The generous doctrine of Skillful Means

·期刊原文
The generous doctrine of Skillful Means. (Spirituality)
Jeff Behrens
National Catholic Reporter
Vol.29 No.21
March 26, 1993
pp.19-20

COPYRIGHT National Catholic Reporter 1993

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The special, poignant case of Harold and John
There is a Buddhist doctrine called Skillful Means. Found in the
Lankhavatara Sutra, it tells of the generosity of the Buddha.
According to the doctrine, all things have a redemptive dimension,
even those that seem to negate redemptive possibility. It is one of
the most generous doctrines I have ever read.
A disciple listens intently to the Lord Buddha as he speaks of the
way to bliss, and after the discourse confesses to the Lord Buddha
that he fears for those who are deaf and therefore never hear the
words that assist to salvation. How then, he asks, shall they be
saved?
The Lord Buddha assures the disciple that, out of a compassionate
need to save all sentient things, he will take on what is most weak
and scorned, and in that very becoming shall make of human weakness
a vehicle. He assures the disciple that deafness is indeed his very
presence. It is through such Skillful Means that weakness becomes
salvific, for the Lord Buddha is in all things.
I first saw Harold and John at a Monday night novena. They came with
their little prayer books and rosary beads, and did so every Monday
night for nine weeks. They were in their mid-50s. John was a
slightly built man, with reddish hair that never was combed. He
always had a smile on his face and asked all sorts of questions
about getting to heaven. There was something childlike about him.
Harold was heavier. He wore baggy pants and red-flannel shirts and
seemed to keep a watchful eye on John. They both smoked nonfiltered
Pall Malls and their fingers were yellowed. They would wait after
the novena to chat with me on the church steps and, over the weeks,
I learned something of where they came from and how they found each
other.
Both had been married. Both had suffered through various
constellations of mental illness and had been forcibly
institutionalized. John seemed less able to cope; he was constantly
on tranquilizers. Both had gradually lost touch with their pasts or
had been abandoned by them. They were living in a rooming house not
far from the church. They met each other there and more or less
looked after each other. I could see them walking together up and
down the main street of the town.
Both were concerned about salvation.
John once came to see me and we sat on the steps of the rectory. He
was upset and started to cry as be told me he was going through a
painful depression and was afraid that he would be sent back to an
institution.
I did not know what to say, other than I had read that sometimes
depression is therapeutic, as painful as it is. It could mean, I
told him, that there is a process going on in his heart, a process
that would lead to something good. I related to him that creative
people frequently suffer such periods. He looked at me with a
definite sense of hope and asked whether I thought he was creative.
I assured him he was, in that Harold would be lost without him. He
smiled, he really did, and said that he would feel better about
that. Harold came to church alone not long after that night and I
asked him where John was. He said that John had to be sent away for
a while but that the hospital was not too far away. Would I go see
him and bring cigarettes? I did. I brought a carton of Pall Malls.
Heavily sedated, John was despondent. He said he had failed again,
and cried from his anguish that he had no control over the waves of
anxiety that would overwhelm and then so depress him. I gave him the
carton of cigarettes and told him to try to take one day at a time,
not to think too far down the road. He was grateful that I had
stopped to see him.
He eventually was released from the hospital and went through a
fairly peaceful period, until the day when Harold felt things
slipping fast and disappeared for several weeks. John slid into
another depression and had to return to the hospital for a few
weeks. The longer I knew them, the more I became familiar with such
being the pattern of their lives. What so moved me was how they
managed, in the best of times, to offer such sensitive and concerned
support for each other. In those times, they found comfort in
novenas, daily Mass and the like, listening to holy words and hoping
they had some claim to such a hopeful largess.
Such a small fraction of human consciousness is intentionally
directed toward such lofty ideas as salvation. We get by, somehow,
and manage to direct our thinking and planning along the gathering
of simple leisures of life and the avoidance of pain. In their
better moments, John and Harold directed their need toward holy
things. The raw and painful circumstances of their lives carved a
ready appetite for the immediately salvific. Periodically,
overwhelmed by the merciless darkness of depression, they would
always bounce back on a sunnier day to listen and smile and hope.
Most Christians assume the Kingdom can only be had through some sort
of feat, as if we must be someone or do something to arrive there.
Be strong, be loving, be wise and this ye shall have.
There exists in every human life a fundamental weakness, an
inability to fashion to our satisfaction the optimum personae that
we project beyond our known and weak selves. Creation is flawed at
its heart, and no power is ours that can heal the flaw that we feel
and are, and make things all right.
From their hurt, out of their weaknesses, John and Harold found and
responded to each other as best they could. I doubt very much that
they translated such as religious, salvific or whatever. They sat in
a pew waiting to hear good news and never realized how it was
somehow incarnate in them and revealed precisely through their pain
and concern for each other.
To such as John and Harold belong the Kingdom. It must have seemed
so very far away from them, but I felt it so very near, in their
gestures, in their hopes, in their so wanting it, in their doing
what they could to ease each other's life with a touch of grace.
Indeed, their hunger for such, for a Kingdom, for lasting goodness,
convinces me that there is such a place.
They would sit in church, gazing ahead at the enshrinement of divine
mysteries, wondering about salvation, hoping that some redemptive
grace would fall their way. And I saw in them humankind, weak and in
such need, awaiting a God who was born unto us all though pain and
discouragement.
They looked for a strong deity, a healing one. I would think of the
good Lord Buddha as I watched John and Harold walking down a street,
wondering about the plight of their lives as they listened to each
other with kindness and patience, giving to each other something of
the very thing they were in such hope of finding.
I have read about salvation and still wonder. As I would see Harold
fumble through his pockets to find a Pall Mall for John, the printed
word and human life emerged.
What is salvation and how do we get there?
The Lord Buddha smiled and spoke.
Harold offered John a cigarette.