July 5-15, 2007

July 5, 2007

I am beginning to feel the lack of a dose of Krishna's wisdom. It's been a few days since I opened the Gita. My meditation went much better yesterday, though I may have drowsed. I'd like to believe I actually had some moments in which I thought of nothing at all, but it seems much more likely I fell briefly asleep. Easwaran notes we will, if we fight drowsiness now, one day be wholly conscious when we descend deeply into ourselves. Now that I have the passage memorized and it comes easily to me, it is easier to get bored, and to wonder what is supposed to be happening. I mean, I get that my job is to keep my mind focused, with one-pointed attention, on the passage, on each word. And I've managed to do that for small stretches – sometimes long stretches.

The goal is not to analyze the words, or apply them to one's life – though I can't help, yet, those images/word-associations sometimes springing up. I let go of them as quickly as I can. OK, but, though the meaning is assumed to sink in thru repetition, the goal is not to actively think about meaning. So one begins wondering, what will happen? Or is anything supposed to happen? Easwaran and others talk about pyrotechnics, and deep emotions and insights – but we aren't supposed to focus on those – just stick to the words of the passage.

I do see the value simply in getting one's mind to do as one asks for 30 minutes. That ought to be goal enough. And I oughtn't to allow it to claim boredom with the passage we've only used for 2 weeks or 3. Probably I'm just being impatient. I've sat, what – 10-12 times? And haven't yet reached enlightenment? Silly girl. It is that, but it is also anxiety that I'm not doing something correctly. Need to just reassure myself by checking Easwaran, and then direct my energies to doing what I am supposed to be doing – training my mind to be one-pointed and my heart full of compassion.

7-am now. I've re-read what I needed to in Easwaran, and it helped. Just keep doing what I'm doing. I'm also going to begin work on memorizing (finding first) some new passages, too.

July 6

What an interesting day I had yesterday! To begin, in my meditation I tried something hinted at in Easwaran – to slow down the passage by letting each word fall, "like a pearl into water," and to follow it down. It's kind of hard to explain. But I did it, dropping each word in and letting it stay by itself until the ripples of it, or the resounding of it, wear off. E says in time we'll be able to follow it all the way to the bottom.

Well, it enriched my meditation more than I would have believed. For one thing, the time flew past, and for another, I went much deeper, much faster. That in itself is hard to describe – the senses withdraw; one becomes less aware of all the sounds smells, aches and pains – kind of like being lowered into a tank, or being sealed up. It gets easier to focus on the one thing. One's breathing becomes deep and slow.

Yesterday I was rewarded with something new; a buzzing energy in my body, centered on the lowest chakra. The hairs on my arms stood up! It was pretty amazing. Do you suppose that was the prana that Krishna was talking about? Wow. I guess what you are supposed to do is push that energy up your spine and into your heart chakra – or your head. I have to re-check. We'll see if I can ever even feel it again. I was at the end of my time, and Easwaran warns against following the side shows. I wanted to, but he is my only teacher and I have to trust him, so I shut it down.

But then I went to work and had an amazing day – did my first television interview – all sorts of wild things.

July 15

Today makes a week of uninterrupted first-thing-in-the-morning meditation. May be beginning to make some progress. Much less chatter today.

I finished Roy's God of Small Things. A beautiful, heart-breaking book. I think that between coming from the horror at the end of Disorderly Knights, and the way Roy lets you know her story is going to be horrifying, I shut myself down. I admired the skill with which she weaved her plot; I so appreciated the child's eye view she so clearly understands/remembers, and I loved the little twins a little bit. But I never surrendered myself to the story. It was so powerful that I feard it, and didn't give myself to it.

Now I'm reading another Indian writer, a book called Vishnu's Death. Anil is the author, I think. It at least has given me more of what I was looking for, more understanding of daily life in India, of a Hindu, of food and when one eats what. Was pleased that now I recognize many of the stories from the Mahabharata and more of the allusions make sense to me.

One thing I must face; there are virtually no happy stories coming out of India, and haven't been for 40-50 years. When I want to judge Christianity by its fruit, I can't close my eyes to the atrocities of caste, of Hindu-on-Muslim violence, or the everyday violence of grinding poverty. I can say to myself, and do, that anyone practicing bigotry, cruelty, etc. is not practicing "real" Hinduism. They may be following Vedic ritual but they are not following the Upanishads or the wisdom of Krishna, and that's true. They aren't. But wouldn't every Christian say those doing evil in Christ's name aren't practicing the "real" Christianity? Of course.

I can make a better argument because there are actually 2 different doctrines – the incarnation of Krishna splits off from the Vedas in the same way Jesus' life and teachings break away from Torah. Its just that in the West, the religion of Judaism couldn't contain the alternate, whereas Hinduism could, can, and continues to hold within it a hundred or a thousand different belief systems.

Nevertheless, one can't be honest and deny that most Indian lives for a very long time have been wretched. Even in a land where poverty is not seen as something awful, like it is here, and where lots of people are happier in their slums or ancient villages than we typically are in all our luxury. Even in a place like that, the poverty is deep, the inequality too unequal, the random cruelty of the government unspeakably hideous and wrong.

2006 - Nature of Evil

With the end of August in 2006 came the end of free time for a loooooooooong time. It was my first semester in my first academic job, and I could not believe how busy I was. I had thought graduate school kept me busy! Yet I found time (usually in those few minutes before sleep, to help my mind wind down) to read a few pages of fiction or something non-work related. And finally, in November, I had something of relevance to this blog to say.

November 12
What is on my mind today? Mostly my book (A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry), and India in general. Here’s the puzzle – how can the most ancient, most enlightened, most cosmic and yet most sensible religion the world has ever produced, spawn such evil? There are times when I wonder if there isn’t something inherently wrong with Christianity, since it so regularly leads to exclusion, discrimination, intolerance, hatred and injustice. But one only has to look at India to see the same things, and for Buddhism look at Cambodia and Sri Lanka and China. For Islam there is Egypt and Sudan and Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Jews also have bloody history and the current state of Israel could hardly be more evil. You know what they did this week? After the Palestinians had managed to hold to a cease fire for 7 months – a remarkable feat considering the heterogeneity of political/military groups in their midst – the damned Israeli army sent a succession – 6, not 1 – missiles to destroy a civilian apartment building in Gaza. 14 children were killed, 6 or 7 all from the same family. And what do the Israelis say? “We’re sorry, it was an accident.” Animals!
It is easy to see why some would come to the conclusion that religion is the root of all evil. I don’t believe that, but I do wonder why religion is so weak. Pundits talk about the power of religion to motivate people, etc., but really isn’t it that religion is powerless in the face of human greed and hatred? It certainly seems to me, looking back at all of history, that it is much more often the case that evil people turn religion into a tool, than that religion transforms and uses evil men.
I presented this to Jim just now over a cigarette and it spurred an hour long debate/discussion that began philosophically but ended with application. He first tried to make it about creating a stronger religion, one that could stand up to human evil, but we didn’t get far with that. It did lead me to say that I think humans are so fallen, so evil, that we can’t base a religion on human nature. He said I sounded like I was talking about Original Sin. I said not necessarily, the original “sin” could simply be a factor of how we evolved. Competition, he said, is the root of all evil. We are hard-wired to compete. Yes, and we discussed that awhile.
But, as I’ve said before, we are also hard-wired to cooperate. Our species would have died out had we not cooperated with one another. Jim made/used a clever metaphor of the Strong and Weak forces in physics – it looks like the strong force is stronger, it is when measured immediately. But it is the weak force that holds the universe together. So we both agree that what needs to happen is an increase in our awareness and practice of cooperation, rather than competition. We argued awhile about how to do that, and the extent to which it is already occurring.

November 13
Oh my. This book I’m reading . . . It is just one heartbreaking tragedy after another. Nearly unbearable to read. I keep looking at the table of contents, scanning the chapter titles for some sign of brightness, some hint of a happy ending. It doesn’t provide much optimism. How can people be so terrible to one another? Modern psychology, with its almost complete lack of attention to issues of power, provides no help in understanding it.
I, from my relatively safe, secure, loving childhood and privileged white middle class status, have no capacity for understanding what makes people hate so globally. I get being angry at someone you know, hating individuals for hurting or thwarting you. But how does that translate, or mutate, into a rage and hatred so general that one can be cruel to perfect strangers? And the contempt! How is it that people can sort others into categories and the despise and reject their humanity based on that category and their membership in it?
I have certainly felt contempt for individuals, and have bordered on hatred because of it. And I admit I’m more prepared to despise people who fall into certain categories – Neo-con Republicans, Bible thumping bigots, bigots in general. But I at least give individuals a chance. Its only when they open their mouths and utter opinions I find despicable that I feel contempt. And I don’t believe I have the capacity to deny food, water, or shelter to even those I despise the most, like Bush. I don’t believe I’m capable of beating or raping or setting their houses on fire, either. Or even shipping them off to be beaten and exploited and worked into the ground.
So how do so many humans find it so easy, so casual, to do all of the above and worse, to people they don’t even know? Just because they are poor, or black, or Mexican, or Buddhist, or Jewish or French, or female or working class or a stranger? I don’t even know how to begin to understand it. And it is so common! Much more common than simple kindness.
We talk about Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot as if they were rare aberrations. But really, aren’t their feelings and theories and callousness closer to the norm? There have been so many evil, despotic rulers, but for each one of them there are millions of soldiers, prison guards, gang members, lawyers, business men, shopkeepers, farmers and even religious leaders (high and low), who feel and behave in exactly the same ways. They just don’t have the power to do it on a grand scale. Although the inhuman decisions of CEOs and bankers destroy lives in vast, uncounted numbers.
How can one not despair? Why do we have it so good in the U.S.? Because we wrote laws and voted on them in an attempt to curb the worst abuses, to try to protect ourselves from the monstrous people in our midst. But now people, in their fear of unpredictable and largely fabricated threats of terrorists, are ready – no, eager – to suspend all those laws that protect us, just to have the illusion of security. Please tell me how removing all of our civil rights and liberties will prevent the spread of anthrax, or stop a nuclear missile, or prevent explosives from exploding? It’s a myth, but frightened people eat it up.
Maybe what they really need is a reminder of what happens in places without these protections. And someone to connect the dots for them, so they see why we must have freedom of speech, law of habeas corpus, and the right to face one’s accuser. Maybe they are so uneducated, taught all the wrong things in all the wrong ways, so that they don’t know.

December 21
Jim shared some of his struggle for meaning. By the end of that conversation I was convinced more than ever that he would benefit from Taoism. So I brought him down the Tao te Ching before I went to bed.