I always meant to do a daily or weekly message with a little Zen and a little observation or commentary. I started it once before but let it fall by the wayside. Here’s another attempt.
Have you ever considered that life is a paradox? Existence is bi-polar in that it has opposites that allow for each to exist. Life itself is the opposite of? – death of course. Without death there could be no life. Darkness – Light. Extreme darkness, extreme light and degrees between. Sweet – sour, love –hate, they all exist in tandem – together. You can’t have one without the other. It is the completeness we call existence.
Shree Rajneesh, more recently known as Osho, points out that language is linear, that rules of language put things in a line, one following the other. Consequently language as an expression of thought makes thought linear, therefore logic becomes linear, but existence is not linear, existence is simultaneous. Love and hate, light and dark, exist together, at the same time in the same space. They are two sides of the same coin, not much separates one from the other. But using language you can’t say the room was full of light and the room was dark as well. Language fails us.
If you go into a dark room at night and turn the light on where does the dark go? It’s still there. The only thing that’s changed is your ability to see. If you close your eyes during the daytime, where does the light go? It’s still there. Light and absence of light, day and night exist simultaneously.
Zen is paradoxical. Zen thought allows things to exist simultaneously and allows opposites to trade places. Doing by not doing is a Zen concept.
To Be or Not To Be?
Osho goes on to discuss having versus being. That man is constantly trying to enrich his life by accumulating more, by getting more property, more wealth, more power, more knowledge. The mind, the head, thinks by having more it will become more, but having can never be transformed into being. Being is accomplished by dropping all desire, just being in the moment, the here and now. In that moment of isness, of just being, says Osho, all is available, all benediction, all blessings, all wonder, all beauty, all bliss. Like light and dark, all exist in the same moment. You just have to realize it.
Do you recall the tribulation of Mel Gibson, his arrest for drunk driving and his remarks regarding Jews? Mel is an example of attempting to have more as a means to contentment and bliss and believing himself and his philosophy to be "right" and others "wrong". Mel’s life apparently became anything but bliss as a result of his quest for more wealth, more power, more things. What has wealth and power wrought Mel Gibson? A poisoned mind? It’s not his drinking, it’s not the alcohol that’s to blame, it’s what his mind has done to his life. One can drink alcohol and be blissful. If the 0.12 blood alcohol content was accurate, Mel may have been too drunk to legally drive but not excessively drunk, not on alcohol - but maybe drunk with power, drunk on supremist Christianity or stressed out from his obsession to have more in an effort to “be” more.
Mel can be faulted for riding the wave of Christian evangelical fanaticism that has swept our nation by introducing the movie “Passion of the Christ” as a crass opportunity to accumulate more wealth, but the result is not harmonious with Jesus’ message of love and just being in the here and now. Yes, Jesus was an advocate of eastern philosophy.
Jesus lived in the here and now and the here and now is the kingdom Jesus spoke of. Consider the lilies of the field, and the birds, and the flowers, God provides and has not forsaken them he reminds us. Why be anxious about tomorrow? Live in the present. Be here now.
Jesus was a product of Eastern thought and philosophy. Even the word Eastern and the Christian holiday we call Easter comes from an ancient European goddess of the dawn called Eostre by the Anglo-Saxons and Ostara by the Germanic peoples. Her name means "movement towards the rising sun" and is related to the Indo-European root word Aus which means "to shine". Hence the word east as a compass direction - towards the rising sun - and the word eastern to describe the area "east" of Europe and "western" to describe the area west of Europe towards the setting sun.
The majority of the Christian leadership has twisted and contorted Jesus’ message to mean the prosperity of having more things, of getting more wealth and power as a reward and blessing for following Jesus. That God wants you to have much more than he provides for the lilies of the field or the birds and wants you to build up treasures while you are here is not what Jesus taught. We know what he thought about the chances of a wealthy person to find paradise and we know what he thought of the despotic powerful. How can a bird have more or be more than a bird is? How can a human have more than God gave us from our birth? Impossible! Birds and all of the "lower" animals are complete just as humans are complete.
Jesus taught about “being” not “having”. When will Christians wake up and “see” what Jesus meant when he warned of those who come in his name? When will they quit warping and reinventing what Jesus taught?
Have you ever seen the video clips of Israeli school children writing messages of hate on the warheads and bombs to be dropped on the Lebanese and Palestinian people? And then have you seen video of the dead Lebanese and Palestine children? Do the Israelis show their children the videos of those dead children and do the Israeli children cheer and clap? That’s how sick western civilization has become. When adult leaders of a nation teach their children to hate and make war how can they call themselves civilized? How can they call themselves God’s people or God’s chosen?
At least President Harry Truman was sad and remorseful when he ordered the atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan. At least President Dwight Eisenhower was sickened by war. How can our current president, George W Bush, laugh and joke, act smug and make arrogant remarks as he orders invasions and missles launched? What abhorrent mutation of thought and reasoning allows him to call himself Christian? What has happened to Christianity and to our nation? Making war is not Christian. What this nation has become is not what Jesus taught and it is not the result of true Christianity. It is instead the result of insanity.
