Even Satan Listens to Bodhisattvas
I watched Spike Lee's harrowing documentary on Katrina, which places this momentous tragedy in the proper social and political contexts.
So much was lost in that storm--a lot of it having to do with compassion and mercy, the two most cardinal qualities of God that are his greatest proofs. From a practical, practising standpoint of meditation- and prayer-based mindfulness, God can only exist (that is, be cognized) in the expression of His virtues. When Sufis like myself invoke God's mercy and compassion before any action, deed or event, we do so because this is activation of the Christ within, or what Buddhists calls "orignal mind," or Sufis the "nur [light of] Muhammed." For me, the residuum of God is what my teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen calls "Allah's 3,000 gracious qualities." And as Confucius kept pointing out, the continuous articulation of those qualities is what makes leaders true leaders.
Alas, that articulation has been almost completely eradicated from public life in America, and people like me who see it as the largest casualty of Katrina are grieving for it this morning. America has been plunged into an evil emptiness--not an emptiness of surrender or relinquishment that are often preludes to bonding and sharing, but a state of still-born consciousness that rises no higher on the chakra chain than maybe the gut. Welcome to the I-me-mine world and world-view. Don't you miss the world of Oneness?
Speaking of Oneness, let me interrupt this text message for the following anecdote: Last night a friend Lou Buetler asked me, "What are your two choices after death?" I answered, "Heaven or Hell." He then said, "If you choose Heaven you choose Hell because in heaven you are still separate from God. The only choice in any life is God, oneness with God." Now that's practising Sufism, which, as you can readily see, is just the Muslim study of non-duality. Now back to my post-Katrina thought-stream:
What, I keep asking myself, will act as countervalence to the vicious vacancy of true virtue in public life, including government? I could say prayer, but some of the most parched spirits in Washington hold daily prayer meetings and look at pictures of the Last Supper with moist-eyed earnestness.
So piety has failed and we must seek, as some Buddhists suggest, a non-pietistic, non-preachy way to restoration of virtue. That several million American believers subscribe to the notion of a kick-ass god who is planning a collective punishment of unrepentant humanity is probably the best evidence we have of the failure of pietistic scripture-based religion. The world is drowning in self-righteousness--Holocaust-addicted Jews who bomb or keep captive their neighbors and justify it as self-defense, couch potato Christians who watch CNN for signs of a crusty Christ's warring presence (sometimes mistaken, according to creationist science, for global warming) and vindictive Muslims who think God rejoices at their self-detonation inside an Israeli Starbucks or in front of a Tel Aviv Gap.
I offer this soothing scene from Wendell Berry's masterpiece, "Jayber Crow," dealing with a Kentucky Katrina called the 1937 Louisville Flood. Our hero Jayber Crow has just left a seminary because he and organized religion don't match up too well and is searching for a new homestead. On his way to discovering his new home in Port William, Kentucky, the fictional locale of all Berry's novels, Jayber is caught in a flood. After trying unsuccessfully to cross a bridge that is in danger of being swept away (this scene is my favorite in all literature, equal in my esteem to the Grand Inquisitor scene in "The Brothers Karamazov" which topped my list of great literary moments for decades), the hero must take shelter in a government building that has been suitably, fully converted into a hospice. The comfort and goodness he receives here give him the strength to resume his journey homeward the next day.
Until Katrina's survivors know a public comforting, and norms of compassion such as Jayber receives, this country will remain without any moorings in mercy, stranded in meaningless , fatal wealth that is robbed of its final, sanctifying resonances of well-being and charity (and please don't trot out the Marshall Plan; we've been living on that laurel too long). I mourn the loss of our country and take refuge in my teacher's constant assurance that God hears our prayers but has already given all the answers in that glorious bestowal called Creation. As long as the major human arteries of His mercy and conduits of His compassion are clogged and hardened with fear and greed, we suffer the illusion God does not love us or is punishing us or does not exist. I believe Job #1 is to unlock the light within; but I hasten to warn that it only becomes visible in its transmutation from heat to illumination, fire to radiance. In other words, as engaged Bahais, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, deisits, and atheists, we praise God most through service to others. "Make the hunger of others your own," Bawa urged thousands of times. That acceptance is what is missing from the Katrina story and its aftermath.
Another aside: The same Republicans who built those useless, overpriced Patriot Missiles built those ramshackle FEMA trailers. Spike Lee took us on a guided tour of one. During his penance in purgatory, George Bush will have to live in a FEMA trailer for a kalpa or two. Hey, it could be worse. As part of its new Madison Avenue makeover and Coke-vs-Pepsi battle with Heaven, Hell, like Wal-Mart, is now offering organic produce. The idea came from a pesty Bodhisattva, who immolated himself on a Saigon street corner in his last life, and has been stationed ever since in Hell refusing to leave until every soul is set free. As for beef, George's freezer will be stocked with meat substitutes made by Christian brotherhoods who think the taking of life is prohibited anywhere, including Hell, in the next world. As Satan is fond of saying, "What makes Hell a hell is your attitude. We truly care about the welfare of our residents. Boca Burgers beat beef patties any day (is than an endorsement?)."
Please take temporary refuge in Wendell's words. They'll help a lot, I promise.
"And then gradually it came clear to me that we weren't just a helpless, aimless mob of strays, but people were there who were in charge of us--people setting up cots, moving about, asking if anybody was sick, or hurt, giving help where it was needed. And then it came to me that I was smelling food. I looked around a little and saw that several smiling ladies were handing out bowls of soup and pieces of bread.
As I knew I wasn't exactly in the same fix as the other people, I didn't go to the table in any kind of rush but waited until I could go without getting in front of anybody. Especially I didn't want to push in ahead of any of the children. But when the way got clear, I went. I got my bowl and my spoon and my piece of bread and leaned back against the wall. I stuck my nose into the steam rising off of that hot soup and let my heart rejoice.
Pretty soon people began putting their children to bed. And the grown-ups who had no children were finding places for themselves. I didn't take one of the cots, but found a little nook behind a statue of a man of another time and folded up my raincoat for a pillow and lay down on the floor with my back to the crowd and my box [of belongings] between me and the wall.
I was thoroughly tired, and I didn't exactly lie awake, but I didn't exactly sleep either. As soon as I shut my eyes I could see the river again, only now I seemed to see it up and down its whole length. Where just a little while before people had been breathing and eating and going about in their eveyday lives, now I could see currents come riding in, at first picking up straws and dead leaves and little sticks, and then boards and pieces of firewood and whole logs, and then maybe the henhouse or the barn or the house itself. As if the mountains had melted and were flowing to the sea, the water rose and filled all the airy spaces of rooms and stalls and fields and woods, carrying away everything that would float, casting up the people and scattering them, scattering or drowning their animals and poultry flocks. The whole world, it seemed, was cast adrift, riding the currents, whirled about in eddies, the old life submerged and gone, the new not yet come.
And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a mudy horse, and letting the pieces fly. I had almost no sooner broke my leash that I had hit the wall."
--Wendell Berry, "Jayber Crow," Counterpoint Press, 2000, pages 82-3.
So much was lost in that storm--a lot of it having to do with compassion and mercy, the two most cardinal qualities of God that are his greatest proofs. From a practical, practising standpoint of meditation- and prayer-based mindfulness, God can only exist (that is, be cognized) in the expression of His virtues. When Sufis like myself invoke God's mercy and compassion before any action, deed or event, we do so because this is activation of the Christ within, or what Buddhists calls "orignal mind," or Sufis the "nur [light of] Muhammed." For me, the residuum of God is what my teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen calls "Allah's 3,000 gracious qualities." And as Confucius kept pointing out, the continuous articulation of those qualities is what makes leaders true leaders.
Alas, that articulation has been almost completely eradicated from public life in America, and people like me who see it as the largest casualty of Katrina are grieving for it this morning. America has been plunged into an evil emptiness--not an emptiness of surrender or relinquishment that are often preludes to bonding and sharing, but a state of still-born consciousness that rises no higher on the chakra chain than maybe the gut. Welcome to the I-me-mine world and world-view. Don't you miss the world of Oneness?
Speaking of Oneness, let me interrupt this text message for the following anecdote: Last night a friend Lou Buetler asked me, "What are your two choices after death?" I answered, "Heaven or Hell." He then said, "If you choose Heaven you choose Hell because in heaven you are still separate from God. The only choice in any life is God, oneness with God." Now that's practising Sufism, which, as you can readily see, is just the Muslim study of non-duality. Now back to my post-Katrina thought-stream:
What, I keep asking myself, will act as countervalence to the vicious vacancy of true virtue in public life, including government? I could say prayer, but some of the most parched spirits in Washington hold daily prayer meetings and look at pictures of the Last Supper with moist-eyed earnestness.
So piety has failed and we must seek, as some Buddhists suggest, a non-pietistic, non-preachy way to restoration of virtue. That several million American believers subscribe to the notion of a kick-ass god who is planning a collective punishment of unrepentant humanity is probably the best evidence we have of the failure of pietistic scripture-based religion. The world is drowning in self-righteousness--Holocaust-addicted Jews who bomb or keep captive their neighbors and justify it as self-defense, couch potato Christians who watch CNN for signs of a crusty Christ's warring presence (sometimes mistaken, according to creationist science, for global warming) and vindictive Muslims who think God rejoices at their self-detonation inside an Israeli Starbucks or in front of a Tel Aviv Gap.
I offer this soothing scene from Wendell Berry's masterpiece, "Jayber Crow," dealing with a Kentucky Katrina called the 1937 Louisville Flood. Our hero Jayber Crow has just left a seminary because he and organized religion don't match up too well and is searching for a new homestead. On his way to discovering his new home in Port William, Kentucky, the fictional locale of all Berry's novels, Jayber is caught in a flood. After trying unsuccessfully to cross a bridge that is in danger of being swept away (this scene is my favorite in all literature, equal in my esteem to the Grand Inquisitor scene in "The Brothers Karamazov" which topped my list of great literary moments for decades), the hero must take shelter in a government building that has been suitably, fully converted into a hospice. The comfort and goodness he receives here give him the strength to resume his journey homeward the next day.
Until Katrina's survivors know a public comforting, and norms of compassion such as Jayber receives, this country will remain without any moorings in mercy, stranded in meaningless , fatal wealth that is robbed of its final, sanctifying resonances of well-being and charity (and please don't trot out the Marshall Plan; we've been living on that laurel too long). I mourn the loss of our country and take refuge in my teacher's constant assurance that God hears our prayers but has already given all the answers in that glorious bestowal called Creation. As long as the major human arteries of His mercy and conduits of His compassion are clogged and hardened with fear and greed, we suffer the illusion God does not love us or is punishing us or does not exist. I believe Job #1 is to unlock the light within; but I hasten to warn that it only becomes visible in its transmutation from heat to illumination, fire to radiance. In other words, as engaged Bahais, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, deisits, and atheists, we praise God most through service to others. "Make the hunger of others your own," Bawa urged thousands of times. That acceptance is what is missing from the Katrina story and its aftermath.
Another aside: The same Republicans who built those useless, overpriced Patriot Missiles built those ramshackle FEMA trailers. Spike Lee took us on a guided tour of one. During his penance in purgatory, George Bush will have to live in a FEMA trailer for a kalpa or two. Hey, it could be worse. As part of its new Madison Avenue makeover and Coke-vs-Pepsi battle with Heaven, Hell, like Wal-Mart, is now offering organic produce. The idea came from a pesty Bodhisattva, who immolated himself on a Saigon street corner in his last life, and has been stationed ever since in Hell refusing to leave until every soul is set free. As for beef, George's freezer will be stocked with meat substitutes made by Christian brotherhoods who think the taking of life is prohibited anywhere, including Hell, in the next world. As Satan is fond of saying, "What makes Hell a hell is your attitude. We truly care about the welfare of our residents. Boca Burgers beat beef patties any day (is than an endorsement?)."
Please take temporary refuge in Wendell's words. They'll help a lot, I promise.
"And then gradually it came clear to me that we weren't just a helpless, aimless mob of strays, but people were there who were in charge of us--people setting up cots, moving about, asking if anybody was sick, or hurt, giving help where it was needed. And then it came to me that I was smelling food. I looked around a little and saw that several smiling ladies were handing out bowls of soup and pieces of bread.
As I knew I wasn't exactly in the same fix as the other people, I didn't go to the table in any kind of rush but waited until I could go without getting in front of anybody. Especially I didn't want to push in ahead of any of the children. But when the way got clear, I went. I got my bowl and my spoon and my piece of bread and leaned back against the wall. I stuck my nose into the steam rising off of that hot soup and let my heart rejoice.
Pretty soon people began putting their children to bed. And the grown-ups who had no children were finding places for themselves. I didn't take one of the cots, but found a little nook behind a statue of a man of another time and folded up my raincoat for a pillow and lay down on the floor with my back to the crowd and my box [of belongings] between me and the wall.
I was thoroughly tired, and I didn't exactly lie awake, but I didn't exactly sleep either. As soon as I shut my eyes I could see the river again, only now I seemed to see it up and down its whole length. Where just a little while before people had been breathing and eating and going about in their eveyday lives, now I could see currents come riding in, at first picking up straws and dead leaves and little sticks, and then boards and pieces of firewood and whole logs, and then maybe the henhouse or the barn or the house itself. As if the mountains had melted and were flowing to the sea, the water rose and filled all the airy spaces of rooms and stalls and fields and woods, carrying away everything that would float, casting up the people and scattering them, scattering or drowning their animals and poultry flocks. The whole world, it seemed, was cast adrift, riding the currents, whirled about in eddies, the old life submerged and gone, the new not yet come.
And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a mudy horse, and letting the pieces fly. I had almost no sooner broke my leash that I had hit the wall."
--Wendell Berry, "Jayber Crow," Counterpoint Press, 2000, pages 82-3.
posted by David Federman @ 9:06 AM
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