Knowing right from wrong?

The essential question.

I originally posted this years ago, but we have short memories so re-posting may not be a bad thing. The current political environment almost demands a review. 

Do you? Know right from wrong? That’s a moral question, not one of legality. As we well know, we have a leader, who might be complying with the letter of the law (and fleecing his sheep to their detriment), yet undermines the intent of the law. 

In a court of law, we are told that not knowing the law is no excuse for breaking one that we may not even know exists. Worse yet is when we do know, but manipulate the system for your own enrichment, at the expense of the sheep. Even when the law is known, it may be consciously broken, allegedly for reasons considered to be valid. And what do we mean by valid? For a higher good that transcends the strict definition of legal compliance? For reasons of making a judgment call that may violate a conscious awareness of our internal criteria, but nevertheless “may” have a desirable outcome? What sort of definition might we hold of “desirable?”

A person may choose to live by the spirit of that law instead of the letter of the law, which of course, presumes the person is aware of whatever difference may exist between the spirit (or intent) and the letter (strict compliance). 

Then we need to consider prescience: the capacity to project into the future, outcomes that will occur as the result of judgments and actions taken previously. Can anyone know the ultimate effects? Obviously not (unless they are an inside trader). Then comes a much deeper question: Is there any benefit to outcomes that turn out to be not what we intended, but rather are what we consider to be wrong? Or might unlawful results lead to further right outcomes? That is the essential question!

Knowing right from wrong is a highly complex moral dilemma that must begin by examining that essential issue. Parents must wrestle with that issue every moment of every day and, most times, end up rolling the dice and hoping that their decisions result is the right things for their children. 

Politicians (at least ones with a conscience—an oxymoron?) are challenged routinely with making choices without thorough consideration or prescience, and more times than not, wrong results come from allegedly right decisions. For whom? Their benefactors? Themselves (at the expense of their constituents)?

Family members likewise are forced by the nature of a constantly changing world to choose between what they believe to be right, but often turn out in wrong ways. Are parents doing their children favors by never allowing them to struggle with the challenges of life to cope as adults? Or by overly protecting them and serving as surrogate moralists, once they have grown to the age of emancipation? 

Do we choose to construct walls between what we want the world to be and what it is? And do we then take the next step of letting our loved ones know that we only want to be fed a constant diet of nice words and deeds, forgetting that by employing their culpability and compliance, it forces them into conscious liars? Do we ever extract our benefit out of the hides of those we recruit, all so that we may live a life of delusion and division between what we wish and what is? And then, do we have the willingness to admit obvious wrongdoing with the forethought that by owning up, our egos will burn with a furious fire that creates in us the discomfort of admitting we used others for our benefit at their expense? 

Does anyone actually embrace what they consider to be wrong, suspecting that there will be a positive outcome? Or isn’t it true that we become strong in places that are broken, and by struggling to overcome our brokenness, we are made stronger yet? Few there are who enjoy being with someone who is always on guard, never vulnerable, and has all the answers. Life breaks us all, vulnerable or not, but beauty can come from brokenness, making us yet more beautiful than before.

It is probably true that few, if any, ever set out to do wrong, knowingly. And it is without any doubt that by facing our deepest fears, we learn to live with fear and make it our greatest friend and teacher.

Poisonous Children

In Buddhist thought, a poisonous monster lives inside each of us and it has three characteristics—greed, anger, and delusion (or ignorance). The name of this monster is our “precious” ego, the mythical surrogate we all create to identify ourselves. I say precious with tongue in cheek because this is the mother of all sorrow. 

It appears precious until we understand it’s phantom nature. It is who we think we are and we defend it to the death. Different religions refer to ego death as the necessary condition for final liberation—being set free to experience fundamental humanity. Christianity calls this experience being “reborn” (sadly misunderstood) and the mystical arm of Christianity refers to this state as “the dark night of the soul,” the darkness everyone must pass through on the way to freedom. 

The soul is a term, which is often used to describe the ego. When Gautama was enlightened he realized his true nature and came to understand that the ego was not real. He saw it for what it is: an idea rather than something real, and along with his enlightenment, he understood the source of suffering—the idea of ego. If you wanted to reduce Buddhism down to a single statement (which would be a gross devaluation) you could call it the solution for overcoming suffering. I’ll explain:

We have a sight challenge: We can’t see our true, immaculate self. The truth is we can’t see each other either. What I see when I look at you is your outer skin—call it a cloak. And since that is what we can see, we think of a person (including ourselves) as a body, only. But none of us is stupid. We know we are more than just a bag of bones. We know that there is someone inside that bag and we call that inside dimension by a name—“our self.” Unfortunately, this our self is just another cloak, an inside cloak that conceals our true identity. So why don’t we see this identity behind the cloak? The answer is simple (but not so obvious). We don’t see the real us because our true identity can’t be seen, but it’s there in spite of our sight challenge. If it weren’t there we couldn’t see anything because our true self is what’s doing the seeing and it’s called consciousness. Consciousness at its simplest is “awareness or sentience of internal or external existence.”

What can we see? We can see objects. What can’t we see? We can’t see the subjects. Anyone who has studied grammar is taught the difference between an object and a subject. If I write the sentence “I see myself,” the “I” would refer to the subject, and “myself” would be the object. But there is a subtle problem with such a sentence (and a clue). Is it possible for a subject to be an object? Isn’t that sentence illogical? Think about it. Either they are different or they are the same thing with an illusion of difference.

Our real nature is not an object, like a stone—which can’t see. When we objectify anything we devalue it, stripping it of fundamental humanity. We are not only objects. We are not an idea. We are real beings, an incarnate spirit with two dimensions, one part of which can be seen and one part that can’t. These two parts can’t be divided. If our spirit is removed we’ll just be a bag of bones. If our body is removed we’ll be a ghost. We may talk as if they can be divided but such thinking is delusional. And there is an inherent awareness in us all that knows this truth, but it is such a vaporous aspect that it goes beyond our detection. 

It is a conundrum, which produces the three, poisons of greed, anger, and delusion. Why? Because “We”—the real us—wants desperately to be set free and it makes us angry that we can’t find the solution! We are in prison—a prison of our own making—and we can’t find our way out, and the keys to that prison are held by Mr. or Mrs. Ego (the gatekeeper of our prison) who is extremely greedy; who wants to possess and defend; who clings to everything desirable and rebuffs everything deemed as undesirable. Our ego judges with a criterion of objectivity—what it can perceive. If I look good, that is desirable. If I look bad, that is undesirable. If you act well, that is desirable. If you act poorly, that is undesirable. We judge based on our capacity to perceive, not what we can’t perceive.

Since it is impossible to see the real us, we all create a surrogate identity that can be seen. And this surrogate is fabricated (clothed) with a vast wardrobe of ideas, judgments, and points of discrimination. We objectify ourselves and in the process strip ourselves of human dignity. Ego is like a hologram—an image in our mind (a self-image), which we watch with our mind’s eye. We can see this hologram twist and turn, to reach out and be reached at. It is amorphous and in constant motion, subject to both assaults, and adoration.

The ego hates to be assaulted (and become easily offended) and loves to be adored. When we are assaulted we naturally take offense and when we are adored, we love it and gravitate to the one who expresses love. We are yo-yos on the string of life. And you know what ticks us off the most? That we see this manipulation happening and seem powerless to stop it! And that makes us really sad or mad! And then we take the next step: we then learn to hate our self for being so powerless and vulnerable. 

The downward spiral—which in the grand scheme is a very good spiral. Why? Because it hurts so badly and we hate pain. Pain is really our friend. It tells us something is wrong that needs fixing and if we humans are nothing more, we are fixers and very inventive. But what is generally missing is motivation. Suffering supplies motivation.

Suffering is our friend. It is something we experience inside. It is not an outside condition. It happens inside—it is a response (an effect) not a cause. And who causes this response? Our suffering is not caused by another nor experienced by them. It is caused by our response, not by outer circumstances, which can never be altered. And who is behind our responses? Why the keeper of the prison keys—Ego (our surrogate self). Ego is the source of our sorrow; our suffering, and since it is the source, it is there we must turn for a solution. 

Our system is an amazingly delicate instrument with all manner of built-in sensors designed to warn us of impending disaster. When we are being affected by a virus we start to feel poorly and we go to the doctor. When we are not feeling well emotionally we also seek out a doctor. But sadly today’s doctors of emotions either drug us to not feel the pain or reinforce our self-image so that we think better of our ego. These approaches only partially help, but unfortunately, they work to remove our motivation to reach beyond the illusion and find our true substance. Consequently, we never remove the cancerous seed but instead just slap on another band-aid.

Ego is a toxic substance, that produces emotional disease, which is why these children of ego are called the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion are toxic children and the only solution to this poisoning is to vanquish the internal creator-mother—the ego and allow our natural goodness to emerge. The answer is not to bolster our self-image or anesthetize suffering but is rather to vaporize the mother—to see it as the phantom that it is.

Meister Eckhart—Christian Mystic and prophet (circa 1260-1329)—said:

“Humanity in the poorest and most despised human being is just as complete as in the Pope or the Emperor.” And we know what sort of clothing the Emperor wears—none.

Fundamental humanity is not flawed in any way. It is complete already. The flaw is what stands in the way of our human birthright that puts one head above another. At the ground level of our humanity, we are equal and good, whether Pope, Emperor, Buddha, or an average person.

The Power of Deception.

A couple of days ago, The Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit was convened at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. The President of the Family Research Council (Tony Perkins) introduced the keynote speaker, Vice President Mike Pence, and said of him: He understands himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican,” in that order.

Yet Pence’s speech was as far away from the essential nature of genuine Christianity as one might be. His chosen venue has been designated as an “anti-LGBT hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and what he said affirmed that assessment. 

If you wanted to sum up the speech into a nutshell it would be, look how great we are under Trump—chest-thumping and ideological superiority (e.g., us, the white-hats against them: the black-hats). 

Nothing about his speech promoted unity and caring for our fellow man but instead promoted the opposite. Following a panel titled “How Gender Ideology Harms Children,” which included Dr. Michelle Cretella from the American College of Pediatricians, (also designated an ultra-right-wing quasi-religious hate group), Pence echoed the panel’s perspective that those who define themselves as LGBT are just sick individuals who are determined to break God’s intentions. They are sinful and need to change their ways. 

According to the Family Research Council’s website, the Values Voter Summit was created in 2006 to “provide a forum to help inform and mobilize citizens across America to preserve the bedrock values of traditional marriage, religious liberty, the sanctity of life and limited government that make our nation strong.” 

Cretella has been excoriated by The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) with a response, titled: “I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse,” saying that Cretella pushes a perspective of “political and ideological agendas not based on science and facts.”  I would add further, the ideology is anything but Christian in nature, which if geared to the teachings of Christ, to treat your neighbor as yourself. 

SAHM destroyed Cretella’s position showing how she cherry-picked bad science to reach her conclusion. Nevertheless, Pence continues to endorse Cretella’s conclusion with his own bad theology and in so doing destroys his own view of himself as being “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican.” And why might I say such a thing? To answer that question we must first define some theological terms and say what it means to be a real Christian instead of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

To the second issue (e.g., a real Christian) one must abide by the essential teaching of Christ to “love one another as I have loved you.” It is specious to claim the title without abiding by the essential teaching of the founder. And to the first issue (e.g., Theological terms) when Jesus taught that sort of love he was referring to a term found only in the New Testament. The term, in Koine Greek, is ἀγαπάω (agapē ) and meant “unconditional love”, or if you prefer “love with no strings attached—be they gender, race, ideology or any other means of discrimination”. So the concluding question here is whether or not Pence, and his puppet master Trump, are in fact promoting genuine Christian unity and love amongst all people, or a faux Christian wanna-be agenda that promotes division and one-up-man-ship? 

A Christian upgrade.

Unless you’ve recently been asleep at the switch you are without doubt aware of the “ransomware” computer attack that has disabled thousands of Microsoft users. Why did this have such a broad-spread impact? Because PC users never took the time to install the upgrade released by Microsoft. 

The result has effectively rendered users of the Microsoft operating system null and void unless they pay a ransom.
This may seem like an odd lead-in to the topic of a “A Christian upgrade.” So allow me to clarify, and to begin let me ask a simple question. What is the relationship between the Old and New Testaments? Not a particularly difficult brain twister but an important question that has a parallel to the current ransomware crisis.

For those who don’t know, the word “testament” means covenant or contract: Two different religious operating systems; an old one and a new one. To be a genuine Christian means abiding by the standards set forth in the “new one,” but not both at the same time. The old was intended to be replaced by the new, but unfortunately too many never took the time to install the upgrade, and the result, just like with the ransomware attack, has rendered Christians null and void without paying a price.

And what is the price? Faux Christians who clearly do not comply with the standards of the New Testament and end up coming off as a hybrid, blending of “an eye for an eye”/tit-for-tat, vengeance seeking, hostile, and a quasi sometimes-professor of Christ: A really bizarre composite which is neither here nor there, which led Gandhi to say—I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” 

The Man in the moon

I have a habit each evening of sitting on our deck after dinner, feeling the gentle evening air and watching the phases of the moon. 

Once every month, the moon reaches fullness, and every time it comes, we can see the man in the moon. Oh, I know: there really isn’t a man in the moon, and you likewise know there isn’t. We’re sophisticated people and live in a sophisticated time. Scientific tools and methods have been with us all of our life. So we know what people who lived long ago didn’t know, and chuckle when we think how deluded they were.

Did you know that many “sophisticated people” in earlier times were convinced that there really was a man in the moon? Some people said that the man was banished to the moon for some crime. Christian lore commonly held that he was the man caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath and sentenced by God to death by stoning in the book of Numbers. Some Germanic cultures thought he was a man caught stealing from a neighbor’s hedgerow to repair his own. There is even a Roman legend that he was a sheep thief.

We laugh at such silliness, but are we able to laugh at our own absurdity? Now we say things like “Those people who see things differently from us are not authentic (fill in the blank.)” You could use the label of Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, atheist or any other birds of a feather. The question isn’t how we label ourselves. The meaningful question is how we don’t label ourselves, but we do love our labels. We wear them like badges of superiority, distinguishing ourselves from others. The famous Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, said: “Humanity in the poorest and most despised human being is just as complete as in the Pope or the Emperor.” And we know what sort of clothing the Emperor wore—none.

We need to consider the moon, not if there is a man in it. Nobody was born with a label. Nobody will die with a brand. But in between birth and death, we become inordinately concerned with labels and forget about our own authentic human nature. Fundamentally the moon is the moon. Fundamentally a human is a human. If you want to stick a man in the moon, then we can all have a good laugh. We don’t laugh, however when we stick a label on us. Too bad, because that also is a good joke.

Unbound or Rebinding?

Many have wondered how to classify Buddhism since it is not preeminently concerned with a God concept (as normally understood by westerners). Is it a method of psychotherapy? Is it a philosophy? A moral code? Religion? What? 

These suggest a desire to define, categorize, and set apart Buddhism from other categorical forms. And the answer is “All of the above” and “None of the above.” The truth is that Buddhism can be (and is) understood to conform to all of these definitions (or not) depending on the nature of the person under consideration—which is infinite in variation—and at a deeper level, without variation.

At the level of self-awareness, there is no end to differences—as varied as snow-flakes. And at the deeper level, we are all just snow. But to go to the heart of an answer, it’s necessary to deal with the matter of a self. Buddhism teaches that there is no such thing as a substantial self—only an illusory one, shaped by unending changing circumstances and karma. This self-substance illusion gives rise to possessiveness, greed, and aversion, which produces suffering and anxiety. And this illusion cascades across every human dimension from the psychological to moral persuasion, to relationships with others and the sublime.

At the deeper level—where we are just snow—there are no differences, and “self” is understood as an interdependent reality connected with everything with no boundaries. There is no inner vs. outer; no beginning vs. ending, no versus anything since there is no discrimination.

Religion (in a western form) is concerned primarily with re-tying a broken link with an external God. The word Religion means —re, “again,” lig, “align,” and ion, “action,” and how this retying occurs differs according to dogma taught by the various religious forms. 

Buddhism is radically different on this score, where there is no presumption of a broken link with an external God. The problem is the same—alienation and estrangement—but the presumption is different. In Buddhism, alienation happens due to the empowerment of the elusive self (ego). This impediment blocks integration with both our true nature and the world in which we live.

For a very long time in Buddhism, the goal of liberation from bondage—the alleviation of suffering—has been understood as Nirvana’s realization, which is seen as extinguishment when the fuel is used up. And the metaphor here is a dying flame of a candle when the oil is expended. There are some sects of Buddhism, still, which maintain this means freedom following literal mortal death. 

Other sects propose this liberation as a here-and-now proposition, which is called parinirvāṇa (e.g., nirvana-after-death), to which an entire sutra was devoted—Mahaparinirvana. The key to any understanding of Nirvana is an acceptance of what is considered to be extinguished. In other words, “life and death.” If life is understood as a physical matter, then death must be understood in the same fashion. In this case, true liberation can only be realized when physical life’s flame uses up physical energy.

On the other hand, if life is understood as unobstructed essence at the snow level, death is associated with unenlightened snowflakes—the illusion of a substantial self, which creates a living hell of alienation and opposition. Zen teaches that true liberation is a matter of waking up to the unbroken and ever-pure nature, which has never left us in the first place. So there is nothing to re-tie. To attempt to find what has never been lost is a guarantee of continuing in bondage, sort of like dying of thirst in the midst of water.

And while many who practice Zen are persuaded of this ever-present, never-lost reality, they still reach for a special psychic state which they associate with Kensho, Samādhi, or enlightenment. What they fail to see is that this very reaching is what blocks what they seek. The subtle trap inherent in this quest for fulfillment keeps the traveler locked into an “other-worldly, not-now” mentality. The goal is always moving away, the faster the chase.

It must be said that the key to either western religious forms or Buddhism to genuine liberation/salvation is surrender, from the quest or from the attempt to achieve what is already present. It is this state of yielding and acceptance; this acknowledgment of emptiness, that produces the desired state of selflessness. And when this state is achieved, the world opens, and we go through the door as new yet ageless beings.