The Three Truths

Life is dizzyingly complex. It’s easy to feel lost, confused, and overwhelmed. So many conflicted voices clamoring for our attention – it seems impossible to cut through the clutter and find the essence. But in the end there are only three truths: impermanence, presence, and love.

Impermanence

On the surface, everything’s impermanent. Nothing lasts. All forms arise and fade. Not only does every wisdom tradition attest this truth, but more importantly, we see it confirmed in our own experience over and over again. There is a graceful fluidity to the process of becoming and be-going that makes life achingly beautiful. But it’s also true that impermanence sparks continual suffering. Everything we touch slips away. For the 2nd century Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius this unimpeachable fact was liberating – our impermanence frees us to more fully live in the moment and truly enjoy our lives. Even as Emperor he knew his fame and importance was illusory and fleeting. His writings are filled with the names of previous luminaries – Augustus, Caesar, Plato, and the question: Where are they now? Reduced to dust. One day we will be lowered into our grave, and all the mourners standing around will one day be lowered into their graves as well, and their loved ones after that, until many, many years from now no one will know any of our names. It will be as if we were never here. The whole world will come to an end. Far from lamenting this, Marcus Aurelius suggests we look with clear eyes at this truth so that we might live with authenticity, courage, and enjoyment. An awareness of impermanence drives us into the depths of the significance of this now moment. This is, after all, all there is.

Presence

When we fully acknowledge, accept, and even celebrate the transitory nature of all things, we are freed of our debilitating attachment to any of them. Coming out of the mind and its endless dissatisfactions, desires, and fears we show up disarmed and awake in the simple, uncluttered, and concept-free awareness of this present moment. No longer enamored with the thought-world, we fully enter the real world. Even our sense of self is amended – we experience ourselves not as a separate entity, cut off and alienated from the whole, but as an egoless aspect of the whole. This is a freedom the conceptual mind can only imagine.

Through practices such as meditation, contemplation, reverie, aesthetic rapture, and immersion in nature we begin to experience for ourselves a realm of being formerly hidden from us – the background beneath the surface of the fleeting surface of impermanence. This abiding presence was always with us – in fact, it is us. It has many names in the world’s wisdom traditions – Inner Christ, Buddha-Consciousness, Atman, Inner Witness, Holy Spirit – and yet no name can fully describe or contain this depth-reality. It eludes our conceptualization and defies any attempt to clothe it in language. All of our words and concepts merely point to it the way a trail sign points to the path ahead. The sign is not the destination, the menu is not the food, and the map is not the place – yet we rely on these referents to show us where we need to direct our active engagement, knowing that when you walk the trail you leave the signpost far behind.

One thing that all the sages and seers report, and a claim we can confirm in our own experience, is the idea that this nameless presence hidden just beneath the surface of the fleeting world of forms is silent, still, abiding, and changeless. Unlike the world of surface forms, it never wavers. It hovers beyond all qualities, categories, processes, and concepts. It just is. And in its stillness it seems apart from the impermanent realm. Calling it permanent is probably excessive and unnecessary – we should avoid calling it anything. Names and concepts distort more than they reveal. But what we’re left with is this – it feels like something. We may not be able to think it, but we sure experience it. There’s a deep, abiding stillness and peace in the presence. We experience an aliveness here, a sense of refuge, and a loving warmth. It’s easy to see why in many belief systems this sacred background, this abiding presence gets personified as a deity, and how teachings, doctrines, dogmas, rituals, and institutions spring up around this primarily experiential awareness. You can call it God if you want to. But you don’t have to. It is possible to remain in the presence of this abiding, underlying reality without clothing it in language, concepts, or religious ideologies.

If we had to name the feeling we have when we realize this presence, we’d probably just say “love.”

Love

Love is the only word left standing after we’ve eliminated all the others. Of course it too is inadequate. But it’ll do.

The most immediate and acute way to experience this for yourselves is in the wake of the death of a loved one. Your beloved is gone. They took form, graced your life, and have now returned to the formless realm. And yet in their absence, you feel more keenly than ever before their presence and the absolute love that you shared. Love is unaffected by the passage of time and the transience of forms. Love is the name of the infinite field out of which forms arise and to which they return.

Armed with these three truths – impermanence, presence, and love – we return to the battlefield of our lives full of humility, yet brave enough to take a stand and do what needs to be done. Love is our power now, and love overcomes every fear, every foe, every lie, and every limitation. We see clearly the beauty and pathos of these lovely, fleeting forms around us. We accept the changes that we and everything else are going through. We no longer cling to the past or crave private happiness. We simply intend the best outcomes, and work diligently to bring them about, letting go of attachment and practicing deep-tissue acceptance of whatever comes our way.

We cultivate a practice of conscious intentionality. We live our lives on purpose. We leave time and space for reverie, joy, meditation, prayer, contemplation, and connection, knowing that these are the windows through which the sacred presence behind the veil of impermanence floods into our lives like sunlight after a storm. No matter what is happening in the outer world, we remain aware of the sacred background, the stillness and silence of our inner being.

Love and only love enables us to withstand the suffering brought on by impermanence. In our pain we reach inside to touch the presence within and are in an instant restored. Love is who we are, what we are, and what everything is. When we live and have our being in love, we are on the beam and held aloft from darkness, ignorance, and meaninglessness. In love we rise to our full stature as beings of infinite value. And we fall in love with the whole messy, beautiful world.     

The Seven Best Things

There are many wondrous things to behold in this brief and brilliant life. But of all the ways the infinite universe baffles our senses, defies our explanations, and sustains our lives, these are the seven best things.

1. Freedom

Freedom is both a heartening gift and a terrifying responsibility. It comes in many forms – freedom of movement, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech. But behind every form of freedom is a single guiding principle – as rational human beings, each of us possesses the tools to best determine the course of our life. This optimistic assessment stands up to close scrutiny, which is not to say that everyone always makes the best decisions, whether for themselves or for the interests of the community. Still, our humanism demands it. It is a profoundly loving act to grant another their freedom. When we remove the hindrances to freedom we honor our highest calling and facilitate the fullest possible expression of our inherent greatness.

2. Love

In the game of life love trumps every other hand. Nothing matters more than the sustenance love offers. What is best in us grows strongest in its nurturing light. Each of us is called by our natures to both receive and offer this eternal spring. Love takes many forms and finds its way through innumerable channels, penetrating even the most hardened barriers. Yet in the end, love is just a word, a word we’ve chosen to signify the interconnective tissue of Being itself. Love is the name we’ve given to the nurturing energy of life – a name for the fundamentally nameless. Love informs our simple kindness and emboldens our struggle for justice. It is the yearning of the sapling for the sun, and the longing of an infant for her mother. We reach out for each other, sometimes skillfully, sometimes not, knowing instinctually that love is the food that sustains all of our souls.

3. Truth

Truth is a word we use for that which is ultimately real. Whenever the word “truth” is used the first question that pops up is, “Whose truth?” But here we are not using the word in such a pedestrian fashion, as if unlimited and transcendent Truth could be contained in any single proposition. Truth statements, bound as they are by language and thought, are necessarily partial and limited. This is not a debate. We are simply using the word truth to point to the ground of Being itself, beyond all thoughts and forms. In traditions willing to personify this ultimate reality we hear the many names of God. In traditions less interested in personification words like Brahman and Dao emerge. But beyond the names and forms lay a simple, universal source. Because of the limitations of human perception and cognition, we must make peace with the fact that our knowledge of truth remains a work in progress, comprised of little more than fleeting insights, partial glimmers, and a general sense of direction. A sailboat never moves in a straight line. It moves to and fro zigzagging across the moving surface of the water. So too we move dialectically across the landscape of our collective understandings, trusting the overall direction more than the momentary tack. Truth is the harbor calling us home.

4. Beauty

One of the great contributions of the Renaissance was its assertion that Beauty is Truth, and that God reveals His infinite perfection through the pleasing forms of this world, both natural and created. This revolutionary declaration simultaneously elevated the role of the artist in society and redeemed nature from the degraded state to which it had been assigned by the medieval church. Artists were no longer seen as decorative laborers or worse, liars, despite their crafty use of illusions and metaphors, but as geniuses whose vision and expertise opened up the gates of heaven. And celebrating natural beauty as a divine realm paved the way for the later Romantic and environmental movements. Beauty is a language to be read with the faculty of intuition. And intuition is that faculty of knowing best equipped to apprehend truth. Our love of art and our awe before nature enlivens and nourishes our moral sentiment, strengthening our courage to honor truth and embody love. Beauty is our source and our soul. Without it we would whither like flowers cut from the vine.

5. Grace

Grace is a word normally associated with Christianity. But when we lift it off the platform of a single faith-tradition we find a boundless, universal phenomenon that defies easy explanation. In personified theologies like Christianity grace is God’s way of supporting everything in creation. In the less centralized theology of India dharma expresses the sacred sustenance that upholds the fabric of reality. Even atheists and agnostics know that they live within a natural order whose interconnected and mutually supportive structures do more for us than we could ever do for ourselves. We do not make the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food that sustains our life, or the sun that grows our food. In every way we are supported by forces not of our own making, and by the work of thousands of people around us, most of whom we’ll never meet. Grace is a simple word for a beautiful and complicated thing. And without it, none of us would for one moment continue to exist.

6. Life

On our worst days we forget, but on our best days we remember. Life is a priceless gift. And like a birthday gift, its bounty is only revealed when we tear off the pretty packaging and dig deep into what’s inside. Being alive means feeling everything, the pain and the glory. Despite all our setbacks and suffering we know it’s all worth it. We would endure a thousand lonely, hollow days for that one golden moment, that single breakthrough, that shattering illumination. And when we grow a little older and settle down we learn to stop chasing those moments and realize that they come unbidden to those who know how to wait, grow still, and see the world anew with each breath. This is it. And we’re glad it is. A self-actualized life informed by freedom, love, truth, beauty, and grace is the Holy Grail, nirvana, and the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the treasure of the quest, the prize of the sages, the rapture of the saints, and the birthright of every beating heart.

7. You

None of the first six best things would have any power at all were it not for our ability to perceive and experience them. As your gratitude for these priceless jewels rises and informs your thoughts, your actions, your rituals, and your relationships, add yourself to the list of miraculous wonders. For some reason the universe decided to express itself as you, in this time and place, and imbue you with all its consciousness and creative capacity. The worst offense is to waste your life. Beginning now, vow to honor these seven gifts by removing for yourself and for as many others as possible any and all impediments to self-actualization. It is our birthright to be amazing. And it is our sacred responsibility to get out of our own way.

Meaningful Work

In my role as a professor I have the opportunity to counsel many young people as they face the endless options before them. What should I major in? What kind of career should I work toward? Should I do what I love or make a living? I’m not there to tell them what to do or who to be. In my counseling work I don’t try to change people. I help them tell the truth to themselves about themselves. The healing comes from that.

When students agonize about their majors, their college choices, their careers – in other words, their futures – what they are really agonizing about is a far more fundamental question, the most important question of all: who am I or even more to the point what am I? No other question so effectively clears out the accumulated debris of years of fear and misunderstanding leaving us clarified and ready to act in accord with our essential nature.

Although he is terribly out of fashion and much maligned, the philosopher Karl Marx made a powerful point when he suggested that instead of homo sapien, our species would be more aptly named homo faber. Homo sapien means “man the thinker”. Homo faber means “man the maker”. For Marx, the single most defining characteristic of our species is not our ability to think but our ability to shape the world around us. Yes, birds make nests and bees make hives, but human beings reach into the ground extracting iron, oil and other elemental substances and then with our opposable thumbs and creative visions we turn the earth’s elements into space shuttles, heart valves and iPads. Like gods we pick up clay and breathe our essence into it. In the alchemy of transformation, work is our talisman.

It is in our nature to work, to create, to combine, to innovate, to synthesize and to build. The things we make, whether they are songs or skyscrapers, are externalizations of our essence. And as we shape the world after our own visions, the world in turn shapes us. It is hard to know where our consciousness ends and the world begins. When we invent the world we are inventing ourselves. And work is the sacramental act that binds it all together.

A former student recently wrote to me through Facebook and relayed a struggle he was having. His heart and his gut were telling him to major in religious studies but he knew that with only a BA he wouldn’t be able to teach or in any other way earn a living with that degree. Grad school in the foreseeable future was out of the question and without a Masters degree his fear was that he would have to settle for some menial job outside his genuine interests – something just to pay the bills. As he framed it, the dilemma was between making money and meaningful work. He asked me what to do.

When a philosophical dilemma arises the problem is often rooted in the way we frame the issue. In other words, to make any headway on this dilemma we must first step back and examine the words we are using. What are our underlying, unexamined assumptions? What does “meaningful work” really mean?

What we have are two conflicting truths. On one hand is the notion that each of us must realize our passion by finding work that is deeply and personally meaningful for us. By finding a career that aligns with our deepest purpose we realize joy. From this perspective, the greatest blunder is selling-out for the almighty dollar and letting our sacred purpose wither.

On the other hand is the equally compelling notion that any work, so long as it does not profit from the suffering of others, can be profoundly fulfilling if the attitude of the worker is deeply committed to the consciousness of service. In this truth the so-called dilemma between making money and meaningful work dissolves. Any work can be meaningful work because meaning is found in the consciousness of the worker, not in external conditions or circumstances. It is this second possibility that often gets short shrift from both career counselors and spiritual advisors. The idea that any work can be meaningful is just not as sexy as following your bliss.

But not everyone gets to be an astronaut or a rock star. Very few earn a living at poetry or painting. Mystics and monks may get manna from heaven, but money? Not so much. And last time I checked, mothers don’t earn a dime. Clearly there must be a way to shift our consciousness into realizing that the sacred nature of work is only incidentally related to income stream. If your dream job has not yet materialized and you find yourself having to take whatever kind of employment comes your way to put food on the table and a roof over your head, consider this. There is great honor and dignity in being a part of something bigger than you, even if that something is an assembly line, a muffler shop, an office suite or a corner café. Some of the most deeply fulfilled people I’ve ever met are humble people with simple jobs – taxi drivers, janitors, warehouse workers, shipping clerks, gardeners.

When you surrender yourself to the choreography of your work, you slip into the now moment where you encounter other human beings, beings of infinite value, and you have the momentous opportunity to bring your training, skill and compassion to bear on their suffering and unmet needs. Making sandwiches, filing paperwork and cleaning rooms may seem like humble work, but it is no less essential than rocket science – without either one the world would be immeasurably poorer. No matter the nature of your work, realize that you are playing an essential role in bringing order out of chaos. As you trim hedges and stock groceries and wipe tables and deliver packages you are participating in the healing of the world. You are mending hearts. You are creating beauty. You are bringing people out of darkness. You are feeding them body, mind and soul. With every kindness you are restoring the faith of the people you serve. Your work is the connective tissue of the body of humanity. To recast an old theater adage, there are no small jobs, only small workers.

Whether we are called teachers or not, all of us teach. The way we treat other people teaches them who they are and who we are. Every encounter, no matter how mundane, is a holy meeting.

So while it is true that we must follow our bliss it is also true that we must guard against the tendency of the ego to hijack our hearts and twist our minds into thinking that we are too good for menial labor. When the Zen student complained to the master that after three weeks at the monastery he had still not learned a single thing about Zen the master asked, “Have you eaten?”

“Yes,” said the student.

“Then wash your bowl.”

All work is service. And service is the work of heaven. Who would think themselves too good to perform the work of heaven?

It is right in the midst of these everyday chores that we realize wisdom. Sweep the path. Wash the sheets. Lift up those around you who have fallen. Let go your empty dreams of fame and glory. They were only the projections of your fears and self-aggrandizement. Instead, embrace your role as a part of the whole, not beneath anyone else or better than anyone else. This is our meaningful work.