The Sith Code

Peace is a lie, there is only passion

-the Sith Code

A few years ago, I was part of a book club that tried to read Sharon Salzberg’s “Loving Kindness.” I say “tried” because one of the club members showed up to the first session in an absolute rage about the idea that any benefit could be derived from a practice that didn’t recognize the full “therapeutic context.” At the time, I interpreted that behavior as the stress from being a therapist in the time of COVID, but now see it as both a red flag about this person’s general behavior toward ideas that threaten the special standing of therapists in our society,, and as a legitimate concern about what I’ve taken to calling “Boomer Buddhism.” 

What is Boomer Buddhism?

I’m not an expert here, and any errors in the story are mine, but my understanding is that sometime in the mid-20th century, a bunch of Buddhists teachers came over from China, India, Thailand, and Tibet to try and teach Westerners about Buddhism. What they found was a society that couldn’t sit still and that had been trained to really really really pay attention to their thoughts as the most important things – Western academic training and western society takes thinking seriously. 

So these teachers taught their new Western students the fundamentals of Buddhist practice. Pay attention to your breath and slowly expand that to awareness of your whole body and emotions (vipassana) Practice developing love within yourself and for others (metta). Learn that your sense of self is not a real thing (Zen atman). 

And like almost everything that they touched, the Boomers took this as the Truth, built businesses around this Truth, and sold it to the masses. Giving credit where credit is due, the Boomers are fabulous at marketing, branding, and propoganda. 

Thus Boomer Buddhism was born. Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzburg, and Joseph Goldstein created “Insight Meditation” and sold it to the masses, and it took over the world. It became “Buddhism” in the West. 

It’s important to know that this is only one type of Buddhism, and it’s arguably not even Buddhism, but a whole religion and ideology built on making the first beginning lessons into the whole thing. 

At the root of this philosophy is the notion that you need to find peace. You become calm, you slow down, you rest. This is an incredibly appealing idea for a culture that’s all about movement, a culture that creates regular burnout in our work. That we even have a word for “burnout” is a symptom of the productivity disease. 

But the Boomer Buddhists are right! If you practice vipassana, you will chill out. It works! It’s amazing! You should absolutely do it! 

But don’t stop there. Because that’s just the first step. 

Why always peace? 

Around the time that this book club dissolved, I had been practicing (mostly) daily sitting for close to 2 years. I had done a few meditation retreats, done a series of courses with the Seattle Insight Meditation organization (an extension of Jack, Sharon and Joseph’s East Coast org). I had been sitting with Sam Harris’s app, “Waking Up” and had gotten proficient at sitting and being aware. I was able to watch my thoughts arise and fall away without being captured by them, and especially in moments of conflict, just spin down the feelings of anger by matching them with emotions of love. I felt like I had some super powers, and in some ways, I did! I was a beginner (still am), but learning the fundamentals was incredibly powerful!

But I felt passive. I had developed the ability to endure, to handle a lot of life’s suffering as just a matter of course. I wasn’t a master of this, but I felt like I was a lot better than the average person. 

I realized that I had become overly reliant on that ability to endure. When things were bad at work, I could just take it. Body pain? Just take it. Relationship conflict? Take it and move on. 

This is dangerous and my friend’s outburst at book club made me realize it. Vipassana had been acting as a depressant. 

I started meditating on other feelings. I wanted to know if I could do more than just peace. I wanted to know if I could spark feelings of joy, of violence, of anger, of love. 

I settled on using the phrase “Peace is a lie, there is only passion” as a way of anchoring my quest. It’s a nerdy Star Wars reference, but it fit. I wanted passion at the root of my life, not peace. I wanted intensity and the full variability of our existence not just an inert and passive peace. 

As with many things, it turns out I was treading old ground. The Buddhists had already tread this ground centuries ago in tantra and vajra. I was in good company. 

Where the journey goes

Over the past few years, I’ve been digging into my own desires, and using them to slowly stoke the fire of passion within me. It’s wildly turbulent, and I absolutely still rely on vipassana and other mindfulness practices to keep the ship upright when I need it, but I’ve also grown my capacity for self-love and injustice and greed and love and sadness and anger in ways that are hard to capture and describe. It’s like I had closed off the doors to most of a massive mansion and willfully said those rooms didn’t exist. No longer. 

At the root, I want to take the full breadth of human emotion and be fully present with it. I don’t want to always be at peace because that’s not what being a human is actually like. I want shrill highs and mournful lows, even when that’s not really what I want. (The not wanting is part of it, too!)

I am practicing because I want a full, loud, and vibrant life. My hope is that this road leads to riches beyond measure. I can say that the journey itself has already been profoundly enriching. This has been one of the best years of my life because I have sought to have peace and passion live next to each other. 

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May I be happy. May I be filled with passion. May I be free from all suffering. May I have the strength to clear all obstacles

May I learn to see each frenzied moment as a shining jewel of passion.