I recently had the opportunity to meet with Joanna Macy, and she shared with me a document she had sent to her colleagues in preparation for a panel discussion surrounding the Dalai Lama’s visit to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Here are some ideas I picked up from that message: Joanna points out that we live in a world that may be dying. Entire species and life support systems are already dying, and mass poverty, hunger, oppression, disease, and conflict are affecting an ever-increasing percentage of Earth’s living things. We can do something about it, but we tend to act as if we don’t believe what’s happening. She asks, “How can we just be present to what’s happening and make it real? Great adventures await us. What is it that corrodes our will, our creativity, our solidarity?”
Joanna realized that many people develop beliefs about spirituality that prevent them from realizing their transformative power. Some of the “spiritual traps” that can desensitize compassionate action include:
1. The phenomenal world of existence is not real. In this view, the pain of others and the demands that their pain makes on us are less concrete than the joy and sense of detachment that we gain from transcending them.
2. All the suffering we experience as we view the world arises from our own cravings and attachments. In this view, the ideal way to deal with suffering is not to lose attachment to ego-related problems, but to lose attachment to the fate of all living beings.
3. We are always creating the world unilaterally through our subjective thinking. Conflict is considered negative thinking, and acceptance is positive thinking. Therefore, when we face the injustices and dangers of the world, we conclude that we are only creating more conflict and misunderstanding.
4. And the corollary is that when we look at the world spiritually, the world is already perfect. We feel so at peace that the world will become peaceful without our action.
With this clear explanation of erroneous views, bondage and snares disappear. Our responsibility is made clear.
1990
Recently I’ve been thinking about non-violence from a Buddhist perspective, which seems to fit very well with the Noble Eightfold Path.
Right View, the first step on the path, reveals a world in which living things are constantly changing, born and passing away. These living things are in a symbiotic relationship, with everything intimately dependent on everything else. This intimacy is not merely close; everything is inherent in everything else. As Whitman says, “I include all things, that is, the multitude.”
Violence against others is violence against everyone, including yourself.
But each being is unique. Each element in each being is unique. Each leaf on each tree has its own special shape. Such is the great dynamism of the universe. The function of each individual is to mature as a unique being with the clearest possible awareness that my fulfillment is the fulfillment of all, and the fulfillment of other beings is the fulfillment of all. Nonviolence is the path to such fulfillment. Violence towards others is violence to all, including myself. It’s so easy to say, but so difficult to practice.
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This article Words of Encouragement: Zen Buddhist Teachings for Western Students By Robert Aitken, published in the United States by Pantheon Books, an imprint of Random House, originally published in the Diamond Sangha Newsletter. Copyright © 1993 Robert Aitken.
