Q&A: From Teacher to Student

I am working on a few new essays, but in the meantime, I wanted to post some answers I sent to a student in response to his questions about Buddhism. It’s been an honor to be a teacher in many ways. One of the greater honors is when students have an unbounded curiosity for a certain subject, and they trust you to be able to give them a reliable answer. That is a very good feeling. The questions and answers are below. They focus on the Buddhist approaches to the concepts of “pain” and “self.” Since adult life is always busy and hectic, I hope these satisfy any curiosities you may have as well before I get any more essays written.

Q: Buddhists believe that pain is a part of life, and yet their key goals are to break that cycle of suffering and escape. So which is it? Do they accept pain as what will inevitably happen or do they reject it and try to escape?

A: Buddhists do believe pain is a part of life, but that pain is a part of life mostly due to an error in our perception regarding our subjective world views and attachment to a sense of individuality/self that separates us from the rest of the living things around us. While the first Noble Truth of Buddhism is usually “Life is Suffering,” the translation never really does justice to the original statement. Here are the first two noble truths as laid out by the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama:

1. Life is dukkha

2. Dukkha arises from/is caused by tanha

Now, the original use of these words is important because depending on how you choose to focus on them it can create either a positive or negative interpretation of Buddhadharma (i.e., Buddhist philosophy). Dukkha can be translated as suffering, but is more or less meant as “unsatisfactoriness.” Same with tanha – it can be translated as “desire,” but is more akin to the word “longing.”

If I long for something, I want it, and if I cannot have it, then I find my life to be unsatisfactory, or in my direct terms, I suffer. And even if I still do obtain that object that I desired, then I may still be unsatisfied with it, because the only reason I thought it would make me whole in the first place was because I did not have that object. But now that I do, I realize that it didn’t really help me feel any richer or more like myself.

The fact that you want anything at all, that we long for certain things and then are eventually disappointed by them, arises from what Buddhists perceive to be a false sense of self. Insofar as what the “self” is, the “self” is usually what humans think is this unchanging, definable trait that helps others pinpoint exactly who we are. However, Siddhartha disagreed with this. He said there is actually no lasting permanent self – our senses, consciousness, and form are always changing and in flux, never staying the same. For example, you never have the same skin cells – they replace themselves every five years or so. So, in essence, you have a different body. This can be supported just by the simple fact of growing up – people grow taller, they have less bones, they start to lose their hair, etc. Nothing that people usually hold onto as definable or immutable qualities stay constant.

This is where the process of meditation comes in. Meditation as a tool is supposed to help people realize the intensely dynamic and fluid nature of reality and our thoughts. Because our idea of “self” comes from an error in our perception of our world, meditation is a tool Buddhists use to try to approach the world from a more objective/compassionate/fair basis (or what have you). Once we extinguish the idea of a constant self, we are getting rid of the longing/greed/desire that causes suffering in the first place. It’s essentially a shifting of our balance, so to speak. Instead of thinking “This is what I need,” or “I want this because it’s what will help me,” Buddhists try to think in broader terms, relating ourselves back to the world and to each other. Which is one of the major principles of Buddhist philosophy: interdependent co-origination. No living being is separate from another living being; no thing arises independent of anything else. Total and complete connection and change – these are the two main things we can start to observe about the world after we learn to change our perceptions.

Buddhists go deeper and deeper into this type of thinking to get out of the cycle of birth and death (samsara) in order to attain nirvana (trans.: extinction). Most people think nirvana is a blissed-out state, but it’s essentially taking the concept/idea of self and completely rendering it null and void. Once we transcend our selfish and subjective view of the world, we have a more enlightened nature of the world around us. Now, there are two schools of thought as your history teahcher may teach you about: Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. Theravada (translated as “Way of the Saints”) is the closest we have to the original form of Buddhism in some ways – they believe in meditating to totally take themselves out of samsara, attain nirvana, and then teach others this “path towards enlightenment.” Mahayana Buddhism is a later form of Buddhism that encapsulates such schools as Zen. Mahayana Buddhists believe that samsara = nirvana, nirvana = samsara. In other words, enlightened nature is not different from the world as we know it in it’s truest sense.

Therefore, the entire goal of Buddhism is to take that life is suffering, which in turn is caused by a sense of desire, and cut off the idea of self (I, me, my) that causes this sense of incompleteness and unsatisfactoriness in the first place. So there is no running from suffering or desire – it’s just that we must cut off the root of it if we do not want to continue suffering.

Q: Do Buddhists think the ONLY way to avoid desire is just to remove “self” entirely?

A:

Your question: Do Buddhists think the only way to avoid desire to just to remove “self” entirely?

Subsequent point related to the question: Appears to be the total removal of all personality and characteristics.

Logical quandary: How can one remove the self?

Answer to the quandary: There is no self to remove.

What we are dealing with here appears to be a logical paradox – Buddhists want to get rid of the notion of self, but insofar as they recognize there is a self to vanquish, they are admitting as to the inherent existence of a self. Which is an argument that people have used in the last two centuries, especially Western philosophers and theologians, to negate Buddhist philosophy. However, Buddhism recognizes life to be inherently paradoxical. The fact that we believe in a self does not in-and-of-itself substantiate the claim of the self, only of our perception and opinion that there is a self – an opinion/perception that is inherently wrong. To negate self is not to negate something that inherently exists, but to negate the perception of it. Think of the notion of a self as a sort of mist/haze that blinds us to the existence, feelings, and lives of other human beings.

This mist/haze that is the idea of self is essentially cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am. Buddhism can be said to approach cogito ergo sum in two ways: 1) Of course you think and therefore have a sense of self, the self is inherently an idea, and as long as you hold onto the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions we believe define our static notion of self, you will always believe in it and 2) To substantiate your sense of existence inherently on sense is to presuppose that there is actually no permanent self. Only as long as you can interact with a small simulacrum of the world will you ever be able to think you exist; once we stop interacting with the world, there is nothing. And, in it’s paradoxical fashion, Buddhism says no to both of these things, because both of these approaches boil down to what is referred to as solipsism – you can only ever know your self exists and nothing else outside of it.

So, given either interpretation, we are blinded to what Buddhists see as our true nature by stating: 1) Our thoughts create an illusory sense of self because we are overly attached to what they represent and 2) our sensory experience of the world can also be clouded by our perception and attachment to certain phenomena and what we associate with them. In essence, we have to realize that, simply because we see a snowflake as white with our eye, does not mean it is white. Snowflake = white. A = A. Just in the same way, we may see a piece of coal as black. Coal = black. B=B. However, whenever we think of a different animal that may have a larger spectrum of colors they are able to see, then the game changes. Let’s say a bird has a greater range of ultraviolet light able to be absorbed into it’s cornea and can see more colors than a human. To that bird, maybe the snowflake looks black. And all of a sudden, the piece of coal appears to be white. The equation is flipped. Snowflake = black. All of a sudden, A=B.

Which brings us back to the mist/haze of the self. We believe in the concreteness of the self insofar as we believe in the concreteness and absolutism of our experience as an individual being. We see the snowflake as white, therefore it must be truly white. I hold onto these thoughts, feelings, and memories as to who I am, therefore they must make up this person I know as Ryan. In reality, the color of the snowflake and the thoughts-feelings-memories we hold onto are both a type of mist/haze. As long as we are not able to look beyond the limit of our experience, we are thus continually mired in this illusory sense of an unchanging, unmovable self. Whereas all along the self never existed because it was an illusion created by an attachment to our experience of the world and of what makes up our mindstuff (scientific term right there).

This is where the Buddhist concept of sunyata (emptiness) comes into play. As we exist, things are inherently empty and void of any traits that could be said to define things as greater or lesser than the whole. In a way, sunyata has a lot to do with the Christian concept of kenosis (self-emptying). Kenosis is the idea that we have to empty ourselves of the notion of self before we are able to let the divine will as defined b Christian belief have a greater part in our understanding of the world. It is based on the self-emptying of Jesus Christ’s own nature at the Crucifixion – Jesus emptied himself of his divine nature to take on a fully human form (which, if you think about it, is itself a paradox of sorts: a man at once both fully human and fully divine. It would technically be considered impossible. Luckily, the faith tradition of Catholicism you participate in does have a lot more to say about this). Even in this sense, there is not a complete sense of self Jesus Christ himself has to hold onto – if his nature is fully divine as well as fully human, not only is he participating in his own pain as an individual person, but he is also participating in the drama of the universe as it continually unfolds and folds back upon itself – for if the divine is eternal, it would have to be even beyond a sense of self because it is beyond the phenomenal constraints of our universe.

Both sunyata and kenosis make one thing clear: our idea of self-nature and of true nature are beyond a rational sort of thinking. This is where the Zen Buddhist tradition of the koan comes into play (we can talk more about that later). But, to wrap it up nicely, both of these ideas find their middle ground in theologia negativa or negative theology. The best thing you can do to picture negative theology is to imagine a stained glass window with an image on it. The image is colorful and pretty and depicts a scene from a story, but it is not the actual nature of the stained glass window. So to better understand what the window is, you start to pick apart the painting that makes up the stained glass window. Bit by bit, you are left with nothing but a clear window with a bright light coming through it and reflected by it. And that’s what we are looking for by discarding the notion of self, of I-my-me – the bright light that is the truth behind the picture and the story it depicts.

Shobogenzo & 100% Authentic Truth: On Dogen’s Fukanzazengi & Makahannyaharamitsu

The myriad differences
Resolved by sitting,
All doors opened.
In this still place,
I follow my nature,
Be what it may. – Reizan

Let’s Try This Again 

Two years ago I wrote an analysis of Dogen’s Zenki (tr. The Whole Works) chapter of his seminal masterpiece Shobogenzo (tr. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye) with the intention of writing further analyses down the road. Then some things called “a job” and “marriage” and “home ownership” happened, and boy, does that take time away from still pretending like you can do nothing but write articles all the time. However, since today is my last day of summer break before going back to teaching for the 2018-2019 school year, I thought I would give it a crack at writing an analysis of some of Dogen’s lighter fare before I have to be surrounded by teenagers for three months.

Before We Even Analyze…

The last analysis I wrote had a section on the differences between how we understand the nature of philosophy in the West versus the East, mostly from the academic standpoint. This time, I want to make it clear that the translations we use are also important. Shobogenzo is a classical text that was lost to the public for centuries – it was circulated in internal Buddhist circles by and for those who thought they had put in the necessary rigor of practice to understand the text. Only in the late 19th century, as the text was rediscovered and “Religious Studies” and “Oriental Studies” were becoming rigorous academic disciplines, was there even an attempt by lay people to understand, analyze, and communicate the text.

Does this all sound boring to you yet? If so, good, you’re a sane person who likes doing normal person things, unlike me. However, if you’re like me and are interested in studying Buddhism, this kind of information is important to keep in the back of your brain – if you’re a person in a city that does not happen to have a large Buddhist presence, you are going to come to know the philosophy and teachings of Buddhism, it will be primarily through the texts. And if you want a decent understanding, you better get your hands on  decent text.

The Shobogenzo, depending on what translation you are reading, can seem like a mish-mash of philosophical jibber jabber or some of the most profound spiritual/intellectual teachings from the other end of the Pacific Ocean. So, instead of making you wonder where the hell I am getting this all from, here are a list of the most accessible translations you can find of Dogen’s master text:

1. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo – Kazuaki Tanahashi (the big book you may see in most Soto Zen monasteries and zen centers in the States)

2. Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo Series – Gudo Nishijima & Chodo Cross (one of the more definitive translations out there)

3. Shobogenzo: The Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching: A Trainee’s Translation of Great Master Dogen’s Spiritual Masterpiece – Rev. Hubert Nearman, O.B.C. (a free translation in PDF format by the Shasta Abbey – just in case you don’t want to pay for it)

4. Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dogen – Thomas Cleary (a translation of thirteen of the more seminal chapters of Dogen’s work – if you want an hope of studying the Shobogenzo during a bus ride to and from work, this is the book you buy).

Be my guest and take your pick – any four of these translations holds the spirit of the text as best as they can given the strains of translating Classical Japanese into English. And in analyses such as our own, it’s important to know we are using a reliable translation, or at least one reliable enough to be used in a college textbook. With all that said, we will be using translations by Thomas Cleary from Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dogen and Yuho Yokoi from the Zen Sourcebook traditionally used in college classrooms. In any future analyses, these are most likely the two guys whose translations I will be using. Plus, Fukanzazengi is not the only chapter we are using for this article today, but also Dogen’s Makahannyaharamitsu (Great Transcendent Wisdom) chapter from Shobogenzo as well. Since both chapters are so succint, but somewhat tie into each other, it will help shed more light on Dogen’s take on the importance of meditation to Buddhist practice. Now, without further ado…

Dogen’s Five-Star Yelp Review on Meditation

That’s not the actual translation of the term Fukanzazengi, but it could be. What it actually means is A Universal Recommendation for Zazen. Zazen is the term used most often in Japanese Zen Buddhist communities to describe the act of sitting meditation. It literally means “sitting meditation.” But there is a difference between meditating the way you may in a yoga class or in a Taoist circle somewhere on a college campus, and the way you do seating meditation in a zen center. For Dogen, zazen was more than just meditation. It was the act of enlightenment itself shining through the individual practitioner. Dogen, and Buddhists in general, adhere to the principle of non-duality, and therefore interconnectedness.

These two ideas culminate in the concept of interdependent co-origination. This term, to sum it up here as best as possible means that all arise, and are no separate from, each other. You arise from your parent, and your child arises from you, the same way a table may rise after carving a tree, and in the end, maybe your child will one day set a drink on that table the tree has become. Not only is everything connected, but their mutual creation and existence are inherently intertwined and a major part of the fabric of the universe.  By realizing this, we learn to accept that things are also not put into neat categories or separated from each other as easily as we may believe. “Ordinary People” and “Buddhas” are not two different things. In fact, they are the same thing. This nonduality, this interconnectedness regarding the conceptual frameworks in how we see ourselves and others is at the heart of zazen.

Ordinary People = Enlightened People

Enlightened People = Ordinary People

That’s Buddhist math, for you. Now, you may ask, where is zazen in that equation? Well, zazen itself is the equal sign. As Dogen himself said in Fukanzazengi:

Zen is not “step-by-step” meditation. Rather it is simply the easy and pleasant practice of a Buddha, the realization of the Buddha’s Wisdom. The Truth appears, there being no delusion. If you understand this, you are completely free, like a dragon that has obtained water or a tiger that reclines on a mountain. The supreme Law will then appear of itself, and you will be free of weariness of confusion. 

In the eyes of Dogen, to practice meditation is inherently the quality of an awakened being. If you had not been able to see your own Buddha nature in the first place, you would not have even started doing zazen in the first place. There is nothing to attain to or work towards because, due to the sheer fact of you existing in that very moment within the state of zazen, means you have attained the supposedly unattainable. As the last Bodhisattva vow states in Zen Buddhism: The Buddha way is inconceivable; I vow to attain it. The fact you are meditating while there are others that may seem much wiser and more put together than you does not mean you are somehow deficient. Earlier in Fukanzazengi, Dogen has this to say to that very thought possibly arising in your mind:

You should pay attention to the fact that even the Buddha Shakyamuni had to practice zazen for six years. It is also said that Bodhidharma had to do zazen at Shao-lin Temple for nine years in order to transmit the Buddha-mind. Since these ancient sages were so diligent, how can present-day trainees do without the practice of zazen? You should stop pursuing words and letters and learn to withdraw and reflect on yourself. 

The practice of the art of zazen does not mean we are deficient in our buddha-nature, but that we are learning how to fully embody it and realize it is there. Because it is by our own nature we forget we are enlightened and awakened beings in the first place. That is how we fall into delusion and craving. We believe there is something missing from us that needs to be filled either with expensive and fancy gadgets, with people, or even with drugs and alcohol. But that’s not true at all. You are already 100% Buddha because you are already 100% yourself. However, as Dogen pointed out, just like for Siddhartha and Bodhidharma, it’s going to take work to realize the 100% authentic truth we all are.

Dogen Thinks Wisdom is Dope

Wisdom is a big deal in all religious traditions – it is seen as that which is greater than any other type of intelligence, emotional or rational. Wisdom allows us to see things as they are, intuit as to the nature of the world and the actions of individuals, and may even give us a small glimpse into the infinitude of the divine if we are able to grasp the deeper knowledge of both texts and faithfulness. In certain religious and philosophical terms then, wisdom is in-and-of-itself the ideal. A quality or essence we can only grasp by learning not only the truth of human nature but that which we were attempting to grasp in the first place. But, as with all things cryptic and mystical, wisdom is not what we may at first believe it to be. This is where we get to the Socratic Paradox (yell that in your heads for added affect). While Socrates himself may have never said the words, what we gather from the writings of Plato is that, after constant searching, questioning, and debating, those who employ the Socratic method of philosophical inquiry are bound to come to the ultimate conclusion that I know that all I know is that I do not know anything.

Dogen just so happens to agree with the Socratic Paradox in his Makahannyaharamitsu chapter:

The time when the Independent Seer practices profound transcendent wisdom is the whole body’s clear vision that the five clusters are all empty. The five clusters are physical form, sensations, perceptions, conditionings, and consciousness. They are five layers of wisdom. Clear vision is wisdom. In expounding and manifesting this fundamental message, we would say form is empty, emptiness is form, form is form, emptiness is emptiness. It is the hundred grasses, it is myriad forms. 

As for the present monk’s thinking to himself, where all phenomena are respected, wisdom which still has no origination or extinction is paying obeisance. Precisely at the time of their obeisance, accordingly wisdom with available faculties has become manifest: that is what is referred to as precepts, meditation, wisdom, and so on, up to the liberation of living beings. This is called nothing. The facilities of nothing are available in this way. This is transcendent wisdom which is most profound, extremely subtle, and hard to fathom. 

When the monk or Buddhist practitioner realizes that wisdom is something to be obtained towards and pays respect and deference to it in the form of the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), then wisdom manifests itself. Wisdom is known in its conceptual and intellectual foundation as a thing. Through enough practice and insight into our original nature – that “100% authentic truth” I mentioned earlier – we start to realize wisdom has no inherent nature. In the same way in which we have no inherent nature. The five clusters/layers described in the passage – physical form, sensations, perceptions, conditionings, and consciousness – they are what we believe to comprise our true self. But we are not what we taste, touch, and feel. The “100% authentic truth” goes beyond the sensations we have that are all too willing to deceive us.

Clear vision is the only true faculty of wisdom Dogen knows we can aptly apply to it in our lifetimes. Especially through Buddhist practice. As Dogen essentially says later in the chapter, “The only way you even know wisdom is a thing is because you have the precepts, meditation, and metaphors of wisdom we talk about here in Zen Buddhism.” But wisdom does not exist because those things exist – wisdom is already there! Just as buddha nature is our ordinary nature, wisdom is inherently there in all aspects of the practice. Buddhist practice – and by extension wisdom in all of its varied forms – is the actualization of what you have always had inside you but doubted was there because either you or someone or something else told you it was not there in the first place. And to realize it, we need to learn to see it in every other aspect of our lives and the world – the hundred grasses/myriad forms Dogen points out.

One is All, All is One

Dogen starts to wrap up Fukanzazengi with one of the few succint statements of his eternally present nondualistic thinking patterns:

Zazen is a practice beyond the subjective and objective worlds, beyond discriminating thinking. Therefore, no distinction should be made between the clever and the stupid. To practice the way singleheartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment or zazen and daily life. 

If we think we know a lot, and start to examine those aspects of life we are not that knowledgeable about, we end up learning in the end we did not know as much as we think we did. Therefore, who is truly clever and truly stupid? If wisdom is something we can manifest through the different types of practice and discipline, then why are we looking outside ourselves for wisdom when it was there all along, in our day-to-day lives? Practicing the constant internal investigation that zazen is gives us the tools necessary to go beyond our opinions and notions of right and wrong, what is and what is not, and start to see the world with clear vision for the first time. Only when we have such clear vision, the essence of wisdom inherently within our “100% authentic truth,” can we start to see there is no division at all.

Zazen isn’t just meditation, it’s the here and now. It’s our unobstructed buddha-nature expressing itself effortlessly in every precious moment of this life.

Don’t know; just go straight. – Zen Master Seung Sahn

Relating to the World: A Reflection after a Decade of Buddhist Practice

Don’t be distracted by inner peace. Don’t be distracted by anxiety. Don’t be distracted by anything. What are you doing right now? What is in front of you right now? Pay attention, see clearly and act correctly. It’s simple, but not easy. – Zen Master Bon Hae

Stay Alive and Be Awake

“The Practice.” That’s what we call it. I learned that soon enough, even before I met any other Buddhists that were part of a meditation group. How is your practice going? Has your practice been strong or weak lately? Remember, that important part of our practice is (you guessed it) to just practice. Whether it is for five or thirty minutes a day, find the time to practice.

These are the pieces of advice and the voices in your head you hear over and over again. “The Practice,” insofar as you practice a specific way, is what makes a Buddhist a Buddhist (I suppose). You cannot say you’re Buddhist and not meditate or chant or be mindful in the same way you could probably say you’re Christian, but have not attended church or even read the Bible in years. A Buddhist cannot be “Buddhist” without “Practice.” And what is practice exactly? Well, that depends on where you are mentally, spiritually, and physically. As is often said, “our karma leads us down different paths.” Which I suppose is true. But there is one path you start to see again and again as you become more ingrained in the vagaries of being a Buddhist in your every day life – that path includes Buddha statues (the fat happy dude is NOT Buddha, but Wikipedia could have told you that for me), robes, zen centers, incense, a lot of comfortable cushions, and a ton of tasty vegetarian food.

I’m sorry to say there is a noted lack of bloody crosses, guilt, and rock music that sounds eerily enough like the Dixie Chicks in Buddhism, but if you crave at least two of those three things, boy do I sure have a lot a vaguely similar Christian denominations for you. However, the path I have been going down for a while is different than the path I was raised on for most of my life. It is less about relating to a divine power outside of yourself, memorizing one very specific text, and feeling a sense of repentance and more about relating to the world around you in an optimal manner.

Let me repeat that again: Relating to the world around you in an optimal manner. After ten years of studying and practicing Buddhism, I believe that’s the one sentence that really gives you a taste of what it is all about. Sure, there are the verses and chants in the sutras and in the meditation hall about becoming a buddha, or realizing our buddha-nature, or paying homage to the larger Buddhist community and the ideals we hold, and so on and so forth. If you ask me though, Siddhartha Gautama saw some really terrible things – sickness, old age, and death – and was utterly honest with himself: “I’m not ready to handle this.” Totally unprepared. As I would think most people would be who are raised in a mansion and (as it has been written in the scriptures) are so engrossed in sex with their wife that they supposedly fell off a roof while doing it. Now, as a new home owner, I could get into the pros and and cons of unintentionally having sex on your roof (…I really hope those tiles were rubber…) but that’s not why I am writing this essay. To admit you are unprepared for what life has to throw at you in the way Siddhartha did is not to say, “Oh, I don’t have healthcare and I’m not sure what will happen if I ever break your hip,” but like, make sure you have healthcare and stuff. What it means to admit you are “not ready to handle this” is to admit quite a lot honestly.

I am not ready to grow up and assume responsibilities for my actions.

I am not ready to admit that I have to take better care of myself.

I am not ready to grow old and feel the creaks and aches in my bones.

I am not ready to admit to myself that I actually am old and will one day die.

I am not ready to admit that maybe, just maybe, I have wasted my life. 

When Buddhists say the world we see is an illusion we have to wake up from, we are not saying the things you see, hear, and taste are not real, but that they are colored by a certain perception. YOUR perception. That you need to put aside your opinions, grudges, ideas, and experience aside for a second (as much as you possibly can) and just LOOK AT IT ALL. Stop what you are doing for a while, sit down, take a deep breath, and just be a part of the world without the intrusion of your own thoughts and ideas. Find that stillness within you and fully inhabit it. It’s okay not to move a million miles a minute and doing a hundred different things and travel a ton of different places to keep yourself busy or to be a “success.” Doing those things gives us a greater knowledge of the world around us and of ourselves, but it does not always give us a chance to actually be a part of the world. Siddhartha saw this. As a man in his late twenties with a wife and child on the way, he had a lot of roles to fulfill: To be the future leader of the Shakya clan, conquer other lands, and lead his kingdom into a golden age, and be a father and wife on top of all that. Siddhartha felt the same types of responsibilities and pressures we may feel today, and just like we do today, he found a way to distract himself.

Whether it was with women or entertainment, Siddhartha had many avenues open to him to forget his true self. We have similar distractions at our disposal too, whether it be a relationship, a vacation, or a video game. There are so many more distractions today than there were during the time of the historical Buddha – hell, we don’t even have to participate in actual reality if we don’t want to any more, all one has to do is go online. But Siddhartha realized he was empty, that he was running towards the wrong stuff and not towards that one thing that mattered above the rest – our true nature. Our 100% goofy, ridiculous, imperfect person we truly are behind the opinions, distractions, and jokes. The more you run away from it, the more you are steeped in illusion and desire. If you are not relating to the world in an optimal manner, you are not relating to it in a healthy manner. And Buddhist meditation, more than any other spiritual practice I have participated in before or since, has the ability to give you the tools and framework necessary to just be still, or in the words of the Korea Zen Master Seung Sahn, to “put it all down.”

Clear Direction

“Put it all down.” Another phrase I have heard quite a lot over the past seven years. I started practicing with a meditation group when I was eighteen affiliated with the Kwan Um School of Zen, an American school of Zen Buddhism founded by Seung Sahn, a certified Zen master from the Korean school known as the Jogye Order. Seung Sahn made the phrase “put it all down!” famous among his first students, and the members of the Kwan Um School of Zen hearken back to it even forty years later. As to what it means, you will have to find out for yourself because each person relates to it in a different manner than another person does. If anything, it means to put down and put aside all that which is unnecessary in our minds and hearts. Here’s a famous story illustrating what I mean:

A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her cross to the other side. The two monks glanced at one another because they had taken vows not to touch a woman. Then, without a word, the older monk picked up the woman, carried her across the river, placed her gently on the other side, and carried on his journey. The younger monk couldn’t believe what had just happened. After rejoining his companion, he was speechless, and an hour passed without a word between them. Two more hours passed, then three, finally the younger monk could contain himself any longer, and blurted out “As monks, we are not permitted a woman, how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?” The older monk looked at him and replied, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river, why are you still carrying her?”

If you caught on, you realize this is not a debate about monastic precepts, but exactly how we see the reality of the world around us. For the younger monk, the woman he sees before him is exactly that – a woman. No amount of thinking can divorce the fact of what he sees before him from the idea he has of what a woman is supposed to look and sound like. However, the older monk, due to his longer years of practice, isn’t clinging to the idea of the woman. Sure, the person in front of him is indeed a woman, but she’s also a human being. He does not have to be attached to any of the thoughts and feelings that may arise from the idea of a woman a male monk such as himself may have. He may have picked the woman up, but he “put down” any attachment to certain thoughts and feelings he may have about the woman or women in particular. In essence, he was able to relate to his world in a way that was compassionate, wise, and optimal – he didn’t get bogged down in any of the thoughts that may make it impossible for us to handle the world as it is.

“Putting it all down” is a process. It doesn’t happen in a day or a week, especially not in a month. We have to work at it. Siddhartha did. He went through a lot of trial and error, needless asceticism, and just plain dumb diet choices before he found the Middle Path and eventually enlightenment. The thoughts, ideas, opinions, words, and biases we may hold have to be examined and traversed. As long as we practice, we are realizing our true nature, but that does not mean we get to leave behind all the messy stuff that makes us who we are. Hell, I’m not a perfect person. I have made mistakes, and am probably making a mistake right now by writing this and not trimming the weeds in my front yard, and will continue to make mistakes. I will say and do things that are always imperfect and not in accordance with what I want to put out into the world. But that’s okay. The practice is not about being perfect. It’s about saying “I AM ready to handle this.”

I am ready for constant change and all the good and bad that brings.

I am ready for the gray hairs and the aching bones and the awesome senior discounts.

I am ready to do better not only for myself but for my family and for all beings. 

I am ready to admit I could have used my time more wisely.

I am ready to admit that I will one day die and that there are definitely a few relatives that I’m scratching out of my will. 

Buddhism does not say you need to accept Buddhism (whatever “Buddhism” is). Buddhism says you need to be ready to accept yourself, because who you are and what the world is are the same, and by opening up yourself to that will make you a better person. And don’t forget to add a dash of wisdom and compassion to boot.

Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma
see no Dharma in everyday actions. 
They have not yet discovered that 
there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma. – Dogen

A Teaching Anniversary: Being a Teacher of Hope in an Era of Decline

“My discourse is a discourse of tolerance. It’s a discourse that, because it is tolerant, defends unity in diversity. This means that it is no longer possible for us to be separated…just because it is in the interests of imperialism that we should be separated. We must overcome the power of the ruling classes who also don’t want to see us united, so that they can exploit us more effectively. We must go beyond differences in order to gain, create, and invent a unity that is necessary and indispensable. I would suggest to you that unity in diversity is something that is invented politically. It doesn’t exist as a spontaneous phenomenon. It exists only as a created phenomenon; it is invented and therefore a political act, an act of political decision, in which its leaders must turn it into a pedagogical object, by which I mean they should debate what unity in diversity means with groups representing the people whenever possible.” – Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Commitment, p. 80

The seventeenth day of October signifies two important steps for me at this moment in my life. First, it is the two month anniversary of my wedding day – a step into adulthood that requires of a person a commitment and promise that transcends even the vaguest notion of self and/or ego. Secondly, it marks the year since I began my job as a real (real in this sense meaning PAID) teacher after about three years of tutoring, studying, and practicing beforehand. Since I started to teach in an official capacity, I’ve felt myself growing and responding with and in tandem with the world and people in a way that I would not have thought possible before I became a teacher. Not only have I had the opportunity to be surrounded by master educators and people dedicated to a craft, in a nation that does not have enough respect for it, but I have found myself encountering events and students that have fundamentally changed both my professional and spiritual vision.

The Illness

However, my first year of teaching has come at a time of disheveled public discourse and political ignominy. The election of a proto-fascist anti-intellectual that preyed off of the ignorance and ill-informed fears of people of various classes who are not easily swayed by the messages of Christian humility they so often affirm that they believe in has left us at a crossroads. The United States of America is, for not the first time, reaping the karma of its very grave sins and stupidity. While the majority of the electorate did not actually vote for Trump, it is telling that said majority is not actually a majority in any real way that corresponds to the objective definition. 

Most of us stayed home.

We sat on our couches. We were shocked. We could not believe it.

We let it happen.

So what do you do to make sure it does not happen again?

The Diagnosis

A year into teaching and more than a year out of graduate school, I am more than ever aware of teaching as a science, one of precision and growth. While every teacher knows that a student is more than their standardized test scores and grade percentages, you need to know where students are in terms of their progress and growth. Insofar as students embody unawakened intellectual potential, they are also in a vulnerable place in the process of becoming who they are – exposed nerves within a system that is meant to educate them and raise them up, not ensconce them within a repetitive cycle of behavior. This is less the fault of their individual communities and an endemic aspect of post-industrial, commercial society.  Our political process is the prime example of the post-modern melancholic feeling of helplessness that we have become accustomed to expect from our culture. As Paul Goodman recognized in his 1960 book Growing Up Absurd:

“These groups of ‘[disaffected youth] are not small, and they will grow larger. Certainly they are suffering. Demonstrably they are not getting enough out of our wealth and civilization. They are failing to assimilate much of the culture. As was predictable, most of the authorities and all of the public spokesmen explain it by saying there has been a failure of socialization. They say that the background conditions have interrupted socialization and must be improved. And, not enough effort has been made to guarantee belonging, there must be better bait or punishment.  But perhaps there has not been a failure to communicate. Perhaps the social message has been communicated clearly to the [youth  and it is] unacceptable.”

If this is true and for almost sixty years we have only judged our students by what they can do for society in order to “guarantee belonging,” then we have failed. This definition of personhood is less defined by sheer humanity and more by capitalistic measure. That we are only ever as good as the money we make and the work that we do. A message such as this is nihilistic – a denial of personhood. If I am not contributing or putting in my fair share, then clearly I am not working hard enough and am lazy. My panic attack is my own fault – why can’t I just get it together? If I committed a crime, then clearly I am the one that has done a disservice to society and not the other way around.

If this is what our young people think of themselves, then indeed Paul Goodman was right – American society has not failed to communicate it’s message.

The Cure

However, there is a different message. One that is a radical affirmation of personhood and being, of meaning that is inherent because it is meaningful to be alive and be me instead of what I contribute. As a teacher, I am here to help you find this meaning because I (and you, and you there, and you here) knows what it is like to feel directionless and lost. That you need to find your purpose, because believe it or not, you do have a purpose, and once you find it, then you will be more than what you contribute to the world and more than what you spend on the next stupid iPhone that is only moderately better than the previous one you had. If I am able to make you open your ears and eyes and turn pages and read articles, then you may realize there is a whole world out there for you to explore, and that once you have the knowledge you need to earn that diploma, then you can go out and be your own master no matter where you travel or decide to plant roots.

In times like these of disaffection and seeming defeat, those who are involved in education realize that it is not simply a science of precision and growth – education is about embodying a certain art of transformation. We teach subject matter and facts not to simply fill a quota, but to radically change ideas and attitudes people hold about themselves and the world. Change itself is slow and methodical, a process and not an event. The discussions we hold with students and the papers we assign them to write may not have the intended effect today or tomorrow, but the possibility always exists when the seed is planted. And that is what the type of change educators intend to bring about, that of possibility. The possibility to make the world a better place, to be a more involved member of a community, to share some kindness or idea that can spread like wildfire to inspire people.

We must realize that it is not our students who will fail us, but it is the attitude and disposition our society has left them with that has engendered failure. This is the great shame we collectively bear as a nation. We care more about what our students and potential generations embody in terms of their marketability and “brand power” (a phrase I will 110% punch someone in the face for if they ever use it in a conversation with me). In this way, the sheer act and practice of learning is a bulwark against the oppressive quality of our current societal discourse and the need to make our students feel they are only ever valuable in terms of what they are able to put in to society and then give back to it within the realm of their buying power.

The color of our skins does not matter – there is literally no biological basis for race. The places and experiences we grow up and have there may make us who we are and create a wall between us and the world if we let it, but in the end, we must recognize that we are all human, and as humans, we all share the quality of suffering. Look past the biases and trauma while recognizing it is important for educators to do because it not only affirms the individuality of our students, but also the truths they embody. For we all embody truth, a “divine spark” of some sort. We will have to do our best to create the appropriate conditions for students to realize this within themselves by being compassionate while also having high standards. To be stern while also kind. The job of being a teacher means helping students find a certain balance within themselves, a gift they may not have realized they had there all along. The only way this can be done is through change. Change will be slow, and it will not always seem victorious. But change for the better, that transformation of a student into an adult and hopefully a fully realized person will create one more vehicle for love and compassion in the world that was not there before.

That may be hard to see as a possibility right at this very moment, when events seem so dark and depressing. When you fight tooth and nail every day to get students to pick their heads up and give a shit in your class. You have to have hope though.

Teaching is the art of hope.

“I am not hopeful on a whim, but rather out of conditioning dictated by my human nature. It is not possible to live fully as a human being without hope. Hold on to hope.” – Paulo Freire

 

Hope in the Midst of Darkness

“Their world was a big, fantastic, crawling, exploding junk pile of despair. I will write her name with honor for seeing it so clearly and looking straight at it without remorse. Perhaps her way or irony was the only possible catharsis for a madness so cruel and so endemic.” – Thomas Merton

The world is on fire. Some would say the world has always been on fire, that civilization itself is a slow smoldering, until we are amid the ashes and ask ourselves how we got to that point. Others may think of the fire as something akin to the fire of ancient Rome, with a modern-day Nero looking down upon the flames plucking away either at his fiddle or his harp (technically, it would have been a cithara, which is a heavy wooden instrument of four to seven strings….you know what, I may be getting off topic). Either way, many seem convinced the flames may soon consume us, both literally and figuratively. With the polar ice caps melting at quickened rates, a rise of strong-arm nationalism across the globe, and a widening gap between the rich and poor, we seem in more dire straits than at any point in history.

The United States of America has voted in a leader who has displayed abject apathy regarding the principles the nation was founded on almost three hundred years ago. Syria has crumbled under the fist of its own leader, who would sooner destroy all under his rule than give up all he ever ruled. This has created an unprecedented refugee crisis and has let loose a clash of civilizations, of identities, and of ideologies. Christian and Muslim, white and black, democracy and demagoguery – conflicts of tribe and thought that have existed throughout history, but never on such a global scale. We face the challenge of a fundamental question that has been posed time and time again to various species – change or die?

“The time of the end is the time of demons who occupy the heart (pretending to be gods) so that man himself finds no room for himself in himself. He finds no space to rest in his own heart, not because it is full, but because it is void. Yet if he knew that the void itself, when hovered over by the Spirit, is an abyss of creativity… he cannot believe it. There is no room for belief.” – Thomas Merton

Would you believe we have been here before, in histories real and imagined? Men waging war, beating their chests, cities burning and crumbling under the weight of our ego, the world on the brink because of our unwillingness to stare into the void and truly see what we are afraid to see. These are not new developments within our story, yet the story never repeats, it only rhymes. There are character traits that carry from one person to another, but the way the story plays out always comes with a new twist. And for every zig that comes, we can zag.

For every fire, there is a stream. For every dictator and government, there is a quiet place and a quiet peoples. For every moment in time where hope seems lost, there is the intervention of the sacred, whether we know it or not. While the history of great men, the history of the West, is a history of imperialist tendencies and abject racism that manifests within demagogues such as Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, the history we have of hope speaks of a different outcome.

“And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” – Micah 4:3

There are moments in time that seem dark and dour, moments when we come to a crossroads where the world seems ready to burst at the seams and fall apart. The antithesis of those moments have manifested themselves in hope and radical amazement.  Walter Brueggemann, a leading scholar in Old Testament Studies, writes and speaks of the notion of “prophetic imagination.” That, in the Hebrew prophetic tradition, we have an example of men (and women) who go beyond the realm of philosophical inquiry in an attempt to understand the world and try to hit at the heart of things. A tradition that is in communion with a higher message than that of intellectuals, politicians, or the ego.

No matter what we are told by the men among us and the men who think they rule us body and soul, we have a feeling, a spark within us, that can never be extinguished and works against all we have been told to accept as part of our society. The message of prophetic imagination is not one of men predicting the future, which is what we usually associate the nature of prophecy with in terms of mode and intention. The message of the prophets is one of radical truth, of facing the reality of our situation and accept it so as to understand the true nature of our immediate reality as we have currently shaped it in our image. Then, when we have registered the reality, we hope. We choose hope.

“Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.” – Walter Brueggemann

Hope is one way to embody a philosophy and perspective the great rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel coined as “radical amazement.” Radical amazement is the principal attitude toward life that Heschel says should be taken by men of spirit and religion, that we must have a wonder and appreciation for life. We lose that appreciation when we desire for ourselves, become bogged down in our differences and our conflicts instead of focusing on what brings us together and makes each of us unique and important to the whole of the world experience. A lack of wonder welcomes darkness and dourness, times when hope and wonder are needed most. Hope is what gives us the strength to see the world differently, radical amazement and wonder is what occurs when a better vision of the world is realized and lived through the power of hope.

The world is a mess, but keep in mind, being human is utterly messy. Being human is also utterly beautiful. The wicked and the wise live side by side at all times in history; kings and commoners, truth and falsities. Humanity embodies multitudes, contradictions, both dark and the light (Okay there Matt, getting a little too cliched there for me…). Being better, being our best selves, requires an intense amount of work. The perfection of the art of living means to constantly self-examine, to put our own interests aside and sacrifice what is best for the self and do what is best for the world.

Men of power and men of influence have not remembered that lately – but this should not come to us as a surprise. Even so, always try to be surprised, to be grateful. Surprised by our ability to gather and fight for a better world, to feed each other when we are hungry, to help each other when we are down. Embodying hope is exhausting, but necessary in the face of an abyss we may not come back from. We will make mistakes, we will falter, but as long as we have a drive for the good, we can embody the truth of our very essence.

There will always be men who crave power and destruction for the sake of their own ends. However, as long we embody hope that can lead us to awe of the world and the radical amazement needed to appreciate life, as long as we commit ourselves to deeds that make the world a little brighter in the midst of despair, we will ensure love prevails.

“It is not by the rare act of greatness that character is determined, but by everyday actions, by a constant effort to rend our callousness. It is constancy that sanctifies.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel

 

 

 

Deal with Yourself: Or Why MNDFLness is Bad for You

Recently, mindfulness has become the latest self-help craze in the United States, especially as it connects with Buddhist meditation practices. Writers at the New York Times have done a very good job of documenting the phenomenon of mindfulness throughout the past two years. As Virginia Heffernan has noted in her 2015 article on the matter, the word “mindfulness” itself was derived out of a sort of mistranslation of the Pali word sati, a word that more closely translates to “memory of the present” than simply the one word we now refer to as its replacement. As Buddhist practice became more popular throughout the ’60s and ’70s, so did its connections to “being more present,” and the general conceit and concept and well-being, both of which I would say Buddhism provides.

As the Buddhist Dharma came to the West, it essentially ran into capitalism. And certain enterprises and ideas that seek to help us escape the demands of a capitalistic society sure do have a way of becoming ensnared by that same economic structure. As Heffernan notes in the article, which I suggest you peruse quickly, mindfulness and the “well-being” it would lead to became a major industry under the Buddhist teacher John Kabat-Zinn, but I am not writing this to point the finger at any particular individual – the fingers have already been pointed at so many within the Buddhist community and in Buddhist scholarship. However, that’s why I mentioned capitalism – because capitalism makes us all complicit! Hooray!

Further adding to the research and analysis provided by his colleague Heffernan a year before, David Gelles writes in a 2016 New York Times article, mindfulness itself has become its own self-sustaining corporate entity of sorts. We have seen this with the commodification of yoga in the West (please, try and tell me it was not commodified, I will fight you), especially with Lululemon and their yoga-focused products. Because when you’re a yogi, you go to a high-end clothes store to make sure you are prepared to forgo all material comforts in the heart of India to become one with the Brahman. Companies, “meditation teachers,” and DVDs all provide courses to get you on the right track in life. Yet, one development in particular has caught my attention and the attention of many other Buddhists: MDNFL. Other than ridding their name of all vowels to appeal to the Millennial demographic that strives to be semi-illiterate, MNDFL describes itself as a meditation studio that “exists to enable humans to feel good.”

Now, I could continue to tell you more and bring up other issues and questions I have. Like, how does MNDFL have guided mantra practice when the meaning of the words themselves do not carry the historical or symbolic significance they are meant to within a temple or the proper Buddhist sectarian setting? Do any of these “meditation teachers” have the authority to guide Buddhist meditation by being the successor of a Dharma lineage, that is, have they received the utmost authority from Zen masters and Buddhist abbots to teach others the rigorous techniques of meditation. Or, boy, how much money do you want me to throw at you to give me the privilege to sit my ass down on a cushion, something I could do at home for free if I was not always getting so distracted by watching the X-Files on Netflix?

None of those questions matter because the first actual sentence, which I assume is the thesis and motivational statement of the company itself, is inherently wrong. Meditation does not “exist to enable humans to feel good.” Buddha never said to any of his followers that he wanted to make sure they had a place to decompress from their jobs after working at an online retailer start-up all day. Saint Anthony the Great, that most bad-ass of the Desert Fathers, did not go into the Egyptian Desert because he wanted to get a tan. Meditation, contemplation, prayer – these are not practices you start to intensely engage in for the sake of making yourself feel better.

In the words of Brad Warner, Zen priest and punk rocker extraordinaire: “Real wisdom is the ability to understand the incredible extent to which you bullshit yourself every single moment of every day.”

Mindfulness, meditation, yoga, centering prayer, etc., etc. – they are good for people. They really can be, if you believe in them and devote your time and energy to one of those practices. The fact is, being more aware of your surroundings and who you are as a person and being present in the moment are aspects of our being we need to recognize every day. They help to not only center and ground us, but to make sure we can participate in our life and in our conscious experience of the subjective or objective to levels we may consider to be almost 100%. It is better to be an engaged and participating member of life than go through our day-to-day grind in a haze, unaware of the ways we may be harming ourselves and others. This is no way to go through life.

However, this does not mean we can take these religious/spiritual practices and fit them into our framework of commodified consumerism we in the West are so used to engaging with. Spirituality, faith, religiosity – believe it or not, the principles of most major wisdom traditions do not jive very easily with late capitalism. We cannot simply consume the teachings of these religions to create a better state of mind for ourselves in the hope we come out a happier person. Because, in reality, meditation and mindfulness are not practices that are intended to make you think happy thoughts and replace all the negative, nasty feelings we have about ourselves with happy ones.

Not only that, but we cannot and should not tear away all that is essential to these mindfulness and meditation practices within the context of the wisdom traditions they belong to. As I write that sentence though, I know I am already too late, but the point still stands in my mind. Yoga itself uses mantras and positions that are divorced from the gods and worship ceremonies they are identified with in the context of Hindu spiritual practice, but that does not deter people from the practice. I have known a lot of people who have found out more about Hinduism and its teachings because of yoga, but there are still a majority of people who may practice without any knowledge of what the practices they are engaging with are really meant to do.

This goes doubly for Buddhism. Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism ascribes an exalted position to the lotus position of seated meditation. The lotus position was the same way the Buddha meditated when he sat under the Bodhi tree and found enlightenment. Not only that, but the position is ascribed with helping one achieve the state of nirvana, or “extinction,” meaning they may not come back after death after having found enlightenment. However, if you strip meditation of the context and concepts of rebirth, enlightenment, and nirvana, then in what context are you practicing meditation in? To feel good? What if that is not enough?

Meditation is a whirlwind of a mental and bodily exercise that makes us hallucinate, feel intense emotions, and reckon with the demons in our lives to an extent we are not used to dealing with. Saint Anthony the Great battles hordes of demons in the Egyptian waste before he came back a wiser man. Buddha confronted Mara, lord of temptation and personification of death for three days before he reached enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. Jesus pile-drived Satan all Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson-style in the desert after a forty day cage match.

If you want to feel good about yourself and be happy, that is your right as a human being. However, co-opting ancient spiritual practices and tearing away the contexts they are meant to inhabit to make them more palatable to a more modern and supposedly rational crowd does not mean you are stripping the practice of that which is inessential. In fact, you may be taking away the much needed environment and tools needed to make sure your journey into mindfulness will actually pay off in the long-run and make you a better person, not simply a person with a nice feeling in their stomach. Going into a “meditation studio,” you can escape the world and sit on a cushion for a fee every month to think happy thoughts. However, that studio and that nice little cushion may not save you from the thing you are actually running away from every time you might be entering MNDFL: Yourself.

To once again quote the Zen Buddhist teacher Brad Warner: “Zen tears away every false refuge in which you might hide from the truth and forces you to sit naked before what is real.”

Care less about feeling good, and start caring more about being good.

 

 

 

 

Growing into Faith: Taking Responsibility for Truth

If my last article was an exhortation for people to take their time to become more educated about the topic of religion, this next article is the natural outgrowth of learning and growing – to take responsibility and act maturely.

Those were the themes I had in mind as I chose the picture above as the banner for this article. A photo of young Buddhist monks being presented at the temple for their ordination, these young monks will most likely spend their days reading scripture, traveling from monastery to monastery to learn from different teachers, and eventually settle down into one particular community, taking responsibility for the life of their monastic community and overall well-being of their home.

This is how most of us enter our faith tradition, as young children, unaware of the tradition or the teachings we are about to embody for the rest of our lives. This is not necessarily a bad thing; people baptize and initiate their children into various faith/wisdom traditions each and every day with the best of intentions that following the particular teachings of that tradition will help make them a good person. However, initiation into a certain faith can also be the result of an unquestioning adherence to family tradition and societal norms. The latter is not necessarily bad either, it just comes off as lazy.

I can hear what some people may be saying as they read that last paragraph.

“Not everyone has the time to learn as much about religion as you think they should learn.”

“Maybe they like the tradition they entered into, there’s noting wrong with that.”

“Why am I reading this article when I could be doing a hundred other more productive things with my life?”

Well, dear reader, you hit the nail on the head with that last one. As for the first two statements, I do not disagree. I am neither asking people to devote their free time to constantly reading books about religion and culture, nor am I asking people to abandon the faith and traditions they grew up with. Yet, there is a precedent set within the great wisdom traditions themselves, a precedent of introspection and dialogue that should be met as often as possible. The majority of believers do not want to engage in any sort of dialogue with their faith or what they believe. But if you are going to church, temple, or meditation every day without asking the hard questions, well…

Then you may not have any faith at all.

This is a question of profundity as much as it is a question of authenticity. Spirituality lends itself to profound experiences and profound conundrums, but it is whether we face the questions the profundity of the universe puts on us that defines the authenticity of both our beliefs and our being. As I said in the previous article, we need to educate ourselves, and in educating ourselves to have an open mind. Only by having an open mind are we bound to have an experience that is the antithesis of quiescent faith – we start to have a relation with the world. As the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton writes in his posthumous work Love and Living:

“The purpose of education is to show us how to define ourselves authentically and spontaneously in relation to our world – not to impose a prefabricated definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of ourselves as individuals. The world is made up of the people who are fully alive in it: that is, of the people who can be themselves in it and can enter into a living and fruitful relationship with each other in it. The world is, therefore, more real in proportion as the people in it are able to be more fully and more humanly alive: that is to say, better able to make a lucid and conscious use of their freedom.”

We could take this as a more theologically fanciful way of saying “the unexamined life is not worth living,” but that is not what Merton is trying to say. Spirituality/Religion/Faith/Shopping at Target is a realm of being and understanding we can only start to truly be involved with when we engage in the dialogue/dialectic it presents to us. Being in dialogue with your spirituality is to hold up a mirror to yourself – to engage with yourself and your own questions is to engage with God.

Therefore, the wiggle room for “God told me to do this,” or “God said stealing that Porsche was okay because that man did not really need it” (he didn’t really need it anyway, no worries, you’re in the clear) becomes nonexistent. As in, there’s no room for that bullshit. The realm of religiosity or spirituality does not afford us the convenience of leaving everything up to a higher power or say he was the reason we did everything in the first place. The primary issue with this way of thinking is that it lends itself to determinism, which, fine, I guess it’s totally not my fault I ate that whole pizza by myself, it was supposed to happen anyway. Secondly, this is the highest mark of a lack of maturity or growth. The practices and precepts people of faith follow are not there so we can rely on Christ, Buddha, Jehovah, or Guru Nanak Dev. They are there to help you become a fully realized, and possible even an awakened, person.

We have a responsibility to ask the difficult questions. We cannot be afraid to evolve and change as people. This fear of understanding just how quickly and abruptly we may change is what usually makes people slink back from engaging with difficult questions in the first place. However, it is fear itself that metastasizes into the traits that faith routinely works against. Fear leads to ignorance, ignorance leads to hate, and hate ultimately leads to suffering. If you want to become a Sith Lord, that’s cool, then I just laid out the path to your ultimate success for you without having to watch the prequels (you are very welcome, no thanks needed). As I said in my last article, we need to have open minds, and that means we must be open to change and open to the unknown. Only when we confront the situations of our life with open hearts are we able to radically respond in new ways and radically renew our relationship with the world.

The best example I can muster is one that the Father of Existentialism, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) brings up in one of his more famous works, Fear and Trembling. In this work, Kierkegaard uses Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as his main character. Usually taken as a model of great faith and fortitude, Kierkegaard gives us an altogether different individual. The Abraham we encounter in Kierkegaard’s writing is one that is constantly plagued by doubt and consternation as to the reason why his new deity has asked him to travel so far from civilization, only to give him a son in his old age so that he may sacrifice him as an offering to the divine.

Abraham follows through with carrying out the task (until he is told he does not have to sacrifice his son, that it was all a test), but all the time he is fearful of what may happen if he does not listen to this god and constantly questions the wisdom and sanity of what he is about to do. In this individual, in this model of the “dark night of faith,” we see a figure who is plagued by doubt and change and an inability to comprehend what he is about to do. But he takes responsibility for his actions and carries them out, wracked with guilt before the change of fortune at the end.

Life, and life lived through faith traditions, is messy. We do not always have the answers we may want or seek, but we must ask the questions necessary for not only our survival, but our growth as a people. Constant questions can drive anyone crazy, and that is not the point of this article, but we must learn to be mature and reasonable people in the midst of opaque and existential phenomena in our interior lives. We cannot pretend the situations and frames of mind we find ourselves in from time to time are enjoyable, or that there will be an invisible force alongside us to always get us out of a jam. The best way to grow is to engage with whatever faith you may hold, because only by communicating with the principles and foundation of our being are we able to possibly find the Truth we may have always been searching for, even if we never knew what we were looking for in the first place. You may be surprised what you find when you learn to shoulder the weight of what our faiths may entail.

“Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart.” – Rumi

Let’s Stop Being Jagoffs: Study a Little More Religion

Disclaimer: This essay is by no means meant to be negative, simply reflective of the reality that I have dealt with over the past five years.

With that said…

The one subject you cannot talk to the majority of people about is religion. Either they do not get it, they do not want to get it, or they don’t give a rat’s ass. I wish I encountered the first and third more often, but the second option is usually the one I encounter the most. There are many subjects people do not want to be educated on, for some reason or another. People don’t want to learn another language because it may be difficult for them, people may not want to learn to cook something new because they are fine with eating meat and potatoes their entire life. Pick a realm of life, and there are bound to be people that are set in their ways, or who would like to spend their time learning other things.

But you would think that people would be more than willing to take five minutes out of their day to learn more about a subject the majority of people believe their eternal salvation or damnation hinges on.

Now, here’s the part of this essay where I have to qualify exactly what I am talking about:

• No, I am not talking about people who hold onto their faith for very personal, or sentimental, reasons.
• I am not talking about grandmas. Grandmas get a free pass in all matters of spirituality. In fact, call your grandma right now. If I was the Pope, I would totally declare it a mortal sin (i.e., a “totally uncool thing to do” for you non-Christians) to not call your grandma.
• I am not talking about fundamentalists and/or evangelicals. In fact, some of them know more about religion than you people because they care a lot. Hence the way they are grouped.

Who am I talking about? I am talking about you, dear reader, the person who has enough time to read this essay, but not enough time to read Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s Islam: Religion, History, Civilization or Karen Armstrong’s Buddha or Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (you…you should probably be writing these down…no, it’s okay, I’ll wait).

I have a very good example I want to cite: Bill Maher. Maher is a comedian that somehow convinced television producers he had the ability to comment on heavy and complex topics concerning the current state of the world. The latest incarnation of this partnership has been, and continues to be, Real Time with Bill Maher. Now, the reason why I cite Bill Maher (of all possible examples I could use) is because Bill Maher consistently says he stands for “liberal principles.” He says he stands for the best version of America that respects the ideals we were founded upon, or at least you can surmise as much from what Maher believes he stands for. However, time and time again Bill Maher will tell just about anyone that listens to him how much he dislikes Islam.

Like, guys, Bill Maher really does not like Islam, why are you not doing anything about it? As viewed in the video here, Maher will even tell Ben Affleck how much he does not like Islam (and, in return, Ben Affleck does not like Bill Maher, which is refreshing). The person Maher is flanked by in this video is Sam Harris, an atheist thinker who has some of his own problems. Why do I choose Bill Maher out of everyone to use as a prime example? Because he is a public figure that sets himself up as an example of discourse and understanding, but consistently fails to hold himself up to an educated standard. Though, none of this makes Bill Maher a special example. He is not alone. In fact, Bill Maher represents the populace of the United States as a whole, especially when we are still willing to fan the flames of ignorance and hate by rallying behind a candidate that talks about banning the practitioners of Islam and practically make Christianity the state religion (which is…you know…against the law, kind of).

Which brings me to my point: Guys, pick up a book.

I swear, books are fun. They’re like a cool movie for the inside parts of your head.

Learning about religion yourself is the only way you will start to know anything about religion that is worthwhile knowing. The spiritual leaders, the practitioners, and the priests, ministers, imams, rabbis, etc., will not help you. That’s not saying anything about them personally, but religious people are not in the business of making sure you learn everything about your beliefs or the beliefs of other religions. Their main role in life is to give people a nice fuzzy feeling in the middle of their chest one to two hours every week, and then make sure people take that nice fuzzy feeling and hope life does not knock it out of them before Friday comes along. If you want to know how Taoists conceive of the cosmos, or what exactly are the beliefs of the Australian aborigines, or how exactly Christianity turned from a Jewish reform movement into a full-blown syncretic tapestry of Judaic beliefs blended with Roman pagan organization, then you need to pick up a book yourself.

But the minute you pick up a book to learn about religion, the chance that everything you believed in that made you feel safe in the universe and gave you the idea that you have a purpose in some overarching plan in the universe is going to go away very quickly. Studying religion, philosophy, or theology is not the type of journey that will make you feel more secure. In fact, you study religion in order to doubt the status quo and ask the tough questions, to lay out all the options and potentiality before you and see what life may have in store for you. What I am trying to say in this paragraph is that, if you study religion, chances are you are not going to come out the same person as when you started, and you are going to have to learn to be okay with that.

The reason I am saying all of this is because, as someone who has spent almost the last decade of my life learning as much information about religion as possible, it is impossible to communicate what you believe. Or think. Or feel. Because religion is a topic and way of life with many paths and many interpretations that span millennia, and all some people know is the message they hear from their pastor or the books/videos they are told will help “educate” them in a way that will make them a stronger believer. And, in essence, religion is not so much about believing as it is about being. Being is not something that is easily communicated through the veil of culture, class, ideology, tradition, and community. So you may have a harder time communicating to people how you think and feel because you are studying a subject that is “weird” and kind of “uncool.” Which are the reasons we do not have enough people in this world that understand exactly just what religion/spirituality is, and what it aims to do.

If you want to study religion like I did (which was through college), please, have an open mind and study a little bit of everything. If you want to study religion in your own way, still, have an open mind. We don’t need more Bill Mahers in the world. What we need more of is cool bearded philosophers and monks.

More beards is better for everyone.

Hope this rant was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.

 

SOON

After a summer focused on attempting to find a job, finishing my graduate program, working two summer jobs that were physically demanding albeit invigorating, and absorbing as much material as I possibly can through meditation, reading, and watching video essays, I finally have the time and focus to devote to this blog again. Expect updates very soon, anyone who follows this blog. Material will be up in the next few days.

Thank you for your patience.

— Matt

The law of love: Being human in an inhuman age

Signum

by Matthew Kizior ’11

Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God. – Thomas Merton

Merton often referred to the denizens of the twentieth century as “children of the atom”: inheritors of a modern world crafted out of the genius of scientific discovery, a world that

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