SHAKESPEARE MEETS THE BUDDHA

The Bard has much of the divine sage in him, according to this searching literary study.

Dickey, a Buddhist and a one-time fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library, argues that the lust, violence, power grabs, and revenge plots in Shakespeare’s plays are informed by Buddhist doctrines that aim to cultivate a detached and serene worldview. Othello’s jealous suspicion of Desdemona, for example, illustrates the Buddha’s warnings about letting obsessive thoughts dominate the mind. Shakespeare’s many beleaguered kings bear out the Buddha’s notion that power is an illusion that confers neither safety nor happiness. The Buddha’s teaching that the world is an illusion is also echoed in Prospero’s speech in The Tempest, likening life to a phantasmagorical vision, “such stuff as dreams are made of.” And a parade of Shakespearian villains, like Richard III, Macbeth, and Claudius, are duly brought down by the colossal karma built up by their murderous misdeeds. Indeed, so attuned is Shakespeare to the Buddhist vibe that, in an instructional appendix on meditation procedures, Dickey recommends a slew of lines, like Lear’s “Poor naked wretched whereso’er you are,” as mantras. Deeply read in both Shakespeare and Buddhism, Dickey is adept at showing how unwittingly Buddhist Shakespeare was and also how limpid and pithy a wordsmith the Buddha could be. Written in lucid, accessible prose, Dickey’s own interpretations of Shakespeare tease out hidden meanings in ways that are subtle but profound. For example, tracing the philosophical arc from Hamlet’s binaristic “To be, or not to be” to his climactic perception that “The readiness is all….Let be,” Dickey writes that “Life and death are no longer fixed states” but “passing stages in a never-ending process of becoming,” one through which Hamlet can finally enact the Buddhist ideal of “a surrender of attachment and aversion.” The result is a fascinating take on the playwright and the Buddha, full of illuminating insights.

An absorbing and elegantly written examination of the spiritual wisdom in Shakespeare.