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| Traditional ideas of masculinity are poisoning our society. There is another way | |
| (about 4 hours later) | |
| When I was younger I was almost consumed by anger. My father had abandoned me before I was born, leaving me with powerful feelings of worthlessness. Self-destruction defined my young adulthood. I thought being tough and violent was the only way to be a man, but I was also scared of violence and sought escape in reading and the natural world. | When I was younger I was almost consumed by anger. My father had abandoned me before I was born, leaving me with powerful feelings of worthlessness. Self-destruction defined my young adulthood. I thought being tough and violent was the only way to be a man, but I was also scared of violence and sought escape in reading and the natural world. |
| While teaching in North Carolina this April, in the early days of the Trump administration, reading the Buddhist poet, teacher and activist Thich Nhat Hanh got me thinking again about false and true heroes – and the kinds of masculine heroes promoted as models in western culture. | While teaching in North Carolina this April, in the early days of the Trump administration, reading the Buddhist poet, teacher and activist Thich Nhat Hanh got me thinking again about false and true heroes – and the kinds of masculine heroes promoted as models in western culture. |
| “False heroes find it easier to make war than deal with the emptiness in their own souls,” wrote Thich Nhat Hanh in Fragrant Palm Leaves, a selection of his journals written in the US and Vietnam between 1962 and 1966. Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam from 1966 until 2005 for practising and encouraging what he called “engaged Buddhism” – the idea that the principles of non-violence and compassion must be practised in the community, not just in the monastery – to effect social change. | “False heroes find it easier to make war than deal with the emptiness in their own souls,” wrote Thich Nhat Hanh in Fragrant Palm Leaves, a selection of his journals written in the US and Vietnam between 1962 and 1966. Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam from 1966 until 2005 for practising and encouraging what he called “engaged Buddhism” – the idea that the principles of non-violence and compassion must be practised in the community, not just in the monastery – to effect social change. |
| Clearly there are multiple ways of being masculine – there’s no such thing as a single, fixed essential masculinity. If you’ve ever been peaceful or angry, if you have ever loved and hated, then you know you can choose to be either of these things. We are the result of our thoughts and actions. Individual men contain and express multiple ways of being. We change often during our lifetimes. | |
| If we are lucky, we move in the direction of love and compassion. More recently I have been trying to make that journey. In this I am lucky to be helped by the people who love me, and I am guided and accompanied by others who have travelled the same route and who have told their stories. Recording a moment of enlightenment one winter night in 1962, in Princeton, Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “I saw my mind and heart as flowers ... Life is miraculous, even in its suffering. Without suffering, life would not be possible.” | If we are lucky, we move in the direction of love and compassion. More recently I have been trying to make that journey. In this I am lucky to be helped by the people who love me, and I am guided and accompanied by others who have travelled the same route and who have told their stories. Recording a moment of enlightenment one winter night in 1962, in Princeton, Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “I saw my mind and heart as flowers ... Life is miraculous, even in its suffering. Without suffering, life would not be possible.” |
| The realisation that you can choose to be peaceful and not angry is a powerful one. It can change individual lives, families and societies for the better – though it takes hard work, of course. I know I will face my anger every day. Thich Naht Hanh writes: “If you’ve seen once, you can see for ever. The question is whether you have the determination and diligence.” | The realisation that you can choose to be peaceful and not angry is a powerful one. It can change individual lives, families and societies for the better – though it takes hard work, of course. I know I will face my anger every day. Thich Naht Hanh writes: “If you’ve seen once, you can see for ever. The question is whether you have the determination and diligence.” |
| Years ago, I read a book of essays called Finding Freedom by Jarvis Masters – since 1990 a prisoner on death row in San Quentin prison, near San Francisco. By his own admission he was an angry, raging and barely literate young man when he entered the prison as a 19-year-old, with an absent father, drug-addicted mother and a childhood characterised by abandonment and violence – a profoundly representative figure, in other words. | Years ago, I read a book of essays called Finding Freedom by Jarvis Masters – since 1990 a prisoner on death row in San Quentin prison, near San Francisco. By his own admission he was an angry, raging and barely literate young man when he entered the prison as a 19-year-old, with an absent father, drug-addicted mother and a childhood characterised by abandonment and violence – a profoundly representative figure, in other words. |
| Masters became a gang member in prison in the early 1980s, and was sentenced to death for his alleged part in the senseless killing of an officer named Sergeant Howell Burchfield. Many people believe in Masters’s innocence and are working to free him. Masters has always said he is innocent of any part in the murder. | Masters became a gang member in prison in the early 1980s, and was sentenced to death for his alleged part in the senseless killing of an officer named Sergeant Howell Burchfield. Many people believe in Masters’s innocence and are working to free him. Masters has always said he is innocent of any part in the murder. |
| Remarkably, Masters has become a Buddhist during his imprisonment, and has taken the bodhisattva vow. This means that he is committed to try to help others – a dangerous practice in a place such as San Quentin, where minding one’s own business is an article of faith to live and survive by. Masters is the bodhisattva who promises to be with those who are in the places of great suffering. The spirit of such beings, Thich Naht Hanh writes in Fragrant Palm Leaves, is irrepressible: “Wherever such persons are found, flowers blossom, even in the depths of hell.” | Remarkably, Masters has become a Buddhist during his imprisonment, and has taken the bodhisattva vow. This means that he is committed to try to help others – a dangerous practice in a place such as San Quentin, where minding one’s own business is an article of faith to live and survive by. Masters is the bodhisattva who promises to be with those who are in the places of great suffering. The spirit of such beings, Thich Naht Hanh writes in Fragrant Palm Leaves, is irrepressible: “Wherever such persons are found, flowers blossom, even in the depths of hell.” |
| In one story, called Peace Activist, Masters writes about trying to help a raging young convict called Bosshog who is causing a ruckus. Masters sends him tobacco wrapped in Buddhist texts in exchange for Bosshog’s promise to “stay cool and not go disturbing the peace on the tier again”. When he is finally released, Bosshog – who arrived in the prison screaming, “I’ll kill you all” – stands in front of Masters’s cell and together they recite the peace mantra Bosshog learned to say whenever he was “about to blow his top”. | In one story, called Peace Activist, Masters writes about trying to help a raging young convict called Bosshog who is causing a ruckus. Masters sends him tobacco wrapped in Buddhist texts in exchange for Bosshog’s promise to “stay cool and not go disturbing the peace on the tier again”. When he is finally released, Bosshog – who arrived in the prison screaming, “I’ll kill you all” – stands in front of Masters’s cell and together they recite the peace mantra Bosshog learned to say whenever he was “about to blow his top”. |
| When we talk about finding new heroes and models of masculinity, we have to talk about dismantling systems of domination | When we talk about finding new heroes and models of masculinity, we have to talk about dismantling systems of domination |
| When I think about true heroes, true male role models, I think about Jarvis Masters – a man who has experienced great suffering and caused great pain to others, but who dared to face the emptiness in his soul. In the most unlikely place imaginable, Masters has found redemption in compassion and helping others, even while he is caged. | When I think about true heroes, true male role models, I think about Jarvis Masters – a man who has experienced great suffering and caused great pain to others, but who dared to face the emptiness in his soul. In the most unlikely place imaginable, Masters has found redemption in compassion and helping others, even while he is caged. |
| In most western settings, including prisons, it’s “traditional” masculinity that is dominant. Aggression, hardness, physical power and emotional reticence – not love and compassion – are the qualities most highly valued. These values are intimately connected to, and manifest in, power and systems of domination – governmental, financial, military and domestic – by which a small number of men secure the natural and economic resources of the planet for themselves, and protect their privilege by any and all means, including imprisonment, slavery and force of arms. | In most western settings, including prisons, it’s “traditional” masculinity that is dominant. Aggression, hardness, physical power and emotional reticence – not love and compassion – are the qualities most highly valued. These values are intimately connected to, and manifest in, power and systems of domination – governmental, financial, military and domestic – by which a small number of men secure the natural and economic resources of the planet for themselves, and protect their privilege by any and all means, including imprisonment, slavery and force of arms. |
| Many men who are raised to believe in these values, but who are denied access to the rewards such values supposedly offer – and who live without encountering alternative narratives – are angry, depressed, violent and destructive. | |
| These are the young men who fill our prisons, who fight in the streets and in pubs, who beat their partners and their children, who fill the internet with misogynistic hate. Historically, they are also the men who are enlisted to fight for other men’s power. When we talk about finding new heroes and new models of masculinity, we have to talk about dismantling these systems of domination. | These are the young men who fill our prisons, who fight in the streets and in pubs, who beat their partners and their children, who fill the internet with misogynistic hate. Historically, they are also the men who are enlisted to fight for other men’s power. When we talk about finding new heroes and new models of masculinity, we have to talk about dismantling these systems of domination. |
| Power knows this, which is why voices calling for different models – valuing peaceful coexistence, mutual tolerance, caretaking of each other and of the planet – are most often marginalised and ridiculed, and sometimes exiled, imprisoned or killed. | Power knows this, which is why voices calling for different models – valuing peaceful coexistence, mutual tolerance, caretaking of each other and of the planet – are most often marginalised and ridiculed, and sometimes exiled, imprisoned or killed. |
| That we need love and compassion isn’t a new story. But things feel so urgent and so difficult now. We are fighting over ever-dwindling resources in the name of this system or that, this God or that, with perhaps fatal consequences for our planet. | That we need love and compassion isn’t a new story. But things feel so urgent and so difficult now. We are fighting over ever-dwindling resources in the name of this system or that, this God or that, with perhaps fatal consequences for our planet. |
| We need to become peace activists like Jarvis Masters. In our families, our friendships, our workplaces and neighbourhoods. Imagine you were told you had only an instant to spend in heaven. How would you spend that instant? In fighting, in grasping for status and domination, or in wonder? | We need to become peace activists like Jarvis Masters. In our families, our friendships, our workplaces and neighbourhoods. Imagine you were told you had only an instant to spend in heaven. How would you spend that instant? In fighting, in grasping for status and domination, or in wonder? |
| As I understand it, meditation practice encourages us to recognise the miracle of our own existence, and the preciousness of each moment we are living in, because it is the only moment we are living in. It’s as good a way as I’ve found to help face the anger and aggression that lives inside me, but as Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us – and Jarvis Masters shows us – any benefit we gain individually needs to be taken out into the world. | As I understand it, meditation practice encourages us to recognise the miracle of our own existence, and the preciousness of each moment we are living in, because it is the only moment we are living in. It’s as good a way as I’ve found to help face the anger and aggression that lives inside me, but as Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us – and Jarvis Masters shows us – any benefit we gain individually needs to be taken out into the world. |
| The mantra Bosshog and Jarvis Masters recite in prison is one written by Thich Nhat Hanh: “If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.” | The mantra Bosshog and Jarvis Masters recite in prison is one written by Thich Nhat Hanh: “If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.” |
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