Punctum Saliens

Do a Google search on “prospero kansas city book burning” and read about our local book burning. The first page contains links to NBC, Fox News, Amazon, and a bunch of blogs. I’m all with Tom on this one. As he says, “not reading a book is as good as burning it.”

I went down to Prospero’s today and picked up 10 books for 10 bucks. There was a lot of crap in the pile and I’m not sorry to see a lot of it go. I definitely do not think that just because a book was written makes it worthy of reading. But I’m not going to be the Book Nazi. If you want to read crap, go ahead and buy that crap and read it.

If a book is just going to sit on a shelf in a storage room or warehouse collecting dust and becoming worm food, then you might as well burn it. At least you can toast some marshmallows and sing a few campfire songs while you’re doing it.

Hey, anyone know where we can get a book of old campfire songs???

You can really learn a lot from a one year old. My daughter has a cold — runny nose, juicy sneezes, etc. Occasionally she will get a little fussy or cranky but for the most part she acts the same as when she is not sick. I can still make her smile and laugh. She still listens to stories. She still crawls around on the floor and plays.

Unlike me! Most of us shut down when we are sick or have headaches or other pains. We don’t smile or laugh. We want to be left alone. We want the world to know that we are miserable. And if we do allow any interaction it must be perfectly clear that we are allowing it at great sacrifice to ourselves.

Stephen Levine, in Who Dies? talks about sickness as a dress rehearsal for death. From the chapter titled “Be Also Ready” (emphasis mine):

In a way, it seems strange that we are so unprepared for death, considering how many opportunities we have to open to what is unexpected or even disagreeable. Each time we don’t feel well, each time we have the fly or a kidney stone or a pain and stiffness in the back, we have the opportunity to see that sooner or later some pain or illness is going to arise that won’t diminish but will increase until it displaces us from the body. We can use each such situation as an extraordinary opportunity to practice the death chant, to practice Gandhi’s closeness with God. We are reminded again and again of the process we are. Continually opportunities arise to practice letting go of this solidness, to tune to the ongoing process, to sense the spaciousness in which it’s all unfolding.

Why wait until the pain is too great to focus the mind? Why not use each moment of sickness, each flu, each cold, each slight injury, as a reminder to let go, to open to the intenisty arising?

When pain or sickness arises I see there is the option to open to it, not holding or pushing it away, not blocking it, not intensifying it. When I open to it as a teacher it no longer reinforces identification with “the sufferer,” “the victim of circumstances,” It’s just what is. And as I try to open to it, I see how it is a perfect preparation for whatever might come next, a deeper letting go. It shows me how I hold to any expectation that life has to be any way at all. Being sick or accidentally hitting my thumb with a hammer becomes preparation for the impossible, for dying, for living in the next unknown moment of life.

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

—Hsin Hsin Ming by the 3rd Zen patriarch. Translation by Richard B. Clarke

from Who Dies? by Stephen Levine, p. 69.

Your search for “the perfect mango” or “the hottest sports car” has at its core a feeling of unsatisfactoriness. Then there comes the moment of satisfaction. The moving from not having to having that comes as you catch a glimpse of that longed-for mango. You become exhilarated. “Oh, it’s yellow. Oh, what a beautiful mango!” And the mango is in your hand and there is a moment of peace. For a split second there is no desire in the mind and the body feels very light. Peace is experienced not because of the object in our hand but because for a moment desire does not obstruct the joy and quietude of our underlying nature. What we call satisfaction is the momentary experience of the vastness which lies beneath. All of a sudden the clouds part and the sun shines through. The painfulness of desire does not exist. The mind for a moment experiences its wholeness. In that moment of nonwanting, the mind becomes like a clear pool no longer ruffled by the prevailing winds and we can see through the still water to what lies beneath. We experience a moment’s participation in the joyousness that arises as we approach our true nature.

In a split second this satisfaction disappears as other desires arise to protect what it has just acquired. To hide the mango, to plant its seed, to get as much out of it as possible. Freedom is lost in the density of yet more wanting, of yet more protection and self-interest.

—Stephen Levine, Who Dies? (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1982), pp. 44-45. (Emphasis mine)

What we usually call happiness is the ability to re-create previous pleasures. The pursuit of happiness is the attempt to satisfy old desires. The very nature of desire is a feeling of unwholeness, of being incomplete. We see that this thirst creates what could be called the “if only” mind. The yearning that says, “If only I could get my sports car, I’d be happy.” “If only I could get that job, or that date, or that money I need, then everything would be O.K.” But to the degree the mind wants that object yet unmaterialized in its world, the less it can be present for what is happening. It is drifting off in future pleasures or musing on satisfactions past. The whole world narrows to just that desire, just that sports car, that prize, that pretty face. The whole world disappears into expectation and life is missed once again, traded off for a mirage floating in the mind. We seldom make direct contact with reality, but instead live only in the flat silhouettes that it casts in the mind.

— Stephen Levine, Who Dies? (Anchor Books, 1982), pp. 43-44.

From chapter 2, “Being Born,” of Who Dies? by Stephen Levine:

The body dies, the mind is constantly changing. But somehow, behind it all there is a presence, called by some “the deathless,” that is unchanging, that simply is as it is.

To become fully born is to touch this deathlessness. To experience, even for a moment, the spaciousness which goes beyond birth and death. To emerge into a world of paradox and mystery with no weapon but awareness and love.

When I read this, I was struck by its similarity to “born again“? Deathless. Beyond birth and death. A dying body but a living presence.

But Levine is not talking about Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus from John chapter 3. Earlier, he says:

Discover yourself. Because you are the truth. And no one can take you there except you. Buddha left a road map. Jesus left a road map. Krishna left a road map. Rand McNally left a road map. But you still have to travel the road yourself.

No. Levine is talking about the essence of things that is everyone. “Being” itself. Our bodies, our minds, our joys, our fears, all that we attach to are not “us” but are outside “us.” This essence is the church or the body of Christ or the kingdom of Heaven or … One body but many members. One body of which we all are a part.

God is not “out there.” God is “in here.” After all, Jesus said that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and what’s closer to us that our Self, our Being?

Just a thought …

I just started reading Who Dies? by Stephen Levine. Tim Freke recommended this book and I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj to a mutual friend and I am deeply indebted to him. Tim is an amazing person and if you ever get the chance to attend one of his events I highly recommend doing so. Here are a few paragraphs from Chapter 2 of Who Dies?:

There is so much of ourselves we wish not to experience. So much fear, guilt, anger, confusion, and self-pity. Sop much self-doubt, so many weak excuses. Is it any wonder, considering the bizarre insistence of our conditioning — the conflict of one value system with another in the mind — that we feel so incomplete. One moment the mind is saying. “Take a big piece,” and then the next it says, “I wouldn’t have done that if I were you.” No wonder we are all crazy, so fractured, trying to protect ourselves from who we fear we are. We dare not share out minds with anyone, even ourselves. We are so frightened of who we might , of not being loved or lovable for the convolutions of our thoughts.

But states of mind, though uninvited, are constantly coming and going, and some we wish would ever come again. They do, and we find ourselves scrambling for leverage to keep our fear down, experiencing the nausea of our immense insecurity and self-loathing.

This persistent elimination from awareness of unwanted states of mind leaves us constantly feeling threatened as we look and say regretfully, “That can’t be me, that fear isn’t really who I am. Anger isn’t me. That self-hatred, that guilt, can’t be who I am.” But there it is. And you wonder who you really are. How do you open to that which you deny? That which you think somehow shouldn’t be there even though it is?

We wish we were otherwise and that is our hell, our resistance to life.

It is almost as though we have become a fractured image of our original being. Our experience with the world has become like looking into a mirror that a great stone has fallen on and shattered into hundreds of pieces, broken from a single unified reality into some splintered reflection of what is seen, of what is imagined to exist. As we look at this fractured reality, we notice with dismay certain parts of the reflection are not what we wish to see or want to be seen. “I don’t want anyone so see my lust; that’s not such a good thing to have. I’m not supposed to be like that. No one’s mind is as crazy as mine.” So we take a piece out. “Oh, there I am really sorry for myself. If they only knew what my life had been like! Ah, but they don’t.” And that piece is removed as well. You notice your greed and self-interest, the sexual fantasies, the competition and confusion of the mind. And you start picking these pieces out. Because these are unacceptable parts of who you think you are supposed to be.

But I think it is very useful, and indeed more accurate, to call it “the mind” instead of “my mind.”

Because when you call it “my mind” you start removing so many pieces that when you look down at this fractured mirror it reflects back very little of what is real. It only displays those qualities you wish to project as being who you are, eliminating all the rest, eluding your wholeness. We thing we have something to hide. Yet this self-protection is our imprisonment. Imagine if for the next twenty-four hours you had to wear a cap that amplified your thoughts so that everyone within a hundred yards of you could hear every thought that passed through your head. Imagine if the mind were broadcast so that all about you could overhear “your” thoughts and fantasies, “your” dreams and fears. How embarrassed or fearful would you be to go outside? How long would you let your fear of the mind continue to isolate you from the hearts of others? And though this experiment sounds like one which few might care to participate in, imagine how freeing it would be at last to have nothing to hide. And how miraculous it would be to see that all others’ minds too were filled with the same confusion and fantasies, the same insecurity and doubt. How long would it take the judgemental mind to begin to release its grasp, to see through the illusion of separateness, to recognize with some humor the craziness of all beings’ minds, the craziness of mind itself?

To be whole we must deny nothing.

What Levine is saying here really fits in well with the Jungian idea of “the shadow” and how we must integrate our shadow into our lives instead of continuing to repress and deny it. Robert Bly has a marvelous book called A Little Book on the Human Shadow. It truly is “little” — you can easily read the whole thing in one short sitting. In it, Bly compares our shadow with a bag that we drag around behind us and into which we put all the things from ourselves that don’t “work.” All our “negative” traits that we are not “supposed” to have or that are not “socially acceptable” or that are not “religiously acceptable” are shoved into our bag. The problem is that when something happens that triggers the release of one of these emotions — and that inevitably will happen — it comes roaring out of the bag like a sumo wrestler on PCP. If we don’t integrate our shadow it reacts out of our control and that’s not a pretty sight.

As C.G. Jung said: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.”

I’ve been reading I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj and while reading page 15 where he says:

All there is is me, all there is is mine. Before all beginnings, after all endings — I am. All has its being in me, in the ‘I am’, that shines in every living being. Even not-being is unthinkable without me. Whatever happens, I must be there to witness it.

the following thoughts started flowing. They carry on where what I posted here leaves off. These are rough thoughts and were written while drinking coffee and feeding my daughter her lunch. As such they may not be very eloquent or complete but that’s ok. Anyway, here goes …

Don’t you see that Jesus had to portray God as being “out there”? He had enough troubles claiming that he was God’s Son and, therefore, God himself. Imagine if he started saying “Oh, and so are you!” His ministry wouldn’t have lasted three days let alone three years. He was talking to Jews, afterall, who had some real issues with “blasphemy”.

Ravi Zacharias, in the Introduction to Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message, talks about Deepak Chopra “who teaches a doctrine … woven into Vedic teachings, karma, and self-deification.” And the inference is that self-deification is bad because only God can claim to be God. But Zacharias’ version of self-deification is saying “I am the God of the Old Testament. I am the God whose name cannot be pronounced. I am the God who cannot be looked upon or else you will die.” But that’s not what the eastern religions are saying. There is no notion of the God of the OT — there’s no valid comparison between “I am God” said by a westerner and an easterner.

So, Jesus portrayed God as out there but he didn’t stop there. Now, I don’t know where the Jesus and Holy Spirit pieces of the Trinity were in the Old Testament but they were not a big part of it. But they are in the New Testament and this is the evolution I talked about the other post. Let’s see what they are in the NT.

Jesus is the way to God. And we are to be like Jesus. We are called children of God — just as Jesus was the son of God. The Holy Spirit is God in us. God is in us. God is part of us. The character of Jesus is the character in us that points us to God. The Holy Spirit is that part of us that is God.

So, Jesus starts with the bordering-on-blasphemous idea of his being God. He showed us God in human form. This is exactly what we needed. We needed a way to God. This is through Jesus Christ. But if Jesus was the son of God and we are children of God, then isn’t Jesus that part of us that points to God?

That’s all I’ve got … for now.

Motivated by Evangelical Anxieties 1: Is Christianity a Religion of Fear? on the Internet Monk I got back to and finished a post I’ve been working on. Bertrand Russel, in Why I am not a Christian, has this to say about fear and religion:

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of these two things.

Looking back on my experiences growing up, I can now see that there was a lot of fear. At the time, it was “just the way things were.” Fear was a necessary part of Christianity. Fear kept us in line. Fear was a great motivator. Here are some things that had a large fear-factor for me:

Communion: The Protestant communion we took once a month (you know, the trays of cracker niblets and Welch’s siplets passed around while we sat in the pews) was preceeded by a dire warning (at least it seemd dire to me then) to not be “unworthy” or some unnamed but horrible punishment would be executed on you. So, I spent the entire “quiet reflection” time before each course confessing all the sins I could think of so I would be worthy. For me there was no “In Remembrance of Me” — Jesus was the farthest thing from my mind. I was worried about my eternal soul.

Blame and Punishment: Every sinful act had to be assigned to a specific sinner and said sinner had to feel the consequences of said act. Most of the time, as a child, these consequences consisted of various objects being applied with a non-zero force to my sometimes bare ass. And by every sinful act I mean every. For example, while I was in Junior High School I twice lied about what I had for lunch. The first time I was severely warned. The second time I was spanked on my bare ass with a piece of wood. This was to punish my horrendous lie of saying I had a PBJ sandwich for lunch when I really just had a milkshake. Talk about being scared straight!

Fate of my Eternal Soul: I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal saviour when I was three. Then again when I was in elementary school. Then again when I was in Junior High. Then again when I was in High School. I was sure that I hadn’t done it right or that it didn’t take or that I had screwed up so badly that my salvation was taken away. For whatever reason the strength, power, and help that a Christian was supposed to receive from God just wasn’t there for me so I assumed that I must not have been a true Christian. And there’s no motivator quite like the fear of spending eternity with your hair on fire and TMJ from gnashing your teeth 24/7.

Failure: But despite my doubts about my salvation, I didn’t talk to anyone because that would be exposing my failures to everyone. And if I learned anything from my parents it was to hide all the uncomfortable feelings from everyone. I was expected to be a certain way and I played the part pretty well. It was just too scary to admit to anyone that I was faking it. And there would be consequences to pay and I just didn’t want to face them.

Things I was taught that were based on the fearful idea of “better safe than sorry”:

One Shot Deal: This life is the only chance you get. At the end of this life you are either going to Heaven (which is über good) or to Hell (which pretty much sucks). If you die tonight or tomorrow, that’s it. So, you should believe in Jesus Christ right now because you never know what will happen.

The Rapture: Jesus is coming back to earth again but this time as a “thief in the night.” Suddenly, everyone who is on the right side of the dogmatic fence will be gone — leaving behind the clothes they were wearing, the cars they were driving, the planes they were flying. Then Heaven help the rest of us. No one knows when it will happen. There are signs in the Bible but they are vague and probably every age could come up with a contemporary interpretation. It’s all meant to scare you into believing “just to be safe.”

The Tribulation: Ok, you say. Let the rapture happen and then I’ll believe. Sounds reasonable. But I was taught that there’s no free lunch here. There’s a catch to the wait and see strategy. You see, if anyone has heard about Jesus before the rapture it will not be possible for them to be saved after the rapture. Once again it’s “better safe than sorry.” I have no idea where the Biblical backup is for this position but that’s what I was told.

I’m starting a series of posts motivated by the book Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand Russell (1957). I’ll tell you up front that I agree with some of what he says and disagree with some of what he says. I think some of his opinions are right on and others are ill-conceived, illogical, and totally ridiculous.

First from the Preface, written by Russell himself:

I think all the great religions of the world — Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism — both untrue and harmful. It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they disagree, not more than one of them can be true.

A classic argument. Interestingly enough, some Christians make the same claim and use it in their “proof” that Christianity is the only true religion. One oft used “proof” is the Blind Men and the Elephant analogy (also here). The claim is that everyone is totally wrong. Everyone, that is, except for the Christian citing the example and those in his camp who have the ability to somehow see the “real” truth. The problem is that he doesn’t place himself anywhere near the blind men or the elephant. He, apparently, has super powers that let him step out of the scenario, shed his blind fold, see the elephant as an elephant, and allow him to condemn all those poor, poor blind souls to hell for all of eternity. Sort of reminds me of Captain Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn when he admits to reprogramming the computers during the simulation test and, thereby, wins the unwinnable scenario. All too convenient, if you ask me.

Let me remind the gentle reader what we are discussing here. We are talking about God, Allah, Brahman, Atman, etc., etc., etc. We are talking about a being that creates entire universes by speaking. We are talking about a being that knows our innermost thoughts and feelings. We are talking about a being that is totally beyond our comprehension, our imagination. And yet one religion gets it right?

Let me use a contrived example to illustrate. You, me, and Bob are sitting around drinking some really, really good bourbon. Bob says, “I’m thinking of a number between 1 and a gazillion. Guess what it is.” You immediately shout out “42.” I immediately start screaming at you “You’re wrong! It’s not 42. How could it be 42? It’s 7427466391!” and begin flicking lit matches into your hair to simulate the eternal torment you will endure in hell because you are wrong.

That pretty much describes the situation. I can no more know what number Bob is really thinking of than can our elephant-seeing Christian really, truly, completely know God. And if he cannot really, truly, completely know God how can he say that someone else’s understanding of God is wrong?

Paul even backs me up in I Corinthians 13

9. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

This is Paul talking. You know, St. Paul. The guy who spoke to Jesus — and Jesus spoke back! The guy who wrote a fair amount of the New Testament. He, St. Paul, said that “now I know in part.” Even St. Paul didn’t have all the answers; even he didn’t know what number Bob was thinking of. Is Zacharias really claiming that he knows more than St. Paul? If Paul only knew “in part,” then we, not having spoken with Jesus directly, can only know a fraction of an “in part” and that’s probably not a whole hell of a lot.

But what does this have to do with ol’ Bert? Russell seems to undervalue religion when he claims that conflicting religious ideas cannot both be right because he assumes that man can know god (in whatever form you want to picture god) completely enough that he is able to pass judgement on another idea of god. He also seems to overvalue man’s ability to “know”; if I don’t have the full picture and you don’t have the full picture then who’s to say that both our ideas are not two different aspects of the same, full picture?

For example, let’s assume that god is a cylinder and you and I, in our imperfect, limited, all-to-human knowledge can only see projections of god. I look at god and see a rectangle. You look at god from a different angle and see a circle. Are our two viewpoints necessarily mutually exclusive? Well, obviously not because god is neither a rectangle nor a circle — god is something beyond both our ideas.

In fact, the real answer is to combine our apparently-disjoint knowledge which would allow us all to refine our ideas of god. It’s like those SAT questions where you are given three projections of a three-dimensional object and have to pick the right shape. If you only have a single projection, there is no way you can get the right answer because you don’t see all the details of the object’s surface.

It seems to me that what we really need to do is take the most disparate religious ideas and try to fit them together for it is the disparity itself that tells us we are looking at very different parts of God or we are looking at God from very different angles. It also seems to me that the mystic religious traditions do exactly this. Mystic Christianity has a lot more in common with mystic Islam and mystic Judaism than the main-stream religions have in common with each other.