We Have Seen the Buddha, and He Is Us

Last week, I saw the film "Les Misérables" for the second time. I had seen the Broadway musical on stage at least four times, and read the book many years ago. Jean Valjean has always been one of my very favorite characters in all of literature. In my Pantheon, he is on a par with Atticus Finch from "To Kill a Mockingbird" as the kind of human being we should all strive to be. Upon this most recent watching, it suddenly became apparent to me that although motivated by devotion to a Christian concept of God, Jean Valjean is the embodiment of the Buddhist concept of Loving-Kindness.

Valjean's moment of enlightenment and attainment of Buddhahood comes from his encounter with the priest from whom he steals the silver. When the priest forgives him and treats him as a "brother", Valjean's seething hatred is transformed by his sudden awareness of the power of love over hatred. It is at that point that he steps upon the path of loving-kindness that he will walk the rest of his life. It could even be said that he is returning to his true nature, since the crime for which he was imprisoned was stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's child who was starving to death.

In every encounter he has throughout the rest of the story, every decision he makes or action he takes is focused through the lens of loving-kindness. This is shown most clearly in those instances when the choices he makes are directly against his own self-interest, even at the risk of being sent back to prison, the most hellish experience of his life. "Consciousness, once raised, cannot be lowered," is a phrase I often quote. In his enlightened state, Valjean is incapable of ignoring the plight of others, not for fear of punishment in some Christian afterlife, but because he has realized his compassionate nature. Ultimately, he shows loving-compassion to every person with whom he comes in contact, even Javert, a man devoid of compassion (the Jungian darkness to Valjean's light) who has hunted him all his life, blinded by a sense of Old Testament righteous anger in service of The Lord. Valjean's acts of compassion toward others are not dependent on the nature of their encounters; they are not situational; they emanate from his very nature, a nature we all share as humans. To parody the comic-strip character Pogo, " We have seen the Buddha, and he is us."

The beauty of all this is that Valjean is not some kind of extraordinary being; he is an ordinary man whose awakening changes his life forever. I think this why he so captures our imaginations and our admiration. He is one of us, an ordinary human being with the ability to choose to live compassionately. To see him do so, over and over, when any of us might have shirked, both encourages us to emulate him and shames us in our lack of resolve. Each of us can take up the banner of loving-kindness and can make it the touchstone by which everything we do may be measured. Doing so accesses the very best part of who we are and opens the door to our spirituality in a way that nothing else can. If we are to make contact with the infinite in any meaningful way, it is only in touching the lives of our fellow beings with compassion that we will do so.

Perhaps Victor Hugo put it best at the end of "Les Misérables":

"To love another person is to see the face of God."