less than ideal

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
-Carl Jung

 

The problem with idealism is that it seems to us like such a good and useful thing. We believe that to  hold “high ideals” equals that somehow we are being a better person and that the only alternative to being idealistic is to be passive or even nihilistic. We all feel that we can clearly see what is “wrong” with the world (and it usually turns out that what we think is “wrong” is that other people aren’t doing what we think they ought to be doing) and that it would be a simple thing to correct the wrong . . . if only things worked the way we feel they ought to. The problem quickly becomes obvious when we discover that everyone else has their own idealism and that it, shockingly, almost never seems to match our own at all.

I have a good many friends who are wonderful people, generous and kind and whose beliefs match my own and yet they are often shocked to find out that I can not join them in strongly speaking out for this or that cause. I fear that some of them take this the same way they take anyone who does not share their fervor, they may assume that I am passive, lazy, or ignorant. One of the common traits of idealism is the belief that if “they” only knew what “we” know then they could not help but to be outraged! And outrage seems to be the main product of idealism. I try to tell them that I do believe I am helping by first being as good of a person as I can be, but because I’m not shouting or engaging in some extreme rhetoric it looks like I’m just not concerned enough.

The plain fact is that an ideal is simply  a construct, a conceptual exercise in trying to force the world into a configuration that we find acceptable. On its own an ideal is a grand thing, in fact as long as we hold ourselves to our ideals we tend to create and do wonderful things, unfortunately the moment we project that ideal outward it turns from a motivator and noble goal into a poison. We are seldom satisfied to uphold our ideals personally, we wish to see them applied everywhere by everyone and so immediately suffering is the result. The idealistic vegetarian is angry that everyone isn’t a vegetarian, the idealistic conservative is angry that everyone isn’t conservative and they share the common ground of feeling uncomfortable in their own world as long as other folks exist who do not share their ideal.

We have only the best intentions, we genuinely feel that our way will lead to everyone being happier, and we truly think that the “other side” would agree if only they knew what we know. The common denominator in the former sentence is that all those things are feelings. Thoughts. Constructs of our minds, products of our conditioning, the electrical and chemical stew of our brains and we tend to believe that every secretion of that 4 pound lump of tissue is Reality. It isn’t. It might be our personal reality (small ‘r’) but the fact is that there is a true reality outside of our concepts and limited world view that is wholly independent of all the junk we feel makes our thoughts so very real. Real reality doesn’t care about our ideals and it doesn’t have a “side” to take.

Consider this, every nation believes it is the good guy. Not one government that has ever existed has thought of itself as the “evil” one. Even those groups which have participated in rape, murder, slavery, mass deception, tyranny, and pillage beyond our ability to even accept still thought of themselves as the ‘good guys”. The Nazis believed that they were saving their people by the disgusting slaughter of entire races of people who had done nothing to harm them, the French Revolutionaries thought they were protecting liberty and equality by executing tens of thousands who, they feared, didn’t agree with the new “freedom” of France. The confederacy asserted that it was protecting its heritage and way of life by keeping other human beings as slaves, while the Spanish missionaries thought they were saving the souls of poor unfortunate South Americans by torturing and murdering them by the hundreds. None of these people believed they were on the wrong side of history. They all had, in their own awful way, “high ideals”.

This then is the problem, as long as we can not see the reality, the truth, outside of our concepts, outside of our upbringing and conditioning, as long as we are all too fallibly human, then our ideals when applied to other people will end in some form of suffering. It feels good to be sure of our thoughts, its intoxicating to be sooooo right while “those people” are so clearly deluded and stupid. We define ourselves, we call ourselves a “tea-party-er” or an “anarchist” or a “Baptist” or a “buddhist” and then we take on all the acting that such a role entails. Eventually people get hurt when our role demands it, sometimes they get killed.

So what do we do? Am i suggesting that we sit back and just let bad things happen? Do we disavow all beliefs and ideals? Should we cynically ignore the outside world? To think so is simply a swing to the other extreme. There is not one choice or the other, this kind of dualistic thinking (your either for us or against us!) is just another false ideal. The solution, as it so often is, seems to be in the middle. The mushy, boring middle ground. The Middle path of applying our ideals wholly, firmly, and with great passion to ourselves. It requires that we first and foremost take that long difficult look into our own hearts and minds and to try to get a taste of the truth without all the filters we are carrying. It means that we examine our own beliefs all the way to the core. So, If I am a vegetarian because I believe that animals should be protected and treated kindly then am I also treating and protecting all the human animals I meet the same way? Am I as kind to the bus driver or to the cop, or my annoying uncle as I would like everyone to be to a cow or sheep or pet? If not then I am not living up to my ideal as a vegetarian for animal rights.

And on the other hand if I am a conservative christian am I living to the ideal of Jesus? Do I believe that all gods creatures deserve love and peace even those who are gay or choose to have an abortion? If I am a true conservative Christian then shouldn’t I apply that same restraint  I would like to see in others to myself? If I have hate for those who are different from me then I’m not really living up to my ideal as a conservative christian.

It is much harder to really and truly apply our ideals to ourselves, it is terribly, dangerously, easy to see how everyone else “ought” to be acting and yet we can seldom ever actually do it ourselves. The funny thing is that when we really and truly take that honest look at the world as it is, when we apply the best wishes we have for others to ourselves first, a strange thing happens. All those big problems, all those things outside that make us so uncomfortable in the world begin to take care of themselves. As if by magic the act of cleaning up our own messy backyards leads to everyone else doing the same. The final irony of an ideal is that we can’t force anyone to accept ours, and yet when we truly embody a noble ideal then  people are attracted to it without us having to hit them over the head with it.

It’s not as fun as reinforcing our sense of self and separateness, but if we honestly want our ideal to become a reality is has to start with each of us questioning the very thing we believe in so strongly.

Buddhism is not a faith, thank God!

In his expansive study of Mythology (which he wryly described as “other peoples religion”) author Joseph Campbell made an interesting observation. Namely that all past religions were in accord with the science of their day. The rules that governed the world of ancient peoples were not in conflict with the faith that these people practiced. To an ancient Egyptian the story of Horus in no way conflicted with the Egyptians ideas of how the Earth was formed, why certain events occurred throughout it and how the miraculous was made understandable. To an ancient Mayan the world really did require human sacrifice and the ritual games that were an integral part of their culture had cosmic significance. These people didn’t have to believe in their religion, they lived it! it was all around them, and it explained their world, their place in it, and their role in the society in which they existed. It would have been completely useless to try to make a Hellenic Greek believe the religion of the Zulus, it wouldn’t have agreed with the Greeks knowledge, his scientific understanding of his world.

Campbell went on to say that if your Myth, your religion, doesn’t agree with the science of your world, then it just isn’t working for you. You can not reconcile the story of a 4000 year old culture with that of ours today, and to try does a terrible disservice to both. No matter how fervently you believe, some part of us knows that the world took longer than 6 days to build or that a woman could not really be formed by a rib taken from a man, we may want to believe, but believing is not the same as knowing. If you want to see what happens to a world full of people know one thing scientifically and are told to believe another thing on faith just take a look at the world of religious violence we have today. It is the schism that comes when ones own mind is at war with itself, it is turned outward, toward everyone who wont help us to fool ourselves that what we really know isn’t what we really know, but at heart the problem is that Belief cannot overtake Knowledge. Faith is another world for believing the unbelievable.

Zen Buddhism is uniquely able to address the concerns that Joseph Campbell explains, and Western Zen Buddhism even more so. For me the first experience of this was when I realized that I didn’t have to reject any of the science that explains my world today at all to be a Buddhist. How pleasantly shocked I was the first time I read of a zen teacher telling a student that all the weird ghost stories ans supernatural stuff in the old zen stories was “just stories to prove a point” and not to be taken as facts. There has never been a point in my years of practice where I had to push away the facts before my eyes in order to swallow a “belief”.  We live in a world where seeing is believing, if you feel that this is a sad state of affairs or a great one is no matter, that’s simply the way it is now. We are given the choice to embrace the real world as it is now or to try to shoehorn ancient non-factual myths onto our lives today. We can see what happens with the latter, it isn’t pretty and it isn’t necessary.

At the same time there is in the Buddhist community a popular idea that as Buddhism has traveled “west”, that is to traditionally non-Buddhist countries, that it is in danger of losing its essential nature. In most of the Buddhist “press” there is repeated the idea that we western practitioners in dispensing with the rituals and accessories of traditional forms of Buddhism that we are turning it into a “self-help” exercise. Obviously though, there is the problem of “mistaking the cup for the tea in it”, that is, of falling in love with the chanting, incense, robes, and ritual and forgetting the essential core of real Buddhism. Most of the comments about western Buddhists failings are said and published by people with a vested (if subconscious) interest in preserving the older form of Buddhism, if you own a magazine that is full of ads for companies that sell statues and expensive retreats and some punk western Zen guy comes along and says “you don’t need any of that stuff” then as a seller or supporter of “that stuff” you get a little nervous. Understandable.  Fortunately Buddhism is a big (and rather tolerant) umbrella, there are, they say, 84,000 doors into the Dharma. Put another way, in Buddhism there is no one true way, only the way that is true for one (you).

In this sense western Buddhism should become a “self-help” exercise. Frankly that type of thing makes a lot more sense to the western world than reincarnated Lamas and transcendental floating do. The wonderful thing is that the essential character, the method that brings one into accord with the world carried on even as Buddhism traveled from one culture to the next.It is no mere coincidence that as Buddhism traveled away from India toward Japan that more and more it began to be pared down of its ritual elements til it was a solid core of stripped bare of all distraction. It was making that journey in time as well as distance and each culture was in the process itself of divesting the primitive science of their day for what they had newly come to realize. Today zen Buddhism is able to give me the spiritual contact with the world without asking me to ignore the facts in front of me. The fact that it has been able to do so throughout history (a history with remarkably less war and death than any other ‘religion’) while constantly being able to agree with the “science of our day” for over 3 millennia should give those concerned with whether western Buddhist are “doing it wrong” reason to relax and enjoy ever-changing and yet always essential nature of Buddhism.