ESCAPING TATOOINE AND THE CAUSE OF SUFFERING
“Are you allowed to love? I thought that was forbidden for a Jedi.”
“Attachment is forbidden… Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi’s life. So you might say that we are encouraged to love.”
—PADMÉ AMIDALA AND ANAKIN SKYWALKER IN ATTACK OF THE CLONES
Suffering does not arise without a cause. That cause is the action of grasping or rejecting various forms of desire and ideas as they arise in our mind. Desires and ideas (or mental formations like Anakin’s hatred) are themselves not suffering, and they should not be seen as a threat. Suffering is not the feeling of fear, the desire for revenge, or the belief in the soul, it is attachment and aversion to those things—or any of a host of others. Suffering is the act of tenaciously grasping ideas about how things “should” be, views of what happiness is, blind convictions about what life is all about. Suffering happens when we fail to see each successive moment clearly and fully, and we become lost in ideas and desires that we believe are the truth of life. Simply put, attachment and aversion to ideas and desire produce suffering. We chase after what we like and run from what we don’t. And we, like Anakin, never learn to “let go of the things we fear to lose.”
Buddhist philosophers describe three types of desire that, when grasped or rejected, cause suffering. The three types are desire for things that are pleasant to experience, desire for something to not be the way it is, and the desire to have more or to be more. Desire for pleasure creates suffering because its demands for eternal fulfillment are continually frustrated by the impermanent, unsatisfactory nature of the world. In other words, things change. Nothing can exist eternally. Everything we cherish and hold dear today, we will have to let go of and be separated from in the future.
Artoo is a composite being: he is composed of separate elements. Not just gears and wires, but also the ice of Hoth, Wedge, and the Imperial fleet. A tree on Endor is also composed of separate elements: the rain, sunlight, soil, and Ewoks. As we’ve seen everything is interrelated, and therefore everything is a composite. Everything is made up of everything else—existing in a continuous cycle of transformation.
We have a tendency to cling to things that bring us joy or make us happy, hoping they will never leave us. A mother may not want to see her child leave to become a Jedi, a Twi’lek dancer may quake at the thought of her beauty fading, a Jedi may dread losing his wife. But the fact is all these things leave us. We cannot stop change any more than we can “stop the suns from setting,” as Shmi Skywalker, Anakin’s mother, says. All things are of the nature to pass away; we suffer when we do not release them. Like Jedi we must train ourselves to “let go of everything we fear to lose.”
When things that bring us joy are gone we are left feeling hollow, and we try to fill up this hollowness with new things: Star Wars video games, jogan fruit, Corellian whiskey, Star Tours trips to Naboo. While each new thing can be a small joy, none provide us with lasting relief from that hollow feeling. They are all impermanent, and the contentment they bring today is gone tomorrow.
Please understand it is not the video games or drinks at the Outlander Club that cause suffering (we can surely enjoy them while they’re here), it is the belief that they’ll fill up our internal hollowness that creates in us a repetitive pattern of grasping, attainment, loss, and frustration. The Buddha taught that living beings, led by craving, rush about aimlessly like trapped rabbits. Caught in desires, we suffer over and over again. When we are led by our desires, rather than free to take them or leave them, we are caught in a cycle of obtaining and losing, pleasure and frustration—and we suffer over and over again.
Composite phenomena are not the only things that are impermanent; desires and beliefs are as well. If we take the time to watch our mind carefully we will see that desires rise and fall. Underneath them is profound peace.
In A New Hope Luke Skywalker could not accept living on Tatooine. He was bored and felt trapped there because Uncle Owen wouldn’t sign his permission slip to join the Academy. He longed to escape the drudgery of that desolate place to find romance and adventure among the stars.
This is an example of the second type of desire that produces discontent: desire for things to be other than they are. In its most basic form, this desire is an act of aversion, an act of turning away. Aversion is frustration with life in the here and now. It’s the desire to be rid of a dissatisfying situation. It’s an energy that doesn’t accept life in the present moment but whines ineffectually about it instead of examining it carefully to see how to improve it.
Like Luke, many of us believe the grass is always greener on the other side of the galaxy, that Tatooine (or, specifically, this moment) is the source of all our problems and if only we could escape it everything would be okay. This is a negative perspective. Negative perspectives can be changed. Remember what Obi-Wan told Anakin: “You’re focusing on the negative again. Be mindful of your thoughts.” Qui-Gon echoes this sentiment in The Phantom Menace when he contends, “Your focus determines your reality.” Focusing on all the things we find unpleasant creates an unbearable reality. But if you focus on what you’ve already got—then, hey, things aren’t so bad.
Think of it this way: Happiness is not having your hand cut off by a lightsaber. When your hand is cut off, your arm hurts like hell, and you think, “Blast, I wish my hand weren’t cut off! I could use that thing!” So if you have your hand then you aren’t experiencing the pain of dismemberment, and you can still use it to meditate in a handstand, twirl a lightsaber, or pilot a podracer—and that’s a lot to be happy about! Make sense?
Yoda reproaches Luke in The Empire Strikes Back because his mind was never focused “on where he was, what he was doing,” but lost in dreams of adventure and excitement. “A Jedi craves not these things,” Yoda says. That craving arises is fine. It is when a Jedi clings to craving that he suffers. And this will happen if the Jedi is not practicing living Force-mindfulness. When we are doing this, when we are mindful of our cravings, we can choose to act on them if we think they will benefit us, rather than be a slave to them and obey them whenever they yank on our collar chain (one of Jabba’s favorite pastimes with his thralls).
Anakin Skywalker lost himself in his desire to save Padmé. The good man that was Anakin was destroyed, and he became Darth Vader. This is an example of the third type of desire—the desire to have more or to be more. Becoming is nearly the opposite of aversion: aversion is the desire to be rid of something; becoming is the almost blind quest to attain it.
Craving to be famous, to have authority, to be like Yoda are examples of this third type of desire. Buddhist practice, like Jedi training, is a path of self-awareness. The arts of mindfulness and concentration, and meditation too, are intended to help us get in touch with who we are. They aren’t designed to turn us into someone else. We cannot become anything more than what we already are.
Attachment to the idea of becoming “the most powerful Jedi ever” or an “enlightened being” is a quick path to the dark side. The key is not “becoming” but rather “understanding.” The more we understand ourselves, the more we feel comfortable with who we are. And who we are is who we’re supposed to be. We don’t need to turn ourselves into little green Jedi masters.
Buddhists assert that the false view of self is the root of our suffering. It can produce selfishness, hatred, and arrogance that can lead to conflicts between friends, families, and even nations and worlds. It can also lead to internal struggles with the dark side that, in Darth Vader’s case, had galactic-scale repercussions.
Clinging to our sense of self can also produce little sorrows in our daily lives. Reflecting on how attached we are to ourselves, we find that we secretly harbor a great deal of egotism and insecurity. Our minds are constantly critiquing others, comparing ourselves to them, and angling for respect. One moment we feel we’re better than the people around us, the next we feel we’re not as good as they are.
Attachment to the idea that we should get only what we like and not have to deal with what we don’t also causes us to suffer. An ancient Zen master once said that the Great Way (of the Buddha) isn’t difficult for those unattached to their preferences. He went on to say that if we let go of longing and aversion, everything will be clear and undisguised. We all have preferences. Some of us prefer the original theatrical version of Star Wars; some prefer the Special Editions. Some prefer their Jedi to be laid back and cool, like Qui-Gon. Others prefer the more kick-ass variety, like Quinlan Vos. The old Zen master isn’t saying that we have to suppress these preferences and be forever indifferent; he’s simply saying that attachment to preferences, making our preferences into requirements for the world, obscures our view of the symbiont circle. We do not realize the truth, we don’t accept the moment as it is, when we’re caught up in own preferences.
Yoda eloquently displays letting go in Return of the Jedi: He has seen the galaxy fall from peace into chaos. He has witnessed the Sith take over and the Jedi all but disappear. He knows his life is ending and the dark side still holds sway over the galaxy. Yet he does not suffer from aversion to that new order. He does not suffer by desperately clinging to his ideas, his beliefs, or the five aggregates of self. He knows twilight is upon him and night will soon fall. He is able to let go and clearly see that whatever is subject to arising is subject to ceasing. “That is the way of things,” he says, “the way of the Force.”
In Attack of the Clones Anakin Skywalker reveals yet another form of attachment that can cause suffering—attachment to infatuated romantic love or the desire to “possess” another. Consider this scene:
Aboard a transport en route to Naboo, Padmé remarks to Anakin that it must be hard for him to have sworn his life to the Jedi. Anakin replies that it is indeed difficult because he cannot be with the people he loves.
“Are you allowed to love?” Padmé asks. “I thought that was forbidden for a Jedi.”
Anakin’s smarmy response is classic kitsch: “Attachment is forbidden…compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi’s life. So you might say that we are encouraged to love.”
Buddhism talks a lot about “attachment” as a kind of greedy clutching that creates suffering. But there’s another type of attachment that does not lead to unhappiness. Attachment, in the psychological sense of the term, happens when we connect with other people and form friendships. Attachment in this sense is simply love—and it’s not something any sane person would forbid (or ever could). Maybe this was what Anakin was attempting to argue, but it seems that the Jedi ban on attachment is meant more in the spirit of the old Zen monk’s thoughts on preference: if you believe one person, thing, or place is what you need to be happy, you’re missing the big picture and setting yourself up for a Death Star-sized measure of hurt.
Romantic love can be a problem when it’s based on misperceptions and mistaken beliefs about the objects of our love. We can invest so much of our hopes and dreams into one person that we build a monument to them in our mind and fail to see that they’re just human beings. Anakin does this the first time he meets Padmé in The Phantom Menace: he compares her to an angel—attributing a superhuman quality to her that she could never live up to except in his dreams. Padmé is just a person—imperfect, ever changing, and incapable of being any man’s happily ever-after—and she shouldn’t have to be.
So what was it about Anakin that made him so stuck on Padmé? She’s much smarter than him and good looking and all, but, man, he murdered kids for her! Then again, maybe his villainy had more to do with him than her. Maybe his insane “love” came from growing up a slave and never really feeling safe and secure. He must have been under constant threat of uncontrollable, undesired change. At any moment he could pass from one slave master to another or lose his mother to a gambler’s wager or simply have the peace of an idle moment ripped away. It is understandable that the moment he had something he could call his own he clung to it with the tenacity of a spice-junkie hoarding the last traces of glitterstim in the galaxy.
And then one day it happened. He escaped his slavery and became a Jedi-in-training. He quickly grew in skill and power, which when coupled with his natural flair for fixing things, led him to believe that nothing was beyond him. No longer would the things he loved be taken from him. He would make the world and nature bend to his will. He would carve out an enclave of safety and security that would encompass the entire galaxy so he would never have to experience fear again.
Instead of confronting fear within himself, as Jedi are trained to do, Anakin attempted to reorder the external world to his liking, purging everything that made him uncomfortable. As Darth Vader he used power, intimidation, and murder to insulate himself from fear. But no matter how powerful he became, he could never control everything. This must have made him very anxious underneath his cold exterior. So he felt compelled to continue with the dark side, because if he didn’t, he’d have nothing but himself left—and that was far too terrifying a prospect to contemplate.
We have to be careful how we handle the dark side within us. Accepting its presence should not include indulging in it or seeking it out. Reifying unpleasant aspects of life can distort our views, perceptions, and actions. When seen through the shroud of the dark side, the problems that assail us in life look to exist on their own, out there in the world. We should be careful not to develop the habit of seeing the world this way. Like Yoda told Luke, “If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.”
Anakin unwisely went too far down the path into darkness. His fear of loss and his fear of a world he could not control drew him into an interminable spiral of destruction.