Lincoln was a Buddha

by Tom Armstrong

Writing in 1880, John Caird, looking back at the man's life, wrote these eloquent summarizing words …

[My overall impression] is that of a man who combined with intellectual originality other and not less essential elements of greatness, such as magnanimity and moral elevation of nature, superiority to vulgar passions, and absorption of mind with larger objects, such as rendered him absolutely insensible to personal ambition, also self-reliance and strength of will – the confidence that comes from consciousness of power and resource – the quiet, patient, unflinching resolution which wavers not from its purpose in the face of dangers and difficulties that baffle or wear out men of meaner mould. Along with these, we must ascribe to him other qualities not always or often combined with them, such as sweetness, gentleness, quickness and width of sympathy.

Caird's words are about Gautama Buddha, but can very much be said of Abraham Lincoln, as well – a person no less extraordinary and no less different from the people all about him such that his impact was astonishing. Events, time and place all had overwhelming influence in making Buddha



Gautama and Abraham Lincoln immortal persons. But both had buddhaseeds sprouting when they were children. And both acted in ways that baffle ordinary men.

Buddha Gautama is a whole other story. He decided to try to let others in on what propelled him. Abraham Lincoln's strange life's journey led him to center stage during America's most trying time, just at that pivotal moment when the baton of the presidency needed to be passed … to that rare diamond, a buddha.

Caird's assessment is interesting in that he didn't apprehend Gautama Buddha as being a buddha. His opinion was what he came to know of Guatama as a man, from what documents he read, compared to ordinary men. Likewise, persons who knew Abraham Lincoln, most all of whom appraised him as an astonishing human being, did not have the wherewithal to assess his high spiritual attainment directly.

Young Mr. Lincoln

The shorthand for Lincoln's boyhood days are that his mother died when he was quite young, but, happily, a wonderful, loving stepmother took her place in his life; he lived in a log cabin; he was naturally athletic, but he was inclined to turn his head toward the pages of a book; and in all ways, even as a youngster, he was honest and wholesome.

All of the above is true. What is not understood is that it is true to an outrageous extreme. Furthermore, it is not understood, except by scholars, that Lincoln was very much not the pastoral, ah-shucks Huckleberry of legend and as portrayed in old movies, but was instead an outlandish alien freakazoid! If he had had a single eye in the middle of his forehead, pointy ears and the ability to fly he would have been a more natural citizen of placid rural Indiana & Illinois than the gawky, two-eyed, big-eared, non-flying Abe Lincoln reality who was born in 1809 and died from an assassin's bullet.

Rural Indiana and Illinois of the 1810s and 20s was the edge of the wild, uncivilized West. The land was rustic and primal as were the isolated homesteading inhabitants. Boys were supposed to be especially ornery and mean and scarred



up and smelly. They would torture animals and torture each other and had distain for learning much more than how to shoe a horse or slaughter a pig. Constant hard physical labor was required of all members of a family to stave off death in the boggy, cold, isolated areas where Lincoln grew up. Poisoned milk killed Lincoln's mother, his maternal grandparents and others. A harsh winter killed scores of neighbors – some found only after the spring thaw.

One thing remembered by many who knew him as a small child was his love of animals. One schoolmate remembered that he quite seriously lectured others about ants' right to life; another, that he broke up a gang of 'mates that were torturing terrapin turtles for entertainment and that he composed essays against cruelty toward animals on multiple occasions.

Though hunting was one of the few pleasures for men and boys of the rural Midwest, Lincoln would not hunt. And though his farming background could have been of great advantage to him politically, he didn't speak of it – most probably since memories of it were admixed with the pain of having been hired out by his father to help slaughter pigs.

William Lee Miller, author of the recent book “Lincoln's Virtues” wrote “Throughout the life of that extraordinary hired hand whose name was Abraham Lincoln, there would be a recurrent pattern: an initial impression of the boy or the lad or the man, derived from externals and superficialities, would then be overthrown by the shock of recognition of this intellectual power.” Miller, it seems to me, has it mostly right, but from (my interpretation of) the words of others in his book and other books [and of these, most-especially William Herndon's “The Hidden Lincoln”] it is not “intellectual power” that throws people for a loop – rather it's Lincoln's emptiness of guile and ineffable Buddha glow that might find expression through his intellect, but might also shine from his compassion, humanity or just the way he held an ax.

A Religious Man

Mary Todd Lincoln said, after her husband's death, “He never joined a church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man by nature.”

As a young man Lincoln would engage in discussions advocating a “doctrine of necessity,” that opposed unfettered free will. I think this is very much a young person's insight into the interconnectedness of all things and beings and the chain of causes that seem to determine all events. A less magnificent person than Lincoln is likely to develop from this beginning, a religious sensibility grounded in scientism. Compassion toward others then becomes just a wildly romantic indulgence. But Lincoln, above everything was vividly compassionate and it was through this lens that he increasingly sought wisdom.

The beauty of his character was its entire simplicity. … True to nature, true to himself, he was true to everybody and everything about and around him. When he was ignorant on any subject, no matter how simple it might make him appear he was always willing to acknowledge it. His whole aim in life was to be true to himself and being true to himself he would be false to no one. – Joshua Speed, one of Lincoln's closest friends.

Speed's statement is as clarion a depiction of authenticity as you might find. Authenticity is a requirement for spiritual advancement.

In his mid-20s, Lincoln wrote a manuscript showing that the Bible was false. He did not believe that Jesus was God and could not believe that a true God would bring punishment to his 'children' when the laws of cause and effect that he saw in the world were pre-eminent forces. His friends were shocked by his beliefs that his law partner, William Herndon, contends he maintained throughout his life. Fearing for his political future, one friend burned the manuscript to keep it from being published. Still, Lincoln – who continued to be forthright and outspoken on the subject – was dogged by a reputation thereafter for being an infidel which was politically damaging.

With Malice toward none …

Leonard Swett, a close friend of Lincoln's, said in an interview, a year after the assassination, “He was certainly a very poor hater. He never judged men by his like, or dislike for them. If any given act was to be performed, he could understand that his enemy could do it just as well as any one. If a man had maligned him, or been guilty of personal ill-treatment and abuse, and was the fittest man for the place, he would put him in his Cabinet just as soon as he would his friend. I do not think he ever removed a man because he was his enemy, or because he disliked him.”

Indeed, Swett's words are a gross understatement; Lincoln was incapable of hate. Lincoln included on his initial Cabinet men who were his rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860 -- and he was especially gracious to guarantee the acceptance of his chief rival, William Seward, to the post of Secretary of State.

Edwin M. Stanton, who was Lincoln's second Secretary of War, is a particularly curious case. Stanton (of whom Fredrick Douglass would observe, “Politeness was not one of his weaknesses”) had ignored Lincoln, utterly, when – many years before he became president -- they were two of three lawyers chosen to represent a company for a particularly important civil suit. Lincoln was not a well-educated East Coast attorney, like the others. Judged from the fact that Lincoln was a rural Illinois lawyer, gangly and not well dressed, he was kept silent at the lawyers' table and the closing argument which he had prepared went unheard and was curtly ignored: The text, that Lincoln had passed on to his colleagues in a sealed letter, was returned to him unopened.

In the first years of the Lincoln administration, there are public records of Stanton referring to Lincoln as an imbecile (twice) and a baboon, yet Lincoln was undeterred in his selection of Stanton as his Secretary of War. He selected the best person for the position and ignored all else.

Observes William Lee Miller, “[Lincoln's] 'ego,' as we call it now, did not distort his good mind's working. His considerable self-confidence notwithstanding, he would achieve a detached and proportionate sense of himself in relation to an unflinching measure of the scope and meaning of the enormous human drama that confronted him. His self did not get in the way.”

Ambition

The biggest character flaw that William Lee Miller tags Lincoln with is ambition. It would also be an overwhelming obstacle to the thesis that Lincoln is a Buddha, if one agrees with Miller that at times Lincoln pushed himself forward, instead of doing the right thing that might have been politically disadvantageous.

For Miller, Ambition first comes up when looking at Lincoln's vocational choices. Instead of remaining in his rural community, either as a farmer or businessman, Lincoln chose to become a lawyer and move to the city of Springfield.

Despite his wide-ranging, superlative skills, Lincoln may have had fewer options than Miller supposes. Saddled with deep compassion for the suffering of animals, he was not suited for farm work. Much as a Buddhist is indisposed to take up the profession of being a butcher, Lincoln was indisposed to make his life's work one that included the slaughtering of farm animals.

Entrepreneurs need to be of a character such that they are eager to profit, overgreatly at times, at the expense of unwitting customers in order to make their businesses thrive. Lincoln did not have the disposition required for him to be a successful businessman. Indeed, young Lincoln's business ventures failed, putting him in a deep debt that took years for him to extricate himself from.

Becoming a lawyer, and tossing himself into the political maelstrom of his time and place, seems to have been the vocational path (and spiritual challenge) that was left to him after crossing off others. His wasn't a fulsome, consuming ambition; rather, it was that last path available that was suitable to his blend of talents and weaknesses.

Lincoln's Face

“At first glance, some thought him grotesque, even ugly, and almost all considered him homely. When preoccupied or in repose he certainly was far from handsome. At times he looked unutterably sad, as if every sorrow were his own, or he looked merely dull, with a vacant gaze,” one observer wrote. Still, as even the caustic Englishman Dicey observed, there was for all his grotesqueness, "an air of strength, physical as well as moral, and a strange look of dignity" about him. And when he spoke a miracle occurred. "The dull, listless features dropped like a mask." according to Horace White, an editor of the "Chicago Tribune". "The eyes began to sparkle, the mouth to smile, the whole countenance was wreathed in animation, so that a stranger would have to say, "Why this face, so angular and somber a moment ago, is really handsome!" He was the homeliest man I ever saw." said Donn Piatt, and yet there was something about the face that Piatt never forgot. "It brightened, like a lit lantern, when animated."

The poet Walt Whitman commented after getting a close-up view: "None of the artists or pictures have caught the subtle and indirect expression of this man's face." And again, some years after Lincoln's death: "Though hundreds of portraits have been made, by painters and photographers (many to pass on, by copies, to future times), I have never seen one yet that in my opinion deserved to be called a perfectly good likeness: nor do I believe there is really such a one in existence."

"Beyond a certain point Lincoln's appearance not only defied description; it also baffled interpretation. "There is something in the face which I cannot understand." said Congressman Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. And the leader of the German-Americans in Illinois, Gustave Koerner, remarked: "Something about the man, the face is unfathomable. In his looks there were hints of mysteries within."

Buddha as a Man; Lincoln as a Man

In the middle of the 19th Century, when Lincoln was being assessed as a heroic and tragic figure, Buddha was being introduced and examined by Victorian England. Since others' assessments of Lincoln are colored by culture, time and place, I think it is interesting to see how similarly Buddha Gautama was viewed.

From the book “The British Discovery of Buddhism,” comes this quote:

Of all the qualities praised, it is the Buddha's compassion and sympathy that was most often remarked upon. Millions were won by his intense sympathy for suffering, observed Joseph Edkins [quoted in Remarks on Budhism (sic)]. According to The Westminster Review in 1878, his was 'the example of a life in which the loftiest morality was softened and beautified by unbounded charity and devotion to the good of his fellow-men'; and The Church Quarterly Review for 1882 viewed him as one 'who, born a prince, sympathized with the sorrows and the moral struggles of the meanest; who … opened his arms to receive as a brother every one who pursued goodness, truth, unselfishness, and his ideal …' George Grant remarked in 1895 that, after making all allowances for accretions, the picture remains of an extraordinary man 'the memory of whose unselfish life, thirst for truth, and love for humanity ought to be honoured to the latest generations.'

Fittingly, the last year of the century, William Rattigan drew together the Victorian assessment of the Buddha:

Having regard to the intellectual and religious darkness of the period, it is impossible not to accord a high degree of admiration to Gautama for the lofty percepts he enunciated, for the gentleness and sereneness which pervade his utterances, for the deeply sympathetic and profoundly humanitarian spirit which underlie his doctrines, and for the manly endeavour he made to arouse a true feeling of self-reliance amoungst a people prone to lean for support upon others.

Conclusion

Yes, we exhaust ourselves on the legend of Lincoln in the third grade, and for us he becomes a tired relic, like Mickey Mouse and Brittany Spears and Star Wars sabers. His face – unanimated and serene – stares out at us from pennies and five-dollar bills. His wise words are just etchings on bronze somewhere -- the life that once was in his words has been expelled. “Fourscore and seven years …” sounds like a tiresome history lesson to us today, not the beginning of a speech, rich and eloquence, that brought chills and tears to Americans for decades after the speech was spoken.

If you pull together all the assessments of Lincoln, it is a remarkable record. He was greatly beloved by all in the communities he lived in. He was the dazzling, pre-eminent person – giving, loving and vividly authentic. Absolutely honest. Absolutely dependable. Fully in touch with the pain of others'. He held no grudges and condemned no one. He believed there was clarion truth in the notion that created America – that all had equal rights to live and equivalent right to live in liberty and pursue happiness. No one could be a master since no one should be a slave. And no one could be a slave since no one should be a master.

Somewhere back in misty time, one of the buddhas that walked this earthy earth became president of the United States. And it made a difference.

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ADDENDUM .......


I saw a recording on C-SPAN of an appearance by Bill Clinton at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston where Clinton made some interesting remarks re Lincoln. It seems that Clinton has read widely on the lives of those who have shared his honor of having held the position of U. S. President.

Clinton's assessment of Lincoln dovetails to some great degree to a claim that Lincoln was a Buddha. My transcription of the remarks re Lincoln follow:

I think some of the presidents are particularly well suited for the times in which they served.

Lincoln was especially well suited to the time in which he served.

It's really interesting. Lincoln had, you know, serious depression problems. And when he lost a son in Illinois; then he lost a son in the White House; then his wife lost three of her half brothers fighting for the Confederacy. Then, she suffered all of her trauma. And then he had all the blood of the Union streaming from his decisions.

Something happened to him that is very rare for human beings who suffered the way he did. He got stronger as he took on the suffering of others. He got stronger as he absorbed the pain of others.

Somehow it displaced whatever that gnawing sense of self-doubt and depression was that ate on him.

And yet because he had himself suffered, he had an uncommon feeling for human frailty and for other people. So he literally was psychologically and intellectually perfect for the moment in which he served.

It was an astonishing fit in history. I mean, he would have been an interesting, remarkable fellow whenever he served. But if he'd been in a kind of blah, blah time, you know, he would have been looking for Prozac a hundred years before it was developed or something, you know.

It's an extraordinary thing for a man to be able to take on the suffering and pain of others. And in the process of doing it to purge himself of pain's grip on his own psyche and heart and soul.

A Buddhist's Analysis of "The Great Gatsby" : While the Still Eyes of the Witness Watch

by Tom Armstrong, editor of Zen Unbound
©2002-2004 Tom Armstrong

“My book is wonderful, so is the air + the sea.” – FSF, letter to Edmund Wilson, summer 1924

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" may seem to be an odd book to analyze in a Buddhist online magazine. There is no meditation, nor even a climactic martial arts battle. And the character Jay Gatsby isn't great because he awakens to the meaning of life. Too, unlike a contemporaneous novel, James Hilton's "Lost Horizon," no one crashlands in ersatz Tibet.

Instead, on a surface level, "Gatsby" is about the opulently rich and their wild, boozy parties. It's about adultery and a chain of events that lead to three deaths. Not the usual fodder to wax polemic on Buddhism, it's more like a plotline to a weekday afternoon soap opera. But here's the thing: "Gatsby" is textured and chock-full of tasty nuggets, written by 28-year-old Fitzgerald at the time when he was brimming with special wisdom and was able to organize complex structure. Strewn through his elaborate concoction, written in lyric prose that came to be known as Fitzgerald's "high style," are touchstones for any Buddhist wayfarer.

Fitzgerald thought "Gatsby" was wonderful, "something new – something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." When critics generally panned his effort upon its release in 1925, he thought none of them understood. An unread failure in its own day, the short book was resurrected when Fitzgerald's career was revisited by critics after his death at age 44 in 1940. At the end of the Twentieth Century, four prestigious literary groups independently polled scholars, writers and critics to amass rankings of the top novel written in the century. "The Great Gatsby" was the consensus Number One American novel – which calibrates with the wild claim Fitzgerald made for it days before sending the final draft to this editor. "I think my novel is about the best American novel ever written," said the letter, dated August 27, 1924, to Max Perkins.

THE WITNESS

A central symbol in the novel is a huge billboard advertising the services of an oculist, Dr. T. J. Eckleburg. It is in the borough of Queens "…above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it." The billboard is high overhead, near intersecting roads, visible from the train that connects Long Island to New York City and near the service station/garage where George Wilson toils and lives upstairs with his wife, Myrtle – who near the end of the book is killed in the street, run over by Daisy driving Gatsby's car. Writes Fitzgerald, "The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic – his irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose. … [H]is eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground."

Analysts of the book offer two main explanations for what the symbol represents. One begins by declaring that Eckleburg's first and middle initials stand for Thomas Jefferson. The basis for this is derived from an understanding of the novel as a sweeping exploration of America. After it was too late to make the change, Fitzgerald wanted to give his book the terrible title "Under the Red, White and Blue" – which would in part be in homage to Fitzgerald's ancestor after whom he was named, Francis Scott Key, the lyricist of the National Anthem. Indeed, there is a gallantly streaming sweep to the novel with its many characters having occupations and lifestyles representative of Jazz Age America.

The most-common explanation for the billboard is that it represents the Christian God. Before George Wilson sets off to avenge the death of his wife, he indicates to a friend that the billboard eyes represent God to him. "God sees everything," says distraught Wilson. "That's an advertisement," his friend says, correcting him. If we are to accept the friend as being more levelheaded than Wilson – and I certainly think that we are – then a proper understanding is that at this point in the novel Fitzgerald is directly telling us not to take up an understanding of the billboard as symbolizing an ever-watching God.

Assuredly, the eyes represent God to George Wilson, but, spurred on by the eyes, his vengeance for the death of his wife results in him killing an innocent man. A pretty lousy God, this billboard! Surely, the advertisement means something else in the context of the book as a whole.

Years before Fitzgerald wrote "Gatsby," he wrote his longest, best and most-unusual short story, a wonderful fantasy called "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz." He had difficulty selling it, however, because the major magazines thought it bordered on blasphemy. Fitzgerald, the borderline blasphemer, was not given to injecting theistic material into his writing. Fitzgerald had a clear interest in themes where human conduct/misconduct were observed, and where ethical persons were faced with dealing with charming unethical persons. But while there were religious elements to many of his short stories, Fitzgerald was not personally an observant Christian -- nor were there pious themes to the hundreds of short stories he wrote, or his handful of novels.

The big clue to the meaning of the billboard can be found in the novel's second chapter when Nick, the narrator of the story and its protagonist, is at the party in Myrtle's apartment, looking out the window:

"I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park though the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

The yellow windows, like Dr. Eckleburg's yellow spectacles, are seen from a street below. Nick, the reader's cogent guide, a little tipsy, ensnarled in the petty dramas at Myrtle's party (as if with ropes) identifies himself with others – swaps himself with others – in the infinitely diverse dance of life. Here, Nick/Fitzgerald approaches reaching a condition of "seeing the vista," to use the phrase of Seiju Bob Mammoser – except that Nick/Fitzgerald acts as a witness, not in fully non-selfconscious detachment from the activity.

Insightful are these words from a biography posted at the website of Brandeis University: “… Fitzgerald had the gift of double vision. Like Walt Whitman or his own Nick Carraway, he was simultaneously within and without, at once immersed in his times and able to view them and himself with striking objectivity. This rare ability, along with this rhetorical brilliance, has established Fitzgerald as one of the major novelists and story writers of the twentieth century.” Of course, what this website's short biography calls “double vision” is a sibling of transcendent insight, an ability to see oneself in everybody else and everybody else within oneself. It is [to use a familiar Buddhist metaphor] to see the moon reflected in a hundred dewdrops. It is interesting that critics/interpreters of the novel do something slavishly that is wrong: They follow Fitzgerald's seeming lead and identify the billboard eyes as belonging to Dr. Eckleburg, when, in fact, we know it is the doctor's billboard, with a surreal (noseless) depiction of a patient of his (not the doctor, himself) in glasses. Confusion of identity is a part of the novel that underscores its true theme: The within and without; the ability of be both the watcher and the watched – the rapture (and shock, sometimes) of being both yourself and any other person. Indeed, it is the answer to the Firesign Theatre ditty, “How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?”

With an understanding of the billboard as a symbol of the high spiritual state of Being the Witness, it explains the character of Owl Eyes, so identified because of his large glasses. An owl in a watchful nocturnal bird that sits high and still in a tree and is identified with intelligence. This character is, I think, clearly meant to be a double for the billboard – or, perhaps, the billboard incarnate.

At first meeting, when Nick finds Owl Eyes in the library – drunk, but sobering up from an encounter with wonderment – his continence is not unlike Nick's at Myrtle's party. From being at the Gatsby party for just an hour, Owl Eyes has gained great insight into Gatsby, despite not having met him. He proclaims Gatsby “a regular Belasco” [Belasco was a producer of lavish Broadway shows in the 20s.] when he finds the books in the library to be real, but uncut. [Uncut means that pages haven't been separated. That is, the books are new but have never been opened.] The library – and, by extrapolation, the party and estate – are an elaborate prop. And yet, the discovery isn't derided as fakery; it is observed as being fakery and it is admired. Owl Eyes mutters “if one [book] was removed, the whole library was liable to collapse.” Owl Eyes is experiencing the epiphanous insight that Nick had had: the simultaneous experience of enchantment and repugnance toward human secrecy and life's endless variety.

By “human secrecy” I think Fitzgerald means the cocktail of shame and deception. It is from this libation that the elaborate concoctions of 'self' stir to life separating each of us from others.

Owl Eyes reappears when Gatsby is showing his mansion to Daisy. Nick, who tags along, reports that he believes he hears the owl-eyed man “break into ghostly laughter.” We may suppose that Owl Eyes appreciates Gatsby's success with his prop home in delighting his beloved Daisy. Owl Eyes is a ghostly apparition, like the noseless face on the billboard.

Owl Eyes is last heard from as the unexpected, only attendee other than Nick at Gatsby's funeral. “The poor son-of-a-bitch,” is his comment.

It may be that Owl Eyes is meant to BE Nick, in Witness mode. For it is only Nick with whom Owl Eyes interacts.

Fitzgerald had profound sympathy for all his characters and it is his compassion, something you find as well in the works of Dickens, Irving and Forster, that raises him to greatness and separates him from the pack of authors who write with moral urgency about that old bugaboo, the battle between good and evil and from within the restricted confines of a self-interested protagonist's one pair of eyes.

In an early biography, Fitzgerald is quoted as having said to his secretary, “I take people to me and change my conception of them and then write them out again. My characters are all Scott Fitzgerald. Even my feminine characters are feminine Scott Fitzgeralds.”

While Fitzgerald cannot have been “empty of self” in the full-throttle Buddhist sense, a careful reading of “Gatsby” indicates that, with his fiction, he moved beyond a simple projection of his identity. Jy Din Shakya explains the difference in his online article “Empty Cloud: the Teaching of Xu Yun”:

We have all heard about a parent, or friend, or lover who claims to be completely unselfish in his love for another. A husband will say, “I kept nothing for myself. I gave everything to her, my wife.” This man is not empty. He has merely projected a part of his identity upon another person.

A person who is truly empty possesses nothing, not even a consciousness of self. His interests lie not with his own needs and desires, for indeed, he is unaware of any such considerations, but only with the welfare of others. He does not evaluate people as being likable or unlikable, worthy or unworthy, or as useful or useless. He neither appreciates nor depreciates anyone. He simply understands that the Great Buddha Amitabha, the Buddha of Infinite Light and Goodness, dwells within every human being, and it is in the interest of this Buddha Self that he invests himself.

A bizarre sequence at the end of Chapter 2, that puzzles many a reader, can perhaps be explained only from an understanding of Fitzgerald's ability to get into the character of others. Chester McKee is the bad photographer at Myrtle's party who is described as “a pale feminine man” who has a spot of shaving cream on his face. In all ways the man is set up as someone to avoid, particularly for a reader in the homophobic 1920s. But after Nick has his “within and without” experience looking out Myrtle's window, he walks over and wipes the lather from the sleeping man's cheek and soon afterward leaves the party with McKee.

I think we may only surmise from the last paragraphs in the chapter that Nick then had a sexual encounter with Chester McKee in his apartment, immediately below Myrtle's. It can only be a gay-sex reference when, in quick sentences, Nick takes his hat from the chandelier and Chester distractedly touches the elevator boy's lever. Next, Nick is standing next to the bed with Chester “clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.” In the last paragraph, Nick is still in New York, awaiting a Long Island train, half asleep in Pennsylvania Station at four in the morning.

I don't think that we are to conclude that Nick is gay (as Truman Capote did when he wrote his rejected screenplay for the 1975 film of “The Great Gatsby”); rather, we are to understand that Nick can fully understand and be sympathetic with anyone no matter how different that person is from himself. This is an echo of what Nick says of himself in the novel's opening pages: “… I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. … Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still afraid of missing something if a forget that …”

FITZGERALD'S LOVE FOR THE CHARACTERS

It is easy to approach the novel with a misapprehension of the characters as all being flawed or pitiful. The shorthand is that Gatsby's a gangster; Daisy's flighty; Tom's a brute; and Jordan's a manly cheater. The Hollywood movies made from the book compound the problem, erring in presenting the characters foremost as gruff, spoiled, shallow and small – as if Nick was our guide Virgil leading us through a Dantean purgatory.

But the characters, as seen with wavering reliability through Nick's eyes, are far from despicable.

When we learn of Tom, he has a “supercilious manner,” “arrogant eyes” and “a cruel body,” but immediately after Tom concludes a sentence with words to Nick “… just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are,” Nick's narration reads “… I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.” [I think it is important to recognize here, and throughout the book, that Nick is keenly aware of others' need to be liked and that Nick's approval is important to all the characters in how they feel about themselves.]

Daisy first meets Nick with “an absurd, charming little laugh” and the words that suit her habit, which we will come to know, of gushing overstatement: “I'm p-paralyzed with happiness.” While Nick hints that Daisy's manner may be a crafty act, it seems more likely that he is just resistant to her mannered but genuinely felt love for others, the surface of a coping strategy to which she is unaware, to help her with the frequent inappropriate things she does and the non-sequitors in her conversations which suggest she is not very intelligent, but may just mean her thoughts and interests wander.

In his earlier novels, “This Side of Paradise” and “The Beautiful and the Damned,” the works were character driven. The high octane of Fitzgerald's way with words fueled the reader through the stories. Accepting advise of other novelists was instrumental in a change in how Fitzgerald approached his craft, which is demonstrated in novel number three, “The Great Gatsby.”

It is important first to understand what F. Scott Fitzgerald was like as a man and how different he was dealing with his art than the narrow portrayal of him as a careless alcoholic, that comes mostly from autobiographical articles he wrote for Esquire, later collectively called “The Crack-Up.” I think that anyone who carefully reads letters of his that have been published will instantly find Fitzgerald lovable, as I did. It is almost charming to find that this man who is the supreme magician at crafting insightful phrases is also an incompetent speller. Invariably, he spells “receive” in the manner of an average fourth grader – recieve – and the last name of his pal and sometimes-rival Ernest Hemingway with two m's. Yet, Fitzgerald's brilliance is ever evident and his words glow with genuineness of character and courtesy. In communications with his editor and in letters with the institute where his wife received psychiatric care, Fitzgerald is a patient problem solver, thoughtful and forthcoming. I think that Fitzgerald's artistic insight is born of forgivingness and understanding of human flaws and frailty – lessons learned from his own many problems – while also having a high appreciation of others' skills or insightfulness. Lovingkindness and deep compassion were present in the man and it is very evident in his work if you blot from your mind much of Fitzgerald's reputation.

SUFFERING EXAMINED: DAISY AND TOM

In “The Great Gatsby,” there is certainly suffering. All the characters suffer rather mightily. But is not the usual trail of crocodile tears that you see in typical novels – a ready devise to drive the plot onward. Here, the suffering of the characters is explored, nobly.

When we first meet Daisy Buchanan, her little finger has been hurt. It's a minor injury, but it presents her in contrast to her “big, hulking physical specimen” of a husband, Tom. [It is ingenious how Tom is described by both Nick and Daisy in ways that are superficially highly critical, but leave the impression of him being strong and handsome, partially forgiving his quick-tempered brutishness.]

Daisy complaint “Look! … I hurt it,” which quickly becomes “You did it, Tom. … I know you didn't mean to, but you did do it.” Tells us a lot about Daisy's delicacy and implicates Tom for carelessness, if not meanness. Daisy wants always to be nice. [She tells Nick that he reminds her “of a rose – an absolute rose”; a comparison he rejects brusquely with these narrative words: “This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose.”] Always in the book, her expressions and thoughtfulness are delightful, passing sometimes into the territory of absurdity – something that the readers notice, but the other characters do as well. But like a flower that would instantly wilt out of the greenhouse, Daisy is in constant need of protection – from a man, and the security of an undiminishable supply of money. [Nick with his usually rosy disposition lives happily outside the Pleasure Dome of Big Bucks.]

Think of Daisy as being like Siddhartha was in his father's compound. Siddhartha was driven to know the truth and willingly took on burdens of discomfort; he left the compound as a young man. Daisy has no interest in truth, and no tolerance for the pain and experience of empathy that truth-seekers (like Nick) will necessarily quickly encounter. Delusion is her shield, her warm fur coat; but this should not be taken to mean that we must view her as a bad person. Delusion is Daisy's coping strategy. She doesn't follow the threads of conversations easily, but she tries (and succeeds!) at being delightful and interesting, something Jay Gatsby best appreciates.

It is important to know that Daisy is based on Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda. Daisy's maiden name, Fay, is the same as Zelda's mother's maiden name. An article in New York Times Magazine, by Peter D. Kramer, titled “How Crazy was Zelda?” offers an analysis of Zelda that is, too, a good description of Daisy:

Zelda's spending sprees, her “passionate love of life” and intense social relationships, her melancholic response to disappointment … point toward a mood disorder, as does the alternation between frank psychosis and a sparkling, provocative personality.

Tom Buchanan, like his wife Daisy, has the knack of knowing how to act in the cocoon of Old Money. Fitzgerald describes with surreal bravado the “elaborate” Buchanan home as Nick first sees it: “ … a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens – finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon …” [All this is in contrast to the much larger mansion of Jay Gatsby, whose wealth is not “Old.” His mansion, “a colossal affair,” is described a few paragraphs earlier in staid terms nearly suitable for a Realtor's ad.]

But Tom is unhappy; he is dissatisfied. Nick claims insight into his heart, and knows that he will “drift on forever seeking … the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.” This perceived restlessness is made evident when Nick tags along with Tom to a makeshift party at the New York City apartment Tom provides for his mistress, Myrtle. There, Tom and Myrtle end up getting into a fight where in an act that is by turns abusive and careless, Tom breaks Myrtle's nose.

It is easy to dislike Tom and identify him as the villain of the book. And with his wealth, physical strength, good looks, and ease at attracting women, it is perhaps hard to sympathize with the unhappiness and dissatisfaction that Nick identifies in him. But Tom clearly is trapped and, despite all his means, cannot find his way to being satisfied.

Dissatisfaction with life is, however, something well known to Buddhists; it's the First Noble Truth. That “way out” Tom may need might be in identifying with others, but Tom is forever the victor in any confrontation with anyone: Winning out over Gatsby in marrying Daisy and with Daisy's decision to stay with him and not run off with Gatsby. And, ultimately, Tom is passively responsible for Gatsby's death -- with Daisy's acquiescence -- thus eliminating his rival.

To Tom, others are tools for his ends; he sees others as many children do. He is blocked in his spiritual development by the very success he has over others. And for that, despite everything, he should have our sympathy.

There is, too, an important additional reason why Daisy should have our sympathy that is revealed in a fleeting clue. In the pivotal middle chapter in the book, Nick, at Gatsby's behest, has Daisy come to his small house where she is to be surprised by the presence of Gatsby, her lover before her marriage to Tom. In words of greeting that Nick and Daisy share before entering the house, Daisy asks, playfully, “… why did I have to come alone?” Nick, in his supercilious manner, saying one of several things Daisy (and in this case, likely, any reader, too) is not meant to understand, responds “That's the secret of Castle Rackrent.”

Castle Rackrent may have been known to many of the well educated and more-readerly folks of 1925, when “The Great Gatsby” was first published, but it was an obscure reference then and is more alien to us today. You would have to have a scholastic interest in 18th Century English literature or be a particularly knowledgeable feminist to know about “Castle Rackrent,” – a novel written secretly by Maria Edgeworth, about the mistreatment of women in patriarchal society. In the Edgeworth novel, two women are separately imprisoned in castles – a circumstance that reverberates in “Gatsby” by Daisy being dominated by Tom, and Myrtle 'kept' in an apartment Tom pays for. Myrtle is also locked up by her husband, George, over their garage near the end of the book.

It is clear from the tortured reference to Castle Rackrent in “Gatsby” that Nick (i.e., Fitzgerald) is especially aware of and sympathetic with the subjugated status of women, even while he maintains his fidelity with the men, in opposition to Daisy's and Myrtle's best interests. But, too, what has been unnoted, is that Edgeworth had a purpose in her novel that I think Fitzgerald shared in his – which is a keen interest in revealing the reality of other people. In the preface to her book, Edgeworth uses the word “secret” in reference to people's inner lives. She wrote, “We cannot judge … from their actions …; it is from their careless conversations, their half finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover [people's] real characters.” Is this line Nick/Fitzgerald's “secret of Castle Rackrent?”

What is most odd about “The Great Gatsby” are its many careless conversations and half-finished sentences. Editors and critics over the years have wrestled with what Fitzgerald wrote, changing sentences and criticizing details. “Gatsby” has generated a bonanza of speculation about many sentences, and there are debates about what corrections in the text should be made [to correct direct errors by Fitzgerald, who could be clumsy with details] or not made [since the 'errors' may be intentional to reveal characters' flaws, insights and personalities]. Indeed, the text of “The Great Gatsby” has been re-edited many times to suit the interpretations of different editors.

I think that the critics fail to appreciate the full extent to which “Gatsby” was sloppy intentionally – to meet the Edgeworth edict of discovering character with careless conversations and half-finished sentences. Fitzgerald knew himself to be a unique and fascinating conglomerate of wonderful and weird qualities and I think each of his characters were meant to be revealed as unique and fascinating conglomerates, as well – and not to be thought of as being placed on a simple spectrum of Good vs. Bad.

Tricycle Gets Ugly

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by Tom Armstrong, Posted 4/8/04
Large increases in fundraising and administration expenses have caused a big jump in losses for the parent corporation of Tricycle Magazine, according to financial information just released by the New York-based non-profit organization.

Last year, Zen Unbound reported that the parent corporation, Buddhist Ray, was in a debt spiral and that continued publication of the magazine was imperiled. This year, we have to believe that the end for Tricycle magazine is very near and that the organization is throwing in the towel, making ready to abandon its creditors -- comprised mainly of its tens of thousands of subscribers -- to the loses it has accumulated in the last five years due to poor management decisions. Currently, Buddhist Ray has an astronomical debt-asset ratio of 2.51 -- that is, its debts are more than two-and-a-half times its assets.

Despite a fifth consecutive year of losses, Tricycle reported increases in pay to its two most-senior employees, exceeding 33% for each. Even with the big pay jump, their salaries are not much more than that of a mid-career policeman; still, it appears that the organization is becoming less restrained and must have abandoned any hope of finding its way back to the sounder financial footing of 1997.

For a period of less than six months last year, Tricycle employed Stephen Donato, a man with a background of successful fundraising, as Executive Director

Buddhist Ray, Inc.
As of	Debt-Asset Ratio
9/30/97	0.64 to 1
9/30/98	0.67 to 1
9/30/99	0.85 to 1
9/30/00	1.25 to 1
9/30/01	1.87 to 1
9/30/02	2.08 to 1
9/30/03	2.51 to 1

of the Board for the parent corporation. While an improved record at fundraising was the best news of its 2002 report, in its year ended September 30, 2003, with Donato's help, Buddhist Ray's expenses raising money exceeded acceptable levels. According to the view of the American Institute of Philanthropy, "... $35 or less to raise $100 is reasonable for most charities." Tricycle spent nearly $143,000 raising $372,150 – or, $38.40 for each $100 raised. In 2002, Tricycle spent nearly $60,000 less to raise a similar amount: $83,485 raising $388,281, or $21.50 for each $100 raised.

Tricycle should have been keeping an especially sharp eye on its fundraising expenses last year, in light of Zen Unbound's report last year that in the past, for each year during a three-year period, they actually spent more on their effort to raise money than what they brought in. [See Buddhist Ray's Record of Irresponsible Fundraising.]

While Tricycle has now raised its subscription rate, and has raised the single-copy price by a dollar, losses in the quantity of magazine sales and in advertising revenue are sure to ensue. As well, the publication is not as good as it has been in the past: There is more reliance on book excerpts, old interviews and the recycling of old material. Tricycle is also not keeping up with competing Buddhist magazine on the news rack, many of which are in full color and consistently offer intriguing cover stories.

And there is this: An absurd article in its recent winter, 2003-2004, issue charged Vipassana and the Zen and Tibetan sects with racism, this paragraph being most central:

When African Americans step into a Buddhist meditation center, that invisible culture is the first thing they see. They may be strong enough to participate in it without losing heart, or their racial identity, or both. Or they may be so strongly motivated to practice in that particular tradition that it just doesn't matter. In any event, they won't be kicked out for being black, because there are few outright bigots in the white Buddhist world. But the deeper racism, the passive racism committed to all the mannered nuances of its own culture – that is felt right away. No wonder most African Americans never make it through the door. There's no sign saying they can't come it. There doesn't have to be.

In his "Editor's View," Tricycle's James Shaheen praised the article for offering challenging answers to sanghas that are largely white.

One can only hope for a big drop in its circulation and advertising after an article so insensitive and non-insightful that it sees Zen, Vipassana and Vajrayana as being passively racist. It's nutty and irresponsible to blast away with a venal charge such as this without a scintilla of evidence. Zen Unbound has called its series of articles about Tricyle "Asleep at the Wheel." Today, our title seems particularly well chosen.

I almost want to say that it is too bad longtime editor-in-chief Helen Tworkov is no longer in that position at Tricycle. She showed some common sense with regard to Western Buddhism's racial issue. In a "Religion & Ethics" newsweekly conversation, dated July 6, 2001, she said of American Buddhism, "There's definately some divides, and I think we could call it a racial divide. I do not think it's a racist divide." And, she said of Buddhist groups, "There's a lot of concern about bringing [them] together. But frankly my own view is it's always coming from a place of being politically correct, and there's not necessarily a good reason for it. There's no reason why people should not be developing their own kinds of practice and their own forms of practice and working according to their own needs." At ZU, we would like groups brought together, but we agree with Tworkov that the animated feelings out there, [with the Tricycle piece being a classic example], come from the bad place of wanting to be rigidly politically correct.

The accumulation of blunders and problems seem to be bringing Tricycle magazine to the end of its run. Its death may be little mourned.

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