I have heard various versions of “Let God and Let God.”  from the time I was very young.  “Trust in God” I often heard.  “One will get what one needs- not necessarily what one wants.” “It is God’s will.”   The implied truth was always that the only way that one can find peace is to let go of one’s own wishes or will and trust that this mysterious God knows what she/she/it is doing.  Somehow this God, whom we are expected to obey, is in charge and, yet, we have the option of sinning/exercising free will.   Intermixed with these truth, in the Christian tradition was the riddle of somehow one must die in order to live.  I grew in the Christian church with lots of paintings and sculptures of this Jesus fellow nailed to the cross; the same Jesus who would emerge alive from the tomb. 
 
One was advised to study the Bible daily while trusting that God would give  one what one needed but apparently only if one quit sinning and when one did sin, ask for forgiveness.   In the tradition in which I grew up there was no limit to the number of behaviors which were likely to make God angry.  It seems as if one must daily die as this sinful person and momentarily – if that long – accept God’s grace.   I was well aware that I failed miserably and was destined to be cast into the everlasting fire of Hell for all of eternity. It was a frightening thought.   Although frightened, I seem both unwilling and/or constitutionally unable to refrain from sinful thoughts which contained the earnest desire for sinful behavior. The desire for the later always outweighed my fear or so it seemed.
 
Much later in life, I would be introduced to many philosophers and theologians who posited many ways to view this human existence and the purpose thereof.   It was at this period of my life that I began to truly understand the concept of death and resurrection. I began the slow and seemingly non-ending practice of accepting that I knew/know nothing. This body of so called knowledge had to be “killed off’/put aside/let go of.  There was no end to the “truths” which I had unwittingly accepted. Some of them were very personal truths about myself and others were more generalized truths about this life journey. This “truths” included:
 
·      Jesus is going to be really pissed if you do not acknowledge He saved you by dying.
·      At the very least one will be developed huge warts with will tell the world that one is a masturbator and ultimately those very same warts will prevent you from entering Heaven. It will take eternity to burn them off!  Oh my!
·      There is absolute knowledge
·      One will get rewarded in the next life for one’s good needs.
·      Good people lived on the right side of the tracks.
·      God loved all people but only if they stayed on their side of the tracks.
·      Killing in the name of God and Country was a good thing.
·      Killing if not sanctioned by the larger community was sinful.
·      If we are good and study we will have a good job, financial security and live on the right side of the tracks.
·      God made man and woman so that he could put his thing into her thing to make babies but it was not for enjoyment.
·      All good people lived in little house  with white pickett fences and kept a neat lawn.
·      One should be proud of and loyal to one’s country no matter how they behaved.
·      White Christians were good people although there was the occasional person of color such as my Aunt Pleasie (Cherokee Indian) who was an exception.
·      The United States was America – this one still confuses me.
·      Our way of government should be adopted by the rest of the world.
·      We should share our food and other riches with deserving people but make sure we are not communists or socialists.
·      Children should be eternally grateful for their parents even if parents were angry most of the time and very mean.
·      We should show our concern to the starving children of China by eating food on our plate that we hated.
·      If someone heard you crying when a parent was beating you it was your fault for embarrassing them.
 
One gets the idea.  The point  is, of course that we present information to our children as if we have absolute truths to impart.  Death and resurrection is a theological concept  but has not relevance for how one lives one’s life.   Then one gets introduced to philosophers and poets such as Rumi. 
 
 
 
TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2013
[Sunlight] How shall we seek real knowledge?
 
~
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
How shall we seek real knowledge?
By renouncing knowledge.
 
How shall we seek salvation?
By renouncing our own salvation.
 
How shall we seek Existence?
By renouncing our existence.
 
-- Muriel Maufroy
"Breathing Truth - Quotations from Jalaluddin Rumi"
Sanyar Press - London, 1997
 
One may also be exposed to  the Socratic method.  If lucky one also meets folks such as Aberjhani
 
“A bridge of silver wings stretches from the dead ashes of an unforgiving nightmare
to the jeweled vision of a life started anew.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
 
Along comes Walt Whitman. What to make of the following which is attributed to him:
 
“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman
 
One might even be exposed to the clearly irrelevant “wisdom” of Mark Twain in such sacrilegious works as Letters from the Earth. To wit:
 
“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.
 
Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings
 
I am again reminded of the quote from Rumi with which I started these musings:
 
How shall we seek real knowledge?
By renouncing knowledge.
 
How shall we seek salvation?
By renouncing our own salvation.
 
How shall we seek Existence?
By renouncing our existence.
 
The “truth” seems to be that I will to learn by accepting the contradiction of what Rumi and others continue to teach me.    Indeed it is by letting go and letting God that I have any measure of control.  It is only not attaching myself to living  that I can live.  It is only by being intentional about my breath that I can let go of any thoughts. It is only by  letting go of thoughts that I have the possibility of thought rather than memory.  For it is memory of what I have previously been taught that I want to let go of if I am to learn.
 
The student says I “I am going to try x.”  The teacher reminds the student, ”We cannot accomplish by trying but only by doing. If you try to pick up this dish you are not picking it up.  It is, thus, by the absence of  seeking salvation that we are saved. It is only by being open to death that we live. It is only by letting of love that we love.”  These are the paradoxes  which we can examine, meditate about, discuss, write endless about, just smile about or jut accept.
 
We laugh at the idea of the truth. We embrace those who we see as unworthy of embracing. We love the unlovable.  
 
We embrace the cup of coffee. We breathe.   We smile. We  accept that we are not which allow us to be.
 
Written  October 19, 2015
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Every day I get the “word of the day” delivered from several sources.    One of the words which arrived in my inbox today was flummox which I was reminded basically means to bewilder, confound, or confuse.   Apparently at some point I als signed up to get a daily quote from various sources which are then magically delivered to my inbox. Today, one of the quotes I found in my inbox is one I immediately recognized.  “To know yet to think that one does not know is best;  Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.” This quote is attributed to Lao Tzu.  

Since I  had just finished reading the paper when this word and this quote appeared in my inbox, I was already feeling flummoxed about how often we humans seem to pretend as if we know when we do not know.  Obviously we “know” that we do not know and yet we seem to convince ourselves that we know.  I ask myself asking:  Whatever does this mean?  Who is the subject and who is the object?  Who is the I who is asking myself?  What could the word ‘know’ mean?   In what sense do we know or think we know?  Dear me. I have just violated a cardinal rule by using the word to ask the question about a word.  No wonder I get to easily flummoxed.

The word ‘know’ according to oxforddictionary.com means:

1.    Have knowledge or information concerning….

2.    Be absolutely certain or sure about something. 

3.    Have developed a relationship with someone through meeting and spending time with them. (In the Old Testament to have known someone is to have had a sexual relationship. Thus, we sometimes might say I do not know him or her in the Biblical sense.)

Of course, thinking about the word ‘know’ leads me to the term ‘truth’ which is often used to indicate an absolute truth rather than a truth/fact as it is experienced or understood by the person asserting or uttering it.   If then I am going to posit “truth” I must also posit the concept of “lies.”    Most of us begin to collect truths and lies about ourselves and the world in which we find ourselves from the time that we have our first conscious thought (in the womb perhaps but certainly once we emerge. Is that indeed a “truth).

The problem is not that we or others posit truths.  The problem is that we humans delude ourselves into thinking that our truth is the truth or that our lies are the lies.  I listener, the reader, or the “sensor” do not want to accept that there may not be any absolute truths or lies. Certainly, it is fine that I am assuming that I am awake and that I am typing on a Macbook while sitting in Panera’s. Those are  realities which I can safely assume that I share with those who are sharing this space.   Yes, when I pick up the newspaper or turn on the television or sit down to share truths or lies with someone or some group of people  I convince myself (we are back there) that it is very important that we not only share the same general reality but that I tell “the truth”  and  that others accept “the truth” as I have expressed it.   As I read the newspaper, I am speaking to myself and discounting the “lies” which others present as “truths.”  The writer or the person being quoted is asserting truths which I find different than my version or what I think I know or what I think I need to believe because any other truth is unacceptable or unbearable to me. 

By the time I finished reading the newspaper or listening to a newscast or reading an article, I am  flummoxed  as to how  they can fail to see my truth which I think of as ‘the truth’.

What ever shall I do? I turn to Walt Whitman and his poem “All is Truth.”

All Is Truth - Poem by Walt Whitman

O ME, man of slack faith so long!

Standing aloof--denying portions so long;

Only aware to-day of compact, all-diffused truth;

Discovering to-day there is no lie, or form of lie, and can be none,

but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon

itself,

Or as any law of the earth, or any natural production of the earth

does.

(This is curious, and may not be realized immediately--But it must be

realized;

I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,

And that the universe does.)

Where has fail'd a perfect return, indifferent of lies or the truth?

Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?

or in the meat and blood?

Meditating among liars, and retreating sternly into myself, I see

that there are really no liars or lies after all,

And that nothing fails its perfect return--And that what are called

lies are perfect returns,

And that each thing exactly represents itself, and what has preceded

it,

And that the truth includes all, and is compact, just as much as

space is compact,

And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth--but

that all is truth without exception;

And henceforth I will go celebrate anything I see or am,

And sing and laugh, and deny nothing.

I smile.  I am no longer flummoxed.  I know only my truths and my lies.   There are few universal truths or  lies and I no longer have to engage in inane arguments with my partner, colleagues, or others

The world will go on. Or not.  We humans will beat our swords into plowshares. Or not. We will celebrate the wonder of creation in dance, music, and art.  Or not. We will build more bombs and drop them on hospitals. Or not. We will pretend to defy mother nature until the 24 inches of rain arrives and reminds us of her truth.  We will pass laws, budgets.  Or not.   I will speak to myself. Or not! 

I will recall the reminder from Lao Tzu.  Or not.

“To know yet to think that one does not know is best;  Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.”

Written October 6, 2015