tuesday march 2, 2010
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Gateway to the Path

This is a time to reflect and recap. A year has gone by, and I've had a considerable change in the path of my life. I've retired from my public career as a social worker in child welfare, and I'm two months into planning an alternate future.

It's a largely positive experience so far. I am well-prepared for a change in social identity as a result of the past two years spent attending Jewel Heart. It helped me gain an improved understanding of some applicable Buddhist principles. By attempting to understand emptiness, and through meditation on attachment, I believe that I am better able to see the benefit to be gained by experiencing change without fear of loss.

It may be said that retirement is akin to death; it is the shedding of a body of behaviors and modalities surrounding a public role, not unlike the shedding of the physical body at death, with it's cocoon of behaviors, thoughts and delusions.

But the future takes planning. I want to finish The Redemption of Coyote Woburn, the mystery novel I began last year. In writing fiction, there is a need to envision a context in which your characters can find a home and a way of facing the future. So hiding in the basement and building bookcases was ok for January and February, but it's March now, and spring will be here soon; there are projects, in addition to Coyote, that need planning. Like a trip to Dysart Woods...on which, more to come.

About politics, I remain optimistic. In early 2009, the optimism of the emerging Obama coalition gave cause for hope. The backlash, though anticipated, has been harsh...violence is always at the center of human potential and an episode in which American populism is unleashed in civil unrest is a horror to contemplate. Are things that bad? Only if I make them so though indulgence in fear.

But the issues facing us are serious, and time is short if human suffering is to be prevented. I do believe that the conservative resurgence of 2010 is a mere reaction to the mainstream of human thinking, which appears to be in the midst of an awakening.

The failure of Copenhagen while discouraging, at least show-cased the emergence of China as an engine of environmental change. That alone is cause for celebration - a big part of the pessimistic global-warming model was based on the assumption that China would plod through each phase of industrial development, spewing co2 in their wake, before arriving at the painfully obvious realization of global limits. Instead, China offers the surprise that they intend to leapfrog over the west and embrace the market opportunities inherent in the shift from a carbon-based economy to one based on re-newable energy sources with minimal environmental impact. This kind of market pressure has the potential to shift the western discussion from one that is driven by reactionary carbon-invested industrialists, to one that is driven by a new generation of entrepreneurs capable of competing with China.

How long does history give us, to wrestle the monster to the ground? To kill the influence of the carbon-based industrialists, and begin to evolve our systems to address the common good while preserving the earth - the incubator that gives us life on our journey through time?

This is our task; to live in harmony with nature in accordance with the vision of the Great Spirit. How to find this pathway and how to embrace its heart? How to bend our arrogance and our will to the greater wisdom of which we are only a part?

In some ways, Americans are harmed by the very diversity that we cherish. A million pathways to choose from...some sincere and from the heart, some appealing to the dark nature that is our constant companion, and the hungers it gives rise to. How to know that the path we choose to follow is the correct one? The path revealed though meditation on our true nature, the path capable of leading us to the heart of the great mystery, capable of serving as a guide to the heart of the Great Spirit?

President Obama I'm bound to say, is as good as it gets, though only time will show the fruits of his leadership; time and the ability of the rest of us to understand and follow the leader's wise counsel. The president is proving himself a tough executive who will get us by hook or crook, to a signed bill on health care and will begin the process leading to the eventual mitigation of environmental catastrophe, to the extent that it can be mitigated at this late date.

On balance, despite a rough year, there is yet reason for hope.

On March 7th, I go back to Jewel Heart after an absence of a month or so. I miss it when I'm not there. Looking forward to a class being taught by Susie and David called "Gateways to the Path." I made my way through Lam Rim I, but really don't feel like I gave it a good effort, so I will look to begin again, perhaps with better focus.

Can I re-hab the basement to create room for a sacred space? Can I re-hab my body through exercise in time to save it from ruin? I was born in 1946, and my goal is to make it to 2046. How likely do I think that is, and what in addition to a desire for longevity for its own sake, can I bring to the quest?

DHL