Katie and I are both big Star Wars fans. We have seen all of the movies many times. And we bought our tickets long ago for the newest release, The Last Jedi. Dec. 15 — The Last Jedi’s opening day — can’t come soon enough!
Now, not everyone is aware of this, but George Lucas is a Buddhist, and there are teachings from the Enlightened One all through the Star Wars movies. Even the names “Yoda” and “Buddha” are eerily similar — and I don’t believe that’s an accident.
Yoda taught patience and discouraged attachment; those things are among the pillars of Buddhist teaching.
Over the last year plus, I’ve written and spoken about a tool that is being used quite frequently to motivate the unenlightened masses. It’s an incredibly effective tool, if only for the short term. It’s called “Fear.”
In the last year, our president has sought to inspire fear of immigrants — Mexicans, Muslims and Syrian refugees. He has tried to gin up fear of transgender people serving in the military, fear of an attack by North Korea.
Texas’ Lt, Gov. Dan Patrick painted transgender people as predators, hoping to make average Texans so terrified of encountering one of us in a bathroom that he could bully the Legislature into passing a law dictating where we pee. It almost worked.
Fear is a powerful motivator.
But what did Yoda have to say about fear?
In the 1999 Star Wars prequel, Episode One: The Phantom Menace, Yoda told young Anakin Skywalker that “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to Hate and Hate leads to suffering.”
Besides being a very Buddhist thing to say (as eliminating suffering in all living things is the highest purpose of Buddhism), it also applies here in a Galaxy Far-Far Away. It’s pretty easy to see that Yoda’s words ring true.
Transgender people were again murdered at an unprecedented clip this past year. Sometimes men afraid of what loving a transgender person says about them express their fear in misplaced anger.
That anger turns to a malignant hate, and that leads to widespread suffering.
You need look no further than a Trump rally to see how fear is being used to manipulate people. Trump wants fear to fear and mistrust the media, especially when the media is bringing out some truths he finds inconvenient. That leads to widespread anger at the media. And so it goes.
I’d prefer we exercise even just a little critical thinking. Don’t let CNN or Fox do your thinking for you. Look at the facts. Do some research. Put down the phone for a minute, or at least quit using it to watch cat videos.
LGBT people of a certain age remember things like the Briggs initiative. Back in the late 1970s in California, there was a proposition on the ballot —Proposition 6, written by conservative legislator John Briggs from Orange County — that would have banned anyone who was gay or lesbian, or possibly even anyone who supported gay rights, from working in California’s public schools.
Thankfully, the Briggs initiative failed.
Anita Bryant and her “Save our Children” campaign tried to make people fear gay and lesbian teachers, suggesting that LGBT teachers would somehow harm children. Anyone with an ounce of education or who had done their own research knew better.
Fear infects the intellectually lazy. You can break free, but you have to put in the work. No one can do it for you. “Do, or do not, there is no “try” (Yoda again).
Fear lives in the future, and since the future hasn’t happened yet, often what we fear never comes to pass. You can’t fear the past; you already know what happened, and it can’t hurt you.
Rational fear can be useful. If someone is threatening you with a weapon, that situation ought to have your undivided attention. Find a rattlesnake in your kitchen? OK, I’m up on the countertop with you.
But when a cab driver is robbed and dozens of others quit their jobs because of fear, that’s irrational. Voting for a bill to tell transgender people where they can go to the bathroom because of fear of predators — even though facts prove that no one has ever been attacked by a transgender person in a public bathroom — is irrational. That irrational fear leads to anger, and that anger leads to hate.
And sadly, that hate leads too often to violence and suffering.
Needless suffering.
Buddha said, “Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.”
He also said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
But how can we know the difference? How can we tell good fear from bad
fear?
Well, Yoda has an answer for that, too: “You will know [the good from the bad] when you are calm, at peace. Passive.”
He’s a smart guy, that Yoda. He didn’t live 900 years by being afraid.
