It has been 15 years since 911, and it’s time to dust off a previous post that was painful to write and perhaps painful to read. I wrote about the side of a veteran’s life that nobody wanted to hear. We much prefer to bathe in the glory of war and avoid the aftermath. But as one who fought and has an aftermath, I thought it was important to paint the whole portrait.
Similarly, some time ago I wrote a book (The Non-Identity Crisis) that has the following on the dedication page:
“This book is dedicated, not to a person, but rather to an idea: the eradication of war and the end of suffering. In particular what I have to say in this book is dedicated to all who have experienced anguish resulting from the tragedy of 911. I write as a fallen warrior with my own wounds inflicted during a previous conflict—The Vietnam War. True for all warriors of any and ever war, the scars never go away, even the ones that lay buried deep in your mind. We learn mostly from our own suffering and if we wish to not keep repeating it, the only ones who can chart a new course are us.”
In this book I write a lot about what war is really like when we scratch away the veneer of glory. We are living in the aftermath of 911, Osama Bin Laden is now dead, and our actions years later reflect this trauma. Bin Laden is now gone but his legacy is not. There is a message in this book that addresses both our responsive actions and moving beyond the trap. I’d like to share with you a perspective from the book that may not been immediately evident:
“When you kill another, sooner or later their surviving loved ones will come after you. War is the ultimate failure of the human family and if we ever hope to live in peace we are the only ones who can create the conditions for that to happen. What we are doing right now around the world is continuing the legacy of war and thereby guaranteeing future conflicts. What I have to say throughout this book is how to end it. Holding onto the desire for vengeance and justification for killing that emanated from 911 virtually insures our collective downfall. The mantra of ‘Never Forget’ is a banner for that downfall and only appropriate for those who never fought. For those of us who have fought, we must forget and forgive or go insane. What Bin Laden started but couldn’t finish on 911—to bring down our culture—we may do to ourselves due to our attachment to revenge at all cost. Did he anticipate our predictable response? It’s impossible to say, but a fundamental rule of warfare is to know your enemy and goad him into a trap of his own making.”
If we are sincere in wishing to honor the sacrifices of our young men and women who so valiantly offer themselves to defend our way of life, the best way of doing that is to stop the insane path we are presently following, bring our warriors home and pay for their healing and restoring their lives.
You are not made good by your beliefs. You are good already. When you realize your inherent goodness there is no longer a need to believe. Then you know.
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.
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True Honor?
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I have been posting and updating this for the past four years. This day is unprecedented, given the outcome of the election this week. Every year we pretend to honor the service of those who fight, become wounded, and die, so we may continue to go about our business with minimal inconvenience.
However, it is time, to tell the truth. A measure of value in our world is to put our money where our mouth is, and despite claims to the contrary, our lawmakers rarely (reflecting the will of the people) allocate support of our veterans. Seven times Republicans in Congress have screwed Veterans, and now there is no obstacle barring them from getting their continuing way.
This article is my opportunity to say a few things about all who have sacrificed and served our country. One of those was me. I served for two years as a Marine fighting in Vietnam. The war didn’t kill me physically, but it destroyed me mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It also wreaked the lives of all who came in contact with me, as well as all those who died because of my actions in Vietnam. It has now been 49 years since I was released from active duty, and I, along with thousands of others who served then, as now, have not been able to forget the horrors of war. Back then, there was no name for what is now known as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The horrors were just imbedded into our minds where they would stay for the rest of our lives, haunting us with traumas too awful to face.
One veteran reminds us that, “Every year, there are nearly a million suicide attempts. I am especially alarmed that veterans account for 20% of all suicides. Nearly eighteen veterans and one active-duty soldier take their lives each day.” We spend untold billions in training and equipping those who fight to defend our way of life and virtually nothing restoring the lives of those who serve so valiantly. This is a loathsome and repugnant oversight for people who pride themselves as the “home of the brave.”
So yesterday I ran an experiment: I decided to observe how many acknowledged my service, and I am embarrassed and disappointed to say that not a single person did so. The day has become less than a sales opportunity at Macy’s. For ten years following my return to “the real world,” I endured a hell worse than what I experienced in Vietnam. The culture which I fought to defend, branded me as a baby-killer, and I became a social pariah, unacceptable to the very people I nearly died serving. Do you know what it’s like to be spit upon by people you put your life on the line for? I know, and sadly I am just one among thousands who experienced the same thing every day.
And then one day, ten years following my release from active duty, our society had a momentary twinge of guilt and decided to “honor” Vietnam vets by throwing a ticker-tape parade in New York City where I was living at the time. Thousands of us turned out to march together, and thousands more lined the street and waved American flags. Everyone cheered and felt good...for a moment.
We continued to march down Fifth Avenue to Battery Park, where the parade fizzled out along without any substantial and meaningful support. I, and all who marched with me, felt profoundly ill. In the dispersion of Battery Park, we figured it out: This wasn’t a parade to acknowledge us; we had been duped a second time (the first being persuaded that fighting and dying in Vietnam would protect our country from evil Asians). Now instead of being mere cannon fodder to advance the wealth of warmongers, we were being used to absolve the psychic discomfort felt by those who had previously used us (but afterward became uncomfortably guilt-ridden). The parade was just a charade to assuage the guilt of those regular folk who didn’t want to be late for some planned social event and thus had no time to do anything of substance before. At the same time, thousands died during the time they tipped a few with their likewise disconnected friends. The crowd got what they came for: release from any sense of guilt, and just went back to their comfy, superficial lives. If that sounds bitter, it’s because it is. I am now beyond the bitterness and on to betterness, but I’ll never forget. Particularly following the publication of The Pentagon Papers, that proved beyond any question that the war was a sham.
It was all an extension of the duplicitous game we play every day of our lives. We get all excited over the marshaling of troops and imagine days of glory, fighting the good fight defending our way of life. The only problem is the way of living our veterans are being asked to defend is a way of life that excludes them once they have fought. When they leave active duty, they are on their own, with minimal support (which they have to fight tooth and nail to get). Most are suffering from grave and profound mental and emotional issues resulting from the horrors of war, they can’t get jobs, are expected to live “normal” lives, and thousands have no choice except to live on the street and stand in breadlines begging for food. More young men and women commit suicide than die in war.
So I don’t attend Veteran Day parades any longer. I have unbounded gratitude for those men (most of whom were poor and non-white) and women who fight and die for our country. They deserve genuine honor but are getting only grief. Thus I have nothing but disdain for people who send our youth off to war and then abandon them when they return. If we are not prepared to support and defend our veterans with something more meaningful than a parade, then we have no right to send them off to fight for us. We should be ashamed, but sadly we are not.
I’ve never met a person who said, “Today I will conduct
myself in a negative and self-centered way.” On the contrary, the odds are
extremely high that each of us conducts our lives according to certain
ideological criteria, whether implicit or explicit. Everyone thinks they are
right and others who don’t share their perspectives are thus wrong. The
polarity of ideologies has never been more extreme than now and is ensuring our
mutual undoing.
To plumb the depths of this, we need to consider the words of Krishnamurti. Do you align yourself with a particular political party? Nowadays it is hard not to. Or in a different vein, do you think of yourself as a man or a woman? Or how about belonging to one religion or another? Lots of variations on the theme of differences but Krishnamurti has a point worth our consideration:
When we identify ourselves in contrast to others we unknowingly adopt an attitude of unintended opposition and violence. And nobody takes favorably to opposition and will then meet opposition with opposition.
Some time ago I had a friend who had grown up in the Soviet
Union and was thus subjected to unspeakable oppression. He detested every idea
that might align with socialism and defended his positions with conviction and
passion. Many times we engaged in friendly discussions and we both came to the
same conclusion: If each of us had grown up with the experiences and influences
of the other, we both would have very different points of view.
In that case he
would understand my perspective and I would understand his. Neither of us came
into this world with any point of view and when we die our points of view will
die with us, but in between birth and death we remain adamant in our
convictions. Our views were entirely the result of what we had experienced, not who we were.
Is there any way of circumventing this dilemma, of bypassing
such fleeting bias? In our ordinary way of thinking it doesn’t seem possible,
but one of the greatest thinkers in human history had a solution, which is not
routinely understood, due to translation problems. According to Jesus, two
things are required to solve this problem: dying to ourselves and then practicing unconditional love
(the kind without discrimination).
The first supporting scriptural reference comes from the book of
Matthew: “He who finds his life shall lose it: and he who loses his life for my
sake shall find it.” That passage
(as many other translations) doesn’t express well in English. The English word
here for life, in the original Greek,
was psuchē, which has various
meanings, the most prominent of which is soul,
later to be translated as a psychic image of self, in other words, the ego—our idea of who we are separate and
apart from others.
The second reference comes from the book of John: “Greater
love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
Again, there is that word life/psuchē. This
is perhaps the most butchered and misconstrued expression in the entire New
Testament. The literal meaning, contrary to popular belief, is surrendering your psyche (ideas) for your
friends constitutes the greatest love.
The question is simply this: what is the prerequisite to
surrendering our ideas in order to express the greatest love? The answer is
obvious: Letting go of our ideas about who we think we are. It’s a two-step process:
once we become clear that we are not an idea (ego) that is hostile to others we can then release ourselves
from the death-knoll of polarized thinking. Only then is it possible to have an open mind and be released from the prison of inflexible dogmas.
In such a case we can conduct
ourselves as the Buddha said at the conclusion of the Kalama Sutra: “… after
thorough investigation and reflection, you find to agree with reason and
experience, as conducive to the good and benefit of one and all and of the
world at large, accept only that as true and shape your life in accordance
with it. Do not accept any doctrine from reverence, but first try it as gold is
tried by fire.”
In the end, spiritual insight has a most positive, practical and
profound impact on personal and world affairs.
Matthew
10:39
John
15:13
“You say either and I say ither. You say neither and I say nither. Either, ither, Neither, nither. Let’s call the whole thing off.
You like potato and I like potahto. You like tomato and I like tomato. Potato, potahto. Tomato, tomahto. Let's call the whole thing off
But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part. And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.”
Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong started that song roughly 60 years ago with lyrics of “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off.” There was no way anyone could have known 60 years ago that this song ought to be our current theme song. It would appear the way things are going that we are about to part and it will break our heart and why?
Over petty differences no more meaningful than “Potato, potahto. Tomato, tomahto.” What began with a chuckle has now turned into really serious turf wars, and the words have changed. Now it isn’t potahto vs. potato. Instead it’s greed vs. need, but fundamentally it’s still about differences.
That’s the challenge of being human: Having differences but always joined in common turf where there is no war. We can be, and are, both but that doesn’t mean we have to chow down on each other.
Ordinarily wolves like to eat lambs and leopards find goats rather tasty but a long time ago a prophet foresaw a day when, “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.” That guy was the prophet Isaiah and I sure hope his crystal ball was clear because right now it looks like dinner time is just around the corner.
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| Everywhere and Nowhere |
The Internet is an amazing technology linking the minds of anyone on earth who has the means to tap into this virtual world. It is always on, located nowhere, but is everywhere at once.
Most unexpectedly, our true nature is like the Internet—always-on, nowhere to be found but everywhere at once, connecting us to a virtual world. That analogy is easy to write, but chances are not readily understood. Who we are truly is an unconditional, indiscriminate, connected-to-everything, spiritual being (e.g., pure, non-applied consciousness). In truth, we have unified with one another already, but this unity can’t be detected or understood. Through this undetectable reality, we touch a world, which is, in fact, only accessible virtually. The bodies we inhabit are so constructed that we connect with this world consciously, mediated through our senses. What we sense as real are actually sensory projections occurring in our brains, and this projection is so excellent and convincing we are fooled into taking this projection as reality.
Here is how the Shurangama Sutra speaks about this conundrum: “...All things in all worlds are the wondrous, fundamental, enlightened, luminous mind that understands, and that this mind, pure, all-pervading, and perfect, contains the entire universe...it is everlasting and does not perish.”
Yet while this luminous mind understands it can’t be understood without falling into the trap of ignorance. As soon as we attempt to understand conceptually, it is unavoidable that this understanding is joined with the illusion of an independent self—the one we imagine is doing the understanding. Such “understood enlightenment” is not true enlightenment.
Fundamental ignorance is that state of unknowing which arises when we attempt to categorically encapsulate and divide what is essential, whole, and complete already. It is a primary motive, in our deluded state of mind of conditions to understand. and our means of attempting this understanding is to compare one thing against another.
We see another and ourselves, notice a physical difference, and conclude a separate individual. But what we conclude is a virtual projection; not reality. Reality can’t be divided, except conceptually, and this leads to the deluded notion of duality, which then expands with the notion that we are set apart from others and our world. If everything is the all-pervading and perfect luminous mind there can’t be a comparison. It would be like comparing one white to another white.
We move, we function, we live and die, but we will never fully understand how any of that happens conceptually. Enlightenment is an accepted, always-on experience that is realized when we stop trying and just rest in our true beingness.
“The Master arrives without leaving, sees the light without looking, achieves without doing a thing.”—Lao Tzu: TaoTe Ching
The quote above has special significance to anyone who has unveiled their true nature. And I use the term “unveil” instead of achieving with intent. Indeed our true nature, for all practical purposes, is buried deep within and must be uncovered. It never comes and never leaves.
Until that moment our sense of self is anything but permanent. It comes and it goes, riding the waves of good times and bad, dangling on a string of judgments. The importance of the principle is of such significance that it represents a pillar among various Buddhist sects in metaphorical terms of guests and hosts. If you Google “Zen, guest and host” you’ll end up with more than 780,000 hits all of which examine the matter from every conceivable direction.
The essence, however, is very simple even though the means of “achieving without doing” can boggle the mind with infinite permutations. In essence “The Master” is your very own mind; the one that sees without looking. The impediment to unveiling this master is a mind that is seen, not the mind that sees. The Buddha taught that our true mind can’t be seen, it can only be experienced through samādhi the awakening of our never-leaving body of truth. While difficult to explain, when awakening occurs there is no turning back. Only then we know what before was only a figment of our imaginations.
When we think of truth we imagine matters in rational terms; the product of our mind that is seen. While this distinction may appear esoteric it is central to genuine awakening—Hard to ascertain but incredibly powerful when experienced. The difference between the two was laid out by Nāgārjuna in his doctrine of two truths:
“The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths: a truth of worldly convention and ultimate truth. Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha’s profound truth. Without a foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved.”
Nāgārjuna taught that “true things” exist fundamentally and can be perceived as such by the senses, while “false things” do not exist as they are perceived. The difference? Truth conceived conventionally keeps ultimate truth concealed. Things appear to our logical mind to contain an independent, self-nature, that is flawed by bias and preconceived ideas, but in his Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way (The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā), Nāgārjuna provided a logical defense that all things are empty of such a nature but are instead interdependently related. Even emptiness itself has no inherent, independent self-nature.
Consequently, what we imagine is a fabrication. While the rational mind of relative truth is necessary to lead us to ultimate truth, so long as we do not let go and see clearly, we will forever be in bondage. It is the experience of awakening to our true nature (not the appearance) that sets us free to enjoy the fruits of the master that never leaves.
Perhaps today you will meet someone for the first time and introductions will occur. You’ll inquire about them and they about you. “Tell me something about yourself,” you’ll ask, and that is how we begin.
Who are you? Who are they? It is the natural way of understanding another as well as ourselves. And that matter is perhaps the most important question anyone will ever ask or answer. The reason? Because the manner in which we understand ourselves serves is the bridge to understanding another.
Whatever we believe about ourselves, is how we assume others understand themselves. If we think of ourselves as an isolated, mutually discreet individual, then others must be that way also. And on the other hand, if we understand ourselves as united with all, that must be how others understand themselves. Two of the most profound examples of such understanding comes from the Bible and the story of The Buddha’s life.
The first comes from Exodus during the encounter between Moses and God: “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites,’ ‘I Am has sent me to you.’”
And the second is this: Following The Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, he passed a stranger on the road who was so struck by The Buddha’s countenance that he asked him, “Are you a god?” The Buddha replied, “No. I am not. What are you then?” the man asked. And the Buddha said, “I am awake.”
These answers may seem dissimilar but maybe that is because we are trying to hard to keep these spiritual disciples apart and distinct. However, putting that desire aside, perhaps the answers are the same. How so?
Our normal way of grasping these answers is by assuming the answers (e.g., “I am” and “I am awake” to be adjectives. Instead, consider the answers as pronouns: Not descriptions but rather statements of inexplicable nature. And just maybe, that is true for us all. We are awake (e.g., consciousness itself). We are who we are—inexplicably: the fundamental nature of awareness.
All of us eventually become creatures of habit and after the passage of time are lulled asleep into a state of blindness based on an assumption that what we think we know is true.
Mark Twain said it best: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Someone who never knows the truth believes they do nevertheless.
Faith, by design, is a precarious state of being that asks us to accept particular aspects of the inaccessible, the imperceptible, the ineffable, and the immeasurable without challenge. And being given over to easy persuasion by those we trust, as being more astute and capable than ourselves, we come to a state of confidence in their esteemed judgments, and at long last embrace and take to be our very own, the ideas expressed by “the experts.”
What breaks this chain of presumption? Ought it not be success or failure? The measure of life as what works or doesn’t for one and all? Unfortunately this is rarely the case. What we believe, is held in higher regard than such concrete measures and we shape our lives, not so much by the good of all than we do by what supports our fanciful wishes: The hope for things being different than they truly are.
Try, try again is the mantra. If at first we don’t succeed then try harder to shape what is not so into illusions of what we prefer. Be more perseverant, more tenacious, and resilient. And after such relentless assaults, even with the experience of not reaching the goal of the common good, we are remiss to let go and try a different path. Instead we hold fast to dogmas and reject the obvious, clinging forever to standards set by those in whom we have placed our trust. In psychological terms, this strange behavior is known as “confirmation bias,” a state of ignorance wherein we reject the truth and favor what confirms our preconceived beliefs. To do otherwise, we reason, will cause a loss of face and force us to admit error, neither of which our egos desire.
It is an exceedingly sad aspect of being human that leads us all into those habitual states of continuing ignorance, and it is not an aspect adopted only by the common man. Surrendering from our cherished ideas, valued though they are, seems risky work. Yet to reach the depths of our souls where the light of truth prevails, requires letting go of little to get all. Meister Eckhart, one of the greatest mystics of all time put the highest release like this:
“I will put into plain words what St. Paul means by wishing to depart from God. Man’s last and highest leave-taking is leaving god for God. St. Paul left god for God: he left everything he could give or take of God, every concept of God. In leaving these, he left god for God since God remained to him in his essential self, not as a concept of himself, or as an acquired thing, but God in his essential actuality.”
Even those who adopt open minds and are moving toward enlightenment fall prey to the trap, sometimes to the edge of death. The Buddha came to the final point of surrender before letting go of the greatest natural fear of all: The fear of death. When he reached the edge of the abyss, his choice was clear: Let go or die. Only then did he awaken to the essence of his True Self. Only then did he become genuinely Self Aware.
Only when any of us faces the grim reaper and accepts what seems like our ultimate demise will we be ready to cast off the chains of illusion and meet, at long last, our true nature and know that, as Eckhart said: “God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.”
And on the way to this exalted place of pure awareness, where do we place our faith? In the orthodoxy? Holy Scriptures? The experts? What shall we consider the anchor that binds us firmly to eternal life?- “Do not believe anything on mere hearsay.
- Do not believe in traditions merely because they are old and have been handed down for many generations and in many places.
- Do not believe anything on account of rumors or because people talk a great deal about it.
- Do not believe anything because you are shown the written testimony of some ancient sage.
- Do not believe in what you have fancied, thinking that, because it is extraordinary, it must have been inspired by a god or other wonderful being.
- Do not believe anything merely because the presumption is in its favor, or because the custom of many years inclines you to take it as true.
- Do not believe anything merely on the authority of your teachers and priests.
- But, whatever, after thorough investigation and reflection, you find to agree with reason and experience, as conducive to the good and benefit of one and all and of the world at large, accept only that as true, and shape your life in accordance with it.
The same text, said the Buddha, must be applied to his own teachings.- Do not accept any doctrine from reverence, but first, try it as gold is tried by fire.”⎯The Buddha: The Kalama Sutra
It is the fires by trial in life that burn away ignorance, but only when we are open to letting go of the unreal and ready for the real. And when once we meet our Self for the first time we are still left with a residue of the old, that lingers like unwanted dust and was previously considered to be gold, when all the while it was fools gold. Then we must learn a new way, no longer clinging to chains of the past but rather accepting wings of The Spirit, just as any baby learns to crawl before walking. And until our spiritual legs grow strong, we will wobble and fall again and again, until at last, we rest in the assurance that the core of our being is firm and immovable. Along the way to maturity we will be unaccustomed to the new way and think for a time as Lao Tzu:
“I alone seem listless and still, my desires having as yet given no indication of their presence. I am like an infant which has not yet smiled.”
