Planting Seeds

When a gardener plants seeds, she intends to yield a harvest. These dry, hard, yellow kernels will give rise to tall green stalks laden with ears of fresh, delicious corn. If everything goes right.

            There are many phases to the process – deciding to plant a garden, envisioning the outcome, learning everything you can about soil, compost, weather patterns, fertilizer, insects, and the elliptic of the sun. But no matter how much we learn and how hard we work, the most important part of the process is intention.

            Intention is the potent act of out-picturing – allowing our vision to move from the realm of thought into the realm of manifestation. We don’t control the weather, the sun, the bugs, or the corn – we are only their witness and collaborator. All creation is co-creation.

            The wisdom traditions of the world warn us of the perils of confusing intention with attachment. “Work without attachment to the fruits of work,” Krishna teaches in the Bhagavad Gita. And in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus counsels us in no uncertain terms to renounce all anxiety about the future. Worrying isn’t going to add one inch to your corn. And Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching put it this way: “Rushing into action you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.” You can’t make the corn grow faster by yelling at it, tugging on it, or nervously pacing up and down the rows.

            Our job is not to grow the corn. Our job is to co-create the conditions in which the corn can grow itself. Corn already knows far more about how to become corn than we do.

            Whether we are growing corn, raising children, or building a career, the same principles apply. All we can do is set intentions, hold aspirations, and envision fruition. But the minute you slip into the seductive delusion that you are in control, chaos reigns and the only crop you’ll yield is suffering for all involved.

            Many of us have worked for micromanagers, bosses who hover over you directing your every move. Under these meddlesome taskmasters workers lose their two most potent qualities – innate enthusiasm and creative problem solving skills. Nothing quashes the enthusiasm and creativity of a work team faster than micromanagement. Instead, hire great people, create the conditions in which they can thrive, and get out of the way.

            Under micromanagement, employees stop trying and stop caring because they’ve received the message loud and clear: their essence isn’t valued or even necessary. They’re seen not as human beings but as extensions of the boss, robotic appendages without heart or vision. When you’re dehumanized, your soul lives in exile. The only reason you show up now is for the paycheck. Is that what anyone wanted?

As a leader you have two principle tasks – articulate the group’s intention, and manage the structural processes so that your employees don’t have to. As a leader, your only question to your employees should be, “What can I do to support you today?” 

A leader is a planter of seeds. Taking leadership in your own life is a matter of humbly but boldly setting intentions, then letting go. As Lao Tzu wrote, "If you want to be a great leader, you must learn to follow the Tao. Stop trying to control. Let go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself."

[This piece was originally published in my column "A to Zen" in the July/August 2018 edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

Life On Purpose

I didn’t make soil, or blood, or light. I didn’t make the water I drink. I didn’t cause the sun to hang in the sky or the crops to grow. I didn’t design the system by which plants cast off oxygen as a waste product, oxygen that keeps me alive. Nor did I extract the crude oil from the ground and refine it into gasoline to fuel my car. And I wouldn’t, for the life of me, know how to make a car from scratch either.

            I didn’t grow the cotton, weave and dye the cloth, or sew it into these clothes. I didn’t invent language, write the world’s literature, or teach myself how to read. I didn’t discover electricity, design this computer, pave these roads, build this house, or make all the art that lends depth, significance, and beauty to it all.

            My life is supported by countless natural systems, and the work of hundreds of thousands of people who I’ll never meet.

I don’t do anything. I just get up in the morning, put on my pants, drink some coffee, and try to keep up. Everything I do, everything I build, everything I create, is only possible because of the boundlessly supportive universe in which I find myself. All creation is co-creation. There is no such thing as the self-made man. Even if you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps, somebody else made the bootstraps.

            In Vedanta philosophy these dynamic relationships are known as dharma. The Sanskrit word dharma comes from the root dhri meaning to support, to sustain, or to hold. In its most basic sense, dharma is the supportive nature of universe, including the laws of physics, the maxims of biology, and the breathtaking harmony of all of these systems nested within systems that make life possible. But it doesn’t stop there. Dharma also means the social order, the way human ingenuity weaves a web where all of our contributions intertwine to create sustenance for us all. We are clever builders with opposable thumbs and an insatiable drive to create.

            There is no such thing as insignificant work. From the field hand to the brain surgeon, the cafeteria worker to the Nobel laureate, every human effort matters, because it all exists in an interlocking edifice of inter-being: pull one brick out and the whole thing comes down.

            And now the moral dimension. Dharma imposes an ethical obligation. It’s imperative that we pitch in. In the same way that we are supported, we are morally obligated to take the talents, passions, and abilities we have been given and offer them as contributions to the sustenance of the universe. For some mysterious reason, the sacred formless source of the universe took form as you. Trust the source. Allow the fledgling idea that you are infinitely significant to take flight. There has never before been a human being exactly like you with your sensibilities, talents, and gifts, nor will there ever be again. You’re a one-off. And there must be some reason why the sacred, eternal, formless source of the universe took form as you here in the world of time-bound, embodied forms. You’re needed. There is work to do – work only you can do.   

When seen through this lens, the work that we feel called to do is a sacred calling. Our calling is that still, quiet voice within us nudging us to take risks, think big, and throw ourselves into the flow of our own best life. Something’s tugging us toward self-actualization the way sunlight tugs the branches of trees upward in ever grander expressions of themselves. How do we discover our dharma? Your mind doesn’t know, but your heart does. Your love will lead you to your purpose. As the Sufi poet Rumi put it, “Let yourself be silently drawn by the pull of what you really love.”

            You have eyes. You see the woundedness of the world. You have a heart. You feel the pain of injustice and cruelty. You have ears. You hear the quiet voice of the truth hidden just beneath the din. You have hands and a mind and two strong legs. You can help. In fact, your own happiness depends on it. As we feed we are fed. As we teach we are taught. As we heal we are healed. As we love we are loved. Our joy arises only insofar as we are able to lift the joy of others.

            As you discover the places where your passion meets the needs of the world, you are uncovering your dharma. And when you live in accord with your dharma – when you are true to your sacred purpose – two amazing things happen. One, life gets easier. It gets easier because you feel yourself being lifted. You’re no longer struggling alone. Allies and resources mysteriously show up when you least expect them. And two, the quality of your work elevates. Your work is better now because you are weaving your unique contributions into the supportive outpouring of literally everything else. In cosmic cooperation, our efforts are amplified.

            In chapter three of the Vedanta classic The Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, “Every selfless act is born from Brahman, the eternal, infinite Godhead. He is present in every act of service. All life turns on this law.” In other words, in the consciousness of surrender to your higher purpose, working not for your own gain but in the consciousness of service, the flow of the universe is pouring forth from you like water from a fountain. You are not doing the work, the work is doing you. In the theologies of the west, where God is personified, a similar concept is found. It only sounds different. Jews, Christians, and Muslims say things like “God, use me. Make me an instrument. Lead me where you want me to be. Tell me what you want me to say. Thy will, not mine be done.” The result is the same – selfless action performed not for self-interest but for the good.

            Peak performance in any endeavor is realized only through self-forgetting. When we are attached to selfish outcomes, we fail. When we put other’s needs first and act for the sheer joy of it with no attachments to specific outcomes, our egos disappear leaving an opening through which the light of the divine reveals itself. We didn’t need to seek greatness, we had only to get out of its way.

            All work is service. We must cultivate the consciousness of seeing our work as a love-offering. This shift will liberate us from the chains of craving and attachment. We’ll no longer be working for a private reward alone. We know we’ll get paid. But we know the wealth and wellness our work co-creates goes far beyond self-interest, far beyond dollars and cents. As we work for these larger purposes, our deeper reward will be the embodied knowledge that we are fast in the arms of a conscious, loving universe. You can’t get that from your 401K. But you should have one of those anyway.   

Soul Force

Bad vegetarian food at the boarding house sent Mohandas out into the streets of London in search of something better. The young law student found a vegetarian restaurant nearby, and it soon became a regular haunt. There he met a group of Theosophists, Yanks and Brits passionate about the world’s wisdom traditions. They invited him to join their study of the Bhagavad Gita. Even though he was born and raised in India, he had never really paid much attention the Gita. Mohandas K. Gandhi had to journey all the way to London to discover his own spiritual roots.

The Bhagavad Gita would become Gandhi’s most beloved book. He carried chapter two in his pocket and read it every morning, along with the Sermon on the Mount from the Gospel of Matthew. The words of Krishna and Jesus formed Gandhi’s blueprint for how to bridge the gulf between the inner and outer life. Should spirituality be a refuge from the field of action, or a stance to take in it?

For Gandhi, a life-long commitment to social justice was born on the metaphorical battlefield of the Bhagavad Gita. In this 2,000 year old text, our hero Arjuna leads an army poised on the edge of battle. Across the field he sees the other army arrayed. He unburdens his heart to his friend and chariot driver Krishna. "Killing is a sin," he says. "I can’t do it." Arjuna collapses in moral paralysis.

Krishna spends the rest of the book encouraging Arjuna to take action, in the process revealing that he is no mere mortal, but an incarnation of Lord Vishnu. Krishna speaks with divine authority, and Arjuna has to listen.

On a literal level it seems that Krishna is authorizing violence. But Gandhi interprets the Bhagavad Gita metaphorically – the real battle is waged within each of us. Arjuna’s battlefield symbolizes the field of action in which all of us make the difficult decisions of our lives. If you take action, one set of consequences unfold. If you do not take action, another set of consequences unfold. There is no escape from action. The only freedom we have is the freedom to shape our actions consciously, compassionately, and without self-centeredness. It is not our enemies we must kill; it is our ignorance, ego-attachment, and delusion. We must slash our attachments to self-obsession with the willingness of a warrior.

As Krishna reminds Arjuna, we are at core imperishable spiritual beings, identical with the ground of being itself. Outer forms come and go, but our essence is timeless – it simply is. Therefore, why worry? As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not be anxious.” Is God in charge, or not?

Our role in this messy life is simply to show up and do the work that is ours to do, without attachment to outcomes or ego-expectations. When we perform our duty, Krishna says, Brahman works through us – we become instruments of the divine. When we renounce attachment and act in the consciousness of service, we are free. This, for Gandhi, is how we are to tackle the social justice work of our times: without rancor, without attachment to specific outcomes, and relaxed in the conviction that even a little spiritual progress is enough. “The arc of the moral universe is long,” Dr. King reminded us, “but it bends toward justice.” And as Gandhi taught, if our means are pure, the ends will take care of themselves. It is not body force or violence that accomplishes our goals, but soul force. When we show up as the consciousness of loving-kindness and cultivate the courage to speak truth to power, while harming no one but ourselves, we have the best shot at co-creating a world that works for everyone. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, “There is no way to peace – peace is the way.” Loving our enemies and turning the other cheek are not just inspiring ideals – Gandhi showed us that they are the foundation of pragmatic political action. Soul force knows no limitations, no barriers, and no bounds.

[This piece was originally published in my A to Zen column in the January/February 2017 issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

A Pond's Reflection

Walden Pond

[This article first appeared in my column "A to Zen" in the July/August edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

There are moments in American history where everything turned on a dime – the first shot at Concord, the Sunday morning attack on Pearl Harbor, Rosa Parks’s decision to keep her seat on the bus. In the history of American spirituality it’s no different. When Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond to conduct his famous, two year experiment in sustenance living he brought with him one book, the Indian spiritual classic the Bhagavad Gita. What happened at Walden Pond would ripple around the world and change everything.

Just eight years before, Thoreau had been a student at Harvard. It was there he stumbled upon the Bhagavad Gita. His was the first generation of Americans to have access to this 2,000 year old masterpiece, newly available in English. Like a handful of others – his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the preeminent American poet Walt Whitman – he was immediately struck by its depth and relevance. Here was a vision of divinity at once strange and familiar, a bracing call to courageous action in the midst of a messy world, and a ringing affirmation of the sacred nature of reality itself. Under the spell of the Gita, Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman would go on to create their own masterpieces reflecting a dawning realization – there is only one presence and power in the universe, and that it permeates all of reality, including us. This exalted humanism, this boundless mysticism, would become the hallmark of a uniquely American spirituality culminating in the New Thought movement, and everything that was to follow.

Today, when people say they are spiritual, not religious, they are reflecting an ancient truth – that wisdom is not found in institutions but in direct experience. Whether through scriptural study, meditation, devotion, social justice activism, or unmediated immersion in nature, every individual stands at the door of an immense transcendence and has only to walk through on their own two feet.

In 1846, during his second summer at Walden Pond, the tax collector came to see Thoreau. He was behind on his taxes. Thoreau refused to pay on the grounds that he thought it immoral to support the immoral actions of his government – an illegal, imperialistic war against Mexico and the ghastly institution of slavery. In Thoreau’s time one out of six Americans was a slave.

He was arrested and put in jail, albeit only for one night. He went on to write an essay about his experience known today as “Civil Disobedience.”  As a young anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, Gandhi read Thoreau’s essay during one of his many incarcerations. He later wrote that it “galvanized” him and formed the blueprint of his own campaigns. At the age of 15, Martin Luther King first read Thoreau’s essay at Morehouse College. He too was changed by it. Later in his career, King became an ardent devotee of Gandhi and the principles of non-violent non-cooperation first articulated in “Civil Disobedience.” It is a remarkable turn of events that an ancient Indian book, the Bhagavad Gita, would come to America to inspire Thoreau who then went on to influence Gandhi, an Indian working in South Africa, who went on to influence King, an African American working for justice in the Jim Crow south. We are indeed all one, and our story is one story.

In “Civil Disobedience” Thoreau articulates the four key principles of ethical political activism. First, use only moral and non-violent means, like boycotting and other forms of non-cooperation. Second, always work within the system before, during, and after your civil disobedience. Be politically engaged – vote, go to meetings, back candidates, or even run for office. Third, be open and public about your actions. No ski masks, no digital anonymity, nor clandestine vandalism. And four, be willing to accept the consequences of your actions, up to and including prison, fines, deportation, and unemployment. The whole purpose of non-violent civil disobedience is knowingly violating immoral laws with the sole purpose of overturning them. When we sacrifice ourselves, we raise the consciousness of others, even our so-called opponents.
         Thoreau, Gandhi, and King show us that spirituality and political action go hand in hand. If we are truly interested in awakening, we are interested in everyone's awakening. We cannot turn spirituality into a means of avoiding the messiness of the world. We have to take a position and take action, no matter how imperfect. Justice is the end and we are the means. We will never have perfect understanding. There will always be questions. But we must act anyway, not out of hatred nor rooted in simplistic, melodramatic judgments of good and evil, but in the knowledge that the Good is trying to be born, and we are all midwives. Each drop of water reflects the whole of the cosmos. So too, we are the eyes, ears, hands, mind, and heart of God. If not us, who? If not here, where? If not now, when?