The Buddha in the Tarot

by Paul Greer

  Finally, as Kaza argues, consumerism creates desires and attachments, and indeed, cannot exist without them. From a Buddhist point of view, consumer advertising is specifically designed to engage us at the moment it connects with our senses, and generate pleasant sensations which in turn create an endless cycle of craving and grasping. Advertising transforms beings capable of “The Beautiful” into deluded consumers wandering through an ocean of Samsaric dissatisfaction in search of “satiety.” As a corrective, Kaza advises that we become more mindful of how consumer advertising manipulates us at the point of sensory contact. At a practical level, ethical responses may include making a conscious effort to reduce the level of advertising we allow ourselves and our families to consume, or making efforts towards the development of alternatives to those wasted hours we spend shopping, whether online or in retail parks.16

  Kaza’s suggestions indicate that “interference” or active wisdom need not entail an all-out war against the “evils of capitalism,” but instead, mindful boycotting – a refusal to implicate our lives in systems which reinforce self, attachments, cravings, and harm towards others. This also correlates to what Christian Feldman terms “discriminating wisdom,” which recognizes that true wisdom moves beyond mere intellectual insight to embrace a refusal to support or maintain actions that generate “suffering, division, and conflict.”17 Such “discriminating wisdom” appears to engage more fully with the ethical implications of the Justice card than the typical recourse to often distorted concepts of karma, which as Donald Rothberg says, appear in “fatalistic” guises, serving to both “blame the victims” and rationalize arrangements of “power and dominance.”18

  The Hanged Man (12)

  General Overview

  To set at liberty those who are oppressed; to participate in the repairing of the world. This is the call and the challenge of Justice. But, of course, it is easier said than done. This call demands interference with psychological and social forces that are very resistant to change. Thus, The Hanged Man stands as a pertinent symbol of the cost that may be incurred by those who seek to engage with the “principalities and powers” than reside both within and without.

  The Hanged Man shows a man suspended upside down from a Tau cross of living trees. His hands appear to be placed behind his back, perhaps bound, suggesting that he has been positioned here by others. Despite this, his facial expression is without pain, and instead radiates a sense of relaxed focus, further suggested by the beatific corona that surrounds his head. His legs form a figure four, the number of solidity and matter; the same position assumed by the seated Emperor in the Marseilles deck, and the inversed form of that assumed by the World Dancer in card 21.

  In traditional interpretations, The Hanged Man is associated with a number of related ideas, especially those of abandonment, sacrifice, suffering, punishment and surrender. Alongside these we find more positive themes, such as the gaining of insight and wisdom, and those of rebirth, renewal and regeneration.

  The card indicates The Fool’s dawning realization that true spiritual progress – the transformation of self and world – cannot be attained through spiritual quietism, but only through a very different route. This route involves direct confrontation with oppositional forces that lie within oneself and within the recognized orders of the world. One message of The Hanged Man is that suffering cannot be beaten by simply attempting to transcend it, but only by immersing oneself in it. And here, the Western image of Christ crucified appears as a potent symbol of immersive kenosis, of “self-emptying” in response to the anguish of the world. A further message seems to be a cautionary gesture on behalf of THE ESTABLISHMENT. As in the age-old practice of hanging criminals and traitors at crossroads, this card serves as a clear warning to those who would challenge and transgress the accepted parameters of Urizen’s directives – whether psychological, religious or social. “The Traitor” indeed was at one time the actual name for this card; and again, Christ crucified below his criminal titulus remains a powerful symbol of such punitive retribution, laid upon those who would dare meddle with the established powers that be. Unfortunately, for Christians beguiled by two-millennia of Fall-Redemption mythology, the crucifixion has come to symbolize and reflect their own paralysis and powerlessness to change either themselves or the world; a knee-bending dependence upon the atoning grace of a wrathful sky-father and his sinless scapegoat. For those with stronger knees – like Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King and Jesus himself - it reminds us of the price that might be paid for wresting the world from the hands of the devil. Such continuous crucifixions are souvenirs of what Fox calls the establishment’s “Great Refusal” of “mutuality in relation,” the defining feature of Jesus’ approach to the world.1

  Yet, the third message of The Hanged Man is that death and despair do not have the final say. Self-surrender, sacrifice and apparent defeat carry within themselves the seeds of wisdom and regeneration. One is reminded of the myth of Odin, who hung for nine days on the World Tree and received as his boon the wisdom and power of the runes. In Celtic lore we find the myth of the sacrificial king, whose spilled blood will restore the land. Such restoration is integral to the card’s symbolism. It is not only implied in the victim’s serene expression, or in the living foliage, but by the fact that when this card (12) is placed under The World (21), it forms a complete ankh – the symbol of life. The patriarchal King of Kings, the enthroned Emperor, has started to relinquish his grip on the ankh, and awaits his final transformation as World Dancer.

  “By his stripes we are healed” declares Isaiah, in reference to the work of God’s Suffering Servant. Yet the healing here means more than blood-atonement for transgressing Urizen’s Book of Brass. It points to a complete re-envisioning of the relationship between God and the world; the healing of a deep wound in our perceptions of the divine. This is brought out with some force by Ruether in her midrash on the crucifixion, entitled The Kenosis of the Father. Like Blake and Hegel, Ruether sees in Jesus’ death the moment of ultimate kenosis; the emptying of divinity itself from the Heavens into the hearts of men and women. Through the eyes of Mary Magdalene, Ruether invites us to imagine the scene of the crucifixion, where Jesus calls out to his father, but receives no reply. Perhaps, reflects Mary, there are no heavenly hosts left and God’s throne itself is empty. Perhaps this very notion of God as an almighty king has been ended through Jesus’ death, and that God himself has now been poured out upon the earth, giving birth to a new vision of the divine within our hearts. This is a vision teaching us to honor the only world we have, and create a new order “without masters and slaves.” Yet, with sadness she reflects that although Jesus may have leveled the heavens and emptied God’s throne, many of the disciples were “busy trying to fill it again.”2

  In the Story of the Buddha: Surrendering to Asceticism

  After leaving Arada and Udraka, Siddhattha fixed a lonely dwelling by the banks of the Nairanjana river, whereupon he was visited by five ascetics, “desiring liberation.” Led by their example, he began years of intense physical and mental self-mortification, thinking that “this may be the means of abolishing birth and death.”3 He engaged in various practices – including teeth-clenching and breath-suppression – to restrain and compress his mind. In doing so, he felt the “roar of winds” in his ear-holes, as from a smith’s bellows.4 He dwelt in dark and dangerous parts of the forest, and would sleep in charnel sites with bones for a pillow.5

  At the end of many years he sat there, says Asvaghosa, with “only skin and bone remaining, with his fat, flesh and blood entirely wasted.”6 His body, according to the Jataka account, “became emaciated to the last degree … and became black.”7 According to the Buddha himself, his ribs stuck out like the “crazy rafters” of an old barn, and the skin of his belly was fixed to his backbone.8 Yet, despite all his efforts, Siddhattha seemed no closer to fulfilling the bodhisattva vow he made when he first left the palace – to “save the world of gods and men.”

  A Buddhist R
eflection: The Sacrifice of Thich Quang Duc

  During a hot June afternoon in Saigon in 1963, a “peaceful protest” against the Vietnam conflict and the oppressive religious measures of President Ngo Dinh Diem culminated in the self-immolation of the seventy-three-year-old monk Thich Quang Duc. According to sources, Quang Duc sat himself in the lotus position, while a nearby monk poured a five-gallon can of gasoline over him. Quang Duc then opened a book of matches, and set himself alight. During the ten minutes that it took for his burning body to collapse, the monk sat with a serene expression on his face, fixed in a state of meditative contemplation. Even as he burned, says David Halberstam, an American journalist who was present at the scene, he never moved or made a sound, his outward poise “in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.”9 That this incident was greeted with horrified incomprehension by the Western media is not difficult to understand. From a Western viewpoint, such a violent act seems defeatist, wasteful, and contrary to any notion of a “peaceful protest.”

  Quang Duc’s sacrifice can be related to the view that true social transformation must begin with the conquering of the self and our fear of death. Yet, Quang Duc’s actions convey more than an inner victory over the self. His sacrifice was at heart rooted in compassion motivated by identification with the plight of the Vietnamese people. Such compassionate identification has a long history within Buddhism. One of the best loved stories from the Jataka accounts of the Buddha’s many past lives tells of a prince called Mahasattva, who offered up his own body to feed a hungry tigress and her seven starving cubs. More than an act of “pity,” which is rooted in the egoic notion of “helping others,” this act was a product of identification – Mahasattva was the tigress, and the tigress was Mahasattva.

  From a bodhisattva point of view, the aim of such self-sacrifice is the enlightenment of others; or at least, the engine of positive change in others. It is the seed from which personal and social renewal are made possible. As Thich Nhat Hahn says of Quang Duc, his death was a demonstration of his readiness to suffer to enlighten others, and in the process, he stirred a whole population. His sacrifice says Hahn, which in spirit was the same as Jesus’ crucifixion, “lit a fire in the hearts of people around the world.”10

  Quang Duc’s death helped change public opinion against the American-backed South Vietnamese government and its war against the communist supported Viet Cong. It also contributed to the overthrow of the Diem regime in South Vietnam in November of 1963. Of equal importance, it was responsible for the further spread of “engaged Buddhism,” which continues to this day.

  Death (13)

  General Overview

  The RWS version of this card shows Death in black armor, riding a white horse. In his left hand he carries a black flag decorated with a white rose. He moves through a field in which we see a dead king, a praying bishop, a despairing woman and a curious child – indicating as Pollack says the essential “democracy of death.”1 In the background, we can see the sun just rising between two pillars. The pillars remind us of those contained in The High Priestess, The Hierophant and Justice, and will appear again, much more closely, in The Moon. Likewise, the sun will appear in many of the subsequent cards, rising further up in the sky, representing revitalization and rebirth. A river also flows through the card, symbolizing perhaps the themes of change and passing time. A vessel, evocative of the funerary boats used for Egyptian Pharaohs, moves eastward, towards the rising sun. The number thirteen has of course a long association with darkness and death, being the number of those at the Last Supper when Jesus was betrayed. Jesus described that night as the “hour of darkness” when he pleaded with his father to “let this cup pass” (Lk. 22: 53, 42).

  Although inseparable from the themes of sacrifice and rebirth found in the previous card, Death in the Tarot stands as something unique, pivotal, impenetrable; and yet at the same time something mundanely human. In truth, the unavoidable reality of death stands at the heart of all human spirituality, and of course, remains forever the central reference point in issues relating to the meaningfulness of our own lives. In a very real sense, much hinges on how we interpret and respond to this card. The existential dilemma posed by death was eloquently voiced by Tolstoy more than a century ago:

  [A]ll around me I had what is considered complete good fortune. I had a good wife who loved me and whom I loved, good children, and a large estate … I was respected by my relations and acquaintances more than at any previous time. I was praised by others and without much self-deception could consider that my name was famous … [Yet] I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life … Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort? ... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living?2

  Tolstoy’s solution to his existential dilemma was to become a Christian, and his choice of religion does in a sense explain the retrospective pessimism that pervades the passage above. Traditional Christian thought concerning death is generally negative in character. In part, this derives from the influence of Platonism, which considers this world of “stench and worms” to be but a distorted image of a more enduring and perfect order of existence. Yet the negativity is also derived from the view that death is an “error” in God’s creation, brought about by the Fall of our first parents, and rectified through Christ’s atoning sacrifice and resurrection. Death in traditional Christian thought is the “enemy” that has been “beaten” through the resurrection, and awaits its final vanquishment with the establishment of God’s future kingdom, where it will be tossed, alongside Hades, into “the lake of fire” (Rev. 20: 14).

  A century after Tolstoy, it seems that a few Christians have adopted a more conciliatory attitude towards this oldest of bogeymen. For Don Cupitt and the Sea of Faith Network, a Christianity fit for the Twenty-First Century must confine itself to the reality of human finitude. There can be no more vain promises of “jam tomorrow.” Indeed, the unproductive belief in an afterlife beyond death robs our present life of its profound meaning and purpose, relegating it to some kind of basic training ordeal completed in preparation for “the real thing.” Ironically, an acceptance of finitude and death frees us to act more ethically, more productively, because it makes everything we do intensely significant. The hope of Christianity says Cupitt is not to transcend death, but to transcend the fear of death - the feared demise of the personal ego - and in doing so, enter “glory” and “eternal life.” Like Jesus, who compared eternal life to the manner in which flowers and birds live, we too, says Cupitt, must immerse ourselves in the present, in natural harmony with our “pure contingency.” In doing so, [d]eath’s sting is drawn.”3

  In the Story of the Buddha: At the Point of Death

  According to the Jataka account, nearing the end of his ascetic endeavors, Gotama was in a meditative trance practicing the “discipline of suppressed breathing.” Suddenly, he “was attacked by violent pains, and fell senseless to the ground.” A few of the deities who were present travelled to King Suddhodana to inform him that his son was dead, and that he met his end before gaining enlightenment. The king, recalling his son’s childhood deeds, simply could not believe the report, insisting that “[d]eath cannot come to my son before he attains to enlightenment.” Eventually the Future Buddha regained consciousness, at which point the deities returned once more to the king and informed him that his son was still alive. “I knew that my son could not have died,” replied the relieved king.4

  However, its is clear that Gotama recognized that he was very close to death, and had still not attained the enlightenment he was looking for. In one version of the story, the demon Mara approaches the Future Buddha, warning him that a “thousandth part of thee (is the property) of death, (only) one part (belongs to) life.” Mara demands that he desist from his endeavors, and live the ho
ly life by doing “good works.” In response the Future Buddha declares that he would rather die than give up the quest for enlightenment.5 Yet, after many years of mortification, Gotama began to realize that it was all “time spend in endeavoring to tie the air in knots,” and thus came to a simple and obvious conclusion: “These austerities are not the way to enlightenment.”6

  A Buddhist Reflection: Death as Transformation

  In the Heart Sutra, the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara makes this particularly enigmatic proclamation: “There is no decay and death, and no end to decay and death.” Such a paradoxical assertion derives from a distinction Buddhists make between relative and absolute truth. At the level of relative truth, that is to say, of everyday Samsaric consciousness, suffering and death are inevitable facts of life that exert a profound influence over us. So much so, that the Buddha named “decay and death” as causal factors in the universal human experience of unsatisfactoriness and suffering (the First Noble Truth), and the twelfth link in the chain of dependant origination. In the Dhammapada, the Buddha simply observed that “all men fear death.”7 Penetration into the nature of death is therefore of much value within Buddhist practice. In the Setting Up of Mindfulness Sutta, “death” is utilized as a meditational tool for the development of insight and wisdom into the human condition. Similarly, the Path of Purity invites practitioners to attentively contemplate the various stages of decomposing corpses. Through further study of the various factors surrounding death, including its inevitability and its unpredictability, meditators are granted insights that, as Chand Sirimanne says, lift the shroud of delusions surrounding permanence and our notions of an abiding self; something which may then lead to liberation.8