darkly dreaming

It’s odd, but watching a documentary about the Westboro Baptist Church, (who own the God Hates America website among other credits), got me thinking about the role of hatred and resistance in my life. Normally I watch things like that, and have this gut wrenching hatred and anger that swells up at the harm that they are causing, not only to themselves, but to the unnamed population of kids and adults who don’t fit the straight christian lifestyle. It only gets worse when they throw in the word ‘fag’, one of a few slurs that make my body cringe every time they’re used. But I sat there, sometimes with my eyes closed because it was too hard to look at the main guy’s face, and it wasn’t making me angry. Rather, I was feeling compassion toward these people. Something that was incredibly odd to begin with, but especially of people that I view as abusing and twisting religion to suit their own selfish desires.

Thus, I took a moment to study what was happening to me, and this one incident began to place some other things in perspective. I found out recently about another in a longer chain of backstabbing abuses commited by some former colleagues of mine. I left my position as Sales Manager because I wasn’t able to mix with these two people, and at the time was very angry at having to do so. I wanted to blame them for all of it, of course. But as time went on, I began to first not care, and then to work through what had happened, and try to glean from it what I could; to grow in whatever areas I had been deficient. Still, to discover that even after I had quit, they persisted in maligning my character was too much at first. I kind of went numb all over. Afterward, as I began to face what I was feeling, I realized I wanted so badly to hate them. I wanted so badly to revile them, but I couldn’t.

In truth, I felt bad for them, and not in a superior way. Both of them had to make a very similar choice to the one I made a year ago; to leave the company and seek employment somewhere better suited for them. One of them has children to feed and cloth, and the other a long history of sorrow and pain. So in the midst of my simple desire to hate them, I instead found myself feeling almost love for them. If I had to name it, then compassion, universal human compassion. Suddenly the Buddhist teachings made so much more sense to me. In my desire to be angry I found instead the realization that I couldn’t hate, I had to love them. Not to make me sound wonderful, just that I actually tried, and failed in my task of hatred.

At some point in the weekend the idea of peaceful resistance came and went through my mind. It was the contradiction in the words themselves that caught my attention. I grew up Mennonite, and therefore still have very strong aversion to violence; yet I do not deny it’s place in the normal operation of society and the world. My ability to publish this is wholly dependent on the violent efforts of my ancestors, and even the contemporary efforts of my peers. But, the notion of resisting without violence had always been a nice idea, something to balance the need for the other. As the news of my maltreatment lingered, this was the belief that somehow came to be challenged. The link still escapes me, but I followed the thread to see where it would go.

Nowhere. At least, not initially. I don’t even remember being able to make anymore sense of it until I sat down to the program today and the numbness didn’t’ come. The anger wasn’t there, and this compassion that I thought was singular, seemed to have become more universal all of the sudden. I can’t cry, that ability seems to have left my emotional reach. But I do tear up just slightly on a few occasions. When someone sacrifices themselves for another, fictional or otherwise, especially if it’s a soldier; but also during these kinds of documentaries. I just feel so overpowered by the injustice of it, by the horribly monstrous attempts to vilify and invalidate another human beings existence. Those are angry tears, and they didn’t come.

This was it; the final piece in the burgeoning puzzle created by my uncharacteristic reactions. As I watched them protest all sorts of odd and honestly perplexing things, I wondered how I might ‘get back’ at them. Nothing. In fact, there is only acceptance and peace. Not acceptance as in turning away and ignoring it; the secular definition useful for the peaceable co-existence of conflicting viewpoints. This is an inclusive, supportive, acceptance that finds not a viewpoint, but a human being; and in finding that human being, loves them without condition. There was nothing to be done, not in resistance to them. I had to simply let my heart go and seek out the individual beyond the hate filled words and angry masks.

I suppose then, on a larger scale, this leads me to rethink a lot of those peaceful ideas I had clung to in childhood. Resisting is violent, it’s against the flow of things. I discovered a certain pleasure and success in doing so this weekend as well. As a kind of counter-weight to the path I’ve just explained, I also had some problems with a friend and finally just plainly addressed it, not exactly confrontationally, but very much direct; definitely not in the water flowing downhill way that I normally use. Also for a job that wasn’t getting back to me, I sent a direct and strongly worded email, getting an almost immediate response. Thus these two conflicting things were floating around my head at the same time.

I’ve not reached some amazing realization about all of it yet, but I do see some interesting things that I had ignored or failed to see before. Where I had assumed that these horrors wrought by religion required resistance, I find instead that they require compassion and acceptance. Yet, there is this piece to action that requires violent resistance, even in my own life. And all the while I hate doing it. My very being rejects the idea of it. But my being can’t eat if I don’t get a job. Hence the conflict between ideas and hungry reality. Where I had viewed myself as being peaceful, it was really just passive. Even going all the way back to my job, it wasn’t a peaceful existence that I responded with, it was passive. Realizing that I would have to move into an aggressive, violent role in order to renegotiate my work environment, I quit. It wasn’t a line that I was willing to cross into. But it wasn’t peaceful, it wasn’t the water way; at least not on it’s own.

Things are reversed at the moment. It’s a little odd, and definitely unbalanced for the time being. Yet peace seems to come out of it. I’ve released the violence where it was needed, and at the same time removed the need or desire to unleash it in other places. I’m sure some master ought to slap me with a stick about now. I do feel good; like something important has begun to emerge in my mind. In this moment, as I write, I am able to understand the master and his stick for the first time. How a purveyor of peace could use violent means to enlighten. I probably won’t take such a path myself, but the paradigm shifts of the weekend have at least given me some different ways to view my water metaphor.

I seem stuck in this belief that there will be something better further along. It was one of those incessant thing that followed me throughout my most doubt-filled times, when I questioned the nature of reality itself, I have always had this inexplicable feeling that something else is going on. Just this tiny little note of peace that seemed to fill in the gaps when I needed it the most. Now that life is feeling absolutely pressured, now that I begin again to question what the point is, I’m still stuck with that tiny little feeling that keeps me hoping despite all evidence and feeling that mounts against it. It’s odd, just this completely ridiculous belief that tomorrow will be better. No matter how many yesterdays that didn’t prove out, I still believe that tomorrow something greater, something better will come along.

This above all other things is the foundation for my belief, my faith, my spirituality; because I lost all else that had anything meaningful to say about this. Depression is such an odd little condition; insidiously comforting so that you believe all you truly need is yourself, even though you despise everything that you are on principle, still you persist quietly, hoping. When if falls upon you slowly, you can almost welcome it; the quiet between storms of genius or mad flights of imagination. Almost as though you expected it, even though you’ve forgotten what it was like every other time, and in the midst of it, you are convinced it’s never been like this before. Again, that hope, that delusion even, that this is as worse as it gets, and that something else is always better. A gentle confidant, it coos to you in deepening tones of despair, all the while slowly stroking it’s clawed finger along your chest, letting flow the life as though it were blood spilt upon the ground. If you’re lucky, you wish it were your blood; at least it would be something real.

Other times it comes on so fast you can feel your whole body begin to slow, and the skin tingle as though each muscle suddenly lost it’s vigor. Those are the worst time, because you were conscious of the process, you saw it glide across your heart and cool your blood to near silence. Where the world slowly fades from real in the quiet times, now it suddenly becomes a story; a fairy tale told by fools who still believe in rules of right and justice. Fools that continue in games of showmanship and love, fools that conjure happiness from potions of food and fun. These times are not gentle; they collapse atop you as a wave upon the sandbar, dragging you under but blurring your vision so that no way is out, there is only in. These times you fight, because you know better, you have only just left the way you wish things were; still fresh are the memories of the other time, the better time. These times you feel the loss, you mourn it with every labored breath.

And when everything is a joke, a stupid pun; when simply breathing is a questionable activity, then you are left only with your principles. You no loner trust the sensations so long regarded as real, the suggestions of life that you clung to with the fervor of fools too distracted to notice the gently peeling tide dragging them into oblivion. What is real? Because your body has stopped to function, it’s dead weight is carried only by your mind’s insistence that it above all else is still real, still exists. So you collapse inward until the things that support you fail, and you become a small lump at the center of swirling fantasy. You are not left with anything but that one, small belief; life is better than not life. Truly, it is the only belief worth having. And from that springs an eternal and unfailing hope. Something greater, something better.

Does it need an explanation? True beliefs may never. Once established by reason and fact, it is no longer a belief. That I call my belief God comes more from ease of use than something classic and codifiable. Should any theology speak to my soul, it would be Anselm. A God, the God, would be that which nothing greater can be conceived. Nothing is greater than a hope for life. I make rambling twists and turns through Jesus and Zen, whending my way home to a merry tune. These are pretense and locution; I know nothing more than hope, and of that I know very little indeed. I don’t believe in Camus, exactly; to die or to live is not the question. Even being and non-being go far beyond the issue. What drives us is the answer; is life worth the cost? Is there something greater, something better to be had that will cancel all the horrors that lurk among our days, preying upon our years? Negating life is an active decision, a rational decision; contemplating death is for mystics, but believing is the passage of all living things.

This little, annoying belief grows in intensity over time. It proves itself over and over again without evidence, and in the face of so much despair. It whittles away the will so that you must acquiesce for the sake of composure. It would be rude not to. The longer you believe it, the stronger it gets so that it despises any questioning, it loathes any attempt to reason with it. An indefatigable tyrant that lords its terror upon you even in the midst of pain and suffering. While the depression seeks to soothe you, to calm you; hope attacks you, rips at your chest and claws at your gizzard, poking flames of life into your hollow skin. You must move, for it will never cease, it will never tire; it will continue forward until death or destruction.

Thus, I believe in life. I believe that something greater, something better will come for me if I persist. I believe that whatever the cost, at least for now, life is worth it. I know things will probably worsen, that sickness and destitution linger about the edges of anyone’s existence. I know that tomorrow will most likely bring more bills and no jobs. I understand that no one will ring at nine in the morning and declare their undying belief in my abilities, offering me a posh job on the spot. Still I believe, I hope.

That I find peace in moments of surrender to the currents of impulses and allow them to wash over me is perhaps a way of centering, a way of achieving Zen. That I flow with the world, allowing it to guide me as best I am able, feeling what it wills and not directing whenever possible, is perhaps a way of achieving Satori. And perhaps, because I bless others whenever the mood strikes me, and seek the way from what I know of Jesus as man, just maybe, that’s a way to heaven. But such a thing is more dangerous than helpful. The moment I am sure that it is beyond this life that is something greater, something better; I will no longer believe, I will no longer hope. I would know, and by knowing, end.

Non-resistance, total acceptance, blessing; it is all I know. Everything else is conjecture built upon wishful thinking. There is a hope, and I am not its master. Today, I believe that something greater, something better is coming tomorrow.

I came to the realization that there is nothing more freeing than ‘no’. It gives you the ability to pack it in, to reach for disillusionment and cut losses. Perhaps to appease your family, your friends, your better judgement. Or worse, you can see it as a statement about yourself; a resolution about your absolute value, a universal statement that for all time describes your worth. That is the power that we allow ‘no’ to have over us, and it is the absolute inauthentic decision to allow it to be at all.

The phenomenological truth is that in that moment you have absolute power. When someone says yes, they are giving you permission, they are in essence taking the power from you into themselves, and it is by their leave that you go forward. This is not inauthentic on principle, but it is not an authentic moment, rather the conclusion of a previous moment. ‘No’ however, is a moment of ultimate reality. It is an abrupt disruption of the normal flow of your life, and it is a truly existential moment. In that ‘no’ you are alone, you are denied access perhaps even existence. Whatever you do going forward will be an authentic choice, or an inauthentic acquiescence to an outside power, and the removal of your freedom.

First, the inauthentic reality of the moment. ‘No’ is not necessarily arrived at by a permissive request, but it is an assumption that one has been made, or should have been made on that point. It is inherently an overt attempt to deny your freedom and to remove your power. From a position of ‘no’ it assumed that a decision has been made for you. Inauthentic existence is one that accepts this presupposition and willingly accedes to its truth as ultimate reality. I will of course refer the matter to Sartre for defense on the point of no choice being a choice. Should you accept ‘no’ on the basis of it being a rejection, on the terms that the rejector has set, you are relieving yourself of responsibility; you are destroying your freedom. Such an inauthentic decision is freeing in relation to the anxiety that responsibility of decision has. It is soothing to pretend that the matter is resolved by the refusal of a power, that the responsibility is no longer yours. Yet, such a position denies your existence as a free individual, and denies your ultimate responsibility in bad faith.

The authentic decision in relation to ‘no’ is simple, pursue or retreat. Sun Tzu is very clear on the power of retreat as an art of war; that in doing so we do not accept defeat, we plan for ultimate victory. Retreat done in an authentic manner is a choice, and an empowerment based on your freedom. ‘No’ allows you the opportunity to evaluate the situation, and take in all factors that have bearing to the situation; giving ample time for pruning where unrelated concerns have grown in the fertile ground of doubt. In fact, there is no greater moment of existential reality than in the denial. There is no way to escape your responsibility to choose in this moment. It cannot be overcome by the force of prior choices, and it will not be solved by inevitable means. Any movement requires choice; responsibility demands it. It is also the situation in which courage is most drastically required to face down the denial of your existence, and the reality of the abyss that surrounds us.

Something denied is power gained. The power to truly make a decision where one may not have existed before. This is the fear and anxiety that we have of rejection in general. It will force us to choose, and we are anxious over the existential reality that we must face in that choice. It is better for us to avoid these moments of rejection; even to run from them in order that we might pursue a lie of existence. When faced, ‘no’ is a clearly defined opportunity to assert your freedom to be. There are only two choices, though variations of each choice may exist. In the face of ‘no’ you must bring yourself to resolution, draw up your courage and march solidly into choice. Willingly or unwillingly, you are given the opportunity to experience your existential reality in full.

Should you press forward, you will do so with no illusions about your resolve, and you will do so without doubt as to your courage. The opportunity to retreat has been given and forsaken in lieu of the advance. One who presses on in the face of ‘no’ does so at her own expense, and without any momentum or power gained from afar. It is a bestowal of power in the situation, absolute power. Tension and anxiety force you to evaluate your position, your character; your very existence. Meaning can only come from you. What you assign to it will be the truth, and no other can take that power from you. Courage to be in the situation must arise from within, and must be fueled by an unencumbered resolution of doubt. Evidence, either factual or affective, must be secure and confident in your mind. You must believe yourself capable of pressing forward, and this same belief will give you the courage to face the reality of non-existence staring you down. In this moment you are the author of your destiny; you are the maker of your existence.

Finally, the decision to retreat is not so much retreat as it is adherence to a different direction. It too requires courage, and because it is so closely guarded by inauthenticity, may require even more courage. Rage, revenge, rebellion; these feelings can encourage advance in an authentic manner. However, doubt, despair, decay; these feelings do not fuel authentic retreat, instead, the must be overcome if retreat is to be authentic. This is the power found in ‘no’. Every movement is power to choose. Understood, responsibility accepted; the moment of rejection is the peak moment for our existential existence.

I’ve had a moment of satori; a little one to be sure, but still satori. I need to collect my thoughts some more, and make them a little more clear to myself even, but I also wanted to put something out there while it’s still fresh. Sartre has about four pages on the view of psychology as it relates to the self, and he calls it the root of all excuses for ignoring the existential anguish. He even uses some of the same Zen language about ridding the idea of Self. God it was amazing. The same thing that I was searching for only twenty pages earlier just popped up.

Just a quick sketch then. To Zen I understand that the arising of the Self is a denial of our true nature which is free. Sartre speaks of how this Self is pushed into a translucent other within ourselves, and we give up our freedom to it, viewing it as an object, and treating it like it has inertia. Then it becomes us, this Self. So that we have this series of actions both past and future that are done for us because it is who we are, our Self, our personality. There it is right there, the Zen no mind, the passing of the Self into the nothingness from which we brought it. I can’t really go any further tonight, but I needed to announce my little piece of enlightenment. I feels like I should call for a celebration. I’m going to start a seperate page where I am going to develop a new understanding of psychology and consciousness from that perspective. It just might be my dissertation.

Cheers!

I’m reading through some essays by Sartre because my friend is having me read Man and Superman by Shaw. I always get really interested in background material every-time I start reading any book that includes the development of these kind of ideas. I suppose it might also be my way of putting off completing anything. While I am enjoying the play, I did find myself again in the debate between Zen and Existentialism. Reading Sartre again has been kind of enlightening though. In his first essay he is rebutting some arguments placed against him by Marxists among others. He looks to the example of morality as preceding existence, and the absence of this to cause what he terms anguish. The way of phrasing this is not too unfamiliar in the context of Zen, based on the idea of universal suffering.

It was more just a feeling that I got as reading through it, and I wanted to journal a little bit of that process to have a developmental log as I went. Existence precedes essence is a fundamental concept to Sartre. This is opposed to the a priori methods of earlier moral systems. (Tangential to this, I love that everything always seems to come down to the moral system, the very literal how should we act, what ought we to do.) Sartre laments the absence of God, the anguish that this causes because there is no good to look to. No esscence that is given, man is free, completely. It did get me to think about the main objection to God in this moral development, the lack of choice that God would represent.

I read through a good deal of the Oxford Handbook of Free Will, which was lent me by a friend, and of course is out of print. (I don’t particularly like used books in certain genres.) Universally thought; in order for an action to be free it must be unknown, even by some extra system being. If I know what you are going to do, the future is determined, and you are therefore not free to act of your own will, but by the predetermined course that I know of. (Bear with this for a moment, I will hopefully return to the original inquest shortly.) What always strikes me is the use of dogma as truth in religion, especially whenever refuting it. Shaw helped me to see that most clearly, in that Don Juan points clearly to the lack of evidence to support the truth that Ana supposes in her arguments. The concept of God foreordaining things is not truly stated to my knowledge, in that I can’t recall a specific reference to God stating that he knows the outcome of a particular persons actions. Job, the oldest source for biblical narrative, is actually fraught with quite the opposite. God and Satan discuss what Job is capable of doing, not what he will do. It seems clearer that God has faith in Job, then that he knows what Job will do. Essentially, I wonder at the very start of what we know to be contemporary “human nature,” which began with the apple.

It was the representation of the fruit of knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil. That phrase has always bothered me, as defiance of God - either in the form of commandment breaking or renunciation - is the definition of evil. If Adam and Eve did not know evil until they bit the apple, how was it that they could commit it, and even more, that they could be punished for doing so. Rather, it has been my suspicion that it was not simple knowledge that they gained, but that they gained the possibility of will, choice. In defying the ordinance against the fruit of that tree, they chose will over determination. (Which also allows me to better reconcile the concept of predetermination, or more accurately in my sense the problem of evil.) Thus, I do not hold to the idea that God knows the fate of man to the extent that he limits our will in the determination of it.

All of which is a side inquiry to the original topic I started with. The intersection of Existential anguish and Zen universal suffering. (I realize that the concept is perhaps better preserved in Tibetan Buddhism, but I identify most readily with Zen, including its lack of emphasis on metaphysics.) The anguish over freedom is not necessarily found in the absence of God, but in the absence of a determined existence by God. Thus I find that the discussion that Sartre makes is to absolve ourselves of the dogma posited by the church, and not disillusionment of the deity. (I realize that until now I have done a horrible job at gender inclusive language, and were this a formal paper such a wanton display of reckless male domination would be corrected. However, for the moment I am more lazy than correct.)Now for the intersection of the two concepts. In Zen the role of Karma is less applicable from my study of it. (And I will readily admit greater ignorance here than in my biblical studies, and council is more than welcomed.) In many koans I see rather that action produces satori, or at least the visible evidence of it. The other day I had trouble seeing the connection between the two concepts - existential authenticity and Zen - yet now find them nearly synonymous. For even should our actions have a metaphysical outcome, or even a metaphysical moral ought, it is only through action that the truth of them is realized. So where the Existentialist begs we act to show our authenticity rather than choosing to disregard our freedom in lieu of a verisimilitude, Zen would also urge us to act rather than contemplate the Buddha in inaction. I am perhaps heretically referring to killing the Buddha should you meet him.

I find for the moment that the greater crisis is the idea of heaven; more appropriately the idea of eternal reward for subjugation to an ought foreordained by the deity. In such a case it is most appropriate to question, as Sartre does, the veracity of our claim to this ought. In what way may we claim that it has truth beyond our own interpretation of it. Such a thing is nearly impossible to prove without a prior belief that such a thing is possible to prove. To she who refuses such an assumption, no amount of argument will provide agreement. Actions done in search of heaven are not authentic, and are not Zen (again in my current understanding.)

Giving up our choice to pursue what others have determined we ought to do is our choice not to choose. Do not seek the Buddha. An ought that is not determined by our own will is not authentic to our will. If I move in the direction that an ought tells me I should, then it must be done of my own will or it is meaningless. Sartre seems to be saying as much, that the action is the definition of the truth. That we make truth for ourselves in each action. Zen seems to also focus on this matter of action. How can one contemplate the way and yet lie in his heart.

For the moment, there is no real conclusion to this meditation. Merely the continuing development of this crisis I find myself in, between the mind and the spirit, both of which pursue their own paths, but a faith seems to well up within me that both are not separate, and that in them there is a truth to be found, and a convergence to be made.