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To Transform Society
Karma and Happiness:
A Tibetan Odyssey in Ethics, Spirituality, and Healing
by Miriam E. Cameron, PhD, RN
with a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Fairview Press/Center for Spirituality and Healing, 2001.
258 pages.
Miriam Cameron’s Karma and Happiness is many things. It is a memoir of her own efforts to live a good life. It is a primer on ethics and spiritual concepts such as mindfulness, impermanence, and compassion. It is an introduction to the situation of Tibet, and it is a travelogue of a demanding journey to Tibet. And by the end of the book, Cameron has succeeded in making the case that while East is East and West is West, the twain can and should meet, speak, and share what each has to offer for the betterment of the entire world.
Cameron, a bioethicist at that the University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality and Healing, began life as a Lutheran pastor’s daughter. The practicalities of her professional life eventually made it apparent to her that she needed additional sources of wisdom: “Once I became a registered nurse, I worked with dying children who belonged to a variety of wisdom traditions. It was then that ethical problems bombarded me. . . . Doing what Jesus would do and following the Ten Commandments no longer gave me enough guidance to resolve complicated ethical conflicts. Christianity, my first wisdom tradition, was no longer sufficient for me.”
Further exploration led Cameron to convert to Judaism and to study yoga. Participation in twelve-step programs and formal study of philosophy and ethics added to her store of wisdom sources. Exposure to Buddhism, particularly as practiced in Tibet, became the next major source during a trip to China. This led to detailed studied, back home in Minneapolis, of Buddhism and of Tibet’s political situation, and then to an extended trip to the “roof of the world” itself.
As travelogue, Karma and Happiness is good enough to be occasionally exhausting. It is almost as if we are along for the ride -- in outdated and probably unsafe vehicles on insufficient roads, at high altitudes where the effects of thin oxygen can be painful and potentially life-threatening, in hotels that lack even the comforts of a cheap American motel, in a society in which spies mingle and swoop in on citizens and foreigners who discuss the Tibetan situation among themselves. On a particularly treacherous bus ride, Cameron distracts herself from her fear by thinking about “the Buddhist perspective on the preciousness of human life.”
While I was trying to distract myself with Buddhist philosophy, the slippery, steep climb became more arduous as the road snaked round and round, higher and higher. Suddenly, the road disappeared. Ngawang [the driver] slammed on the brakes and the bus slid to a halt -- ten feet short of a sixty-foot drop.
Despite close calls, illness, and discord among the members of their traveling party, Cameron and her husband and companions manage to take in the sights and much more. They see firsthand some of the mistreatment of the Tibetan people. Visiting a nunnery, they learn that all but two of the nuns are absent because they are attending a “mandatory meeting called by the Chinese government.” Their guide, Karma, explains, “The purpose is to straighten them out about their proper role in liberated Tibet, to reeducate them about His Holiness’ [the Dalai Lama] abuses of human rights. Basically, the Chinese are informing the nuns about the consequences of their actions if they engage in protests against the government.” Despite such oppression, one of the nuns shows the visitors a tiny altar in her room, complete with a faded, forbidden photo of the Dalai Lama hidden in a crevice.
Throughout her journey, Cameron outlines some of the ethical dilemmas she is trying to work out by drawing upon the many sources of wisdom she has engaged throughout her life. Is she obligated to help Tibetans, and if so, how? Can she be true to the Tibetan cause while being on good terms with people in China? Solving these dilemmas cannot take place apart from compassion, the central discipline of Tibetan Buddhism, and Cameron spends a chapter giving a comprehensive summary of the teaching of the Dalai Lama during a three-day seminar:
The Dalai Lama called for individual, scholarly, and political attention to the discipline of compassion. “We need to cultivate not only the rational mind, but also the human spirit. Western educational systems are not paying enough regard to development of the heart, compared with the brain.” This comment drew a strong round of applause. “Compassion should be taught to children, because this concept is difficult for adults to understand. If families and teachers are role models, children will grow up understanding compassion. This is the proper way to transform society.”
When all is said and done, Cameron comes away from her odyssey with a strong sense of the suffering that results when one group “forcibly imposes its values on another group,” and calls for us to not merely tolerate, but celebrate each other’s values. “Diverse wisdom traditions have not only added richness to my philosophy of life, but also helped me to deal with life’s inevitable difficulties.” Wisdom traditions, she points out, “can be compared with world cuisines, which vary in sight, smell, texture, nutrition, and taste. Tibetan momos, Jewish matzo balls, Chinese wontons, and Italian gnocchi are all dumplings, but each has different characteristics. . . . Life would be boring if all food -- and wisdom traditions -- were the same.”
Karma and Happiness has many values. While it is not as comprehensive an introduction to the situation of Tibet as John Avedon’s In Exile from the Land of the Snows (which is unfortunately out of print), Cameron covers the ground of recent Tibetan history well enough to easily bring the reader up to speed. As an example of the value and even necessity of intelligent syncretism if a pluralistic world is to have any chance of being a peaceful world, the book is unlike any other I have read. And Cameron’s chapter on the Dalai Lama’s teaching on compassion is in itself practically worth the price of admission. The discipline of compassion transcends theologies and doctrines and dogmas, and apologists within any tradition could benefit by exposure to this teaching.
I purchased my copy of Karma and Happiness while attending a benefit concert in Minneapolis for the Gyuto Monks, who are raising money to finance a Tibetan spirituality center in the Twin Cities. The monks sincerely promised the audience (in this post-9/11 world) that the money raised would be used for no other purpose than to spread compassion. Karma and Happiness gives a taste of the Tibetan ideal of compassion, in theory and in practice, leaving the distinct impression that the health of the individual and the world will be much improved by attention to this challenging and powerful discipline.
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