Our Common Core

WE KNOW ONLY A LITTLE*

We know amazingly little about what happens beneath our feet. It is fairly remarkable to think that Ford has been building cars and baseball has been playing World Series for longer than we have known that the Earth has a core. And of course the idea that continents move about the surface like lily pads has been common wisdom for much less than a generation “Strange as it may seem,” wrote Richard Feyman, “we understand the distribution in the interior of the Sun far better than we understand the interior of the Earth.”

A Short History

of Nearly Everything,

Bill Bryson

*

 At the university I studied; philosophy, history, radical Marxist theory, labor history and the foundations of capitalism along with the arts and a rudimentary range in the sciences: including psychology, anthropology and sociology. I even took a course in Religious Studies (one of whose texts was the “The Varieties of Religious Experience”). I thought of myself as having had a well rounded liberal arts education, knowing a little about everything but surprisingly little about my core (even though I considered myself quite an adventurer). The truth was, however, that I ventured out very little from popular culture when it came to my own beliefs. Arrogant enough to pretend that what I believed was founded on a body of knowledge that was beyond question, I behaved accordingly. After all, my political opinions were based on a thorough examination of social phenomena and anyone who thought differently was, of course, a dolt. All of this education was fine and dandy but it should have told me what I didn’t know rather than to suppose my beliefs and my opinions were based on an infallible encyclopedia of information set in stone. Not only was I ignorant of my own core, I saw nothing  that told me that it had anything in common with others.

    Truly, I am not trying to impress anyone with my credentials. Contrarily, I point them out to say that the the core of the Heart of Compassion opened up to me only when I let go of what I thought I knew and began the adventure of a lifetime by simply looking within. Once I cleared away the obstructions, a light shone through that put all my knowledge in perspective. What I know about my core today is always changing as the dark corners of fear and doubt are exposed to the light of compassion. This was done… this dawning… this spiritual awakening… came about by applying the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. A practical and useful spirituality that was based on what is knowable… not pie in the sky or oogah-boogah religiosity… but a fundamental living relationship with the divine,... our core... yours and mine,  that directs and informs me as I wind my way through the challenges of the day.

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* Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 164

Renewing of the Mind

 TRAINING YOUR THOUGHTS

Thought is the real causative force in life, and there is no other. You cannot have one kind of mind and another kind of environment. You cannot change your environment while leaving your mind unchanged. This is the real key to life, if you change your mind your conditions must change too --- your body must change; the color tone of your whole life must change.
    And be not conformed to the world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind… (Romans 12:2).
…. This may be called the Great Cosmic Law.

Excerpted from:

Around the Year

with Emmet Fox, p. 361

~

I often hear my fellow travelers on similar spiritual paths say that they don’t watch the news or read the papers because it “bums” them out and shapes their thinking in a negative manner. I can understand their position, and even support it to a degree; but I am not so inclined because I do have a variety of sources available to me today that my grandparents had not even imagined to exist. I don’t accuse others, who are less interested in the news of the day, of sticking their heads in the sands either because I know that the most important thing is to act compassionately. Acting compassionately can also be applied to the problems of the day if I don’t allow myself to be driven knee-jerk by the differing slants presented on the nightly news. Whatever kind of news junkie I am, it is important to me to know what folks are getting all fired up about and judge for myself where I stand. How might I apply spiritual principles to the issues of the day? Am I buying into the accusations and emotional barrage thereof? Where can I encourage understanding and healing? Where can I put a hand out to opposing sides and find the humanity in others I would have detested otherwise? I couldn’t do so without constant conscious contact with a Power far greater than myself. This takes some training of the mind and is accomplished most effectively for me through a regular inventory of my own thinking combined with the practice of quietude in the spiritual renewal of meditation.

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Compassion/Pity/Arrogance

Compassion is a far greater and nobler thing than pity. Pity has its roots in fear and carries a sense of arrogance and condescension, sometimes even a smug feeling of "Glad it's not me." As Stephen Levine says; "When your fear touches someone's pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone's pain, it becomes compassion." To train in compassion is to know that all beings are the same and suffer in similar ways, to honor all those who suffer, and to know that you are neither separate from nor superior to anyone.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Daily Reflections by

Sogyal Rinpoche

~

Very few people are so tuned to, and apt to exploit, pity and condescension as addicts and alcoholics are. I believe that this is where the "No strings attached" attitude works best. The strings attached to arrogance can cause me to burn-out if I expect anything… even a token of gratitude… in return when I give of myself to another.
    Pity is often exploited by those in need and it can irritate us. I.e., when passing through Oregon, every rest stop along I-5 seemed to have someone with a sign that read "Need money for Gas!" I know that it is a racket and it peeves me somewhat. In fact, it ought to. Hasn't anyone seen the scene the "alley of miracles" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame where the beggars threw off their crutches after a hard day begging? Do I respond out of guilt or do I see myself in the fellow that is simply down on his luck? Some do need help while others are, well, out of kindness I can say, clueless. No, I can't allow myself to feel taken advantage of because, eventually, I will cease helping others or having any compassion at all for those I might have pitied if my graciousness is compelled by guilt or the arrogance of salving it.
     Compassion can translate to giving a sandwich to a panhandler, caring deeply for his wellbeing, instead of coin that might be used to go for a jug of wine. Then again, coin might be given knowing full well what it is going for because I know what its like to really need a drink.  The true test of compassion is when I am cursed for such charity, instead of being thanked for it, and it doesn't bother me at all: not because I don't care but because I do care deeply.

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For Endurance Sake: I Die

p.127

This is how a human being can change:

There's a worm addicted to eating
grape leaves.
    Suddenly, he wakes up,
call it Grace, whatever, something
wakes him, and he's no longer
a worm.
    He's the entire vineyard,
and the orchard too, the fruit and the trunks,
a growing wisdom and joy
that doesn't need
to devour.

(Mathanawi, 2537-2539)

Jelaluddin Rumi

~

I'm no Rumi but along the same lines in a A Taxi Romance these verses ended chapter five with: I Poemed a Dream:

Woe to you, humankind. You have lost your
aspirations and thus your wings.
Now psyche plucked and feather-bare with
no legs to compensate where glory flew
above the tedium of earth-bound
mediocrity, you crawl like a worm.
Exactly like a worm: devouring the putrid
waste and wasting what is not…
Genius is dead and mourned: you've become a
democracy of worms; wingless, legless,
writhing twisted masses, mired inside of
computer banks and throttled by tentacles
of credit cards in fields of robot
mothers serving up their baby's toxic
memory of a castrated deadbeat father.

Be not afraid. Poor genius is not dead
And still owns wings.
A worm is no worm.
It owns a set of wings… tattered or not:
Withs and withouts; doubts; fears; love; and hopes.
"O, Christ! The Devil is Old," says the
Sage; "Grow old and know him!"
Wingless and full of woe, charging
Headlong on rubber legs… iron willed…
Like molten lava! Upon this wobbly rock
I've found my principle, if only for the
Sake of endurance… I die.

When I wrote this piece I had no idea how true it was: the paradox of "for the sake of endurance… I die." I'd scribbled it down during a drunken rage only to see in it a gem of truth… an inspiration of sorts to keep moving… to lift myself on tattered wings to no avail… until I died to myself and opened up with wings anew September 15, 1998.

    For this I celebrate: Merry Christmas.

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Ignorant/Enlightened

You should know that so far as Buddha-nature is concerned, there is no difference between and enlightened man and an ignorant one. What makes the difference is that one realizes it, while the other is ignorant of it.

The Sutra of Hui Neng

~ 

I have been noticing for some time that there are people everywhere that hold to deeply felt beliefs that defy their I.Q.'s. This knife cuts both ways… it doesn't take much to get through the door. It doesn't matter how smart, clever or dumber than a block of bricks I might be. It doesn't matter a whit how I package my experience if I have been touched, awakened or otherwise blessed: the mask falls off and all my beliefs come to naught. I still have the same cells in my body and the same mass of neurons tucked between my ears. 

     The greatest difference that I can see is that I am more apt to act on compassion… I haven't been let in on to some arcane mystery. I am just as I am and that is all there is to it. When I surrendered to a power greater than myself, I didn't have a name for what I had surrendered to. I wasn't about to make up anything about God: I had already gone that route. I simply surrendered it all and just figured that, if there was a God at all, it would be revealed to me in time. However, something did happen and I couldn't deny it… I had entered the realm of the Spirit of Compassion and from that moment on there was no turning back. The key to that door I entered is the willingness to enter. All it takes then is the surrender of that will. From there on I can think I know anything I wish to but it behooves me to know what an act of blind-faith is and what my actual experience with the divine is.

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Scorn or Praise

This is an old saying, O Atula, not one merely of today: "They blame him who remains silent, they blame him who speaks much, they even blame him who speaks in moderation." There is none in this world who is not blamed.
    There never existed, nor will there ever exist, nor does there exist today anyone who is always scorned or always blamed.

Dhammapada 227-228

~

A very few months ago I became willing to take the middle path and, on this path, I have taken a vow to refrain from blame and to use praise with utmost caution. This has often resulted in being told that I am wishy-washy about the important issues of the day or when group or personal disputes demand my attention. However, the advantage I have gained is powerfully more than I ever expected. Being able to see clearly, without prejudice, is of immense value that far exceeds being oh-so-right about everything in every dimension; whether it is being right in politics or personal disputes. Honest debate is not avoided but honest debate has become far more meaningful when I take the side of compassion in whatever argument that confronts me. Taking the side of compassion requires me to be informed as well as loving. I suppose it might have been one of those apes recently down from the trees, following the herds, which were so inclined to flip-over cow turds just to see what was under them. What was found there was probably the one simple act that furthered our evolution in the long distant past (according to the ethnobotanist, philosopher and psychonaut guru, *Terrence McKenna).

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* Terrence McKenna contended that the first ape human prototypes stepped out of the trees onto the grasslands where the great herds left cow patties in great abundance. Under these there were grubs to be found, high in protein and the addition kick, magic mushrooms. He proposed that these two findings provided nourishment and raised our ancestrial consciousness leading humankind into an awareness that was, at once, communal, cooperative and evolutionary..

Seeing the Way

Simply keep putting everything down, and know that that is what you are doing. You don't need to be always checking up on yourself, worrying about things like 'How much samadhi' --- it will always be the right amount. Whatever arises in your practice, let it go; know it is all uncertain, impermanent. Remember that it's all uncertain. Be finished with all of it. This is the Way that will take you to the source --- to your Original Mind.
Ajahn Chah;
Seeing the Way

~

A prayer I recite every morning goes like this:

Everything changes… everything passes… Things appearing… Things disappearing… and when all is over… everything having appeared and disappeared… being and extinction both transcended… still the basic emptiness and silence abides and that is blissful peace.

    I was told, years ago, that every cell of my skin is replaced in a few years. This says something to me about impermanence in a way that is very real. I think that money does that too. One day I have some and, very shortly after, I have none. My clothes wear out and that face looking back at me in the mirror is hardly recognizable when I compare it to pictures of my youth. Thinking about this can be depressing until I realize that I am on the great procession of life and this is how it goes for every one of us. Fearing change and fearing death is a cultural obsession and, if I desire to be free of that obsession, I must embrace change, even death, as much; not more… not less… than I love the smile and laughter of a precious child.
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