Completeness? Does it include pain? evil?

I have to digress because I got several e-mails questioning my premise of "completeness" when it comes to evil. This is a difficult one—it was a real challenge for me to accept violence and evil in the world. On a sunny bright day filled with birds and flowers it is easy for me to perceive that "this is Divine." But when I read the newspaper with all the devastation and suffering in the world. Is that Divine too?

Well, it is excruciatingly hard to accept, but the answer is "yes." Yes, all of this creation is the manifestation of the Divine. You see, when we divide it up between good and bad, god and devil, we are creating duality out of inherent "Oneness." The creation with all its diversity is One. To us, the fact that suffering and pain and evil are essentially divine is the bad part, yet we ignore the good part, we are essentially divine.

On an individual level, when I use an attitude of completeness, I am accepting and compassionate. I may hear of someone having murdered someone. I bless that person and feel compassion that he/she was the one who had to carry out that task in the creation. In fact, in the completeness, that person is part of the diversity and balance.

I remember once Swami Chinmayananda told me, "Nancy, you will never figure out why things are the way they are. It's not possible for the mind, an object of creation, to understand its creator. It's like trying to use the flashlight to look inside to see how it is made up… You take the batteries out to investigate the workings, then where is the light? The teaching that I give you is to make the mind give up and forget the pursuit of 'why,' and experience some peace in accepting 'what is.' However, your mind keeps dredging up endless questions that will always keep you away from peace. So you decide."

I may be projecting, but it appears that many of us have looked to a "spiritual life" to avoid pain and suffering of life. Actually, I've referred to it as the golden carrot to get us interested. Unconsciously, I thought that the spiritual life was the solution to have a life in which all people and circumstances conspire to treat me great. I don't know why I expected it, as many of the great masters have suffered physical maladies—serious ones.
But the question remains: who suffers?

  Enlightenment Is Being Complete

When I go through life with its inherent ups and downs and its challenges and joys, I find it effective to use the "enlightened attitude," that is, maintaining a sense of completeness. When I know I am complete, I am not affected if I lose something, neither am I affected if I gain something. Life is just a myriad of dramas and traumas for my mind and body to experience.

The best story I heard in India to explain this attitude is the one of the master who always was telling his disciples to live without fear. One day he was walking down a path and an elephant came charging toward him. Like a streak of lightening the Master ran off the path to avoid being trampled. One of the clever disciples questioned him, "You told us not to fear, yet you jumped out of the way of the elephant."

The master answered, "No, I did not jump out of the way; it was my body that ran away."

So the master did not expect that he could sit on the path and a miracle would happen. He let the body do what bodies do—run. In his completeness, running was as much a part of life as miracles.

And I can view the world the same way. It is complete. There nothing I can do to harm it—and neither can anyone else. Likewise there is nothing I can to do to improve anything. Yet something in me continues to act…. And why not?

Next time—but what about the illusion of “true completeness”: a soul mate?

Suffering is just Suffering

Buddha said, “Life is suffering.” I've lived long enough to notice that he was right. I've also lived long enough to notice that no one believes it. However, through my life experience, I have developed another way to look at suffering. I think Buddha [or his scribes] made it much too complicated—it's really quite simple.

As I observe myself and others, it's quite evident that we have created our lives to avoid suffering. There are many ways to relieve/postpone/disguise the suffering. Drugs, alcohol, food, cigarettes, adventures, meditation, hate, anger and even love and marriage are very prevalent methods. So all keep us from the basic truth: “Life is suffering.” Several times when I was tired or sick with no one to help me, I remember saying to myself, “This is why people stay married, they will never have to feel the lonely desolation I am feeling right now.” And I was willing to feel the anguish of the helplessness. I've always figured, you won't get the highs if you don't take the lows.

This week I took it as a project to see how many times I found my mind and body racing away to some pleasurable experience. What were they running from? They were running from a basic feeling of suffering, in a greater or less degree. What happens when I agree just to feel the suffering that was being given to me? Aside from the expansion resulting from acceptance of "what is," this week I experienced a short-term benefit too.

At a public hearing, I presented facts and figures concerning pollution in my community that I had been preparing for two years. Next day I woke up with a raging fever and chest cold. I needed a rest, so I took the folk advice that fever is good for you—it'll burn up the virus or bacteria. Last night I literally suffered from the heat of my own body and was drenched for hours. I could have gotten up and relieved the heat with a shower or with a fan, but I burned through it and let it be. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up and the fever was gone.

I can distinctly remember an incident when I was about eight years old, I had the thought, When I am 12, everything is going to be perfect for me. I was actually hoping, I'm suffering now, but I won't have to when I am older. Well, that was a joke, yet I think I still innately have that thinking pattern to some extent. Often unconsciously my motivation is the same. “When I do this, everything will be perfect.” “If I do that, everything will be perfect.” Obviously, when I am in that mode of thinking, I never have a chance to realize the perfection in the here and now.

However, sometimes the universe speaks up loud and clear. Yesterday, in spite of feeling so lousy, I had to pick up some groceries. I walked by a car with a bumper sticker that said, “An angel is watching over me.” Thinking of the success of the environmental hearing, I said to myself, The whole heavens must be watching over me. Just as I had that thought I looked up and saw a huge rainbow in the sky. I have not seen a rainbow for years. As a matter of fact, I was lamenting recently, “Where are all the rainbows?”

So suffering is just suffering; it's neither more nor less. If I accept suffering, I experience a broader, more complete spectrum of life that allows me to accept myself and others more. I see everything is perfect—just like I wanted it to be!



I truly believe we have to invent a way to make our life worthwhile.

I have been off-line for weeks now because a date was set for the public hearing over the water pollution issue that I am fervently, but not obsessively, working on. So I'm preparing data that was not available until July 8 to presented at the hearing on August 17. There are so many angles of the problem that I could never have conceived when I first started the investigation. I do ask myself at times, "Now why am I doing this?" My immediate answer is "Well, what else would I be doing?"

What are you doing with your life? Don't think that traveling and writing about India is the only "Divine" work. It is the hardest thing in life to realize that everything we do is part of a bigger picture—even though we may not see the bigger picture. Some of us are blessed to get glimpses of the "bigger picture," but even so we have to go on with our lives with that "knowing" as a kind of dim light in the background. Life is what it is... and sometimes I think it's overrated. That's why we have to use our life in some way that is meaningful, if not to others, at least to ourselves.

What we choose can be basic. I remember so many devoted mothers in India. It fascinated me that they would fast and pray for their family on a regular schedule. They found meaning in the sacred task of raising a family. Some people are fortunate to find it in the work they do. Others have to compromise and find another avenue to let their spirit flourish.

What we choose can develop, modify or change completely. Certainly that has been true in my life. Here I am involved in being an activist (with heart) trying to save my local environment and finding out the political reality. Did my years of meditating and reading and studying about the spiritual life create this? Hummmm....

The basic problem...

The basic problem turns out to be simple, our self-consciousness separates us from others. Due to the ego, we are aware of a separate entity. This self-consciousness goads us to do all sorts of things for me and myself, or me and my family. This self-consciousness keeps us from seeing the whole and being the whole. It's that simple. Yet when we live life, the truth is hard to apply-because we do have to pay attention to taking care of our body and circumstances. Or do we have to pay attention to how our body and circumstances are being taken care of in spite of our efforts.

Where Shall I Find GOD?

If life is for us to find some higher purpose, should we renounce the world and go find it. Tagore was a unique person, a universal person. He acted in the world on the level that the world accepts. He started a school, a university and wrote stories, dramas, poems and music for public audiences.

In the deep of the night, the man adverse to worldly pleasure said:
"I shall leave home to seek my desired God.
Who is it that has kept me here tied?"
God said, "It is I." But the man paid no heed.
Clasping the sleeping infant to her breast
The loving wife lay at one end of the bed in deep slumber.
The man said, "What are you all? The trickery of illusion."
"It is I," said God, but no one paid any heed.
Leaving his bed, the man called, "Where are Thou, my Lord?"
God said, "I am here. Still his words were not heard."
The child called out in his sleep hugging his mother;
God said, "Turn back." But his words were lost.
God heaved a sigh and said, "Alas, deserting me,
wither goes my devotee to find me?"

Giving up security

One of my friends mentioned that the guy who washed her windows was the third generation of window washers. I replied "That's what the caste system was about—or trade guilds in Europe." You had the security of following in the family tradition. It was a guaranteed job, plus you were likely to know something about it and have an inclination toward it. That was security! The modern capitalistic scheme of things has snatched it away from us. Although many do know what they want to do in life and never have to make a decision, many of us (like myself) are pushed into a job by relatives or have to choose our jobs out of the classified ads. Whatever position happens to be open at the time we read the column is the job we go for-what a fate! We begin to adapt ourselves to the tasks for the sake of money to survive. We are back to the same dilemma. When we don't really have a choice, does it make a difference what we do? What we are searching for may not be here, but is likely not to be there either.

Selling Water by the River

What should I do? Does it make a difference? There's a common saying among Japanese Zen Buddhists. The seeker lives daily just chopping wood and carrying water. Then he goes to the monastery and becomes enlightened. He then returns to the world and carries water. The daily activities of life are enough. So the wise ones tell us not to judge our activities, for it's the attitude we act with, not in the act itself.

If we are on the spiritual path, we expect thins to be bright and promising. If not, we question: How can life be so rough on you? You who have meditated and gone to satsang regularly. And really in weak moments, I ask the same question myself. However, there is a deeper part of me that knows these things are happening in life, they are not happening to me. Usually, that "me" is able to chuckle and say "next." The nature of the creation is to have black, white and lots and lots of grays. I get my share of challenges. Some people say, it's a test. Well, that may be true, if so, all life is a test. I prefer to remind myself, that no one is testing you. Life is just what it is. Live the life you have been given. And be alert!

What should I do?

The Creator loves diversity! I think the hardest part of living a spiritual life is knowing what to do, in any given situation, but also in our life's plan. Somehow, we think there is something wonderful and great and best to do. But let's consider "doing." From the Hindu point of view, Lord Krishna clearly told Arjuna: Relax, friend, I'm doing it all.

So this creation is the manifestation of Divinity-by whatever name you want to call it, whether you want to personalize it or depersonalize it—it's Divinity. If this creation is in fact the manifestation of Divinity, then what can we do, say or think that is outside of Divinity? Personally, one of the hardest things for my mind to comprehend is that there is ugliness and meanness and pain and sorrow in the creation. I just could not accept that this reality that I observe every day was Divinity. Neither could I accept the negativity that I saw in my thoughts. To me, good was God and bad was me. I wanted everything and everyone (including me) to be kind, gentle and loving at all times. However, that's not the way the creation is. If "I" cannot accept it as it is, then "I" remain stuck in duality: good—bad; god—me. Even knowing all is Divinity, the question still remains: What should I do? Does it make a difference? Think about it and we will analyze it further next week.