Ever Wonder Why the World Is the Way It Is?

We live in a dysfunctional world.  Violence and conflict are all around us … within ourselves, within families, within societies, between nations.  How often do I hear people asking, “Why?”

The typical answer is some version of, “That’s just life,” or “It’s human nature.”  But that’s too easy and facile an answer.  The truth is more complicated and enlightening.  While it’s true that it is the way it is, it is not human nature; it’s human development.  That means it’s not inevitable; people can change.  We have a choice.

All religions depict life as a constant struggle between light and darkness.  In former times, that fight was often spoken of as being between God and the Devil. 

These days one hears little about the Devil for the same reason that most people don’t talk much about God.  The existence of these deities as external forces that control our lives, to whom we can on the one hand pray for deliverance or on the other bargain with for what we desire, just flies in the face of both our life experience and scientific knowledge.  Many have thus lost their belief in the God of our forefathers, if not declaring God dead.

But another concept of God is very much alive for those who walk the path of spirituality/mysticism … whether it’s Buddhism, Hinduism, Jewish Kabbalah, Islamic Sufism, or Christian Gnosticism.  Their truth is that the Buddha/God essence is within each of us from the moment of our birth and remains there throughout our life.  

But that divine essence becomes hidden from us over the years, buried by successive layers of our ego-mind’s reaction to life’s experiences.  We become wounded by those experiences.  We become lost to our true selves.  And so we walk the path to reconnect, to rediscover our true selves.  Our salvation comes from within us, not from some outside force.  And so the eternal struggle is seen as being between our heart/soul and our ego-mind.

While we learn that the Buddha was tempted by Mara, the Buddhist equivalent of the Devil, I have never, I believe, heard the Devil mentioned when speaking of the challenge of healing ourselves, of ending our suffering. The reference is rather to freeing ourselves from the control of our ego-mind, it being the true source of our suffering, not the events we experience.  As the Buddha said, to free ourselves of the conceit “I am” is the ultimate freedom.

Recently, however, I felt the presence of the Devil.  I was having dinner with a friend who knows he has to limit his consumption of alcohol.  But he said he wanted a second glass of wine that night.  And that after dinner he wanted to go to some bars and have a beer like he does when he travels with other friends of his.  Knowing I would disapprove and say “no,” the expression on his face when he talked was a mocking one, sly.  I was aware of the strangeness of it at the moment, but I didn’t recognize it.  Only when I meditated the next morning, did I realize that I had been in the presence of the Devil.

I now understand that just as in some religions the Devil is thought to be a fallen angel,  in Buddhism, as well as the mystic traditions, the Devil can be equated with our ego-mind, which is our internal fallen angel/Buddha/God nature.  We have become so wounded repeatedly over the years that the ego-mind has no trust, no faith, and is consumed by fear; it has become cynical about the world around us.  It has overpowered our true self to “protect” us; we are in its control.  And so the Devil, our own Devil, is inside each of us; it is the nature of our ego-mind.

Ernestine, the Flip Wilson drag character, used to say, “The Devil made me do it!” In comic strips, a person was sometimes portrayed with an angel sitting on one shoulder whispering in his ear and the Devil sitting on the other doing the same, being confused by the competing advice; a graphic depiction of our internal Devil as well as our internal God-essence.   We have all experienced that.  So the concept is not foreign to our culture or experience.

I have written in previous posts how all the conflict and violence in the world, whether in the home, workplace, society or between nations is a result of the insecurity that man acquires from his life experiences.  (See my posts, “The Root of All Abuse and Violence - Insecurity” and “Insecurity as the Cause of Social Conflict and International War.”)  

That the ego-mind is not only filled with the fear, anxiety and self-centeredness (and often aggression) caused by insecurity but through continued wounding has acquired the lack of faith, trust, and cynicism of the Devil makes the dysfunction we observe all that more intractable.  And it explains the specter of evil that we see in all corners of the world.

This is why the world is the way it is.  It’s not because people are bad … there is no such thing as a bad person, just people who do bad things … or that humans are flawed.  It’s because our life experience has made us insecure and our ego-minds have reacted in a way which makes us a threat to our own well-being and the well-being of those around us.  The greater our insecurity, the more of a threat we become.  At some point we become the Devil incarnate.

If one wants to save the world from itself, this insight offers a possible agent of change.  It may not only be very helpful in a practical way for those already struggling to free themselves from the control of their ego-mind, the control of their emotions and perceptions, it may encourage more people, both leaders and followers, to enter upon that path.

How?  We very much identify with our ego-mind.  Its feelings and perceptions are all we’ve known our entire life.  Even for those who walk the path of the spiritual/mystic traditions, while we come to learn that our feelings and perceptions are the cause of our suffering and are not a reflection of our true selves, the power of these feelings are often barely diminished because we find it hard to deeply disown them.  So powerful is the ego-mind.  

When push comes to shove, we always return to the perspective of our wounded self, our ego-mind.  We have not purged ourselves from its grip.  The roots in our self-perception go too deep.

Identifying the ego-mind with the Devil may be very helpful because that image does not conjure up “I.”  It conjures up instead trickery, deceit, doing something against one’s best interest, evil … which is in truth how the ego-mind operates and controls us.  

Most people, regardless their status in life, regardless their lack of spirituality, would not I believe want to self-identify with the Devil.  It thus may well open the door at least a crack to the light of their heart.  And encourage people to at least ponder walking the path in order to find the way to disown their ego-mind and say “no” to its guidance, thereby freeing themselves from its control and finding inner peace and happiness.

Each soul saved makes for a better world.  Religions have always taught that.  But now salvation rests with the individual, what he chooses to do with his life.  Whether he chooses light or darkness, peace or suffering, not with his belief in a God external to himself.  This spirituality is of the present moment.   Its reward is here and now in a life of peace and happiness, not a Heaven to be experienced after death.

Darkness Before Light

We learn that life is a struggle between the forces of light and darkness.  Buddhism sees the conflict as between your heart and your ego-mind.  In Christianity, it’s between God and the Devil.  

Many holy men have taught that there can be no light without darkness, without first suffering you cannot learn how to free yourself from suffering.  In this line of thinking, we drift from the true Buddha nature or God-essence we were born with because without suffering first, we cannot live a truly spiritual life.  To be spiritual without having ever suffered is almost an oxymoron.  Our suffering grounds our spirituality.

I have certainly experienced personally, and I have observed it in many others, that until one reaches rock bottom in one’s suffering, an all-enveloping darkness, we do not have the motivation to change our habit-energy.  We cannot fully release ourselves from the emotions, judgments, cravings, or attachments that cause our suffering.  

No matter how strongly people may feel and honestly mean that, for example, they want an end to their addiction, until they hit rock bottom they will not be able to emerge and remain sober.  That is why, regardless the nature of the addiction, the typical scenario is that people return to their addiction over and over again.

During a recent meditation, I became aware that this personal lesson applies equally well to societies and nations.  Take for example anti-semitism.  It has existed for most of the Christian era and despite the fact that in the U.S. and other countries it is no longer politically correct to voice such feelings, they are still there not that far beneath the surface.

Only one society hit rock bottom with regard to this darkness … Germany.  Because of Hitler and the holocaust, the German people have taken it upon themselves, especially the post-WWII generations, to free themselves from this blight.  And they have been very thorough and disciplined about it.  They have gone far beyond passing laws making racial hate speech and action against the law.  Even today, 70 years after the end of the war, children are taught in the schools about the holocaust in a very unvarnished way so that they understand and will never countenance any form of anti-semitism.

The United States, unfortunately, has never dealt with its history of slavery and racial discrimination with anything close to the same determined thoroughness.   After the cataclysmic Civil War, nothing was done in the north or the south to rid the nation of this cancer on its soul.  Yes, the 14th amendment was passed guaranteeing the government’s equal treatment of all, but there was no accompanying national effort to root out racism and free ourselves of it once and for all.  And so it just festered.  

Almost a century later came the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and other laws which brought more legal equality to African-Americans, outlawing discrimination not just by the state but by corporations and individuals in many settings.  And while these laws brought about meaningful changes in the their lives, it did nothing to change the underlying racism and discrimination present throughout much of our society.

Why have we come such a little distance in this matter which is of such great importance to the soul and welfare of our country?  Part of the reason is that during the short period when the defenders of slavery were weak, immediately after the Civil War, the government did nothing to change the underlying pattern and reeducate people; the tactics of the Reconstruction Era were a farce and did more harm than good.  

After that short period, the defenders of racism became strong again; the white forces that opposed racism, relatively weak.  They had been, after all, primarily against slavery, not endemic racism, and slavery was no more.  Yes, a century later they managed to pass some needed laws, but doing what would have been necessary to cleanse the country was not even under discussion.  Partly because it would have meant cleansing the north of racism as well, and there would have been little support for that.  Partly because it was just taken as a given that racism would exist; it was not extinguishable.

Now the dark head of racism and bigotry has raised itself once again.  During the recent presidential election, the level of vilification leveled at various classes of Americans, and immigrants, by a major party candidate was unheard of in modern times.  And it has empowered a small core of Trump supporters to unleash its racial venom in the form of acts of violence and vandalism.

After the election, I urged the people to rise up in the spirit of Gandhi and MLK and demonstrate en masse in solidarity with all those being attacked as well as the long-suffering American worker through a new organization, American Solidarity, but to no avail.  See my posts, “How to Respond to the Election?” and “The Case for Civil Disobedience,” and www.americansolidarity.org.

But after the President’s recent executive order barring entry to all people from seven Muslim-majority countries as well as all refugees from Syria, there has been a groundswell of protest across the country against what is seen as an assault on human rights and the historic openness of America.  

Everyone supports vetting travelers and refugees for possible terrorist leanings.  We need to protect the country from a very real danger.  But Trump’s action was over-broad, smacked of Islamophobia, and because of its incendiary nature was felt by many to actually increase the threat of terrorism not decrease it.

Will this outpouring of support for respect and against bigotry towards Muslims, caused by our current darkness, build into a movement that attacks the more deeply rooted racism and bigotry that America continues to labor under?  Or will we need to descend further into this pit so that the American people and government finally cannot escape what it needs to do in this matter?  

I certainly hope that we don’t need to descend so far.  On the other hand, I fear that if we don’t, the whole episode will be papered over and nothing fundamental will change.  The lives of Muslims, women, and LGBT people, even Latinos, will probably get back on track.  But for Blacks, their lives will remain basically the same as they have since the end of slavery.  Yes, they can stay in hotels, and eat in restaurants, and many blacks have risen out of poverty and have good jobs, but in more fundamental ways nothing has really changed.

God Is Not Dead, We Just Look for God in the Wrong Places

There have been many pronouncements that God is dead.  The most famous perhaps is that of Friedrich Nietzsche, although it is widely misunderstood.  If you look beyond the quoted phrase, Nietzsche was saying that we have killed God.  That we have taken away everything that was magical in God’s creation and are left with nothing to moor us.  

“But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?”

This is not the statement of a Godless man, but one who realizes that our modern knowledge makes it impossible to believe in the God of the Old Testament and that we must find something else to believe in, to moor us.  

Darwin’s theory of evolution as well as the many discoveries of modern science regarding the history of the world just are not compatible with the Bible.  In a word, one cannot believe that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and that man is several million years old .. even modern man is about 50,000 years old … and believe in the God of Genesis.

But others have argued a more fundamental point, as do I.  The history of life on Earth has proven that the concept of a God to whom one prays and who is said to answer prayers and control life on earth is an illusion, purely a creature of belief.  So even if one looks at the Bible with a grain of salt and says that God guided the creation of the Earth and all that is upon it over this expanse of time, the God that we’ve been taught to believe in just doesn’t exist.

What kind of God would have allowed slavery?  What kind of God would have allowed the holocaust and all the other gross and minor inhumanities of man.  What kind of God would for some reason make a child suffer and die?  The questions go on and on.

In the old days, and even today, many people answer these questions, not willing to see the facts as evidence that such a God doesn’t exist, with the classic, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”  Because if they did not believe in God, what would they believe in?  As Nietzsche said, God is their mooring. 

The answer is not so much a “new” conception of God, but one that has existed almost as long as the world’s major religions … that God, that the Devine, is to be found in each of us.  It’s just not a concept that has received much exposure. 

The mystical traditions of all three Abrahamic faiths ... Christianity (Gnosticism), Judaism (Kabbalah), and Islam (Sufism) ... as well as Buddhism and Hinduism contain the teaching that what we think of as being ourselves, our ego, is not our true self.  That instead our true self is variously defined as our heart, our true Buddha nature, our Divine essence.  Our suffering results from our true self having been buried under years of learned experience at the hands of our family, peers, and culture, of our thus identifying with and being under the control of our ego.  Unfortunately, these truths are not stated in the Old Testament or Koran nor are the flocks of these religions taught this truth.  How sad.

Although Christ did not speak to this issue, some in the early church, such as Paul, and later Augustine, and then the Reformation, put forth the concept of original sin … that we are all born sinners because of Adam’s not heeding God’s word in the Garden of Eden and being cast out.  And that only God, or Christ, can bring salvation.  This concept became central to the teaching of the Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations.

But as I noted in my post, “Our Culture Is the Serpent in the Garden of Eden,” I believe that this take on the story is wrong.  What then is the real lesson of the Garden of Eden?  

As told in Genesis, in the paradise that God created, man and woman were naked, but they were not embarrassed by their nakedness and they were one with all things.  The only thing forbidden to them was to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.   They lived in a world where there was no “knowledge” of right or wrong, good or bad, no cravings, fear, or strife.  Interestingly, the paradise of Genesis is virtually identical with the Buddhist Nirvana.

But they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The point is not so much that God’s commandment was broken and that they thus sinned and were cast out, but that because it was broken in this specific way, they lost their innocence and the world would never be the same.  

The story does relate dramatically, metaphorically, that man would be separated from the Tree of Life, from the knowledge of his true self, his God-essence, having gained knowledge of good and evil.  But not that man for all eternity will be burdened with original sin and be born a sinner.  That is the spin that Christianity put on the story.  And as a result, millions of people in each generation have believed, because they were so taught, that they were born sinners.  Not a healthy self-concept.

The teaching of the opposing universal truth … that our ego is not our true self but that the God/Buddha essence is … is found in the teachings of the Buddha, in Sufi literature such as, The Art of Being and Becoming, in the Kabbalah, in the teachings of Gnosticism, and in the Bhagavad Gita.  Contrary to the fear of Nietzsche and many others that man will be left rudderless without their belief in the old God, contrary to the proof they see in our modern culture of the death of the old God and the resulting waywardness of people, God has always been alive and well inside each and every one of us.  

But it is for us to rediscover it, to uncover it, and allow it to embrace us and transform us.  For example, according to Kabbalah, “every soul is pure in essence and the only salvation is to become enlightened (i.e. to remember the truth of who and what we really are). … Salvation is the process of clearing out whatever obstructs our manifestation of the concealed divine image. … Kabbalah leads to the conclusion that ultimately we must rely on ourselves - for we alone have the power to save ourselves.”  It is to our heart we must look for guidance, not our ego-mind.

If one were to ask why most of organized Christianity adopted the doctrine of original sin, and why in Judaism and Islam the teaching that the God-essence is in each of us is mostly confined to their mystical branches, the answer might be found in that statement of Kabbalah just quoted … “we must rely on ourselves, for we alone have the power to save ourselves.”  Organized religion could well have felt that that teaching would reduce its power and influence.   Or it could be that organized religion didn’t have faith that we, ordinary people, can save ourselves and thus felt we needed something external to believe in.

Having found Buddhism in my middle age and walked the path for more than 20 years now, I can attest that freeing ourselves from our ego-mind is not an easy matter.  It involves changing the habit-energies of a lifetime; changing everything we have come to believe about who we are.  But it is possible, with discipline and good teaching, to find the Buddha nature, the God essence, inside each of us.  First comes belief in the teaching, then meditation and practice, and ultimately self-realization.

God is alive and well.  The God-spirit is in each of us, no matter how high or low, no matter how pure or consumed with evil thoughts and acts.  We have all been led astray by the serpent of learned insecurity and the culture of “want.”  We have been programmed by our life experiences to act and think as we do.  But that is our ego, not our true self.  There is no such thing as a bad person; just persons who do bad things.

If we all sought to find the Divine in each of us, the world would be a very different place.

Aging - A Buddhist's Take on the Stages of Life

Because in our culture we tend to identify ourselves very closely with our bodies, the life cycle of man is usually portrayed visually in its physical manifestation. While this baby to invalid cycle certainly describes the passage of time for man’s body, it is not descriptive of the growth or deterioration of man’s spirit or wisdom over time.

Most cultures, through the ages up to the present day, have thought of the baby at the beginning of the cycle as a virtual blank slate, who knows nothing and who learns as he or she grows.  One exception is the Christian concept of Original Sin, a burden we are told we are born with and which can only be escaped through salvation.

As man grows older he was considered, until modern times, to gain in wisdom from his length of experience and his distance from the passions of youth, unless or until the point that senility struck.  Wisdom being defined as the knowledge of what is true and right, knowledge of how the world works, and the ability to make wise judgments.  As a result, in most societies, it was the elders who were held in the highest esteem.

In contemporary times, however, wisdom is generally not valued or sought after in most cultures  …   certainly not in the West and increasingly not in the East.  The sole remnant is in scholarly circles and to a certain extent, perhaps, in religious orders.  Rather it is simply knowledge that is valued, and knowledge is increasing equated with technological skill, with the ability to be technologically innovative being the highest valued skill of all.  

As a result, not just the old, but increasingly the middle-aged  … who were once thought to be at their prime professionally … are felt to be irrelevant to most everything.  Their way of thinking, of viewing the world, is outdated. One clear exception to this is the financial industry, where the only criterion of value is the ability to make money; it doesn’t matter how old you are.  In politics, it’s hard to say what is valued, other than the ability to get elected.  But no one, old or otherwise, is esteemed because of his or her wisdom.  

The Buddhist perspective on the trajectory of man’s life is quite different, starting with birth.  The Buddha taught that we are all born essentially perfect with the true Buddha nature inside us.  Zen Master Bankei (1622-1693) took this one step further and taught that we are all born with the unborn Buddha mind within us and so are born enlightened.

Thus, as a newborn, we are like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.   We have not yet tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and thus have no knowledge of right and wrong, like and dislike, fear and insecurity.  We are one with our unborn Buddha mind.  Everything just is.  (Note: the Tree of Knowledge is not a metaphor for knowledge in the sense of scholarly learning; it is knowledge in the sense of  judgment of oneself and the world around one.  Thus Adam and Eve had no shame in their nakedness in the Garden of Eden, but afterwards wore a metaphorical fig leaf.)

What happens after we are born is that we do indeed learn.  We taste, one could say are force-fed, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and as a result most of us are thrust out of the Garden of Eden into a life of suffering … of insecurity, fear, doubt, anxiety, anger, greed, lust, negativity, pride (yes, one can be very insecure and very prideful at the same time) … for the rest of our lives.  One may gain much factual knowledge and skill so that one is valued and rewarded financially, but as the years pass most people deteriorate spiritually, becoming ever more trapped by their feelings of insecurity and its destructive consequences, ever more distanced from the purity they were born with.

But the true Buddha nature is always alive within each person.  And so, if he becomes aware of the true nature of his suffering (in short, that it’s not a function of what is, but how one perceives it), if he stops walking through life asleep, he has a choice to return home to his unborn Buddha mind, which I must note is quite different from being saved or being born again, although the latter sounds similar.  

Let me explain.  When you return home to your unborn Buddha mind, you are at peace, judge neither yourself nor anyone else, and have the compassion born of loving kindness towards all.  When people are born again in the Evangelical movement, their faith may be reborn and they may have a “personal” relationship with Christ, but they unfortunately do not become Christ-like, they do not return to the unborn Christ within them.  Instead they become full of judgment towards others and self-righteous.

But I digress.  So, whether as a teenager, an adult, or a senior citizen, if we are lucky enough to experience something that wakes us up (and this something is often a tragedy or something “bad”), we have the opportunity to walk the path of the Buddha and become free of the feelings and perceptions that have made us suffer all our lives.  We relearn that our purpose in life is being compassionate and offering joy to all others (and thus to ourselves), not making as much money and acquiring as much as possible.  Thus, although the body may deteriorate as we age, the spirit may blossom and we may achieve what Buddhists refer to as “perfected wisdom.”

Which brings me to the issue of aging … valuing the elderly and death.  In our society we typically warehouse the elderly, whether well-off or poor.  If you’re well-off, you will have more comfort, but basically you will still be separated from your loved ones and, as you become more infirm, increasingly isolated from the rest of society, from that which gives life its context and meaning. 

It didn’t use to be this way.  In an earlier day, when family values and options were very different, the elderly were cared for by their families in their homes.  It was often difficult and burdensome, but the elderly were given love (I know it wasn’t always this ideal), and at least were surrounded by family rather than segregated into the unfamiliarity of an independent living apartment or a nursing home.

At the same time as we have made the process of aging more isolating, modern medicine combined with religious mores have resulted in more people aging and suffering in a way oddly appropriate in this age in which technology is worshipped.  Many elderly people are kept alive now who in earlier days would have died.  We typically see this as something wonderful.  And often it is.  But is it wonderful for the person if their quality of life is gone, as it is for so many?

There are several aspects of Buddhism which are relevant to how we treat the elderly and death.  The first is that all people are valued, all are respected.  Whether wise or not, at peace or troubled, old or young, a doer of hurtful things or good things … a Buddhist has compassion flowing from loving kindness for all, knowing that everyone suffers and that we all are they way we are because that’s how we’ve been programmed by our life experiences.  Free will is not a Buddhist concept.

Without question, the elderly are to be especially respected and treated with compassion because many are wise and all have weathered so much of life.  Yet I think it can be safely said that our current way of “dealing” with the elderly is neither respectful nor compassionate.  It is mostly convenient … for us.  And so this must change.  

I don’t know what the practical answer is to the way the elderly are segregated in our society and end their lives … which can take many years … in surroundings where the norm is boredom and loneliness.  But society must start talking about this problem and find a way to return human quality to the last years of life.  The elderly deserve to be treated with respect and offered joy.

Second, in Buddhism, death is seen as a natural part of life.  There is nothing to be scared of.  And so instead of running from death, Buddhists live life prepared that death may come at any moment.  They live, or try to live, in what Christians would call a state of grace … to be at peace, free of psychological suffering, offering others joy, and finding happiness in each moment.  

Most people unfortunately do not end their lives in this state, despite a last minute visit from a priest, minister, rabbi, or imam.  Such ministry may bring some comfort perhaps, but not peace.  Hospice programs work more toward that end.  Again, I don’t know what the answer is, but we should do whatever we can so that all people who are dying, whether young or old, are helped to find that state of peace before death.  

This also impacts the question of whether people have a right to die, or to death with dignity.  When your mind and/or body fails you in a major way and you are suffering, society should give you an option to end your life, peacefully, legally, rather than making you suffer even more.  

That’s all the Death with Dignity or Right to Die movement is asking for.  Actually, they’re asking for something far more limited, just in cases of a diagnosed terminal illness … i.e. the person is going to die soon anyway, so why not let them end their suffering.  

But the medical profession’s fear of being sued and the religious establishment’s argument that since God gave life, only God can take it away have come together to create a huge hurdle to enacting such legislation, abetted by a fear of death that most people have.  Interesting how the religious will support human intervention to extend life, when if it were up to God and the natural process the person would die, but won’t allow human intervention to end life even when that is what a person clearly desires.  So much for leaving things in the hands of God.

Bottom line, we are talking about human beings here.  All people have the right to be treated with respect.  And if a person decides, while he or she is of sound mind, that when a defined irreversible (not necessarily terminal) physical or mental state is reached that he or she wants to be aided by a physician to die in peace with dignity, then that person’s will should be respected and the law should allow for such physician-assisted death.

So much suffering is inflicted upon mankind in the name of society’s values and customs.  At least at the end of one’s life, one should have the option to be free of suffering and to die in peace, free of fear, free of anger, free of pain.

Our Culture Is the Serpent in the Garden of Eden

As told in Genesis, in the paradise that God created, man and woman were naked, but they were not embarrassed by their nakedness and they were one with all things.  The only thing forbidden to them was to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.   They lived in a world where there was no knowledge of right or wrong, good or bad.  Interestingly, the paradise of Genesis is virtually identical with the Buddhist Nirvana.

But once they ate the fruit of the tree, they became aware of and were embarrassed by their nakedness.  They now had knowledge of value judgments; they were no longer innocent.  They lost God’s favor and were forced out of the garden into a world full of the frustrations of cravings, fear, and strife.

The Abrahamic faiths’ take on this story is that man is a sinner because he violated God’s commandment.  And that women are the causal source of sin because it was Eve who listened to the serpent and tempted Adam to eat the fruit; it is thus also a cautionary tale regarding sexual temptation.  Man can only be saved by obeying God, which is to obey the multilayered moral and ritual strictures of His religion (take your pick as to which one).  

But if one looks at the story with fresh eyes, without all the layers of religious interpretation by rabbis, monks, imams, and others, a different lesson takes shape.

The real lesson here is that the world of God is the world of innocence, where there is no good and evil.  There is no evil because there is no desire for what one does not have.  There is no good because man does not compare himself to others.  There is no good or evil because man is one with himself and all things.  This is the world of freedom from the known.  The point is not so much that God’s commandment was broken, but that because it was broken, mankind lost its innocence and the world was never the same.

Speed forward several millennia to the current age.  The world is filled with serpents, those who seek to entrap mankind with the knowledge of good and evil, of beauty versus ugliness, of every duality one can create.

The consumer culture on which our capitalist economy depends is based on people being manipulated by marketing into wanting more of what the masters of the world want them to crave and into thinking that a product will in some way give them entry to a better life by satisfying that craving.  We have all been taught that happiness comes from having what we don’t have and thus we have become creatures controlled by craving.

The political culture is based not on bringing people together but by dividing them into opposing camps.  Often fomenting ill will and at times even hatred towards those “others,” thus again manipulating the populace.  Political rhetoric today, such as it is, appeals mostly to the emotions, even when it is put in a form which sounds rational.

Even the prevailing religious cultures provide no refuge.  Religion, which theoretically should be the main advocate for peace on earth and goodwill towards all, instead has over the millennia been perhaps the major source of strife among mankind.  It has been, together and in concert with nationalism, the greatest divider and thus the greatest source of conflict.  And how convenient to fight others, exploit others, dominate others in the name of promoting God’s law, when in truth it is always about promoting the power of nations and individual men.  And to the extent that the fight was against “savages,” ironically those who were being “saved” often lived a life and had a culture much closer to the garden of eden than the warriors of religion.

Towards its own, religion has never really been a force to bring mankind back to the state of grace that existed in the garden of eden.  Instead, it has created a system of fear, using its own concept of good and evil to control its flock and build power and influence.  

In truth, though, none of this should be surprising.  Religion is after all, despite its protestations to the contrary, a product of man, not of God.  If it were the latter, why would there be so many different religions, all at odds with each other?  

Is there then no force in the world to help mankind return to a state of innocence, which is its birthright, and live in peace?  The only force I am personally familiar with is found in the teachings of the Buddha.  His teachings seek to enable man to perceive that all his suffering is caused by what he has learned from family and culture and that all this learned experience is empty of any intrinsic existence and has no inherent value.  When he perceives these truths, he experiences all things without the intervention of thought and emotion ... he is once more free of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  And when he reaches that state, all suffering and doubt cease.  (I must acknowledge that I am a practicing Buddhist.)

The Buddha was a historical person.  The Buddha saw his role as relieving mankind’s suffering by putting him back in touch with his true pure nature, thus ending his craving and bringing him peace.  Jesus sought to achieve a similar aim by putting man back in God's grace.

But even here, the teachings of the Buddha are one thing ... Buddhism as an organized religion can at times be something quite different, witness the Buddhist mobs doing harm to Muslims in Myanmar, or even at times vying groups of Buddhist monks fighting with each other.  These are cases of men being Buddhists in name only.  They have strayed far from the teachings of the Buddha.

Indeed all religions ... including Judaism, Christianity, Islam ... have at their core the basic moral teaching of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you and most sought in their own way to bring mankind back to a state of grace because they are all based on the teachings of truly holy men.  But the basic teachings of most religions also created an us v them culture, and in the hands of less holy men the religious establishment has turned this aspect into the dominant theme of our world.

If we want to free ourselves from having tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, if we want to experience peace and happiness, there is only one way, and that is to turn our back to the dominant culture and follow the simple truths of the teachings of the Buddha and the other religions, while disavowing any teaching that your religion is the only path to God.

One final note ... Eden was a place here on Earth, not a paradise one accessed in heaven upon death.  While there is no way, given the dominant forces and the conditioning of mankind, to ever achieve that state of innocence again here on Earth, we can each in our own small way create waves of Eden that spread out from each of us.

The Self-Help Scam

The self-help industry is huge.  Although numbers are hard to come by, in 2008 Nielsen Bookscan reported that 13.5 millions self-help books were sold in the U.S.  The self-help industry is said to be worth around $11 billion annually, including seminars, DVDs, etc.

Obviously, lots of people are crying out for help.  They feel miserable or frustrated about their lives in various ways, whether it’s their relationships, work, family, or personal development.

And it’s no small wonder because we live in a culture which is extremely competitive and which is constantly sending us messages, whether through the media or through family and peers, that we need to be more than we are, we need to have more than we have.  We live in a culture which creates feelings of insecurity from almost day 1 after birth.  As insecure people, we cannot develop and maintain good relationships.  And we cannot be satisfied with anything we achieve; regardless how successful or powerful, we always want more in order to remain happy.  Our culture has created a collective monster.

This is the context within which the self-help industry thrives.  And it is the context in which it ultimately fails the people it supposedly is trying to help.  The problem is that as soon as you fall into the trap of feeling there is something about yourself that needs “fixing” or “improving,” there is no hope because you are buying into the culture’s hype.

And that is why, despite the tens of millions of people who read and are otherwise drawn to the advice of self-help gurus, nothing really changes in their lives or in the world.  Yes, a few “make it.”  But the vast majority get nowhere even if they faithfully follow the advice given.  If these books worked as advertised, the world would become far less dysfunctional and vast numbers of people would feel better about their lives.

No, the problem lies not with individuals, it lies with the culture and the way it impacts everyone in it.  No one can escape it.  We are all a product of our learned experience ... whether from family, peers, or the larger culture.  But it all comes back to the culture.

Our ego is the repository and protector of these learned experiences.  It drives our lives and controls our actions based on these learned experiences which at their core are based on insecurity.  As such it is the font of our neuroses that cause us so much fear, anxiety, anger, and general suffering.  It is the reason why few of us ever feel at peace or find true happiness.

Since you can’t change the culture, we have two options.  The one is to change ourselves in a way so that we have a better fit with the culture and thus do better in our interactions with it.  Succeed on its terms.  That is the basic tact of self-help books.  And it doesn’t work because our culture feeds upon and manipulates everyone in it.  And thus we can never find real happiness or peace going that route.

The other option is to change the way we interact with the culture ... to interact with it on our terms.  To realize with great clarity what it is and how it operates, how our learned experiences have impacted us and caused us endless suffering, and how we can step back from this manufactured ego and find our true selves ... strong, secure, happy, and at peace. Freeing ourselves from the cravings that our learned experience promotes ... that is the source of peace and contentment, happiness and yes, even joy.

And that, my friends, is the Buddhist path.  Ending our suffering not through the process of psychoanalysis or self-help improvement, but by understanding how our feelings and perceptions, while feeling very real, actually have no inherent reality and are just a product of our learned experience ... and learning that by freeing ourselves from this known, from our ego, we can discover again our true selves and see ourselves and the world around us as we and it really are, without the distorting filter of our learned experiences, our thinking mind.

The Ultimate Failure of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life

Rick Warren wrote an amazingly successful spiritual book, The Purpose Driven Life.  According to amazon.com, it has sold more hardback copies than any other non-fiction book in history and it is the most-translated book in the world, except for the Bible.  Recently a new edition was published.  

If so many tens of millions of people have read his book, where is the great change that should be occurring in the world?  The point is that it isn’t.  It’s like the Bible.  Untold millions of people have read and reread the Bible, many with great fervor, but there are precious few who truly walk in Christ’s shoes, who do what Jesus would do.  The same is true for Jews and those of other religions.  As the saying goes, they may talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk.

What is going on here?  Why are there so many people who are reborn Christians or are similarly reconnected with other religions, and yet we have seen no increase in peace and love, in the lack of suffering in this world?  If anything, this reconnection to spiritual roots seems to have increased the divide among people, the us v them mentality, that is so endemic among the religious evangelical or ultra-orthodox.  Perhaps that’s because it’s much easier to focus on their love of God, their sense of community, and the form or rituals of religion rather than the essence of His teaching.

To examine the book’s ultimate failure in this regard, look for example at Day 16 of The Purpose Driven Life.  Warren notes that God expects us to love others, even those who may be difficult, and even those who are not members of “God’s family.”  He states that this is vital to our purpose here on earth, that without love our other actions or abilities don’t matter, noting that God has commanded us to love one another and that we must show it by our actions.

This is a beautiful thought.  I, and I’m sure many others, have written similarly about the transformative nature that the teaching, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” would have on the suffering in this world if only it were followed.  Yet despite the fact that it is the moral cornerstone of every major religion, its essence is uniformly dishonored, ignored by most of humanity, regardless whether religious or not, rich or poor, educated or not, a leader or a follower.

Why is this so?  The answer is simple ... our ego controls what we do, our every action.  The product of all our learned experiences ... whether from our family, our peers, or the larger culture that form our environment ... it is very powerful, entrenched in our minds.  Every feeling, perception, and judgmental thought is a consequence of that training, that conditioning.  It is the only “I” we know.   And it is from our ego that we usually divine our purpose, unfortunately. 

If we attempt to do something which is not in line with what our ego wants us to do, we find it almost impossible to make any progress.   And clearly, the messages of “love your neighbor as yourself” or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” run counter to what most of us have learned from family, peers, and our culture.  Instead, it’s all about “me” ... doing whatever is necessary to get ahead and achieve one’s goals.  It’s about competition.  “It’s a dog eat dog world, and I’m not the one who’s going to be eaten.”  

So the answer to the question of why millions of people have read and sincerely believe in The Purpose Driven Life as well as the Bible and yet their actions towards themselves, their family, and the world around them have changed hardly at all, continuing to inflict suffering on themselves and others, is that Rick Warren’s book, as well as the Bible, does not confront the issue of how to surrender your ego to God.  

That's because he and the Bible treat our "temptations" as the voice of the Devil, and his solution is to resist the Devil by humbling yourself before God and quoting scripture to the Devil when you are tempted.  But while being born again may be very effective in freeing oneself from an addiction, like George W. Bush’s alcoholism ... something large and visible which causes damage to oneself ...  it often has little impact on reducing the hold of the seven deadly sins (lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride ... oddly, the list does not include anything about doing harm to others), and it has little or no impact on all the other aspects in which the ego manifests itself in one’s everyday life.

It’s just not that simple.  One must first acknowledge that all these forces, regardless where they originated ... family, peers, culture, the Devil ... have become part of us through our ego.  They are thus at the very core of our self-image, our concept of "I."  That acknowledgment is the starting point.

I can personally attest that even for someone who has practiced Zen Buddhism for almost 20 years and meditates every day, surrenders his ego to his true Buddha nature, and is free of all one’s hot buttons and fears, is a real challenge.  It requires constant vigilance and discipline.  For as soon as one is distracted and lets one’s guard down, the ego sees an opening and seizes the moment.  One is never totally free of it for it is a part of us.

That said, if one addresses the ego as Buddhist teaching does, one slowly evolves to a point where the negative impulses towards ourselves and others are replaced largely by feelings of love and compassion.  It frees us to recognize and perform what is our real purpose in life ... to offer others joy and help relieve the suffering of others.  

And by so doing, we experience joy ourselves.   Feeding our ego never brings us real joy because it always needs something more to be satisfied.  That is why in our culture one can never be rich enough, powerful enough, sexy enough, young enough, etc.  The messages we receive from almost every outlet of our culture feeds and strengthens this aspect of our ego.  

Listening to the sound of a different drummer, to your true self, is a huge challenge.  But it can be done.  For books, a blog, and an advice column on freeing oneself from one’s ego, go to my website, www.thepracticalbuddhist.com, by clicking on the Self in No Self book icon in the right margin.