May You Live in Interesting Times: A Small Meditation on Life When It All is Falling Apart

Last updated on: March 4, 2016 at 9:35 am by James Ford

May You Live in Interesting Times: A Small Meditation on Life When It All is Falling Apart 2016-03-04T09:35:47-08:00 James Ford

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I really would like to indulge in a little schadenfreude in the wake of last night’s Republican debate. There was Mr Trump in all his orange glory. The various non Trump candidates (the theocrat, the boy with the memorized speech, and the reactionary who only looks like a grown up while standing among that crowd) explained in gory detail why the businessman/reality television show character is unqualified to be president, fraud, con man, liar, among those reasons, and where among his responses was assuring the American people of the size of his genitalia. And then, just to make sure we understand we’re watching the implosion of a political party, at the end how the non Trump candidates declared, all of them, that they would support him should he win the nomination. On the face of it seems a picture example of cognitive dissonance.

However, yesterday I was also talking with an old friend, who explained to me with absolute conviction that Secretary Clinton is “the best Republican” in the race. While I have seen excessive statements about Senator Sanders among some of the secretary’s supporters, at least in my little corner of the social media world, it has largely been supporters of Senator Sanders who are absolutely determined to drag down their opponent for the Democratic nomination with a litany of attacks that could largely be pulled from a Republican play book. Calling her the best Republican is in fact tame compared with some of the characterizations. But, the polarization it conveys, that summarizes for me that the Democrats are not going to be content with letting their opposition to self-immolate. They want in on the bon fire…

And it sure seems Rome is burning.

In 1947 while standing in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill famously observed how “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…” Over the years I’ve taken comfort in that. However, in this current race I find a Facebook meme declaring how given the current state of affairs that “strange women lying in ponds and distributing swords as a system of government is starting to sound better every minute.”

A few years ago I delivered a sermon where I ruminated on the famous Fermi Paradox, which is neat summarized in Wikipedia. “The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.” By Fermi and Hart’s math the galaxy, ours, the Milky Way, should have been pretty much completely colonized by some vastly earlier civilization by now. But, it hasn’t happened. The stars, which should be alive with chatter, are silent. And, so, hangs the question: “Where is everybody?”

There have been any numbers of responses to the paradox. Some are quite inventive. But one in particular haunts me, has even made it hard to go to sleep sometimes. Put simply it suggests that it is in the nature of intelligent life, at some point, to destroy itself.

In the face of the problems facing us not only as a nation but as a species, I’m finding it harder and harder to maintain optimism about our ability to survive our demons, the ones Buddhists have so long observed, our relentlessly arising greed, hatred, and ignorance. These manifest as a constellation of grasping, a constellation of aversion, and that last thing, which I’ve come to understand as our constellation of blind certainties.

Now, I’ve witnessed with my own eyes how these things can transmute, how hatred can become clarity, how greed can become generosity, and how those terrible driving certainties can become a generous and profound curiosity. We human beings contain both the seeds of our destruction and the seeds of our salvation.

I see it at the individual level more often than in groups. And that is a problem. A big one. We do not live by ourselves. In fact while an occasional individual can “escape” into a cave somewhere, the fact is we are a herd animal, that individual separated from the community is an aberration, not a solution. So, absence is not the deal. Rather, relationship is the deal. It is, as my friend the Zen and Insight teacher Doug Phillips says, “all about relationships.”

But, that extends. It certainly cannot just be about relationships among people. It is all about relationship. And at the same time we live in a world where everything falls apart. We know we are each of us going to die. Well, that’s also true of everything else. Nations die. Planets die. Stars die.

And so, so what?

Here I find myself thinking of the Hindu spiritual classic the Bhagavad Gita. It addresses this issue, calling us to act and then, so simply, to let go of the results of our actions. I think there’s something quite important here. The Gita observes how “action alone is within your control.” The point is bare and hard to avoid. Our control “never extends to the fruits.” That’s just the way it is in a world where things are verbs not nouns, and our actions are currents in a great stream rushing headlong to a distant sea.

For me the take away is, well, yes, the American political scene is a disaster. And, we have no particular reason to assume it will turn for the better.

And, so what?

Our job actually isn’t to win. It is to be full and present and to do the best we can. (Of course that means my job is to be full and present and to do the best I can…) Period.

And the results? Well, we just have to let go. I just have to let go. You just have to let go. The results aren’t the deal.

The deal is the doing. The deal is the intimate stuff.

Two cents on a Friday morning…

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