At least one of my friends is brave enough to respond to my “Seeing Through RED” in written email. Should it astonish me that others will not, who perhaps identify with targets caricatured in that blunt piece? It seems that many lack confidence and fluency to debate an issue. Maybe they just lack time and energy or suppose it profitless, imagining me not open or important enough to engage. If so, why would I care?
If I am a projection of transpersonal process-entity into personal and social existence not unlike a finger intruding into water, should I worry about making ripples on entering or withdrawing? If my personality has no basis, pehaps I am only shadow on the water of so-called “external reality” or its political life. The politics of water would suggest that if left alone it will go quiet and level out, all turbulence subsiding. If mine were the sole projection and I wanted no more than peaceful water, that would suffice, even if evidence of my bodily presence remained. If I am shadow, the water stays undisturbed. If we are all shadows, many may not agree and persist in vibrating with any ripple even though unable to stir an effect. But, I regard myself and others as equally real.
One can achieve quietude any time without going into a monastery, cloister or Zen retreat. Zen advances no ideal of departure from worldly affairs or physical living. One cannot well transmit ‘no-mind’ to those not ready for it. They must be isolated from having effect or else overcome by greater turbulence that, like a big wave, either casts them out of the lake or covers their uproar with white noise.
We have a differential of ideas about social and political correctness. Should we always fear offending anyone? In the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita suggests peace and war, familiality and alienation are equally illusory. We look at the patterns, find ourselves and take our places responsibly with no more doubt or fear. Responsibly to whom or what? Only to the acts which define us, the selves we decide to become or at last discover we have always been. Contrary to widespread opinion, the orient offers us no fundamental or perfect wisdom, only exercise on the way to it.
A tradition of social deportment would have us be always sweet and polite to each other, no matter what provocation we receive. Tact is often an easy escape from simple discomfort. Yet, we see civility in Congress has vanished save for the most elementary rules of conduct on the floors. Civility there can mask anything but sociability. So, also, in public media forums. Why may we not antagonize those who antagonize us with their mistaken identifications of us, willfully viewing liberal and wholistic, communitarian values as “Socialism”? Once more, take the Tea Party. Take that stale, radical, falsely “grassroots” pseudo-conservativism. Cut that weedy grass and rake it away!
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