The Mask Behind the Mask

#59, January 10, 2001

Sometimes on my way to work, I pass by one of Petaluma's many drive-through coffee stands. One day I noticed a clown standing alongside the road, beckoning commuters into the espresso lane. The clown was smiling. How could I not return the greeting? I smiled, waving for good measure. He waved back, still smiling.

For weeks, whenever I took that route, I looked forward to my happy encounter with the clown. Start the day with a smile-- it was better than caffeine! Then one day, I happened to pass when the clown was not smiling. In fact, for the brief moment I drove by, he looked a bit unhappy. It made me sad, and I wondered what might be wrong.

Did I mention this was the first time I saw the clown without his mask? It's interesting: my earlier mood elevations were triggered mostly by a piece of painted plastic.

This experience reminded me how much of human relationships are conducted at the mask level. Literature and drama from every culture abounds with mask stories-- the idea of masks is central our lives. We tend to create and inhabit the mask of what we want others to see. And nowhere is this more apparent than in politics. The candidates' public behavior and advertising create a mask designed for maximum voter appeal. Sometimes these masks are realistic replicas of the wearer, honest representations of honorable people. Sometimes they are cynical distortions, letting even monsters masquerade as heroes and saints. This masking creates, literally, a world of problems.

There is another layer of masks we need to address if we want to solve the problems of this "top" layer. Let me explain with an example. I was sitting at a City Council meeting a few years ago, looking at an agent for the Sonoma Mountain Conservancy. In my view, here was a man hired to put a mask of respectable ecological sensitivity on his client's paranoid privacy obsession. I saw through his first mask, and perceived the smug, arrogant face of well-endowed power. My reaction was outrage. Mercenary, how dare you smile on this larceny!

But I caught myself, recalling what this sort of hostility produces: a spiraling cycle of thicker masks, wider gaps between people, and more mutual frustration and anger. Gandhi, Mandela, and King changed their worlds by recognizing the ugly inner face as just another mask. Beneath that ugliness was the universal soul, the light and love common to every human being, however deeply buried. I looked again at the agent as his children or grandchildren might see him, as papa pitching a ball or helping with homework. My new perception didn't change what he was doing at that moment. But I believe it gave me some emotional freedom and power to deal with his behavior in way that would be less personally threatening to him, his client, and their allies, more appealing to neutral observers, and thus more likely to succeed. We shall see.

Looking beyond both the outer mask and the inner mask may seem like an arcane or naïve approach to political activism and social change. Indeed, if applied without intellectual honesty and the courage of conviction, it can become an excuse for appeasement, for tolerating violence and injustice. But I have no doubt that if we want to accelerate the pace of creating a sustainable, humane culture (which presently seems awfully slow), we need to master this technique.

What's involved? It's the old axiom about changing yourself to change the world. You have to quiet your little monkey-mind enough to begin to see deeper, beyond the masks, to really understand and live the unity of life. My favorite teacher on this topic remains the late Eknath Easwaren, whose books and tapes are available at Copperfield's and via the web at www.nilgiri.org. But when it comes to utter simplicity, it's hard to beat the everyday advice of Buddhist teacher and anti-war activist Thich Nhat Hanh: when the stress and strain is giving you pain, just take a deep breath and smile.