Out of the Mouths of Babes...
My eight-year old Willy, when his guinea pig Leafy died the other day, was faced with the choice of where to bury him. He decided on a place in the back yard which, he said, "is where the heart would be if the back yard were a person."

Emerson on Spirit
In her review of Lawrence Buell's new biography,
Emerson, Brenda Wineapple passes on a quote from Emerson that caught me:

''Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.''

We need more heart, more than ever
In an editorial in the Times Magazine last week called The Tug of Paternalism, James Traub makes a powerful argument for allowing the heart to enter our policy making. He is speaking specifically of deciding whether to intervene in Liberia, but his call for more heart could serve as well in any area of policy, foreign or domestic. He writes,

"When Liberian citizens late last month deposited the corpses of their friends and loved ones, killed by rebel shells, at the gate of the American Embassy compound in the capital of Monrovia, they were not only issuing a desperate plea for salvation but also making a statement of responsibility: it is you, the United States, who must answer our prayers....

"For all the talk of global integration, the fate of the very poorest countries has become, if anything, a matter of even greater indifference to the rich ones than it used to be. Virtually the entirety of West Africa, and for that matter the equally beleaguered nations of central Africa, like Burundi, offer little strategic and only potential economic value to the West and do not really figure in the war on terrorism. And the fate of Rwanda proves all too clearly that, in the absence of self-interest, appeals to common humanity will not bring rescue.

"And so these countries are left with no claims save the utterly unexpected one: paternalism. What could be more archaic in this globalized age? And isn't there something here of the former servant throwing himself on the mercy of his master? Well, yes. And that is a terrible affirmation of failure. But is paternalism so very bad? It's an acknowledgment of obligations incurred by shared history. It's an expression of kinship. After all, Liberia looks to the United States because the United States is in its blood. It is not simply pro-American but, in some odd but meaningful way, American."

Doing the right thing v.s. doing things right
During my annual conversation today with my friend Chris Moore, an Episcopal priest who has much wisdom and whose book, Solitude, is a welcome support for "alone time" in the midst of the crazy demands of life today, we talked about this notion of form v.s. substance. Chris said that the most common failing of ministers is to insist on their way of doing things without enough regard for their parishioners. He said the distinction is often drawn between "doing things right" and "doing the right thing." When all the energy is put to "doing things right," what gets lost is an appreciation for the dynamics of the experience in question. Say, for instance, a new minister insists on moving a small parish's altar from the wall to be free-standing, disregarding the history and dynamics of the congregation in favor of following the letter of Episcopal regulations. This would be "doing things right," but if it detracted from the congregation's experience of spirit, it would not be "doing the right thing."

Form vs. substance
In a book review in this week's Times, Robert Wright raised some questions for me in his discussion of the role of fundamentalism in promoting violence. In his review of the new book, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by Jon Krakauer, he says,

"Krakauer writes that 'as a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane … there may be no more potent force than religion.' But sheer instinctive self-righteousness may ultimately be a bigger part of the problem. It is a common denominator of crimes committed in the name of religion, nationalism, racism – even, sometimes, nihilism."

I think this is true, and I'd like to think out loud why. Is it because religion is just a form – a way in which we organize our thinking about the universe, life, ourselves? If so, does it simply seek to describe substance without containing any substance itself? Is not substance entirely in the experiencing of what religion seeks to describe? Religion can certainly evoke experience, which is then substance, as when the reading of scripture enraptures the reader. But still religion is at best the vehicle, and not the experience itself. The experience is the substance.

I think Wright is making the point that violence is born of substantive experience. Self-righteousness is a more immediate precursor to violence than whatever form motivates the self-righteousness (in the case of the book, it is Mormon fundamentalism). In a free society, we will always have to suffer the existence of forms that we detest – exclusionary fundamentalism, racism, nationalism, etc. – and we will embrace forms that others detest. But we will also always be responsible for the substance of our response to them, and to the rest of society.

In that sense, is it more effective to preach non-violence than it is to preach Christianity or Buddhism? I imagine it depends on the audience; Christians will find non-violence more palatable if it is served along with Christian principles. But Christianity is the form, and non-violence the substance. We will build bridges if we remember that non-violence is a substantive act of will and is not dependent on any particular form. Non-violence can be embraced by all.

Beyond "smelly little orthodoxies"
Terrance Keenan, the zen twelve-stepper who I mentioned in an earlier post as the author of St. Nadie: Zen Encounters with Loneliness, delves on page 12 into one of my deepest concerns: fundamentalism, aka in its sneakier form, dogma. He writes, "...Orwell [George?] would have us stand against all the 'smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.'" I want to see if I can tackle this subject from a positive perspective, since I believe it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

If orthodoxy helps me improve my spiritual condition, how can it be wrong? This presupposes, though, that I am able to avoid the common pitfall of orthodoxy/fundamentalism/dogma which judges other ways. No one has a patent on the truth. As I try to get at in my mini-manifesto, the truth is the truth no matter what we say about it. My path is as good as my perception of truth, as is yours.

Keenan's opinion is that orthodoxy and/or rationality necessarily detract from our ability to perceive truth: "We do not leave make-believe behind when we emerge into so-called adulthood.We just call it rationalization. It is said rationalization is more important to life than money, food, or sex. ...How difficult it is to know the know the actuality of our inner voice, to know it is not some fiction we have created, a rationalized mask over our own godless wildness. I wanted to be free of myself and was at the same time afraid that to be so was a kind of death. ... Perhaps I am too often absent from my own being."

Zen is all about the experience of truth, and Keenan is saying that the experience of truth is different than talking about it. I agree. The truth behind Christian grace and Buddhist dharma and Sufi tales and koans from zen itself is an undiluted and inviolable whole. As the Course in Miracles starts off, "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists."

The difficulty is in bringing this unified whole from one's solitary experience into the world, and to find unity with others in the shared work of constructing an enlightened society. This statement is in one sense a tautology, since authentic holy work will inexcorably lead to a higher manifestation. But my point is that our most immediate environment is our relationships, and we are rational creatures. Therefore, our responsibility is at least two-fold: 1) to do our holy work so we can experience truth and 2) to maintain our awareness in our "worldy" experiences, including our reasoning (Keenan's "rationalty") and our relations with others.

Truth is one. Orthodoxies are many. Let's hold hands and jump towards unity.