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?

Would Gandhi Tweet?

Would Gandhi Tweet?

Would Martin Luther King have a Facebook page?

Absolutely.

Both men were masters at using every available medium to great effect. They understood the fact that if you really want to change the world, it’s not enough to stand on the sidelines and be right. You have to overcome your natural aversion to self-promotion and get loud. How can you change people’s hearts and minds if they can’t see you, can’t hear you, and don’ know who you are?

After he graduated from law school in London Gandhi moved to South Africa where there were countless opportunities for a young lawyer to ply his trade. He quickly realized that the institutionalized racism of apartheid was no mere abstraction – as a dark skinned Indian he endured daily indignities and outright violence. He was reviled, thrown off of trains, and frequently arrested for refusing to cooperate with apartheid. While in prison he read Henry David Thoreau’s immortal essay Civil Disobedience and later wrote that he was “galvanized” by it. Thoreau laid out the four core principles of non-violent civil disobedience. 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. In other words, 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, and no safe houses. And four, be willing to accept the consequences of your actions, up to and including prison, fines, deportation, and unemployment. Gandhi would enact these four principles with great effect.

The whole purpose of non-violent non-cooperation was to knowingly and publicly violate unjust laws with the sole purpose of overturning those laws. It was essential, therefore, that your actions be highly publicized so that the conscience of the nation, indeed of the world, could be raised. By sacrificing themselves and causing no harm to their oppressors, non-violent protestors shine the light of truth into the darkness of ignorance.

Martin Luther King and other leaders of the American civil rights movement were great students of both Thoreau and Gandhi. King understood the power of the principles of non-violence and employed them fearlessly, all with the keen sense of a trained publicist.

In March of 1955, a 15 year old unmarried pregnant African American girl named Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white man on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested for violating the Jim Crow statutes of segregation. Dr. King and other civil rights leaders decided not to pursue her case and instead orchestrated another, similar event, this time with the married, more conventionally respectable Rosa Parks. In December of that same year Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on the bus and was arrested. So began the 385 day Montgomery Bus Boycott. The city’s African American population organized its own ersatz bus lines, carpools, and walking teams. The sheer spectacle of it attracted national attention and elevated both Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King to celebrity status. Like Gandhi before him, King knew how to turn a local story into a universal struggle.

Eight years later in 1963, King and others ramped up the pressure in Birmingham, Alabama. They were met with brute force in the streets by the infamous chief of police Bull Connor with his police dogs and fire hoses. King’s call to “fill the prisons” brought thousands out in non-violent marches. The movement even began to use children as street protestors, over the objections of some of King’s more cautious compatriots. During one particularly violent episode a Life magazine photographer put down his camera to help a fallen child. Dr. King pulled the man aside saying, “Never do that – never put down your camera. That child is going to be alright. Take a picture. That’s how you can help.”

There’s no doubt that if King and Gandhi were alive and working today, they would employ a vast array of communication media to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Gandhi would Tweet, and Martin Luther King would have a Facebook page. And they would both use crowd-funding to build committed communities around important actions.

It’s not that different for artists.

The goal of making a film, staging a play, publishing a book, or producing an album is very different from the goal of social justice; nonetheless, an interesting parallel exists. You’re going to need publicity, and you’re going to need funding.

Michelangelo had the de Medici’s. Van Gogh had his brother Theo. The Rolling Stones have Prudential, Volkswagen, and Sprint. But independent artists only have each other, and their fans. Twitter, Facebook, and crowd-funding are the new tools of the trade.

There are no more record companies. Not really. Not like the old days. No one’s going to hand you a hundred thousand dollars to make an album and mount a tour. And that’s probably a good thing. The vast majority of bands never survived that system anyway. Independent artists have also largely abandoned radio – corporate radio isn’t interested in them and vice versa. YouTube has replaced radio as the medium for breaking new music, and it’s utterly democratized – no one’s in charge. All you have to do is make a great video of great song, and hope it goes viral. You do whatever you can to draw attention to yourself. You stop being afraid of being annoying. You ask everyone you know for help. And money. If it works your Twitter followers suddenly hit five figures, then six. Your Facebook page explodes. Fans all over the world start sharing your work with each other. Your CD Baby and iTunes income starts to pay the bills. The hive mind has spoken. We’re the record company now.

Two hours after I launched my 30 day Kickstarter campaign for my upcoming album Two Pines, a generous fan pledged at the $500 level. That means she gets a house concert, among other things. When I spoke with her I told her, “You know, you could charge at the door and easily make your $500 back.” Then she said an amazing thing. “No, I want all the money to go to the project.  I’m giving you the door.” I was floored. But then I understood. People want to help. They want to get inside art projects and be a part of them. They want to share in the creation of something that has value for them. Crowd-funding is a way for fans to have the ultimate fan experience – to stand with the artist in co-creation. Music is a collective art form. It belongs to no one. It exists in the space between us. We make it together. Artists and audiences are two halves of one thing. In my natural aversion for self-promotion I’d overlooked this dynamic. Kickstarter isn’t charity – it’s a way to draw exactly the right people into a supporting community around a shared body of work.

And that’s something worth Tweeting about.

Renounce and Enjoy

[This first appeared in my column "A to Zen" in the January/February issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

When asked by a reporter to sum up his philosophy in three words, Gandhi replied, “Renounce and enjoy.”  It isn’t easy to summarize the complexity of Vedanta philosophy in three words, let alone 300, while at the same time conveying the essence of the world’s wisdom traditions. Maybe that’s why they called him Mahatma, the Great One.

And what is it to renounce? It is to relinquish the illusion of control, move out of the ego-mind and into a deep and restful state of acceptance and surrender. Renunciation is the conscious decision to stop resisting what is. When asked “What is your secret?” the great 20^th century spiritual teacher Ramana Maharshi simply replied, “I don’t mind what happens.”

Yet for Gandhi renunciation was no sack cloth and ashes asceticism. The goal is not withdrawal from the world but full immersion. Free from the tyranny of our own ego demands, we are for the first time truly capable of experiencing joy. It is a terrible irony that the endless search for happiness is the very mechanism that generates perpetual dissatisfaction. Joy, it turns out, is our natural state. When we realize that happiness and joy are already inherently ours and not the result of the fortuitous arrangement of external circumstances, we loosen our grasp.

Renunciation and enjoyment are two sides of one coin – you can’t have one without the other. When you are truly enjoying something, you are accepting it as it is, you are surrendered to it, and you are aligned with it. And when you are accepting, surrendering and aligning, you are enjoying.

Yet how are we to practice renunciation in the midst of this busy, active life? Do we not set goals? Do we not strive to achieve them? If I practice renunciation, who’s going to do all this work?

In the Bhagavad Gita, Gandhi’s favorite book, we read Krishna’s words of counsel to the beleaguered warrior Arjuna as he lies crumpled on the battlefield, paralyzed with anxiety. He knows that no matter what he does, terrible things will happen. For Gandhi the battlefield is a metaphor for the field of action in which we all stand. Each of us is the Arjuna of our own lives. We may not literally be warriors, but every day we face a daunting phalanx of rivals, impossible tasks and Sophie’s choices. When Krishna tells Arjuna to fight, he is telling all of us that life brings agonizing dilemmas, and we can’t opt out – we must act. Inaction and action both bear fruit. As Jean-Paul Sartre reminds us, when we do not choose, that is still a choice. There is no reprieve from our radical and inescapable freedom.

The only choice we have is what kind of action to take – selfish or selfless. Krishna tells Arjuna to act without attachment to the fruits of action. We must do the right thing, intend the highest good, and let go of the outcome. When we renounce attachment to results we become a channel through which the infinite good manifests itself.

Things will go wrong. Unintended consequences will unfold. Take action anyway. “Every action, every activity,” says Krishna, “is surrounded by defects as a fire is surrounded by smoke.” Practicing renunciation, we don’t cling to mistakes or define ourselves by them.

Beneath it all is the teaching of non-duality. Everything is a manifestation of the one divine reality, the Godhead Brahman. Therefore, everything that happens is ultimately a manifestation of Divine Mind. The only thing that can interfere with this sacred outflow are self-obsessed people trapped in ignorance, imposing their own limited and limiting agenda on the world. In renunciation we move out of self-will and into accord with Divine Mind becoming its instrument. Then even in the midst of conflict the background hum of divine harmony can be heard. Sometimes it even rises to the surface.

In 1943 my father Hilbert Bolland was taken from his native Holland by the Nazis to be a slave laborer in Germany. It seemed as if the world had come to an end. Yet during those long years of war, each spring the trees blossomed, the deer in the forest gave birth to fawns and the world renewed itself, oblivious to the travails of man. One evening, my father was startled by the trill of a nightingale singing unseen high in the boughs of a Linden tree, its beautiful melody drowning out the din of distant artillery fire. In that timeless moment he knew he was going to be alright. He knew that there was a sacred presence beneath the surface of things, an eternal ground of being upon which everything stands, far more real than any man-made mayhem. By surrendering to that we gain our footing, find our path and realize our joyful nature.