Lake Superior as seen from the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
“If I am not in the world simply to adapt to it, but rather to transform it, and if it is not possible to change the world without a certain dream or vision for it, I must make use of every possibility there is to not only speak about my utopia, but also to engage in practices consistent with it.” — Paulo Freire
The eponymous main character in the television series Joe Pera Talks With You has a special tradition. He believes that when you carve a jack-o-lantern, you give it a piece of your soul. So every year, on the Saturday after Halloween, he takes his jack-o-lantern on a “Fall Loop”: a scenic drive around Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The purpose of this voyage? To lay the aging pumpkin to rest exactly as he hopes to be some day: sent careening off one of the UP’s many waterfalls. This year’s Fall Loop Day was last Saturday. That got me thinking—what are some of my own traditions honoring the dead? I can think of one predominantly.
Every year, on the Sunday closest to the anniversary of my grandmother’s death, we prepare an altar of offerings to her and my grandfather. They contain a pot of tea, piles of fruit, freshly cooked rice, and many of their favorite dishes—roast duck, pork belly, char siu, steamed buns, zongzi. Some more contemporary items have found their way onto the yearly table, such as soda, potato chips, and—rather humorously—cigarettes for my grandfather. We set the altar up in my eldest uncle’s house, beneath my grandmother’s shrine. We arrange the items neatly, light incense to the shrine and to the shrine to Guanyin we have in another room, and we pray. We invite our forebears to visit us and dine on all the food and drink we have on offer. We ask that they bless us with good fortune in the coming year. We tell them we are grateful that they came to see us, however briefly, before they return to wherever it is they’ve gone. We wait until the last of the incense burns all the way down.
Then we eat. Can’t let the food go to waste, after all. The idea is that our otherworldly visitors have eaten the spiritual contents of the food, and we have eaten the—well—real contents. In that way, it’s like we dined together, sharing one more meal across space and time. Defying death just for the opportunity to eat, drink, and smoke cigarettes with people you love. What an Asian thing to do.
Growing up, I certainly didn’t believe that what we were doing was “real.” That is to say, the ghosts of my grandparents were floating into our home, eating the ghosts of our food, and sprinkling ghostly good luck dust on top of our heads. I don’t think any but the most superstitious members of my family did either, though if asked, they’d likely deflect in our characteristic smart-ass manner: “You don’t know that’s not what happens,” etc.
Yet we do it anyway, year after year, and have done since my grandmother’s passing. Why? The boring and pessimistic answer is that we do it because we’ve always done it—because it’s tradition. But a tradition must have some social utility, however limited, in order to persist. In my case, I’d wager the utility has several faces. For one thing, and rather simply, it forces us to spend time together when we probably wouldn’t otherwise, since we don’t exactly “get along” in the conventional sense. It calls a truce in the family, even if only for a few hours every year. Secondly, it encourages us to resolve the lingering resentment we have regarding what the dead did to us, or us to them. This is really more for us than it is for them. My grandfather was not very good to his family, as so many fathers aren’t. He was an alcoholic and absent for much of his children’s lives. Ancestor worship affords each family member an opportunity to sit with his life and the role it played in the course of their own. Not to forgive him, as I wouldn’t ask that of them, and I don’t think the tradition does either. Only to sit with him and with themselves in relation to him. You can say that’s somber, but meaningful things often are.
The final utilitarian element, I think, and I know I keep coming back to this, is that it gives us cause to cook and eat some bomb food. The world’s great cultural traditions all center around food for a reason. Satisfying your tastebuds is equally as important as satisfying your soul.
As you might expect, I still have trouble “believing” in my family’s practice, so to speak. Religious as I am, I am still a member of the modern era, and did receive—however begrudgingly—a science education. I just can’t quite picture my grandparents, looking maybe like Force ghosts, descending from the heavens to fill a bowl of astral food like they’re at some extra-dimensional casino buffet. So I can’t say I accept the tradition as taken literally. But I do accept the metaphysical layer. Practicing it, and telling myself the story it asks me to tell, is worthwhile. It calls me to service, to remembrance, to consideration of what I owe to those who came before me.
I know it sounds corny, but I do believe that by acting as though it were real, I give it one small semblance of reality. Not much—merely a fragment. But enough. Buddhists believe that consciousness exists within the world; not separate from it. That every person is the universe talking to itself. If that is what we believe, then it follows that we have the ability to speak things into existence within certain bounds, i.e. within ourselves. That is why we say, for example, that we already have “more than enough conditions to be happy” as long as we are alive. Call it delusion if you want, but I choose to call it hope. In this instance, it means hope that what we do for the dead means something. Hope that some connection between us persists even after they are gone. Hope that when it is our turn to be remembered, we too will get our favorite brand of cigarettes on the altar.
I’m not ashamed of those beliefs of mine and my loved ones which may reasonably be called religious, spiritual, or superstitious. As ridiculous as they may be, it would be equally ridiculous to deny them categorically. It takes a criminal lack of ambition, in my opinion, to look at this existence and see nothing beyond the physical. To not permit yourself to wonder what remains undiscovered. That’s not me. I’m happy with who I am because the alternative is to deny those parts of life that make it charming, dramatic, and endlessly thought-provoking.
Some people who hold beliefs similar to my own, on the other hand, shy away from descriptions of those beliefs as religious or spiritual. I’m thinking of course of people who say that “Buddhism is more of a philosophy than a religion.” This phrase, in its various permutations, has become commonplace in conversations about Buddhism in America. Those Buddhists who have taken it on as their guiding principle often refer to themselves as secular Buddhists. They find value in Buddhist teachings and some Buddhist rituals, but eschew its metaphysical components such as merit, karma, reincarnation, and the centrality of a monastic order. This approach to Buddhism is becoming more popular all the time, and it goes without saying that anyone is welcome to practice this way. Personally, though, I just don’t get it.
My first reaction when I learned about this movement, I have to admit, was rather negative. I was offended that the elements of Buddhism which I associated the most with it—and with my childhood—were the very same parts that the secular Buddhists would strip away. It felt personal. Eventually, however, I came to understand there are reasons why someone who values the Buddha’s teaching may not be able to subscribe to it as a religion. For example, many people in this country—many who were raised Christian in particular—carry religious trauma. They had faith used against them; saw religion promote the worst aspects of the human spirit rather than the best. Either way, my hands are dirty too. The Asian diaspora in the United States harbors more harmful social views than I can remember off the top of my head. The history of Buddhism in Asia is stained with millennia of oppression and bloodshed. At the end of the day, I can’t be picky. The Dharma is beautiful. It deserves to survive and to spread. To do so, it must adapt. People should be free to incorporate it into their lives whichever way they see fit so long as they abide by its tenets.
While I’ve come to respect secular Buddhists, I still don’t think I will ever understand them. I couldn’t separate Buddhism into secular and spiritual elements even if I wanted to. To me, it’s all intertwined; the parts simply aren’t removable. Pope Francis said that “a religion without mystics is a philosophy.” For some people, that’s just as well, or even preferable. Me, though? I need something more to chew on. Philosophies are fine and all, but you don’t see many people structuring their entire lives around Sartre. At least, I don’t.
But that’s how I was raised to see things. Other people were raised differently. Their brains are malleable in places where mine is stiff, and vice versa. That’s OK. I beseech any secular Buddhist reading this to humor me, though, by engaging in a simple thought experience. Ask yourself: how much of your devotion to secular Buddhism is based on your evaluation of its merits, and how much is based on fear of admitting that you are indeed a spiritual person? Because if you really want to be spiritual, then be spiritual. Spirituality is a boon to anyone who is compatible with it. It permits you to interface with the deepest, most base layers of the self that you might otherwise—in my opinion—fail to access or even perceive.
This goes for all of you. I’d wager many people are more spiritual than they let on—maybe even more than they realize. And even if you’re not spiritual, I know for a fact that you worship something. Everybody does.
Take inventory of your character. Ask yourself what it is you’ve built a shrine to in your mind. If you don’t find anything, look closer and you will. That is what you worship. Human beings are naturally reverential creatures. We like to elevate things above ourselves—to grant them a capacity that exceeds our own. We do it most of the time without thinking. We revere things with our thought, speech, and action. Nobody really believes they’re at the top of the universe; not with reality staring them in the face. No—we’re all chasing something. Consciously or unconsciously. But I think we better do it consciously if we can help it.
When we are unintentional about what we worship, we often find ourselves building shrines to objects that do not merit our veneration. We prostrate before things that we would be ashamed to admit held such sway over us. For example, a great many people in world history have worshiped wealth, and in so doing have doomed untold millions of others. Many people today worship pleasure and consumption to the detriment of themselves and those they care about. Others still worship mockery, ignorance, and disdain. I know because I have been all of these people in the past. I went about without a care in the world, unanchored, somehow having convinced myself that I served nothing, when in fact we are all servants to something. Sometimes I think I still am this way.
Everyone worships at some altar, so take care what yours might be. Exercise what control you have to make sure it’s something deserving. You have more of a choice than you think. Just in case anyone is worried, I’m not asking you to be religious. Really, you don’t have to be. There are so many items you can place on your altar. Maybe you choose to worship family or community. Maybe you choose to elevate art, or music, or sea turtles. It could be a combination of all these things and more. You could go for broke and worship humanity, full stop. As long as it’s something you can name with a smile—something that gives you hope.
I’ve seen what happens when people lose all hope. I’m sure you have too. We don’t need any more of that, so please don’t let it happen to you. I don’t care if you have to worship the strangest, oddest thing you can get your hands on. I’d rather you find hope in something I don’t than fail to find any at all. And if you can afford me the same grace, that would be very kind.
Image credit:
By Ty Zhang - Own work, Public Domain.