FATHER FRANK’S RANTS

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS

Rant Number 304 22 May 2008

Three Cheers for the Dalai Lama

Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, is now in London. This spiritual leader of Tibetans is one my heroes. A tough monk, he laughs and jokes a lot. Not bad for a bloke who is the fourteenth incarnation of a bodhisattva called Avalokitesvara. The ghastly Chinese dictatorship hates him and that can only augment my huge admiration for him. God willing, Tibet one day will be free, while the communist party will end up in the gutter where it belongs. I used to contribute my bit towards that goal by writing for the Falun Gong’s paper, The Epoch Times but the editor inexplicably dropped me. Too much a turbulent priest for them, I suppose. Washington must have complained…

Great souls like the Dalai Lama spread enlightenment whenever they speak and act. For me, a ray of that came via a remarkable statement he made years ago: ‘I am now 60 and so I must begin to prepare myself for death.’

Preparing oneself for death. A fulgurating thought. How does one do that? And what exactly is it that what one prepares oneself for?

Buddhists do of course believe in reincarnation. To some, a comforting credence. One perhaps a little difficult to hold together with their doctrine that the self is an illusion. If that is so, what is it that gets reincarnated? But forget such quibbles. Karma will sort it all out – presumably. Not for the priest to query the Buddha’s high teachings.

‘I must prepare myself for death.’ Europeans, whose ancestors were at least Christians, have a rich tradition of preparing for eternity. Memento mori, remember that you will die, monks would warn each other. Armand-Jean de Rance’, a young French aristocrat, was frivolous and worldly despite being ordained. After the painful death of a woman he loved, he underwent a dramatic conversion and retired to a monastery. Soon, he founded a religious community of extraordinary austerity, called La Trappe. Perpetual silence, manual work, frequent fasting, total abstinence from meat, fish and eggs, rising at 2 AM for prayers, common dormitory of straw mattresses laid on plank beds…no wonder Rance’ called his religious rule ‘a training for death’. One of the men who placed themselves under his spiritual guidance was a king. James II, England’s last Catholic monarch. Exiled in Paris, old and disappointed after a life of adventures, pleasures, wars and mistresses, James no doubt felt it was the right time to prepare himself for death. (Prince Charles is more humdrum but… should he take a leaf out of King James’ book? It would benefit the future supreme governor of the Church of England, surely.)

La Trappe aroused the fury of neo-pagans like Friedrich Nietzsche. He raged against such out-and-out self-denial and mortification of the flesh. Hatred of life, he termed it. But of course Nietzsche disbelieved in the Beyond. For him there was no judge waiting in the afterlife, only extinction. In fact, a trappist monk is no masochist. He would not subject himself to such a tough rule if he did not believe in a Final Judgment. In a pressing need to be undergo cleansing, penance and preparation for that awful, Great Day. Wherever he is now, if his soul has not disintegrated, Nietzsche would see the point of that.

The judge, yes, the judge. ‘There is no one who can judge us and therefore we must judge ourselves’ says Rosmer to Rebecca in Ibsen’s saturnine play, Rosmersholm. I saw it at the Almeida Theatre last night. A long and wordy drama, filled with twists, like a thriller. The last one is tragic: Rosmer and Rebecca do indeed pass capital judgment on themselves by committing suicide together. Both him and Rebecca bear responsibility for the death of his first wife. Rosmer, a former priest, had first lost his faith in God and then in his humanitarian mission. There is nothing more for them to hope or fear for – they conclude. But disbelieving in the supreme Judge does not necessarily negate his existence. A savage might not believe in the mysterious, invisible power called electricity – let him touch a live wire and he will quickly learn to reverence that unseen force. Similarly, Rebecca and Rosmer are self-deluded. Suicide, far from being their own self-imposed punishment, only aggravates their guilt. They have not escaped the final reckoning – only made it more terrible.

‘I must prepare myself for death.’ Although advancing age makes that imperative particularly pregnant, it applies at all times in life’s journey. Cotidie morimur, Seneca wrote. We die a little bit every day. My death is today one day closer than it was yesterday. Time gets forever shorter. It is thus a growingly urgent task.

‘I must prepare myself for death.’ Pray, reflect on the sheer grandeur of that self-command. Addressed to our degraded Western humanity, largely devoted to consumerism and the lowest forms of hedonism, the fierce truth of that remark is searing. It is like a sharp blade sinking into our inner being. It takes a monk to say something like that. A worthy spiritual athlete, like the Dalai Lama. Only hope his demise isn’t quite round the corner. God knows how we need guys like him around.

It indeed most foolish to be unprepared for death. Jesus tells a short and sharp parable (St Luke 12:16-21) about a man whose property yielded rich crops. That pleased him but also made him anxious. ‘My barns aren’t big enough for all this plenty. Shall I build bigger barns to store my wealth?’ he asked himself. So he did and grew smug. ‘I have plenty of cash and goods for the rest of my days. I am going to enjoy myself. I shall pig it out, get as drunk as a skunk and have a ripping good time.’ But God told him: ‘Fool! Tonight your soul will be required of you? Your riches then, whose will they be?’

Rosmer, the sad hero of Rosmerhsolm often proclaims that his life mission is to make people think for themselves. Now, there is a thought Jesus invites us to really think. Our goodies, our loves, our cares, in the end, whose will they be?

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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