The Joy of Sorrow & "Noble Doubt"

In the place of our contemporary nihilistic form of doubt I would ask you to put what I call a “noble doubt,” the kind that is an integral path toward enlightenment. The vast truth of the mystical teachings handed down to us is not something that our endangered world can afford to dismiss. Instead of doubting them, why don’t we doubt ourselves: our ignorance, our assumption that we understand everything already, our grasping and evasion, our passion for so-called explanations of reality that have about them nothing of the awe-inspiring and all-encompassing wisdom of what the masters, the messengers of Reality, have told us?

Sogyal Rinpoche

Glimpse after Glimpse

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     Especially throughout the long and drawn-out national election season this year, the self-assurance and attitude of smug disapproval and finger pointing of advocates of one party against the other rose to an apex that neared violence if any of our common political assumptions were questioned. Not only is there a presumption of ignorance on the other but the accusation of evil, racism, greed or elitism etc on one side: sloth, incompetence, dependency on entitlements or pandering to them (and on and on), was pinned on the other. In this regard I like to think of the adage asserting; “all politics are local.” It holds the most truth for me. Local, in its purest application, means for me to look inside. I sat down one day and saw that the much reviled “Tea Party” had much in common with the “Occupy” movement. Both were spontaneous and both saw that the center of the dispute had to do with economic issues. One side insisted that the problem was government taxation and corporate favoritism while the other side protested corporate greed and excess as the problem. Somewhere in between the two sides agreed if I put aside the distractions of extreme elements and their demands. The peculiar thing was that to even suggest this to anyone on either side of the issue was to evoke the most vile and venomous reaction. I sat and saw my own venom and addressed it instead of bemoaning the situation. Quietly working on my own attitudes encourages me to expand my consciousness enough to accept the humanity of those I oppose. The answers are in the healing after the wound has been opened and not in inflicting more damage. Somewhere in the Art of War I read: Victory parades ought to resemble funeral processions. Maybe Sun Tsu never saw a New Orleans funeral but that would at least be respectful glee and not so much gloating: it would be The joy of sorrow.

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