Tag: buddha

The Hierophant, The Sky Thingie, and Noshing at the Spiritual Buffet.

An exploration of religion versus spirituality as illustrated by buffet lines.

The Tarot card The Hierophant shows us a Pope-like figure seated on a throne, with acolytes bowing down to him.  In a general sense, The Hierophant represents all that is traditional, conformist, and conventional.  In a more specific sense, he represents dogmatic religion, as opposed to spirituality.

The basic idea here is that if you want to learn about religion and what it teaches, you go to a priest, a pastor, a rabbi, or an imam.  If you want to learn about spirituality, you meditate or you take psychedelics or get involved with a tradition such as shamanism or ecstatic dance.  Religion involves learning about other people’s interactions with the divine.  Spirituality is about having your own interaction with the divine.

I started thinking about all of this the other day when I read this passage from David Michies sweet little book, “Buddhism for Busy People:”

“One of the refreshing things about Buddhism, however, is its insistence that you should only take up those practices which benefit you.  If certain aspects aren’t helpful, simply put them to one side.  You can always come back to them later.  You won’t go to hell because you don’t believe in karma.  Nor will believing in it guarantee you a place in heaven – like everything else in Buddhism, it is what you DO that counts, not what you say you believe.”

I was contrasting that in my own mind to a Catholic priest I saw on a news show recently inveighing on the subject of Catholics who supported a woman’s right to have an abortion.  “We don’t agree with, ‘super-market Catholicism,’ “ he said.  “You’re not allowed to push your cart down the aisle and pick out this part of the Catholic faith but reject other parts.  You have to accept the entire doctrine or you’re not really a practicing Catholic.”

The differences in the two approaches couldn’t be any clearer.  Buddhism is basically saying, “Hey, here’s what we think the truth is but you need to pick out what works for you.”  Traditional religions are saying, “Here’s what the truth is and you need to agree with it, even if it seems like nonsense to you.”  The Buddha actually encouraged his followers to debate him on concepts  they disagreed with and cast aside whatever they thought was wrong.  On the other hand, it’s Catholic doctrine that whatever the Pope says about faith is infallibly true.  Always.  From god’s mouth to his ear.  Period.

The difference in those approaches probably lies in ancient human history when our cultures had shamans rather than priests and pastors.  Our ancestors undoubtedly found the world to be a scary place that was full of mysterious and sometimes life threatening occurrences.  We can easily imagine a cave woman leaning against a tree enjoying a rainstorm when -KABLAM!!!!!!!! – a bolt of lightning blows the tree into splinters and flings her twenty feet through the air.

Her first response would probably be something along the lines of, “Holy shit, what was THAT?!?”

As she clambered to her feet, though, and brushed the mud and splinters from her loin cloth she’d have a brilliant insight:  something must have CAUSED the lightning thingie that blew up  the tree.  And since the lightning thingie came out of the sky, whatever caused it must live . . . up there . . . in the sky.  

She’d probably spend many nights around the cave fire discussing this with the other tribe members, comparing notes, and arguing about the exact nature of the . . . Sky Thingie . . . that threw the . . . lightning thingie . . . at the tree.  What was it like?  Was it like a human being?  Why would it do such a thing?  Did it hate trees?  Perhaps it had been aiming the lightning at the woman and missed her and hit the tree?  Did it have poor eyesight, then?  What was it so pissed off about, anyway?  Was it a male or a female thingie?  And if it was a male thingie, did it have . . . you know . . . a thingie?

So there would have been many complex disputations arising out of the tree being hit by the lightning.  At a certain point, a cave person would step out of the shadows and say, “Hey, I had a dream about the Sky Thingie that threw the lightning thingie.  He says that if you’ll sacrifice a goat and not eat shellfish he won’t do it again.”

“Oh, really?” someone might reply.  “So the Sky Thingie is definitely a male?”

“Well, yes.  And he has a beard and wears sandals and sits on a golden rock.”

“So, you can talk to him, then?  Did he say why he’s throwing lightning thingies at us?”

“He did it because you didn’t sacrifice a goat and you ate clams.  Those are the rules.  He told me.”

Thus was born the shaman:  a special class of human beings who had knowledge of and were able to intervene with supernatural forces.  He or she would no doubt have been seen as just as important – or more so – than the tribal hunters, fishers, or gatherers.  After all, she had a special relationship with the Sky Thingie and could protect the tribe from supernatural temper fits and, um, sky anomalies. 

The tribe would have soon realized two things:  (a) like all humans the shaman was mortal and would die at some point; (b) therefore, he needed to train other shamans to take his place and keep a record of the Sky Thingie’s rules.

Thus were born priests and religions.

As the centuries passed and the priest/shamans had more and more visions and wrote down more and more rules from the Sky Thingies, the rules got more and more complex and began to include things like:

  • Don’t eat bacon.
  • Don’t trip blind people.
  • Don’t have sex with sheep.
  • Don’t work on Saturday.
  • It’s okay to have slaves, but only for seven years.
  • The Sky Thingie loves you and if you don’t believe that we’ll kill you.
  • Always capitalize the Sky Thingie’s name.  If you don’t, we’ll kill you.
  • Never draw a picture of the Sky Thingie or we’ll kill you.
  • Women are property and they should cover their heads and faces.  Or we’ll kill you.

You can tell from the last few rules that things started to take a nasty turn somewhere along the way and that the priests and religions were getting more powerful in society.  Not only had they established themselves as the only people who could interpret what the Sky Thingie wanted, they could also kill anyone who even tried to talk to the Sky Thingie on their own.

That’s really the point that we’re at with many of today’s formal religions.  They consist of centuries of barnacle-like accretions of irrational rules that can only be interpreted by the priests and pastors and rabbis.  Intelligent self inquiry is NOT encouraged.

Which is why the Buddhist approach is so refreshing.  

Formal religions have rules like, “Don’t eat bacon because the Sky Thingie says not to.”   Buddhist discussions are more like:

“Don’t eat bacon.”  

“Why not?  I really like BLT’s.”

“Do you want to be happy and avoid pain?”

“Well, yes.”

“Do you think pigs want to be happy and avoid pain?”

“Um . . . well . . . yes.  I suppose they do.”

“Do you think it’s painful to be raised in a tiny pen and killed when you’re young?”

“Well . . . yes.”

“Would you be happy if someone cut you up, fried you in a teflon pan and slapped you on a piece of bread with some tomatoes and lettuce?”

“Well, no.”

“Then don’t eat bacon.”

And, of course, even then, you’re free to eat bacon sandwiches if you want to.  No one will kill you and you won’t go to hell.  You might reincarnate as a pig, but, hey, fair’s fair, right?

As long as we’re on the subject of food, think of it this way:  religion is like being invited to a huge Thanksgiving dinner.  There are platters full of turkey and mashed potatoes and baked yams and apple pies and cornbread dressing and green bean casseroles with those strange fried onion things on top.  

Maybe you really hate baked yams or green beans and you just want a little turkey and dressing with mashed potatoes and gravy.  But, no, there’s a huge scary guy with a baseball bat at the head of the table and he says that you have to eat EVERYTHING!!!  Especially the green beans and yams.  Or he’ll kill you.  And then you’ll go to hell.  Gulp.

Spirituality, on the other hand, is more like a buffet line.  You walk along, looking at the varieties of food and you only pick out the food that appeals to YOU.  You don’t force down every single thing on the line just to prove that you’re faithful.  If you feel like a shrimp salad instead of Swedish meatballs, that’s what you get.  

“Meditation?  Yes, I think I’ll take a bit of that. Hmmm . . . Wicca . . . does that fit on my plate right now?  Maybe as a side dish?  Oh, look . . . it’s affirmations and positive thinking.  Man, I haven’t had those in FOREVER.  Yum. . .”

There are no priests or pastors standing at your shoulder telling you that you REALLY want the roast beef instead of the tacos.  YOU choose what’s nourishing for you at that moment and take a pass on what doesn’t feed your soul.  And it’s an all you can eat buffet.  You’re always free to go back for second helpings.

But maybe skip the bacon sandwich.  Just consider it.

Lost Car Keys, Emotional Ladders and Being Ram Dass’s Illegitimate Child

Learning to climb our emotional ladders.

Did you ever have one of those morning meditations that was absolutely perfect?  Maybe you get up out of bed, light a candle on your altar, close your eyes, and the love and peace just FLOW into you as you sit there.  You feel compassion for all living beings and you feel oneness with the entire cosmos.  You feel that if you aren’t totally Buddha-like, you must at least be the illegitimate child that Ram Dass never acknowledged.  You are just SO high, SO spiritual, SO totally in the flow!

The feeling may continue as you take your shower, allowing the warm water to wash all the negativity from your aura.  And then again, as you eat your oatmeal, reminding yourself that you honor all living beings by not eating the flesh of animals.  You know you’ll have a perfect day at work.

And then . . . and then . . . you can’t find your car keys.  You go through the pockets of the clothes you wore the day before.  Check your night stand.  Look under the bed.  Scour your sock drawer.  Crawl around on the floor in case you dropped them.  Within the span of a few moments you’ve been transformed from Pema Chodron into a snarling, wild eyed beast.

“Where are you, you goddamned little jingly bastards?  Where in the fuck ARE you?”

Ironically, at the very height of your fury and hysteria, you locate the keys.  On your altar.

Sigh.  Another failed leap into enlightenment.

In their book, “Ask and It Is Given,”  Esther and Jerry Hicks make the point that sometimes it’s perfectly okay to feel angry.  In fact, sometimes getting really pissed off can be a sign that our mental health is improving.

It’s kind of a breath of fresh air in the New Age/New Thought movement.  We are constantly being told that we must stay positive and that, because of the Law of Attraction, being angry will do nothing but attract angry people and unpleasant events into our lives.  We find ourselves trying to censor our emotions, consistently trying to not feel what we’re feeling –  if what we’re feeling is anger –  and then feeling guilty when we can’t do it.

The Hicks look at it from a slightly different vantage point, which is that angry emotion is better than no emotion.  The basic premise is that our emotions are what motivate us, what keep us moving in life, what draw us toward love and make us run away from hatred.  Without emotions, we’re just stuck, dead in the water.

They say we live on a sort of a ladder of emotions, with apathy and depression at the bottom rungs of the ladder and love and joy at the top. In between joy and depression there are our other emotional states like irritation, feeling overwhelmed, pessimism, hopefulness, and so on.  As we climb the ladder and become more fully emotionally engaged with joy, we become more fully alive. When we descend the ladder into depression and apathy, we’re not really living, we’re just existing.  The ladder would look a lot like this:

JOY

POSITIVE EXPECTATION

OPTIMISM

HOPEFULNESS

PESSIMISM

IRRITATION

OVERWHELM

BLAME

ANGER

REVENGE 

RAGE

DEPRESSION

APATHY

I really like that idea of an emotional ladder because it allows me to be the mess that I frequently am and be honest with myself about where I’m at.  As the Hicks said in another book, it’s easy to program a GPS to take you from Phoenix to L.A. but first you have to know that you’re in Phoenix.  If we’re on the second to the top rung of the ladder – positive expectation – then it’s relatively easy to take that next step up to joy.  On the other hand, if we’re stuck WAY down the ladder in anger and we try to jump straight  up into joy, we’re probably going to fall off of the ladder and land on our asses.  It’s important to be honest with ourselves about where we really are on our emotional journey.  It saves us from broken asses.

And that leads into another neat concept which the Hicks came up with: the, “emotional set point.”  Basically, that’s just the rung of the emotional ladder that we live on most of the time.  We humans tend to be creatures of habit and so we pretty much maintain a consistent emotional state.  If we’re happy most of the time, we’ll stay happy most of the time.  If we’re sad most of the time, we’ll stay sad most of the time.  We may occasionally climb up and down a few rungs on the emotional ladder as life brings us good or bad events, but we tend to return to what feels like our, “natural,” state of being.

And there is a certain natural, genetic component involved in that.  According to The Harvard Health Blog, about half of the reason we may be happy or sad is based on the disposition we were born with.  So that person you know who’s always chirpy and perky and bright and annoyingly happy?  Yeah, that’s probably real.  They were likely just born that way.  And the friend who always seems a little sad may have just inherited it from his parents.  It’s their natural emotional set points.

The good news behind that, though, is that we can change our emotional set points.  Just because it feels, “natural,” to be in a certain emotional state doesn’t mean that we have to stay in that emotional state.

Suppose, for instance, that I’m a perfectionist.  I would want everything to go exactly according to plan and turn out just the way I’d envisioned it. 

What would flow out of that state of being would be a great deal of impatience with my co-workers and/or family members because they weren’t living up to the high standards that I set.  I might be constantly criticizing them, sniping at them, belittling their efforts and generally acting like an insufferable prick.

The cure for that could be to do loving-kindness meditations.  Starting to actively envision what other people are going through and building in empathy for the fact that they’re struggling with life the same way that I am.  As I continued to do that, my perfectionist expectations would drop away and I’d begin to see the people around me as fully dimensional human beings who deserve caring and patience.  I’m changing my emotional set point.

Or perhaps, like so many of us, we grew up in physically or emotionally abusive families.  Our, “go to,” response to stress in life might then be emotional flatness.  We learned very early in life that it’s easier to just turn off our emotions rather than feel the pain of the abuse.  

What flows out of that is becoming emotionally absent with our partners or children whenever there’s a problem.  Even worse, we abandon ourselves emotionally and fail to experience joy and deep love because we’re so shut down.

The cure for that could be to start doing, “happiness meditations.”  Just sit down once or twice a day and meditate on something that makes us happy, even if it’s a distant childhood memory of a beloved dog.  Start learning to live in that emotion again.  Stopping several times during the day and asking ourselves, “Am I happy right now?”  And, if we’re not, pull up that memory again until happiness becomes a habit.

The point is that it’s a practice, the same way that yoga or meditation are practices.  We don’t get where we want to go all at once.  If we come home and find our life partner shtupping our best friend, it’s okay to be angry.  In fact, it’s a hell of a lot better to be angry than it is to be depressed.  Anger can empower us but depression takes our power away.

As long as we’re feeling something, we’re still okay.  We’re still moving.  We’re still growing.  And, as the Hicks said, we can reach up for that next best emotion on the ladder. We can change our emotional set point.  It’s better to feel irritation than to feel overwhelmed.  It’s better to feel pessimism than to feel irritation.  It’s better to feel hopefulness than to feel irritation.  We can steadily, consciously move our emotional set point upward toward joy as long as we’re honest about what we’re feeling and we don’t shut ourselves down.

If we don’t feel it, we don’t heal it.  If we don’t heal it, we don’t grow.  And growing toward happiness is even better than knowing where your car keys are hiding.

Happiness, Meaningfulness, and the Four of Pentacles

The importance and differences between happiness and meaningfulness in our live.

In her wonderful book,The Power of Misfits: How to Find Your Place in a World You Don’t Fit In, Anna LeMind references a study by Roy F. Baumeister on the differences between happiness and meaningfulness.  In some cases, the two experiences may overlap, but they aren’t always synonymous.

It turns out that human beings crave both happiness and meaningfulness.  The Buddha tells us that all sentient creatures want to feel happiness and avoid pain, and we share that drive with the birds and the bees, the turtles and the spiders.  Bring on the happiness, baby, and take away that pain.  That’s an old blues song, I think.

Where we differ from most of the animal world (we believe) is that we also need to have a sense of meaning in our lives.  Having a lot of orgasms may make us extremely happy, but it doesn’t necessarily bring any meaningfulness into our existence.  If we’re lying on our death beds reviewing our lives, we’re not likely to say, “Man, I had 20,000 orgasms.  Now that’s a life well lived.  My life really meant something.”

According to this study, it’s actually pretty easy to define what makes us happy.  Being happy involves three major components:

  1. – having our needs satisfied.  That’s a pretty simple one.  If we’re hungry, it makes us happy to eat.  If we’re cold, it makes us happy to get warmed up.  If we’re horny, it makes us happy to have sex.
  2. – having the sense that we can obtain what we need and want.  In other words, not just eating when we’re hungry but knowing that we have the powers and abilities to get out there and get that food all on our own.
  3. – feeling good most of the time.  That’s kind of a no-brainer, but it’s true.  People who mostly feel good are mostly happy and people who feel lousy are mostly unhappy.

None of those three factors necessarily make us feel that our lives are meaningful, though.  Feeling good, for instance, is very strongly associated with being happy, but not necessarily with feeling meaningful.  People who are very healthy tend to be happier than people who are sick, but both healthy and sick people have an equal shot at leading a meaningful life.

Having the powers and abilities to get what we need and want is another one that may make us happy, but it doesn’t necessarily bring meaningfulness along with it.  In our society, having the power to get what we need and want usually means having money.  If you really, really, really need and want that new computer, you have to have the dough-ray-me to pay for it, right?

But even money has a very strange relationship with meaningfulness.  In the Tarot, the suit of pentacles represents material possessions and money.  In the Four of Pentacles, we see a guy who’s really having a love affair with money.  He’s got his feet resting on money, he’s got his arms wrapped around money, and he’s got money sitting on his head.  What a happy guy!

Probably.

Maybe.

Could be.

The study found that people who have plenty of money tend to be happier people, BUT they don’t necessarily report living a life that’s more meaningful.  On the other hand, NOT having enough money makes people less happy and their lives feel less meaningful.  So it’s not really the money that counts, it’s the lack of it.

Here’s another interesting little snippet of information that’s about life being easy versus life being hard.  We’ve all known people who appeared to be unbelievably lucky.  It’s like anything they want just seems to fall into their laps with little or no effort on their parts.

And we’ve also known people who seem to be unbelievably unlucky.  No matter how hard they work, no matter how much they struggle and strive, life consistently turns into a shit sandwich for them and their desires and goals slip away like vapors in the wind.

Unsurprisingly, having an easy life makes people very happy.  And having a hard life makes people unhappy.  But neither one of those is linked in ANY way to a sense of meaningfulness.  You can have the easiest life in the world and still feel like it doesn’t mean anything.

There’s another fascinating element with meaningfulness and happiness, which is TIME.

We know how the mindfulness meditation people are constantly hammering at us about, “Stay in the present moment!  There’s no unhappiness in the present moment.”

It turns out they’re right!  Happiness is very highly correlated with living in the NOW, in the present moment, rather than ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.

But, unfortunately, it’s also inversely correlated with having a sense of meaning.  The more you live in the present moment, the happier you’ll be, but you also sacrifice a sense of your life having any overall meaning.

Why?  Because meaningfulness is a function of time.  The greater the span of time in your life that you’re contemplating, the greater a sense of meaningfulness you’ll have.  If you think about what yesterday and today meant, the odds are that they didn’t mean very much, unless something extraordinary happened.  On the other hand, if you think about what the last ten or twenty years of your life meant, you’re much more likely to see patterns and meaning.

And the same thing applies to the future.  The future gives the present moment meaning because it involves us in taking purposeful actions meant to create that future.  What we’re doing today is meaningful because it has a purpose – making the future.

So we have this odd conundrum.  The more we stay in the present moment, the happier we’ll be, but the less meaning we’ll derive from our lives.  The more we dwell on the future and the past, the less happy we’ll be, but the more our lives will feel meaningful.

The study also found an oddity in our perceptions of happiness and meaningfulness.  People tend to view happiness as being relatively fleeting, something we feel momentarily and then it gets away from us.  And they feel that meaningfulness is more permanent, something that will last long after happiness has disappeared.  Which is just not true.  Both meaningfulness and happiness tend to be fairly stable and long lasting.  We probably just feel that happiness passes quickly because it’s so intimately related to the present moment, which is always appearing and disappearing, appearing and disappearing, shazam!

Which brings us to the probable reason for why meaningfulness is so important to human beings.  The author concluded that MEANINGFULNESS IS AN ATTEMPT TO IMPOSE ORDER ON FLUX.  Life is chaotic, man.  Life is constantly changing, constantly transforming, constantly shazamming from one thing into another and then another and then another.

And it drives us nuts.  We need a sense of stability, of orderly progression, of the past moving logically into the present which will then move logically into the future.  We need to be able to connect the past, present and future of our lives in a MEANINGFUL way.  Otherwise it feels like life is something that just happened to us, rather than something we lived.

If all of this sounds very complex, it’s because IT IS.  We are very complex.  To seek happiness is to be alive.  Every single animal on the earth seeks happiness.  But to seek meaning is distinctively human.  It’s who we are.  It’s what we do.  Meaningfulness is not necessarily the same thing as happiness, but it’s just as important.

The Magician, The Devil, and the Habit of Evil


Have you ever had someone in your life who was truly evil?  I mean, beyond our usual descriptors of, “He’s an angry person.”  Or mean. Or disturbed. Or selfish. 

I mean, really, genuinely evil.  Someone who consciously inflicts as much pain as they can, knowing that it’s wrong.  It can leave you wondering about the world and about everything you believe in.

For most of history, human beings have been using a sort of, “argument from nature,” to excuse their worst behavior.  They point to the world of animals where fangs and claws seem to rule, and pronounce that it’s either kill or be killed, the strong survive and the weak die, and, since we’re animals, too, those rules apply to us, as well.  We HAVE to be cruel because it’s our nature.

Even leaving aside their totally disregarding all of the love and nurturing that we ALSO see in the animal world, it’s a bogus point of view.  They are deliberately ignoring the fact that good and evil are choices and that where no choice exists no concept of evil can exist.

We might feel pretty squeamish watching a cat torture a mouse but we don’t think that the cat is evil because of it.  We recognize that it’s the cat’s nature and instinct to hunt and kill and that the cat hasn’t made a conscious choice in the matter.  There’s no evil because there’s no choice between good and evil and where there’s no choice there can be no morality.

In The Fool card, we see pure energy entering into the world.  In The Magician card we see a human being directing that energy and choosing how it will be used.  He or she can use it for benefit or harm, for good or for evil, and that’s the point where morality is born.

To a certain extent, those of us who have embraced the New Age movement are guilty of being a little goody two-shoes about the existence of evil.  We try to live in the affirmation of love and caring and we try to NOT let negativity, malice, anger, and hatred into our lives or our consciousness.  But, as Louise Hay said, “If you are going to clean the house, you have to see the dirt.” Pretending the evil isn’t there doesn’t make it go away.

The good news is that there’s probably a LOT less evil in the world than some religions would have us believe.  If we recognize that true evil involves a conscious choice to hurt and cause suffering we can eliminate all of the animal world because they operate on instinct, not choice.  

Psychotics – even serial killers – can’t really be called evil in the pure sense because they can’t make rational choices.

Serious alcoholics and drug addicts can’t really be called evil – no matter how much damage they do – because they’re driven by their compulsions and disease.

Sociopaths and narcissists get us into an interesting – and scary – gray area.  Sociopaths actually recognize that other people make moral choices between good and evil but they have no internal moral compass themselves.  They recognize the concepts but they just don’t care about them.

Malignant narcissists also recognize that other people make moral choices but they think we’re stupid to do so.  They delight in manipulating people who have a sense of right and wrong and use those deceptions to enhance their own sense of being superior to everyone else.  “See how I charmed you and lied to you and you were too stupid to know the difference?”

And that’s a strange thing to wrap your head around.  If someone knows the difference between good and evil behavior on an intellectual level, but has no heart, no compassion, no empathy with others, are they actually capable of understanding the hurt and pain they’re inflicting?  And if they don’t really understand it, are they evil or just very flawed humans?

I dunno.

Sadly, it seems that a lot of the evil in the world and in ourselves is a matter of plain old habit and rationalization.

The Devil card is very dramatic.  We see two humans in chains with a literal Bat Out of Hell glowering above them.  The riff on this from fundamentalists christians would be that there is evil everywhere and if you’re not careful The Devil can reach out and SNATCH you up, just like that!

But – again – evil is not something that is external to us;  it’s an internal choice. In fact, it’s a series of choices. Despite the theme in horror films, no one is born evil.  We just get comfortable with it. We CHOOSE to act wrongly, to react with anger instead of compassion, to indulge our rage instead of finding our love, until choosing to be a curse in the world rather than a blessing is a habit.

So the people in The Devil card aren’t just wearing their chains.  They made them, one link at a time.

“Little by little a person becomes evil, as a water pot is filled by drops of water… Little by little a person becomes good, as a water pot is filled by drops of water.” – Buddha

Even Hitler was once someone’s beautiful baby boy.  Choose carefully.