Guest Post: Tim Cox: On Tolerance

Tim Cox is a friend I met during the SDi I & II certifications in Boulder back in October. Tim is working on a master's degree at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. The following post is his reply to my post on "the war on Christmas." With his permission, I have moved his comments to the main page as a guest contributor.

I would like to take this opportunity to invite others who have thoughts they'd like to share to send them to me at Integral Options Cafe. I want this to become a true "ideas cafe," where multiple viewpoints can co-exist, learning and growing from each other.


I have been working on a term paper for a cultural diversity class in my master's program and chose the topic of religious tolerance for my exploration, so I have lots of thoughts running around in my head at the moment. Forgive me if this presents itself as somewhat jumbled and long winded, as I am sort of just throwing my response together. I'll do my best to make a coherent argument representative of my opinions.

First off, I have to say that I agree with you on most aspects of your post but have a hard time with some of the other points. In my view, this whole debate over deciding the most PC term for the big, green, needle-leafed tree upon which multi-millions of people hang decorations during the holiday festivities has become an utter media-driven fiasco representing the depravity into which our country has fallen. The difficulty I have with the controversy is that I can see both sides of the argument.

I can see how some individuals would be offended by the use of the word Christmas to describe a tree symbolic of the religious holiday that the majority of the U.S. celebrates. On the other hand, I can see how many are outraged in feeling as though they are being forced to strip away the established symbolism from the second most important holiday (Easter being the first) in their view. Despite these facts, I think that this entire argument is built on shaky ground, with a multitude of scattered eggshells and land mines.

What is truly at the heart of this debate is not the dialogue about what the damn tree should be called, but rather it is about the core values and beliefs that define those individuals who are having the debate in the first place.

"Values, in the general sense of what is important to people and what standards guide their behavior," according to Matthew Oordt (From: Value Change, Authority, and Religious Tolerance) "are extremely essential components to understanding the functioning of individuals and society. The more we are able to understand what values are, how they develop, what influences value change, and how values affect attitudes and behaviors, the better equipped we will be as a society to maintain strong values and use them consciously and beneficially in negotiating old and new challenges."

Values are not a bad thing. They are the beliefs that define our behavior and the foundation upon which we build our worldview. A world of individuals sans values would be absolute chaos. The problem we face as individuals and as a collective occurs when tolerance for an individual's or culture's values dissipates.

Brad Stetson and Joseph Conti, in their recently published book, The Truth About Tolerance, state:

Tolerance, rightly understood, is a patience toward a practice or opinion one disapproves of. This understanding may come as a surprise to many people today who imagine that tolerance is simply a synonym for the words acceptance or agreement. Why include the harsh word disaprove in the definition of tolerance, some may wonder?

The classical idea of tolerance has been marked by a clear understanding that toleration entails disagreement yet respect, that is, a difference of opinion accompanied by a firm moral commitment to the decent treatment of the person with whom one disagrees. The most famous formulation of tolerance is attributed to the eighteenth-century philosopher Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death of your right to say it." So by technical definition, tolerance is "A policy of patient forbearance in the presence of something which is disliked or disapproved of. The English word tolerance is derived from the Latin tolerare, meaning "to bear," so the concept of forbearance or putting up with something not agreeable is inherent in the concept of tolerance. Thus logically built in to the very idea of tolerance is the presence of disagreement. It would make no sense to be tolerant of a public policy or practice we agree with. The concept of tolerance is not relevant when there is no dispute or discontent about the way things should go or the way they should be done. Toleration need only be brought to bear when there is tension, when there is a disagreement about what is fitting and proper, whether the context be public or private.

With that said, I agree with you that, "There is no reason why the winter holiday season can't be inclusive of other traditions." However, must that inclusiveness come with the intolerance of those individuals in allowing a "Christmas tree" to remain being called such? It is embedded within the Christmas holiday that the tree representative of it be known as a "Christmas Tree" and not a "holiday tree." I don't hear anyone asking Jews and those others who may celebrate Hanukkah to call a "Menorah" a "candle holder," or anyone asking those individuals who celebrate Kwanzaa to call a "Mkeka" a "straw mat upon which gifts and symbolic items are placed." Hell, if we are to truly be tolerant of all individuals, then we need to find a new word for holiday as it is derived from the words "Holy Day" or better yet, not even publicly display symbols of the celebrations, as this may be offensive to those individuals who are Jehovah's Witnesses and do not celebrate any occasions. Are you starting to see my frustration with this topic? It could continue, ad nauseam.

I am going to wrap up my discussion of this topic with a few final comments. I believe that we have become a nation of victims with individuals trying to find anything and everything to complain about. Truly, we have more pressing issues than what we should call a Christmas tree. I feel saddened for those who take personal offense to the use of the term. I know we are a nation with a predominantly white, Judaeo-Christian population that for centuries has placed unfathomable prejudices and oppressions on individuals of minority classes. Yet, we cannot undo the past. What we can do is make amends for those travesties and attempt to establish a society in which we are tolerant of all peoples and the symbolism they choose to display in celebration of their holidays, including those in the majority (millions upon millions of whom are not even Christians), who chose to celebrate Christmas with loved ones around the "Christmas tree." That is what would constitute a pluralist society.

I would like to address one further topic (which will be much briefer) that caught my attention. I think you need to be cautious in your labeling of all Christians as that of the red-Blue meme. I happen to know many individuals who would consider themselves to be quite the opposite. It is true that most Christians believe that they worship the one true god and are the one true religion. But for the most part, isn't that what defines religion? A claim to absolute truth is inherent in most major religions, and a belief that opposing absolutes can be correct and true is certainly incongruent. I'm certain that even if you were to ask Senator John Kerry (in seclusion with assurances of complete confidentiality, of course, for he wouldn't want to be condemned for "flip-flopping") if he believes, based upon his publicly stated faith of Christianity, that his god is the one true God, he would say yes. If he were to say otherwise, he would be going against the very nature of what it means to be a Christian. Yet, on the surface, he is very much orange-Green.

Does this make him a bad person or suggest that he doesn't hold Christian values? Absolutely not. It is just part of his value system and serves as an example that not all Christians have a center of gravity at the Blue meme. Yet at the core of their faith are strong undertones of Blue. This would be the same whether we are talking about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, or any other of the major religions. With that said, it would follow that most of the world's citizens have a major portion of their meme stack in a Blue orientation. But even so, we must be careful to remember that religion is only a manifestation of the Blue meme. The Blue meme is more accurately defined by its focus on absolutism, authority, sacrifice, order, ideology, and obedience to rules, just to name a few. These characteristic values can be seen in individuals with a COG of Blue yet who are far from being religious.

For me, the irony of the Green meme lies in that there is such a strong push against the ideals of the Blue meme, yet many of these "Green" individuals continue to uphold such beliefs that a life of egalitarianism, pluralism, and relativism is the one and only "true" way. In doing so, they are acting more "Blue" in their thinking than they could ever imagine or would ever admit. Furthermore, as you stated, they are expressing intolerance of those individuals whose worldviews are different than their own and are only propagating the decay of the very tolerance they fight for. Many of these individuals are the ones who, as stated above, are fighting against the very notion of calling a tree a "Christmas tree" because the terminology is so embedded in a religious social system which they perceive to be erroneous, obsolete, and persecutory. If only they could see the idiocy in their plight, perhaps we would be a nation of greater tolerance.

"The War on Christmas": Fundamentalist Christianity vs. Postmodern Relativism

Faux News host John Gibson has been ceaselessly promoting his moronic book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought (Sentinel, October 2005), anyplace that will let him talk about it. Media Matters for America has a snippet of his appearance on Janet Parshall's nationally syndicated radio program.

From the November 17 edition of Salem Radio Network's Janet Parshall's America:

GIBSON: The whole point of this is that the tradition, the religious tradition of this country is tolerance, and that the same sense of tolerance that's been granted by the majority to the minority over the years ought to go the other way too. Minorities ought to have the same sense of tolerance about the majority religion -- Christianity -- that they've been granted about their religions over the years.

PARSHALL: Exactly. John, I have to tell you, let me linger for a minute on that word "tolerance." Because first of all, the people who like to promulgate that concept are the worst violators. They cannot tolerate Christianity, as an example.

GIBSON: Absolutely. I know -- I know that.

PARSHALL: And number two, I have to tell you, I don't know when they held this election and decided that tolerance was a transcendent value. I serve a god who, with a finger of fire, wrote, he will have no other gods before him. And he doesn't tolerate sin, which is why he sent his son to the cross, but all of a sudden now, we jump up and down and celebrate the idea of tolerance. I think tolerance means accommodation, but it doesn't necessarily mean acquiescence or wholehearted acceptance.

GIBSON: No, no, no. If you figure that -- listen, we get a little theological here, and it's probably a bit over my head, but I would think if somebody is going to be -- have to answer for following the wrong religion, they're not going to have to answer to me. We know who they're going to have to answer to.

PARSHALL: Right.

GIBSON: And that's fine. Let 'em. But in the meantime, as long as they're civil and behave, we tolerate the presence of other religions around us without causing trouble, and I think most Americans are fine with that tradition.

That is about as clear a red-Blue statement of its position as you're likely to hear. Tolerance, which is one of the most crucial aspects of the Green Meme's worldview (multiculturalism, pluralism, relativism, egalitarianism), is something to be put up with, but not embraced as a "transcendent value."

The view of God depicted here is of one who is judgmental, jealous, and angry--a very Old Testament view, certainly not a Christ-based view. Christ taught love and tolerance of all people, no matter their race, gender, religion, or place in life. These are not the views expressed by these fundamentalists.

Gibson's book and his appearances on various Faux News shows is just another part of the "culture war" that is raging in this country. Faux News and its talking heads are actually creating the war as much as reporting it, which seems a rather new function for news reporters. Anyway, the fundamentalist red-Blue Christian Meme is convinced that it has the one true god and the one true religion, and that relativists and secularists are out to destroy them and their worldview.

To be fair, they are partly correct, which makes their most extreme claims (such as the supposed war on Christmas) that much more difficult to refute. The orange-Green Meme (progressives in Westernized countries) really has no tolerance for organized religion, seeing in it the oppression of women, minorities, and anyone who is not a believer. With that view, this more "tolerant" Meme sets out to dismantle Blue structures, such as organized religion, authoritarian political systems, and oppressive social values, for example, apartheid and segregation.

The Green Meme loves to hold up all religions as equally relevant--everything from Wicca and paganism to Buddhism and Islam. This infuriates the fundamentalist Christians as well as the Islamic fundamentalists. ALL fundamentalist variations of the world's major religions (you can add communism to this list as well) believe they hold the one true religion and that all others are the enemy.

Here is the irony: the Green Meme (what Wilber calls the Mean Green Meme--repressive collectivism) can also act from a fundamentalist stance when it works to dismantle systems that is doesn't like.

Each worldview in the first tier of the Spiral Dynamics model believes it has the only "true" version of reality. However, this does not make them fundamentalist in that most people expressing these worldviews do not feel a need to destroy those who hold opposing worldviews. Those who do feel the need to destroy opposing worldviews are the fundamentalists, no matter which worldview they are expressing.

In the case of the supposed war on Christmas, pluralist Green wants to make the winter holiday season all inclusive, and to that end it wants people to say happy holidays rather than Merry Christmas. It wants a holiday tree rather than a Christmas tree. In 2005, Christmas falls on December 25, as usual, but Hanukkah begins, along with Kwanzaa, on December 26. There is no reason why the winter holiday season can't be inclusive of other traditions. We are a pluralist society, not a Christian society.

The "Ouch" Teaching

In his essay "The Test of Truth" (Best Buddhist Writing, 2004, originally published in the Fall 2003 issue of Tricycle), Larry Rosenberg offers this Chinese teaching story.

People came from far and wide to hear the dharma talks of a young teacher. Apparently he had some depth. And one day, an old master came to hear him. He sat in the back of the meditation hall while the young teacher was giving a dharma talk. But the young teacher saw him, and out of respect, knowing that he was a renowned teacher and also much older, said, "Please, come up here, sit next to me while I give my talk." So the old master rose and sat next to him. The young teacher resumed his talk, and every other word was a quotation from a different sutra or Zen master. The old master started to nod off in front of everyone. And the young teacher could see this out of the corner of his eye, but he just continued. The more authorities he cited, the sleepier the old master became. Finally, the young teacher couldn't stand it anymore, so he asked, "What's wrong? Is my teaching so boring, so awful, so totally off?" At that point, the old master leaned over and gave him a very hard pinch and the young teacher screamed, "Ouch!" The old master said, "Ah! That's what I've come all this way for. This pure teaching. This 'ouch' teaching."

Rosenberg offers this story within the context of his article focusing on the Kalama Sutta, which details a conversation between the Kalamas and the Buddha. The Kalamas ask tough questions about claims of various teachings to be the one true teaching. The Buddha responds that self-knowledge is the only valid test of a teaching's truth.

Rosenberg's argument, and the teaching story he offers, are relevant in my life right now, and maybe for other readers, as well. I love books, and I have a tendency to rely on reading as my primary means of acquiring knowledge. The Buddha would likely permit such study as a viable means of practice, but he would surely argue that the teachings I read must be confirmed or rejected through experience.

The mind tends to think it can study its way to enlightenment. Perhaps this is just another manifestation of ego. By definition, however, formlessness and nondual awareness transcend the capabilities of the rational mind.

I rely far too much on my rational mind. I need an old master sitting beside me to pinch me and remind me that direct experience is the only path to truth. I want to live in the moment of direct experience as much as humanly possible. I won't give up my studies, but I will make a greater effort to meditate regularly.

Being with the breath is one of the basic mind-training techniques, and also one of the most effective. I am going to make an effort to work on simply being with the breath in my practice. No more mantras or visualizations--nothing other than bringing awareness back to the breath over and over and over again.

But meditation is only a small part of daily life. I am also going to focus on being more present in everything I do during the day. If I am eating, I will eat as though nothing else exists. When I am training clients, my clients will be the only reality. When I am with my girlfriend, she will be the focus of my attention. This is a lofty goal, I know. However, it is the intent and the practice of bringing consciousness back into the moment that matters the most. I will seldom be as present as I want to be, but I am going to hold the intent.

We all spend so much time in our head. The truth does not reside in our head alone. We must cultivate the "ouch" teaching--a direct, unmediated experience of reality.

Sunday Poem: Mirabai

The Heat of Midnight Tears

Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,
kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night.

If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water,
I would have asked to be born a fish in this life.
If we could reach Him through nothing but berries and wild nuts
then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came from the womb!
If we could reach Him by munching lettuce and dry leaves
then the goats would surely get to the Holy One before us!

If the worship of stone statues could bring us all the way,
I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.

Mirabai says: "The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God."

[Translation by Robert Bly. Holy Fire: Nine Visionary Poets and the Quest for Enlightenment; Harper Perennial, 1994.]

Mirabai (also sometimes called Meera; 1498-1550, dates uncertain) is believed to have been born to a well-to-do Rajput family in the village of Merta (200 miles from New Dehli) in a region now known as Rajastan. Being a princess, she married Bhoj Raj, the crown prince of Mewar, in 1516. He died in battle five years later, at which time Mirabai began to spend more and more time worshipping Krishna and visiting sadhus (holy men).

Mirabai openly rebelled against all things conventional and rejected her affluent background and the restrictions that allowed only those from lower castes to become bhakti (ecstatic religious poets). She devoted her life to a profound and passionate pursuit of Krishna, eventually adopting the sadhu lifestyle (constant travel, poverty).

Much of her poetry (there are nearly 5,000 poems attributed to her, though only about 200 are believed to be authentic) is erotic and expresses a subtle sexual longing for Krishna, who is often described as her husband, lover, lord, or beloved. The erotic component of her verse speaks to her intense and deeply personal desire to experience union with Krishna, expressed in a most intimate manner. A popular belief in India holds that Mirabai finally achieved that union with Krishna and disappeared from his temple, leaving only her sari wrapped around his statue.

For more information, try the following sources:
"Mirabai: The Rebellious Rajput Rani," by Bill Garlington
"Viraha in Bhakta Meera's Songs," by Vasanti Mataji
A 2002 bibliography (partially annotated) of Mirabai translations and studies

The Ideosphere and Change

The Spring/Summer 2005 issue of Kosmos featured an article by Yasuhiko Genku Kimura called "Kosmic Alignment." I want to present and discuss a few of his ideas.

[T]he prime mover of the world is not technology per se but idea. Technology is only an artifact of idea, the prime mover, but not the prime mover itself. Idea, and idea alone, moves the world. This means that we can move the world with our own thinking through the generation and propagation of ideas. The problem, however, is that the majority of humanity remains the consumer of ideas without being the producer.

***

For the locus of thinking is within the individual. It is not the collective but the individual composing the collective that alone can think and generate ideas. The ideospheric transformation of the kind I speak is a synergetic phenomenon that emerges when individuals in sufficient numbers become authentic, independent thinkers, that is, originators of ideas, producers of dialogues, and contributors to the network of conversations that comprises the world.

***

In following the evolutionary thrust for optimization that is driving our collective transformation toward an unprecedented height of culture and civilization, the ideospheric configuration we require for the 21st century is omnicentric, having independent yet interconnected centers within the intellectually and spiritually sovereign individuals, living and working as self-authorities in the matter of thinking, knowing, and acting. Then, the thinking, knowing, and acting of these authentic individuals will synergetically co-develop throughout the omnicentric configuration of the evolving ideosphere. The Information Revolution that is underway with the omnipresent Internet is simultaneously the manifestation of, and the apparatus for, this new omnicentric configuration of the ideosphere.

There is more to the article than these small quotes, but this series of ideas felt important enough to think about more fully.

First, a complaint. Kimura writes as though he is proposing intellectual theory, when in reality he is proposing a "call to arms." He is challenging us to become the vehicles for cultural transformation rather than waiting for it to happen around us. He is also challenging us to "be the change we want to see in the world," to paraphrase Gandhi, and that is not an intellectual endeavor--it is a matter of human connections.

I want thinkers like Kimura to write in such a way that we can become passionate about the message, about change, about taking a place among the movers and shakers with a vision for a better world.

That being said, there is a lot to like about Kimura's vision. If we each can become the producer of ideas and find ways to get them into the world (like blogging), we each can make a contribution to global evolution. However, we can't all be producers--someone has to consume what we produce. Therefore, it falls to those of us who have a vision, or who are already working toward change either individually or collectively, to be leaders.

So far, so good--until someone with power and tools and really bad ideas decides to change the world to conform to his/her vision (think Bush/Cheney, or James Dobson, or Hitler). What Kimura doesn't discuss is how the "bad" ideas can be weeded out from the "good" ideas. This is clearly necessary and involves a degree of moral development that we can all agree is worldcentric. Yet, how do we prevent egocentric people with power and a bad idea from changing the world to match their vision? Tough questions that may require tough answers.

Here is Kimura's answer to the question:

The act of idea-generation through authentic thinking and the sustained engagement in the conversation of humankind, if conducted in the context of pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness, will lead to powerful moral action that will engender a New World.

This functions well as a general idea, but not as a useful limit to power. This is where I get politically incorrect: not all ideas are created equal, as Kimura clearly suggests. There needs to be some form of check on bad ideas, unevolved ideas, or ideas that can cause harm, pain, or suffering. Perhaps a free market, a kind of capitalism of ideas, is the best solution. If one looks at the internet, it becomes apparent that people choose valuable ideas by frequently visiting their creators (think blogs and web magazines, not porn). So the internet is a good example of how bad ideas can disappear over time.

Yet, people live at different developmental levels with different worldviews. A Buddhist, such as myself, will have nothing in common with someone who frequently visits Christian family sites, or conservative blogs, or porn. But we each think that our worldview is valid, and there are likely to be a lot of other people who share that view.

I think the differences are fine. They support Kimura's suggestion that the internet is one of the variations on his omnicentric (as opposed to concentric) ideosphere. Many of us are here for that very reason. This is a free-flowing marketplace of ideas without a clear center--in fact, there are many centers or hubs where the biggest ideas are generated.

This is how we will change the world. Kimura suggest that individual transformation is based on collective transformation. I think it is the opposite, but I am a Buddhist. Real change happens when individuals evolve and want to make a difference in the world through volunteering, creating a new business or service, or simply changing from a job that reduces freedoms, choices, or resources to one that expands freedoms, choices, or resources.

True change starts with the individual--with each of you who are reading these words. It can be very simple (the "butterfly effect"): commit a random act of kindness, give an unexpected compliment, extend yourself to someone who might need you.

These are ideas made tangible. Expand on them. Make your life about creating opportunities for compassion. If you can figure how to make a living doing that, then do it. I became a personal trainer to help people. It turns out that it isn't my knowledge of diet and exercise that creates the most change, it's my compassion--it's listening without judgment, it's empathy, it's supporting my clients to make changes in who they are, not simply how they eat.

We can do this in our families, among our friends, with strangers. This is an idea that can change the world; one act of kindness or compassion each day. How hard is that? It won't be apparent to us in our lifetimes. We may never see the benefit of our actions. We must simply trust that if we extend ourselves to other people, they will extend themselves to others, and it will become a chain reaction.

Believe in the power of your ideas and change the world.

Nepalese Boy Thought to be Reincarnation of Buddha

I have resisted posting on this story for a while, but it seems to be gaining traction in the media. Yahoo News (via the AP) ran the story on Wednesday.

I'm skeptical, to say the least. However, there must be a distinction made between the boy's possible spiritual enlightenment and the mythology that has sprung up around him. He may be a reincarnated Buddha, or he may be a boy with an intense desire to seek enlightenment.

All that individual-interior stuff aside, he is not surviving for 6 months without food or water--the individual-exterior doesn't get to live outside the natural laws.

At this point, all we have are local reports. We need an independent observer to test his claims and those of the people around him.

KATMANDU, Nepal - A teenage boy has been meditating in a Nepalese jungle for six months, and thousands have flocked to see him, with some believing he is the reincarnation of Buddha, police and media said Wednesday.

Ram Bahadur Banjan, 15, sits cross-legged and motionless with eyes closed among the roots of a tree in the jungle of Bara, about 100 miles south of the capital, Katmandu.

He's supposedly been that way since May 17 — but his followers have been keeping him from public view at night.

A reporter for the Kantipur newspaper, Sujit Mahat, said he spent two days at the site, and that about 10,000 people are believed to visit daily.

Soldiers have been posted in the area for crowd control, officials said.

A makeshift parking lot and cluster of food stalls have sprung up near Banjan's retreat, an area not previously frequented by visitors.

Many visitors believe Banjan is a reincarnation of Gautama Siddhartha, who was born not far away in southwestern Nepal around 500 B.C. and later became revered as the Buddha, which means Enlightened One.

Others aren't so sure.

Police inspector Chitra Bahadur Gurung said officers have interviewed the boy's associates about their claim that Banjan has gone six months without food or drink.

Officers have not directly questioned the boy, who appears deep in meditation and doesn't speak.

"We have a team ... investigating the claim on how anyone can survive for so long without food and water," Gurung said.

Local officials have also asked the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology in Katmandu to send scientists to examine Banjan.

Mahat said visitors can catch a glimpse of Banjan from a roped-off area about 80 feet away from him between dawn and dusk.

Followers then place a screen in front of him, blocking the view and making it impossible to know what he is doing at night, Mahat said.

"We could not say what happens after dark," Mahat said. "People only saw what went on in the day, and many believed he was some kind of god."

Buddhism teaches that right thinking and self-control can enable people to achieve nirvana — a divine state of peace and release from desire. Buddhism has about 325 million followers, mostly in Asia.

Houston Smith Interview on Beliefnet

Beliefnet has an interview with Houston Smith, the greatest living historian of religion. Smith is not one of the academic types who simply studies a religion. While affirming Christianity as his home base, Smith has immersed himself in several of the world's great religious traditions. His The World's Religions and The Forgotten Truth are classics in the comparative religion field.

U2's Bono Uses Fame to Create Change

CBS's 60 Minutes did a profile of U2 last night, with a focus on Bono and his political activities. U2 has always been a socially outspoken band, whether they are singing about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the genocide in Bosnia, or the religious warfare in their Irish homeland. Offstage, however, Bono in particular walks the talk in his songs.

Bono has worked to provide AIDS drugs for dying people in Africa. He has lobbied the richest countries on the planet to forgive the crushing debt owed by the poorest nations.

Bono’s passions are shared and supported by the band, drummer Larry Mullen, Jr., bassist Adam Clayton and the guitarist who calls himself “The Edge.”

“I think early on the heroes that we had were people like Bob Marley, John Lennon, The Clash,” says The Edge. “And those bands all had the same combination of rock 'n roll, the rage, railing against injustice. And the politics. We connected with that in a major way.”

With albums such as Boy, October, War, and A Blood Red Sky, U2 established itself in America as a socially conscious band that makes incredible music. With 1987's The Joshua Tree (perhaps one of the greatest albums ever recorded), U2 established themselves as the biggest band on the planet. The band has held that title ever since, continuing year after year to produce infectious music that carries deep meaning.

As much attention as Bono gets for his social activism, he still feels himself to be a musician first and foremost. Here are some of the lyrics from "I Still Haven't Found What I Am Looking For."

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well yes I'm still running

You broke the bonds and you
Loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it

There is a definite Christian flavor to Bono's vision, but it is not traditional Christianity. Rather, Bono seeks a vision in which the spirit of Jesus Christ--the rebel who spent his time with the outcast and poor, not with the wealthy--is manifest in the lives and actions of people. It is a vision that acknowledges differences and suffering, but it also seeks the freedom, both physical and spiritual, of all people.

Beautiful Day:

Touch me, take me to that other place
Teach me love, I know I'm not a hopeless case

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by a cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And, see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colours came out
(Day) Down
(Day) Day

It was a beautiful day / (Day) Down
Don't let it get away / (Day) Day
Beautiful day / (Day) Down, (Day) Down

Still, it is in the political realm where Bono's understanding of human nature--what Spiral Dynamics might see as a second-tier knowledge--becomes so apparent. Bono was angry that the Christian right in America had done so little to address the AIDS crisis in Africa, so this liberal rock star approached them, and rather than giving them some bleeding heart speech, he spoke to them in their language, in terms they could understand and respond to.

How does he get support for his projects? “It was probably that it would be really wrong beating a sort of left-wing drum, taking the usual bleeding-heart-liberal line,” says Bono.

Instead, he enlisted the ruling right of American politics. “Particularly conservative Christians, I was very angry that they were not involved more in the AIDS emergency. I was saying, ‘this is the leprosy that we read about in the New Testament, you know. Christ hung out with the lepers. But you're ignoring the AIDS emergency,” says Bono. “How can you? And, you know, they said, ‘Well, you're right, actually. We have been. And we're sorry. We'll get involved.’ And they did.”

The ability to successfully gauge the worldview and meaning-structure of an audience and speak to them in such a way that they can be convinced to do something they had been hesitant to do is indicative of an integral worldview. A person at this level is not so fully attached to his/her own worldview that it is impossible to see into another. Bono has this gift.

Stuart Davis recently expressed his feeling that U2 shows the greatest depth (meaning in their music) and span (range of influence) of any band in music today. I quibbled with that a bit, but I'd have to agree with him after seeing this interview.

Bono's music can move me to tears in ways few other musicians can (Peter Gabriel and Human Drama also can). He often seeks the best in human beings through his music, even when expressing his pain at what he sees around him.

One:

Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus?
To the lepers in your head

Did I ask too much, more than a lot?
You gave me nothing, now it's all I got
We're one, but we're not the same
Well we hurt each other
Then we do it again

You say
Love is a temple
Love a higher law
Love is a temple
Love the higher law
You ask me to enter
Well then you make me crawl
And I can't be holding on
To what you got
When all you got is hurt

One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other

Sunday Poem: Adrienne Rich

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
and absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it's a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Adrienne Rich has been a leading figure in American poetry since winning the prestigious Yale Younger Poets award for her first book in 1951. Since then, she has published book after book of deeply personal and socially relevant poetry. While often claimed by the "women's movement" as one of their leading voices due to Rich's openness about being a lesbian and her activism for women's rights, Rich transcends any single puropse to her life and work. She is first and foremost an American poet.

Rich won the National Book Award in 1974 for Diving into the Wreck (which she accepted jointly with Alice Walker and Audre Lorde in the name of all women who are silenced). She has also been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, the first Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Brandeis Creative Arts Medal, the Common Wealth Award, the William Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the National Poetry Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry.

I was a young man in college when I first read this poem in an Introduction to Literature class taught by professor James Dean (to whom I am forever indebted). In that class he us taught that literature offers a path into the deeper realms of human experience, and he encouraged us to explore those realms within the works we studied and within ourselves. Nearly everything we read for those three quarters moved us further into the interior of what it means to be human.

I was a psychology major when I took those classes, and this poem spoke to me about the process of Jungian myth work, of which I was enamored at the time. I saw in Adrienne Rich's poem a revisioning of the hero myth, a feminization of the hero's quest. There is no dragon to slay, no kingdom to save. There is only the Self and its quest for wholeness. This is the central, most powerful myth underlying modern psychology: that through introspection, self-awareness, and understanding we can gather the riches of our innate humanity.

This poem provided me with the template for my own efforts as a poet. I dedicated myself to the exploration of the wreck that lies in the depths of my psyche, to the exploration of "the wreck and not the story of the wreck."

A few years after first reading this poem, I immersed myself in the alchemical psychology of Jung and became especially interested in the idea of the alchemical wedding--the union of masculine and feminine elements in the psyche that can provide a new sense of wholeness and balance. Rich is working with the same theme here, being both mermaid and merman: "I am she: I am he." Yet it is only after entering the hold of the wreck, the symbolic container of the alchemical process, that the poet recognizes the unification of her duality and can proclaim, "We are."

For other critical assessments of the poem, click here.

Bibliomantic Quote of the Day

Sometimes when I am feeling uninspired, I will open a book I like to some random page and read whatever I find there. I call this process bibliomancy--I'm sure I didn't invent the word or the practice. Today's book is The Simple Feeling of Being by Ken Wilber, a thematic collection of quotes from his published works.

From Collected Works 4: "Stages of Meditation," pages 357-58.

When you practice meditation, one of the first things you realize is that your mind--and your life, for that matter--is dominated by largely subconscious verbal chatter. You are always talking to yourself. And so, as they start to meditate, many people are stunned by how much junk starts running through their awareness. They find that thoughts, images, fantasies, notions, ideas, concepts virtually dominate their awareness. They realize that these notions have had a much more profound influence on their lives that they ever thought.

In any case, initial meditation experiences are like being at the movies. You sit and watch all these fantasies and concepts parade by, in front of your awareness. But the whole point is that you are finally becoming aware of them. You are looking at them impartially and without judgment. You just watch them go by, the same as you watch clouds float by in the sky. They come, they go. No praise, no condemnation, no judgment--just "bare witnessing." If you judge your thoughts, if you get caught up in them, then you can't transcend them. You can't find higher or subtler dimensions of your own being. So you sit in meditation, and you simply "witness" what is going on in your mind. You let the monkey mind do what it wants, and you simply watch.

And what happens is, because you impartially witness these thoughts, fantasies, notions, and images, you start to become free of their unconscious influence. You are looking at them, so you are not using them to look at the world. Therefore you become, to a certain extent, free of them. And you become free of the separate self-sense that depended on them. In other words, you start to become free of the ego.

The quote continues for a couple of more paragraphs, providing a glimpse of the higher-order consciousness--nondual awareness--that will eventually develop. Most of us will not have more than a brief taste of that state in our lifetimes.

My practice has been frustrating lately, so this quote comes as a reminder of why I sit and that sitting is about the process, not the results.

One of the key points from this passage is the idea that we develop, through meditation, the power to witness our thoughts rather than having them dictate our consciousness. Possessing an observer self, that part of consciousness that stands behind our thoughts and witnesses them as they come up and dissipate, is crucial to nearly all higher-level psychological work we will ever do. If we cannot take a step back from ourselves and witness our thoughts, actions, and behaviors, we do not possess the freedom to change them.

I have been working with my inner critic for the past several months. Of all the parts of myself I have tried to work with, the critic is the toughest. As an introject, it wormed its way into my life at a very young age, before I had the rational thought processes to question it.

Sitting has helped me hear the voice of my critic as a distinct voice. That is why I sit--to know myself better, to witness and release whatever comes up. Most importantly, sitting allows me to accept whatever comes up as a part of who I am. Attachment and rejection only feed the energy of the thing, whatever it is, but pure acceptance reduces the charge it might carry.

The more I sit, the quieter my mind becomes.

Stuart Davis on U2

Stuart Davis has a wide knowledge of music, and he thinks U2 is the greatest example of depth and span in a band since the Beatles--"Depth being the degree of their interior spiritual, emotional, cognitive, artistic (etc) development; Span being their outward success in radio, tv, sales, all the objective markers that business enterprises meaasure."

Check out his thoughts here.

After reading Stuart's thoughts on U2, I'd love to hear what anyone else thinks on this subject. Personally, I'm a huge Peter Gabriel and REM fan--these guys (and Live) are the musicians who speak to me in a big way. A close second is David Sylvian.

Please add your picks in the comments section.

On Equanimity

The new issue of Tricycle has an article, "A Perfect Balance," by Gil Fronsdal and Sayadaw U Pandita, on cultivating equanimity. As I read the section by U Pandita, I found myself thinking, "Yeah, it's not quite that easy for most of us."

Before launching into my objections to the article, here are a couple of quotes that provide the Buddha's views on equanimity.

As a solid mass of rock
Is not stirred by the wind,
So a sage is not moved
By praise and blame.
As a deep lake
Is clear and undisturbed,
So a sage becomes clear
Upon hearing the Dharma.
Virtuous people always let go.
They don't prattle about pleasures and desires.
Touched by happiness and then by suffering,
The sage shows no sign of being elated or depressed.
---Dhammapada, 81-83

Equanimity is characterized as promoting neutrality toward all beings. Its function is to see equality in beings. It is manifested as the quieting of resentment and approval. Its proximate cause is seeing ownership of deeds (karma) thus: "Beings are owners of their deeds. Whose (if not theirs) is the choice by which they will become happy, or will get free from suffering, or will not fall away from the success they have reached?" It succeeds when it makes resentment and approval subside, and it fails when it produces the equanimity of unknowing.
---Visuddhimagga, 9.96

With this basic understanding of equanimity in hand, U Pandita offers five ways that each of us can cultivate more equanimity in our lives.

1) Balanced emotion toward all living things
2) Balanced emotion toward all inanimate things
3) Avoiding people who go "crazy"
4) Choosing friends who stay cool
5) Inclining the mind toward balance

(These ideas are from In This Very Life by Sayadaw U Pandita, copyright 1991.)

Numbers 3 and 4 seem pretty easy. We can certainly make wise choices about our friends and the people with whom we surround ourselves. However, the other three items fall into the "easier said than done" category.

Here are some of U Pandita's suggestions for generating more equanimity toward all living beings:

To prepare the ground for equanimity to arise, one should try to cultivate an attitude of nonattachment and equanimity toward the people and animals we love.
_____

One reflection that can develop nonattachment is to regard all beings as the heirs of their own karma. People reap the rewards of good karma and suffer the consequences of unwholesome acts.
_____

You can also gain equanimity about beings by reflecting on ultimate reality. Perhaps you can tell yourself that, ultimately speaking, there is only mind and matter. Where is that person you are so madly in love with? There is only nama and rupa, mind and body, arising and passing away from moment to moment.

Most of U Pandita's advice has a similar tone and content. For the most part, I find this of little use and unrealistic for most Buddhist students.

When I am working on developing equanimity in my own life, I find it crucial to look at the source of the attachment in as much detail as possible. Thinking about the nature of ultimate reality does me little good when a coworker is irritating me to the point that I can't get any work done or I feel like breaking something. Simply telling myself not to be attached to the feelings I am experiencing will not solve the problem, either.

What does work, however, is for me to look at what the person (or his/her actions) represent to me, and most importantly, is there something about the person (or his/her actions) that I see in myself that makes me uncomfortable. Most often, this is where the solution is to be found. As an example, a couple of years ago I had a coworker who I felt was self-obsessed, inconsiderate, childish, rude, and generally unpleasant to be around. He made me crazy on a daily basis. When I looked more closely at the situation, I realized that he was exhibiting exaggerated traits that I disliked in myself. When I began to work with those aspects of myself and got to know them better, he no longer set me off so easily. I had to reclaim my projection, as a therapist might say.

Similarly, when I was a very young man in college, I was crazy in love with a young woman. My self-esteem hinged on everything she did--either she was nice to me and I was a good person, or she was indifferent and I was worthless. I was so attached to her loving me and to our relationship that I completely lost myself for the time we were together. When I finally was able to reclaim my projection of self-worth from that relationship, I was suddenly able to see our time together in a whole new way.

When we become attached to people or things, there are usually deep psychological reasons that must be addressed if we want to release those attachments. It is not a simple matter of choosing not to be attached, or reframing the person, thing, or relationship in terms of ultimate reality. We must dig in the dirt of our souls to uproot the attachment from the place where it originally began to grow. Otherwise, it will simply grow again in a slightly different way from its original roots.

The single best practice for developing equanimity is daily mindfulness. If we start with one attachment we want to rid ourselves of and work each day to be aware of it when it surfaces, we will be well on our way to removing its roots. It won't happen in a week, and maybe not even in a year, but it will happen if we are willing to look honestly at ourselves and our motivations. I have found no other way to uproot deeply held attachments.

If you haven't worked on mindfulness before, have a look at some of Pema Chodron's or Lama Surya Das's books. Insight meditation can also be adapted to a daily practice away from the cushion.

Moral Hierarchy and Singularity

Another item from the new issue of What Is Enlightenment?

In an article called "Moral Hierarchy: The Key to Evolving Consciousness," Jason Hill argues in favor a new and improved understanding of moral hierarchy. For him, moral hierarchy seems to be more of a process and relationship than a static object.

He distinguishes between the hierarchee, the one who is seeking a wise teacher to whom one can voluntarily surrender the self for the evacuation of its "twisted inner logics, justifications, rationalizations, and obsessions," and the hierarcher. In this approach, surrender to the guru is not simply "passive submission," but rather becomes "a form of radical intersubjectivity."

The hierarcher is the guru, the wise one, the teacher who possesses, through direct experience of nondual consciousness, an inner moral compass superior to other mortals. "His moral center of gravity is a seat of compassion and humble gratitude for the blessings of being a high-order being." Further, "he is driven by a burning desire to evoke the discovery of the God that exists in the Great Beyond in us."

At this point, a more extensive quote is necessary in order to introduce Hill's variation on the notion of "singularity."

Noble spiritual cartographers that they are, moral hierarchers relieve us of the need to play hide-and-seek with ourselves. At various times in meditative reflection, I find myself asking: "Why are you playing hide-and-seek with yourself?" "Why do those you know intimately play such games?" The answer, I believe, is that we play this game because the hiding grants us solace from the burden of that which we are intermittently driven to seek: our raw, naked singularity. Our singularity terrifies us. It is not the same as individuality, which we often conflate with the type of music we like, the values and principles we self-righteously cling to, or our deepest sense of self-image. Singularity is the embodiment of our entire being--down to the smallest cellular and microscopic aspect of our corporeal bodies--as well as the nonsubstantive immaterial spirit that is both contained in and outside our bodies.

Our singularity terrifies us because we know that there is no other like it. To live a life faithful to its architectural spirit, to live in accordance with the demands of its identity (which is singularly our own but has a share in a greater singularity--The One--from which our indubitable version derives its imprint) is to live a life alone in the midst of others.

The moral hierarcher as spiritual teacher is like the brave bodhisattva reconciling us to this blessed aloneness by pointing a path toward our own singularity.

I like the idea of singularity as Hill presents it here. The only problem for any widespread use and adoption of this term is that the futurist people have already appropriated the term in reference to their notion of a coming time "when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity." Renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil has just published The Coming Singularity. The AI people think this leap will involve human-machine hybrids.

What fun!?

So, back to Hill's version of singularity. His conception gives us a way to conceptualize Wilber's Atman Project, the evolutionary principal in Spiral Dynamics, and just about any other model that proposes the evolution of human consciousness into the nondual realm.

One last quote:

The moral hierarcher as spiritual teacher, however, is ultimately dealing with the immaterial as he engages us in the path toward evolutionary consciousness. Ultimately, to compromise would be to act as if the God in the Great Beyond in all of us exists as a different God in the corporeal house of each. This is the difference between New Age spirituality and an authentic guide toward evolutionary consciousness. Unassailable dignity is the location of one's singularity. In that inviolate space resides the God in the Great Beyond.

This is the paradox. This is the mystery to be contemplated. And this is the eternal gift of the moral hierarcher as spiritual teacher: The discovery and practice of singularity requires an unbreachable uniformity and implacable non-compromise.

Hill is positing a "one, true God" in this quote, but it is stripped of the religious baggage such claims usually carry. He is speaking of God as nondual consciousness, ungendered, fully manifest in matter as well as ineffable. This is the transcendent divinity--pure Spirit--so many of the world's great mystics have described.

I think this is a useful concept for our discussions. I hope to explore this idea further in future posts. Any thoughts any of you have would be appreciated.