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.

Over at EnlightenNext Magazine, Maura R. O’Connor writes a great piece on the downside of self-esteem.

Self-esteem is generally defined as the confidence in one’s own merit as an individual. Since the 1970s, when baby boomers discovered and embraced the concept en masse, it has become a tenet of the psychological canon and is so ingrained in popular wisdom and parenting techniques as to seem like natural law: The higher a person’s self-esteem, the happier, more productive, and more mentally healthy that person will be. Like most people my age, I’m a product of this movement, which means that from a very young age I’ve had parents and teachers telling me that I’m fundamentally great and that it’s important for me to know and accept this fact. So how did I rate on the self-esteem test? Let’s just say I’m not lacking any.

She goes on:

In her recently published book Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—And More Miserable Than Ever Before (2007), psychologist Jean M. Twenge cites a fascinating statistic. In the 1950s, just twelve percent of teens age fourteen to sixteen agreed with the statement “I am an important person.” Yet by the late 1980s, an incredible seven times that—eighty percent—of teens said they agreed with it. The increase attests to the steadily greater adherence in America’s schools, families, and popular culture to the belief in the power of self-esteem.

What are the implications of this? A lack of coping skills, perhaps?

In Karen Armstrong’s recent post, Calling All Religions to Compassion, she rightly brings up some key points of integration for traditions:

Compassion is indeed central to every one of the major world religions — but sometimes you would never know it. Increasingly religion is associated with violence and intolerance; it seems preoccupied with dogma, belief, getting to heaven, or enforcing correct sexual behavior. There are magnificent exceptions, of course, but it is rare to hear religious leaders speaking of the primary importance of compassion. People don’t even seem to know what it means.

What’s fascinating are the responses from people.

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.

Check out this great post by Bodhipaksa over at Wildmind.org.

Money quote:

So for the last few days I’ve been checking in with myself while parenting, not just seeing whether or not I’m happy, but seeing what I can do to bring about more happiness. My inner mindfulness bell will ring, I’ll remember to check in with myself while playing with or taking care of my daughter, and find sometimes that I’m not really engaged, part of me wishing that I was reading a book or watching a movie. So I bring my attention more into the present moment, appreciating how delightful my daughter is, appreciating that I’m alive and aware, relaxing my body, and letting myself be happy.

Pics Along the Path

Originally uploaded by Michael G. McAlister

Morning sky in Lafayette, CA

I was impressed years ago when I read Paul Kennedy’s book, Preparing for the 21st Century. In it there is a chapter on the dilemma that the US faces: whether or not it has the capacity, or desire, to adjust to a changing world.

Among the many topics that fascinated me, none was more powerful than the idea surrounding America’s ability to mobilize and meet military challenges anywhere in the world within forty-eight hours. This global reach and access to “hard power”, as Kennedy puts it, has its limits and its costs, however. Just because the hammer works well, as the cliché goes, doesn’t mean that every problem is a nail.

So in the International Herald Tribune this morning, Kennedy writes about the potential for the US to begin using “soft power” as a way of getting its needs met. In my reading, I was struck by how his description reminded me of what enlightened communication might look like geopolitically:

What the next president needs to do is recognize clearly what the hopes are that have made him so popular in so many different parts of the world: the African hopes that he will give real help to their troubled continent; the desires across Latin America that he will keep to liberal policies on trade and immigration, offer to ease the impasse with Cuba, and pay their region real respect; the yearnings in Europe, Canada and Australasia that he will take seriously America’s obligations toward international institutions and treaties, including environmental and anti-protectionist commitments; and the moderate-Arab hopes that he will offer more than lip service to the Palestinians.

Let’s hope that opening replaces closure and power can manifest as something that serves to increase the world’s consciousness as opposed to something that serves the one-sidedness of egoic self-interest.

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.

In a a recent post over at Intent Blog, Deepak Chopra writes about taking a vow of non-violence in his thinking, speaking and his actions in front of an audience of 500 people at a plenary session of The Alliance for a New Humanity.

I told them if they were ready to take this vow, they should stand up.

People stood up, one by one at first, then in groups of twos and threes, and finally in tidal waves, until more than 450 people had stood up and taken the vow.

Following this, everybody agreed to have at least two people in their lives take the vow. The two in turn, would have two others join them in taking the vow. Our immediate goal now is to get 100 Million people across the world to take this vow. In the meantime, we will be setting up ways to measure and support the dramatic effects this tidal wave of shift in consciousness is going to create.

While I have tremendous respect for Dr. Chopra and the work he does, I think he is walking a dangerous line here. Based on his words, he’s conflating his “vow” with “attachment”. And to make matters potentially disastrous, he’s collectivizing the attachment by asking others to stand and publicly make the same vow with him. This tactic usually leads to deeper suffering since the purity of its intention can so easily mask an attachment to an outcome. Of course the goal is a good one. Yet in situations like this, well-meaning but confused practitioners begin to cling to their vows and then turn them in to instruments of what may very well end up looking like Spiritual McCarthyism.

There is a way around this trap. Instead of encouraging people to metaphorically sign a loyalty oath, Dr. Chopra and the rest of us who teach should encourage our students to become deeply intimate with the violence in each and every aspect of life. We should encourage all beings to look carefully at the impulses that lead to violence in our speech, our thoughts, and our actions. Doing so allows us to make vows for peace rather than making vows against violence. Making a vow against anything gives birth to both fundamentalism and war.