Restraint with the eye is good, good is restraint with the ear. Restraint with the nose is good, good is restraint with the tongue. Restraint with the body is good, good is restraint with speech. Restraint with the heart is good, good is restraint everywhere. A monk everywhere restrained is released from all suffering stress.
-Dhammapada, 25, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
A couple of years ago, I made a joke that really offended my family. My mother (apparently) spent a week crying over how she could have ever possibly raised such a horrible, awful son. I didn't even find out that so many people were offended until the next year. Wow.
I made a huge deal out of it; I was offended at the response--that people would talk about it behind my back for months--that no one would say anything to me--that they were even bothered by the joke to begin with.
Before I go much further, you probably want to know what I said. This was after Thanksgiving dinner at home in North Carolina. As usual, the "adults" were still sitting and chatting about local folklore at the dinner table, and the "kids" had migrated to the far side of the room. My sister (the only of the four kids that still subscribes to Christianity) had brought her boyfriend from New York, and we were meeting him for the first time. They both worked at a Christian camp whose sole purpose is to convert heathen high school kids to Christianity. We had always joked that as the brothers, it was our job to run off the boyfriends. Somewhere along the line, I joked that "he's only in it for the sex." Get it? Funny? Well, not in the context that you know that absolutely everyone in the room was offended, and everyone wound up apologizing to the new boyfriend for my horrific behavior... all without me knowing (that part isn't particularly surprising).
This week, my mother sent me the quote at the top of the blog, asking what I thought about it. My response? "That's kind of the point of Buddhism." She asked me to elaborate. Before I got a chance to write down my thoughts, she effectively admitted that she was trying to bait me into contradicting myself--trying to get me to blame my actions on my ex, which I could get away with now that I'm single.
Well, this got me a little bit irate all over again, but I did stop and think about it. I realized yesterday why I never subscribed to Buddhism, despite liking much of what it has to say. Buddhism is based around the idea that desire leads to suffering. In order to end suffering, you must end desire. This is a valiant but impossible goal. You cannot end desire. The desire to end suffering counts as a desire. The desire to be a good Buddhist counts as a desire.
To me, this just seems like a religious case of learned helplessness. It's a coping method for dealing with oppression, for dealing with impossible situations. If you are apathetic about the situation, it no longer causes you to suffer (you aren't lost if you don't care where you are). Of course, this is also a fabulous method of pissing off your captors, but that's a different twist on the whole thing.
While desire may be the source of suffering, it is also the source of pleasure, of happiness, of everything that makes life worth living.
What do I think of restraint? I whole-heartedly believe in the freedom of speech. I believe in the right to express ideas, emotions, thoughts, opinions... You don't have to like what I say. If I offend you, you don't have to keep reading; you don't have to invite me to your next party. You don't have to stand here and listen to the end of my thought. I have a right to say it, even if no one wants to hear it. If I want to keep friends, it's my own responsibility to not tell someone in the middle of a large group of people that an outfit makes them look fat.
I believe that the moment any kind of censorship is applied, you begin to stifle the freedom of expression. I no longer feel safe with my family, as I'm worried what *else* I might be able to say that could offend people as much as that simple joke. I can't talk about atheism, as I'm afraid I might offend by admitting I am an atheist, as that pretty clearly states that I think they believe a lie. Who might I offend if I *did* actually get into this discussion? I can never again speak freely around my family without fear of repercussions, and that hurts. Restraint may help keep friends, but it shouldn't be required to keep family.
"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will fight to death your right to say it." Voltaire
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