Category: Blog

In my previous post I claimed that playing, laughing, chanting, and walking are acts of resistance. Here’s why: When we play for playing’s sake, that is when we play for the sheer joy of playing, we slip from zero–sum thinking to non–zero thinking: from trying to win the game to trying to maintain the game. When we laugh we make it impossible to be afraid. When we chant we open our hearts, empty our heads, and unclench our fists. And when we walk we meet the world and are met by it, and in so doing we discover it isn’t an it at all, but a Thou.

In a previous post I asked how you resist evil. Here, in no particular order, are some of my little acts of resistance. Through my writing and lectures I openly and publicly name and reject the parochial and jingoistic aspects of religion, and promote Perennial Wisdom in their place. I engage in a version of the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Ransom and Release, supporting organizations that provide safe shelter for abused and endangered animals (primarily dogs and elephants). I talk with my neighbors, then I talk with them some more. I have a Little Free Library (www.littlefreelibrary.org) on my front lawn and talk with people who stop by to take or drop off books about what they are reading and thinking. I sit on my front porch and greet passersby. I love my grandson and teach him to be fearless and kind. I love my dog and invite her to teach me to be a servant leader. I avoid anesthetizing myself with food, drink, drugs, media, or the Internet. I play. I laugh. I chant. I go for long walks.

The monkeys were mostly wrong. We have to see, name, and intervene to stop the evil erupting all around us. We have to listen intently to what we are being told by government and media to see if we aren’t being fed newspeak that drapes evil in the flag of liberty and patriotism. We have to hear what we say to one another and how we say to discover if we are spreading fear and lies stoked by “false news” and conspiracy theories trending on Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. But the monkeys are right about doing no evil. It doesn’t help to oppose the demonizing of one group by demonizing another. As the Buddha taught, “Overcome anger by peacefulness; overcome evil by good,” (Dhammapada 223).

Jesus taught, “Resist not evil,” (Matthew 5:39). What he meant was “resist not evil in a manner that makes you evil as well.” Understood in the context of his time, turning the right cheek to force the Roman soldier to strike you as an equal, freely carrying the occupier’s pack for an extra mile (after having been forced to carry it the first mile), and stripping oneself naked in debtor’s court to show the injustice of the economic system were all powerful, nonviolent acts of resistance (see Walter Wink, The Powers That Be). His death on the cross was no less an act of resistance, while his resurrection an even greater one. We live in a time of many evils: some small, some great; some fully realized, some about to be unleashed. How do we resist? Or perhaps more profoundly, how do you resist?

Yesterday a woman said to me, “God gave us free will. Otherwise we would just be puppets on a string.” OK, but what’s wrong with being puppets? What’s wrong with not having the capacity to do evil? Would we complain if God created us without the capacity to rape, plunder, pillage, and murder? Of course not. We imagine God created us with free will to excuse our sadistic fantasies of God torturing people who do what we don’t want them to do.

Language shapes our reading of reality. The languages I speak are obsessed with nouns that are either acting or being acted upon. But there are no nouns in nature, only gerunds; no things, only events, only happenings. I might say I’m looking at a tree, but in fact I am looking at “treeing”. I see nouns because I don’t see deeply. Seeing deeply I would only see happenings, and the I who sees would be another happening as well.

Who are you, really? Not who do you say you are, or who others say you are or should be, but who are you, really: who is the you who says and hears what others are saying? I am a white male Jewish American, but the me that knows this isn’t any of these things. I am currently sitting on a wooden Adirondack chair overlooking the Cumberland Plateau, but the me that knows this isn’t sitting anywhere. The me that knows cannot be known; it has no attributes; it has no substance; it isn’t a thing but a knowing. But what is it if there is nothing to know? What is it—who am I—if there is no content to know?  Can the knowing that knows everything be forever unknown?

“Unending Love” is a poem by Rabbi Rami, co-founder of One River Foundation.
At the end of the poem is a chant and video of the poem by composer David Goldstein.

Unending Love

I am loved by an unending love.
I am embraced by arms that find me
Even when I am hidden from myself.
I am touched by fingers that soothe me
Even when I am too proud for soothing.
I am counseled by voices that guide me
Even when I am too embittered to hear.
I am loved by an unending love.

I am supported by hands that uplift me
Even in the midst of a fall.
I am urged on by eyes that meet me
Even when I am too weak for meeting.
I am loved by an unending love.

Embraced, touched, soothed, counseled;
may mine too be the arms and fingers,
the voice and the hands,
the eyes and the smile
that compels another to say:
“I am loved by an unending love.”

Welcome to the Kali Yuga, the Apocalypse, the End Times, the collapse of order into the creative sea of chaos. Global warming and climate change and the rise of ISIS and jingoistic nationalism and mindless consumerism and Gilded Age capitalism and all the other bogeymen that haunt our dreams both waking and asleep didn’t cause the collapse, they are simply how the collapse is happening. The cause is simply reality. We need times of collapse the way we need earthquakes and tsunamis: without the shifting of the earth’s plates that cause earthquakes and tsunamis, the earth couldn’t function; without periods of collapse there is no new growth. We need Good Friday if we are to have Easter Sunday. That’s why Good Friday is good: Jesus has to die if Christ is to be born. So the question isn’t “How do we stop the collapse?” but rather “How do we ride it out compassionately, wisely, and lovingly?”

Rabbi Rami, co-founder of One River Foundation, editor of The World Wisdom Bible, and one of the most creative figures in contemporary American Judaism presented the opening teaching at the Festival of Faiths in Louisville, KY, on Wednesday, April 19, 2017.

Rabbi Tirzah Firestone describes Rabi Rami as “brilliant, heartful and full of reverence (and irreverence). A great pluralist soul with a fabulous sense of humor. You will love him.”