Real Freedom

Enshrined in the Declaration of Independence is the idea that freedom is a core American value. But the question remains – What is freedom? I think there are three stages of freedom, and until we carefully differentiate between them, all of our well-intentioned dialogue about this vital issue is doomed to end in frustration and confusion.

            Let’s call the first and most rudimentary form of freedom adolescent freedom. At this stage of our development freedom simply means doing whatever you feel like doing. As children we are ringed round with authoritarian structures dictating our every move. Adolescents necessarily rebel against these external control-mechanisms as they evolve toward personal autonomy. I think we can all agree that adolescent rebellion is a good thing, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us. It’s how people are made. But personal evolution is rarely neat and tidy.

            It turns out that this first stage of freedom isn’t very free. As adolescents we are driven largely by unconscious needs and the forces of peer pressure. We only think we are free. Then we grow a little older and wiser.

          At the second stage of freedom we mature beyond hedonism and learn that our best self-interest is often served by postponing immediate pleasures for larger long-term gains. And on an even deeper level we learn that our best self-interest is entirely interwoven with the interests of others. We learn that there is no me without we – that there is no such thing as private happiness or private freedom. Our freedom and happiness cannot flourish if others are imprisoned and miserable. As Nelson Mandela wrote, “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” At this second, mature stage of freedom our separate sense of self grows translucent, transparent even, as our sense of interdependency expands. We begin to see ourselves not merely as individuals, but as a part of a whole. We are evolving toward the third and highest state of freedom – awakened freedom.

            In awakened freedom we drop more and more of our cravings and attachments, we get better at accepting current conditions without resistance or resentment, and we move from reactivity toward acceptance. Spiritual teacher Krishnamurti called this state of consciousness “choiceless awareness” – to experience reality as it is without the neurotic compulsion to have an opinion about everything. Asked once what his secret was, Krishnamurti replied, “I don’t mind what happens.” Imagine how freeing that would feel.

          Awakened freedom means shifting from the consciousness of scarcity to the consciousness of abundance. It does not mean receiving everything I want, but realizing freedom from want.

            Awakened freedom means allowing the ebb and flow of life to rise and fall unabated without taking it personally. Sometimes we feel strong. Sometimes we feel weak. Sometimes we receive joy unbidden, other times a nameless sadness overwhelms us. It’s o.k. In awakened freedom even our sadness becomes a friendly companion. As contemporary teacher Adyashanti puts it, “Real freedom is freedom from the demand to feel good all the time.” We realize that we are deeper than our thoughts, deeper even than our pain. In the boundlessness beneath the thought stream, we are irrevocably free.

            Awakened freedom mean relinquishing the illusion of control, slipping into the unbridled miracle of the present moment, and resolving to walk through this brief, beautiful life awash in wonder and willing to love.

[This piece was originally published in my column "A to Zen" in the May/June 2018 issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permision.]

Skillful Means

The Buddhists have a concept called upaya – “skillful means.” It grew out of the simple observation that one shoe does not fit all feet, and that we often have to change our approach as the situation around us changes. Principles and rules are fine, but without the freedom to adapt to the realities before us, we fail.

            It began in early Buddhism as the acknowledgment that different people employ different techniques to attain enlightenment. Some meditated in solitude, others committed acts of compassionate service, while others devoted their lives to philosophical discourse and intellectual rigor. If enlightenment is available to all, a fundamental Buddhist precept, whether a learned king or an illiterate pauper, then surely the paths to wisdom are many and varied. What matters is the outcome, not obedience to someone else’s path. Upaya simply means: do whatever works.

            The Lotus Sutra tells the famous story of the man who saved his children’s lives by luring them out of a burning house by lying to them. They were too young to understand what fire was, and were too engrossed in their play, so yelling “Run!” wouldn’t have worked. Instead, he told them that outside the gate of the house were all of their favorite toys, the toys they had been begging their father for. Out the gate they ran, only to discover there were no toys waiting for them. Instead of toys, their gift was escaping a horribly painful death. While in principle it may be wrong to lie, clearly, in this case, it was the right thing to do. The crux of the matter is this – one can waste a lot of time arguing in the abstract about whether or not it is ever morally acceptable to deceive another. Or one can leave such idle musings to the scholars and philosophers and simply forge ahead into the messiness of real life, doing one’s best moment by moment to cooperate with the unfolding chaos of the world and work toward the best possible outcome, knowing that paradox, absurdity, and contradiction dog our every step. Upaya reminds us that sometimes the real question is not What is right and what is wrong? but How can we make things better than they are right now? Progress, not perfection.       

            The concept of upaya is particularly useful in the realm of spiritual practice. When I teach meditation, I guide participants through a set of suggestions about how to sit, how to breathe, and how to move through the process of deepening into a state of relaxed stillness. But I make it clear that all of my suggestions are just that, suggestions. In any guided process, whether it’s meditation, yoga, or contemplative prayer, one must adapt the process to one’s unique individuality. Only you know the peculiarities of your body, your mind, and your current energy state. This is not to say that we ignore all suggestion and guidance – there’s a reason we go to teachers and give them our trust. They are discipline-experts who lovingly pass down the best practices of all of those who went before us. But blind obedience to past practices is counter-productive to the ultimate goal. Our teachers and all of their valuable suggestions are like the notation on a sheet of music – it isn’t music until we translate those notes with our living, breathing fingers, hands, hearts, minds, and voices into the vibrations of sound. In the end, we are the instruments through which wisdom manifests itself. And no two renditions of a song are ever alike.

            Nowhere is upaya more evident than on the fringes of religion and philosophy. In the first book of Carlos Castaneda’s remarkable series, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Castaneda recounts his apprenticeship with the Yaqui shaman Don Juan. In the initial stages of the process, Don Juan used jimson weed and peyote to shatter his apprentice’s habitual, conditioned mode of consciousness. As soon as this was accomplished, he promptly dropped the use of all psychotropic substances. They were simply a skillful means to an end, not an end in themselves. It was never about the drugs. It was about the transformation they afforded. So too, as generations of seekers, under the influence of Castaneda’s widely-read books, sought their own mystical visions in the deserts of the southwest in the fog of intoxication, many confused the journey with the destination, descending into drug-soaked oblivion. For some of us, the judicious use of psychotropic compounds under the loving guidance of a trusted friend might be an excellent beginning to a deep and meaningful philosophical and spiritual transformation, as it was for Carlos Castaneda. For others it might prove disastrous.

            Another example of upaya in the fertile fringe of religion and philosophy is the area known as Tantra. Tantric practices had an enormous impact on both Hinduism and Buddhism. Perhaps as a reaction against the overly controlling rules of some yogic and Buddhist monastic practices, Tantra brought the messy worldliness of folk religion, mythology, and shamanism into the ethereal and otherworldly sensibilities of formal religion. If all is One, as Hinduism and Buddhism teach, then why divide the whole of reality into two disparate realms, the sacred and the profane, celebrating one while eschewing the other? Instead, Tantra suggests that we use all of the dimensions of our mind-body experience to heighten spiritual insight, including sexuality and inebriation. Naturally, these activities are especially prone to abuse and misunderstanding, so they must be practiced under the guidance of discipline experts. But at their best, for some people, Tantric practices can be a powerful path of awakening, even if they embrace behaviors that seem on the surface to contradict the core principles of the religions they claim to embrace. Buddha taught against the use of intoxicants. In the disciplined path of Ashtanga Yoga, the mother-path of all yogas, we are to reduce our enmeshment with the material, sensory world, pulling back into an interior awareness of our inherent, abiding, Universal Self. Yet in Tantra, the very opposite seems to be happening. How does this make sense? It doesn’t. Not everything in this big, messy world fits into neat boxes. Sometimes you just have to find your way through the thicket of competing truth claims and trust your own inner-knowing. Sometimes you just have to do what works, and rules be damned.

            While rigid adherence to principle may seem on the surface admirable, in the actual give and take of life, it can lead to outcomes nobody wants. We have to find a way to on one hand adhere to principles when the winds of expediency blow, while on the other hand be willing to bend principles to the realities before us. A guiding notion might be this – as long as love is our intention, not naked self-interest, we can’t go wrong. Principles, at their best, help us guard against self-centeredness and harming others. But when principles fail, we always have upaya to lead us through the terrain where there is no path.   

Becoming What We Do

[This piece first appeared in my "A to Zen" column in the July/August 2015 edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced her with permission.]

They lived thousands of miles apart on different continents, in different centuries – two men that would go on to become the most influential philosophers in history. They never met, but they shared a common question. What are the mechanics of moral transformation?

In 6^th century B.C.E. China, Confucius taught that action precedes internal transformation. We become what we do. Confucius believed that human nature was essentially good, but our innate goodness existed only as potential. In order to actualize our potential, we need to cultivate three primary virtues: shu, ren, and li.

Shu is the consciousness of empathy; the imaginative understanding of how our actions impact others. For Confucius it came down to one simple rule: “What is hateful to you, do not do to others.”

On this empathetic foundation one then cultivates ren or kindness, the willful decision to work for the good of others with no thought of what we might receive in return. Moving from quid pro quo toward altruism, Confucian morality favors duty over self-interest.

Still, the seeds of shu and ren bear no fruit until they are embodied in the actions of our everyday lives.

Li means proper behavior or decorum – all of the little rituals of life that demonstrate our care and respect for one another. For Confucius, human excellence, like any other art form, is realized through conscious choice and willful practice, in the same way one masters the violin. You don’t get good at violin by thinking about it, or admiring it from afar. You have to pick it up and play. After a lifetime of practice, virtuous behavior becomes internalized and unconscious. What began as rote repetition attains graceful naturalness in time. Our innate goodness is externalized through action. We become good. And everyone benefits.

A century after Confucius and half a world away, a young student at the Platonic Academy in Athens began to formulate his own ethical theories, eventually emerging from the shadow of his famous teacher Plato. Like his mentor, and in a curious alignment with Confucius, Aristotle taught that humans were by nature good, but our goodness was a seed that would flourish only with proper cultivation. For a human being to reach their full moral potential, four things would have to happen: education, reason, habit, and character.

Education is essential because it trains our faculty of reason, and reason is required to discern the good. Then the good must be practiced repeatedly until it becomes habit. And habit constructs character. As Confucius argued a century earlier, we become what we do.

For example courage.

For the ancient Greeks, courage was the most important virtue because without it none of the other virtues are possible. One must be brave to be compassionate. But how do we zero in on courage? How can we tell if we’ve stopped short in cowardice, or overshot into rashness? For Aristotle only reason can make this determination. Critical thinking and rational deliberation are requirements for moral action because they correctly identify the Golden Mean, the virtuous middle point between the vices of excess and deficit. On this Aristotle and Confucius agree – we cannot become good without first developing keen discernment and an iron will.

From the Confucian and Aristotelian perspective, the mechanics of moral transformation are fairly straightforward. Correctly identify the good. Practice it until you embody it – act courageous until you embody courage, choose compassion until you embody compassion. Watch old habits fall away, replaced by new habits that give full expression to your innate goodness. Thus is the good, both individually and communally, realized.

We aren’t talking about mere conformity to arbitrary norms or obedience to whatever fleeting laws currently hold sway – we’re talking about becoming who we really are.

In the end, by embracing transformation and embodying virtue we become integrated, no longer in conflict with ourselves. Our thoughts and actions align with our innate higher nature resulting in serenity, freedom, and happiness. For Confucius and Aristotle, the fully realized life is natural, joyful, and deeply rewarding. Who doesn’t want that? And it begins with action.  

The Golden Rule

[This article first appeared in the July/August 2013 edition of Unity Magazine and is reproduced here with permission.]

“One going to take a pointed stick to poke a baby bird should first

try it on himself to feel how it hurts.” – Yoruba proverb, Nigeria

Everyone knows the golden rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  A quick Google search gives you all the examples you need.  In one form or another the golden rule is found in all religions and ethical philosophies.  Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and beyond – all the world’s sages sing the one song of our inherent interconnectedness and our sacred duty to treat others as ourselves.

The golden rule begins in empathy and ends in right action.  First we must understand our identity with others and the mutually binding interests we share.  With this fundamental understanding in place the foundation is set – we are now free to act in accord with our principles, knowing that our actions co-create our highest good.  Right action is not born from self-interest but from a broader, more universal awareness of the good, an impulse grounded in the insight that I cannot thrive while my brothers and sisters are not thriving.  When we serve others our own interests are served, automatically and indirectly.  This is what the Dalai Lama meant when he said, “Considering the interests of others is clearly the best form of self-interest.” 

The simplicity of the golden rule heightens its appeal.  Properly followed, it renders all other rules moot.  In Confucianism the virtue of shu or reciprocity calls us to be aware of the impact we have others.  “What is hateful to you,” Confucius said, “do not do to others.” Every transgression would be prevented by the proper application of this simple maxim. If we saw our selves through the eyes of others, our words and actions would naturally soften and grow more compassionate. 

In an uncanny parallelism from the Talmud, Rabbi Hillel says, “What is hateful to you, do not do to others.  This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.” It’s as if the golden rule contains in encapsulated form all of the learned complexity of the world’s voluminous ethical and religious codes.  Even St. Augustine, a staunch teacher if there ever was one, leaves us with a simple task, reducing Christian ethics to a seven word motto: “Love God and do what you will.”  By calling for all thought and action to be rooted in a condition of consciousness in which one is lovingly aligned with God, Augustine bypasses all of the intellectual hand-wringing and second guessing that commonly plagues ethical reasoning and gets right to the heart of the matter – a child-like state where right-action and kindness flow like water.  When you begin with love for what is right and true, your actions will fall into accord with what is right and true, and the people will prosper.

The golden rule is not information.  It’s a reminder.  It calls us back to our higher natures, our inherent kindness and our commitment to affirm the infinite value of all sentient beings.  It’s simple enough for a child to understand, yet deep enough to occupy the most skillful philosophers for millennia.  It stands like an ancient monument, yet it’s perennially fresh and invites us in anew moment by moment.  And its universality points to a possibility – that regardless of the wide variety of surface inflections and cultural diversity found in the world’s wisdom traditions, there is an underlying commonality in the human experience that transcends time and culture.  We are far more alike than different.  Our unity is affirmed by our universal values.

We all carry the golden rule within us.  Whether we attune to it or not is another matter.  We are free to ignore it any time we want, and follow instead the dictates and longings of our endless woundedness.  But when we come back to our sacred core we feel once again the inherent wellness of our hearts, and know that we are safe, and that there is always enough.  Only then do we dare to love and be loved, falling into the arms of a truth unbound by space and time – the law of our own infinite value.  And with new eyes we immediately see that all the blessed others around us share in this infinite stance, this infinite abundance.  It is from here that the golden rule makes perfect sense.  We wouldn’t have it any other way.