinking skills to understand they’d been coerced by deception and fear. Nevertheless, they suffered, and I have nothing but great compassion and love for them.

On the other hand, my critical thinking skills were fully intact, yet I remained stuck in a world of hurt. That is until I read this:

"As long as I complain about being oppressed, the oppressor is in consolation of knowing that I know my place, so to speak.”