A Little Dickensian Dharma for the Holidays
The following is adapted from a Dharma Talk I presented at the Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple on Sunday, December 22, 2024. I offer it to Being Bombu readers in gratitude to the LAAHBT for allowing me the chance to share my message.
As you all know, this time of year is a very special one for a vast number of people on this planet. Bodhi Day, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year are just a few of the holidays that are being celebrated at the moment, and over the next few weeks, those celebrations will really be coming to a head. If you will allow me, I would like to start my post this week with something a little different. You might even say that it is something that, though unusual for my Buddhist blog, is undoubtedly appropriate to the season at hand.
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew: Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come around . . . as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow- passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
Perhaps these words sound familiar to you. You may have even encountered them on television over the last few weeks. The reading comes to us from the gifted pen of none other than Charles Dickens and what is undoubtedly one of his best-known works - A Christmas Carol. A little personal fact about me: A Christmas Carol is one of my most beloved stories of all time. Few tales have had the same impact on me and my approach to life as this one. I have made it a habit and a priority to read it every year during this holiday season. As entertaining as it is, I find its moral and spiritual appeal to be even more powerful. If you have never read it, I highly recommend it.
Now I know what you are thinking. Christmas is not a Buddhist holiday, and with all of its talk of blessings and God, Charles Dickens’ book is not a traditionally Buddhist story. Well, historically, that is certainly true of the book on its face. However, I ask you to dig a little deeper with me here and see that the Dharma is very much alive in what the author was trying to say and, in so many ways, speaks to us loudly even today through these words that were written almost two centuries ago.
In the story, we meet Ebenezer Scrooge, a man who has hardened his heart to the needs and plight of others around him. He clings tightly to his money and his business with neither time nor taste for anything else. Old Scrooge is so attached to his wealth and his pride that his passions prevent him from seeing both the harm he is causing and the good that he could potentially be doing for others. He is blind to just how interconnected he is with the people around him. It is only after a visit from the tortured spirit of his former business partner and run-ins with three Christmas ghosts - one of which shows him the aftermath of his own death - that Ebenezer comes to see the power he has to change the lives of others for either the good or the bad.
There is a wonderful scene in the story in which Scrooge is confronted by the ghost of his now-deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, who lays it down plain for him. In awe and fear of the apparition, he reminds Marley’s spirit that, in life, he was always a good man of business. Angered and horrified at the assertion, the ghost has an answer of his own.
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. “The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
Let’s pause here for a moment to reflect on those words. Charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence . . . these sound familiar, do they not? Putting the common welfare before our own selfish interests sounds like something we have heard before, too, no? How often have our Dharma lessons illustrated these very same virtues? We talk a lot about gratitude in Jodo Shinshu, and these are the very things for which we are told we should be grateful in others. They are also the characteristics we are urged to embody when going about our worldly dealings if we genuinely hope to break free of the cycle of birth and death. They are the virtues of the very Bodhisattvas and Buddhas themselves.
One need not celebrate Christmas to appreciate the importance of charity, mercy, and kindness or to see how our actions impact the well-being of others. That said, what makes this time of year so special is the fact that we do indeed fill it with reminders to put others first, to live with love and gentility, and to be thankful for every act of kindness we, too, receive. The spirit of this holiday is a feeling and a way of life that transcends Christianity, Buddhism, or any of the other faith systems that make our world so wonderfully diverse. And while these are attributes that we should display throughout the year, having a holiday season during which we pay extra-special attention to them, to quote Scrooge’s nephew, has and will do us good, even if it never puts a “scrap of gold or silver” in our pockets.
Now, you may be wondering why I chose to make this post about Christmas and Dickens, aside, of course, from the obvious fact that the holiday is exploding all around us. We cannot escape it! Well, if you have had the chance to read my last couple of messages, you may remember that I have been talking quite a bit this year about causes and conditions, how they shape us, and how we contribute to those that shape others. While this story has been one of my favorites since childhood, it was only recently that it dawned on me that Dickens could easily be mistaken for a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist with his emphasis on this very lesson.
As we know well that he was not a Buddhist, there has to be something more to it than mere coincidence. I like to think that the law of causes and conditions is a universal truth that is bigger than any one teaching or religion. Does the Dharma not say as much? Yet is easy for us as Buddhists to disassociate ourselves from a holiday that we tend to think of as not being our own or solely for the observance of our Christian brothers and sisters. I am not saying that we need to buy into the spectacle and commercialism that seems to so mark the holiday these days. As people of blind passions and attachments, humans tend to get carried away with the materialism of it all. But it seems to me that, when we shut ourselves off from this festive time, we miss out on an incredible opportunity to demonstrate our own belief in causes, conditions, and interconnectedness, and, of course, our ability to make this world a little bit better when we recognize our own roles, responsibilities, and potential in it all.
It is my hope that each of us will not only open ourselves to the possibilities of this season of kindness and mercy but that we will take an active role in making sure that a little bit of this “Christmas” spirit lives on throughout the rest of the year as well. We can call it something else if it makes us feel better. I swore to myself that I would not make any jokes about how I now refer to my Christmas tree as my “Causes & Conditions” tree, but I promise you that I will never look at the age-old tale of Scrooge the same way again. May we all be like the changed and humbled version of old Ebenezer. If I may quote Mr. Dickens just once more:
“And it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us and all of us!’
My friends, regardless of the holidays you choose to observe, or whether you choose to celebrate any all, I personally want to wish you a happy, healthy, kind, and merciful season. Take care of yourselves, take care of one another, and take care that a gaggle of ghosts don’t force their way into your homes this holiday with a lesson or two of their own. As Jodo Shinshu Buddhists, with our birth in the Pure Land guaranteed, mankind is also our business. Let us truly become like Ebenezer Scrooge and become good people of it. Like him, we still have time to make that change.
Happy holidays one and all!
