thoughts on spiritual awakening in today's world
Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception for Catholics, the first day of Hanukkah for Jews, and *Rohatsu* (Buddha’s Enlightenment) for Buddhists (at least in Japan). I’ll probably go to Mass tonight. Wish my Zendo had a service right after that I could go to also!
Joy to the world, the Lord is come! May the Light shine in the darkness!
I just rewrote and restored three old pages to the site. Buddha, by Karen Armstrong, also her wonderful and brilliant A History of God, and, now, back by popular demand, my old page The Lotus and the Cross: Common Threads in Buddhist and Christian Spirituality.
See, the old pages **are** being restored! It just takes time; my perspective has changed so much in the last couple of years that almost every page of my site has to be rewritten to some degree. For instance, I’ve been studying Zen now for a year, and that makes a big difference. It may not sound like much if I say that the main change is that I’m shedding conceptual beliefs, but if you’re as wrapped up in them as I was, it’s pretty significant.
As I was developing this site from 1996 until around 2000, I still had the very mistaken notion that mysticism would give “the Answer,” that replacing some beliefs with better beliefs would bring me to God’s truth. That’s like saying the number ten is closer to infinity than the number nine!
Over the last few years, I began to realize that God’s reality is inexpressible, but I couldn’t find the right way to convey the change in my perspective on my site, which had over 140 pages by early 2003. Finally, I took down almost everything, started blogging my current thoughts, and restoring old pages, slowly, in their own time. More are coming, but this is all for today.
That’s Jedi life in the real world.
It strikes me that Thanksgiving is most spiritual American holiday. Christmas has largely become the holiday of merchandise, and Easter is too, to a lesser extent. All Saint’s Eve—once the day of remembering all the heroes of the Christian faith—has become almost totally lost in Halloween.
Holidays like Pentecost and Ascension just aren’t celebrated much, except for a few words in the churches that note them (which is quite a far cry from all).
Amid the gorging and the football, there’s also something more subtle and wonderful thriving in Thanksgiving—calling people together to share time with each other and focus, for at least a few minutes, on everything that’s right, instead of everything that’s wrong.
Thanksgiving is not specifically Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist. It belongs to everyone. Thanksgiving’s only theme is gratitude, which is at the root of all true worship.
If you have loved ones, be thankful!
If you have food, be thankful!
If you are alive, be thankful!
A friend of mine at work passed out a questionnaire she wrote for a class about language, race, and “social class.” Needless to say, I had fun with it.
One really good part was the question “Does your language reflect your race?”
I wrote: What’s my race? Caucasian? Anglo-German? Human? I don’t know if my language reflects my race, but it does reflect *me.* In the course of a day I might use mostly Standard American English (with a few Ebonic phrases) a few words Spanish or German words, and if the subject warrants, a dash of Sanskrit. What race is that?
Then, it asked me to identify my “social class.” I was genuinely confused. I had hoped notions of “social class” sank with the Titanic, but here I was, being asked to identify my “class.” What the hell does that mean? Is it where I am, socially? Oh, well…
I wrote: “… working middle-income techno-geek nerd-mystic living alone in Ghent.”
My friend ended up putting me into a more conventional category before handing her survey results to her professor!
Now granted, I do like to mess with people when it comes to the assumptions that are usually unquestioned, but identifications are part of, (a big part of) the sickness of the world. We abbreviate reality with concepts, and then further abbreviate them with categories. We identify ourselves with certain groups, and then feel that we are separate from and superior or inferior to those who are not of those groups. We identify ourselves with our past experiences, with our past emotions, with our churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques. We identify ourselves with “races,” nations, sports teams, “social classes” and tribes. Gradually, the maze of labels becomes more “real” to us than the simple reality itself. We even fight, kill, and die for the identifications which have taken over our minds.
After reality is forgotten, it’s essential to recover the truth. I am here. I seem to looking out through eyes, and living in a body with a beating heart, and breathing air. Things that have happened are not me, they merely form a story. Those I love are simply those I love. Many things define my life, but nothing defines me. No label can capture the reality. I am. What am I? In the words of the immortal Popeye, "I yam what I yam." Or as Rumi put it:
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim,
not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen.Not any religion or cultural system.
I am not from the East or the West,
not out of the ocean or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all.I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story.My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.
Neither body or soul.I belong to the Beloved, have seen the two worlds as one,
and that one call to and know,first, last, outer, inner, only
that breath-breathing human being.
The Essential Rumi
It’s occurred to me how much noise there is in most spiritual websites, spiritual books, and so forth. (And this one is one of the worst!) That’s because most writers, like me, try to use concepts to get beyond the concepts. We blather about this tradition and that tradition, this Scripture and that Scripture, this teacher and that, this experience and that. In addition, this blog is the "online journal" variety, sharing my downs as well as my ups.
But since the little revelation I had Sunday night, I see that the noise itself is the silence, that "samsara is nirvana." It’s hard to describe—I see garbage by the curb, and it seems as beautiful as a painting in a museum, although I still have the urge to pick it up (or wish someone else would!).
I can only laugh at the energy and time I’ve invested in spiritual "seeking." What is there to seek, when God is in everything you are, everything you see, touch, smell, and hear? Why do we seek the return of the Lord, when he said "I am with you always"?
Just renounce wanting, having, needing. Live your life, meet your responsibilities, do what’s appropriate to do, and don’t resent or resist unpleasant things, or crave or try to hold onto the pleasant circumstances. A roller coaster has ups and downs, without them, the ride’s no fun at all. You wanted to go to heaven right? Open your eyes. "There" is here!
Probably the most helpful spiritual website I’ve ever seen is Pure Silence. org by Mark McCloskey. I came across this post today, and it hit home, to put it mildly.
I’m disgusted with my own "spirituality." I’m sick and tired of mysticism, I’m weary of wanting to awaken. I feel like I just want to go back to sleep.
I’ve got to apologize for going so long between posts. Sometimes what I want to share here in this space feels so personal, or so difficult to put into words, that I end up not doing it at all.
Something that’s been on my mind the last couple of weeks is “the world” vs. “the earth.” There’s a big, big difference between the two, and probably the easiest way to distinguish them, is simply by realizing that the world is not real. What do I mean by not “real?” Well, take a look at the earth, for contrast. Look at your friends, spouse, kids, your cat, dog or parakeet—those are real. Look at yourself. Feel your skin, your clothes, your headache or your peace. That is real. They are there. Go outside, see the cars, the grass, the sky, birds, clouds, bushes and asphalt. Real again. Better yet, give yourself a nice, total immmersion experience of reality—go canoeing in a park, or mountain biking, or swimming in the ocean, with a minimum of thinking or conversation. You’ll start to get to know the difference.
What’s not real? Everything that exists only in the mind. Chances are, as soon as you start talking with someone, conversations will turn to things that have no basis in reality. Whether someone or something is “good” or “bad.” Whether something “means” something else or not. The past. That’s right, the past happened, but it is not real. Past sounds like passed for a reason. The future is obviously not real, but we devote inordinate amounts of our thoughts to it.
When you feel stress about the future, you’re feelings are real enough, but their cause is unreal. There’s some profound truth in the trite workplace sign “FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real.”
But there’s a lot more non-reality to become aware of. Our very identities are pieces of the past we esteem and carry on with us into the present. If you ask my name, I’ll say, “Jon.” That’s a real sound, but how does it become a shorthand for me? I could have been named Douglas, Vladimir, or Akhbar. And if I so chose to, I could change it. Ask my nationality, and I’ll say “American.” What I really mean is that I was born in a part of the earth where people had agreed to recognize an organization of people as having some authority over them, and by agreement, this organization was known as the government of the United States of America.
But look at a view of the earth from space, and there are no lines drawn, no square patches colored blue, pink, or yellow, and no names written upon the land. There’s no “United States of America” there, no “Switzerland,” and no “Iraq.” What’s real are the nameless landmasses with their nameless forests, plains and deserts and the nameless oceans, lakes and rivers.
I am not my past, my name, my family, my upbringing, my country, my religion, my ideas, nor my thoughts. Neither are you. Kind of makes you wonder why all the fights about names, families, lifestyles, countries, religions, and ideologies, doesn’t it?
Meditation is an opportunity to begin stripping away the conditioning, the associations, and shared hallucinations that comprise “the world.” What are you, there in the dark, with eyes closed, with no name, no past, no future? What is that? It’s worth getting to know, because that is real. That is you.
OK, I’m a geek. I work in front of computers all day long, I play mostly in front of a computer all evening. But it’s occurred to me that I live too much of my life (almost all of it!) in boxes. I live in a box, work in a box, and get from home to work (and vice versa )by means of driving a smaller box. This is true of a LOT of us. (You know who you are.) Today I had a pleasant day with several hours outside the box at Cape Hatteras. It was great!
New goal for the Frimster: a hour of unboxed living every day.
Last night, I had a deep realization of the First Noble Truth. Now, to anyone who’s not immediately put off by the negativity of the statement that “life is dukkha (loosely translated as ‘suckiness’),” the fact probably seems self-evident. There’s death, sickness, poverty, hatred, fear, all the stuff. You know it, I know it. Big deal. What came to me last night, (and it came to me like a sledge hammer on my head—it was a shock, I’m telling you, it was not pleasant!) was that life is anxiety. Or that anxiety is the canvas our lives are painted on.
It’s one thing to accept the suckiness of life intellectually, or even to see its effects in the world in general, but what happened last night was I saw it in everything. Most people have very few moments in waking life that don’t have a tinge of anxiety, although it might be so subtle it’s like the hum of a refrigerator in the kitchen, when you’re upstairs listening to the stereo. But it’s still there! We’ve really trained ourselves not to see it. (Even though it seems a third of their articles are about it, you could read Tricycle for years and not get it!)
Our anxiety comes from many sources—psychologists concentrate on our parents and authority figures, and yes, there’s anxiety there. All of our lives we’ve been given rules and consequences for not following them. And so, we become conditioned. Am I doing what’s right? Did I do something wrong? But this root anxiety is a lot more basic than that. Will I get what I want? Will I get what I don’t want?
On an even more primal, unconscious level—Will I get something to eat? Will something eat me? How do I stay alive?
And even more fundamental, and more subconscious—Do I really exist? Who/what am I?
So we cover up our anxiety with everything—possessions, positions, activities, interests, thoughts, beliefs, etc. ad nauseum. None of which are wrong in themselves,but the anxiety that makes us cling to them is usually unaddressed. “Now that I have x, feel x, think x, know x, do x . . . I’m OK, right?” It doesn’t matter what color the paint we throw on the canvas, the canvas is still there. Even the belligerent thug who slugs whoever disses him is just throwing another layer on the underlying dukkha, the canvas of anxiety.
Just being—I mean simply be-ing, as opposed to doing, and having—is something that causes tremendous anxiety to most people. Try to even talk to some people about sitting meditation, and even the thought—not the action, mind you, but the mere thought—of sitting and doing nothing horrifies them. Now I can see that’s at least part of what makes it the laboratory, where all the paint is stripped off the canvas of insecurity.
What happens when we go farther and strip off the canvas? What’s left? That must be what awakening is.
A week ago a friend of mine was thrown into jail, charged with trespassing. He was innocent, but because his accuser complained loudly enough, he was tossed into jail, without an opportunity to meet with, let alone to be represented by counsel. Furthermore, he wasn’t scheduled for a bond hearing (his first opportunity to have legal representation) for nearly three weeks. Fortunately, his family was able to have his hearing moved up, and at his bond hearing six days after his incarceration began, he was released as there was not a shred of evidence against him.
In school, I was taught that part of what made America “the greatest country in the world” is that you’re always “presumed innocent until proven guilty.” At least in Virginia Beach, there’s a very good chance you’ll be judged guilty until proven innocent. My friend was actually rather lucky. Last night, I learned from a local community leader of the case of a teen-age boy who was incarcarated for six months before having a hearing.
The enormity of this problem goes unnoticed because this problem is invisible to most of us. But the fact is that 1 out of 50 American adults is in jail or prison as you read this. Not does America have the world’s largest prison population, but even our per capita rate of incarceration is the highest in the world?. Thats’ right. Not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Not the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not the People’s Republic of China. But the Land of the Free.
So what do you do when your friend is in jail, a victim of false arrest? You try to visit him, and give him a book to cheer him and help pass the time. But if your friend is in the Virginia Beach Correctional Facility, it doesn’t work like that. This isn’t the friendly cell of Mayberry RFD. An inmate is only allowed vistors for a half-hour, once a week, through the glass. Books can not be delivered to prisoners by visitors. Books can not be shipped to prisoners from local bookstores. An inmate may only receive a book if it arrives directly from a publisher! (Too bad if it’s our of print, as many spiritual classics are.) But of course, since the jail is taking on the role of an unofficial prison, there must be a library, right? Wrong. Daily exercise, like in a state penitentiary? It’s weekly in Virginia Beach. Adequate facilities? Inmates sleep on the floor, 30 men to a 20 X 50-foot room.
Incarceration rates are soaring for minor offenses, when both violent crimes and property crimes are at their lowest rates ever recorded. That’s right. So why do you feel so afraid when the fact is you’ve never been safer from crime, at least not in the last thirty years? Start recognizing cultural lies and marketed fear around you. Open your eyes.
Children have no choice but to accept the stories they are told about the world. But part of adulthood means seeking the truth. Spiritual awakening is not really about seeking bliss. It’s about ending the deception which the mechanisms of our fears, desires, and conditioning feed us in the Matrix. Here are some of them:
The system works.
It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can do.
If you didn’t deserve it, you wouldn’t be there.
We spend too much trying to rehabilitate people.
Sure we bombed them, but it was for their own good.
If we kill all the bad guys, all the bad guys will be gone.
It’s time to determine to discard lies and seek the truth. That’s Jedi life in the Real World.