51 Thursday
“How do I cope when I go back to the real world?”
“I often hear this question and I know what you mean, but I think it’s not properly stated. To me anyway, this is the real world, a world in which people try, knowing all their limitations, to live with some degree of harmony, mindfulness, and compassion. What you are referring to as the ‘real’ world, which is the world of deceit and ambition, of violence and never-ending conflict, that is the world of māyā, the world created by delusion. So the question as it is stated is like asking how can I live in illusion? I think if you see this then the question becomes something totally different, which is: how can I live with some degree of order in my life, with some love in my heart? You shouldn’t worry about changing the world either, which is the other extreme, because until you’ve changed internally, then all that you do on the outside will have no ultimate meaning. So I feel that when you truly enter into the silence that will teach you all the things you need to know, and then you will have right understanding, which is no understanding in the way you know it now, and out of that will come right action.”
“You see, I am not playing with words, I’m on about the reality, and obviously right action includes right speech, right livelihood, and so on. We’re all so hung up on the words and the form all the time, we’re not listening, and the real problem passes us by. The silence I’m talking about is not found in this doctrine or that one, but only when attachment to any particular doctrine has been left behind, because you now recognise everything as your teacher, and so you are no longer trying to do the impossible, trying to separate yourself from the totality of life all its pains and joys, all its sorrows and happinesses, but have entered into it all unafraid, which means that you are living in freedom. Also I feel that you shouldn’t make the mistake of separating yourself from the world, ‘real’ or not.
You see we all partake of the totality, and part of that is that we all live with some degree of illusion or delusion, and this ignorance or avidya is as much a part of ourselves as it is of other people. The point is that when you attempt to separate yourself from these things, that’s when judgement, condemnation, and hate arise. But if you can see that given certain conditions everyone, including oneself, can make mistakes, act in an ignorant way, or do something carelessly or callously, when you see this as a fact, then great compassion arises.
It’s said that compassion is the last suffering of the saint and I like that very much, that’s very meaningful to me, especially in Passion Week. For me the question is not, how can I separate myself from the world and all its ambiguities, but how can I enter into the totality of that without fear? And I think the answer lies in seeing that we are not separate from the world, like some sort of super-intellectual being that has somehow got itself trapped in a body, but that our bodies and minds are vehicles, albeit limited ones, for that thing called love, compassion, God, or what-you-will, and all people realise this to a certain extent, some more than others maybe, but no one is totally good and no one is totally evil, it’s an ideological fallacy to think in that way.
So for me knowing the reality of our nature, and having faith enough not to worry about making mistakes, or having to be perfect all the time, enables one to enter into life mercifully, and to act in accordance with that, and then that action is not emerging out of division – and thereby creating further division – but comes out of a loving awareness of the totality, with all its darkness and light, and then that action is whole, and it has the power to heal, because it’s not rejecting anything or anyone, no matter what they’ve done, but is seeing reality and working with it as it is.
And I think this question of action is central to meditation. Sometimes when meditation is talked about it’s as though all we were trying to do is put our own backyard in order, and maybe find out how to cope with the ‘real’ world, as the questioner put it. But in itself it has little meaning because I feel that we are called upon to help transform the world – we transform it anyway, whether we act in ignorance, whether we separate ourselves from it, or whether we act out of a knowing of the totality, so relationship and engagement are always there.
But the only thing I feel it’s worth dedicating one’s time and attention to, one’s life to really, is this thing of opening oneself up so that one becomes, in St. Francis’ words, a channel of peace, open at both ends so to say, then there is a receiving and a giving of love, and that it seems to me is what we were born for; and love is action, an action born of understanding, arising out of an acceptance of the totality and therefore an acceptance of this gift of life itself, and that action will have some meaning in the world.
O God I have a question
it is this O god: who are you?
for when I look and look again
I find I do not know you
O God a second question
it is this O God: who am I?
for when I look and look again
I find I do know know me
in this divine forgetting
in which I say I don’t know
I find I’ve put the past down
and do not carry it any more
and I see now that I look
there is a lightness to my step
a great joy is in my heart
I am brought to life again
I am free once more to see
I am open to come-what-may
I have become like a child again
by forgetting what I don’t know
and so I ask you kindly
make all my days like this
so that with my very being
I may praise and thank my God