Author: Jon

Destroy the World, Save the Earth

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I’ve got to apologize for going so long between posts. Sometimes what I want to share here in this space feels so personal, or so difficult to put into words, that I end up not doing it at all.

Something that’s been on my mind the last couple of weeks is “the world” vs. “the earth.” There’s a big, big difference between the two, and probably the easiest way to distinguish them, is simply by realizing that the world is not real. What do I mean by not “real?” Well, take a look at the earth, for contrast. Look at your friends, spouse, kids, your cat, dog or parakeet—those are real. Look at yourself. Feel your skin, your clothes, your headache or your peace. That is real. They are there. Go outside, see the cars, the grass, the sky, birds, clouds, bushes and asphalt. Real again. Better yet, give yourself a nice, total immmersion experience of reality—go canoeing in a park, or mountain biking, or swimming in the ocean, with a minimum of thinking or conversation. You’ll start to get to know the difference.

What’s not real? Everything that exists only in the mind. Chances are, as soon as you start talking with someone, conversations will turn to things that have no basis in reality. Whether someone or something is “good” or “bad.” Whether something “means” something else or not. The past. That’s right, the past happened, but it is not real. Past sounds like passed for a reason. The future is obviously not real, but we devote inordinate amounts of our thoughts to it.
When you feel stress about the future, you’re feelings are real enough, but their cause is unreal. There’s some profound truth in the trite workplace sign “FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real.”

But there’s a lot more non-reality to become aware of. Our very identities are pieces of the past we esteem and carry on with us into the present. If you ask my name, I’ll say, “Jon.” That’s a real sound, but how does it become a shorthand for me? I could have been named Douglas, Vladimir, or Akhbar. And if I so chose to, I could change it. Ask my nationality, and I’ll say “American.” What I really mean is that I was born in a part of the earth where people had agreed to recognize an organization of people as having some authority over them, and by agreement, this organization was known as the government of the United States of America.

But look at a view of the earth from space, and there are no lines drawn, no square patches colored blue, pink, or yellow, and no names written upon the land. There’s no “United States of America” there, no “Switzerland,” and no “Iraq.” What’s real are the nameless landmasses with their nameless forests, plains and deserts and the nameless oceans, lakes and rivers.

I am not my past, my name, my family, my upbringing, my country, my religion, my ideas, nor my thoughts. Neither are you. Kind of makes you wonder why all the fights about names, families, lifestyles, countries, religions, and ideologies, doesn’t it?

Meditation is an opportunity to begin stripping away the conditioning, the associations, and shared hallucinations that comprise “the world.” What are you, there in the dark, with eyes closed, with no name, no past, no future? What is that? It’s worth getting to know, because that is real. That is you.

A Breath of Hastily Denied Honesty

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In an unexpected moment of candor less than two weeks ago, the President of the United States said regarding “the war on terror:” “I don’t think we can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror are less acceptable in parts of the world.”

Knowing that such honesty doesn’t play well at the polls, the President and his handlers rapidly spun it to mean nearly the exact opposite, that the United States can and will definitely bring an end to terrorism. Of course, his opponent, John Kerry, must also pretend that such a war is winnable.

Of course the war is unwinnable, at least by the methods presently used by nations. Great Britain’s war against the Irish Republican Army has been going on for eighty years now, Israel’s against the PLO for nearly sixty, Russia’s against Chechnya for a full decade, and the list goes on. A war is winnable only if its fuel can be exhausted. The fuel of violence is resentment. How is resentment brought to an end? By either the complete and total exhaustion of one of the two warring entities, or by ending the underlying resentment that fuels the violence.

World War II was won by the utter exhaustion of the Axis powers, after the destruction of millions of people on both sides. A single entity, like a government, can indeed be brought to such exhaustion. The Taliban fell, Saddam Hussein fell. But Iraqi and American forces are now wracked by almost daily terror attacks. Al-Qaeda still commits terror attacks around the world. Afghanistan is now back in the control of local warlords financed by the opium trade, and Iraq has largely disintegrated into chaos. Brutal dictatorships like Pakistan are propped up with weapons and money to become even more dictatorial to their citizens.

This is the simple truth, which no one wants to say, and no one wants to hear: War doesn’t stop terrorism. It fuels the resentment, and for every terrorist killed, more rise up, as long as the resentment grows.

This is the bitter truth that world leaders must face, regardless of their country or party: do what is needed to end the resentment, and you will cut off terrorism at its source. It’s essential that we try to understand why our enemies hate us, and how we can change that hatred into something else.

Not a thousand American troops, nor ten thousand Iraqi civilians killed, nor any number of insurgents, militants, or terrorists killed will bring peace, as long as people are angry enough to die.

I told you you didn’t want to hear it, but that’s Jedi life in the real world.

Live outside the box

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OK, I’m a geek. I work in front of computers all day long, I play mostly in front of a computer all evening. But it’s occurred to me that I live too much of my life (almost all of it!) in boxes. I live in a box, work in a box, and get from home to work (and vice versa )by means of driving a smaller box. This is true of a LOT of us. (You know who you are.) Today I had a pleasant day with several hours outside the box at Cape Hatteras. It was great!

New goal for the Frimster: a hour of unboxed living every day.

A Christian Fatwa? “He Should Be Killed”—Robertson

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Q: What religion has leaders who use all available media to call for a religious government, and urge those they find most unworthy to be killed?

A: The Christian Religious Right. On the 700 Club on Thursday, August 19, Ayatollah Pat Robertson called for a fatwa on Ayatollah Muktada al-Sadr. His entire quote follows:

Al-Sadr is a rebel whose breaking the law. He’s a murderer, there’s a warrant out for his arrest. He should be killed, it’s just that simple. They should execute him and they should take care of those people. He’s holding up the most powerful army on Earth and he’s thumbing his nose at the authority of the new government, and it’s time the forces took action against him and stop the play. I hope this news says they’re going after him.The news yesterday said, well. he’d agreed to some kind of a deal, but he’s a liar, he’s not going to do a deal and it’s time we move in and do it swiftly and get this sore out of the way.

You can hear it yourself at The 700 Club website. [UPDATE: this broadcast has rolled off the page, as of Sept. 11, 2004l]

A few thoughts on Robertson’s fatwa:

  1. Making al-Sadr into a martyr would be unbelievably stupid. It would almost certainly condemn Iraq (and the U.S.) to years of war.
  2. Ayad Allawi, the Prime Minister of Iraq, doesn’t want al-Sadr to be killed. He actually wants him to run for office so al-Sadr can see that the majority of non-extremist Iraqis reject him.
  3. With this pronouncement, Robertson seems to have lost all contact with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
  4. Robertson can be quite comfy with killers when he can profit from them. Consider his business relationship with Charles Taylor in creating Freedom Gold through the tax shelter of the Cayman Islands. Taylor escaped from a Massachusetts prison, fled to Libya, instigated an insurrection in Sierra Leone, killed the president of Liberia, and initiated a war taking over 200,000 lives, and has been linked by the FBI to funding al-Qaeda:

Let’s pray for light—for ourselves, for Iraq, and for Pat Robertson.

We know what we want for ourselves . . .

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I received this email from someone called “The Writer.” (I guess he or she meant to leave a comment but emailed me by mistake.) Anyway, The Writer had a brilliant insight, that basic spiritual truths are self-evident on the personal level, but not on the social level. No wonder Christ said to love our neighbor as ourselves!

It’s amazing how basic spiritual truths take many thousands of years to be learnt via hard experience by humanity. That the ends do not justify the means, and that peace is better than war and life better than death, and freedom better than imprisonment, are on the personal level self-evident. But on the larger social level things do not seem quite so clear, for some reason. . . . the writer.

Underneath the painting—the First Noble Truth

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Last night, I had a deep realization of the First Noble Truth. Now, to anyone who’s not immediately put off by the negativity of the statement that “life is dukkha (loosely translated as ‘suckiness’),” the fact probably seems self-evident. There’s death, sickness, poverty, hatred, fear, all the stuff. You know it, I know it. Big deal. What came to me last night, (and it came to me like a sledge hammer on my head—it was a shock, I’m telling you, it was not pleasant!) was that life is anxiety. Or that anxiety is the canvas our lives are painted on.

It’s one thing to accept the suckiness of life intellectually, or even to see its effects in the world in general, but what happened last night was I saw it in everything. Most people have very few moments in waking life that don’t have a tinge of anxiety, although it might be so subtle it’s like the hum of a refrigerator in the kitchen, when you’re upstairs listening to the stereo. But it’s still there! We’ve really trained ourselves not to see it. (Even though it seems a third of their articles are about it, you could read Tricycle for years and not get it!)

Our anxiety comes from many sources—psychologists concentrate on our parents and authority figures, and yes, there’s anxiety there. All of our lives we’ve been given rules and consequences for not following them. And so, we become conditioned. Am I doing what’s right? Did I do something wrong? But this root anxiety is a lot more basic than that. Will I get what I want? Will I get what I don’t want?

On an even more primal, unconscious level—Will I get something to eat? Will something eat me? How do I stay alive?

And even more fundamental, and more subconscious—Do I really exist? Who/what am I?

So we cover up our anxiety with everything—possessions, positions, activities, interests, thoughts, beliefs, etc. ad nauseum. None of which are wrong in themselves,but the anxiety that makes us cling to them is usually unaddressed. “Now that I have x, feel x, think x, know x, do x . . . I’m OK, right?” It doesn’t matter what color the paint we throw on the canvas, the canvas is still there. Even the belligerent thug who slugs whoever disses him is just throwing another layer on the underlying dukkha, the canvas of anxiety.

Just being—I mean simply be-ing, as opposed to doing, and having—is something that causes tremendous anxiety to most people. Try to even talk to some people about sitting meditation, and even the thought—not the action, mind you, but the mere thought—of sitting and doing nothing horrifies them. Now I can see that’s at least part of what makes it the laboratory, where all the paint is stripped off the canvas of insecurity.

What happens when we go farther and strip off the canvas? What’s left? That must be what awakening is.

The system works. (Don’t look behind the curtain.)

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A week ago a friend of mine was thrown into jail, charged with trespassing. He was innocent, but because his accuser complained loudly enough, he was tossed into jail, without an opportunity to meet with, let alone to be represented by counsel. Furthermore, he wasn’t scheduled for a bond hearing (his first opportunity to have legal representation) for nearly three weeks. Fortunately, his family was able to have his hearing moved up, and at his bond hearing six days after his incarceration began, he was released as there was not a shred of evidence against him.

In school, I was taught that part of what made America “the greatest country in the world” is that you’re always “presumed innocent until proven guilty.” At least in Virginia Beach, there’s a very good chance you’ll be judged guilty until proven innocent. My friend was actually rather lucky. Last night, I learned from a local community leader of the case of a teen-age boy who was incarcarated for six months before having a hearing.

The enormity of this problem goes unnoticed because this problem is invisible to most of us. But the fact is that 1 out of 50 American adults is in jail or prison as you read this. Not does America have the world’s largest prison population, but even our per capita rate of incarceration is the highest in the world?. Thats’ right. Not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Not the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not the People’s Republic of China. But the Land of the Free.

So what do you do when your friend is in jail, a victim of false arrest? You try to visit him, and give him a book to cheer him and help pass the time. But if your friend is in the Virginia Beach Correctional Facility, it doesn’t work like that. This isn’t the friendly cell of Mayberry RFD. An inmate is only allowed vistors for a half-hour, once a week, through the glass. Books can not be delivered to prisoners by visitors. Books can not be shipped to prisoners from local bookstores. An inmate may only receive a book if it arrives directly from a publisher! (Too bad if it’s our of print, as many spiritual classics are.) But of course, since the jail is taking on the role of an unofficial prison, there must be a library, right? Wrong. Daily exercise, like in a state penitentiary? It’s weekly in Virginia Beach. Adequate facilities? Inmates sleep on the floor, 30 men to a 20 X 50-foot room.

Incarceration rates are soaring for minor offenses, when both violent crimes and property crimes are at their lowest rates ever recorded. That’s right. So why do you feel so afraid when the fact is you’ve never been safer from crime, at least not in the last thirty years? Start recognizing cultural lies and marketed fear around you. Open your eyes.

Children have no choice but to accept the stories they are told about the world. But part of adulthood means seeking the truth. Spiritual awakening is not really about seeking bliss. It’s about ending the deception which the mechanisms of our fears, desires, and conditioning feed us in the Matrix. Here are some of them:

The system works.
It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can do.
If you didn’t deserve it, you wouldn’t be there.
We spend too much trying to rehabilitate people.
Sure we bombed them, but it was for their own good.
If we kill all the bad guys, all the bad guys will be gone.

It’s time to determine to discard lies and seek the truth. That’s Jedi life in the Real World.

It’s dry here

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Almost everyone I know has periods of spiritual dryness. I certainly am not past that; I’m in such a period right now. There’s a lot of doubt underneath the surface—”Is any of this helping? Am I stupid for seeking enlightenment? Isn’t meditation just a waste?”

I know these voices—and I think every mystic is familiar with them. Sometimes they seem more convincing than others. I think it’s strange we don’t talk more about our doubts and fears in the spiritual life. Instead, it’s much easier to keep up the mask of certainty. Almost all of our spiritual leaders do; uncertainty cannot be countenanced. “The Bible says . . .” “You must believe . . . ” I distrust such degrees of certainty now—too often a past certainty can lead to a present spiritual blindness. “God is on our side, we must destroy the evildoers, etc.”

And I’m not really distressed by the blankness of my spirit, or God’s silence right now. I’m trying to make it a part of my practice, to listen to the doubts, and fears “little Jon” has, and smile at them and let them pass. It isn’t always easy. In December last year, for a few weeks, it became a pretty rough time, with some feelings of despair. Many mystics, such as St. John of the Cross and Eckhart Tolle, have described “the dark night of the soul,” a period (often long) of despair and depression before God breaks through upon their consciousness and instills a never-ending awareness of infinite grace.

Fortunately (I think it’s fortunate), I’ve never had to deal with that, although a close friend of mine has. But last December for me was more like a shadowed nap-time of the soul. And this is nothing compared to that. Everything is practice, every emotion, even the fears and doubts.

My first maritime rescue mission!

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A friend of mine invited me along for some boating this morning. We took out a 23-foot fishing yacht, and enjoyed the waters of Hampton Roads between Norfolk and Hampton. It was choppy on the east side of the Hampton Roads bridge, but quite a bit calmer on the west side. I even had a shot at piloting, which was a thrill, because I had never done it before (and my friend is not much more experienced than I am!)

After a while, clouds began rolling in, and we decided to head back. I was just beginning to hoist up the anchor when my friend saw a flare go up from a small boat about a quarter-mile to starboard. (God, I love talking like a sailor!) It turns out, though, that the Fourth of July is the worst day possible for a Roman candle red signal flare to get any notice. It took me several minutes to pull up the anchor through the mud (there’s got to be an easier way, and no, this boat didn’t have any kind of wench at all). Honestly, we were hoping that another boat might answer the call, but none did, so as soon as we were free, we sped off to help.

A man, woman and boy were on the boat—they couldn’t start their engine due to a dead battery. They had called a friend to come and get them, but we offered a tow, and they accepted. (Good thing, too. A thunderstorm had opened up, and visibility was down to about 200 yards. They would’ve been stuck for a long time.) It’s hard to understand directions being shouted from another boat over the roar of a 200-horsepower outboard motor in a heavy downpour, but we soon reached their boat ramp in Portsmouth. They were grateful for our help, and we felt grateful to be able to give it. It was a wet, long ride back to Hampton through the rain, but it felt like such a wonderful way to celebrate the holiday. No, my first “rescue mission” didn’t involve CPR or any heroics, just a neighborly tow, but hey, that’s Jedi life in the real world.