Church of the Churchless

Pope says hellfire is real and eternal

Well, looks like it's going to be an interesting afterlife. If you believe the Pope—and why wouldn't you, since he's infallible—the fires of hell are real and eternal.

This news comes on the heels (oops, I typed "hells" first time around; guess the Devil made me do it) of my condemning myself to hell for a free DVD. And providing video proof which, unexpectedly, has been viewed by 755 people in less than three months (only a few of whom were me).

Despite being a devoutly unfaithful lapsed Catholic, I figured that it was safe to take the blasphemy challenge. After all, Pope John Paul II had rejected the reality of a literal hell.

Pope Benedict XVI has overturned the Paulian good news that hell is just the condition of separation from God. Since I'm also separated from the Tooth Fairy, Bigfoot, and the Easter Bunny, none of which I believe in either, I can handle Pope John Paul's form of damnation.

Pope Benedict's vision of hell is a lot hotter. And longer, since it's eternal.

Hopefully my Catholic baptism and first communion will stand me in good stead after I die. Limbo wouldn't be so bad, though the last time I checked Benedict wasn't big on limbo as a hellfire alternative.

On Fox News I saw an ex-ambassador to the Vatican interviewed about the Pope's "hell is real" announcement. This foursquare Catholic was asked if non-Christians are going to hell, even if they're otherwise good people.

He prevaricated a bit, but ending up saying that he's pleased the Pope is telling it like it is now (in comparison to John Paul's feel-good Catholicism, I assume). In other words, nonbelievers in Jesus are screwed.

Benedict won't be Pope forever, though. So if pagans like me are able to outlive him, we've got a good chance of seeing the "is hell real?" question take another turn around the wheel of Catholic dogma. The infallibility of the Papacy is strangely mutable.

It reminds me of another supposedly infallible line of religious leaders, the gurus of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. They're considered to be God in human form, seemingly a step up the divinity ladder from the Pope.

Charan Singh, who served as guru until his death in 1990, said that it was okay for vegetarian disciples to eat cheese even though it contained rennet—which usually is derived from animals. However, Gurinder Singh, his successor, put out the word that rennet should be shunned if you want to keep your karmic load light.

That led to a flurry of quasi-panicked research into rennetless cheeses among the faithful. Of whom I was one, back then. We'd spend many anxious moments reading the small print on cheese packages, not to mention driving pizza parlors crazy with cheesy questions they'd likely never encountered before.

It's interesting how the God-given truth can change so quickly. Sort of makes you wonder whether we're speaking of truthiness here, rather than the really real variety.

I'm betting that hell isn't real. And that a bit of rennet won't doom me to transmigration into a lower form of life, such as a neo-conservative.

If I find myself worrying about whether my bets will pay off, I've found that doubling down is a good strategy. I break another Radha Soami Satsang Beas vow and sip a glass of organic red wine.

With some cheese. Usually rennetless, I have to admit. Karma or no karma, I prefer not to eat the stomach of calves. Ick! That's hellish!

Unbelievers should want the Bible taught in public school

Seeing the headline on this week's TIME cover, "Why We Should Teach the Bible in Public School," I was prepared to become outraged. But after reading the article, and giving more thought to the subject, this unbeliever is all for more Biblical instruction.

Naturally it shouldn't be with an evangelical slant. The article's author, David Van Biema, says that the Bible should be treated as the bedrock of Western culture, not the holy word of God.

Other religious texts also should get wider exposure in schools. A few weeks ago I pulled up to a drive-in Dutch Brothers for a latte fix before speaking to a comparative religion class.

The guy on duty asked me how my day was going. I said, "Well, I need to stay awake for a talk on Taoism that I'm about to give." He responded with a "Taoism? What's that?" I offered up a 30-second summary after getting over my amazement that someone his age wouldn't know anything about one of the world's preeminent quasi-religious systems.

However, even more amazing is the fact that we live in the land of Biblical idiots. The United States is the most Christian-crazy nation on earth. Yet Americans know next to nothing about the Bible, as Stephen Prothero tells us in his book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—But Doesn't

Blogger Wonkette shares some of Prothero's delicious ignoramus tidbits:

75% of adults believe the famed Benjamin Franklin saying "God helps those who help themselves" is one of the Ten Commandments.

50% of high school seniors believe Sodom and Gomorrah were married.

Only one in three Americans can name the four Gospels, while less than half can even name one of them.

As Van Biema notes in his piece, those Christians who support the death penalty with "an eye for eye, tooth for tooth" mentality either don't know about "turn the other cheek" or conveniently choose to ignore it.

There are many other examples in the Bible of contradictory or ridiculous teachings that demand active consideration by free-thinking individuals, not passive acceptance.

Bart Ehrman is a scholar who changed from a devout evangelical into an agnostic after learning so much about the history of the Bible, he realized that the words in it can't be trusted. Ehrman's book, Misquoting Jesus, definitely should be part of any public school curriculum.

I'm certainly no Bible scholar, but I know more about Christianity than most Christians. That's one reason I'm not a believer.

I know how little evidence there is that Jesus even existed. I know that the Gospels were written long after Jesus' purported death and resurrection, and have been heavily edited—both intentionally and unintentionally—ever since. I know that the books of today's Bible were selectively chosen from among a much larger collection of early Christian writings, some of which (like the Gospel of Judas) cast heresy in a new light.

So when it comes to teaching the Bible in public schools, I say "bring it on." Critically. Comprehensively. Creatively.

Personally, I don't find the Bible to be interesting or compelling reading. But I can take it in small pieces. In fact, now and then I even come across scriptural passages that, for one reason or another, seem eminently worshipful.

My blogistic compendium magisterium

[Update: The compendium has been moved here. The Google Page Creator site isn't up any more.]

By the authority vested in me, which pretty much reduces down to keeping my annual TypePad blogging fee paid up, I hereby announce the release of a Church of the Churchless compendium magisterium.

I rarely put text in color, but if there's any occasion that demands it, this would be it. For a magisterium relates to the teachings of the Church; it sounds profoundly Latinish; and this blog surely is a church, because it's got the word twice in its name.

My compendium can be found here. It's a Google Page Creator creation. I fashioned it because blog entries, by their very nature, soon fade out of notice (and mind) as new entries push them off the front page and into the archives.

I wanted to list all of my blog posts in one place, partly for my own use. Often I remember writing about some subject and have to use Google to find what I said. Having the post titles all lined up by category on a single page gives me, and others, an alternative way of locating my blogistic rantings.

It wasn't always easy to put a post in a particular category. Some would say that every single one should go under "humor," and I'd find it difficult to argue against that. Nonetheless, I categorized them variously as best I could.

I've been working on the web page for quite a while as time permitted. Making my way through the Church of the Churchless archives, opening each post so I could copy the URL into a link, I was mainly struck by two things.

(1) I've written a lot of stuff. (2) I'm really fortunate to have so many thoughtful people willing to comment on that stuff.

So, thank you. I enjoy writing for the sake of writing. But knowing that someone is reading the writing, and interested enough to say something about what I've said, raises the joy level considerably.

And not only for me. For those who read the posts also. Because often the comments are the best part of a post. I read every one. Often they lead me in a different direction: philosophically, intellectually, emotionally, literarily.

Fairly frequently I noticed that a post had been stimulated by people's comments to a previous post, which spurred additional comments, and so we went.

After looking at all that I've written over the past two and a half years, the thought "Is there anything more to say?" came to mind. My answer: Probably there is.

The end of saying is the end of life. I'm not saying that we have to put everything into words, because a lot of life is unsayable.

However, there's a joy in speaking. To our own self. To others. To the cosmos.

Speakers and listeners go hand in hand. Thanks for holding mine.

Deepening the mystery of existence

Pondering "Why is there something rather than nothing?" will blow your mind. This is the most common way the mystery of existence is framed, as noted in my "Existence exists. Amazing!"

But, hey, why stop there? If we're going to have our minds blown, might as well blow up what's doing the blowing up also. Bigger the explosion, the better.

This morning I plucked Milton K. Munitz' The Mystery of Existence from my bookshelf. This is a deeply philosophical book that isn't the easiest of reading. I'd read most of it before flaming out from intellectual overload on the final chapters.

Today, though, I managed to grasp Munitz' basic point that had eluded me before. Asking "why?" presumes there's an answer. You've already framed the problem by your very questioning.

Actually, he says, this is what we should be asking:

Is there a reason-for-the-existence-of-the-world?

Oh man! Before, I was standing on the abyss of our ignorance about why there is something rather than nothing. The void was unsettling enough, having no discernible boundaries. However, I had the sense that somewhere in that blob of mystery there was an answer.

Humans might never know it. It might remain hidden in the abyss forever. Yet the notion that a "why" concerning the mystery of existence itself existed—this was a lodestone offering at least some vague directionality to the search for ultimate reality.

The truth about existence was out there. Probably way out there, impossibly far removed from the ability of a Homo sapiens consciousness to know it. Still, "out there" points somewhere, even if it's impossible to ever get there.

Munitz super-sized the mystery for me. There's no reason to assume the existence of a "there" where a why resides. The problem is considerably deeper that just not knowing why there is something rather than nothing. We don't even know whether there's an answer to the question.

The void just became much voider, the mystery a lot more mysterious.

I realized that as non-religious as I am, I'd still been clinging to a traditional metaphysical assumption: there's a reason why existence exists.

That reason is said to be known only to God. Or Tao, Buddha-nature, Allah, the Great Spirit. Or to the future, when science will reveal all. Or to an alien civilization far more advanced to ours. Or even to no one, the reason being part and parcel of existence itself.

Regardless, the reason existed. And not just in a subjective mind, but objectively. Munitz says:

Of the broad possibilities canvassed earlier, according to which a reason-for-the-existence-of-the-world could be either an "assigned" reason or an "objective" reason, it would only be the latter, in the last analysis, that would count. We should want to know, quite apart from any conceptual scheme, where there is, or is not, a reason-for-the-existence-of-the-world.

Trouble is, we can't. Munitz spends quite a few pages laying out his arguments for why this is the case. At the end of his "Philosophical Agnosticism" chapter he sums up the not-knowable situation, saying that we don't even know where to begin to answer the question of whether there's a reason for the world's existence.

With other human beings, it's different. We can figure out reasons for what they did or made.

We establish that they had such reasons, and what they were, by getting evidence of the relevant kind (but not by resorting to a theory, myth, or metaphysical construction). In the simple, straightforward case, this consists in asking the person in question, or in examining some document, or other reliable source, for the required information.

The relevant evidence is obtained through some channel of sensory experience and by interrogation. These resources, however, are completely lacking in trying to establish that there is a reason-for-the-existence-of-the-world. Where, then, shall we turn?

We are completely lacking in clues. The prospects of getting knowledge from some form of "direct" inspection (without having to resort to faith, postulation, or the analogizing speculations of some metaphysical conceptual system) are simply unavailable.

Hence this avenue of establishing knowledge of the existence or absence of a reason-for-the-existence-of-the-world is not open to us. We must admit our total ignorance.

Fine with me. But not for the world's religions, spiritual paths, philosophical systems, and other claimants of ultimate knowledge. Their stock in trade is answers—or at least the promise of an answer to the mystery of existence.

The answer, though, isn't blowing in the wind. For if there's wind, or blowing, it's coming from the question side of existence, not the side where an answer may or may not be. Munitz implies that anything of this world—thoughts, perceptions, emotions, conceptions—"would provoke the very question we are trying to answer."

And not only this world. Munitz shuns mysticism in his book, but to my mind other-worldly perceptions also would be question-provoking rather than answer-providing when it comes to the ultimate mystery of existence.

I could be sitting at the right hand of God, immersed in the glories of divine light and sound, being taught how the Almighty creates creation, and I'd still have questions: "God, who created you?" "God, how do I know this isn't an illusion?"

I could hear a booming, "I am the Lord, thy God, eternal, uncreated." That voice still would be part of existence. I'd still be clueless about whether there is a why? for the existence of the world, taking the "world" now to include spiritual as well as physical reality.

Or "God" could laugh and say, "Fooled you. You're right, everything I've shown you is an illusion—the Matrix, a computer simulation. It looks just like a real universe, doesn't it? I'll show you how the programming works."

Now I'm zapped into another dimension where I see God, and me, and universes being formed out of cyberspace and cyberenergy. But I still have no way of knowing whether there is a why? to that.

I don't know whether I've reached really real reality, or even if there is such a thing, because I'm still stuck in existence. It's impossible to get outside of existence and learn about it objectively. Like everybody else, I'm always on the inside, looking in, even if I were able to reach a spiritual realm.

Munitz speaks of religious experiences:

To say that these experiences are genuinely revelatory of an independently existing, transcendent Being, and are not merely expressions of deeply felt human yearnings, or the projections of human imagination and its myth-making propensities, is precisely what needs to be established.

One cannot appeal to the experiences themselves to establish this; they are not self-authenticating…What supporting, public tests, or independent criteria of corroboration are there, by which to separate the spurious claims of the visionary from the possibly authentic?

None. Yet it could be argued that the mystic doesn't demand any proof of what is being directly experienced. Fine. I'll agree with that. Experience is its own corroboration for the experience.

The fact remains: it isn't possible to experience anything other than existence. No one can step outside of existence and ask it "Why?" The question always reverberates inside the mystery. We don't even know whether an answer exists, much less what it might be, if it does.

Meditating this morning after reading Munitz' final chapters, I felt strangely peaceful. Looking into the darkness of my clueless consciousness, for a moment I was relieved of the "What's it all about?" that has gnawed at me for most of my life.

Some questions are unanswerable. Some questions are so questionable, we can't be sure they are valid questions. Such is the mystery of existence.

Floating free in perpetual ignorance—that struck me as not so bad. Maybe better than being lashed to a time-bound pseudo-truth. And there's always the bit of hope that Munitz left me with, near the end of his final chapter.

In saying that the mystery of existence is unanswerable, I mean "unanswerable relative to the already known methods of achieving knowledge of reasons." If "reason" is understood in its ordinary uses—as "purpose," "scientific explanation," or "evidence"—then it makes no sense to say there is a reason for the existence of the world.

…I should not wish to dogmatize about the possibility that some other "rational method," not hitherto known by man, might be developed in the future course of human evolution, or perhaps is already possessed by some special type of "mind" wholly unknown to us.

But we, now, have no knowledge of such a method: nor do we have any rational method within our present resources by which we could undertake to establish the existence or character of this "method."

Well, I guess the method, if it exists, will have to come to us—not us to it.

I'm here. Surprise me.

(If this post leaves you hungry for still more confusion, "Something's happening here: Existence" contains the thoughts of Will, a fellow admirer of existential mystery.)

Life is fair. Here’s why.

About ten years ago I wrote a book called "Life is Fair." That was back in my fundamentalist days, when I was pleased to toe the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) party line on karma, vegetarianism, and most other doctrinal matters.

But you know, I still believe that life is fair. Just not for the same reasons that I expounded in the book.

I got to thinking about life's fairness when someone emailed me a few days ago, asking if "Life is Fair" still was being sold. He'd noticed that it wasn't listed on the RSSB (a.k.a. Science of the Soul) web site. I checked and was told that the book was out of stock.

So I have to assume that it's still being sold with my name on it, notwithstanding the fact that I've come to be viewed as a heretic by the RSSB powers-that-be.

My own perspective is that I'm still 100% devoted to the true Radha Soami Satsang Beas teachings. I've simply decided to let go of ritualistic religious fluff that has nothing to do with genuine mysticism or spirituality.

I'm also much more willing now to say "I don't know." So I'll say it: I don't know whether much of what I wrote in "Life is Fair" is true. Such as, whether this depiction of the Fairness Machine reflects how the cosmos really works.

(I'll upload my final Word version of the manuscript for those who want to read all or part of the book. It's 3.8 MB, due to the cartoons. The Fairness Machine chapter starts on page 82. The cartoons scattered through the pages are worth the book's modest price, which in this case is zero.)
UPDATE: Since Life is Fair is back in print, and I've been asked by RSSB to delete the downloadable file at the request of a copyright holder, I've done that.

I don't know whether reincarnation is a reality. I don't know whether there is another dimension to the cosmos where karma is stored for dispensation in other lives. I don't know whether what happens to us in the life each of us is living now is partly due to our actions in previous incarnations.

Yet I still believe that life is fair. It just seems much more likely than the obverse. By "fair," I mean there's a reason for things. They don't pop out of nowhere, miraculously or randomly. Even the laws of quantum physics, where randomness is an integral aspect of the subatomic world, have a foundation in well-formed mathematics.

When people say, "life isn't fair," they're speaking anthropomorphically or personally. What they usually mean is that stuff happens that shouldn't, in their opinion. Babies are born blind. Tsunamis strike villages without warning. Bad things happen to good people.

But unfairness doesn't exist without a privileged position, either human or divine. Here's a personal example from the Homo sapiens side.

I head into town (Salem, Oregon) this afternoon from our rural home five miles outside the city limits. My wife has warned me that they're back to paving the road adjacent to some new subdivisions. Ever the optimist, I still leave at my regular time, figuring that my good karma will produce a "Slow" rather than "Stop" sign when I get to the flagger.

I'm wrong. Half a dozen cars are lined up ahead of me. I wait. And wait some more. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes. No traffic is coming through from the other way either. Then, there is.

Unfair! I say to myself. I'm in the group heading into town for important business, like, in my case, exercising at an athletic club. The cars breezing past me likely are heading home.

Of course, the rational part of my brain (what little is still operating after a quarter hour of fuming) is thinking, "The people who got to pass through the work area first are feeling good that they're finally moving. That seems fair. So how could this delay be both unfair to me and fair to them?"

Well, because I'm me and they're them. And the guys operating the paving equipment, who have to stop every time traffic drives through, probably have the attitude, "Geez, it'd be a lot fairer if we could get the job done without so many interruptions."

So when we look for fairness or unfairness in life, there aren't any objective signs of either. What we find are people who stamp something as "Fair" or "Unfair" on the basis of their subjective perspectives.

How, then, can I believe so confidently that life is fair? Simple. I don't see any evidence of the privileged position that unfairness requires. There's no Fairness King or Queen who can sit on his or her throne and proclaim, "This is fair; that is unfair."

What we do have is a demonstrably interconnected universe where no thing, living or inert, stands alone. I'll quote myself, from the Fairness Machine chapter of "Life is Fair."

The main thing to remember about the law of karma is common to all laws of nature—the equal sign. Remember this, and you will know most of what you need to know about karma. To say "Life is fair" really is the same as saying "Life = some chain of causes and effects."

… We already know the end result, because this is us right now: our health, our wealth, our family, our friends, our beliefs, everything that makes up what we call "my life." What we don't know is what produced all of this. So we are left with only an answer, a solution to some unknown set of equations: My life right now = x + y + z + ….

There's a lot in my book that I don't agree with now, or at least am unsure about. However, the notion that there are causes for everything evident in this physical world still makes good sense to me.

Those causes are the reason I believe life is fair. The workings of the Fairness Machine that is our universe likely aren't how I described them. But the machine itself is undeniable: it's all around us, and indeed is us.

We don't know how the contraption works from the inside. The outside, though, is clearly evident. And it's product is: fairness. Cause and effect. Interrelatedness. Seamless connections. Quoting myself again:

Gravity controls the motion of all the trillions of celestial bodies in the universe. Gravitational forces guide the motion of everything in space, from microscopic specks of interstellar dust to giant galaxies.

Now, is there a big computer somewhere that keeps track of the incredibly complex dynamics in our unimaginably vast cosmos? No. And there isn't any earthbound computer which can come close to the precision of nature that keeps every heavenly body perfectly related to every other heavenly body. If one entity changes, such as a star exploding or an asteroid hitting a planet, then everything in the universe adjusts to this event instantly and automatically [note: I shouldn't have said "instantly," since gravity acts at the speed of light].

Gravity is a fascinating reflection of the higher metaphysical law of karma. This all-pervading force of nature illustrates a point that applies equally well to material and spiritual states of reality: the laws of nature are self-executing and self-balancing. "Self-executing" means they operate continually in every corner of the universe. There is no stop button that allows us to temporarily halt their workings.

Again, I'd quibble with myself about some of what I said in those paragraphs. However, the main thrust of my argument still seems unarguable to me. Somehow the universe functions as a whole, effortlessly weaving actions and reactions into an ever-changing tapestry of causes and effects.

I may not like what I see or experience. I may call it "unfair." But there's no evidence of unfairness when I look at things from the perspective of the entire universe (insofar as I'm able). The cosmos, a unity, doesn't have a privileged position. It's positionless, being everywhere and everything.

This leaves divinity as the other possible source of unfairness. If there's a Zeus who arbitrarily casts thunderbolts of suffering down upon some, while bestowing capricious godly favors on others, that sure would be unfair.

Where's the evidence of such a being, though? There isn't any. Not a whit. Which is fine with me. I'd like there to be a god who makes things peachy-keen for me, because I'm so obviously deserving of peachy-keenies. But that's much different from a god who just does whatever the hell (or heaven) she wants.

I'm happy being a tiny part of the whole that is our universe, all mixed up with other parts. I used to enjoy feeling that I was a special part, chosen by God to enjoy divine favors. Now, that strikes me as horribly unfair.

In the end, though, what do I know? I could be wrong about everything, including what I just said.

Maybe only Dilbert has the answers.

[Update: This "Life is Fair" piece from the Stanford Daily ends up with pretty much the same conclusion as I do. The author exhibits a pleasing cynicism. I like his opening line, since it reminds me of me: "When lying in bed late at night, alone and without easily available pornography, I sometimes turn my enormous brain to contemplating the nature of existence."]

I make some new web friends

There are some new friends in my "Links to Explore" category in the left-hand column. In the usual web fashion, I haven't talked with them or seen them, and probably never will.

Yet I feel that we're close, closer in some ways than I am with people who I meet face to face all the time. Pondering deep thoughts about life, spirituality, and the cosmos (plus some not so deep) gives us a lot in common.

The folks over at Religious Forums have brought almost 11,000 members together to discuss all sorts of belief systems. I appreciate their Church of the Churchless welcome, and will return the favor by sharing how Phil described their web site to me.

We are a very diverse forum that welcomes anyone willing to be civil, regardless of their spiritual persuasion or lack thereof.  That seems to make us nearly unique among religion forums on the net.  We are constantly getting new members who have been banned from other forums because they weren't "Christian enough" or "Muslim enough" or "Atheist enough" for the staff of the forum they were banned from. 

Indeed, our staff is itself an eclectic collection: We have conservative Christians, liberal Muslims, three kinds of Pagans, atheists, Buddhists, Native Americans, and folks who have not decided yet what they believe on the staff at religious forums. They all have in common a shared belief that civil discussion between people of different views is enriching and beneficial to everyone involved.

Sounds good. Plus, they just added an Eros Room! Even better.

Over at Café Philos, a fairly new blog billed as "commentaries on living, the arts and sciences written by café frequenting scoundrels," Paul finds a lot not to like in a book by Christian fundamentalist James Dobson. Amen to that. And a post about Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion led me to more thoughts about the book on The Buddhist Blog.

Jim is an Eternal Student and writes about what life is teaching him. In an email he told me that he's a little more God-sympathetic than I am, wanting there to be a personal God. Well, me too. I just have the same questions Jim asks in his summary of himself.

And what about religion? Do I go to church regularly? (No, but if I ever find a community of people like me, I will start going again). Do I believe in God? I wish that I could say "yes, definitely". I WANT there to be a loving God behind it all. I want there to be a kinder and gentler (and more intelligent) life after death. And I believe in the duty to help make this world kinder, gentler and more intelligent. I pray every day. And I do what I can to promote kindness and gentility.

But yes, sometimes I get that scary feeling (similar to looking over a high, steep cliff) that maybe there isn't a God. The best I can say is that this world seems like a place that should have a God behind it. And sometimes I can almost see or hear that God in the truly beautiful and meaningful things that happen during the course of a lifetime. But looking at all the evil and pain and suffering, all the hopeless lives, all the coldness of death, I wonder how a loving God could let things get this bad. What is the point of so much suffering, so many broken souls, so much death? There well may be a reason -- just because I can't figure out special relativity doesn't mean that Einstein was wrong, and just because I can't figure out why the world is the way it is doesn't mean that there isn't a "meta-Einstein" behind it.

True. But my bet is that a personal God isn't at the root of It All. Increasingly I find myself inclined toward the philosophy expressed on A Personal Tao, a site I found on one of the sites that found me.

Like Douglas Hofstadter says in his soon-to-be-released new book, we're strange loops, looping strangely.

It takes two to Tao (and Tango)

One nice thing about Taoism is that it's pretty damn simple. The yin-yang symbol, or Taijitu, says just about all that can be said about my favorite philosophy.

Which ideally would be nothing, as the first four lines of the Tao Te Ching tell us.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

But last Thursday night I was expected to say something about Taoism to a Comparative Religion class for about an hour. And I was caffeine-fueled with a large vanilla latte. So I expended quite a few words during my expounding about the wordless.

The talk went well. This was the third year I've been invited to the class. Previously I made the mistake of over-preparing. This time I threw a bunch of Taoist books into a paper bag after festooning the pages with post-it notes that marked some favorite passages.

When I felt the spirit, I picked up a book and pulled out a quote. Like this beauty from the Tao of Pooh:

In order to take control of our lives and accomplish something of lasting value, sooner or later we need to learn to Believe. We don't need to shift our responsibilities onto the shoulders of some deified Spiritual Superman, or sit around and wait for Fate to come knocking at the door.

We simply need to believe in the power that's within us, and use it. When we do that, and stop imitating others and competing against them, things begin to work for us.

In the yin-yang symbol, the super-duper ultimate power is represented by the circle. That's wu chi, empty fullness, the state of the Tao prior to creation. Wu chi is the balanced stance of readiness that Tai Chi forms begin and end with.

I mentioned that Tai Chi is a physical embodiment of Taoism. That's a big part of why philosophically-inclined me likes Tai Chi so much. When you practice a philosophy through movement, abstract concepts count for precisely zero. You may think you're got your balanced act together, but an awkward stumble after someone disrupts your root speaks for itself.

A wall that separates two rooms of the martial arts studio where I learn Tai Chi is formed into the yin-yang symbol. My instructor gestures toward it frequently, because every move in Tai Chi flows from the interplay of yin and yang, softness and hardness, insubstantial and substantial, unweighted and weighted.

Just as in life. Except we usually don't pay attention to how opposites do more than attract—they're absolutely dependent on each other. How could you have "male" without "female," or "good" without "evil"?

I told the class that the Taijitu has a bit of black within the white, and a bit of white within the black, to show that yin is yang is yin is yang. When yin (traditionally, the black) is at its maximum, that's when yang (traditionally, the white) begins to blossom.

A basic Tai Chi move is rollback, redirect, and press. Someone pushes hard on you. You roll with their energy, unresisting. There'll come a point where the push runs out of steam. That's a turning point. Redirection now is easy. Your yin acceptance turns into a yang press (or push), almost precisely mirroring the sinuous path of the boundary between black and white in the yin-yang symbol.

Go with the flow. That's Taoism 101. Plus the advanced course. Nothing is unchanging but the supremely supreme ultimate non-being, wu chi. "Tai Chi" means the supreme ultimate, but since it is being, Tai Chi (or creation) continually is becoming through the interplay of yin and yang.

Accept it. Embrace it. There's no way around it, because nothing is outside of it except nothingness. Clinging is futile. The only way to be secure is to have full faith in the Way.

Like the Tao of Pooh says, quoting Chuang-tse, that doesn't mean we're powerless. It simply means that our power isn't ours.

At the Gorge of Lü, the great waterfall plunges for thousands of feet, its spray visible for miles. In the churning waters below, no living creature can be seen.

One day, K'ung Fu-tse was standing at a distance from the pool's edge, when he saw an old man being tossed about in the turbulent water. He called to his disciples, and together they ran to rescue the victim. But by the time they reached the water, the old man had climbed onto the bank and was walking along, singing to himself.

K'ung Fu-tse hurried up to him. "You would have to be a ghost to survive that," he said, "but you seem to be a man, instead. What secret power do you have?"

"Nothing special," the old man replied. "I began to learn while very young, and grew up practicing it. Now I am certain of success. I go down with the water and come up with the water. I follow it and forget myself. I survive because I don't struggle against the water's superior power. That's all."

Well, that's a lot. Indeed, everything.

I talked some about my struggles to learn Tango. As noted in "I get a glimpse of Tango Zen," an effort to learn a new move often goes like this.

I began by knowing that I didn't know. Did fine. I progressed to knowing that I knew. Fell apart. I ended up not-knowing that I knew. Best of all.

That's a valuable lesson for me, the supposed leader, to learn. I say "supposed," because dancing is most enjoyable for me when the source of the leading isn't me. At least, not the usual me. When the leading happens by itself, that's the Tao taking over.

I just got an American Tango instructional DVD to supplement our classes. Watching the first part of it today, I was told that the woman's movement should be a fraction of a second behind the man's. He leads, and she follows. When she moves before the lead happens, that's not good.

One leader at a time, please. And on the Tango dance floor, that's the man (at home, it's different).

The question for all of us is: who leads the leader? From what source does every motion, mental or physical, spring? Can we attune ourselves more closely to the Dancer behind every dance, so we don't stumble around the ballroom of life?

Pooh tries to point the way.

To know the Way,
We go the Way;
We do the Way
The way we do
The things we do.
It's all there in front of you,
But if you try too hard to see it,
You'll only become Confused.

I am me,
And you are you,
As you can see;
But when you do
The things that you can do,
You will find the Way,
And the Way will follow you.

(If Pooh isn't enough for you, here's a bonus Secrets of the Yin Yang Symbol video.)

Secrets Of The Yin Yang Symbol - The most popular videos are here

Wine, women, and enlightenment

Got to get fired up, or cooled down, for the Taoism talk I'm going to give to a Comparative Religion class tonight. I won't prepare a whole lot. Want to let it flow.

I'm planning to carry along the Lieh-tzu, though. That's the third leg of the traditional Taoist canon, along with the Tao-te Ching and the Chuang-tzu.

Translator Eva Wong says:

The Lao-tzu describes a state of reality that a sage experiences; the Chuang-tzu describes a state of mind that the sage is in; but the Lieh-tzu describes how the enlightened person lives.

…If the Lao-tzu is poetry and the Chuang-tzu is prose, then the Lieh-tzu is a series of comic strips. By exaggerating the ridiculous aspects of human actions, it portrays the human condition as humorous and pokes fun at social taboos.

I love how Taoist sages so often take a contrarian view of morality. You won't find a story like "What damages health more—unrestricted pleasure or obsessive hard work?" in a traditional religious scripture. Here's an abbreviated version of Lieh-tzu's tale.

-----------------------------

Tzu-ch'an, the chief minister of the kingdom of Cheng, had two brothers. While he spent his energy on strengthening the country and putting down crime and disorder, his two brothers indulged in everything that satisfied their senses.

One of the brothers had a brewery and a large warehouse in the back of his mansion where he stored thousands of jars of wine. He drank heavily, and, when drunk, he was oblivious to everything around him. He couldn't recognize friends or relatives, and he lost all concern for life or death.

The other brother had a dozen rooms in the house where he kept a group of beautiful young women. When he was aroused sexually, he would spend months with the women, never even bothering to come out to meet friends and relatives or take care of the family business.

Tzu-ch'an was very concerned about his brothers' lifestyles. So he went to talk to Teng-hsi, a fellow statesman who, although sarcastic and snide at times, was known for his keen observations and problem-solving ability.

Tzu-ch'an said, "Can you suggest anything that would get my two irresponsible brothers to behave more properly?"

Teng-hsi replied, "Tell them what they're doing is damaging their health. Maybe this will convince them to change their lifestyles."

One day Tzu-ch'an found his brothers together. He took this opportunity to talk to them about their lives.

"Heaven made us a cut above animals in dignity and intelligence. Therefore, it is your duty to live up to these expectations and behave in a manner befitting our position in society. If you only live to satisfy your senses, you are no more than animals. Stop harming yourselves, become responsible citizens, and I shall give you a position in the government."

Tzu-ch'an's brothers said:

"We know that wine and sex damage health. But we also know that life is short, and we want to enjoy whatever we can now. You, on the other hand, suppress what you want to do in order to maintain your rank and power.

"You are proud of your achievements and you want us to conform to your beliefs. You want to entice us with titles and political power, but we know that such things only bring burden and trouble.

"You may be the chief minister, and the country may look like it's in order. But look at yourself closely. You are tired and haggard. You have damaged your body and mind because you are anxious about keeping the country in order. In order to maintain your reputation, you have damaged your heart by suppressing your natural inclinations.

"We, on the other hand, may be wild and unruly, but we are true to ourselves. We have never put up a front to gain respect. We have never been involved in dirty politics or harmed other people with treachery and intrigue.

"Can you say this about yourself? If you can't, then it's not we who should take your advice, but you who should take ours."

Tzu-ch'an did not know what to say. Later he saw Teng-hsi and related the whole incident to him. Teng-hsi said, "You have been living with enlightened men and didn't even know it."

Be your own book

It's hard enough to simply haul myself around some days. Yet I'm still spry enough to have little trouble managing these garage crawlspace stairs. (After all, I just took twenty years off of my life).

But pushing a heavy box of books up the stairs and through the narrow opening, that's an extra energetic load. I just repeated the job a dozen times, putting back stored books that had to be removed when our garage got some earthquake strengthening.

The light at the top of the stairs came to seem more than metaphorical. After a few trips up and down, I began to feel more than a little resentment toward my previously dearly beloved books, several hundred of which fell into the spiritual/religious/philosophical genres.

They were damn heavy, that's for sure. Yet what had I gained from reading all that poundage?

About a year and a half ago I wrote about becoming my favorite book. I've still been buying books, yet not with the same oh, yeah, this could be it! expectancy.

Like lots of other people, I've had the implicit expectation that reading or hearing certain words would unlock a treasure trove of understanding—the Open, Sesame fantasy. Indeed, sometimes it'd seem like the door would open a crack.

Before it'd shut again.

Words aren't reality. Echoing Magritte, I know this is not a blog post. Not really. Eight English letters don't begin to capture whatever the hell it is I'm doing at the moment.

At the same time, words are part and parcel of my current awareness. So words are reality. Just not as real to me as the thoughts that precede my keyboard tapping, or the intuitions that precede the thoughts.

More and more, I'm realizing that what I'm looking for in spiritual books I already have, just as what I write about I already know (but need to form into a sense that can be shared with others). Like I said before about my flash of insight in a bookstore:

Then the flash of insight hit me. What I was looking for was a spiritual book that exactly expressed everything that I already hold to be true. In short, I wanted to read about me. My beliefs, my approach to fathoming the meaning of life, my meditation practice, my God-philosophy.

I wasn't searching for fresh truth. I wanted a validation of what is already true for me. I wasn't trying to find answers to the big questions of life. I hoped to find that someone else had dealt with the questions in the same way as I am.

I still do this, but to a lesser extent. Most mornings now my pre-meditation reading starts off with the sports section. I don't try to fill my head with someone else's spiritual thoughts before I try to clear my head of my own.

I've been accused of thinking too much, often by me. In my defense, allow me to point out how many culprits contributed to my recent straining up the stairs.

Books published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas filled up several boxes. This supposedly is a path of love, not of thinking, but the RSSB gurus and disciples definitely love to talk about their thoughts about love.

Similarly, Buddhism advises that the dharma raft doesn't need to be carried after having crossed to the other shore. I have to assume that lots of Buddhists are still paddling. And writing about it. Voluminously.

Ditto with Sufis, mystical Christians, and everyone else who wrote the books now reposing in the crawl space.

Other books I'll probably always keep close at hand. These tend to be writings that pull the rug out from under themselves, urging me in one way or another not to read them. Like Emerson's essay on self-reliance.

Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.

Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

And also, in my case, with some huffing and puffing.

Hard-wired for religion

Religious people often talk about how difficult it is to have faith in God and stay on a spiritual path. They like to think of themselves as brave souls choosing the road less often taken, going against the grain of a materialist, godless, faithless culture.

Actually, there's increasing evidence that the truth is just the opposite, since the minds of human beings are hard-wired for religion. What's difficult is recognizing our instinctual propensity to believe, and choosing a course that leads in the direction of reality.

Such is one of the messages of an excellent online article in the New York Times magazine, "Darwin's God." (I believe it's only available to TimesSelect subscribers, so will make it into a downloadable Word file: Download darwins_god.doc)

The article's author, Robin Marantz Henig, says, "The debate over why belief evolved is between byproduct theorists and adaptationists."

On the byproduct side, anthropologist Scott Atran wondered why religious belief is so prevalent (92 percent of Americans believe in a personal God) when what is materially false is taken to be true, and what is materially true is taken to be false.

Seemingly it wouldn't be a productive evolutionary strategy to be so out of touch with reality. Attan says:

Imagine another animal that took injury for health or big for small or fast for slow or dead for alive. It's unlikely that such a species could survive.

So he reasoned that if religious belief wasn't adaptive, maybe it was associated with something else that was. This is like blood being red. The redness is a byproduct of having blood that contains hemoglobin and can transport oxygen.

In the same fashion, many evolutionary researchers conclude that "agent detection" aids survival. Religious belief just hops along for a ride on the adaptive train.

Agent detection evolved because assuming the presence of an agent -- which is jargon for any creature with volitional, independent behavior -- is more adaptive than assuming its absence. If you are a caveman on the savannah, you are better off presuming that the motion you detect out of the corner of your eye is an agent and something to run from, even if you are wrong. If it turns out to have been just the rustling of leaves, you are still alive; if what you took to be leaves rustling was really a hyena about to pounce, you are dead.

This means, says Henig, that our brains are primed for belief in the supernatural, "ready to presume the presence of agents even when such presence confounds logic." God hears us and answers prayers. Divine beings take an interest in human affairs and direct our destinies.

The adaptationists look upon the origins of religion somewhat differently. They wonder what survival advantage religion might have conferred to humans early on, even if it doesn't have much (if any) reason for hanging around now.

Some researchers, Henig says, think that "religion made people feel better, less tormented by thoughts about death, more focused on the future, more willing to take care of themselves." This made them better mates, and helped groups with self-sacrificing individuals to outlast the competition.

Jesse Bering, a psychologist, holds that belief is our fallback position—our reflexive style of thought. I can believe it. Most people are religiously minded in one way or another. It's the easiest thing to do.

But now that we've evolved to a recognition of our own habitual propensity toward belief in the supernatural, it's possible for humans to take a higher road. Henig's article ends with:

What can be made of atheists, then? If the evolutionary view of religion is true, they have to work hard at being atheists, to resist slipping into intrinsic habits of mind that make it easier to believe than not to believe.

Atran says he faces an emotional and intellectual struggle to live without God in a nonatheist world, and he suspects that is where his little superstitions come from, his passing thought about crossing his fingers during turbulence or knocking on wood just in case. It is like an atavistic theism erupting when his guard is down.

The comforts and consolations of belief are alluring even to him, he says, and probably will become more so as he gets closer to the end of his life. He fights it because he is a scientist and holds the values of rationalism higher than the values of spiritualism.

This internal push and pull between the spiritual and the rational reflects what used to be called the ''God of the gaps'' view of religion. The presumption was that as science was able to answer more questions about the natural world, God would be invoked to answer fewer, and religion would eventually recede.

Research about the evolution of religion suggests otherwise. No matter how much science can explain, it seems, the real gap that God fills is an emptiness that our big-brained mental architecture interprets as a yearning for the supernatural.

The drive to satisfy that yearning, according to both adaptationists and byproduct theorists, might be an inevitable and eternal part of what Atran calls the tragedy of human cognition.

Is Sant Mat a non-dual spiritual practice?

I find the notion that reality is non-dual appealing. I used to be much more of a dualist, or transcendentalist, believing that something above and beyond the physical universe is where ultimate truth, beauty, and wisdom lie.

But increasingly I resonate with Wikipedia's description of non-duality (though I don't agree that Plotinus is a non-dualist):

Nondualism may be viewed as the belief that dualism or dichotomy are illusory phenomena. Examples of dualisms include self/other, mind/body, male/female, good/evil, active/passive, dualism/nondualism and many others.

To the Nondualist, reality is ultimately neither physical nor mental. Instead, it is an ineffable state or realization. This ultimate reality can be called "Spirit" (Aurobindo), "Brahman" (Shankara), "God", "Shunyata" (Emptiness), "The All" (Plotinus), "The Self" (Ramana Maharshi), "The Dao" (Lao Zi), "The Absolute" (Schelling) or simply "The Nondual" (F. H. Bradley).

Recently I got an email from Mike, who shared some interesting thoughts about Sant Mat in general and the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) branch of this religious philosophy in particular. I've included his message as a continuation to this post.

I was struck by Mike's assumption that Sant Mat is a non-dual spiritual practice. Having been initiated into RSSB about the same time Mike was (1971), and being familiar with the teachings of decidedly non-dual mystics such as Ramana and Nisargadatta, I've never thought of Sant Mat in this fashion.

Ken Wilber is a modern non-dualist. In his magnum opus, "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality," Wilber sums up his philosophy as: (1) the Many are illusory, (2) the One alone is real, and (3) the One is the Many. Thus reality is illusion, and illusion is reality.

Could be. Unity is what most of us are looking for in one way or another, and non-duality is even more of a piece than monism—which ends with a One that transcends the maya of Manyness. I like the non-dual wrinkle that ultimate reality is right here and now, not only far off in some other realm.

I just don't see Sant Mat as being authentically non-dual. To the extent that it is, non-dualism is very much de-emphasized in comparison to the thoroughly dualistic aspects of the meditational and devotional practices I was taught.

For example: body, mind, and soul are considered to be separate and distinct. The goal is to leave body and mind behind, and become pure soul. "Heaven" (a.k.a. Sach Khand) is an actual place, another dimension of being, not a modification of present consciousness.

The guru is to be worshipped and obeyed. He isn't merely an exemplar of what the disciple can become, but rather is thought to be a son of God who has been sent by the Creator to retrieve lost souls. While the highest manifestation of "God" in Sant Mat is formless, the disciple is supposed to rely on the guru's various forms (physical, astral, causal) during a long spiritual journey from many to the One.

So there's a lot of duality to be discarded in Sant Mat before attaining the nondual. Other practices such as Zen, Advaita, and Taoism take a much more direct route to non-duality.

Still, Mike correctly points out that if the overtly ritualistic and religious aspects of Sant Mat are discarded, you're left with a spiritual practice that could indeed be viewed as falling into the non-dual camp. Of course, this could be said of anything: if you take away the fluff, you're left with the essence.

What I wonder is, "Why not dive right into the essence, rather than spending time and energy wading through the fluff?" But that's a matter of personal preference, as Mike says. For some people, during some periods of their lives, dualistic supports—authority figures, congregations, holy books, worship services—are needed.

Here's Mike's message:

Evidence of my steadily declining divinity

When we had to drag everything out of the crawl space above our garage, I found a 1970 photo that hadn't seen the light of day for quite a while.

I was struck by how I appeared so wise at 21, and, let's admit it, Christ like (leaving aside the minor detail that no one knows how Jesus looked).

Now, at 58, I don't know nothing about God and all that. I'm on a downward trajectory that has culminated in my Wu Project. But I'm confident there's further to fall.

This unposed photo was taken in my home town of Three Rivers, California. I'd returned there for a summer festival of something-or-other in an artistic neighbor's pasture. David Green, sculptor, artist, and spiritual seeker, snapped me in front of a tie-dyed banner that he'd made.

I'm holding some posters in the original. I cropped them out to place more focus on my serene yogic visage.

Back then I knew it all. Or at least a lot. That was before I became a spiritual doofus. I'd been studying hatha yoga and meditation pretty intensively for more than a year. I could chant mysterious mantras and stand on my head like you wouldn't believe.

I could give inspiring talks on Indian philosophy. I could say "Tat tvam asi" (That thou art) and actually believe that we all are God.

Now, I'm clueless. Yet this lack of clues about what It's All About doesn't dismay me. I've gotten comfortable with being spiritually lost.

Back in 1970 I thought I'd found That. Yet, looking back, what I'd found were ideas, concepts, imaginings, philosophies. I was good at talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

Not much may have changed in that regard. But at least now I'm more realistic about where I stand, even if I'm not moving in any discernible direction.

And heck, for all I know (which isn't much) where I am, and was, might be exactly where I'm meant to be. It just takes a lot of stepping to learn the value of staying still.

Coping with death and the fear of non-existence

I got an email from someone who'd read my "Death and the primal fear of non-existence." She said:

I completely understand where you are coming from. I have been having the very similar thoughts more recently.

It completely numbs me up. I often need to choke/scream out aloud to bring myself back to sanity.

These days I sometimes fear the thought of having that feeling even.

I was wondering whether you have developed a coping mechanism? Or can share anything else with me about how it is/has been affecting you.

I am very much looking forward to your response. I haven't been able to completely relate to anyone else who is as overwhelmed as I am about these thoughts of non-existence.

Here's my open letter back to her:

-----------------------------------------

My friend in fearing non-existence, the first (and maybe most important) thing I want to say to you is bravo! Pat yourself on your trembling back. Embrace your shivering self.

Really. I'm not making light of the panic you've been feeling. I'm just suggesting that you deserve kudos for looking into the depths that most people shy away from.

I realize this isn't of your own doing, in a sense. I mean, the thoughts you've been having about dying and not existing, forever, spring from a source beyond your conscious self.

If you're like me, the thoughts about death that you're able to share with others arise from an unsharable experience. You're looking into a void of non-being that shakes you to the core. Nothingness can do that. It penetrates every defense.

As crazy as this may sound, from my perspective you're fortunate. So am I. We've had glimpses of an ultimate reality. Most people live their lives firmly within the bounds of the familiar. You've peered over the edge of everyday existence.

And what you saw scared you. Understandably.

But here's the thing: that experience is yours, just as my experience is mine. It is real, since it exists. Yet it isn't part of the fabric of objective reality in the way that the computer I'm typing these words with is. Using my mind, I can't make my computer disappear. However, fear is much more malleable.

Understanding that, I've been learning to cope with my own primal fear of non-existence. Well, "cope" sounds too negative. "Embrace" is more like it. I'm grateful for the soul-shuddering anticipation of death that I've had. It's given me the opportunity to live more vividly.

It may well be that this life is all there is. After death, finis. The end. If that's the case, I want to make the most of the moments that I have left. By contrast, people who believe in eternal life, or a lengthy afterlife in some heavenly paradise, are partly here and partly there.

Their imaginings of what awaits them beyond get mixed up with what is here, now. I don't want that to happen to me. So I try to use my glimpse of nothingness as motivation to embrace more fully the everything I'm currently aware of.

I still sleepwalk through life more than I should. But feeling death's fingernails on my spine makes me more awake than I would be otherwise. For that, I'm grateful.

I spend some time every day meditating. Basically, I try to die. Not physically, mentally. I want to get as close as possible to what I fear the most: not existing as the person I am now. I've found that the terror of non-existence is strongest when I fear the fear.

When I say, "bring it on," whatever or whoever is responsible for the terror I've felt holds it back. Kind of strange. But not really. Like most fears, running away enlivens the threat. Staring it down makes it shrink away.

This doesn't have to be an aggressive posture. Sometimes I speak to non-existence in more of a "teach me" tone. Looking into the primal emptiness that each of us is familiar with, I sense that it's both highly repellent and highly attractive.

Religion, mysticism, and philosophy are worlds apart from the raw experience of what's been numbing you. And at times in my life, me. Words can't help us. I've been told by well-meaning friends, "Why be afraid of death when you won't be around after you die?"

I appreciate their intention to soothe. However, I've found that the light of reasonable words, no matter how bright, doesn't touch the darkness lying on the other side of my last breath. I'll enter it alone when I die, and I've got to deal with the anticipation of it in my own fashion while I'm alive.

You too. So all I'm doing here is sharing how I've been dealing with my fear of death. Your way might be very different from mine. Trust your heart. Don't hesitate to go where you're drawn, even if you're the only one on that path.

That said, I'll close by reiterating what has worked best for me: putting out a welcome mat for what I wish would never show up at my door.

Death comes for us all. I can either peek through the curtains of my life with fear and trembling or say to my eventual visitor, "Let's get acquainted as best we can now." For I'm pretty sure that if I could rehearse some mini-dying, the maxi-dying of my final performance will go more smoothly.

Sitting quietly in my meditation closet, I enjoy closing my eyes and simply saying to myself, "I am." Or, when the saying has run its course, even more simply experiencing non-verbally what those two words point to.

I try to leave aside all the descriptors that could be added to "I am… ." A man. An American. An agnostic. A husband. A father. A blogger. A Tai Chi student. A person who muses about death and the primal fear of non-existence.

Somehow, the less I feel myself to be, the more being I seem to feel. Whether this points to some sort of survival after death, I don't know. Naturally, I hope so.

Regardless, I know that "I am" for the moment. How many moments more, I don't know. That's not up to me. As a song I remember from the '50s said, "What will be, will be." Yes.

I'm grateful that I've been able to have the experience of being. Anything.

I could not have been at all. Which would have meant that I never would have had to worry about dying. But I'm happy to trade that worry for living my fifty-eight years.

Today I saw two Canadian geese land on the lake that I walk our dog around most afternoons. They flew low over our heads, honking. Fluttering down onto the water, they started in on what might have been some sort of goose mating dance.

Beats me. I'd never seen anything quite like it before. One goose would flap its way along the surface, honking like crazy. Then the other would catch up to it, echoing its cry. And so they went across the lake, water splashing, engaged in early spring goose living.

I felt a tear begin to form. A tear of gratitude. I too was alive. And able to be part of life.

For a moment, that was enough.

It may well be, for every moment that is enough.

[Next day update: In the course of completing a compilation of Church of the Churchless posts, I just came across "I'm alive. Wow!" It echoes what I was trying to say at the end here, perhaps more clearly.]

Keeping it real: facing death without God

You'd seen most of your family killed with machetes and guns.

You'd been taken away, marched to the edge of a pit with some other abductees, and left for dead after bullets missed you.

You'd spent hours trying to climb out of the pit, stumbling through blood and guts.

Somehow you survived. You made it from Rwanda to England. Now you want to tell your tale. You can't write in English very well. You need the help of a writer who works with refugees.

Last night I saw Sonja Linden's "I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda" performed by the Salem Repertory Theatre. It was, in a word, remarkable.

Our front row seats offered us an intimate view of Renee Noonan and Ted deChatelet, who played Juliette (the Rwandan) and Simon (the writer).

Linden's play is founded on the reality of an actual woman from Rwanda who saw her family murdered. She sought both healing and a testimonial act in writing about it.

The play is powerful.

Watching Noonan, a marvelous actress, become Juliette for ninety minutes, I was struck by how "acting" of this sort is a misnomer. Noonan's voice, expressions, and mannerisms exactly reflected what she was experiencing. The inside of Noonan/Juliette also was the outside—no evident difference.

By contrast, I'm frequently (if not usually) presenting a face to the world that differs from my subjectively experienced visage. If I'm angry, I try to hide it. If I'm happy, I try to tone down my exuberance. If I'm anxious, I try to appear calm.

With Juliette, what you saw was what she was. When she was sad, it showed. When she was joyful, it showed. Actress Noonan showed this audience member what it is like to not act as anything other than what you are.

Similarly, Juliette dealt with death as it was. There wasn't a single mention of God. Nor, to my recollection, any "why?"

God and why? are meaningless concepts when Hutu killers have been led to your Tutsi family door by a neighbor you considered a good friend, and the U.N. troops you hoped would be protectors ended up firing their guns only at dogs chewing on corpses.

Juliette looked death in the face. She didn't pretty it up, nor did she uglify it. In a moving scene, she lights a candle for each of the family members who were killed.

I liked how she talked about them as realistically as she faced death. They were human beings, not saints. She liked some things about her relatives; she didn't like other things.

Juliette never doubted her feelings. She spoke and lived from the heart, teaching her teacher, Simon, how to write more honestly, just as he was urging her to do the same (the first draft of her book was dry description; Simon drew out from her the perspective of the person behind the describing).

Death is scary. In Rwanda, for almost a million people it was brutal, nasty, painful. To be afraid of dying in that way (or indeed, any way) is normal. To be afraid of being afraid—that's an unnecessary complication.

Just as feeling bad about feeling bad is. Or doubting your doubt. Or being anxious about your anxiety. Reality is best lived simply, not complexly.

There weren't any answers in "I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda." Nor were there any questions. Death doesn't deal in Q and A's.

It is what it is: ugly and beautiful, bad and good, terrifying and delightful, an ending and a beginning. Juliette engaged with death in an authentically human fashion, head-on, with no turning away toward a mythical God or imaginary afterlife.

May we all be so bold. And so honest.

God-shaped hole is as big as our beliefs

It's a poetic notion: there's a God-shaped hole at the heart of my being. That's why I'm always restless, continually looking for something more, ceaselessly trying to find the very thing that will fill my cup of happiness to the brim.

Catholic theologian John F. Haught speaks about this supposed urge for the infinite in a What is Enlightenment? interview (January-March 2007 issue).

Sometimes people ask, "What is the evidence that the infinite exists?" For Augustine and for many religious people throughout the ages, the best evidence is the utter restlessness of the human heart. You could extend that also to the restlessness of the intellect itself.

We all realize that no matter how much we know, there is yet more to be known; we all realize that no matter how much we get in life, how much we have, how much we possess, we are never fully filled up by it. So there is, in a sense, a God-shaped hole at the heart of our being. That's what Augustine was saying—our hearts are restless until we rest in the infinite.

No, that's an unjustified assumption. It's truer to say, "Our hearts are restless until they are at rest."

I know this, because I frequently experience short-lived restlessness reliefs. When I take the first sip of a vanilla latte. When I start watching a new episode of "24." When I pause to look at the full moon over Spring Lake during a nighttime dog walk.

I don't feel like I'm being filled with the infinite in these moments. Quite the contrary. I've immersed myself in the concrete here and now. Resting on that firm foundation, I feel at peace.

For a while. Haught correctly points to the evanescence of my Ah, so good states of being. As soon as the closing credits of a "24" episode flash across the screen, I'm wishing that it were already the next Monday night.

The root of my restlessness is, of course, my belief that in seven days "24" will resume its progress as scheduled through Jack Bauer's terrorist-fighting day. I anticipate a projected future and want it to happen now. Since the future comes in its own sweet time, a "24" shaped hole forms in the heart of my being, where it stays until 9:00 pm on another Monday rolls around and I'm once again contentedly sitting in front of the TV.

Add together all of my unfulfilled desires, and to the religiously minded that's a "God-shaped hole." However, to its credit this Christian web site notes that Pascal (one of the original sources of this concept) speaks of the universal seeking for happiness, not God.

Many people, including Pascal, believe that only God can permanently fulfill the yearning of a restless heart. Since our desires are limitless, only infinity is capable of filling the happiness void that always seems to be either right with us or just around the corner.

Well, here's another way of looking at the situation: when we assume that God is the missing piece to the puzzle of our lives, we're just adding one more unfulfilled desire to an already lengthy Want List. High-definition television, remodeled bathroom, ten pound weight loss, satisfying romantic relationship…knowing God.

A happiness hole is formed when what I want and what I have don't coincide. Making coffee in the morning, I think "Got to get the newspaper." But I haven't finished with the coffee yet. So I feel a tinge of restless anxiety: I'm already behind on the day's to-do list!

However, that restlessness is my own creation. It isn't a God-shaped hole. It's a Brian-shaped hole. When I focus on simply measuring out the organic ground coffee and filling the carafe with reverse osmosis-purified water, I don't feel a lack in my life.

After all, my life is always being fully lived. There's never a void in my life that needs to be filled with living. If there were, I'd be dead. Which is a void of a whole other nature.

So whenever there is a difference between what is actually happening, and what I believe should happen, a restlessness born of unmet expectation begins to whirl away in my psyche. The motion forms an is-should gap that I interpret as something wrong, a problem to be solved, a flaw needing fixing.

When the should side includes "be filled with God," that gap widens. Instead of simply lacking a newspaper, or the next "24" episode, I've got a seriously sinking feeling that I'm missing the most important thing in existence. Even worse, I lack any reliable knowledge about where to get my God infusion.

So the God-shaped hole at the heart of my being is as big as my unsubstantiated beliefs about God. It'd be crazy for me to believe that I'm missing out on a television program named "Happiest Show on Earth" when such doesn't exist. I could spend all day fruitlessly looking through the TV Guide, worrying that I'm missing out on some great entertainment.

Or I could watch what is actually on the air. And enjoy Robert Bly's versions of Kabir poetry. (Some people hate Bly's tinkering with Kabir, just as Coleman Barks' freestyling of Rumi ticks others off; I like this poem, no matter the source).

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or resting?

There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no towrope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.