#dukkha

Well being without illusion begins with a refusal, not a negation of joy or meaning, but a refusal to accept the metaphysics of arrival that saturates contemporary life. The promise of arrival is the central narcotic of late capitalist civilisation. It organises desire, structures labour, justifies exhaustion, and renders suffering tolerable by endlessly deferring fulfilment into an imagined…

The characters are enmeshed in greed, hatred, and delusion, which are known to Buddhists as the three poisons. And the characters manage to violate the five traditional Buddhist training precepts in their behaviour. The five precepts, whose disregard is said to bring harm and regret, are not killing, not stealing, not lying, not committing sexual misconduct, and not taking intoxicants. The characters murder, steal, lie, engage in sexual misconduct, and abuse alcohol and drugs, often all within the space of a few minutes.

Tim Ratliff, for example, committed fraud (greed) and is now losing his mind from fear of the consequences (hatred), which he is escaping in sedatives and whisky (delusion). It was stealing that landed him in this situation (second precept) and his lying (third) and substance abuse (fifth) are prolonging the crisis. His son, Saxon, driven by sexual greed and shallow egotism (delusion), leads himself and his brother into trouble with his obsession with unethical sexual conquest (fourth precept), fueled by alcohol and drugs (fifth), which ultimately culminates in incest (fourth). And so on.

One of the driving tensions of the plot is also authentically Buddhist: will the characters succumb to the urge to be violent or not? Will Tim kill himself, or even his whole family? Will Greg, a wife-killer in hiding, kill Saxon, who he thinks slept with his wife, or Belinda, who knows of his crime? Will Rick kill the man he believes murdered his father? Will Gaitok succumb to Mook’s pressure to be ambitious and violent for the sake of career advancement?

This last tension animates a tragic Buddhist tale embedded in one of the flashier plot lines of this season: that of Gaitok and Mook. Gaitok is a mild-mannered security guard who avoids confrontation and violence. He is infatuated with Mook, a beautiful Thai girl who herself has more of a thing for the burly tattooed bodyguards who shadow the hotel’s owner. Gaitok attempts to be more aggressive, to get a promotion to please Mook, although he confesses to her that he thinks violence was condemned by the Buddha and is wrong. Ultimately, Gaitok shoots a fleeing murderer dead, thus winning a promotion and Mook’s love. Their mutual disregard for his true, more honorable character promises a life of future misery for them both.

In another scene, the brutality of muay-Thai boxing is juxtaposed with a voice-over of the ajaan saying, 'Remember this: every one of us has the capacity to kill. Buddhist scripture condemns violence in every form. Violence, aggression, anger, stem from the same source: fear. The only good faith response is to sit with your feelings. Violence does spiritual harm to the victim and the perpetrator. Buddhists believe: always non-violence.'

If I knew nothing about Buddhism watching The White Lotus, I would come away with the idea that it is a peaceful religion that promotes stilling the mind, non-violence, and acceptance of life as it is, and whose meditation teachings are commensurate with the pop-mindfulness stuff one can hear in any yoga class or meditation app. I would also believe that it promotes spirit above form, and detachment from self, and that it promises that all beings come from one universal consciousness to which they will return at death in a peaceful homecoming. Not the worst presentation of Theravada Buddhism, to be sure, but far from a wholly accurate one.

When it comes to the plot, however, the show delivers Buddhist insights in spades, serving up hefty doses of teaching about the perils of violence, along with the poisonous nature of greed, hatred, and delusion and the chaotic consequences of killing, stealing, lying, unethical sex, and intoxicants. The show might not be true to Thai Buddhism, but it’s true to life."