ALLEVIATING SUFFERING

Suffering bothers me....it bothers me a lot. Speaking about suffering and enlightment, in this video Ken Wilber said, "It hurts more; but it bothers you less...When we taste the infinite Absolute of consciousness, the world is seen just as it is—radiant, perfect, and whole. The relative, however, does not cease to be. Quite the contrary, the pains and pleasures of our relative lives are intensified to an unimaginable degree. We have to give ourselves PLENTY of room to feel BOTH: The ABSOLUTE PERFECTION in everything that arises.
..And yet see ONE person starving and you will start crying so hard it will kill you." The more we become aware, the more it does hurt; the more acutely the pain and suffering of all those around us is felt.  At the same time, every manifestation we see around us is sacred and part of the Divine and so nothing is ever lost.  Suffering is of the utmost horror, but not to be taken too seriously because in the end nothing can be harmed at all and even death has no real sting.

From that perspective, we CAN watch everything unfold almost like watching a movie, for even though pain and suffering are very real, they are not the ultimate reality...

Enlightenment is realizing that we are all ONE, all manifestations of the Divine, all sacred, all holy.,,and to treat all "others" as such.  How much suffering in the world would be alleviated if we all treated everything as a part of ourselves?  This is why Jesus said, "As you did it unto the least of these, you did it unto me." Because we are all part of God.

A Letter From a 16 year old Oslo Survivor

Dear Anders Behring Breivik,

A lot of the friends I met at Utoya are dead and you are the perpetrator. You are the man who, by coincidence, didn’t kill me. I was lucky.

You might think that you have won. You might think that you have ruined something for the Labour Party and for people around the world who stand for a multicultural society by killing my friends and fellow party members.

Know that you have failed.

You haven’t only made the world stand together, you have set our souls on fire and should know we’ve never stood together as we do now. You talk about yourself as a hero, a knight. You are no hero. But you have created heroes. On Utoya that warm day in July, you created some of the greatest heroes the world has seen, you unified people from all over the world. Black and white, man and woman, red and blue, Christians and Muslims.

You made your victims martyrs, immortals, and you have shown the world that when one person can show as much hatred as you have done, imagine how much love we can show when we stand together? People who I thought hated me have given me hugs on the street, people I haven’t been in contact with for years have written 300 to 400 words about how much it means to them that I survived. What can you say about that? Have you broken anything? You have united us.

You have killed my friends, but you haven’t killed our cause, our opinions, our right to express ourselves. Muslim women got hugs of sympathy from random Norwegian women on the street and your goal was to protect Europe from Islam? Your actions worked against its purpose.

You deserve no thanks; your plan failed. A lot of people are angry, you are the most hated person in Norway. I am not angry. I do not fear you. You can’t touch us, we are greater than you. We do not answer evil with evil, as you wanted it. We fight evil with good. And we win.

Ivar Benjamin Østebø, aged 16.

Thanks to Humanity's Team for this blog post.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

"How do you kill your enemy in a way that puts a stop to violence rather than escalates it?

"One of us is gone, one apparently horrific, terrible, vicious one of us...is gone...I'm regretful for the rest of us who are now left thinking that this is a cause for celebration.  It is not.  It is a cause for sorrow at our continued inablility to realize that there is no such thing as us and them; that whatever we do to cause harm to one will harm us all.

"When we hate, we cause hate.  When we think we have won by vanquishing our enemy, we have lost.  In killing Osama bin Laden, 'they' lose because one of their leaders is gone.  But we lose too, because we have deepened the causes and conditions that lead to more hatred and its consequences."

"...when you do not produce another force of hatred, the opposing forece collapses."  - Chogyam Trungpa

Excerpted from: "Osama bin Laden is Dead One Buddhist's Response" by Susan Piver.  Read the entire post here.

A FRESH LOOK AT DEATH AND ORIGINAL SIN

In the beginning, there was One, and One was All that there was.  Out of this One that was All, there began to manifest matter…and stars…and planets…  On one planet that we know of, slowly soil…and water…and plants…and animals…began to appear…but still there was only One that was All.  Simple at first, the One began to manifest in more and more complex forms. The One was becoming the many, but the many were still the One.  And the One loved the many.  The forms would appear for a time and then return to the All – we have called this birth and death.  Some of the animal forms completely ceased to appear, returning back into the All (we have called this extinction) while ever new and growing forms emerged.   Still the One that is All remained, unchanged yet always changing – for God is One.  God saw that it was all good, and that nothing was ever really lost.

As one of the forms developed, it became aware of itself in distinction from the One – became “self-conscious.”  These first humans realized they were different and separate from all that surrounded them – they became aware of themselves as individuals.  They even gave all the other plants and animals names because they perceived everything as so different from themselves. Believing themselves to be “separate beings,” they had no sense of their connection with plants, animals, other humans, or with the One.  The One was still very much in the many and the many in the One, but self-conscious humans were not able to discern this.  This is the only thing that God said was NOT good – man's perception that he was alone!

One of the things newly self-conscious humans noticed was that something terrible happened to the other animals and humans around them: they ceased to be – they experienced Death.  And humanity began to understand that this was the horrible fate that awaited each person. In metaphorical language, humanity ate of the tree of knowledge (awareness), and as a result realized they would surely die.  Naturally, this caused great fear!  With no knowledge of the One in which they lived and moved and had their being, humanity felt alienated and alone, naked, exposed, vulnerable and without protection in a large and terrifying world. So began the conscious struggle for survival - the need to fend for and preserve themselves. Aware for the first time of the always impending threat of death, humans began to perceive circumstances in terms of whether they were advantageous to physical survival…or not.  Good…or evil....  Selfishness came into being.  Hot on the heels of (and driven by) selfishness, sinful behavior began to proliferate.

Death and sin are intrinsically connected, but we do not die because we have sinned.  Death, as far as can be ascertained scientifically, is natural and has always been a part of the cycle of life.  Instead, awareness of our own mortality creates a great fear which compels us to do whatever is necessary to survive.  Sin, then, is not the cause of death, but rather a result of the fear of death.  We sin because we're afraid of dyin'...

More later...

BEYOND UNIVERSALISM...

There seems to be an unspoken agreement in much of Christendom that certain topics are 'sacred cows' - not to be questioned.  One such topic that is garnering a lively discussion lately (thanks to the upcoming release of Rob Bell's new book Love Wins) is hell.  I, for one, believe an atmosphere in which questions and open discussions are repressed creates a recipe for stagnation, and so I am thankful that the book is providing an opportunity for questions and the discussion of new ideas and perspectives. 

I had already been musing on the topic of what happens after death before the present fire-storm (pun intended) erupted.  Universalism, while a step in the right direction, still seems to me to be bound to the traditional concepts of heaven or hell in an after-life rather than as present realities. I wrote about my thoughts on death in a post titled Overcoming the Sting of Death.   And Logan Geen, over at A Sect Unto Myself submitted an excellent post titled Universalist? in which the reader is invited to explore beyond Universalism as commonly thought of.

In this "Death & Spirituality" interview from 1990, Bro. David Steindl-Rast provides a fresh and multi-faith perspective on what may happen after the death of the physical body.   Food for thought...fire for questions...and fodder for discussions...

What do you think?

DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE DEVIL?

Here is an alternative concept of satan: satan is not an impish being with a pitchfork, prodding people into a sinful life; rather, satan is the lower nature of all people. It is the self of us that can tempt us to do things that we know are not for our highest good. Satan is the selfish, human, cunning, devious ego of limitation that motivates the human personality to turn away from God. 

It is the part of us that must decrease as our spiritual nature increases. How do we overrule this part of us? "I, when I am lifted up from this earth, will draw all men to myself". We must elevate our desires of human appetite, raise the standards of our moral passions, bear up our spiritual aspirations, and be receptive to the drawing power of Christ. This is to lift up and spiritualize the human self, thus defeating our "satanic" nature.

When this happens, the kingdom of Christlikeness will be established in our hearts, minds, and worlds. This is the objective of true Christianity. Rather than doing battle with an external force that doesn't exist, the overruling of the lower nature by the higher is the ultimate accomplishment.

Excerpted from the book Alternatives by William L. Fischer.   More from this book can be read here.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE CHAPTERS

How easily we allow our old habits and set patterns to dominate us! Even though…they bring us suffering, we accept them with almost fatalistic resignation, for we are so used to giving in to them. We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved.

Still, reflection can slowly bring us wisdom. We can come to see we are falling again and again into fixed repetitive patterns, and begin to long to get out of them. We may, of course, fall back into them, again and again, but slowly we can emerge from them and change. The following poem speaks to us all. It's called "Autobiography in Five Chapters."

1) I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I fall in.

I am lost... I am hopeless.

It isn't my fault

It takes forever to find a way out

2) I walk down the same street

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don't see it.

I fall in again.

I can't believe I'm in the same place.

But it isn't my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out

3) I walk down the same street

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I see it is there.

I still fall in ... it's a habit

My eyes are open

I know where I am

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

Excerpted from "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" which can be downloaded here for free.

OVERCOMING THE STING OF DEATH

The Buddhist principle of impermanence teaches that individuals are like flowers that bloom for a brief time and then fade away.  If I understand this principle correctly, all things are said to be in a constant state of change but also of interconnection and unity – a process of flux and flow from one form to another.  For example, moisture in the form of clouds becomes dew, mist, fog, rain, snow, or ice and falls to the earth. There, it becomes ground water and flows along in streams and rivers, sustaining and cleansing all of life. The water becomes a part of all that is nourished by it – every plant, animal, or human.  Finally, the moisture evaporates – becoming cleansed and renewed in the process – and is transformed into clouds to begin the process again. And so it is with all of life.  While the duration of living things seems brief to us, nothing is ever really lost – all things are merely transformed. 

This is in accordance with The First Law of Thermodynamics, which says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, simply transformed from one type to another. Digging deep into Christian teachings, agreement can be found there as well: men wither like the grass of the field and fade in the manner of a flower.  Life is portrayed as a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes from our field of perception (James 4:14).   But we also likewise find the good news that all things are restored, for “the thing that hath been, it is that which shall be…and there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9).  And again, “That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been…” (Ecc. 3:15).  Man goes back to dust, and the spirit goes back to God who gave it (Ecc. 12:7). Nothing is ever lost, and what was, will be again.

We, too, like all things, are being transformed, and it does not yet appear what we shall be (1 John 3:2).  We cannot see deeply enough into the nature of reality to discover the transformation that takes place as our present forms fade away.  But we can know that when Christ appears to us – when we come into a level of awareness that enables us to perceive the Christ within us, then we shall be like him.  AND, when that happens, we’ll also be able to see God as he really is: as Love.  With the understanding that God is truly Love, there is no longer any reason to be afraid of death.  Death can be seen for what it is: not a punishment, but as part of the natural process of the renewal of all things.   With this understanding, Rev. 21:4-5 becomes a current reality rather than a dim promise for the distant future: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.  Behold, I make ALL THINGS NEW…!”  Once the veil that keeps people from seeing the nature of reality is removed, death will be swallowed up in victory, and the Lord will wipe all tears off ALL faces (Isa 25:7-8).  It is only our limited perception that makes us cry…

All must indeed face death, for death is part of the natural process of renewal and happens to all.  But death does lose its sting and brings us sorrow no longer.  Instead, we can rejoice, for the reality is NOTHING IS EVER TRULY LOST - merely changed from one form to another.  That's really good news!