 Ram Dass, Author Be Here Now and Be Love Now
Ultimately, we all have only one teacher, and that is life itself. Oh, to be sure, many different folks will cross our paths, and books as well... Some, we'll never forget... Others, we'll always regret having met them, read that particular book, or believed that certain dogma... To be sure, I have my own list of regrets... but, that which I now categorize as a "regret", in fact contributed something, in its own way, to the the me of now... I suppose that the one most important tool of discernment is simply that of whether or not we like the person we are becoming... or, at least, are we tending towards becoming the person whom we most desire to become... The Ram Dass quote that resonates most deeply with me is this one: We are all just walking each other home... Isn't that a sweet way to view the world and our relations with others? In pondering this sweetness, I focus in on the Three C's as core attributes of this walking each other home... They are care, cooperation, and compassion... Regardless of where you stand, sit, or avoid in regards to religion, these Three C's are the essence of every truthful and practical application of any and every world religion... I hope the day will come in which no one operates from the presumption that a particular religion is, in absolute terms, the only way home... This is not a helpful attitude, perspective, or belief... On the other hand, the Three C's offer a simple and clear means for personal and social reflection and analysis... Let's begin with care... The simple heart-action of caring about oneself, one's family, relations, neighbor, community, and nation is where we all have to begin. If one cares, then, as a matter of course, one wishes no serious, intentional, harm upon another person: but more, caring implies intentional planning, action, and then the construction of networks of liberating possibilities for everyone... and not the continued "liberation" of the lucky or the few, but new systems that genuinely serve and lift up everyone... Caring is directly connected to cooperation... cooperation is oftentimes relegated to a child's school or playground: but isn't it very strange that cooperation, once we become adults, diminshes in perceived value? Charles Darwin suggested that the strongest and the quickest to adapt were most likely to survive and thrive. Peter Kropotkin sensed that Darwin had overlooked an essential insight and proposed that species survive and thrive to the degree that they cooperate with one another... Kropotkin's term for this cooperation was mutual-aid... We see significant evidence of the grit, grace, and power of mutual-aid in times of crisis: earthquake, tornado, hurricane, flood, mudslide, fire, or other catastrophe, automatically has us looking out for one another... My question is: where does all the cooperation and mutual-aid go when the catastrophe passes? One of my favorite words is radical... Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement correctly pointed out that the word radical most genuinely means getting to the roots... The word now, in common usage, has come to be a label someone or other applies to one's political enemy (overlooking the reality that very few in politics get anywhere near where the roots of anything are)... Nevertheless, both caring and cooperation have their roots in activated compassion... The Dalai Lama has, many times, said, if you want to be happy, practice compassion... An activated compassion is the most powerful force in the world. Compassion, intentionally linked to care and cooperation, as one of the Three C's, is the root of all truth in every religion: exactly to the degree that we personally and collectively practice and organize ourselves by the inspirations of compassion, are we practitioners of any religion! Obviously there are both haters and blamers who use their religion to justify all sorts of cruelties, injustices, and divisions: but this is not religion! If you are actually interested in real religion, read A Global Ethic, The Declaration of the Parliament of the World's Religions! The Three C's might be likened to the finger that points at the moon... they are not the end point, but words to help in the walking of each other home...
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 The Smith Family (A Number of Years Ago) On Raspberry Island, Lake Superior
How can anyone consider a sacred life without thinking about family? Some few of us become monks or nuns, perhaps even cloistered. Still others might enter a ministry or a priesthood in which vows, particularly including celibacy. But, for most of us, and that includes all those who deeply ponder building the sacred into their family life, work-a-day world, etc. It has been said that the "most" sacred life is the life of consecrated devotion of the Holy One: minus the commitment to marriage-partnership and family. While I honor and respect those persons who follow this rugged path, family life is no less rugged: indeed, it is highly likely that the sacred gift of family supercedes the challenges and commitment of the so-called "consecrated life"... It is possible that we can "blame" this seeming split between the sacred and the secular upon the ancient Greek philosophers who "divined" a division between "body" and "soul"... between the "pure" and the "profane": pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure, as "unfortunate" and opposed to "God-like" celibacy... Pardon me if I think this philosphical divide as profoundly unnecessary and obviously contrary to the Holy Scripture of Nature: can you not see the verdant greening all around? Life is crazily abundant: and not just because sex is fun! The real problem is the "thinking" that separates everything into "this or that", "good or bad", "sacred versus profane", "God from Human", and of course the devious "if you indulge in that which gives you pleasure, you'll pay for it in the end"... and so we have an entire Planet getting raped, an epidemic of violence against women and children, and justifications up the wah-zoo for sexism, racism, nationalism, injustice, oppression, and exploitation... How is a family, any family, supposed to make sense of all of this? Trying to make sense of the absurd is itself absurd! It is precisely here, in the rejection of the absurd, that families have a chance to chart a different course. Abstract speculation is fine for the philosopher, but a parent feeding an infant at two-thirty in the morning has a different reality (absent from agenda)... Families are always all about relationships: most often, the "most" broken or deviant gets most of the energy in any relationship. Those who have been used and abused always find ways to return the favor anywhere down the line. This is not abstract speculation: it is also true for monastic communities! The sacred in the family is always (all the time) exactly in the everyday... Intention is where we begin: a cultivated gratitude is always the path into the sacred... Observing nature and the natural grants depth and nuance and generosity: without which there is neither family nor civilization... Observation, nuance, and generosity are feminine attributes: so, in a way, the building of a sacred life is a Paleolithic culture: modern families are in desparate need of oral traditions (I could say oral sex just to tease you!)... it is in the mutuality of family-engaged conversation that a shared wisdom can be found... it's not for nothing that everyone is attracted to the campfire, to stories under the moon, and to the intimacy of the dark... The sacred in the family is not genuinely-likely found in church, temple, or mosque: rather, it is most likely found in the intimacy of the discovery of self in a shared family wisdom... This shared wisdom obviously implies an equality between parent-partners as well as an everyday operational equality of parent-partners and children... If the child intuites the truth of equality with parent, a shared reverence is born... Finally, the sacred life in family practices weaving... weaving the cosmos into dishwashing or sweeping the floor is practical parenting: which is a deep bow to the wonder inherent in every moment: a shared task, like a walk to the store, parent and child, is just about as holy as it will ever get! Oh, you might sometime also volunteer some hours in a Soup Kitchen, but it is in the everyday weave of conversation in which the sacred becomes obviously present... One could call this practiced weaving a necessary aspect of the deep-ecology required from all of us as we continue stepping into our future... There is no more important family practice than that of weaving gratitude into your daily life: practice sacred circle before meals in which everyone says something or other she / he is most grateful for... that and, every night, whisper into your child's ear that you love her / him / them... this moment is also a good time to teach your child how to say "sorry" and forgiveness... when you as parent say that you are sorry for something or other, you are gifting a growing wisdom to your child... Anyway, this is our practice... and, as always, your comments and insights are most welcome!  Is the Universe Indifferent... or "Just" Mystery-Within-Mystery?
Looking out the study window, the sky is white, the forest a January bare with the larger branches holding snow, carefully as a Mother holding her newborn... Forests, as much as the oceans of the world, protect within them some ancient, primeval, knowing that is now only approachable by means of sacred imagination... Whenever Michelle and our beautifuls take off on one adventure or another, and I am home with the dogs, a reverent melancholy soon anchors itself in my mind... Last night and on into this morning, I've been pondering what is evidentially clear: the universe operates with an indifference that is simply mind-numbing for every self-aware consciousness... Our dogs, Dobby and Bella, operate on a plane of consciousness that could spark jealousy in the hyper-activated human mind that is riddled with endless philosophical ponderings: well, that's me. Is it you as well? They wake up rambunctious until they are fed: then they simply sleep... My job is to feed and, in an hour, take them for their morning walk. They pee. They poop. And Bella always looks intently at hers as if wondering, "Where the hell did that come from?" My living is no where that simple and clear... Even while washing the dishes I am seldom "mindlessly" present: usually I will have music in the background: John Coltrane is good... Beethoven not so much... The Rolling Stones work if I had gotten rowdy with the dogs outside... Here are some of my notes that I scratched out at my desk late last night: Indifference in the Universe might just as well be rendered instead as Mystery... Indifference implies (does it not?) a fundamental lack of meaning (besides that of survival and reproduction)... Perhaps Mystery summons the meanings in care, cooperation, and compassion: essential ingredients for every community... and more than what we can easily comprehend... Increasingly, as we approach in our studies of both quantum physics and the roots of mysticism, the clarity we seek is in the taken-for-granted reality of co-existence as the most essential link: we are all (and everything) connected... Now, is it possible to look and see without drawing conclusions? (This is fundamental to Taoism.) Is it possible, that in the Mystery of the Universe, opposites can be simultaneously true? So, the Universe is simultaneously "indifferent" and a "benevolent Mystery": we get sick, we suffer in a multitude of ways, and we die, whether or not any of it fulfills our needs or our desires... "indifference" hunts us all down... And through it all, many of us have opportunities for pondering, for play, for cooking great meals, for art, for music, for literature, for mutuality and pleasure, and for the companionship of dogs... all of this, and more, is the work and presence of "benevolent Mystery"... Ancient sages in India and China likewise pondered, as I have, and likely you as well... By means of their observations, meditations, and conversations, they concluded a definite veracity to indifference... but more! There is also Mystery: variously described as Tao, dark-enigma, and Mother (these descriptions originate from China)... and from India came the stunning insight of advaita (without duality)... You see, I started with duality, right? In the beginning, there was indifference and mystery... But the expereience of the mystic always points directly at cosmic unity... That Oneness, for the Hindu sage, was experienced as being (Sat), knowing or consciousness (Cit) and bliss (Ananda)... Thus, in the core teachings of the ancient mystics, and philosophers like Leibnitz and Huxley, we are presented with the Perennial Philosophy: (1) there is an infinite, changeless reality beneath the world of change; (2) this same reality lies at the core of every human person; (3) the purpose of life is to discover this reality experientially... And so we steadily practice... this is the building of your sacred life... Bella is snoring behind me. It's now time to pull on my socks, shoes, and winter coat. Let's go dogs! Got the poop-bags and plenty to ponder some more...  Wangari Maathai
That this African woman, Wangari Maathai, was an environmentalist and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize likely means little to most folks -- and even less to those (like the fossil fuel industry) who prioritize "making a buck" over every other consideration... Wangari began what became known as the Green Belt Movement: an environmental cause taken up by women to plant millions of trees in Africa (and the world) as a saving grace for Planet Earth: she wrote, "The tree is just a symbol for what happens to the environment. The act of planting one is a symbol of revitalizing the community. Tree-planting is only the entry point into the wider debate about the environment. Everyone should plant a tree." Wangari's husband divorced her, and in doing so, noted that she was too hard to control! Damn right! Too hard to control should become the clarion call of every young girl! (And the rest of us!) Just like Wangari and just like Mother Mary! Yeah, I know, I write too often about spirituality (but then again, this is about building your sacred life, is it not?). But there is a point that I want to make: I think it a silly spirituality that would have our saints and heroes dumbed-down into caricatures of supposedly holy, human beings (complete with plastic holy cards)... Shams of Tabriz insisted that Rumi go purchase a jug of wine in the public market place for all to see: simply because the caricature of "saint" was a stumbling block to his truly becoming a saint... like Mary... The Wild-Woman of the Magnificat no doubt (in my mind) could play guitar like Ani Difranco, had legs like Dua Lipa, (but most importantly) walked with the swagger of Aretha Franklin! Religion is for the lazy: building your sacred life takes passion, swagger, and background music that bursts at the seams of your status-quo consciousness... Too hard to control is more than a black t-shirt saying: it's the holy shit that hits the fan when the Holy One gets too rambunctious and begins to insist on justice and liberation as the Keys to your next steps... just like Wangari... and just like Mother Mary... There is not a particle of matter in the universe, not a grain of sand, a leaf, a flower, not a single animal or human being, which has not its eternal being in that One, and which is not known in the unitive vision of the One... This quotation is from The Marriage of East and West by Fr. Bede Griffiths... Here's another quote, from the same book, by Fr. Bede: Consciousness can grow beyond the boundaries of time and space, and enter into transcendent consciousness, a consciousness transcending the limits of matter and mind, of the categories of sense and reason, and become aware of the universal consciousness which embraces the whole creation... Wangari, Mother Mary, and Fr. Bede! They all come together with (in) our every effort to live seamlessly the sacred: home, work, play, sex, leisure, community organizing, public service, meditation, walking the dog (s), washing the dishes, etc. etc. The Trinity of the Hindu, Sat (Being), Chid (Consciousness), and Ananda (Bliss), is the Undivided Totality within our Every Moment: it's all Sacred: it's all Good: It's all an Opened Door to Wonder and Beauty... Satchidananda... Say it... And meditate: "So Hum"... I am That...  "The Great Void and the Realm of Form are Not Two!"
The above quotation, by John Blofeld (from Bodhisattva of Compassion, the Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin), succinctly primes the reader for a quantum possibility: our minds are not separate from Mind (Blofeld)... Or, as physicist Amit Goswami puts it, "The breakthrough idea is that consciousness is neither a material brain product nor a dual object; instead, it is the ground of all being in which material objects exist as possibilities..." (from How Quantum Activism Can Save Civilization). When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner, and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into a single one so that the male will not be male and the female not be female, then shall you enter the Kingdom. -- Jesus of the Beloved (from the Gospel of Thomas) Mind, or Quantum Consciousness, is the undifferentiated no-thing-ness of Ultimate Reality. This "IT" is the sole reality... and manifested reality is, in essence, the means by which, or through which, "IT" discovers and knows itself... Mind is the boundless source: and creation is, as it were, the boundless mirror in which Mind knows itself... Blofeld: both philosophers and physicists are veering in the direction of believing that the whole universe is a mental creation... (from Bodhisattva of Compassion). This is perhaps the most meaningful (and playful) definition of our human purpose: we can choose to mirror the Quantum, Divine, Consciousness and thereby assist in Naming the Universe! The Kingdom is the recognition of, and the mystical re-entry into, the Ultimate Reality of Oneness... The Path, as outlined by Jesus of the Beloved, is that of living our lives as the process of "making the two one"... The practicalities of Oneness are the Beatitudes and the Great Parable of How the Rubber Hits the Road: I was hungry and you fed me... or as the case too often is: I was hungry and you did not feed me... Quantum spirituality is the particle and wave of 21st century transformation / rEvolution... Living the mantra of Divine Life of undifferentiated compassion, is the radical humility of knowing that nothing can exist idependently of everything or anything else... Simply put, we need to jerk our mind onto a new platform (a new dimension of consciousness): thirty years of life in a Soup Kitchen with the slow-turning of beads in hand, Hail Mary Oh Ma, boiled with the potatoes to become OM-Ah! And returning to Oh Ma when catastrophe was looking me in the face and turning again into Hail Mary when getting fat and happy... Surrendering into the soup of contemplation: seeking nothing (no-thing) only the be-coming of compassion... ungreedy... perhaps a simpleton... serene in obscurity... like a Third-World Mother... breathing the Mother in beads and service... a sage, a Buddha, a Christ... Namo Kuan Shih Yin P'u-Sa... Hail Mary full of Grace... Mother Mother... Oh Ma... Therefore should the mind be constantly fixed on her... (from the Lotus Sutra)... Ordinary consciousness must surrender before extraordinary consciousness... Ultimately (only) the Path is that of becoming the Mother... just like Jesus...  Sahara Desert
Little Brother of Jesus, Carlo Carreto, related a version of this story in his spiritual classic, Letters From the Desert... Without shade during the day and warm blankets at night, the great Sahara Desert will claim one's life... with no evident thought, whatsoever... As a novice in the Order which took on the mantle of Charles de Foucauld, Carlo Carreto was required to go out into the desert as a spiritual pilgrimage and trial by fire... Brother Carlo had a small bag of dates, dry bread, water, and two blankets as provisions for his journey... Walking away into the desert, his beads passed slowly, with his breath, as he walked. A hood covered his head from the blazing grief of the Sun... that night, he not only gave thanks and praise to the Beloved, but also to the two blankets that would preserve his life during the plummeting cold... How strange the ways of death in the desert: fire or freeze! Not a human choice... Brother Carlo survived that first night and a number of more as he kept walking and walking... breathing his prayers... calling out the holy Name as he stumbled in the sand, rocks cutting his hands, and the last of his dates spilling out... That night, he looked up into the stars: so many stars! They said there were more stars than grains of sand in the deserts of the world... he began to drift into the sleep of an exhausted man... when he heard a voice: not of the Divine, but of another man... How could that be? In that vast desert, how could another man have stumbled across him in the night? Brother Carlo invited the Stranger into his barren camp... he had nothing but the clothing upon his seemingly ancient frame. He asked Carlo if he might have a blanket for the night... Carlo knew the bitter cold of the Saharan nights, just as he knew that, at a minimum for survival, two blankets were required... If Carlo shared one blanket, both lives would be at risk... if he refused, the Stranger would certainly perish... How could he refuse though? He was a Little Brother of Jesus, after all... Share he did... both he and the Stranger shivered, shook, and near morning, joined in a jump-about dance to celebrate their survival... Morning prayer was silent, touched with tears, but with a deep peace that he had not known before... As the Stranger departed, Brother Carlo called out, "Brother! You forgot your blanket!" Carlo handed the blanket to his Elder Brother... And strangely, as he continued his journey with his single blanket, he was not cold again... It seems, after all is said and done, there is really only this little Warm Blanket Gospel...  Ram Dass, Holy Man Scoundrel
Some people seem to have been born with "extendo arms", perfect for reaching the troublesome spots that seem to always question and object to that which is called "faith"... Meanwhile, there are still others who trip over everything: like, obvious hypocrisy, conflicts with reason and science, and all of the accumulated power and privileges of the "priestly class" ("priestly" covering all of the "professional" religious, regardless of any specific faith)... And then there are some few, like Ram Dass, Andrew Harvey, Matthew Fox, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, Amit Goswami, and Bede Griffiths, who combine faith with science, and mysticism with activism... At one time, I admired the folks with "extendo arms" even while I habituated with the folks who are always "tripping" over something... But thirty years in a Soup Kitchen, somewhere along the line, got me to thinking that to keep trying to "scratch the faith itch" was both an abstraction and a distraction, in short, a waste of time... Sort of like approaching one's first-night-of-marriage-bed, with what one has studied as theories of pleasure... when the one thing required is a gentle, passionate, kiss and dive... Faith, in this day and age, is stupid. Haven't we all been around the Sun enough times now so as to get our heads adjusted to what really matters? And just exactly what is it that really matters? First off, if you intend to drive a car, you don't jump into the trunk, do you? Following after the Celtic insight, one either lives in, or intentionally cultivates, the spiritual perspective of radical amazement! One simply lets "faith" take care of itself: forget it as something of importance. It is enough to practice amazement! Science tells us that the Universe is most likely some 13.8 billion years old. The Hubble telescope can pear back in time just about that far! And yet! Here we are! We live on a tiny blue-green planet in the perfect position to orgasm life! Holy Moly! We live with mountains and rivers, oceans and ducks, snails and butterflies! We get to make love! Holy Moly again! We get to gaze upon a naked woman or a naked man: how incredible is that! We get to kiss and talk! We can talk Immanual Kant or Ani Difranco, and peanut butter with jelly or honey! It is amazing this miracle of making babies... and then to give birth, or to humbly try to help the definitely working mom... It is amazing to teach a child how to pee into a toilet... or out on the lawn when the neighbors aren't home... It is amazing for me to think back and to remember that I had a hand in giving away over two million meals to homeless and hungry folks! It is amazing that I got arrested with Martin Sheen at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site! It is amazing, always, to be able to feel the love in my heart, always greening (as St. Hildegard would say)... Scratching the itch of faith, while there are so many reasons to doubt, just muddies the waters... We are such tiny beings, so fragile, so mortal, and so serious! It's like we've all taken up residence in the Inn of the Rabid Dog and we want to argue about G-d when we should be wondering if there's a rabid dog around... Faith will take care of itself, if you relax and enjoy your meal, the company you are keeping, and you always leave a very generous tip for the wait-staff and cook! Radical (to the roots) Amazement is the ticket to a good life! Tell your Lover, everyday, "Baby, I'm Amazed!" Stand in the Holy, holy, Sun, and say, "Baby, I'm Amazed!" Kiss your kids, and say, "Baby, you are Amazing!" Stand up for social justice, peace, equality, and re-generating the Planet: and say to yourself, "Baby, I am Amazing!" Pass it on and on: cultivate opportunies to live and to become radical amazement... [I hope you won't be offended or disappointed if I tell you the secret of the Mystics... but, "BOO!" is the Name of God...]  One of Trump's New Confederates... Brandishing Their Flag
Generally speaking, I try to keep my politics focused on the big political design of the Holy Scriptures: be gentle and compassionate as your Divine Beloved... Obviously, compassion implies peace, nonviolence, social justice, the equality of gender and race, and the loving stewardship of our Common Home... But, the attempted coup and insurrection that was prompted by Trump, will not stand without my voice (small as it is) getting into the mix... Rush Limbaugh can moan and groan his appreciation for the violence employed by the patriots of 1776 -- and wish that current "patriots" shared a similar conviction... if they had, how many of our Representatives would have been murdered? As it is, January 6, 2021 will forever be a day of infamy: when America's "dance with democracy" nearly came (how close?) to a shocking end... That "nearly" was serious: what if the military had followed Trump? What if former General Flynn still had troops at his command? That is just "how close" Wednesday was to disaster... I've written and said it before: tell no lie! Neither money nor violence are the root of evil. Rather, the root of evil are all of the lies that support it! Racism is entirely constructed on lies. Sexism is entirely constructed on lies. Inequality is entirely constructed on lies. Social injustice is entirely constructed on lies. And the greed that would willingly put @risk the well-being of the entire Planet is entirely constructed on lies. Limbaugh, Jones, Carlson, and the rest of the plainly right-wing-nut media would have nothing to say -- nothing to add to our national conversation -- if they could never again lie! And as for Trump, it does seem that lying for him comes as natural as breathing... Where do we go from here? Right next to the table upon which I write, are a couple stacks of books: books that are my reference points to the wisdom I seek: there's the Gospel of Jesus, the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, the poems of Li Po and Tu Fu, Be Love Now by Ram Dass, the Tao, Watercourse Way by Alan Watts, Illuminations of Hildegard by Matthew Fox, a book by Fr. Bede Griffiths... with more to my right and more behind me and more out into our Gathering Room... The point is not that I can read! Rather, it is that I have points to which I refer as I strive to build my sacred life... When I write about compassion, nonviolence, the Beatitude Life, contemplation, radical personalism, social justice. etc. I don't just pull ideas out of thin air: I constantly check my references! Is this, is that, at least approaching consistency with the big ideas of the Gospel, with the Tao, with St. Francis, with Dorothy Day...? I don't check in with Limbaugh or Carlson: I don't reference Trump or Cruz: remember by their fruits you shall know them: they lie! Who in their right mind wants a mouthful of their fruit? I am a deeply flawed human male: but with my reference points frequently employed, I still have potential! What are your reference points? Which exemplars or saints or sages direct your attention? How do you imitate Christ? Are your prayers about your wants or are they about how you need to serve others? If you are still breathing, you still have time to become the hero of your own life story: not as in "look at me!", but in "this, becoming Love, is my real life!" Read anything by Ram Dass, but especially, Be Love Now... I understand that everything is a choice: you can believe Trump and QAnon, or you can take a chance on Robert Daniel and read some Ram Dass... there is a big difference: Ram Dass will fill your head and heart with wonder... while QAnon can, in the end, only promise (no pun intended), a brick in the ass... Building your sacred life is as daring as the sacred choice to never tell a lie -- and to turn your back on the liars: and if you still haven't learned how to tell the difference between truth and lies, just compare whomever's words and actions to the Beatitudes of Yeshua (Jesus of the Beloved)... it really is quite simple...  Steven Spielberg and Actors from Ready Player One
A weirdly fun movie, from a few years ago, is Ready Player One, based on the book by the same name. Out of context and with no explanation, I have pulled five words from the movie as title for this blog, and her name is Chuck! I figure that it's a good place to start with another pondering of soul, person, Tao, and Gospel... I guess that you could say, now go figure... In other words, the idea of who someone is (perhaps you) is a mental construct of an environmental construct: in spite of the photos I present of myself, with accompaning philosophy, I just might really be Chuck... Maybe, in fact, you are... Chuck is the illusory idea of any and every individual self... We build our sense of self from the tools of self-identification that we are taught, along with the overwhelming influences of place, class, race, gender, education, culture, and religion: all together, they (we!) are an environmental construct... But, who would either you or I be, if we were born with our opposite gender, up or down on the class-ladder, and so on? If every conditioned, environmental, construct was stripped away, who would you be? Who would I be? Perhaps most religious philosophies, insist that, in our essence, we are soul... Western religion generally thinks of soul as something that we have, sort of like an interior ghost that we possess... And that it is our soul that is of primary interest to G-d... or so it seems... Delving a bit deeper, there is also the philosophy of person: a person being the union of body and soul, and it is as person that the Divine relates to us... but, that still begs the question of ideas and constructs: both mental and environmental... It seems to me, as I both ponder and write, that the idea of both soul and person are themselves constructs of mind, time, place, and environment... Is there even a me without each and all of the constructs with which "I" am inundated from birth-through-life? Why should I even care? This, too, is a construct. Going along, being "saved", being forgotten, whatever: it's all just ideas, right? Decide to agree with this, disagree with that, and so on, neither proves nor means anything at all... Everything happens in our Mind, right?... A current catch-phrase is mindfulness: a word-construct meaning attention to the moments... It seems to me that we are always, always, full-of-it-in-our-mind! Isn't it time for some classes in mindlessness? "Chuck" is whomever we think that we are. But, who were you, before you were "Chuck"? This question of "Chuck" is the essence of the mystic-path: "not him, not her", not this, not that, all the way to the very bottom of emptiness... It is precisely at that zero-point, that un-conditioned Real Reality, that we see our face before we were born... Infinity begins in no-thing... Heaven is exactly beneath your feet... Ego-annihilation is a trip into our own personal Chuck... Zero-point is such Radical Grace, that every mystic turns and turns and turns and runs away, back into her Chuck! This is the spiritual life, the building of your sacred life! Here's my own, very first, zero-point story. (It's true!) As you likely already know, I started a Catholic Worker Community back in yonder-years, with my life savings being our start-up funds. Inevitably, within a few months, all the money ran out (a bit over $6,000)... I collapsed into a complete ego-annihilation: I had "lost" my savings as I had "lost" my Catholic Worker vision and project: no money, no food, no way to any longer serve the folks who had come to so appreciate the free meals we gave them... Completely empty of both faith and possibilities, I told the first volunteers who showed up that we were done... Kevin suggested that we say a prayer, Anna Marie selected the silly scripture of Jesus of the Beloved taking five loaves of bread and two fish and with them feeding over five thousand people. Welcome into what is possible with Radical Grace at the Zero-Point: we gathered into a circle of five people, listened to the scripture, recited the Our Father, and that was it... within minutes, a white, unmarked, semi-truck parked in front of our CW House... the driver knocked on our door, "Would we like some bread?" We unloaded the truck: bread was three feet deep across the sofa: bread was stuffed everywhere it was possible to stuff bread... Now, remember that zero-point: I walked from our front door into the kitchen: at that precise moment, our phone rang: I turned to the volunteer on my right, Bob, and said to him, "God, I hope that's not a donation of more bread!" I answered the phone: a fisherman in Moss Landing wanted to know if we'd like to have 400 pounds of frozen fish? The impossible miracle story of the Loaves and Fishes, is the kind of explosion that happens whenever "Chuck" disappears somewhere into the zero-point: when our original face before we were born: conditioned by everything into our very own personal Chuck... has ceased, even for just a moment, to exist... Exactly this, is the high-point, the end of evolution: infinitity... heaven... didn't Jesus say: the Kingdom of God is within you? Ultimately, building your sacred life is learning how to get out of the way... Everything that Jesus taught was a "how-to" in getting out of the way... it's all a road-map into ego-annihilation... like what Hafiz said: "Zero is where the real fun starts!"  Masanoba Fukuoka
Japanese farmer and philosopher Author: One-Straw Revolution Western Civilization has advanced? to the now common practice of living by the axiom of freedom is busy-for-money... even the homeless man has to be busy: collecting cans or otherwise scheming for beer-food-motel money... Whether homeless man, industrial giant, movie-maker, or member of Congress: dissatisfaction and only dissatisfaction keeps the wheels greased and spinning... It's all the same, only the scale differs... As a direct consequence for our collective life-by-dissatifaction, our very Planet itself is giving every evidence of its own essential dissatisfaction: global warming is a tirade of judgment on the entire system of dissatisfaction... On the other hand, there have long been folks like Masanoba Fukuoka who have observed the rhythms of nature: get up at dawn, get something to eat, lolly-gag around, nap in the afternoon, eat again as the sun goes down, wrestle in the grass with a lover, and then simply sleep... The attainment of a certain quality of leisure gave rise to philosophy, the arts, meaning-making, and the construction of all of the underpinnings of civilization... Indeed, philosophy is the cultivation of satisfaction... How much is enough? is a relevant question for the individual person and society both. By now, it is no longer a question motivated by jealousy to ponder what it means if a person who spends a million dollars a day for his own consumption or pleasure, could still make a profit: as is the case for any number of folks in the billionaire-class... A solid gold toilet is still a toilet... The Unholy Trinity (Privilege, Profit, and Power), needs the concentrated push-back of the citizen-voter-activist standing to serve and save democracy from the schemings of the solid-gold-toilet-billionaire-brigade... controlling Congress, media, banks, agriculture, the courts, the police, and every civil institution, it might seem too much for the solitary citizen-voter-activist... which is true enough, for as far as it goes... But on the other side of true enough is where personal transformation and social change reside in creative freedom, resistance, and rEvolution... A nation of gardeners, consciously sequestering carbon in their small-scale urban farms, is perhaps the most consequential action we could take: scale down in life-style: embrace simple living: build intentional community: and cultivate satisfaction in one's daily life... this is the antidote to the cruelity of "freedom is busy-for-money"... Happiness is the cessation of the search for happiness: happiness is supposed to be the satisfaction that is generated by "enough"... And what are the tell-tale signs of "enough": isn't it time for thinking, time for relaxation, time for play, time for children, time for walking, time for holding hands, time for making love any time, time for volunteering, time for cooking incredible meals for a common table that includes family, friends, and welcoming strangers, time for civic actions and commitments, time for working the garden, time for planning a trip to Paris, time for a bike ride, time for climbing a mountain, time for teaching someone how to read... time is literally endless when we have recovered our natural sensibilities and have learned our philosophy of life: life is for living with grace, with gentleness, and with the peaceable kingdom in mind... Heaven is inexhaustible in bringing forth wild bounty. (The I Ching, translated by David Hinton) Quotes by Masanoba Fukuoka: Could there be anything better than living simply and taking it easy? I believe that if one fathoms deeply one's own neighborhood and the everyday world in which he lives, the greatest of worlds will be revealed. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. Ignorance, hatred, and greed are killing nature. Giving up your ego is the shortest way to unification with nature. |
AuthorRobert Daniel Smith was privileged to serve the homeless and marginalized for 30 years in California. He is living now almost within shouting distance of the Twin Cities. He is a poet, artist, writer, and long-time Companion of the Way still dreaming... Archives
May 2022
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