Everyone Wants to Live

My Buddhist teacher Shunryu Suzuki likes to use the phrase, “Things as it is.” Sometimes one of us students would gently correct him, thinking he didn’t understand English grammar, and say, “You know, Suzuki Roshi, in English the correct way to say that is ‘things as they are.” He would thank us and try that out, saying “Things as they are” a few times. But it was clear this didn’t sound right to him, and soon he was back to saying “Things as it is.” This may not have been grammatical in English, but to his ear, it was correct from the standpoint of Buddhism. There are many things and many people, but at the same time we all share the same singular reality: we are here, we exist. Sometimes he would say, “The fact that you are here right now is an ultimate fact.”

In our present time it seems that there is not one shared reality, but many different realities, curated by political commentators, social media, various idealogues, and relativists who insist that reality is entirely subjective, different for each person or group. This situation is fueling tremendous discord and conflict the world over. However, there is one thing we all have in common– indeed not just human beings, but all life forms– we want to live. Even people who are suicidally depressed actually may want to live, but in their desperation, they don’t see how. We all want to survive, but we don’t necessarily extend that wish to other people, other tribes, clans, or nations. If we feel threatened enough, we will pick up a weapon, or whole nations will go to war, to make sure of their own survival.

But the ultimate fact of “things as it is” can also be the wellspring of compassion. If we can extend our own wish for survival– in the spirit of the Golden Rule– to acknowledge that just as we have a right to live, so do others have that same right, then we have entered a much more evolved moral ground– the moral ground that Suzuki was expressing with his Buddhist “grammar.” In fact, Buddhism extends this moral ground not just to other human beings, but all forms of life, which is why as a worldview it is deeply compatible with ecological, whole earth thinking, and the recognition of such universal survival threats as climate change.

It is something of a mystery how and why some individuals, and some societies, reach this moral high ground in their culture and society, and some do not. And sometimes there are factions of society that reach a higher ground, while others do not. Our own nation is instructive. Our founding documents, while idealistic in their doctrine of a universal common good, were actually riddled with the contradictions of a slaveholding mentality, which by definition denied millions of human beings that common good. In spite of a terrible civil war, we are still saddled by these gaping contradictions. There is a movement afoot to politicize and deny teaching the truth of our tormented racial past in public schools. As a trolley car conductor I knew back in the 60s used to say when he stopped at Liberty Street in San Francisco–my stop– “Liberty Street, Liberty Street, liberty and justice for some.” Presumably, in many school districts of today, he would be sacked for saying such things.

“Things as it is” means that there is in fact an inalienable truth, a common reality, and however long it might take, and however much pain we might all need to endure, that truth, sooner or later, will out. Yes, we all want to live, we all deserve to live with respect and dignity. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” The question is, how long is that arc, and do we have enough time for justice to come before the earth becomes so hot that none of us can live?