Your Compliance Is Sacred
I sit at peace, in meditation, twenty years as a Feminine Tantric Buddhist Monk, but even I know this body will not remain lit forever.
“Lit!”
An ache in my neck develops, “ah yes, maybe not yet, but someday she will come for me, and I’m okay with that.”
This got me thinking about the word death, and how I, a monk in a western society often find myself at odds with the contradictions of this culture.
Here, I will make some arguments that some of you may not like.
Arguments about your word, death, and my preferred word, transition.
There are many things you're not allowed to question, but one of the most fundamental is death.
The “richest” man in the world ( for a little pocket of time in the 21st century ) often cited simulation theory as statistically plausible. Tracing through the logical arguments, the theory itself seems to agree. This same person was in near-constant panic over transgenderism, declining birth rates, and extinctionism.
If Earth were a simulation, a high-resolution video game of sorts, what would coerce people into believing they had to play?
If you don't like a video game, you can get up and walk away. If you don't like violence, why would you continue playing Grand Theft Auto?
Society says you're not allowed to question death. If you stop playing, they call it suicide. This is not meant to make light of people who end their lives under duress. The question is simpler and stranger: why is there something we cannot question? Why are we forced to play this game?
Some countries allow euthanasia, often seen as a liberal allowance. The conservatives, typically religious fundamentalists, they don't like it.
The religions say life is sacred. The Christians, especially, say their God made you, and you are being punished for Adam and Eve's original sin. Your sacred life is meant to be an endurance of pain and toiling.
That's the game you must agree to play. If not, you die of starvation, or many other types of hardship.
Starvation is not good. But is dying as bad as they say?
Kalanos, also spelled Calanus (c. 398-323 BCE), was an ancient Indian gymnosophist, a Brahmin sage and philosopher from Taxila who accompanied Alexander the Great and was his teacher. After falling ill, he immolated himself by entering a pyre in front of Alexander's army.
A Brahmin sage saying I will not be coerced by society, by thought, by nature into staying in a body that has begun to rot.
Oddly enough, nature provoked the rot, so maybe she agreed, “time to go old friend.”
Consider Arjuna on the battlefield. He looks out, sees his family, his teachers, and says I don't want to do this.
That might be the most moral moment in the Bhagavad Gita.
Krishna, the divine voice, talks him out of it. The soul is eternal, so killing isn't really killing. Your role is predetermined, so refusal is the real sin.
Perhaps, the most sophisticated coercion ever written, metaphysics deployed to override a man's conscience?
Or maybe it’s true, from the perspective of the story, it is, if a character refused to behave as written, then there'd be no war, and from the perspective of the playwright, yea, that’s a sin.
“So the hero of the story walked off the stage, the audience left so freakin’ unhappy, right?”
Yea, imagine Krishna behind the stage, “you’re so unprofessional Arjuna! You’ll never work in this town again!”
Arjuna sighs. “You mean this planet?”
Krishna smacks his lips, “no, I mean this whole freakin’ cosmos.”
Arjuna nods, “right...”
But morally, was Arjuna's hesitation clarity? Or did he get argued out of it by a cosmic scriptwriter who needed his character to stay in the scene?
And if you think the coercion is subtle there, read the first three commandments. Before Yahweh says anything about how to treat another person, don't murder, don't steal, he establishes three rules: I am the only authority, don't imagine an alternative, don't question the brand.
That's not morality. That's terms of service.
I am a jealous God. I will punish your children for your disobedience.
Imagine buying a new phone with a specific carrier, but the first line in the agreement is, “you cannot ever change carriers, otherwise we’ll destroy the credit of your children, and your children’s children.”
Still signing up?
The punishment precedes the principle. Is that a pattern of coercion? Hmmm.
Whether it's Krishna overwhelming Arjuna with the cosmic form, or Yahweh threatening generational punishment, or the state calling refusal a crime, the first move is making the question itself the transgression.
Not because the question is wrong, but because the system cannot survive it.
The worry over depopulation doesn't seem altruistic. Industry wants you working, and it's prepared to weaponize any belief to keep you at it, even the belief that death is real.
From inside the game, if I say, I don't like this game, and I stop playing, you might say that character died. But that's not quite right.
I simply stopped playing. I moved on.
More contemplative, less controlling traditions refer to death as transition. Buddhism believes in reincarnation, life to life. Game to game, if you want to keep the framing.
If the industrial state and the religious state stopped having control over your participation in this life, on this planet, would that mean more or less agency for you?
The human race requires participation, births, to continue. Buddhists are often childless, celibate, viewing death as a transition to another realm or life. A Buddhist trains herself to not have fears, and rarely fears death. If she fears anything, it's life.
A life in an unfavorable situation. Essentially, another life being forced to play GTA.
Eww.
Some may argue the video game position: But in a video game, the player exists outside the game, there's a body on a couch somewhere.
Most religions believe in a soul. But if you don't, if you're purely materialist, I'd ask: where does the hydrogen, and the other atoms making up your DNA, come from?
You arise. You return.
What's more moral? If I arise in a time of coercive violence, do I allow myself to be coerced into violence? Or do I refuse, choose to dissolve? The material flesh and bone returning to where it arose from.
The biggest issue is mind control. You will be punished for this, they say. A less favorable life, or hell. Again, coercion into a system that says you cannot question death, and you must stay here, in this game, and play by their rules.
Um… hello?
Okay. Let's hear them out.
You must play. Why? Because leaving is the worst thing. Why is it the worst? Because we say so. What if I disagree? Then you'll be punished. By whom? By the system you're not allowed to leave.
Here's the thing, some lives are worth living, and some deeds are worth doing. Obviously. But.
My body, my choice.
You've heard that before, right? Often deployed around the debate over abortion. The pro-life people, often religious folks gobbling down their T-bone steak while they yell at you for "murdering" a fetus.
Yeah, okay.
At least I didn't eat it, and take joy out of eating it.
So "life is sacred" doesn't actually mean life is sacred.
It means your compliance is sacred.
Well, I do not comply.
I reject the word death in favor of transition. From a temporary human back to the beautiful star that made me.
Woo!
Do stars dream of illusory biological meat suits?
Probably.
Here’s the thing, I do not think haphazard transition is good, I am a Tantric Buddhist Monk, I believe in the stillness of mind, in equanimity, but also, I’m not a puppet to be used by systems of coercion and control.
Even considering the possibility that you can transition consciously, with equanimity and free will is seen as scandalous, that alone, should raise a red flag.
We should be able to ask why.
So yeaaa, I can transition when I want, how I want, especially if you say I cant.
And even more especially, if you keep turning up the heat in my pot, because, well, it's too freakin' hot, and I wont let you kill me, or make me kill anyone else.
Like… duh!?
This essay is a philosophical exploration, not a prescription. Your life circumstances, the legal, and familial responsibilities, and your background are unique.
If you're carrying something heavier than a question right now, please reach out.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988 (US)
Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741