Beyond Conflict

It’s liberating to realize that you don’t have to have an opinion about everything. It’s okay not to know. It’s okay to withhold judgment, wait, and let things play out. It’s even okay to let the other guy be right once in a while.

            Wisdom is a fluid way of being in the world, not a rigid position paper. Conflict is fathered by certainty. Peace is mothered by patience.

            As the 13^th century Sufi poet Rumi wrote, “Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

            On one hand, it’s important to carefully discern between truth and falsehood. We gain little by leaving truth-claims unexamined. On the road to knowledge every step counts.

On the other hand, when we elevate our momentary assessment of the moving target of reality to the level of dogma, we distort reality to such an extent that it is no longer recognizable. We trade in the messiness of the real world for a conceptual cage of our own making. Lost in the rarefied air of our own self-serving thought-constructs we slip further and further away from the fact that reality is a vast, interdependent field of energy, matter, and consciousness too fluid and fast-moving to ever be reduced to a simple, fixed set of truth-claims.

We have become masters at accumulating information. We’ve mistaken information for knowledge. Not everything can be Googled. Just because you can provide a link or a YouTube clip does not mean you understand. In fact, there may even be an inverse relationship between information-accumulation and insight. Sometimes too much knowledge clogs up the works, clouding our natural, unadorned insight. As Laozi wrote in the Daodejing, “The more you know, the less you understand.” Clarity is the fruit of emptiness. A busy mind is barren ground.

When the Oracle at Delphi declared that Socrates was the wisest man in Athens it sent Socrates on a quest. He didn’t believe he was wise, so he set out to interview everyone with a reputation for wisdom to see how he measured up. He quickly realized that while these allegedly wise men had lots of opinions, they knew no more than he did. In fact, their endless opinions obscured their insight and impeded their ability to learn. The damage caused by their habit of mistaking unfounded beliefs for facts far outweighed whatever actual knowledge they may have possessed. This led Socrates to conclude that since he knew nothing, and admitted it, he was in fact wiser than all of these supposed wise men. From this ancient tale we get a clear message – humility and the admission of ignorance are a sign of real wisdom. As the Zen saying goes, “Don’t seek enlightenment. Just get rid of all your opinions.”

When we move past rigidity of thought we open up to infinite possibility. As the complex and fluid phenomenal realm unfolds before us, we stay in the present moment, keenly aware and awake to what is revealing itself. All energy, consciousness, and matter connects together into a single field of awareness of which we are an integral part. In the language of the mystic Meister Eckhart, “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.” Individuality slips backstage while unity consciousness steps front and center. Or as St. Francis of Assisi put it, “What you are looking for is what is looking.” All of this is true, according to the Hassidic tradition of Judaism, because “The creator and the object of his creation are a unity inseparable.”

This is why reducing the whole of reality into tiny conceptual boxes is an act of violence. The fluidity of not-knowing allows everything in, while the arid rigidity of conceptual categorization blocks everything out – we never get at things-in-themselves, only our thoughts about those things. This is why Laozi wrote in the Daodejing, “In the pursuit of knowledge everyday something is added. In the practice of the Dao everyday something is dropped.”

In a famous Zen story, a learned professor of religion and philosophy went to visit a Zen master. When he arrived the master set the table and began to serve tea.

“Why have you come to see me?” the master asked.

“I have come to learn about Zen,” said the professor. “I have studied all the world’s religions and philosophies. I have learned the languages and read all the books. I am known as an expert the world over. There is very little I don’t know. But Zen eludes me.”

As he was speaking the master poured tea into the professor’s cup. When the cup was full he kept pouring. The tea brimmed over the rim, spilled onto the table and into the professor’s lap.

“What are you doing?” the professor cried as he leaped up.

“Your cup is already so full,” said the master. “There isn’t room for anything else.”

If, as these ancient sources show, emptiness is an essential quality of wisdom, then how do we attain it? By letting go of the illusion that we are in control, and renouncing the delusion that we have to solve every problem, iron every wrinkle, heal every wound, and right every wrong. Far from the philosophy of acquiescence or apathy, this open-hearted stance is a starting point for genuine growth and healing. Our actions are purer, stronger, and more effective when we work without attachment either to our own ideas or to a specific outcome. We should not work to see our own narrow ends met – we should work collaboratively with others and with the energies coursing around us intending simply to do good. Krishna calls this “working without attachment to the fruits of work.” In this consciousness of renunciation we become instruments through which the highest good manifests itself. The Daoists call this effortless-effort or wu-wei. You don’t have to know the final destination before taking the first step. You just have to move in the right direction and let the rest take care of itself.

Otherwise there’s a danger. If we instead seek to impose on the uncarved whole of the world our narrow, cookie-cutter conceptual framework, we give up any chance at genuine wisdom. When we build a limited and limiting worldview full of answers and inflexible doctrines, we have lowered ourselves into a well from which we can only see a tiny piece of the sky. And from our narrow view we see alternative perspectives as the enemy. We live in perpetual conflict with one another, and ultimately, with our own, truer self. This is no small thing. The whole world pays the price for this parochial narrow-mindedness. In his 1933 essay “The Triumph of Stupidity” Bertrand Russell wrote, “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” And I think we all know what happened to Europe, and to us all, in the dark years following 1933. It is a mark of wisdom to have doubts. It is a sign of danger to have none. Certainty is both the refuge of fools and the bludgeon of bullies.

Certainty is the seed of conflict. Unity is born from humility. As we learn to move beyond conflict into the consciousness of peace, we turn again to the words of Rumi, and this time include the next line: “Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.”

Before the Fall

I think a lot about aging and dying these days. No, nothing happened. I’m fine. It just hits you sometimes – we don’t have forever.

            If you’re paying attention at all you can’t help but notice – everything moves around us like a comet. Events, people, problems, and gifts sling in out of deep space, loom into view, come so close we can touch them, then slip through our grasp to recede into the darkness beyond all reckoning. The trick is not to think about it too much. Just stay present to what’s right in front of us. Pay attention. It all goes by so fast.

Rehearsing Death

            After Socrates was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by the Athenian court, he awaited his execution in prison. His friend Crito came to see him. Crito considered himself well-connected, and presented Socrates with a proposition. I have the guard bribed, he said, the warden bribed, and a sailboat is awaiting you in the harbor. But Socrates refused to escape. He considered it an admission of guilt, and immoral besides. As a devoted Athenian citizen and decorated war hero who’d benefited from Athenian citizenship his whole life, he argued that it’s irrational to obey laws in your own interest while breaking laws against your interest. If we do that, he said, we violate the very concept of law and regress into naked self-interest. But there was an even deeper reason Socrates refused to escape.

As his friends gathered around him in the final hours, their grief was profound. They loved their old philosopher friend, a virtuous and charismatic teacher who exemplified for a generation of Athenians the courageous and noble pursuit of wisdom. As Socrates lifted the cup of hemlock to his lips they wept. Yet he remained calm, good-natured even. How, they asked, can you be so accepting of this horrible fate? He turned to his friends and said, the philosopher rehearses his own death. In other words, if you really love wisdom, and if you’re really honest, then you have to admit that none of us knows what death is. How can we be afraid of something we cannot conceive? Fear has no place in authentic wisdom, Socrates taught. And then there’s this – what if being dead is better than being alive? I mean, we don’t really know do we? So living in fear of death is the height of folly.

What does it really mean to rehearse one’s death?

“Rehearse,” from the Old French rehercier, originally meant “to go over again” or “repeat,” or literally “to rake over,” and “turn over,” as in turning over the soil for planting. Rehearsing one’s death then means to face it again and again, engage with it, work with it, prepare for it, learn it, and turn it into a productive field of insight. 

Rehearsing our death means practicing deep acceptance of the transitory nature of all things. To everyday let go of everything you love, to live each day as if it were your last, and to embrace your loved ones as if you were about to be forever parted. There is no time for half-hearted commitment. Only whole-hearted will do. This, for Socrates, was the examined life – the only life worth living.

            By not rehearsing our death, we live in an illusion, falling prey to all manner of distortions. We slip into the illusion that we are a permanent, isolated identity. We fall into the illusion that our current belief system is true, pitting us in eternal conflict with all other perspectives. We dangerously ascribe to all sorts of tribalisms, nationalisms, and other deleterious parochial maladies. We trade in our vulnerable humanity for false security. But in the light of wisdom we realize the fluidity of the self, the poverty of group-think, and the provisional nature of all truth claims. We grow willing to relinquish our illusions in exchange for full membership in the loving community of consciousness that transcends self, ideology, tribe, ethnicity, and nation.

Over Our Shoulder

            In Carlos Castaneda’s wonderful, controversial account of his apprenticeship with the Yaqui shaman Don Juan, death played a prominent role. Don Juan taught Castaneda that our death is always present, lurking just over our left shoulder. Knowing he is always there, like a good friend, we acclimate to his close proximity. We get used to him always being around. His nearness frees us from the pettiness of our lives. We get better at letting the little things go. With death as a constant companion, our priorities shift, our values clarify, and our courage tempers into steel. We quickly drop perceived slights (since there is no more ego to defend), and move instead into the consciousness of forgiveness and gratitude. Every moment becomes a shining, singular miracle – a gift of infinite grace. In the words of the Jewish mystic Abraham Joshua Heschel, the world becomes “bereft of triteness.” Banality transforms into significance. Boredom becomes impossible.

            But if you are unwilling to make friends with your own death – your own fluidity, your own impermanence – you close yourself off from its gifts. You sentence yourself to a life of illusory self-importance, confusion, suffering, and disappointment. The fullness of the beauty of the world eludes you, the grandeur of human creativity evades your grasp, and the delirious depth of love remains only a rumor, not a lived experience. Our death is always hovering nearby, trying to cajole us into our own best lives. But we keep running away, pretending he isn’t there.

Before The Fall

            This, after all, is the source of all our pathologies – we think we have forever. We think there is always time. That tomorrow exists. But it doesn’t. Not really. It exists only as an idea in our heads. It’s not real. There is always only this now moment. And in the eternal present, all is well – every fear unfounded, every longing met, every question mollified.

            Instead, we idolize the past. Some of us live in the illusion that everything used to be better, and long to return to the good old days. We obsess about our looks and spend thousands of dollars on skin treatments, hair color, cosmetics, and even surgery to turn back the clock, mistakenly thinking that if we could be anywhere other than here, anytime other than now, anyone other than who we really are, we’d be happy. What a torturous pursuit.

            Sure, blame the culture. Blame the cosmetics industry. Blame the media. Blame advertising. Blame corporations. Blame Photoshop. But they are just a mirror held up to our own fear, and our belligerent unwillingness to make nice with our old friend death.

            Summer’s winding down and soon the leaves will turn brown and red and gold. They’ll fall in spirals to gather in drifts, clattering down the street in the autumn wind. The days will grow shorter, the nights colder. Winter is coming. We love the changes. But we fear them too. Because we know we only have so many autumns left, so many winters. What if this is our last summer, our last hot day? If we knew it was our last, would we waste it complaining? Would we label it a hardship? Or would our hearts open laughing to delight in its embrace? It’s never too late to awaken to the truth and renounce the illusion of permanence. It’s never too late to really, fully come alive. All you have to do is rehearse your death, and receive its gifts. All you have to do is know, really know in your bones, that this is it.

When Me is Three

[A version of this article was first published in my "A to Zen" column in the March/April 2014 issue of Unity Magazine and is reprinted here with permission.] 

            What is the most important relationship in our life? Is it the one we have with our spouses or life partners? Our parents? Our children? Our friends?

None of the above.

The most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves because that is the ground out of which all the others grow. Who you are and how you navigate the terrain of your inner life affects everyone and everything around you.

In ancient Athens Socrates was fond of repeating the motto chiseled into the marble at the Oracle at Delphi – “Know Thyself.” For Socrates self-knowledge meant far more than simply knowing your place or playing your role well. It meant digging deep, questioning everything, and seeing what remained after every pretense was turned to ash in the blazing light of reason. Journeying through the abyss of the unconscious is no walk in the park – it takes tremendous vision and willingness – the vision to penetrate the smoke of denial and the willingness to let go of everything false. When the goal is authenticity, no price is too high.

But what is this self that we are supposed to get to know?

In Vedanta philosophy – the ancient wisdom of the Vedas, Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita – a subtle and sophisticated philosophy of self emerges. We, like everything else in the universe, are said to be woven from three strands or gunas – tamas, rajas, and sattva. Tamas is the quality of unconsciousness, ignorance, darkness and inertia. Rajas is the quality of undirected energy, manic self-centeredness, and restless anxiety. Sattva is the quality of illumination, stillness, and inner-wisdom. All three gunas are ever present within us, but one is always eclipsing the other two.

When tamas is dominant we are lethargic, deceitful, and lost in delusion. We take pleasure in vulgarity and intoxication and have no regard for the well-being of ourselves or others. We procrastinate and waste time. Covetousness and envy cloud our minds. Tamasic consciousness is hell on earth.

When rajas dominates, we swell full of ambition and self-seeking, working hard for outer rewards and recognition. Greed, rather than the good, motivates us. Fear and competition drives us like a lash. We view others either as rivals or as means to an end. Even when we attain our goals, satisfaction eludes us because there is always someone who has more. Rajasic consciousness is busy-mind incarnate.

When sattva dominates, we work with the greater good in mind. We move out of thoughts of I, me, and mine and awaken into unity consciousness, realizing our underlying oneness. A genuine sweetness wells up through the cracks of our ordinary lives. Healing and serenity replace dissatisfaction and craving. We finally realize that we are and have forever been in the Kingdom of Heaven. Sattvic consciousness is self-illuminating enlightenment.

The tamasic person suffers continually, yet is too sick to do anything about it. The rajasic person stays stuck in the illusion of separateness, beset by endless longing and fear. The sattvic person realizes their inner divinity and experiences fully the blissful nature of this now moment.

The good news is that each of us has the capacity to shift into sattvic consciousness. The spiritual practices of the world’s wisdom traditions offer ample support. Study, pray, meditate, love, create, devote, serve – there are many paths to the summit.

Simply put, sattvic consciousness is our inner light. Others call it Christ-consciousness, Buddha-nature, Atman, or our unseverable connection to the Source. It is not something we attain, nor is it the fruit of our spiritual discipline – it is what we already are and have always been. We have only to awaken to it. In fact, it is our tamasic lethargy and our rajasic busy-mind that cloaks this divine reality within us. When we feel the compulsive, addictive, and self-destructive energy of tamas, when we feel the manic, racing, fearful, self-obsession of rajas, we  have only to shift our attention to the sattvic inner light that shines behind the fog of tamas and rajas. It may not be as difficult as we think it is. Turning enlightenment into an arduous ordeal is a favorite game of the rajasic mind.  What if we allow it to be easy? What if we take Jesus at his word when he says, “My yoke is easy, my burden light.”

Now self-knowledge takes on a whole new meaning. When Socrates says, “Know thyself,” he means come into alignment with your higher self, the part of you closest to the divine and therefore most real. In Buddhist enlightenment, it is the sattvic consciousness that finally lifts us out of the haze of tamas and rajas, illuminating the whole world. “Be lamps unto yourselves,” said the Buddha, and when you realize your inner light, “don’t hide it under a bushel basket,” added Jesus. Coming into right relationship with whom and what we really are is our greatest gift to ourselves, to our loved ones, and to the whole world.