Help, I’m in Facebook jail for three days. I posted a Google image with a bondage mask to support a piece on the way we see the mask as bondage, and when warned about the image I tried to take it off and inadvertently posted it more times, which put me in jail for three days. I’M INNOCENT!
Is there a way to escape?
The struggle for freedom of America’s original slaves in an ongoing metaphorical struggle of humanity for liberation from the prison of our past, our history, and our karma. The Edmund Pettis bridge is the mythological bridge over which we must all cross to get to our promised land, individually and as a people.The truth is that life is a bridge. In Buddhism when you get to the Other Shore you look back and there was no shore. You are right where you started, only. you see it for the first time. The bridge is only visible when your goal is in the future, but when you arrive, there is no future. You realize that you are always already Now. You have always already been free.
The bridge as a Way is the non-violent path of MLK, the path of awakening to the unity in the many, the non-dual in the dual…the aroused mind that rests on no form, thought, feeling, beliefs and personality.
I think with Black Lives Matter movement the metaphorical understanding of this march as a national march has caught on. Ironically, it’s the meaning of All Lives Matter that is catching on, but not as a counter to Black Lives Matter.
The Bridge has no color. Black life is my life. Black life is all life. Black freedom is my freedom. This bridge is my bridge. This walk is my walk. Life is a bridge to freedom. One step is the whole bridge. One step is the Buddha.
This is the Bodhisattva Bridge.
All beings without number I vow to liberate
Endless blind passions (prejudice) I vow to uproot
Dharma gates without measure I vow to penetrate
The great way of Buddha I vow to attain.
Let’s look at the Non-violent way of MLK. Some, many blacks at the time, thought it was a failure. I remember when MLK’s Way was questioned and Black Power movements with a raised fist began to rise, impatient with the way of Gandhi and Jesus, and the Buddha I might add.
What is the Non-violent Way? It’s Non-Dual! Duality is always violent, the Two pitted against each other in a death duel to be the One that has no second. We all want to be the One, to BE somebody, to arrive, to be noticed, loved, respected for our unique self, our true self…we all want that, must have that, but what is the Way?
There is the Way of Violence and the Way of Non-Violence. That’s it, unless forgetting about it and just getting drunk is a way. We violent way is the only way because that is the American Way. You become number One by defeating the contender, the challenger, the one in power. Politics is violence without guns.
What is the Non-Violent Way, and does it work? Let’s look at the Way MLK used it. In the South White was number One, and Black was separate and not equal. How do you restore justice or equality when the ONE doesn’t want to give way?
How do you activate a change in the collective mind? First, you must have a fundamental trust, faith without question, the Mankind is basically Good and Just. One wants to awaken this basic sanity, this basic love, this basic goodness that is the ground of our Being.
MLK provoked the One by obeying the universal laws of justice and not the local laws of injustice. Then when the ONE reacted, as they must because you were breaking their local laws that kept them in power, you didn’t fight back. This creates a rage in the One because you cannot create a justification for your defense of your local laws. It becomes obvious to the Collective mind that you are attacking and beating defenseless people. You cannot say you are protecting law and order when you are obviously creating disorder. You are exposed. Your Narrative breaks up. Your guilt is revealed. Your inhumanity is put in the foreground.
The non-Violent movement is the inaction that is action. This is a martial art of using the force of your opponent to fell him. This is the sacrificial way of Jesus who willingly goes to the cross of crucifixion, who allows himself to be beaten on the Selma Bridge as a willing sacrifice for the awakening of the man to his basic goodness..
OK, lets take this Bridge Metaphor deeper. Jesus says resist not evil, but instead of evil just say Obstacle. Resist not the obstacle that black you from the bridge to unity, which is where the universal bridge goes, towards unity, resolution, peace, and joy..the promised land where there is no more conclict with what…our obstacles.
We want to get to a place where there is no violence, no conflict with…the obstacles or the enemy of our journey. How do you get to peace? How do you get to non-violence? Do you get there with violence?
Well, obviously not, but then what do you do, nothing? That won’t work either. So the problem is a Zen Koan. If you say you get there by confrontation, you are wrong. If you say you get there by doing nothing, you are wrong. So how to you do effortless effrot?
There is something beyond logic here, something beyond violence and non-violence, beyond doing something and doing nothing…What is it?
That is the mystery of the Bridge to Nowhere. The gateless gate of Zen. This bridge must be discovered. It must be come upon as if by chance, by accident, as if it were a miracle or gift. There is no map, no path, no established way.
Because of America’s suffering, because of our struggle to be free, first from the tyranny of the Monarchy of a faraway empire, the from the division of a civil way, and then from a depression and Facism, and now the struggle has gone interior. The struggle is psychological now, for we all shop at the same Walmart. Now we are in a struggle from freedom from our own mind’s tyranny.
America is the Light of the World as we keep that lamp of freedom burning. The oil that feeds that flame is our racism. It is America’s original sin that keeps us wanting to stand up, to awaken to a greater unity, one that embraces the many instead of being for the One at the exclusion of the many.
America with one compass leg in the light of freedom keeps expanding its other leg to a larger circumference. If that expansion stops, our light goes out.
The Bridge to Nowhere keeps on giving. Let’s move deeper into our own mind and the obstacles we encounter there, all the negative thoughts, feelings, and whatnot that seem to block us. How do we get past them? How do I get past depression, addiction, anger, envy, prejudice, all that? Do I fight them? Do I exchange them for positive thoughts, which is a form of violence? Do I ignore them? I cannot ignore them. What is the non-violent way?
How do I engage the thought that I writing here is useless? How do I muster the writing when faced with the feeling that is has no meaning, no use, that I have no use here? Where is the bridge?
The non-violent way is the Creative Way. When I see the double-bind of the question, that there is no answer, and that every choice is lose/lose, and in that seeing I just sit with it, being OK with it, allowing the Not KNowing to rise and just sit there. To be Not Knowing…what happens?
A bridge appears out of the mist of Not Knowing. You suddenly Know what to do…but your action is the action that springs from your true nature, which is Knowing. You are a being that Knows, and that knowing is prior to the division of Knowing into this or that choice, this or that way, both of which go no where.
Know is beyond good and bad, this and that, positive and negative. Knowing cuts through that. Knowing penetrates that gate, that bridge we think has another side.
The Bridge to Nowhere has no other side. You are already always here. That is the Knowing that crossed the Bridge to Nowhere.
Once you step on this Bridge to Nowhere, all the steps you need will follow without effort. The Bridge to Nowhere has nor goal, has nothing to gain, no place to attain. Walking is no effort, once you stake that first step. You are Now Here…The only thing that changes is the space between a few letters.
Whatever unpleasant situation adults find themselves in, like stranded with a flat tire, the child will find something to play with. The Zen Practice is awakening that sense of play. After all, didn’t Jesus say you must be like a little child to get into the Kingdom of Heaven, or Presence as Eckhart Tolle calls it? In Zen it’s Just This.
Practice is play. You are working in an unpleasant job. You cannot leave, you cannot change the boss, and you cannot stay…Oh…Practice! It is in these Zen Koan situations that practice gets traction.
A Zen Koan situation is where no matter what you do, you lose. This is either the conditions for creativity (a great leap forward in the evolution of your consciousness) or the violence of depressions, and despair, along with drugs and alcohol to cope.
Take advice from Don Draper in Mad Men. First, one needs a little madness to cut the rope and be free. (Oh, Zorba the Greed said that) But the madness of Don Draper and Zen is that when you are caught in a double-bind of lose/lose, you bypass it, like the double-bind that Lucky Strike bypassed by saying in the Ad: It’s Toasted! That is the Practice.
When you are stuck and cannot stay and cannot get out…Wonderful. It’s Toasted! This is the dance of Zorba (I keep coming back to Zorba. Hope you saw the movie, if not watch it).
We welcome opportunities to practice. We allow the practice. We choose to practice. What good is practice when everything is going well. It is in the lose/lose that we practice, that we dance. We make toast out of the situation. I know…it’s mad…it’s mad.
Metaphorically speaking, Zen is a lucky strike. Zen is all about, an nothing but awakening that lucky strick of “IT’s Toasted!” When you are caught like Bre Rabbit on the sticky tar baby so that no matter what you to you just get more stuck, that is where the Break Out happens.
You see through the Catch 22 as a creation of your own mind. That SEEING is the break out; that seeing is the release of spontaneous creative acton, of being, a knowing that IS being, a being that is knowing.. Our True Nature is One nature, not the two minds caught in a double-bind. It is in the double-bind that our true being leaps forth, force into creation by its inability to choose a way out. The chooser dies in the double-bind because no matter what is chosen loses.
The experience of Catch 22 is madness. It’s madness that one cannot choose a successful path, that one cannot know what to do. The only way out of this madness is…madness, but a madness that is sanity. That’s is the laughter of Zen…It’s Toasted!
in COVID 22 yes is no and no is yes. If you stay home you destroy the economy upon which you depend. If you don’t stay home you destroy the economy upon which you depend. Now, which is it? Choose or you destroy the economy.
Trumps’ path is to ignore it. It’s Toasted! A double-bind or Catch 22 is impossible to live in. The oscillation increases until the amplifier bursts. It is madness to self-desruct; it is madness to leap out. Either way, madness is going to happen. It is mad to stay, and mad to leave either through violence or creativity. Both violence and creativity are mad.
Zen is induced madness.
There is a contradiction in sanity that creates a Catch 22 or double-binging tape loop of an Ego that is trying to balance between two incompatible forces. I must be good and obey the higher dictates of goodness, but I only feel real and authentic when I obey my own nature. This is a contradiction of two valid natures that are incompatible because there frames of reference are the opposite. The frame of reference for Goodness is the whole society needs, and the frame of reference for uniqueness and individuality is my needs. Here are two imperative that must be obeyed but cannot, for to choose one is to deny the other….Catch 22.
But we must choose…it’s Toasted! The Trump way (The GOP way) is to choose what is bad for you. One is good by being bad. Breaking Bad….
But if you choose madness on your own, you will be defined as insane and put away. So you choose madness by joining a mad group. The group chooses madness and you get to be good by blindly obeying the laws of the Group. This way you get to be a rebel and a servant at the same time. You bypass the double-bind. It’s Toasted!
Years ago when we moved into the house of my wife’s great aunts, the attic was full of household gadgets from the 20s. “What in the hell is this thing,” we’d say holding up some gadget from a bygone age.
If you don’t know, the gadget I’m showing is a cherry pitter. Did you every have consternation getting the pits out of a cherry? Oh, the horror…well, here is your salvation, just one click away on Amazon. A Cherry Pitter.
But will this be the end of pits in your life? I don’t think so. What gadget every brought lasting peace? New Gadgets always bring new pits.
Life moves from complexity to simplicity, and from simplicity to complexity. It’s a swing where the push is pulling you and the pull is pushing you.
Every pit creates a new pitter, but then your life gets too complex with too many pitters. Where are you going to put all the pitters? Someone will invent a simple pitter that pits all the proliferation of pitters into one simple pitter that removes all the pits.
But new pits will be discovered, since life is change, and the need for a new pitter will create the invention of a new pitter that pits the old pitter. Life is one pit after another.
Whatever happened to the original cherry?
WHAT IS IT? The question is a Zen koan, a question that burns into the complexity of the mind filled with contradictory words. What is It? If I could just know what IT is, my suffering would end. If I could just put my feet on the ground of IT, my drowning in a sea of thought would end. What is the first Word? Is the first world also the last word?
Helen Keller describes the first and last Word of Zen when she, imprisoned in total darkness felts cool water on one hand in a faucet and her teacher spelling w..a..t..e..r in her other hand. She describes this first Word and creating the whole world, illuminating a world in which she could be at last, human.
What is this first Word? Where did it go? Where is it buried in the landfill of thoughts and words we now live in? Each of us must find it. No one can find our word for us. Is this it? NO…or MU!…Is this it?…NO….is this it?…NO…
What is the simple Word, the Big Bang if you will, in all this noise?
Everything is an IT because we leave the I out of it. Everything is a Third and distance person (mind your grammar rules) because it leaves out the First Person. We look for IT is close and distant places. But we never find IT because the First Person is missing, the person who is looking.
“God disguised as myriad things
and playing a game of tag
has kissed you and said
‘You’re it..I mean,
you’re REALLY IT’
Now it does not matter
what you believe or feel
for something wonderful,
Major-league Wonderful
is someday going to
happen.”
Hafiz
What has to be surrendered to discover Creative Power? We all know that we cannot choose to be creative, to know what to do. Choosing is our Personal Power. Not choosing is our divine power, cosmic power, creative power. The cosmos is creative, isn’t it? Through surrender that creative power flows through you as you. Through Personal Power, which is non-surrender, only your will power flows through you as you and that personal will is always in conflict with the Cosmic Will, the will of nature, or whatever you want to call it.
You see? The more I resist the Cosmic Will, the more personal power I feel. I can only feel my personal power by resisting a greater power, but never surrendering.
Now, in America, we are witnessing the folly of never surrendering. We can see in a clear outline the absurdity of never surrendering to a high truth, a greater truth, to nature if you will. Personal power always meeds its Waterloo. COVID is America’s Waterloo.
Personal power, the power of resistance cannot defeat COVID. In the same way, you cannot defeat Diabetes by not obeying the dietary laws of Diabetes.
OK, let’s dig deeper into this question of Surrender. Religion says to surrender to God, but that is translated into surrendering to the local religion. So the surrender is not complete. One holds something back.
God wants total surrender. What does that mean? In Buddhism, that means giving up your belief it God, in the Buddha. If you see the Buddha, kill him, means if you see the idea of Buddha as something, kill that. But don’t stop there.
If you see the idea of yourself as the Chooser, as the one who surrenders, kill that too. Leave no thought standing. Leave no power with standing. All personal power must be surrendered, given up, let go.
The beautiful paradox here is that you cannot do it, for any doing by you is personal power, and that sword must be surrendered. One must surrender but you cannot. There, there is the wound that will not heal, the Koan that has no answer, the great question: Who am I?
The hot iron ball of Unconditional Surrender melts the ice of all resistance. But what happens with total surrender, total Not KNowing, Not Choosing? Do you disappear? That’s what we fear.
The practice of Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism is the practice of surrender. Whatever thought arises in the mind, you surrender. You let it go. When the mind is an empty bowl of Not Knowing, KNOWING rises, Knowing is not born but reveals itself as always being there.
Knowing what to do is a creative action. The knowing and the doing are one. You are one because you have surrendered that which is Two, that which resists the One, the Knowing/Being.
Digging even further, a spiritual practice, no matter what the tradition, require unconditional surrender. Meditation, being mindful, questioning everything, study, and so on, is not Sunday thing, but 24/7. Being awake is not a part-time job. That is Zen. Not practicing the Dharma here and practicing the world there? Not going to church for an hour and going to the world the rest of the week. This is a lifetime practice and it won’t bear fruit until that happens.
Evangelicals see their religion as a life-style. Muslims see their religion as a lifestyle, not a once a week church service. Orthodox Jews see their religion as a lifestyle, a full-time practice.
But all of these “practices” are conditional. They depend on surrendering to a group, a body of the religion with its specific laws and doctrines. This is not unconditional surrender.
Unconditional surrender questions everything, every condition. Every condition must be questioned in order to arrive at unconditional surrender, where you don’t know what is true, for you realize that all the truth you have known, surrendered to is conditioned.
What is the unconditioned? Who are you? That is the same question. You are the unconditioned, the Unborn. You are the undefined, the free, and the creative. You are the Creative, and creativity is unconditioned.
But that does not mean you are a great artist. No…just eating your cereal in the morning is a creative act. Just surrendering to eating your cereal and not thinking about what’s next is a creative act of surrender.
And that is Zen. What is enlightenment? asked the monk.