Is Paris Hilton a Buddhist?

Last night I had such anxiety in bed, after putting my book down on the comforter. Buddhists focus on radical acceptance, living in the moment, a simplicity of being, and so then, are not the- purposefully or not- ignorant and happy, relatively shallow people the same? What is the difference between Paris Hilton and a practicing, enlightened Buddhist?

I don’t understand my own absolute love and desire for beauty. I used to; I have temporarily forgotten many things I used to know so totally.

I just finished a biography, CHASING BEAUTY, THE LIFE OF ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER. Gardner is my family name on my mother’s side. Isabella lived in the 1800’s and early 1900’s as a white, American woman of privilege and married into a family of riches. Her life was full of international travel, fascinating people, and a deep love of beauty that transformed slowly over time into a collection of art and historical pieces from around the world. Her dream became to open a museum, one that included objects of awe and beauty- frescos, chairs, paintings, textiles, etc- displayed all together instead of pure against a naked background; chosen solely by Isabella, down to the smallest detail. The eventual museum she built, after her death renamed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (at her request/respect), is now a worldwide recognized home to some of the most important pieces of art ever made, and is a testament to Isabella’s vision and devotion.

The Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston, Mass

I struggled through much of this book, which surprised me, mainly because biographies have been my favorite reads for a few years now, especially biographies of women. The beginning was fascinating and I flew through Isabella’s young life and marriage, but once her travels began, it did feel at times like a suffocating list of self-interest, the endless names of the places she visited, the names of the people she sat at tables with, even the art pieces she viewed, sometimes literally listed in one long paragraph. Isabella was in many ways a generous person, in her bubble. She was often silently financially supporting various people in her community, especially artists. By all accounts, she was a respectful traveler who, while she carried the prejudices typical of white people of her time, was mostly curious and respectful toward all people she encountered, looking to learn.

Eventually, she began collecting more purposefully, and years after the death of her husband left her in charge of a large trust, she began the work of her museum. She was a part of each and every decision and implementation of the museum’s exteriors and interiors, and spent most days showing up to lunch with the workers and go over the plans and progress.

Throughout this book though, I kept getting this feeling of restlessness, of inner tedium. At this time in my life I just don’t know that I can deeply care or connect to stories about actual people who live primarily to satisfy their own pleasures, who live and die never deeply engaging with the suffering of the world around. Isabella lost her only child, a son, to illness. He was four, I believe, and this destroyed her. She knew suffering, and as I said, she helped within her circles. She left a lasting legacy of art! But she also lived deeply within her place of privilege and despite her wonderful intellectual curiosity and aptitude in art and culture, she never really engaged with the world around her in any way that wasn’t about her own passions. That’s not wrong. I have lived that way most of my life. It’s how most live, and beautiful lives come this way. Many of my favorite stories are written this way- Anne of Green Gables. Such a small life, but full of all the things we are taught matter most- love, passion, nature, community, relationships, great food, deep learning.

How today, can I think about the perspective of directly engaging with the suffering of the world around, or not. A small life of small beauties has always seemed like such a perfect and wonderous thing to me. Now, I don’t know how we will ever get anywhere if we are all sitting in our gardens watching the bees, listening to the birdsong, feeling big feels and thinking deep thoughts, when the world around us is being strangled and beaten to death by people who march relentlessly to achieve their goals, usually capitalist goals of power and growth, endlessly hungry. In Nosferatu the demon vampire creature snarls, “I am not evil. I am an appetite.” The human ability to become deeply and perpetually hungry for power and money has as much potential to destroy as actual evil does, and in fact often morphs quickly into actual evil. Hannah Arendt’s EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM famously uses the phrase “the banality of evil” to illuminate how the Germans involved in the higher levels of the horror of the Holocaust did what they did. Isn’t capitalism so banal in its day-to-day face of purchasing and pricing and money systems obscure and complicated to the masses, who might further engage and buy a book on how to understand stocks, or flipping houses, or how to get POWER, a book we sell often to young white men at my store.

Thich Natch Hanh wrote a lot about suffering, as all the Buddhists I know of do, but the primary focus in these writings is how to be a person suffering in your own heart, not how to both watch your thoughts and experience the reality of now and the open sky-mind ( ideas that have helped me tremendously over the years ) while also engaging with and working to better the world. Why do all well-known Buddhists have to go away for such long periods of time to meditate and exist? I just finished Pema Chodron’s HOW WE LIVE IS HOW WE DIE a few nights ago, which I ate up. It gave me a lot of comfort, and some ideas of what I want to discipline myself in this next year, but it also wasn’t about how to be a person really engaged in this world while practicing Buddhism. The ideas are transferrable to all life, right, this is the whole idea, that you take you everywhere you go, but all the examples are so quiet, so intimate. Pema herself has been the head of an isolated Buddhist abbey for years. What then for a person like me, who has no time to go away and meditate? Who meditates in my bathroom, in my car, while washing dishes, not in an isolated retreat, who tries to breathe and touch the out-breath and accept the reality of the living moment while raising money for people being burned alive, bombed to death. A person who works and doesn’t have nearly enough money, who is teetering on poverty when my divorce finalizes. Can the deep spiritual work be done under conditions of modern life WITHOUT ESCAPING?

I’m thinking about how I can simultaneously be more engaged with the activism that has become so important to me in the last year, and balance my nervous system connecting with the ideas and spirit of Buddhism. So much of modern psychology advocates for leaving toxic wind, but so much of modern life holds our eyes open into that wind. Closing down and shutting the doors to this life can come in grades, there is the classic villager who never leaves his home but once a year, who nobody sees, there is the villager who is part of the village but never leaves that community, there is the villager who is a part of their community and is learning about the communities around, engaging with mutual aid, and on. How can I be the me that I am happiest being- the poet watching the bees in my backyard, lolling in the sun, learning French, reading, listening to music, dreaming, loving my people unconditionally and always, writing, feeling safe- and the me that is working to end a genocide and change my country?

Balance, balance, obviously, you might say. If it’s possible to balance these two lives- deep beauty and calm in one, and courage and work in another- I don’t see who is doing it successfully, people are falling apart. And the ones who aren’t are mostly disengaged and focused on the small things they can control- which is the advice my therapist gave me repeatedly years ago.

I don’t feel hopeless, but curious and frustrated. Life made so much more sense when I thought almost totally of my family and my friends. Now that I think in such macro concepts every day, about the government, our political systems, the corruption of AIPAC, at-risk communities with the orange one as head, the environment, the things we all talk about all the time, and nothing makes any sense at all.

But soon, soon, I will read a book or a poem or an essay that will remind me of what I once knew, and I will remember. And then I will tell you!