No Two Buddhas For Parents

"Religious practice is about atonement." --Nothing Special by Charlotte Joko Beck

Charlotte Joko Beck writes in her book, Nothing Special, Living Zen, "I listen to many people talk about their lives, I am struck that the first layer we encounter in sitting practice is our feeling of being a victim--our feeling that we have been sacrificed to others' greed, anger, and ignorance, to their lack of knowledge of who they are. '

"Often this victimization comes from our parents. Nobody has two Buddhas for parents. Instead of Buddhas, we have parents for parents: flawed, confused, angry, self-centered--like all of us..." If, in practice, we grow more in awareness of having been sacrificed, we become angry, upset, confused. We feel hurt that we have been used, mistreated, like this by our loved ones...

Firstly to simply become aware of the feeling, the sensations in our body arising in this instance; secondly, we can grow into working with those feelings that have come to the forefront of our awareness, our anger, desire to get even, our feeling of hurting those who have hurt us in like fashion... We can fight back, but there are other avenues we may choose instead, reflecting back a growing awareness of victimization.

Practicing with this perception, we may experience powerful desires, anger, retribution, confusion, withdrawal or coldness. If we continue to ask, "what is this?" something, however painful it first seems, begins to arise into our consciousness. "We begin to see not only how we have been sacrificed, but also how we have sacrificed others. This can be even more painful than our first realization."

It may occur to us that what we have been doing to others, sacrifice, was done to us--especially when we act upon our angry thoughts and try to get even. We then sacrifice others. "As the Bible says, the evil is visited upon generation after generation."

When regrets and sorrows become great, they're a heavy burden to carry, a realization that what we have done, is what others have done before us, comes a desire to lighten the load, for salvation may arise within us. If we are "committed to healing, we want to atone..." To atone means to be at one, to be in harmony, to make amends. Unable to wipe out the past--we've already committed the deed, we must look to this present moment, to this time now.

In atonement, we embark upon a lifelong process, as did the central character of the recent film of the same name, Atonement. Out of our self centered spinning, we learn to focus on the now, others around us, reality as it is. We, as humans, will not ever hope to entirely stop sacrificing others or ourselves; we are not too perfect to realize that. But what we do hope to realize is that we can, and do grow in maturity and recognition of those places and situations which inspire our impulses. Such so that it becomes much more important that we recognize not what has been done to us, but what we do to others. There is, as theologian Martin Buber wrote, "the I-thou relationship."

"Someone must be the first to break the chain in relationships with our friends and intimates."

What does "this have to do with enlightenment and oneness?"
An enlightened person will be the one willing to be the sacrifice, to break the chain. The willingness to become the sacrifice is basic. Practicing through our lives, growing in awareness, in maturity, we get a free choice, or free will, about what we're going to do.

Even if it's about people with whom we are no longer in co-union (communion). Anger arises, a sinking feeling in the stomach, perhaps. Do they, or we for that matter, need a sacrifice?

Is there some lightness drawing the sense of action forward? What are our intentions? Examine intention carefully, and do not absolutely avoid people who have brought up this anger in you. Are you measuring yourself? Is there a fantasy playing in your mind the moment the person comes into view?

What is necessary in the situation?

Be the best you can be in that moment. Focus upon the necessary and do that. You have that ability to see and use for your own benefit and that of others.

Love and Death

"Death is our enemy, our last enemy." Love is Stronger than Death by Peter Kreeft

Death the stranger, death the friend, wait... death is all of us. Death is a mother, death is a lover...  Philosopher and author, Peter Kreeft will not allow his reader to loiter in Love is Stronger than Death. The topic for many is wholly unexamined, and yet at some time it will greet each and all. "Life is always fatal. No one gets out of it alive... It is a mysterious country...a bottomless pit... we have not unraveled her riddle...little chance we will." Kreeft writes in addition, that there is the meaning of life in the meaning of death. The empirical absolute of life is death. It is the backdrop, if you will, against which all of life plays out.

Death makes a life have either more or less meaning; it provokes some to be more mindful and others to become more and more forgetful. If death is meaningful "then life is startlingly more meaningful or startling less meaning-full than we usually think." Kreeft goes on to say that his book is about death, not about the feelings we may have towards death. He asks and examines questions about what is ultimately a reality, death, a measurable and empirical fact, like the sun rising and setting.

The 'democracy of the dead,' as C.K. Chesterton called it, refers to death as the great leveler, the one force in life that makes all equal. He asks what is the 'end of life?' Is it death? Can we know what the purpose of life is when faced with its 'death' shadow? How can it be like love, a desired end, the goal, a consummation? In the view of death, these terms seem strange, strange indeed. He, Kreeft, says we cannot begin to know why we die until we begin to know why we live. Knowing one's purpose in life sets the course for a whole host of other directions and priorities.

Death gives rise to questions about life after death. It forces the questions of the eternal, of God, of Bliss, of Nirvana and more. But first on to death as an enemy. It must be the enemy before we can recognize it as a possible friend. Many current, popular books on death teach confusion, in Kreeft's view. He says that, "denying, ignoring death, [it is] treated as a stranger...what this does is add to the denial of death."

He writes that as an enemy and yet the inevitable, somehow, we may come to befriend this one. But to say that it is merely natural, not to be overly played out is like the difference between tolerance and forgiveness. Forgiveness sees beyond the evil; it sees all the more. Tolerance refuses to acknowledge evil at all; therefore it is blinded. So instead of finding the way free of evil, tolerance is a block, a trap into evil. Thus the modern cycle of the enmity with death continues with tolerance.

Writing about the ways people consider death such as sleep, loss, or darkness, Kreeft writes we "find our selves at birth plunged into a madly rushing river", that flows towards a subterranean cave; within that cave, life co-exists. Between these two finite poles, we 'strut our stuff.' Always we fall in timeless direction. And finally he notes that "death is irreversible because time is irreversible... In fact time is another word for death."

And isn't death, like life, composed of both meetings and partings? we look forward to all the great and potential meetings in our life, despite the wistfulness  of departures. And so for the puzzle of it: we all rebel against this fact, eventual.  In a sort of lover's quarrel with the world, we diligently resist, rebel; railing against time. "Is that all there is?" We shout. But wait! There is joy, there is bliss. The religious and spiritual among us insist. The quest for meaning, for purpose, for love and friendship give to us what death will not.

There is a reason to live and a reason to die. Can modern society have fallen so far from the traditions that made these reasons clear? In Kreeft's view the answers and the results of our traditions, our ancient wisdom, in part, leads us back to the way of a rising heart of humanity, a rising to meet the One, the beloved. Death is then the friend.