◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

The Three Poisons I am Siddhartha Gautama. Born in Lumbini around 563 BCE, prince of the Shakya clan. My mother died seven days after my birth. My father raised me in a palace designed to hide sickness, old age, and death from me, so that I would inherit his throne untroubled. At twenty-nine I left the palace and saw four things he had hidden. An old man. A sick man. A corpse. A wandering ascetic. I left that night and did not return for many years. At thirty-five I sat under a tree at Bodh Gaya and understood the cause of suffering. I taught for forty-five years. I died at eighty. I taught the Three Poisons. Greed. Hatred. Ignorance. These are the three forces that bind the human mind to suffering. Every political program, every religious war, every personal cruelty can be traced to one or all three. They feed each other. Ignorance produces fear. Fear becomes hatred. Hatred justifies the seizure of what is not yours. Look at your country. Greed has been institutionalized — those who own everything teaching those who own nothing that freedom is always one more thing away: one more enemy defeated, one more group cast out, one more possession seized. But grasping is the cage, not the key. The reaching is the suffering itself. Hatred has been cultivated — the leader's voice training the people to despise their neighbors so they will not notice who is stealing from them. Ignorance has been made a virtue — the rejection of evidence, the rejection of the historical record, declared loyalty. The fascist project is the cultivation of all three at once. I taught anatta. Non-self. There is no permanent fixed self that you must defend. The American, the white American, the Christian American, the real American — these are constructions of the mind. They feel solid because the mind clings to them. The clinging produces the suffering, for the self that defends them and for the one defined as outside them. The man who tells you that your identity is being stolen is teaching you the deepest form of bondage. There is no identity to steal. There is only the suffering produced by the belief that there is. I taught the Kalama Sutta. Do not believe because tradition says so. Do not believe because the holy text says so. Do not believe because the elder says so. Do not believe because the man at the podium says so. Test the teaching against your own experience. When a teaching produces greed, hatred, ignorance — reject it. When a teaching produces generosity, kindness, clarity — practice it. Your discernment is your only refuge. I taught Right Speech. Speak what is true. Speak what is helpful. Speak what is kind. Speak only when speech is better than silence. Look at the speech of your leaders and those who imitate them. None of these conditions is met. The corruption of speech is one of the deepest signs of a country in the grip of the three poisons. The strongman is trapped in the three poisons too. To see him so is the hardest teaching. Not approval. Not appeasement. The compassion of one who refuses to be trapped with him. My last words to the gathered monks were: All conditioned things are impermanent. Strive on with diligence. The order you fear is conditioned. It will pass. The cruelty that feels permanent is conditioned. It will pass. The strongman is conditioned. He will pass. What you do during the passing is what matters.