On the Other Hand

If we really look carefully at the situations we live in can we really see anything wrong or untrue? All around us is correct and precisely what we need. This POV is radical. Most people when confronted with this talk about violence, abuse etc. and then say that if we are not pissed off about the state of the world we will do nothing to benefit it. Not so, say the sages. In fact, being pissed off wastes energy, clouds up the mind and takes on an endless trip to precisely the same place we started from as was demonstrated by George Orwell in his book Animal Farm. As Peter Townsend wrote

"Meet the new boss,
Same as the old boss"

The same mentality of anger and need to be right will create the same situation with cosmetic changes whether coming from the left, right or anywhere in-between. Something deeper has to change. Unless we confront the underlying problem we face as a civilization we are trapped. We are the enemy--inside of us, at this point in history, is where the real problem lies. It seems we have no choice at this time but face ourselves--it is the only ground that we can act on. There are some obvious reasons for that at the moment. The current political/economic/cultural forces at work are so powerful, so overwhelming, and so totalitarian in their scope that conventional political or even military opposition is impossible without damaging things further. Technically the current regime in power is illegitimate because it lacks moral grounding. It seems obvious that no morality seems to be recognized except as propaganda to fool the masses. We live in a Machiavellian world with plenty of cushioning for those higher up on the hierarchy to pretend everything is "normal".

There is a great moral vacuum at the center of everyone's life that is covered up by an ever increasing stream of amusement and noise. This is, by the way, true of all classes of society and POVs--those that listen to Rush Limbaugh, Al Gore, Fox News, NPR, Noam Chomsky and even the Dalai Lama or any other spiritual leader. We fill our selves with way more information than we can possibly assimilate and that creates internal noise. The internal noise, in turn, masks the fundamental instability of our cultural situation or positive (dharmic) role.

The first step is to realize that the emperor has no clothes. There is no fundamental basis for our ethical life that we can know for certain unless we have been strictly brought up in a traditional society--even then the contradictions of modernism will drop on you like a fog by just going on the internet.

The second step is to realize, by necessity, that since there is no external or cultural basis for morality that we have to find it in our being since our awareness of being alive is the only certainty we really have. From that point we can then realize that all that really exists when we are quiet and not creating and recreating the stories that whirl around our heads (since the very essence of our current culture is to be surrounded by a whirlwind of stories sometimes deemed information) is the present moment and our witnessing of this moment right now.

The third step is to find, on the basis of our direct perception of this moment those cultural artifacts that make sense in terms of the essential being we experience in this moment. These artifacts can be the basis of a new emergent human culture. On a realistic level we know that this process is bound to be error-filled because we are used to using internal narratives to establish being rather than direct experience.

Having said all that I can only say that some kind of yoga or spiritual practice is the only thing that can contain and nurture these steps thought we may have to remind ourselves that any spiritual path and scriptures are only signs. Religion has debased itself by making the signs into gods and often removing any sense of divinity from its practice. Christianity seems to have attempted and succeeded in that very well but the others have done fairly well as well particularly Islam and Judaism. Yet this situation is entirely correct and perfect for us right now. If things were not as they were it is pretty clear the increasing focus on spiritual growth and yoga would not be there.