A Bow To Bowing

What a marvelous little thing a well-placed, properly-intended bow can be.  There is the royal bow, the deep bending at the waist or the full curtsy to bended knee.  But these are intended as a sign of subservience or allegiance that acknowledges a supposedly superior one.  Those are the secular expressions of separation that some people incorrectly ascribe to all forms of bowing.

But then there are the bows not of separation and subservience, but of unity and equality of being.  The bow that, for a moment, returns us to the desirable state of proper humility.  Because arrogance is one of the greatest hurdles to insight and internal peace, and humility is a key to opening that spiritual door.  In this context, the small humble bow can make such a large impact.

The Buddhist and the Hindu place open palms together, with fingers pointed upward, in front of the heart.  The separate parts (the two hands) join together into one wholeness (the form).  She bows slightly from the waist to another, or to nature’s creations, not out of inferiority but in equality.  This gesture can be for one to honor and appreciate the other: the teacher honors the student who honors the teacher.  Through this simple gesture, she can express, “The Divine Light in Me honors the Divine Light in You.”

The Muslim can drop to his knees and touch head to ground.  By this action, he can also reaffirm a lack of personal arrogance or superiority – another form of expression of personal humility shown before God and all humankind.

The Catholic can genuflect before the image of Christ in the sanctuary (or elsewhere).  It can be an intended “interruption” and refocus as she mentally hustles mindlessly from current task to the next to-do item.  The genuflection can remind her to always stop and remember God and the spiritual in the midst of one’s earthly travels and distractions.

The Christian, both Catholic and Protestant, can bow his head, using only a slight movement of the body.  That slightest of motion can be a historical protest to the old royal subservient bow, while subversively acknowledging instead a power far greater than any royal.  Combined with the joined palms of the hands, he can come quietly into prayer – a prayer not of request, begging or supplication, but of communion and connection – the unity of the hands acknowledging the unity of God and God’s creations.

The bow, however specifically performed, is intrinsic to most all branches of spiritual expression.  Done mindfully and intentionally, it can be an expression of outreach to one’s God / Nature / Universe.  To all living things.  To one’s self.  It says to the object of our attention that, “I see you.  I acknowledge you.  I respect who and what you are.  And I give thanks to and for you.”

When we bow to honor another person or thing, we simultaneously bow to honor ourselves.  Namaste.  Gassho.  Amen.

Religious Radicals And Terrorists

There are many tragic stories that have come out of the recent Boston Marathon bombing.  Stories that cause us to quietly contemplate the numerous events such as this, and whatever larger lessons we need to draw from their occurrence.  Lessons in the positive power of government and law enforcement working in cooperation, demonstrating public service at its best.  Stories of selfless heroes, rushing into potential harm’s way to help strangers in need.  These are the good stories we etch into our minds and speak of to others.

Then there are the other things we say that betray our real intentions.  I have written before that “words matter.”  They matter because words create images and impressions either for ill or good – depending upon the degree of thoughtfulness and the intentions of the speaker.  One of the worst of the thoughtless use of words is the media’s and public’s overuse of the terms “radical Islamist” or “Islamist terrorist” as they speculate on the bombing perpetrators’ sick motives.

Islam is a religion.  Islam is not a person.  Just as Christianity and other religions are a religion, not a person.  One who follows Islam has a different name – i.e. “Muslim,” one who “surrenders unto God” (as we all might well do).  Just as a follower of Christianity is a Christian but more appropriately a Methodist, a Baptist, a Catholic, an Episcopalian, an Evangelical, etc.  These are the actual people.  People who interpret and practice what and who they believe across a wide spectrum of words and actions regarding themselves and their fellow human beings.

When we accuse someone who makes extreme statements, or takes violent actions against innocent people, as being an “Islamist radical or terrorist,” we inherently (and inappropriately) confuse the religion with the individual.  An individual who has perverted an expansive religion into a misrepresented personal belief.  Islam did not call for those bombs on Boylston Street to be set.  Rather, two young, disaffected men compensating for their self-perceived inadequacies struck back to make a public, attention-getting statement – as is the case with virtually all terrorists and mass shooters.  But when we paint them with a broad “Islamist” brush, we betray the message of love and peace in the Qur’an nearly as much as those two men betrayed it.

For whatever reasons of history and cultural bias, we seem to find it easy to incorrectly link the religion of Islam with its disaffected radicals.  But we are self-servingly reluctant to apply the same reflex to disaffected Christian radicals and terrorists.  We are quick to criticize Muslim fundamentalists, even as we willingly accept Christian fundamentalists all around us; yet both are extremely rigid interpretations of their core religious teachings.  But what else can you call a North Carolina legislator who recently proposed that Christianity be declared the official state religion?  Or the callous Westboro Baptist Church members who picket funerals of innocent victims and servicepersons as being “an affront to God?”  Or the several Christian shooters and bombers who have killed supposedly “to save lives” from abortion doctors?  Or the Catholic Oklahoma City bomber who killed adults and children as a protest against the government?  Or the bigot who indiscriminately killed peaceful Sikh worshipers in Wisconsin?  Or the small-time minister in Florida who burned the Qur’an to protest Islam and incited ill-will the world over?  Or the Fox News commentators whose continual anti-Muslim rants – done to bump up their ratings – fall just a hair short of being legally classified as “hate speech.”  These people claim a Christian affiliation, purporting that their acts and statements are done “in God’s name.”  But theirs is a God most of us do not recognize.

If we insist on speaking of “Islamist radicals and terrorists,” then let us similarly label the many “Christian radicals and terrorists” who live among us.  Let us at least be consistent in our verbal slandering of good religions and good-hearted people because of the inexplicable and despicable acts of miscreants.  Or better yet, let us just leave religion out of our terminology altogether, and simply call all purveyors of hate what a Muslim acquaintance called the 9-11 perpetrators several years ago: “These people are just a bunch of thugs.”  No religion has a monopoly on thugs.

Doer Of Good Deeds

In the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” the Tin Man laments that he has no heart.  Just a hollow, empty echo results when one taps on his metal chest.  To compensate for that and grant him his wish for a heart, the Wizard gives him a heart-shaped watch as a Testimonial recognition to his being a “Doer of Good Deeds.”  Good deeds are what a good, warm heart does.

This is a message echoed fully in most all religions.  Be generous to the poor.  Support the widows and the children.  Assist the labored with a relieving of their heavy load.  Give to charities.

The payoff for all these good works of the heart comes in the next life, or the afterlife.  In Islam and Christian teachings, we are given the image of the heavenly ledger where our actions – our good and bad deeds – are recorded through our lifetime.  If the “net balance” of good deeds outnumbers the bad, then the door of heaven will be opened for us.  Similarly, for the Buddhist, good deeds accumulate “merit,” resulting in good karma from this life transferred to our next rebirth into a higher, more realized form.

But is the doing of good deeds enough to warrant such future rewards?  I think not.  It is very easy to put a check to a favorite charity in the mail.  To volunteer at the hospital, AIDS clinic, or museum for a day and then return to the protective safety of one’s home.  To be a tutor or mentor to a schoolchild, particularly for an orphan.  Or to set aside your own personal ambitions in order to give a greater opportunity to your child.

All of these actions, and similar others, certainly constitute being “good deeds.”  But if they are done, or given, without the packaging gift of the heart, then they are a hollow gift.  As hollow as the chest of the Tin Man.

Good deeds given from the heart means that we are truly connected to the recipient of our action.  They are not a nameless, faceless being to us.  Even if we do not know them personally, we create a representative vision of them as we drop the dollar bills into the Christmas red bucket of the Salvation Army.  We give of ourselves without a need, or even a desire, for acknowledgment or recognition.  No need to sign our name over the door of the new building or the memorial plaque.  As the Taoist says, “do your work quietly, and then step back again.”

We do our good deeds with no expectation or demand for an equal return.  There are no IOUs in truly good deeds, no reciprocal contracts.  As Jesus explained to us, a large gift made with no sacrifice means less than a small gift of great sacrifice.  Good deeds are a one-way gift, with no chains of obligation attached.  The gift of “freedom” is always embedded in a good work.  Yet we also know fully in our hearts that “we reap what we sow.”  That “what we send out comes back to us many-fold.”

Good deeds are not deposits made into our heavenly salvation accounts.  They are not design fees for shaping our rebirth.  True good deeds are simply expressions of what is already perfect in our own heart – the very Buddha-nature that already resides in each of us, waiting to be realized.  They are simply the ways that we find to express our best feelings toward one another, towards all living things, without keeping score.

Good deeds are the way we emulate God, through realizing that piece of God that is already in us.  In our generosity, truly good deeds are the gift of our expression that we give to ourselves.  So that when we tap on our chest, we do not hear the empty echo of the Tin Man.  Rather, we hear the warm gong of God’s voice speaking within us.  To us.

The Words And The Messages

There are four great Master Teachers who have most extensively influenced religious thought in this world: chronologically, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad.  In each case, I find it beyond “coincidence” that none of these four wrote down their own teachings.  Moses and Buddha were each raised in royal households; Jesus spent formal study with rabbinical teachers in the synagogue.  These three Teachers were clearly literate and their lack of writing is presumed to be by deliberate choice.  Muhammad was an uneducated trader, though his wife and family had benefit of literacy.  His non-writing was structural, not chosen.

The result is that, in all instances, their great teachings come to us as a recaptured oral history, written down by their followers as remembered details.  In some instances this occurred hundreds of years after the fact.  As important as their teaching mission for God was, why were these teachings left to such chance, such potential for ambiguity and therefore misunderstanding or misrepresentation?

Language is an imperfect art, and is anything but a definitive way of accurately communicating a thought between two people.  Communicating a thought accurately in written form, without benefit of inflection, body language, tone or immediate give-and-take feedback is even more difficult, creating even greater opportunities for mis-communication.  Virtually all of the written teachings from each of these four Masters came as notes from their public talks, not from meticulously thought out creations of the scholarly written word.  In public discourse, these Masters could rely on all the verbal nuances to accompany their teachings.  In such settings, they knew that their listeners would be focusing on the comprehensive purpose, finding the overall point, of their message, not analyzing and agonizing over each tiny word particle and its many potentially shaded meanings.

Which is just what we see happening today.  Academic scholars, religious school instructors, and clerical leaders spend untold hours debating word etymologies and arguing over “precise” meanings and their diverse interpretations.  It is as if one particular word or phrase – likely translated through multiple languages several times over – is thought to hold the key to ultimate spiritual meaning.  Meanwhile, the real point of simply “be kind to one another” gets lost in the analytical exercise.  These Master Teachers spoke of spiritual forests; people today often fight about religious trees.  Which is why those Teachers avoided the temptation of the written page, knowing that such exercises would be best left to their followers to come.

When we do reading meditation, we avoid such limited wordsmanship.  We return to, and hear anew, the original lessons these Teachers spoke to us.  We read slowly, deeply, and repetitively enough so that we give up the words.  Instead, we listen to the sentences, hear the paragraphs, and then finally understand the meanings that these Teachers gave to us.  Words are the gymnastics of the mind.  The paragraphs are the messages of God.  Listen for the real point.  Consider that point deeply.  Thereby, walk a step closer on the path to being as One with God.

Man + Woman

Have you ever wondered why God created man and woman as separate beings from each other?  Thousands of centuries have been spent with these two forms trying to understand and coexist well with each other.  So it might be understandably tempting to think that God could have come up with a less difficult arrangement for being one “human being” rather than two subdivisions.

The obvious difference in the genders is the sexual one, which provides a specific method for reproduction.  But in the Jewish-Christian heritage, animal life came before human creation, so it seems that human reproduction was simply patterned after our animal predecessors.  Besides, God is more than smart enough to have come up with a different form of reproduction without separation if so desired.  Especially given that reproduction and birth occupy such a small portion of our lifetimes.  Once birth occurs, “Mr. Mom” has repeatedly shown that child-raising can be adequately accomplished by either gender.  So one assumes that there has to be a larger reason than just reproduction for there being “man and woman” instead of one singular “human.”

When we think about all the things that make up Life and human existence, the range of component elements is beyond our comprehension.  What can be seen, felt, experienced, thought, understood and formed is endless.  Therefore what constitutes being human is an endless definition with few boundaries.  If our purpose in life is simply to fully experience and learn what all of Life truly is, to thereby be able to see and know as God sees and knows, then this vast breadth of “being” outstrips the capacity of most of us.  So God created “gender” to make the task of “experiencing human” a bit more manageable for us.

God made man and woman separately in order to define human beings more clearly.  So the human essence could be seen more clearly and thereby better explored.  The human is a complex being, with a makeup that is almost beyond the ability for an individual person to assimilate and manage.  It is potentially too overwhelming to people, particularly so in primitive human beings.

So specialization was in order.  The singular human was separated into the two more manageable parts of man and woman.  Two parts into which those many human aspects could be reduced into a more workable number so as to be lived out, explored, experienced, and perfected more fully.  And since many human aspects also have what appear to be their “opposite” aspect, these seeming contradictions could exist in the separate “man and woman” forms with reduced internal conflict.

Man and woman exemplify the seeming contradictions found in our separateness.  Yet all aspects exist in both man and woman.  By bringing these two beings into juxtaposition, they can provide the means by which we discover all human aspects within our own self.  As our collective humanity matures more and more – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually – the separation between genders becomes more blurred.  Each gender is able to understand the other’s aspects even more, in turn allowing each person to grow within him/herself.  It is a growing that continues until that ultimate time when separation is only in the physical; the spiritual separation is no longer needed.

The sexual act may be primarily about reproduction of the species.  But it is also the means by which humans can bridge their separation, understand the essence of each other, and merge those together even if only in the moment.  That physical union must suffice until one reaches the ultimate spiritual reunion of all human aspects within one’s own self.

It is in the union of our separateness, the union of that which we think of as “male” and as “female,” that humanness is formed.  The dichotomy of our separateness yields into a comfortable paradox that makes up part of our full humanness.  And it is in becoming fully Human that we also find God.

Cherry-Picking Morality

Charlie Fuqua was a Republican candidate for the Arkansas legislature in November 2012.  In a book he had written prior to the campaign, he called for parents to put their rebellious children to death as punishment, thereby serving notice to all children to “give proper respect to their parents.”  Fuqua based his proposal on Deuteronomy 21:18-21 / Leviticus 20:9 in the Old Testament which in fact specifies such punishment.  Even in today’s conservative Republican Arkansas, this was deemed over-the-top rhetoric.  Fuqua lost handily to his Democratic opponent, garnering only 30% of the vote.

As incomprehensible as Mr. Fuqua’s story may be on its face, it nevertheless highlights one of the larger problems we have in today’s political and religious debate in America.  Deuteronomy is the last of the first five books of the Old Testament which comprise the Jewish Torah – its most sacred text.  The Torah enumerates the Laws (Instructions) of human conduct, stated as being given from God through Moses.  In the 12^th Century, the Jewish rabbi and scholar Maimonides extracted an authoritative list of 613 such commandments covering a vast range of topics ranging from one’s relationship with God, rituals and observances, and managing the circumstances of one’s daily life.  These 613 Commandments can be exhausting in their scope and detail.  But the larger question highlighted by Mr. Fuqua’s pronouncement is the relevancy of these religious laws written 3000 years ago to our lives in the 21^st Century, and how these particular laws apply to the Jewish and Christian religions of today.

Some of the Commandments are clearly not applicable today because they focus on situations which no longer exist.  But what of the remainder covering many situations implicitly condoned by having rules to govern them but rejected by our social norms today?  Do we really choose to execute people for the numerous situations specified in many of these commandments?  Many Americans are highly opposed to what they understand about the strict cruelty of Shari’ah Law practiced in some Islamic-based countries or tribes.  But do those same Americans understand that many of these Shari’ah Laws have their precedence 1500 years earlier in the Old Testament – rules carried from Leviticus into the Qur’an reflective of Muhammad’s admiration for the Jewish religion?

A number of books, articles, and theses attempt to grapple with how the Mosaic Laws apply or not to Judaism today.  Similarly, there are volumes of torturously and numbingly convoluted arguments about how Christians are or are not bound by these laws, reflecting Christianity’s continuing 2000 year struggle with its Jewish heritage.  Most of this intellectual argument centers around the idea of a “New Covenant” from God through Jesus to replace the Old Covenant of Abraham and Moses – even though Jesus never claimed an intention to replace the existing law but only to “fulfill” it – i.e. fulfilling it by embodying the old law and demonstrating the heart of it by his own words and actions.

This is the slippery slope we cascade down when we try to have it both ways: to pick and choose what articles of our religious dogma we elect to adhere to, YET claim that our choices are still “God’s Law.”  Questioning and working through a set of spiritual beliefs is an expected obligation in Buddhist practice to ensure that one’s beliefs are truly one’s own, not simply an imposed imprint of parental or cultural teachings.  In the Catholic Church, decrees from the Pope are considered theologically to be final, unarguable, and beyond selectivity.  Yet in America (and increasingly in Europe) devout congregants are making many self-selected decisions about religious and secular moral obligations.  In Protestantism, the very existence of its numerous denominations reflects a need to discern selected beliefs from a body of teachings or the myriad interpretations as to the applicability of those teachings.

Once we remove the first brick from the walls of our dogma – whether from the Torah, the New Testament, or the Qur’an – then we also lay waste to the claim that what remains is “mandated by God.”  Freedom of choice in religious dogma means the selected dogma must then be justified by reason, by conscience, or by faith.  Any of these justifications can be spiritually and morally acceptable.  But arguing that what remains is “God’s will” is hypocritical and untrue.

When our preachers stand in the pulpit and spread hatred and hurtfulness towards others and claim that it is God’s will and laws, I unhesitatingly reject their arrogant claims of authority to determine God’s mandate.  I choose to believe that Leviticus 18:22 written 3000 years ago saying, “A man will not lie with mankind as with a woman” is trumped 1000 years later by Jesus’ message of love towards one another.  (No prohibition is stated in the Torah regarding female homosexuality, and Jesus never spoke about homosexuality at all.)  I choose to accept polygamous relationships (assuming all involved voluntarily seek it) which is governed by biblical law and thereby implicitly condoned, and see no basis for government intervention in such relationships.  I choose to reject any form of slavery, in spite of it being condoned biblically, as being abhorrent to my rational mind and the laws of this Nation for which individual freedom is an ethical and spiritual necessity.

Furthermore, I choose not to execute my rebellious children, no matter how difficult they may prove to be – or what Deuteronomy 21:18-21 says for me to do.  And when someone says that our concept of punishment and justice should be “an eye for an eye” because God said so through Moses (Exodus 21:24), I will point to Rule # 196 in the Hammurabi Code written on a rock tablet in Babylonia @500 years before Moses that says, “If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.”  Are Hammurabi’s 282 laws also from God, and are they too still applicable today as “God’s Will?”

If one picks and chooses only the Laws of God that one personally likes, but still uses “God’s Will” as the justification for those selected laws, then I ask that person to thereby honor ALL of the laws.  If not, then let us go in peace with each other, living the best moral life as we can best determine, drawn from the best teachings of those most admirable teachers who have gone before us.  The teachings that best bring us into peaceful being with all that is around us.


(For a free digital copy of my summary of Maimonides’ 613 Commandments from the Torah that underlie this posting, email your request to Info@MckeeLearningFoundation.com)

 

Our Personal Creation Story

When we read the various creation stories that have appeared across cultures and religions, on the surface they are stories to explain how our outer world came into being.  The world we can see, touch, and with which we interact.  How those things may have truly come about was beyond the capacity of early human beings to comprehend, just as there are many questions about creation that still today are beyond our capacity to understand in spite our current grasp of modern science.  So the explanation had to be in a form that could be comprehended by people of those early times – the traditional stories and myths of our creation.

In truth, our questions are not really just about the creation of the outer world in which we live.  Rather, the desire for explanation is really more fundamental: a universal need to answer the question “Where Did I Come From?”  Which then leads to the question of “Who Am I?”  And from that, the bigger question of “Where Am I Going?”  If we think of these various stories as simply multiple façades over a single repetitive structural blueprint for creation, and see the stories handed to us as really a model for how all things were created, then a creation story can tell us a great deal about our own creation, our own selves.

For example, consider the creation story told in the Torah, a familiar story of beginnings shared by Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths.  The first step (day) of creation existed in a void of nothingness but water and darkness, until God said, “Let there be light” – and so there was light.  God’s light.  In that same way, my life came from nothingness, a void until God created my soul from a particle of God’s spirit, sparked by the illuminating source of God’s light.

In the second step (day) of creation, God created “an expanse in the midst of the water, [to] separate water from water,” thereby creating “Sky” (Heaven).  In that same way, a space in that Sky was created for me, the place where my soul was originally formed and resided; the spiritual home from which I came, and the spiritual home to which I will return.

In the third step (day) of creation, God “gathered the water below the sky into one area so that dry land may appear,” thereby creating Earth and the Seas.  On the land, God then “brought forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it.”  In that same way, the egg within the woman separated the water of the womb to become the available soil into which the seed of the man could be planted and bear fruit.

In the fourth step (day) of creation, God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night [and] serve as signs for the … days and the years … two great lights, the greater (sun) to dominate the day and the lesser light (moon) to dominate the night, and the stars.”  It was the creation of the dimension of “time.”  In that same way, my fertilization and development occurred within a structured process over nine months of time; my human life has then transpired in subsequent steps through measured time over years (versus my spiritual life, which is timeless).  Each day is measured by the rise and setting of the sun and each night’s passing of the moon.  The sun is my creation father, the moon is my creation mother.  Both come together to parent and watch over my life through each passing day.

In the fifth step (day) of creation, God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and the birds that fly above the earth.”  In that same way, my life began in the warmth of my mother’s water, water regulated by the Mother Moon, starting in the simplest form of a cell, yet a cell with all the capacities to potentially support life.  Around me, the Universal Spirits traverse the world, unbounded by place, keeping watch over all.  In their flight, the birds call to the soaring aspirations of freedom and movement that live in our hearts; remind us of our ability to travel far beyond where we may find ourselves physically and spiritually; and point the way to our personal connection from Earth to Sky (Heaven).

In the sixth step (day) of creation, God brought forth “every kind of living creature: cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts of every kind.”  And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” …  “Male and female, God created them” … and said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on the earth.”  In that same way, I first passed through basic mammalian facets to develop my physical capacities and instincts.  Then and only then did I begin to evolve to my human “self,” moving inevitably toward human birth, in the image that God “image-d” (imagined) for me.  Until I emerged physically formed, ready to begin the learning necessary to become capable and ready to master the earth.  To rule all living things in God’s stead for whatever time period God may allow for me.

The Creation story of Earth is likewise the creation story of each of us.  It is a deliberate, sequential, building-block process that is repeated in the appropriate way to create all forms of life.  The details, the mechanics, the character names, the time frames may change as we continue to learn more of the technical secrets behind God’s creations.  Seen differently, our “science” is simply a new creation story for contemporary human beings.

Our creation stories give us a shared reference for our common existence.  Read deeply and expansively rather than superficially, they guide us to a deeper understanding of creation beyond its mechanics, but to a fuller understanding of God’s purpose guidance for our lives.  It is up to each of us to draw the appropriate lessons from these insights.  The miracle and grandeur of The Creation is also the miracle and grandeur of our own creation, the metaphorical answer to Where Did I Come From.  It is the miracle of Who I Am.  The grandeur of Where I Am Going.

(From www.McKeeLearningFoundation.com : for a free digital copy of my collection of over 50 creation stories that underlie this posting, email your request to Info@MckeeLearningFoundation.com )