Letting Go

“The best way to live is to be like water, for water benefits all things and goes against none of them.”

~ Verse 8 of the Tao Te Ching

 

The events of today have made me realize that I am still very much attached to my beliefs.  When they are questioned, I rationalize them.  When they are challenged, I defend them.  When they are ignored, I cling to them all the more.  When someone does not believe as I do, I attribute it to ignorance or folly.  And I do so without ever seeing my own pride.

 

So it struck me as rather hypocritical to claim to have an open mind and yet be judgmental towards those who do not have an open mind in the same way that I do.  Who am I to judge?  I claim to be open-minded and yet reserve my judgment for those who do not question the source of their beliefs, or who disregard the poor and needy, or who are drawn to materialism and the race to have the next best gadget on the market.  And yet these same people are more than these things; they may have valid opinions and beliefs that I can learn from, ideas that will broaden my own worldview…  but I write them off because their attitudes do not match my own.

 

When did I become so arrogant?

 

The Tao says, “The Sage puts his own views behind, so ends up ahead.”  In order to accept all people – to be truly and genuinely open-minded – I need to let go of my beliefs and all those things that I use to define myself, to make myself appear different from everyone else.  I have fallen into the trap of seeking identity in division; I have become so enamored with the idea of social revolution that I view anyone who opposes me with contempt; I have been attempting to impose my will on the universe even as I speak of embracing the uncertainty of nature and destiny.

 

So now I need to unlearn my beliefs – or what I believe are my beliefs.  I have to let go of my preconceived notions of what I think is Truth.  I have to let go of the very concept of my self, so that there can be no attachments and nothing to attain – only clear sight and a life lived in accordance with the nature of things, moving in harmony with the present moment, always knowing the truth of just what to do.

 

There must be no I.  Only that which is.

The New Patriots

“All machines have their friction…  but when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer.”

~ Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

 

Who decided that rule by the majority is the best system of government?  When did this become a tradition?  After all, when power rests in the hands of the majority, it’s not because it seems the fairest to the minority or because the majority is most likely to be right – Copernicus and Galileo could attest to that.  It’s simply because the majority is the strongest.

 

Justice cannot be served by a system based on majority rule, but by people of conscience.  You might argue that a government has no conscience, and you would be right; but a government made of conscientious people is a government with a conscience.  And this means cultivating a sense of respect not for the law, but for the right – laws never made people any more just, and those who respect the law most can be easily made into agents of injustice when the system itself is unjust.

 

Even the idea of voting for change is suspect – another way of sustaining the tradition.  Voting is like gambling with a slight moral tinge to it; we vote for what we think is right and against what we think is wrong, but the moment we consign our consciences to the majority we have given up genuinely caring about what we believe.  We cast our votes, hoping that the right will prevail, and we grumble about it when it does not…  but we are, essentially, willing to leave it to the majority.  So it turns out that voting for what is right is still doing nothing for it.

 

But it sure makes a lot of people feel good that at least they expressed their good intentions in public.

 

I can’t say that I’m content to leave these decisions to the mercy of chance, or entertain the feeble fancy that the right will prevail through the power of the majority.  I can’t say that I have a lot of faith in humanity – there’s not much virtue to the found in the action of the masses, because far too many people are content to simply perpetuate a system that they’re comfortable with, serving their country not as people, but as machines.  If only the majority of people were also people of conscience…  but they’re not.  Not yet.

 

It’s ironic, really…  I’ve never been proud of this country.  I’ve never really felt an attachment to any one place – maybe a lifetime of traveling and wandering the globe has given me a different perspective on things, a sense of belonging not to a single country but to the Earth as a whole.  That’s part of what motivates me now.

 

Wherever I've gone, I've seen problems.  We live on a fractured and damaged planet that needs one country to stand out as a shining example of What Could Be; one place to set their own affairs in order and show the rest of the planet a better way.  To change the world, we must change a country.  To change a country, we must change the system that controls – or, in this case, hinders – that country. 

 

As for what country undergoes this revolution, that’s entirely irrelevant – except that I live in this particular one at this particular time, so I see no reason why I shouldn’t just start with this one.

 

I don’t really know where that leaves me, though.  I believe that this country can become one based not on prejudice and materialism, but on interdependence and unity.  I believe that a true patriot is one who is committed to building his or her country into as perfect a place as it can become, and who resists any government or system that hinders this social evolution.  I believe that the best government is that which governs not at all.

 

It’s a bold vision, and I’m willing to work for it.

 

But first I need to find others who believe as I do, to awaken New Patriots who aren’t willing to let the majority or the government stop us from making this country into what it could become.  If we are to serve the country best, we must resist any force that tries to stop us from making change for the better.  To do what’s right, we must break the laws that support injustice.

 

It’s a sentiment best expressed in the words of Captain Malcolm Reynolds from the movie Serenity…

 

I aim to misbehave.

Handlebars

It’s rare for a music video to inspire me.  So when I discover one that does, it’s an event that requires comment.

 

The video in this case is for the song Handlebars by the Flobots.  Even if the music isn’t quite your style, the video itself is a powerful and poignant work of art that speaks of the state of society and the human condition.  It is saddening, and yet inspiring.

 

When the day comes that my government finally goes too far, I hope that I have the fortitude and depth of faith to stand up for what I believe, to defy the powers that be no matter how damning the odds, to raise my fist to the sky and cry out for freedom.

A Meditation

“Tao is limitless, unborn, eternal – it can only be reached through the Hidden Creator.  She is the very face of the Absolute, the gate to the source of all things eternal.”

~ Verse 6 of the Tao Te Ching

 

There is something about this particular verse of the Tao Te Ching that resonates within me.  I can’t quite put my finger on it; perhaps it’s because it connects so well with my idea of what God is, or perhaps it simply makes intuitive sense to me, or perhaps it’s something else entirely.  Whatever the reason, I am just going to have to sit quietly and meditate on it and trust that the Truth will be revealed when I am ready to receive it.  After all, the rest of Verse 6 reads, “Listen to Her voice; hear it echo through creation.  Without fail, She reveals her presence.  Without fail, She brings us to perfection.”

 

I'm here.  And I’m listening.

Embracing Uncertainty

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself…”

~ Jesus, Mark 6:34 of the Bible

 

The last two weeks have flown by, laden with summer activities – from lazy afternoons spent on lakes and beaches to rigorous treks through forests and over mountains.  It has given me the chance to take in the glory of this season, and the time for the lessons I have learned to make the transition from head to heart.

 

One of these lessons has been to find that state of balance where I can desire a good thing without being attached to it.  In this I must humbly disagree with some of the great sages who have spoken of the hindrance of desires, claiming that we must let go of our desires – even the desire for enlightenment – in order to be in harmony with the workings of the universe.  This is true to a certain degree; many desires lead to the kind of division that I wrote about in my last entry, in which one person seeks to possess more than another.  But some desires – like the desire to act for the good of all people and not just the good of the self, or the desire to know the Truth or attain enlightenment – are of a different sort entirely. 

 

Verse 41 of the Tao Te Ching says that “when the best seeker hears of Tao, he strives with great effort to know it.”  In other words, such a person – the best kind of person, according to the text – desires to know more of the Tao.  So not all desires are hindrances to enlightenment after all.

 

But there is a distinct difference between desiring to know the Tao and being attached to gaining knowledge of the Tao.  To strive to know Truth is a healthy desire.  To attempt to control how swiftly that knowledge is gained, to force one’s own will upon the process of enlightenment, to be so blinded by attaining knowledge of the Truth that one becomes unbalanced and moves out of harmony with the Tao itself…  this is taking a good desire too far.  It would be far simpler to strive to know the Tao and to allow that knowledge to grow naturally and organically, attaining that knowledge as it is revealed, rather than chasing after it and being frustrated in the lack of progress or, worse still, discovering something that is not Truth but calling it Truth regardless.

 

To put it in more relevant terms:  It is like desiring a romance with a charming, intelligent, and devastatingly beautiful woman, and allowing that romance to grow and blossom naturally instead of prematurely forcing it into being, and being able to enjoy a deep and simple friendship should the romance fail to evolve.  Indeed, such a friendship may turn out to be better than the romance could ever have become. 

 

Zen Master Seung Sahn once said, “People live their whole lives with the hope that good things will always come to them…  For all their lives, they go around and around and around, chasing good things, avoiding what is unpleasant.  As you practice the Way, you have to give up this human route…  Don’t want anything.  Then your true self will be realized naturally.”

 

It is the acceptance of the fate that is meant to be, trusting that whatever comes to pass is in harmony with the greater symphony of the cosmos and is therefore the best of all possible worlds. 

 

It is the delicate balance of desire without attachment, of striving for that which is good while allowing destiny to play its part in shaping that very desire.

 

It is nothing less than embracing uncertainty.

Community

“In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be, and in order to find myself I have to go out of myself…”

~ Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

 

I had a discussion with a friend last week about Richard Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene, that presented the argument that selfishness is an evolutionary mechanism for survival of genes.  It essentially states that every action we take will be tainted by selfishness to ensure the continuation of our genetic code, whether it be in ourselves or our offspring, our community or our culture.  Dawkins is an author whose work is often highly controversial, but whether or not he’s a credible author is not really my concern.

 

What I find interesting is that this is just another assertion of the belief that people are selfish by nature.  It’s not a new idea.  Dawkins just puts a biological spin on it.  But here again, Dawkins work isn’t my concern.  This idea of our inherent selfishness is.

 

I’m concerned because I believe it’s true.

 

I can see it in the society that’s been evolving around me.  I’ve been witness to people trying to find themselves by asserting their own desires in a struggle against the rest of the world, imposing their will on other people, acquiring for themselves some share of the limited resources available for consumption.  All this does is emphasize the difference between those who have and those who have not.  And people try to define themselves in this division.

 

Thomas Merton writes an elegant illustration of this condition:

 

I have what you have not.  I am what you are not.  I have taken what you have failed to take and I have seized what you could never get.  Therefore you suffer and I am happy, you are despised and I am praised, you die and I live; you are nothing and I am something, and I am all the more something because you are nothing.  And thus I spend my life admiring the distance between you and me; at times this even helps me to forget the other men who have what I have not and who have taken what I was too slow to take and who have seized what was beyond my reach, who are praised as I cannot be praised and who live on my death…

 

Someone who lives like this is merely an individual, but not a person.  It is an illusion of self-awareness, in which every effort to become more real and more an individual makes the person less real and less a person, because it revolves around a lie.  It is the lie we tell ourselves that we can only be real if we are separate and distinct from others, acting as if we were a different kind of person from the rest. 

 

It is the lie I sometimes hear echoed by my soul.

 

If we can turn away from these lies and seek our identity in community with others, no longer finding solace in division but in unity, the fractures that separate one person from another will begin to mend as we remove the things that divide us, as common ground is discovered, as community is rebuilt.  In time, humanity could be made whole.

 

But first we have to stop being so damnably selfish.  And therein lies the problem…  Turning an introspective eye inwards to my own life, I don’t even know where to begin. 

 

What can change the nature of a man?

 

I don’t know.  I don’t have the answer to that question.  Maybe I don’t even need to know for change to take place.  What I do know is that I’ve a long road ahead of me…  and that makes me all the more thankful for friends to share the journey with. 

 

Here’s to unity.

Truly Blessed

Another week has passed, and I have yet to be possessed of that spark of inspiration to ignite my creative energies.  I thought briefly of soldiering on regardless, but to force myself to write when I have nothing to write about strikes me as intuitively wrong.  Something to do with letting go of my desires and allowing my spiritual growth to be more organic…

 

Hm.  Perhaps that very idea will bloom into next week’s entry.

 

Until then, I simply want to express my gratitude to the force of deity or destiny that has brought me a multitude of blessings, such that I have been surrounded by them for my whole life, and have noticed in particular abundance over the past few weeks.  I am talking, of course, about my friends – those whose paths I have stumbled upon by fate or fortune, with whom I may share the road for a time.  I am made better and brighter because of them.

 

So, to my friends – and you who read this will know who you are – thank you.  Words cannot express my gratitude for all that you have brought into my life:  wisdom, inspiration, companionship, joy and laughter…  Much of who I am can be traced back to your influence, in ways indescribable and unfathomable, such that I doubt you even realized how great your impact would be.  But you have left your marks upon my soul, and I bear them with pride, for yours is the work that will last forever.

 

Thomas Merton once wrote that identity is found not only in God but in others.  My life is a living testament to the truth of those words.