Samsara
By Alexander Lazarus Wolff
“I am subject to death, and I have not gone beyond death.”
Upajjhatthana Sutta (AN 5:57)
There's a way that light gilds the high-rises and temples in Bangkok at sunset. The gold roof finials, etched with naga fins and feathers of Garuda, glimmer like wedding bands caught in the late day's sun. Each opulent tier of the roof grows more ornamental as it reaches up to touch the tip of the evening sky. The temples are like lotuses unfurling from the squalor of sheet metal tenements that sprawl through the alleys in the poorer regions of the city.
In Thailand, I discovered that what I wished for was not what I understood it to be.
***
At 19, I flew over to South Asia alone. I was on a quest for self-perfection, and Buddhism was the means by which I believed that would be achieved. A white-clad postulant in a sea of ochre robes, I realized that the ajahns—my Buddhist teachers—were molded from the same flesh and blood as mine, this corporeal body infected by carnality. I was a meditator on the eight precepts, the Buddhists' set of ascetic training rules. Those in white were a small group, but we all had the same aspirations. Each of us shared the desire to end desire, knotted in the jungle's thickets of roots and vines. Our sole source of shelter was a wood platform with a tin roof and no walls. Aside from gathering once for the daily meal the precepts allowed, we spent our days completely alone. Only under such austere conditions, the Buddha believed, could one acknowledge and obliterate the defilements of the mind.
***
The Buddhist figure of the hungry ghost is perhaps the most accurate depiction of the inherently desirous nature of humans. In traditional Asian paintings, the hungry ghosts (called peta in Pali) look like a sack of flesh with a stomach as large as a cauldron and appendages that look like tangled branches. Tendrils of red smoke swirl out of their mouths, indicating their incessant desire. These beings are depicted as having necks so thin that they cannot swallow food, but they have stomachs so big that they can never be satiated.
***
Despite my own struggles, I had gained a small spiritual following on social media. The number of messages was validating, and it allowed me to look past my genuine struggles, a practice some would call “spiritual bypassing.”
I thought I had achieved the first stage of enlightenment, that of being a sotāpanna, which translates to “stream-enterer.” In Theravada Buddhism, a sotāpanna is said to have entered the spiritual stream, which would sweep them along to enlightenment, only to be reborn seven more times. I thought I had achieved that goal. Looking back now, I could merely write pseudo profundities that had a poetic lilt. I was not holy. I’d turned Buddhism into another thing that I needed to be successful at, indulging my ego and stripping Buddhism of its spiritual qualities.
There was another Buddhist practitioner around my same age, named Adam, who had amassed a number of followers by posting quotes from suttas. We talked occasionally; he planned to ordain. His zeal for the Dhamma was as pure as a jewel. With the combination of pictures of nature he posted on Facebook, and his output of Dhamma posts, it appeared he was a sort of child prodigy in Buddhism, someone whose mind so was focused on the development of the path that his life seemed radiant. Of course, Buddhism taught me that things are not as they seem.
“One should look upon the world as a bubble or mirage,” said the Buddha in the Dhammapada.
***
The Buddha defined enlightenment as being unconditioned. The word nirvana (nibbāna in Pali) literally means “blown out.” It is the extinguishment of our desires. The fully enlightened person is called an arahant, a fully perfected one. For an arahant, there is no yearning to be elsewhere, no fire of desire that needs to be squelched. It is a state where one engages in pure action, leaving behind only a few karmic footprints.
Nirvana is the state where the three marks of existence (impermanence, suffering, and not-self) are perfected. It is at this point where you realize all that you desired—fame, money, sex—was merely illusory, a mirage created by your impure mind.
***
The difference between Mahayana Buddhists and Theravada Buddhists is that the former believes that we are born inherently pure. I’ve always found that belief to be one of self-deception. There may be a luminosity inside of us, but it is not so pure.
***
This longing for purity led me to Thailand in a quest to attain mastery of my mind. Years of mental strife had worn away at my psyche. But there in the monastery, there was little peace to be found. Little peace to be found in the wood platform on which I slept, the hundred-degree heat of the high-noon sun, in the austerity of the precepts or the lush jungle that surrounded Wat Yan.
Life at Wat Yan was stripped down to even less than the essentials, life bare as bone. My wood platform was off the precipice of a mountain, a 15-minute trek up steep stone slabs covered with moss.
I remember how my scapula dug into the wood platform as I tried to sleep at night; how the humidity clung to my skin and did not dissipate even as night’s veil fell over my platform in darkness. Night in a jungle is a thick oblivion. The world is dark as death. But it didn’t matter: light would have brought insects and moths, which would slip under my mosquito net and pummel me like empty bullet casings. The buzz of bugs was the only thing in a backdrop of complete silence. It was the silence that frightened me most. I was alone with my mind, and I was mentally ill and destabilized.
Aristotle said the person who can handle complete silence is an enlightened being or an utter beast.
***
I first had sex when I was 14 years old. It was in a Sheraton in Tampa, Florida. I was there that night to perform with a prestigious band for middle-schoolers. My pursuit of perfection had brought me to the Sheraton; an animalistic desire led to the events of that night. Even then, I sought out sex to prove to myself that I could get people on a whim, that there was no scarcity but a surplus of people on whom I could draw. By the time I was 15, I had learned to run from myself into the arms of another.
***
My teacher in Thailand was a famous monk name Ajahn Suchart. He had an aura of lightness and stillness I’d never seen. For over a year, I’d asked him questions in his question-and-answer sessions online.
I fault him for being human. It was the same fault that I found in myself.
***
I give a wai, the traditional Thai greeting, as one monk passes me by. It’s 10 AM. The sun of Thailand illuminates the ripples in the reflecting pool and the blossoming lotuses, showering down on the golden peak of the monastery’s memorial. Having returned from alms round — wading through the thick morning mist, collecting food in buckets, and passing rows of stilt houses — my fellow meditators and I congregate.
After the meal, I walk to the rows of toilets to the right of the main hall, the stench of human waste growing ever more present with each step. I press on my stomach, put my fingers in my mouth, and purge the food the laity had given to me in good faith. I watch my vomit spiral away down the toilet. What amount of meditation could atone for this?
I step out of the stall and feel the dense humidity clinging to my sweat-slicked skin. The saffron-robed monks walk past me, symbols of wholesomeness and purity vanishing as they walk on.
***
I’ve never found solace in the idea of karma. The West has misinterpreted karma, believing it is the universe’s tally system, a way to make each being egalitarian and equal on this Earth. But karma cares little about you. Karma is intention, and it is from this personal intention that the impersonal, implacable turning of the karmic wheel designates our next existence.
***
Bhikkhu Samahita, a former professor and a doctor in Denmark, was one person to whom I’d turn. Born Jan Erik Hansen, he quit his job and moved to Sri Lanka to practice Buddhism. I remember talking with another practitioner about the vigor and verve he brought to Buddhism. His passion was to end passion.
Bhikkhu Samahita was someone on whom many could rely. You’re the aversive temperament, as am I, he said. He is referencing one of the six temperaments from the Visuddhimagga. Being of aversive temperament was not a bad thing: it is the temperament that can most easily turn to the wisdom temperament, to which it would transform after enlightenment.
Given the context, I took it as a compliment. Yes, I said. I believe I am a sotapanna. Though, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I read the Dhamma a lot.
He then said, You are also attractive, which means that you practiced gratitude in a former life. You’re in a good place. Never give up. The progress is gradual, with many relapses into ego-belief.
What I remember most about that conversation is not the actual dialogue, but the spiritual communion between two people who were dedicated to perfect their lives.
Though he would end that call with something that I didn’t understand until now.
Karma is often mixed, he said.
I would soon come to fully appreciate this truth.
***
One of the few things no one knows about—and I’ll let no one know—is how many people I’ve slept with. All my suitors blend. The nights in the sweat-wet sheets and the midnight rendezvous are like one long line of people I wracked up to make myself feel like I was needed or wanted. Through sex, I learned, I could soothe my most innate fear, that of being without someone around when I needed them.
I meditated every day. I alternated between celibacy and a high level of sexual activity, a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other: denial and self-indulgence. I reasoned with myself that technically, I was not violating any of the five precepts. I was above needing people, yet I continued to go out—driving to duplexes to men that, with each kiss, were balm to my wounds. There was comfort in the plaster corridors of cheap motels, a rush in driving through the humid Florida night toward late-night liaisons. Lust was a rapture. The flings that would last only a few weeks; they made flickers out of the ash of my life.
***
I left the monastery prematurely. My binging and purging was out of control. I returned to Bangkok, leaving Bang Lamung behind. I booked a couple of weeks in a 4-star hotel in downtown Bangkok. I traded in the wood platform for a room with a jacuzzi, satin sheets, and an in-room bar.
Encased in luxury, I watch as night spreads out over Bangkok. I take the elevator down to the lobby, my sandals slapping the marble floors, and pass the valets flashing smiles at people (Thailand is known as “the country of smiles,” after all) in their perfectly trimmed suits. The hotel fades into the cityscape behind me as I walk through the alley to downtown Bangkok.
I am out, with a few thousand baht in my hand, buying sticky rice, curries, Thai sweets, and downing them as I walk around, darting to each street food vendor with a compulsion that only befits a hungry ghost. Food is my sole source of pleasure: the milkiness of the panang curry fills my stomach, a substitute for my inner emptiness; the mango ice cream, an attempt to quell the fires of my desire; the sticky rice, an ephemeral refuge from myself.
There is a Thai saying: don’t search for peace with the tip of your tongue. Even knowing this, I could not resist my impulses. Binging was an act of gluttony and indulgence; purging was a penance. Together, they brought the obliteration I sought.
It was only a few nights before that I had been at Wat Yan. There, too, my binging and purging was like fire swallowing up a dried-out forest. I had the veneer of piety. A postulant in white, I was shown respect by the Thai lay people, some even saying that I was like a “hero.” I don’t know who I deceived more: them or myself.
***
Sex was of no interest to me in Thailand. There were offers: a guy coming to my room, hitting me up after seeing me on Grindr; a man around my age from Myanmar—and I planned to go to Myanmar—named Aung, who had followed me on Facebook for a year. We chatted frequently, and his messages always seemed to have a secondary intent, intimations of desire embedded in messages about the cessation of desire. It became apparent when I was in Thailand.
How about you show me your ass, he’d ask. The inquiry was one I was used to. And I would learn more about the reality of the realm of Theravada practitioners quickly. It was after that conversation with Aung that reality seemed to crack open, revealing itself as a façade.
***
Adam is my boyfriend, Aung said. The conversation began to unravel. We were in that four-star hotel in downtown Bangkok, languishing in luxury, far from the austerities of Wat Yan; I too was not what I made myself out to be.
I didn’t know this, I said.
You couldn’t tell that he is gay? Aung asked. I love him, he continued, Though he also does heavy drugs, and it upsets me. Please don’t tell anyone about this.
Reality began to split open in front of me: many of the practitioners I knew were not living by the precepts they taught; their lives were an act. I was struck by the desperation and loneliness that would drive Aung and Adam to choose, and hide, and nurture such a relationship on opposite sides of the world.
Was I like them? How many of my spiritual experiences were mere phantoms, delusions conjured by the ego's eye?
***
The first death was Bhikkhu Samahita, who hung himself from the rafters of his father’s house in Copenhagen only months after his father died. He was regarded as having achieved the second stage of life, becoming a once-returner.
When I posted about his suicide on Facebook, people who, days before, saw Samahita as a paragon, lashed out, calling him a stain on the religion. One fellow meditator from Myanmar commented, If his suicide is true, he set a bad example for Buddhists and the world of Buddhism as there’s a website founded by him to inspire disciples to refrain from immorality and free themselves from sufferings. This is not only a huge farce on his part, but on Buddhism across the world.
Then a second death: Adam. To others, even myself, he seemed to have an ethereal nature despite his youth—or he had, until my conversation with Aung, when I learned about Adam's other side. He died of an overdose. By then, Thailand was oceans away, and my meditation practice had stopped.
***
Evening gilds everything. As the minutes pile on top of each other, and the rusted hue of evening grows closer, I probe for something safe onto which I can latch. What reprieve is there in a world riddled with impermanence? In reflection, my pilgrimage was a quest to quell my mind. After a childhood marred by trauma and isolation, the only connections I had as I entered my teen years were hookups and trysts, a world of carnal sin, the realm of the hungry ghosts.
When I think back to my time as a Buddhist, I feel my heart catch, snared by barbed wire. It is not that I dislike the religion. It will forever be a part of me, both metaphorically and literally, as I have a Dharma Wheel tattoo on my wrist and a lotus on the front of my bicep. The interesting thing is that I got the lotus tattoo after I’d already stopped practicing for a year. Buddhism has left its residue on me. It is part of me. But I have not lived up to what that part of me demands.
***
It’s 2023, and the domain name on which Bhikkhu Samahita had shared his Dhamma now displays scantily clad cartoon women bent over against a backdrop of falling gold coins, an ad for online lottery games.
That is the reality of samsara.
Life goes on without fanfare.
***
Five years removed from Thailand, I look back at my diligence and routine. For a decade, I practiced. I sat in the lotus position in front of a teakwood altar in my meditation room. In the center were three sticks of incense placed in a small silver bowl filled with fine sand. My meditation timer and a picture of my ajahns framed two Buddha statues, their gold trim traced by the light from two lit candles.
I did not know that my faith would wane. By the time I moved to Virginia, I stopped practicing. My first house, a row house in the Byrd Park region of Richmond, had a small third room I used as space for my spiritual practice. After five months of living in Richmond, I abandoned that room, letting dust coat the pearls and golds of the Buddha statues, ashes of incense sitting in their bowl.
—For Bhikkhu Samahita and Adam
END
Author Bio: Alexander Lazarus Wolff's writing appears in The Best American Poetry website, Poets.org, The Citron Review, NDQ, The Society of Classical Poets, South Florida Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag, Serotonin, and elsewhere. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, he teaches and studies at the University of Houston, where he holds the Inprint MD Anderson Foundation Fellowship. He is poetry editor for The Plentitudes and is on the editorial board of Black Fox Literary Magazine. You can find him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolffalex108/ on Instagram/Twitter: @wolffalex108 and at www.alexanderlazaruswolff.com.