"Buddhist" is the popular self-identifier one often comes across
when encountering relativizing post-hippie pacifists who get by
with "live-and-let-live" so long as no actual aggression confronts them.
Buddhism however, is not relativistic in the least;
it certainly addresses relativity and all that is relative.
But it gives objective analysis and points toward truth.
Dharma could never have taught Right Action by relativizing.
The Compassion and Generosity of a Bodhisatva aren't atheistic,
they are void of ego, which by its very nature is loaded with relativity.
Karma is not even relative, and can be depended on to teach
responsibility to those who use the term to excuse their own passivity.
Keeping a faked "peace-of-mind" by philosophizing on others' suffering
because it's not viewed as one's own suffering, and therefore "their karma,"
is a refined form of sloth at best, and narcissistically arrogant to say the least.
To apply oneself as a Buddhist really, to relate to the Teaching, is work.
The path of a monk is not to escape this world, but to apply oneself
in perhaps less visible dimensions, to develop on the meta-level
all of one's spiritual potential, for karma is action, not inaction.
Right Action requires involvement without being sucked in.
This means meditation, contemplation, reflection, discipline, study;
it clearly doesn't mean hanging loose and being "non-judgemental".
Discrimination cuts through the relatives - there is light, there are hues;
they are each beautiful in characteristic, unique: red is not blue, yellow not indigo.
Even white is not quite clear; the Clear Light of Dharma is absent of relatives.
All descriptions notwithstanding, its true nature is basic sanity.
To really shed light on the matter, the personality moved to accept the Path
is already motivated by that Clear Light; all other considerations are relative.
A dizzying scream builds in me, nauseous with empathy
I focus and take refuge in the Great Compassion.
I offer all this, disciplined and compressed into that flame
steadily flickering from the oil candle before me:
never extinguished, bearing witness, burning karma.
All other flames here come and go, this one alone remains
all hours and all days. Into it goes all devotion and all prayers, hymns, mantras.
The sickness in my gut gives way to an iron strength.
The whole world is held between my thumb and index finger tips,
like the string end to a balloon. And all the Great Ones
are centered in my heart, as I breathe, as I breathe.
That flame is centered in my gut, containing sacred syllables,
it goes where I go. Practice never ceases, love's duty is Dharma.
Flame is in time and out of time,
the wheel turns, and the wheels:
My age unites with the Ages, timeless - the unbearable is bearable.
Nothing is in my hands, and everything.
How often do I hear demanded
with the same easy umbrage and scorn –
sometimes quite poignant, often quite banal –
always easy, because to drop anchor in deep waters
and to wait it out requires work – and character:
how often have I heard demanded,
"Where was God?" or "What kind of 'God' would allow...?"
The real despair is entirely understandable,
the righteous indignation behind it makes a lousy argument
for self-styled atheists and agnostics or followers of
a materialistic gospel leading ultimately nowhere.
The Question begs an answer, for it assumes an intellect,
yet is intellectually weak and wanting a breath of life –
I will try to give it that, a goose in the ass, a jump start.
Putting aside any chat of "predestination" or joining the chorus
of misusers of the term karma, consider for one moment:
if I get in my car right now and someone else climbs in one,
and each of us has a preconstructed plan for the day
based on habits and wants and needs and routine – clueless,
neither of us plans in an accident, but we arrive
at the same intersection and it happens.
Someone wasn't paying attention. God always does.
(But we shell out dough for "navigators,"
and we ask, What kind of God would allow this!)
A child is murdered, a pet is run over, an elderly woman
is mugged, a homeless man is beaten half-dead, a girl is raped.
There are so many persons all at once, whose person-selves
are each planning an agenda without knowing everything,
mostly without a clue because you cannot know everything –
people crash, slip on the ice, commit suicide, shoot their mates.
Where is God? On the breath, but we aren't.
There are mass atrocities, all ideological, committed with religious fervor,
the latter unspeakably committed in the ever-abused name of that "God"
of whom we are now demanding, How can He! How dare He!
The natural world is being laid waste, greed and crass consumerism rule,
construction and de-construction and destruction – millions of egos
carrying out their grand or petty agenda simultaneously over lifetimes.
With such odds, something's bound to occur.
Ah, "God" – that laughing, scorning Psychopath with a sadistic sense of humor,
infantile and pathologically narcissistic, surely a Deity with issues.
There is one very unpopular and uncomfortable reason
for all this: we are free to choose, we are not machines.
It is a characteristic of that same God, that we are born
with this very freedom, that we came here of our own free will,
to be and to become human, to dis-cover Him as our own true nature.
It does not mean we are born conscious, nor that it will make us so.
But we are free to wake up at one time or another, and when we do,
we may also choose to stay awake and live in an awakened state.
This requires of us the most intelligent responsibility.
So where is God now, and what is it that He appears to allow?
He didn't give us ISIS, ISIS gave us ISIS. We gave ourselves
all the shit we see before us, from the most intimately personal
to the most regional or global – everything which causes some to
ask ceaselessly: WTF was God thinking! In short:
"God" will not solve your problems, remembering Him might –
that would be to mindfully and with devotion stay in the breath –
But God will not "solve" your problem.
We are given the freedom to responsibly pay attention.
And there is being with each other and for each other.
And staying really close, and really loving.
A poor woman came to Buddha,
wept over her dead son,
begged Buddha to bring the boy
back to life.
Buddha said, fine, okay, I'll do it.
First bring me a mustard seed from a
household which had never
lost a member and mourned.
She went out, she sought all over, she returned empty handed.
And she got it, and she took the Path of Dharma.
And she began to pay attention.
"For a few pennies ye buy yourselves a sparrow,
but I tell you: not a sparrow falleth, but the Father knoweth."
Not a sparrow falleth.
