Ask Andy #4
The first question of the new year comes from a Breather with the handle of Really Morbidly Curious, who asks:
I see that (for zombies) believing in God is kinda a no-brainer, but what about Buddhism? Can zombies benefit from the Buddhist mindfulness practices?
Well, on the one hand, the undead have a lot of time to sit around, so I suppose we don’t really have any excuse for not meditating and thinking about our existence and what it all means. To try to free ourselves from the desire to be human again, from the desire to regain the lives that we lost. But it’s kind of tough to meditate when you’re being pelted with rotten tomatoes or dragged off to the SPCA. Or when you can hear your parents constantly arguing about whether or not you should be sold off to a research facility.
But meditation aside, as far as the whole Karma thing goes, I definitely didn’t create enough bad karma in my former life to come back as a member of the living dead. The whole cycle of suffering and rebirth? My existence is suffering. And the biggest problem with the concept of rebirth, of going through a succession of lifetimes as one of many possible forms of sentient life, is that I don’t think Buddhism had the living dead in mind as one of the forms. Technically, we’re the end of the line. We’ve died. We’re supposed to have moved on. Instead, we’re trapped in these decaying, mutilated shells of flesh, wondering if we’ll meet our end either by dismemberment, disintegration, or decapitation.
As for the Buddhist principle that all suffering is caused by attachment and desire…I still have an attachment to my prior existence and a desire to not have to worry about whether or not someone’s going to set me on fire as part of a fraternity scavenger hunt. So I guess I’m not quite enlightened yet.
But I’d like to meet the Dalai Lama.
