At its most chaotic, life is a contest. And if the “world’s shittiest buddhist” contest were anything like “Miss America,” Descartes would win. Yeah, definitely Descartes. In the portion of the pageant when he stood, evening gowned and answering questions, when Steve Harvey asked him about the meaning of life, Descartes would say “I think therefore I am.” As the next contestant, I’d have thrown shade at Descartes from the wings.
In my earlier days, I’d have agreed with him. I couldn’t dance or field a baseball to save my life, so I identified with my mind. If being and reason were synonymous, at least I knew I existed. By and by, my intellect became a liability though: I entered the monastery complaining that “I lived in my head” and earned the Abbot’s praise for my self-knowledge. While monking it up, my growing acquaintance with Buddism changed my tune: wielding the few bits of Eastern wisdom at my disposal, I’d have asserted the proper response was “I think therefore I think.” It turns out, though, to be still more complicated.
Descartes was right about the tendency to equate a certain kind of being with thought, but he was wrong to think it anything but perilous. I know this because I built, nourished, and named a persona, who wore my scent, who used my words, who kept my face expressionless. His name was Brother M. Dismas Warner, OCSO. I know Dismas. I watched him die.
One of my jobs in the monastery was assisting in the palliative care of dying monks. This ranks as one of the greatest graces of my life. Francis, Laurence, Luke, Leonard, blessed Eddie, and Holy Greg—they all prepared the way. When they died, they did it with unvarnished panache, and we buried them as Trappists are buried: straight in the dirt, no coffin. For a Trappist, precious little stands between life and death, and they’re formed to know that from the word “go.”
When my turn came to let go, albeit in a different way, I did. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let me talk about how “Brother Dismas” came to be. I grew up with a mild disability, which left me mildly socially outcast, and mildly at odds with my body. I acquired the nervous ticks of mild PTSD and a mild axe to grind. I felt my feelings in rare, cathartic bursts and acted impulsively. My upbringing was not shitty, but the needle on my security-ometer read “empty” just often enough, and it taught me to manipulate people to get my needs met. I was—nay, I am—an affirmation slut.
What I lacked in affirmation, God supplied, at first. Prayer left me with insight after insight, and like a lonely little lab rat choosing crack over food, I kept pressing the buttons. Insights gained in prayer were my gateway drug. By the time I was 32, when I identified as an addict, I saw what I’d done. I’d ridden a tide of alternating insight and resentment, identifying myself with the high points. It was a maneuver prevailing spiritual wisdom reinforced. Don’t make decisions in times of desolation, it says. Follow your consolation, it says.
I did. The flow of insights, and the occasional, paltry, altered-state of consciousness redirected my life. I went from high point to high point, so consistent and confident in the practice that I assumed the name of one now-deceased. “Brother M. Dismas Warner, OCSO.”
What I’d done was spiritualize my ego, then give it a name. I followed a pattern many had followed before me. St. Paul is chief among them. God had left him Torah-drunk and so attached to his own rectitude that he’d persecuted those who believed differently. For Paul, Jesus solved self-deception.
Adult Children of alcoholics borrows a cautionary tale from AA: don’t try to understand the reasons why you drink—or, in ACA: act impulsively, or manipulate to get your needs met—rather, just ask your higher power’s help in renouncing self-will. This is a different narrative, one that, at the time I heard it, I sorely needed. It argues that “admitting what we’re powerless over” is a healthier starting point than our mountain-top moments. Whether “the bottle” masquerades as self-will or resentment, as manipulating or drinking or drugging, remembering I’m an addict is the key to not picking it up. What the first step of ACA did for me, Jesus did for St. Paul: that is, deprive egotism of its religious clothing.
Not until I’d been seven years a monk did I see that the identity was shot through with self-will: not until my abbot challenged my desire to profess solemn vows did the effort I spent on reinforcing my identity become apparent. I decided, in short order, to stop making that effort.
I remember the moment it happened. After the talk with the Abbot, I was in the monastic church. In a blink of my mind’s-eye, I saw how all of the high points I’d used to build my identity had led me here. I saw how I’d let go of everything that wasn’t a high point: my identity depended, more and more, on a continual rejection—even of everything good, when it didn’t play into my little narrative. No one was in church with me, and I wasn’t privy to a blinding theophany. There was simply a moment when I turned to face the abyss of doubt inside myself, then spoke to it: “If I let Dismas go, what will you use to guide me?”
The “you” to whom I’d spoken must have had a capital “Y” because his answer came, and in a form I could recognize as transcendent. But for a single thought, my head was quiet, and that single thought rang with wisdom. Like Job, but in my own words, I had addressed whirlwind. “What will you use to guide me?” I'd asked. And the whirlwind had answered back, over and over: “EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING.”
In the months that followed, I took off my monastic habit for good. I left the monastery shortly thereafter. Upon more closely examining the events of my leaving, I find a few things to be true. I believed in, and we sometimes believe, as a people, in a god who isn’t God, but an idol of our own making. I reduced belief, and perhaps we corporately reduce belief in God to the ability to analyze him. And lastly, the person think I am, the person I think you are, neither of us is exactly as he seems to be.
Nor is life a contest, as it seems to be. But even if it is, Steve Harvey is instructive here. All who hazard answering his questions are contenders for shittiest Buddhist. At the point in my life when I would have agreed with Descartes, I was ignoring half the data of my life. These days, when I’m being pretentious, I would answer Steve’s question like this: “I think, therefore I am who i am not. When I’m not thinking, I am.” I suppose, though, that this proves I’m no competition for Descartes, I’m just more verbose. Probably there is no Tiara. If life is a contest, I might have to content myself with “Ms. Congeniality” at best. Who knows, though? In the end, even when life is the most illusory of pageants, sometimes Steve misreads the envelope.
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