Since publishing the Buddha Nature article, many people have been asking me about the Hitler-in-Hell part. Luckily, not about if Hitler is in Hell; I think we all can agree that, if there’s a Hell, Hitler is going to be there.
No, the question is about the rebirths, about what gets passed from life to life. And I get it; it’s a common question. We’ve answered it before: what gets passes is the seeds of actions and the vows we take. But perhaps a different approach is better.
So, let me tell you, in a story format, what it is really like. Just remember; this story is a lie.
Imagine that you live in a cyberpunk world. In an arcology; one of these cities that are totally enclosed. It’s like a company town, but built with no gates on it. Let’s call it the Samsara, Inc arcology.
You get born into it.
Samsara’s CEO is this guy, Mr.Yama. Big guy, everyone says that he’s like a bull. You’ve never seen him in person; just in videos and pictures. You are from a sweeper family, in the lower levels of the arcology and in theory you will never see him. But when you look up, up at the spires of glass and steel, you imagine him in the uppermost level. He probably has a penthouse, too.
You’re poor, but you’re also smart. Your parents and friends have high expectations for you. Perhaps, in time, you’ll move from maintenance to a business-side, or perhaps…even to management.
You graduate first in your class. But with your newfound maturity, now you have to go to the compulsory reviews.
These reviews are the most dreaded aspect of company life. Not only because they dictate if you maintain your position or not, but because you get effed, some time. It remains a mystery what the big F is; Perhaps you’re fired, and nobody will see you again. Perhaps you’re just fucked up by his goons.
Nobody but the goons knows, and they’re not telling.
You go to your first yearly review. At your level, it is in a big amphitheatre. It is full of people, and you have to queue to get a number. Then, sit while waiting for your number. They call you to the front after about eight hours and give you your first review: sweeper, level 3.
This has been one of the lucky reviews. Nobody you know got taken; but you have seen goons go to the people sitting and take some of them away. You shudder and go back to your sweeping.
In the third year of your review, you notice a guy. You’ve seen him on the periphery. Big guy, someone told you he was in a corporate boy band because of his sweet voice. He doesn’t look like a boy band member any more. He looks old, fat and oily. But he’s setting around him a ring of what it looks like mini-drums.
Bored, you sit by him. He plays, softly, a beat. At a pause, you ask him about the beat. It’s a Dub, he says. There’s something in the beat, almost like a memory that refuses to come. He asks you if you’d like to learn about it.
Somehow, you forget the nerve-racking waiting for a review. You nod, and he shows you how he plays it. He stands up, wobbling, and gestures to his place. You sit, start playing and somehow space out. When you come back, it’s your number and you run to get your review. The guy is nowhere to be seen, almost as he had faded away. Perhaps his number came up too, but why leave the drums with you?
You leave the drums to get your review: sweeper management.
Everyone parties. Everyone tells you they knew.
But at night, you can hear faintly the beat.
In training, you’re distracted. It’s almost like you’re hearing about another world. People can see it on your face. Burnout is very common, so you have help, as much as the community can give it. But you’re not feeling burned out. At night, you try to recapture the beat. You dance when alone in your small communal shower.
You never see the guy again.
In your next review, everyone’s very nervous about you, but you’re not. You kinda can feel the beat. And the reviewer, somehow, sees it in you. Instead of showing you your review (probably not good) he motions to the goons.
Even when they show you to a place with the smell of blood, you’re not terrified. Afraid? Yes.
But somehow, the beat stays in you.
Suddenly, the ground is coming up to hit you and you see red.
You die.
You get born.
You get born as an electrician. You learn about wiring at your grandad’s knee. Your parents fail the review, so the community of electricians helps you. You graduate in the middle of the class. In your second year as an electrician, you are called to help on one of the low-level executives brothels. There’s a boom in the speakers that distracts you more than all the young flesh on display.
There’s a memory that’s trying to come about. About a beat, about a dub. You put-putter at work, trying to recreate it, unless suddenly, one day, it is there. You dance to it; you show it to your friends.
On the rainy days, you dance it near the glass in the lower levels, meters from the acid rain that would melt your bones.
You get taken on your next review.
You get born this time as a courier between the levels.
The beat finds you with the sound of your bike as it descends a stairway. You know it, somehow. It is in your bones.
Also, in your bones: an injunction that you must keep it secret.
For the first time, a review will not kill you in this life. You get run over by a truck. But you tell of the beat to community people that you love and trust more than blood. You don’t remember the ex-boy band musician or the other lives, not yet anyway. But there are things you know.
In the next life, it is difficult to turn off the beat. You rely on your secret community, that’s growing like a virus; the followers of dub. Even some low-level reviewers have embraced the dub. You still get caught working at an executive brothel yourself, dancing to the beat. But somehow, while the goons brain you, you know you will be back.
You get born.
You try to learn. Is it a bio-hack? Was it a soul that you received? Is the Dub god? You try from black-market clinics to forbidden meditation techniques. But you find nothing. Even the Dub itself is a rhythm. You suspect it works so well not because it is sacred, in the sense of special or apart, but because it is not. Neither are you.
You realize that there’s nothing special in the Dub, in you, in the situation. There’s not a soul that gets carried over. This promise of freedom carries over: Samsara Inc. isn’t a natural state or a divine creation; it’s merely another possibility. That promise is what the Dub is. As you get shot in a mini-riot, you realize that there’s no difference between the ex-boy-band musician, you, the people rioting, the goons or even Mr.Yama himself. There’s just confusion and the belief that this is and only this. By sheer suspicion, you have dispelled the confusion.
In the next life, you cannot turn off the beat.
On the one after that, you cannot turn it on. On suggests that an Off might be there as a possibility. But the dub now is part of every phenomenon.
Around this time, people mention you look a little like Mr.Yama. Big and wide, like a bull. You now remember how the dub started, or at least, started for you. At a review, a junior executive walks by, asking you what you’re doing. You show her the dub, and the dub is you, and you flow to the executive and now there’s no difference.
People say that you will be the one that dethrones Mr.Yama. The Yama-Killer. But you know that this is not so. What must come after is so totally different that what is now, that people have problems grasping it. No problem, you become a storyteller. You tell them stories about how the arcology is going to change, how it is going to be wonderful. Even the IAs are following you.
To those closest to you, those more mature, you can directly show them. They understand that most people won’t get it, but they work towards organizing it.
There is no civil war, at least openly, in the arcology. But Mr.Yama does not go anywhere, anymore. He is just hiding in his penthouse and doesn’t talk to anyone but his trusted sidekicks. He thinks you will try to depose him; that’s what he would do. But you don’t need to.
One day, you seem to breach the penthouse. While the guards rush there, your community invades the sound system. With the AI members that chant the dub, you hack the controls.
And, while Mr.Yama watches in horror, you broadcast the dub everywhere.
And everybody knows it, and knows their own nature. And the arcology is no more an arcology and Mr.Yama doesn’t need to die, since he’s powerless.
And this story is a lie.
Just like yours.
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