I am Large, I Contain Multigrains

Buddhism has not had much to say about power. Traditional teachings warn more about sex and other physical cravings, which play almost no role in The Lord of the Rings. The absolute prohibition of sexual contact for monastics suggests that sexual desire is the archetypal craving that needs to be transcended in order to achieve the serenity of nirvana. Whether or not that was true in India twenty-five hundred years ago, our situation calls for a different focus. Today the primary challenge for socially engaged Buddhism is the individual and collective craving for power, which, Midas-like, destroys whatever it touches. Power and money may be quite valuable as means to some good end, but they turn destructive when they become ends in themselves. Sauron and Saruman, like Gollum, no longer have any goal but power itself — the power that is the Ring. With them Tolkien shows the suffering that results from a quest for power lacking a moral dimension.

In contrast, the strength that Gandalf, Aragorn, Frodo, and others demonstrate is shown not by accumulating or exercising power but in their willingness to give it up. Gandalf has no selfish craving for mastery. He wishes only to serve. 'The rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward.'

Gandalf gives us the definition and the model of a modern bodhisattva, the sort we need today. Are they so rare among us, or is it that the Saurons and Sarumans are so much more visible? And so more powerful, in the conventional sense, because in our world it is not so much physical craving as lust for power that motivates the greed, ill will, and willful ignorance now endangering the earth. People have always craved power, but because of modern technologies there is now so much more power to crave and use; and because of modern institutions, such power tends to function in impersonal ways that assume a life of their own.

Transnational corporations and stock markets institutionalize greed (never enough consumption or profit!) in a world where the centralized bureaucratic governments of nation-states unleash institutionalized ill will (horrific military aggression) in pursuit of their 'national interests.' Under the guise of globalization, ever more sophisticated technologies are deployed to extend the institutionalized delusion that dualizes us from the earth (by commodifying, exploiting, and laying waste to its furthest corners). Today these institutionalized versions of the three poisons [greed, anger, and ignorance] are the Mordor that threatens our future. If Buddhist teachings cannot help us understand this, perhaps there is something wrong with our understanding of Buddhism.

Hobbiton expresses Tolkien's nostalgia for the vanishing rural England in the West Midlands of his youth, but we should not dismiss such home sickness with the reassuring Buddhist maxim that 'everything passes away.' Our collective attempt to dominate the earth technologically is related to the disappearance of the sacred in the modern world. If we can no longer rely on God to take care of us, we strive to secure ourselves by subduing nature until it meets all our needs and satisfies all our purposes — which will never happen, of course. Because our efforts to exploit the earth's resources are damaging it so much, the fatal irony is that our attempt to secure the conditions of our existence here may destroy us. Is there a clearer or more dangerous example of institutionalized delusion? We are one with the earth. When the biosphere becomes sick, we become sick. If the biosphere dies, we die. The technological Ring of Power is not the solution to our problems. It has become the problem itself.

Instead of seeking power, happiness for our heroes is connected with the ability to delight in the simple pleasures of everyday life: enjoying a glass and a song by a warm hearth in the company of others, for example. The fellowship of loving friends is contrasted with the greedy, private pseudo-happiness of those who seek only the Ring. Sauron, Saruman, Gollum: each tormented, solitary soul looks out only for itself, and knows nothing of the wide community of willing helpers that enables Frodo to complete his mission.

We need to recover such community and such an ecological sensibility if we are to make it through the dark times that threaten our world. We also need new types of bodhisattvas, inspired perhaps by the fresh models that Tolkien's myth provides for socially engaged Buddhism. As with Frodo on his improbable quest, it is easy to become discouraged. There is, however, something to remember at such times. Frodo's task was appointed to him in a mysterious way that he did not understand, because it cannot be understood. The implication is that the mission he and others undertook was successful in the end, because they were a part of something greater than themselves.

For us, too, to be spiritual means opening up to a transformative power that works in us and through us when we do the best we can. Is that also true for the world that we are non-dual with? Who knows what is possible, or even what is actually happening today? Who, for example, anticipated the worldwide collapse of communism in 1989, or the sudden end of South African apartheid in 1994? The task of socially engaged bodhisattvas is not to unravel the mystery that is our world, but to do what we can to succor its sufferings in this time of crisis. Frodo and Sam discovered many unexpected helpers along their way, and so may we."