Awake in This Life

Over at the Washington Post’s, On Faith section, John Mark Reynolds makes the point that humility supports our spiritual evolution. He also suggests that we have little control over God’s plan for us:

The events that impact a nation are ultimately in God’s hands. Because God loves human beings, He does not always give us what “we deserve.” No nation, and this includes our beloved United States of America, would long survive that test

That does not mean that God’s will is easy to understand. God’s actions are difficult to read in history, because His world is complicated. The blessings earnestly prayed for in one nation may bring harm to another people. God balances great complexity in making this the best possible world for free human beings.

This is all well and good, but to assume that God is somehow separate from us puts us squarely in the dualism that hinders real humility. How arrogant for any of us, in other words, to assume that we are in anyway separate from the Infinite. The shattering realization that all of us are dynamic expressions of the inseparability of Spirit, or God, or the Infinite is precisely what offers us glimpses of an authentic humility; one that includes everyone and everything, eternally.

Interesting writing by Brian D. McLaren over at the Washington Post’s “On Faith” section:

A lot of people say that the deeper you go, the more all religions are the same. Based on my study and experience, that statement strikes me as potentially quite misleading.

This goes along with what I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Buddhism losing traction in the East. What’s the best way to get people back into the temple? Maybe a little messianic mythology and claims of reincarnated Buddhas could inspire clinging and attract droves of faithful.

Who knows? Most importantly, who is it that cares? Get to the root of that question and one can’t help but see that we are all Buddhas.

Barbara O’Brien at About.com writes a blog titled, Japanese Buddhism: Going Out of Business? Based on my travels over the last decade, I’d have to say that I agree with her observations. I’d also say that the idea that we should return to the fundamental approaches of the past will only make Buddhism more irrelevant to 21st Century citizens of the world.

Some suggest Japanese Buddhism needs to re-embrace the Vinaya-pitaka, the rules for monks given by the historical Buddha that are still, for the most part, observed in the rest of Asia. Celibacy is high on the list of rules. Others call for Japanese Buddhism to diversify — branch out into teaching the dharma and providing social services other than funerals. However it’s done, Japanese Buddhism seems in dire need of a revival.

So what should the revival look like? It will be interesting, whatever happens. But the East would do well to steal a few pages out of the West’s playbook on this one.  If Buddhism is to survive, it must do a Western thing and become a dynamic, living expression of relevance. When the stillness of the East, meets this dynamism of the West, we’ll have something far more accessible to people. Done correctly, the core of the teaching might avoid becoming diluted thus avoiding a New Buddhist circus of “feel good” evangelism.

Bill Maher speaks of his newly released film, Religulous:

I don’t use the word “atheist” about myself, because I think it mirrors the certitude I’m so opposed to in religion. What I say in the film is that I don’t know. I don’t know what happens when you die, and all the religious people who claim they do know are being ridiculous. I know that they don’t know any more than I do. They do not have special powers that I don’t possess. When they speak about the afterlife with such certainty and so many specifics, it just makes me laugh.

I’ve written and spoken at length about this over some time. Again and again I’ve argued that I’m pretty certain that certitude leads to war. Or in spiritual terms, that attachment generates suffering. The problem is that Maher’s certitude makes him sound like a fundamentalist in rationalist’s clothing:

People can tell you, “Oh yes, when you get to Paradise there are 72 virgins, not 70, not 75.” Or they say, “Jesus will be there sitting at the right hand of the Father, wearing a white robe with red piping. There will be three angels playing trumpets.” Well, how do you know this? It’s just so preposterous. So, yes, I would like to say to the atheists and agnostics, the people who I call rationalists, let’s stop ceding the moral high ground to the people who believe in the talking snake. Let’s have our voices heard and be in the debate. Let’s stand up and say we’re not ready to let the country be given over to the Sarah Palins of the world.

To be fair, I agree with much of what he is saying, and, let it be known that have not seen the film yet so feel free to discount my premature commentary. Our baby daughter came down with a slight bug so my wife and I have been home-bound, which has forced us to watch a selection of Tivoed mediocrity instead of getting to the theater. That said, reviews and Maher’s own comments seem to center around his clinging to his version of what is false. We call this “fundamentalism.”

More to come.

Deepak Chopra compares Sarah Palin to the shadow of Barak Obama in a recent commentary:

Palin’s pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.” For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind.

His essay is worth a read since doing so reminds us of how sticky politics can be for any of us. Then again, anyone on the Path can let the attachments, both gross and trivial, point them in the direction of Awakening. Watching our clinging, in other words, offers us disidentification from whatever our attachments might be.

I admit that I was transfixed by the Olympics last night. It was amazing to watch Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt do the impossible.

But I Tivo’d Rick Warren’s interview with Obama and McCain last night and upon my early morning review, and then listening to the Sunday Morning TV Gab, I came away with an interesting mix of feelings.

First of all, I’m interested in how many Americans are truly interested in the depth of a candidates religious convictions and what this might or might not imply.

Further, what does it say about a person running for office if they cling to the ideas that support a mythic god?

Then, to what extent, and in what capacity, should those of us who don’t cling to a mythic god care about what the candidates said last night?

Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe writes well about the event, as does Andrew Sullivan.

While I happened upon this discussion late, I liked it very much. Both men are intelligent, passionate and polite.

In their exchange Harris, author of The End of Faith, establishes a definition:

I think that faith is, in principle, in conflict with reason (and, therefore, that religion is necessarily in conflict with science), while you do not.

Sullivan, author of The Conservative Soul, goes with this:

Agreed. As the Pope said last year, I believe that God is truth and truth is, by definition, reasonable. Science cannot disprove true faith; because true faith rests on the truth; and science cannot be in ultimate conflict with the truth.

Of course, it continues on.

Despite their eloquence, however, I’d have to say that they miss the holiest (if I may) of all points. The problem is not that either one of them is necessarily right or wrong, it’s that they are both looking at the reality that both faith, and faith-in-God, point to as something outside of this very experience. It seems that Harris clings to the notion that God is a lie that exists out there in the minds of those people. Sullivan clings to the idea that God is the name and form of omnipotent truth. Either way, both cling to a version of their personal truth and are thus establishing the very boundary of separation that will keep the mind in control of the search. This is what Buddhist teaching suggests will build the inertia of attachment. And attachment causes fundamentalism to arise no matter whose “truth” it is that one seeks to defend.

There is much more as both Harris and Sullivan carry on. Enjoy.

On beliefnet.com today Deepak Chopra blogs:

In any system of organized religion, belief trumps first-hand experience. Such an experience, when it is truly spiritual, brings a sense of universality, far beyond our concepts of race and creed.

Interesting echo of the section from p. 72 in AiTL, titled Anger and Dogma.

It is important to remember that the events of insight are neither the measure nor the point of meditation. Rather than the flashiness of the Zen awakening experience called satori, our Path to Enlightenment is only about incorporating disciplined and conscious stillness in our day-to-day life. It’s a simple recipe for each of us: stop grasping, and engage the relaxation of our individual consciousness into the expansiveness of Universal Awareness—and, in doing so, move into our Big House.

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