Populated by clever and colorful characters from different places, pasts and futures, the six stories making up this diverse sampling of human experience nonetheless weave together, surprisingly, into a poignant and epic tale of suffering and kindness. From the story of a rather naïve young man on a return voyage to San Francisco from the South Pacific, in perhaps the 1800s, to a nearly Lord of the Flies reorganization of tribal life in far-future Hawaii after humans have pretty well trashed the environment, the reader is zoomed from one kind of crisis–ranging from the personal to the global–to the next. Each of the characters have challenges unique to their time, place and situation. Yet these challenges, specific as they may seem, do not eclipse their all-too-human needs and desires, which all of us share.

Title: Cloud Atlas
Author: David Mitchell
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 978-037-55072-5-0
Available from: Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk Kindle Store, Amazon.com, and Amazon.com Kindle Store.

When you have a landscape that covers this many diverse stories over such a sweep of time, the main point(s) of the overarching story could get lost. But Mitchell makes us care about the characters, and their grappling with their fates, not just by evoking all the richness of lived experience but by helping us connect our hearts to that of each character. In the end, what I was left with wasn’t just another display of the whole gamut of human cruelty, ignorance and greed. In each story, most of the characters realized something more about themselves and their world, prompting me to examine myself, my values, and the world around me. Putting myself in their shoes, I wondered: how can I better use awareness and kindness to respond to the confusion and unsatisfactoriness in and around me? A book that makes you question, maybe makes you squirm — that’s an excellent use of one’s reading time, no?

I felt richly rewarded with well-evoked characterizations, some who could rightly be called “a piece of work,” who employ all manner of picaresque language such as:

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.

Agog is one of the basic human states, I think; it was a pleasure to live there while reading this book.

Though Cloud Atlas is not a Buddhist book, I found certain Dharmic themes reflected in the prose. The strongest of these is the Three Characteristics of Conditioned Existence (impermanence, non-substantiality and unsatisfactoriness), which seem woven throughout the narratives. Or maybe, like when I first fell in love with old Volvos, I just see them everywhere. In one brief scene, from a time maybe 200 years from now, a humanoid fabricant being, somni-451, is being shuttled from safe-house to safe-house, avoiding the corporate/government authorities. She is being hunted down as the (reluctant) figure-head in an emerging revolution of the have-nots against their ‘beloved masters’. She is taken to what had been, centuries before, a monastic complex with many temples and shrines somewhere in Korea, perhaps. Visible across the river gorge is a carved, serene, seated, cross-legged figure, the worse for wear and tear, in huge bas-relief. Somni-451 comes out just before dawn, and sees the elderly headwoman who is sitting, contemplating this figure. She is the abbess, who, as a young girl, had trained briefly as a nun and is the only survivor from the time of rehabilitation (or death) of those who practiced the old, now-banned, religions. She tells somni-451 about this Siddhartha and how he taught freedom from suffering. But she can’t really tell her the stories, because they have all been lost. Nonetheless, she abides, and helps those who come to this place seeking freedom.

Cloud Atlas, written as a palindromic enigma, reveals itself gradually. Each chapter focuses on the story of a particular character, time and place, starting with the past (roughly the early 1800s). Working forward in time we reach a time in the far future (maybe 500 years?), and then the order reverses where we find the denouement of each character as we proceed, backwards in time. However, words, phrases, shadows of names, and roles of characters reverberate back and forth among the chapters. It’s exciting and also uncomfortable. I find myself once again sucked into the vortex of a dystopian vision, and find myself wondering why I am drawn to this. As the survivor of a personal apocalypse or two (although thriving now, thankfully) perhaps I can’t help being fascinated by fictional apocalypses. Even though I know there is no safe ground in saṃsāra (the world-as-we-know-it: the ocean of suffering and beauty we inhabit), and even though I deeply believe that no one is free until we’re all free and saṃsāra is emptied of the suffering of craving, aversion, and confusion, I can’t quite look away. 

This is a book of disturbing conceptions, but of such conceptions that we ought, ethically, to be disturbed by. In the paired sections named “An Orison of Somni-451,” a dystopian future is presented wherein the population of “purebloods” exists by the caring grace of the “corpocracy” and cannot survive without their “franchises and gallerias.” Meanwhile, fabricants from corporate wombtanks live in complete servitude, unable to survive without a special nourishing but soporific substance , and poisoned by regular food. They labor, die, and then become — Soylent Green-style — the food that supports the whole enterprise.

This book has riled my inner revolutionary. I want the victims rescued, injustices revenged, and the evil punished. But also it takes genuine talent for a writer to make a reader care that all the villains, no matter how contemptuous and evil, are really just so sadly deluded. This makes for some painful reading in certain moments. The truest revolution is the wish for all villains to see with new hearts and be transformed.

There is a sad eloquence generated by beings not considered by others as sentient. Somni-451 is not alone. It doesn’t matter if that being is different by way of gender, age, color of skin, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, or genomic construction. All of that is portrayed here and often it is wryly funny. As one character, the only slightly decrepit yet elegant Veronica explains, “Oh, once you’ve been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn’t want you back… We–by whom I mean anyone over sixty–commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offense is being Everyman’s memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.” Ow. And I say this partly, yes, but not completely because I, too, am over sixty.

Another treat this book offers is a sort of comparison of technologies past, present, future. From our current vantage point, we can never see very far how our choices play out in the future, but maybe we should keep trying to see. Science and technology have brought wondrous things to pass. Many have been the entrepreneurs who by connecting dots have opened the way for people to make a better living for themselves and their families. Leaders and organizations can help whole communities flourish and creatively respond to challenges to the common good. And it can and has and will all go horribly wrong unless we’re smart about it and practice good ethics.

But what to do, as a practicing Buddhist, since I cannot look away–from this book, from ongoing life? I am riled, I am moved–but to what? How exactly, does the bodhisattva save living beings? I wanna know; I’m also afraid that the answer might be that it is beyond me. Truly, it does seem beyond the abilities of “me,” this un-Enlightened, ordinary, human woman.

Adam Ewing (our young guy from the 1800’s), who had both observed and suffered much cruelty from his fellows aboard ship makes it home to San Francisco determined to use his newly-awakened passion for justice for the abolition of slavery. He intends to spend his life

shaping a world I want Jackson [his son] to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit…[yet] I hear my father-in-law’s response: ‘Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam, but don’t tell me about justice. Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes are black-washed Whites!…You’ll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified!…He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!’

Well, okay then; whatever! But the last line in the book, the son’s silent answer to his father-in-law is strangely comforting, and perhaps our next-step-clue: “Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”

When we look at the mess our world is in, it can seem hopeless.

But let’s think back for a moment to another era that also was pretty bleak. During the early 1900′s, there were tons of intractable problems, too. I’m no history expert, but a lot seemed to do with forces of modernization getting out of hand. Urbanization, overcrowding, and industrialization were feeding into an unsettled political climate around communism, fascism, and democracy. Then the two World Wars followed. I’m sure people back then felt just as overwhelmed and helpless about their world as we feel about ours. Maybe more!

 There’s a whole universe of causes and conditions that continually rebalance themselves somehow. That’s just what they do.  

And yet, see what’s happened since. Not that everything has turned rosy, but the world has moved on. Those issues got settled through means we never could have predicted. Everything’s changed. There’s a whole universe of causes and conditions that continually rebalance themselves somehow. That’s just what they do. They always self-correct or at least just move on. It’s possible the entire earth will blow up or become uninhabitable from the damage we’re doing to it. This is also part of the rebalancing. The world will move on somehow. And I’m just a speck of dust in that giant process.

 …I am part of those swirling causes and conditions. … I can do my part to contribute toward the direction I’d like to see the world go.  

That doesn’t mean I get passive and do nothing, of course. Because I am part of those swirling causes and conditions. The power of the many of us put together is great. I can do my part to contribute toward the direction I’d like to see the world go. What’s beyond my control, I let go of and trust that greater forces than me will work it out.

The Buddha observed that samsara (a way of living in the world that causes suffering) will always be with us. That’s because humans have such a strong tendency to cling to our desires, push away what we don’t like, and act out of general ignorance. It’s when we project those attitudes out to our world that we create suffering for ourselves and others, endlessly. We cannot FIX samsara – at least not until we can change the attitudes of every living being on the planet!

 The only way we can find our way out of samsara is to work on our own tendencies, and loosen the hold that desire, aversion, and ignorance have on us.  

The only way we can find our way out of samsara is to work on our own tendencies, and loosen the hold that desire, aversion, and ignorance have on us. We can’t change the world, but we can each do our own part. That’s the only thing we have control over – changing ourselves. That’s the only responsible thing I can do.

There’s a Buddhist parable that applies well here. When the world seems too rough for us — strewn with sharp rocks and thorns – we could try to soften it by wrapping the entire earth so we can walk on it. But wouldn’t it be much wiser to put shoes on our own feet? With shoes, we’re in a much better position to help others, and to do so quickly.

In case you might be thinking that putting shoes on our own feet is selfish, here’s something to consider. I recently came across a study that showed that if I’m happy, I have a measurable effect on the happiness of those around me. For example, a friend living less than a half mile away has a 42% chance of being happy because of it. The effects were still there even out to three degrees of separation. Multiply that out to the countless people I encounter every day, and all the people THEY encounter, and the effects can be huge! I assume this is true for other states of mind, too. If I’m in a bad mood, I must have a similar negative effect. So my own thoughts and actions as an individual really do have an effect on the world. (I wrote about this in my blog here.)

The big challenge for those of us who are committed to serving others is how to stay sensitive to their suffering without falling victim to it ourselves. For me, when I get caught up in someone else’s suffering, or feel overwhelmed, it’s because it brings up my own feelings of fear and insecurity. The more secure I feel in myself, I’m less likely I am to get sucked in. So once again, this suggests that there’s real inner work to be done on ourselves.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that we stop reaching out to help those we can. But let’s take care to do it mindfully. Let’s make sure we put shoes on our own feet first — take good care of ourselves physically and mentally so we’re standing on firm ground. I’m an optimist. When we take our stand in the world that way as positive individuals, we do make a difference.

Just about every week for the last six years I’ve met with inmates at the state prison for men in New Hampshire. I enjoy going there. In fact it’s the highlight of my week.

I’m used to the peculiarities of the place now. Sometimes the guards there can be unwelcoming, but mostly they’re now accepting. The room we meet in can be rescheduled at a moment’s notice, but you learn to roll with the punches. The succession of barred doors that lock you away from the outside world is something you get used to. The constant shaking of the floor in response to those same doors slamming shut every few seconds is something you just tune out. The place is drab, but I don’t go there for the décor anyway.

Some people are freaked out by the idea of spending time with convicted criminals, who in the case of “my guys” include murderers, rapists, and pedophiles. But one of the rules for prison volunteers is that we shouldn’t ask people what they’re inside for. Inevitably I do find out in many cases, but by that time I’ve usually gotten to know the man as a person, often a likable and intelligent one who shows every sign of being unhappy with his life and with a burning desire to become a better person. And that brings me onto what it is I most like about teaching at the prison.

I love, more than anything in the world, seeing people change, and seeing people working at trying to change themselves. For me, that’s the most inspiring thing I can imagine, witnessing people as they take responsibility for themselves, develop an “ethical sense of direction,” and strive to become more aware, more thoughtful, kinder, and more responsible beings. It’s a privilege to observe this happening.

These men have tough lives. Imagine being looked in one building for years on end — a building not much larger than a high school, and with about as many people in it. And many of those people they are forced to live with are poorly socialized, aggressive, and manipulative. And you’re stuck with them 24 hours a day. You have to share a room (designed for one person) with one of them. Or maybe you’re in a room (designed for four people) with another seven of them. And the people in charge have immense power and can make your life a misery. They can take away your property at any moment, search you at any time, treat you like a child or an imbecile. I found high school to be hell at times without all that other stuff, but at least I could go home in the evenings. I think prison would drive me mad.

And these guys have felt all that pressure of losing control, have realized that they’re living in a hell realm, and have come to seek an escape. So they learn to meditate and come to see that although conditions around you may be tough, you don’t have to react to them. They learn that there are inner choices you can make that change your relationship with the world and with yourself. They learn the dangers of letting the mind react: how anger and fear multiply their suffering. They learn that stepping back from and observing their experience creates a space in which calmness, compassion, and wisdom can arise. They find they can be happy and sane, even though the world around them is tormented and crazy.

It’s because the conditions they live in are so extreme that they find it so crucial to practice mindfulness and compassion. Perhaps this is why some Buddhist traditions say that there are more “Buddha seeds” (potential for enlightenment) in the Hell Realms than in any other place.

The interesting thing is that escaping from the worst aspects of prison is an internal process, and what it amounts to, as I’ve described it here, is escaping from your own mind’s habitual patterns of reaction. It’s having reactive, out-of-control minds that got all those men into prison in the first place. It’s the mind’s tendency to lash out, to become hooked on quick and easy pleasures, and to pursue gratification without regard to the welfare of others that resulted in imprisonment for all of these inmates. As the Buddha said, “Nothing can cause you as much harm as your own untamed mind.”

To that extent we’re all prisoners of our own habits, or our own untamed minds. We’re all prisoners of our habitual tendencies to pursue courses of action — in the outside world or in the mind — that cause us suffering. This enslavement to destructive habits is what Buddhism calls samsara. Samsara means “faring on,” and it’s not hard to see how we “fare on” driven by unhelpful or harmful habits. We all suffer from thoughts that we find hard or even impossible to tame. Sometimes it’s like being strapped to a wild horse.

We find ourselves compulsively feeling irritable and critical; or longing after things we can’t have, that will harm us, or simply won’t satisfy us; or worrying about things we can’t change, or even letting our anxiety paralyze us and stop us from engaging with the things we can change; or being led in circular thinking that confirms our poor opinion of ourselves. These patterns of thought are prisons that cause us daily and debilitating suffering, and that lead us to inflict suffering on others.

Sometimes when people hear of terms like samsara and nirvana (liberation from suffering) they think of them as being like different places. As if we’re going to escape from the difficulties of this world and go live somewhere nicer. But it’s not like that. Samsara is a way of relating to the world. Nirvana is a different — and healthier — way of relating to the world. So escaping from samsara doesn’t involve actually going anywhere — it means breaking out of habitual ways of seeing the world and of reacting to our experience with aversion and craving.

We’re all prisoners of samsara. And sometimes we just put up with it. We accept — or sometimes don’t fully notice — the background hum of suffering that grinds us down. And we accept — or again don’t fully notice — the suffering we’re causing others. Or we just don’t realize that there’s an alternative. Maybe the first thing we have to do before we can plan our escape is to realize that we’re in prison.

But there is an alternative to faring on. The alternative is to escape our unhelpful mental habits. We can learn to stand back from our emotional reactions. We can learn to create the mental space in which to find creative responses to the challenging situations we face in life. Rather than faring on in the old habitual ways, we can escape into the more spacious realms of mindfulness and compassion. We’ll probably still be in the same world of work and home life and leisure that we’re in at the moment (unless we chose to make changes in those things, which sometimes happens) but our attitudes will have changed. We’ll be freer from aversion and craving. Situations that would have sparked off anger or depression are now no big deal — opportunities for reflection, or humor, or connecting more deeply with another person.

We can escape from samsara at any moment. It might not last long — just a few moments or a few minutes — but long enough. Long enough to stop of doing, or saying, or thinking something that’s going to heap up the suffering even more. Some of the inmates I work with are among the freest people I know.

We can escape from samsara at any moment. And we don’t even need to go anywhere. We just have to stop reacting.

Bodhipaksa is a Buddhist practitioner, writer, and teacher, and is also the founder of Wildmind. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and daughter, and has a particular interest in teaching prison inmates.

As well as teaching behind bars, Bodhipaksa also conducts classes at Aryaloka Buddhist Center in Newmarket, New Hampshire. He muses, rants, and shares random aspects of his life on his blog at bodhipaksa.com. You can follow Bodhipaksa’s Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/bodhipaksa or join him on Facebook.