19: Relative and Absolute

That New Times Religion

Greeting all,

Last week, I focused on some Christian themes, this week, it’s Buddhism!

Zen, to be specific; though, that’s just one of the threads weaving through this. It’s a wandering ramble, a call to the divine, and a reminder (to myself most of all) of what’s really important.

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In Zen, one of the koans used for training is: “why did Bodhidharma come from the west?”

I know enough about Zen to understand that koans are a “call,” but not enough to understand what would be considered a proper “response.”

Nevertheless, poor Buddhist that I am, it makes me think…

Why did Boddhidharma (the man who brought Buddhism from India to China in the 5th or 6th century CE) do so? Why does Dharma move where it moves? Why did Lao Tzu write his book before heading off to the wilderness? Why did the Buddha decide to leave the palace? Why did Jesus return to Palestine in his 30s?

Why does the truth that encourages human evolution spread the way it does?

But also:

What stops that movement of truth and evolution?

Why did Socrates drink hemlock? Why was Christ crucified?

Why do Abraham’s descendants fight amongst themselves so bloodily?

Why were the teachings of Christ used for subjugation, colonization, and slavery?

Why did Tibet fall?

Why are priests so often accused (and found guilty) of abusing innocents?

How could we have ever forgotten our original instructions, our indigeneity, our belonging to the land, the earth, and this planet?

Why the enslavement of the Africans? Why the decimation of the Native Americans and the Jews and the Palestinians and all the others?

To me, all these questions boil down to this: What is the relationship between the divine (absolute) and the manifest world (relative)?

And, since we humans are holders of both the absolute and the relative, what is OUR responsibility towards each of them? Their relationship seems to happen through us, so it’s probably an important thing for us to look at!

There’s a story of a monk who came to speak about meditation to a class of high school students. His first action was to write on the board: “Everyone Wants to Save the World, But No One Wants to Help Mom Do the Dishes.”

There is the old Zen story about a different monk who taught that, once we are enlightened, we no longer fall under the law of cause and effect (karma, trauma, etc). He was turned into a fox and stuck that way until someone could give him a better response.

This is not a mystery about why human beings be human. Our tendency to misunderstand and destroy is well documented and seems to surprise no one these days, even as our world grows hotter and hotter and the animals die and the soil no longer nourishes…

The mystery that I want to explore here is the mystery of what it takes to convince something better to come along. People don’t want what we have right now, not truly, not in their hearts and their souls. We are simply unable to truly see anything better as real and possible and worth breathing our lives into.

So I wonder about where the divine is in all of this. After all, if a child is throwing a tantrum, sure, you may need to let them do it for a while, but if the child is throwing a tantrum in such a way that they are burning down the very home they live in, shouldn’t someone step in?

Maybe no one can. But, as all the great wisdom traditions have shown, we are not utterly bereft of aid. We cannot be said to be entirely alone. Help has come from on high again and again and again.

The mystery for me is: What can we do to open ourselves and call for such help now?

Lord knows we need it and none of the old ways seem to really provide any kind of stabilizing, evolutionary force within the culture. There is a sense, at least to me, of playing at a kind of cargo cult, copying actions we have seen produce results in the past, but using coconuts and shells instead of radios to call for aid.

Where are those who know and can give aid and direction? How can we call on them? Whom do we ask for a new dispensation and how do we make ourselves worthy to receive it and have it unfold within us?

I say “worthy” not to mean “good enough” or “pure enough” or “unbothered by worldly concerns enough.” No, I say “worthy” to mean becoming CAPABLE of serving as a conduit for the forces that could bring us aid and help us to grow up as a species.

After all, one does not use wood to conduct electricity; one uses metal. This is not because the wood is sinful and evil, simply that it is not in the nature of wood to conduct electricity.

Metal does.

So how do we make ourselves into a metal that conducts the divine electricity?

Metaphors of change are always difficult, so perhaps the difference is better pointed to as iron ore and purified steel. Because the line dividing such things, as has been said, is drawn right through every human heart, and it is never a question of rejection.

And so, because it is something that happens within each of our hearts, the chemistry of this necessary purification of iron ore into steel can only be an individual, internal process. No one can do it for us; we have to do it for ourselves.

But we don’t have to do it alone.

It is only through this type of combined work that we will be able to make any kind of functional call to help from the divine.

If there is a way forward for us here, as the structures and supports of our current society fall away (and all signs seem to point this being a kind of necessity), then let there be an equal and opposite reaction of goodness and of seeking within all of us.

You cannot have a Grail quest without a wasteland, and when Camelot falls, we have to decide whether to try to eke out a living in its ruins or head out into the wilderness.

But sadly, we cannot rush such things. When something breaks it breaks quite quickly, but when something new grows, it grows quite slowly. Life is thus. Nine months of gestation begets several decades of life, but an eternity of stony sleep is brought about by a second’s misstep off a curb at just the wrong moment.

So. Why did Boddhidharma come from the west?

I feel a burning in my heart, an aching longing for the humanity we are capable of being. And I feel a well of deep sadness and grief around my heart, for what we currently are.

And I am afraid that if I grasp that burning heart unprepared, it will singe me and I will drop it into this well of grief and the grief will douse the fire and all within me will be dark and cold and damp and grief-filled forever.

But if the grief keeps rising, that very same thing may occur without any bumbling around with this flaming heart. So, here we are.

Why did Boddhidharma come from the west?

Because he loved.

And that longing is one from love and for love. That is why it burns.

Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, the call of the dharma, of the truth, is also the call to real love. The kind of love that you may curse and you may hate and you may wish were otherwise… But you cannot deny the truth of it.

The responsibility of the divine to this world is one of a call to love. And as representatives of both the divine and this world, it is only within our own private hearts that we can answer this call, part to part. For this is how we resurrect the beauty of this world; this how we call the divine back in touch with us.

But the requirements for It’s Presence there are not easily achieved.

One wonders if they are even still reachable these days…

Well.

We had better hope that they are.

And we had better start trying.

Much love,
Ian Reclusado
of The Kind Knife