I was about to post on the subject of difference when someone sent me the following video. The video says all I could ever say about the subject…and more. Check it out. (You might have to copy and paste this address.)
<https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=410861091927>
I deeply admire the spirituality of Einstein though I think he called it his “religious sentiment.” He shows that it is possible to appreciate science, to believe deeply in the scientific exploration of our world, and still maintain faith. In the quote below he describes the “delusional systems” that we are all susceptible to and the prison that they constitute. He encourages us to broaden our world, to realize that we are all in this game together, even those that are vastly different from us:
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
A mind run amok is dangerous. If life is reduced to reason, life is impoverished. There is more to life than ideas. There is more to ideas than ideas. Ideas without that “more” are very limiting. I guess I’m talking about ideologues here. And they are scary as hell. These people…in many cultures… will kill if you don’t believe their ideas.
Goethe had this in mind when he noted, “They call it reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being beastial.” And, Rabindranath Tagore wrote, “A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it. “
A fundamentalist preacher from my youth once posed three rules for speech: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?
Hmmm.
This should give us pause from time to time.
Just for the record, the above bromide was brought back to my attention today by Steve Roberts (coolmindwarmheart.com) who attributed it to Eknath Easwaran and an old Arab proverb: The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers.
Mobi Ho, in his introduction to book, Thich Nhat Hanh’s, The Miracle of Mindfulness, describes how the disciples of Hanh attempted to facilitate reconciliation in Viet Nam after the war ended in 1973. He noted that these disciples “persistently refused to support either armed party and believed that both sides were but the reflection of one reality, (my emphasis) and that the true enemies were not people, but ideology, hatred, and ignorance. (my emphasis)
How can opposing sides of any issue be merely “the reflection of one reality”? Even more so, how can this be the case when both sides are armed to the teeth? Ho believed that the answer is because both sides of the conflict were slaves to “ideology, hatred, and ignorance.” T. S. Eliot described these peoples as “united by the strife which divided them.”
This is also relevant to the field of mental health. In my trade, we have a term for couples who are joined at the hip in intense conflict and would never leave each other for any amount of money: conflict habituated relationships. I once knew a couple who spent the last 35 years of their life, living at opposite ends of the same house. They hated each other intently and ravaged the lives of their children. But they could not do without each other.
I believe that Ho was very astute in his observation that the real issue in conflicts like these is “ideology, hatred, and ignorance.” It is as if the people are “the toy of some great pain”. (I think that quote comes from Ranier Rilke).
And, to conclude, I can’t help but apply this phenomena to our current Congress. I fear that the real issue is that many of them are mere ideologues, filled with “hatred and ignorance” and are willing to “ravage the lives of their children”, i.e. the American citizenry.
And one further point. Ideology is ideology. Be it conservative or be it liberal, ideology is ideology. The point is to have ideas, of course, but not be so blind as to bludgeon other people with those ideas.
It was about a year ago that the Bolivian miners were rescued from the bowels of the earth. I was so deeply touched by their ordeal and the heroic efforts to rescue them and when they were successfully brought to the surface of the earth again, I was even further moved. I remember praying for them daily and when they were rescued I thanked the good Lord for his mercy.
This experience helped me to further understand the mystery of prayer. Even as I prayed, I knew that there was no God “up there” with really big ears, considering the prayer volume from around the world, and pondering over what he would do. And I certainly knew that my simple little prayer, coming from someone so completely obscure, was not going to persuade God to intervene. And when they were rescued, I’m afraid the cynical thought crossed my mind, “Hmm. Now what’s going to happen when the next mine disaster occurs? Will God be so merciful? And if not, why?” Sure enough, within the next month or so two more mining disasters took place and everyone of the miners died.
So, why pray? Is it just a foolish gesture like so many of our intellectual hoity-toity contend? Perhaps so. I just don’t know. But, even with all of these doubts and suspicions of my own cowardice, I pray daily. One could say that I even “pray without ceasing.” I do this, first of all, because it centers me and calms me. And that is one important dimension of prayer. But I also pray because spiritual teachers from eons past…and present…speak of the importance of prayer. Does it make a difference? I have no definitive answer but these aforementioned spiritual teachers suggest that it does. If nothing else, it releases good karma and hope into this void that has us all.
And a central issue in all of this speculation is, “Is there a God?” I believe there is but He is far beyond our intellectual grasp and can be known only with a faith that is willing to look beyond our rational mind. He is so transcendent that we cannot own him like the fundamentalist believe. BUT, he also is immanent as in “the kingdom is within” and he is with us each moment and there is a critical sense in which He is us. Or, as Paul put it, “nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
Maturity involves acknowledging the shadow side of our life, embracing it even, and learning to live with it all the while disallowing it from predominating in our life. It is there. We can deny it, even put our blinders on, but it is still there! Even those who live an Ozzie and Harriet life still have a shadow side.
And relevant to this shadow side, I’d like to share today’s posting from Richard Rohr:
Expelling what you can’t embrace gives you an identity, but it’s a negative identity. It’s not life energy; it’s death energy. Formulating what you are against gives you a very quick, clear, and clean sense of yourself. Thus, most people fall for it. People more easily define themselves by what they are against, by who they hate, by who else is wrong, instead of by what they believe in and whom they love.
I have made several references to the books of Richard Rohr. Richard is a Franciscan monk who emphasizes meditative prayer and a contemplative faith. Though he is passionate in affirmation of his Catholic faith, he does not dismiss the grievous errors of the Catholic church and its tendency to be dogmatic and power-mongering. Of course, this can be said of any faith, of any ideology that has ever come along.
Two of his books in particular have really spoken to me. The Naked Now emphasizes a non-dualistic approach to the Christian tradition and to any other tradition that we might subscribe to. We are all trapped in the time/space continuum and we have a difficult time ever transcending that dimension, that abyss of a dualistic view of the world.
He also has a book of meditations out, which is just a compendium of wisdom from his various books, speeches, sermons, and audio recordings—Radical Grace: Daily Meditations by Richard Rohr.
Rohr emphasizes the need of escaping dogmatism. If our faith is going to be real, and therefore efficacious in our life and in our world, it has to be more than the mere regurgitation of dogma that we have been inculculated with.
Check out the following link to learn more about his daily affirmations that are available by email.
http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/richard-rohr/dailymeditations
And I close with the wisdom of Leonard Cohen: O bless this continual stutter of the Word being made flesh.
Playwright Tony Kushner’s HBO mini-series (2003), “Angels in America” is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on television. Starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson it was a poignant portrayal of 1980’s gay culture in America as it dealt with the AIDS issue. It was beautifully written and acted.
One of my favorite lines has to do with the question, “How do people change?” The question is posed rhetorically in a museum and a pioneer woman mannequin comes to life and answers:
Well, it has something to do with God so it’s not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out…and the pain! We can’t even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It’s up to you to do the stitching. And then you up you get. And walk around. Just mangled guts pretending.
The point is, change is difficult. And Kushner writes poetically and thus overstates the issue. We all find change painful but, mercifully, not that painful! But we prefer be-bopping through our life, mindlessly following some script that we subscribed to in early childhood, not deigning to apply “mindfulness” to our lives. To do so inevitably exposes themes in our lives, basic assumptions, that are maladaptive to say the least. As Adrienne Rich noted once, “Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.”
And for some, gut-wrenching change is in the cards. “Just mangled guts pretending” is their lot. By this, I think Kushner wrote of the excruciating pain of acting purposefully when their lives have been torn asunder by “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” (Shakespeare, Hamlet) or some particular devastating “shock.” It takes real to courage to act, and to act purposefully, when our lives have been torn apart.
I now have a youtube clip of the above scene:
We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.
I’ve always loved this aphorism of Lao Tzu. It pre-dates the wisdom of Jesus who taught that only when we are empty are we filled. Specifically, I make reference to the doctrine of kenosis, or “self-emptying” taught in Phillipians 2:7 by the Apostle Paul. It is so difficult to take pause in our day to day life, practice a “mindful” moment, and catch a glimpse of our ego-fullness.
And once again, I quote Rilke who noted re the “hero”—- “Daily he takes himself off and steps into the changing constellation of his own everlasting risk.”
literary lew 