Note from the Webmaster: I intend to update this page every few weeks or months, replacing this with a new conversation when one really catches my eye. The object is just to give you a feeling for the sorts of conversations that we have.

This particular dialogue was set off by a Peggy Noonan editorial. (Peggy Noonan is a Republican speech writer, best known for the "1,000 points of light.") So the first thing you will read below is her editorial, which appeared in the magazine "Forbes ASAP" on November 30, 1998 (almost three years before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001). After that comes the conversation that we had, inspired by her editorial.

The entire conversation took place by email. I have done a bit of reformatting and cleanup, but I have not rewritten what anyone wrote.

I suppose it is commonplace to say it, but it's true: There is no such thing as time. The past is gone and no longer exists, the future is an assumption that has not yet come, all you have is the moment—this one—but it too has passed . . . just now. The moment we are having is an awfully good one, though. History has handed us one of the easiest rides in all the story of man. It has handed us a wave of wealth so broad and deep that it would be almost disorienting if we thought about it a lot, which we don't.

We know such comfort! We sleep on beds that are soft and supporting, eat food that is both good and plentiful. We touch small levers and heat our homes to exactly the degree we desire; the pores of our bare arms are open and relaxed as we read the Times in our T-shirts, while two feet away, on the other side of the plate glass window, a blizzard rages. We turn levers and get clean water, push a button for hot coffee, open doors and get ice cream, take short car trips to places where planes wait before whisking us across continents as we nap. It is all so fantastically fine.

Lately this leaves me uneasy. Does it you? Do you wonder how and why exactly we have it so different, so nice compared to thousands of years of peasants eating rocks? Is it possible that we, the people of the world, are being given a last great gift before everything changes? To me it feels like a gift. Only three generations ago, my family had to sweat in the sun to pull food from the ground.

Another thing. The marvels that are part of our everyday lives—computers, machines that can look into your body and see everything but your soul—are so astounding that most of us who use them don't really understand exactly what they're doing or how they do it. This too is strange. The day the wheel was invented, the crowd watching understood immediately what it was and how it worked. But I cannot explain with any true command how the MRI that finds a tumor works. Or how, for that matter, the fax works.

We would feel amazement, or even, again, a mild disorientation, if we were busy feeling and thinking long thoughts instead of doing—planning the next meeting, appointment, consultation, presentation, vacation. We are too busy doing these things to take time to see, feel, parse, and explain amazement.

Which gets me to time.

We have no time! Is it that way for you? Everyone seems so busy. Once, a few years ago, I sat on the Spanish Steps in Rome. Suddenly I realized that everyone, all the people going up and down the steps, was hurrying along on his or her way somewhere. I thought, Everyone is doing something. On the streets of Manhattan, they hurry along and I think, Everyone is busy. I don't think I've seen anyone amble, except at a summer place, in a long time. I am thinking here of a man I saw four years ago at a little pier in Martha's Vineyard. He had plaid shorts and white legs, and he was walking sort of stiffly, jerkily. Maybe he had mild Parkinson's, but I think: Maybe he's just arrived and trying to get out of his sprint and into a stroll.

All our splendor, our comfort, takes time to pay for. And affluence wants to increase; it carries within it an unspoken command: More! Affluence is like nature, which always moves toward new life. Nature does its job; affluence enlists us to do it. We hear the command for "More" with immigrant ears that also hear "Do better!" or old American ears that hear, "Sutter is rich, there's gold in them hills, onward to California!" We carry California within us; that is what it is to be human, and American.

So we work. The more you have, the more you need, the more you work and plan. This is odd in part because of all the spare time we should have. We don't, after all, have to haul water from the crick. We don't have to kill an antelope for dinner. I can microwave a Lean Cuisine in four minutes and eat it in five. I should have a lot of extra time—more, say, than a cavewoman. And yet I feel I do not. And I think: That cavewoman watching the antelope turn on the spit, she was probably happily daydreaming about how shadows played on the walls of her cave. She had time.

It's not just work. We all know the applications of Parkinson's Law, that work expands to fill the time allotted to complete it. This isn't new. But this is: So many of us feel we have no time to cook and serve a lovely three-course dinner, to write the long, thoughtful letter, to ever so patiently tutor the child. But other generations, not so long ago, did. And we have more time-saving devices than they did.

We invented new technologies so that work could be done more efficiently, more quickly. We wished it done more quickly so we could have more leisure time. (Wasn't that the plan? Or was it to increase our productivity?)

But we have less leisure time, it seems, because these technologies encroach on our leisure time.

You can be beeped on safari! Be faxed while riding an elephant and receive e-mail while being menaced by a tiger. And if you can be beeped on safari, you will be beeped on safari. This gives you less time to enjoy being away from the demands of time.

Twenty years ago when I was starting out at CBS on the radio desk, we would try each day to track down our roving foreign correspondents and get them to file on the phone for our morning news broadcasts. I would go to the daily log to see who was where. And not infrequently it would say that Smith, in Beirut, is "out of pocket," i.e., unreachable, unfindable for a few days. The official implication was that Smith was out in the field traveling with the guerrillas. But I thought it was code for "Smith is drunk," or "Smith is on deep background with a really cute source." I'd think, Oh, to be an out-of-pocket correspondent on the loose in Cairo, Jerusalem, Paris—what a thing.

But now there is no "out of pocket." Now everyone can be reached and found, anywhere, anytime. Now there is no hiding place. We are "in the pocket."

What are we in the pocket of? An illusion, perhaps, or rather many illusions: that we must know the latest, that we must have a say, that we are players, are needed, that the next score will change things, that through work we can quench our thirst, that, as they said in the sign over the entrance of Auschwitz, "Work Brings Freedom," that we must bow to "More" and pay homage to California. I live a life of only average intensity, and yet by 9 p.m. I am quite stupid, struck dumb with stimuli fatigue. I am tired from 10 hours of the unconscious strain of planning, meeting, talking, thinking. If you clench your fist for 10 hours and then let go, your hand will jerk and tremble. My brain trembles.

I sit on the couch at night with my son. He watches TV as I read the National Enquirer and the Star. This is wicked of me, I know, but the Enquirer and the Star have almost more pictures than words; there are bright pictures of movie stars, of television anchors, of the woman who almost choked to death when, in a state of morning confusion, she accidentally put spermicidal jelly on her toast. These stories are just right for the mind that wants to be diverted by something that makes no demands.

I have time at 9. But I am so flat-lined that I find it very hard to make the heartening phone call to the nephew, to write the long letter. Often I feel guilty and treat myself with Haagen-Dazs therapy. I will join a gym if I get time.

When a man can work while at home, he will work while at home. When a man works at home, the wall between workplace and living place, between colleague and family, is lowered or removed. Does family life spill over into work life? No. Work life spills over into family life. You do not wind up taking your son for a walk at work, you wind up teleconferencing during softball practice. This is not progress. It is not more time but less. Maybe our kids will remember us as there but not there, physically present but carrying the faces of men and women who are strategizing the sale.

I often think how much I'd like to have a horse. Not that I ride, but I often think I'd like to learn. But if I had a horse, I would be making room for the one hour a day in which I would ride. I would be losing hours seeing to Flicka's feeding and housing and cleaning and loving and overall well being. This would cost money. I would have to work hard to get it. I would have less time.

Who could do this? The rich. The rich have time because they buy it. They buy the grooms and stable keepers and accountants and bill payers and negotiators for the price of oats. Do they enjoy it? Do they think, It's great to be rich, I get to ride a horse?

Oh, I hope so! If you can buy time, you should buy it. This year I am going to work very hard to get some.

Now it's more like this: Dad goes to work at 6:15, to the city, where he is an executive; Mom goes to work at the bank where she's a vice president, but not before giving the sitter the keys and bundling the kids into the car to go to, respectively, soccer camp, arts camp, Chinese lessons, therapy, the swim meet, computer camp, a birthday party, a play date. Then home for an impromptu barbecue of turkey burgers and a salad with fresh Parmesan cheese followed by summer homework, Nintendo, and TV—the kids lying splayed on the couch, dead eyed, like denizens of a Chinese opium den—followed by "Hi Mom," "Hi, Dad," and bed.

Life is so much more interesting now! It's not boring, like 1957. There are things to do: The culture is broader, more sophisticated; there's more wit and creativity to be witnessed and enjoyed. Moms, kids and dads have more options, more possibilities. This is good. The bad news is that our options leave us exhausted when we pursue them and embarrassed when we don't.

Good news: Mothers do not become secret valium addicts out of boredom and loneliness, as they did 30 and 40 years ago. And Dad's conversation is more interesting than his father's. He knows how Michael Jordan acted on the Nike shoot, and tells us. The other night Dad worked late and then they all went to a celebratory dinner at Rao's where they sat in a booth next to Warren Beatty, who was discussing with his publicist the media campaign for "Bulworth." Beatty looked great, had a certain watchful dignity, ordered the vodka penne.

Bad news: Mom hasn't noticed but she's half mad from stress. Her face is older than her mother's, less innocent, because she has burned through her facial subcutaneous fat and because she unconsciously holds her jaw muscles in a tense way. But it's okay because the collagen, the Botox, the Retin-A and alpha hydroxy, and a better diet than her mother's (Grandma lived on starch, it was the all-carbo diet) leave her looking more . . . fit. She does not have her mother's soft, maternal weight. The kids do not feel a pillowy yielding when they hug her; they feel muscles and smell Chanel body moisturizer.

When Mother makes fund-raising calls for the school, she does not know it but she barks: "Yeah, this is Claire Marietta on the cookie drive we need your cookies tomorrow at 3 in the gym if you're late the office is open till 4 or you can write a check for $12 any questions call me." Click.

Mom never wanted to be Barbara Billingsley. Mom got her wish.

Well, we're going to get more time. But it's not pretty how it will happen, so if you're in a good mood, stop reading here and go hug the kids and relax and have a drink and a nice pointless conversation with your spouse.

Here goes: It has been said that when an idea's time has come a lot of people are likely to get it at the same time. In the same way, when something begins to flicker out there in the cosmos a number of people, a small group at first, begin to pick up the signals. They start to see what's coming.

Our entertainment industry, interestingly enough, has plucked something from the unconscious of a small collective. For about 30 years now, but accelerating quickly this decade, the industry has been telling us about The Big Terrible Thing.

Space aliens come and scare us, nuts with nukes try to blow us up.

This is not new: In the '50s Michael Rennie came from space to tell us in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" that if we don't become more peaceful our planet will be obliterated. But now in movies the monsters aren't coming close, they're hitting us directly. Meteors the size of Texas come down and take out the eastern seaboard, volcanoes swallow Los Angeles, Martians blow up the White House. The biggest-grosser of all time was about the end of a world, the catastrophic sinking of an unsinkable entity.

Something's up. And deep down, where the body meets the soul, we are fearful. We fear, down so deep it hasn't even risen to the point of articulation, that with all our comforts and amusements, with all our toys and bells and whistles . . . we wonder if what we really have is . . . a first-class stateroom on the Titanic. Everything's wonderful, but a world is ending and we sense it.

I don't mean: "Uh-oh, there's a depression coming." I mean: We live in a world of three billion men and hundreds of thousands of nuclear bombs, missiles, warheads. It's a world of extraordinary germs that can be harnessed and used to kill whole populations, a world of extraordinary chemicals that can be harnessed and used to do the same.

Three billion men, and it takes only half a dozen bright and evil ones to harness and deploy.

What are the odds it will happen? Put it another way: What are the odds it will not? Low. Nonexistent, I think.

When you consider who is gifted and crazed with rage . . . when you think of the terrorist places and the terrorist countries . . . who do they hate most? The Great Satan, the United States. What is its most important place? Some would say Washington. I would say the great city of the United States is the great city of the world, the dense 10-mile-long island called Manhattan, where the economic and media power of the nation resides, the city that is the psychological center of our modernity, our hedonism, our creativity, our hard-shouldered hipness, our unthinking arrogance.

If someone does the big, terrible thing to New York or Washington, there will be a lot of chaos and a lot of lines going down, a lot of damage, and a lot of things won't be working so well anymore. And thus a lot more . . . time. Something tells me we won't be teleconferencing and faxing about the Ford account for awhile.

The psychic blow—and that is what it will be as people absorb it, a blow, an insult that reorders and changes—will shift our perspective and priorities, dramatically, and for longer than a while. Something tells me more of us will be praying, and hard, one side benefit of which is that there is sometimes a quality of stopped time when you pray. You get outside time.

Maybe, of course, I'm wrong. But I think of the friend who lives on Park Avenue who turned to me once and said, out of nowhere, "If ever something bad is going to happen to the city, I pray each day that God will give me a sign. That He will let me see a rat stand up on the sidewalk. So I'll know to gather the kids and go." I absorbed this and, two years later, just a month ago, poured out my fears to a former high official of the United States government. His face turned grim. I apologized for being morbid. He said no, he thinks the same thing. He thinks it will happen in the next year and a half. I was surprised, and more surprised when he said that an acquaintance, a former arms expert for another country, thinks it will happen in a matter of months.

So now I have frightened you. But we must not sit around and be depressed. "Don't cry," Jimmy Cagney once said. "There's enough water in the goulash already."

We must take the time to do some things. We must press government officials to face the big, terrible thing. They know it could happen tomorrow; they just haven't focused on it because there's no Armageddon constituency. We should press for more from our foreign intelligence and our defense systems, and press local, state, and federal leaders to become more serious about civil defense and emergency management.

The other thing we must do is the most important.

I once talked to a man who had a friend who'd done something that took his breath away. She was single, middle-aged and middle class, and wanted to find a child to love. She searched the orphanages of South America and took the child who was in the most trouble, sick and emotionally unwell. She took the little girl home and loved her hard, and in time the little girl grew and became strong, became in fact the kind of person who could and did help others. Twelve years later, at the girl's high school graduation, she won the award for best all-around student. She played the piano for the recessional. Now she's at college.

The man's eyes grew moist. He had just been to the graduation. "These are the things that stay God's hand," he told me. I didn't know what that meant. He explained: These are the things that keep God from letting us kill us all.

So be good. Do good. Stay his hand. And pray. When the Virgin Mary makes her visitations—she's never made so many in all of recorded history as she has in this century—she says: Pray! Pray unceasingly!

I myself don't, but I think about it a lot and sometimes pray when I think. But you don't have to be Catholic to take this advice.

Pray. Unceasingly. Take the time.

Article by Peggy Noonan, first published in "Forbes ASAP," November 30, 1998

This is incredible. It brought tears to my eyes. It hit me at just the right time I think. I especially like the way it ended. Pray. Pray unceasingly. I felt pretty guilty after last Saturday night's meeting. I was afraid that I had inadvertantly stepped on Dave's experiences and the general mood to go out and get instruction wherever it is to be found. I was also afraid I came across condescending even smug. If I was guilty of any of those things or even if I just came across to any of you in any of these ways please forgive me. I think what I was trying to say is that I myself have lost a certain amount of faith in the methodology that I have espoused for so many years and that I witnessed Saturday night and read about in Douglas Harding yesterday, the self psycho-analytic approach. I don't question its validity, it just isn't "tripping my trigger" these days. Maybe I just smell too strongly the old Rosean dictum "I sought my mind with my mind until I was cursed with confusion and I found YOU nought." Perhaps I was just finally in synch with Rose when he told me after listening to my mental machinations for an hour or so—"yeah I know what you mean. I went through all that stuff myself. But, hell, I lost track of myself years ago." For myself I just somehow know that I'm not going to "worry" myself any further or any faster along to the goal. What resonates to me is Peggy Noonan's injunction below. "Pray, pray without ceasing." My answer to Zach and all the Zachs is to pray. Pray without ceasing.

Don't get me wrong, I think that Peggy has some very good points here. But nonetheless, something about it kind of makes me sick because I think that for most people, it's exactly the wrong message. The peer pressure is already all in the direction of trying to work to generate more time for ME and that's exactly the wrong way to go. We're never going to be able to go back to a world without technology. We're never going to be able to just back away from doing more things. Call me naïve, but I think that the solution is not backing off and making life less hurried, I feel like if you're really living a life that is full of love for God and constantly for the benefit of others then the more energy you give, the more you get in return. Otherwise no matter how much free time and space you try and create for yourself and family it will never really help. Sure, I think that more prayer is always beneficial, but with all the activities of daily life constant mental prayer is impossible. I have to agree with Rose in that the only way to do it constantly and ceaselessly so that it really makes a difference is to make your life and actions your prayer and I fully believe that is the only real solution to the things that Peggy raises.

I am <still> reading this really awesome book about this lady Peace Pilgrim and I must include a quote I just came across from her.

Fifteen years before my pilgrimage began, I felt completely willing—without any reservations—to give my life, and I started to live to give instead of to get. When I dedicated my life to be of as much service as possible to my fellow human beings someone said to me very sarcastically, "What do you think you can do?" and I replied, "I know I am a little person and can only do little things, but there are so many little things that need to be done." And I never had any trouble finding little things to do. I can say this to you: Live the present. Do the things you know need to be done. Do all the good you can each day. The future will unfold.

Perhaps the path toward inner peace does not seem easy while you are walking it, but when you have walked it you look back and think: How could I have earned the great blessing of inner peace so easily.

- Peace Pilgrim

All you have to do to get a copy of the book is to write to this address and they send you one for free. I highly, highly recommend it. As cheesy as her name is, she's my inspiration right now.

Friends of Peace Pilgrim
7350 Dorado Canyon Rd.
Somerset, CA 95684
email: PeacePilgrim@znet.com

Actually I think Peggy would agree with you. I think getting busy helping others would not be the same kind of business she is talking about. However I do believe that she is also talking about contemplation and "chopping wood and carrying water" like the Zen monks preach. One of the problems with my comparisons of RGI to Mepkin is that the manual "busy" work there is structured so that you can literally pray while doing it because it takes in most cases so little mental effort. I also don't think she is for going back to no technology or anything like it. I think she IS talking about being grateful and happy with less.....it is like the woman I showed my farm to and complained that I was worried about buying it because it would tie me down with maintanance. Her answer: "just hire someone." My answer: "So I have to work 14 hours a day to pay for all the help I need in order to have time to enjoy my farm. But if I'm working 14 hours a day where is the time?" I'm glad you "pushed back" though Chuck if that's the way you really feel, I love a foeman worthy of my steel. :)

Yes, but not exactly . . . Perhaps I need to go back through and read her again as I just skimmed it because I was in a rush. I agree with her "happy with less" but I'm not really talking about contemplation, "busy" work, and "chopping wood and carrying water" . . . I feel like there's too much to be done as far as spreading the "dharma" and getting others questioning, interested and looking into the mystery of life. That's not meant as a criticism of Mepkin because I think that in their "busy" work of doing the eggs and so on they are making sure that Mepkin stays alive as a place where others can come and be exposed to their atmosphere of love and thus they spread it that way. And so I don't think that it matters if your work takes enough mental effort that you can't literally pray while doing it as long as that work is directed towards the spiritual benefit of others. Even if it's just insomuch as simply making money to be able to pour into and support the spiritual search. It occured to me a few weeks ago at a Saturday night meeting that the best way for me to contribute might just be to start a company with the sole purpose of making lots of money and contributing it to creating spiritual organizations like SKS. It doesn't matter to me how much your work is supposed to improve your this or that or get you to a higher state in this or that other thing or do this or that to your ego, I don't care, as long as it's oriented towards benefiting self, I think it's worthless. There's just too much to be done for others and too much benefit to be had out of losing yourself and forgetting about taking your own temperature, in the process of turning others on to the spiritual, which is why I for one liked what you added at the end of the last meeting. Forget "chopping wood and carry water" or being grateful and happy with less if it's oriented for my own spiritual benefit, there's too much postering, banner painting, planning meetings and so on for the benefit of others to be done. That's all i'm saying. As much as I am still inspired to go work with Cohen at some point, I refuse to become someone who is constantly taking my own temperature and checking for my own spiritual fruits about how my ego is doing . . . while I don't want to try and "take the splinter out while I still have a board in my eye" I think far more people need to go the way of first becoming God-centered rather than self-centered and in that many of the boards will fall out all on their own. Something about Peggy just still struck me as too self-centered and that's what I was reacting against.

Very impressive Chuck. What I like most about what you write is your passion. This is not just an intellectual musing on your part. I'm not 100% in agreement with you but that doesn't matter. The important thing is to go after it with passion.

Chuck, I think if you look around, you will see a ton of people who are busily, busily doing. From their own perspectives, they are doing good for others. One person labors ceaselessly to protect a woman's right to choose. Another person works tirelessly to end the carnage of abortion murders. Both are selfless and dedicated and both of them really hate each other and, in the end, I don't know that either one of them is doing much good for the world. They may just be canceling each other out.

So my only point is, it isn't enough to work. You also have to put a lot of thought into making sure that your work is in the right direction. You have to "take your temperature"—carefully and often. You have to make sure that your motives are pure, or at least as pure as possible. The Buddha set out to eliminate suffering. But first he spent a long time meditating under trees. Was that selfish? Was it because he had a plan that "I will meditate for ten years, get enlightened under the Bodhi tree, and then tell everyone how I did it?" Or was it possibly just because he knew that he was useless to the world until he got his own shit together?

The urge to procrastinate from studying for my stats midterm combined with wanting to clarify my point is overwhelming . . . :)

That's just my point though Kenny, because the work that I'm talking about IS different from the work that the two people are doing on either side of the abortion battle or anything else that people are battling for in the name of others! And your point with the Buddha shows exactly how. The reason that the Buddha was able to do something unique, something that many credit as TRULY helping society was because he took the time to question, to sit down and really think about what would relieve suffering in a real way. And getting people to do that is EXACTLY the kind of work that I'm referring to—the work of making people less like robots and more like real ALIVE human beings. And the only way is to get them questioning fundamental things like what the best thing to do with their lives really is and getting them to do it for more than 5 minutes. That's what makes it different, that's what makes it spiritual. I mean damn, here we have the Buddha saying that he found a way to permanently relieve suffering and like you say so often, how many people when they are young enough for it to make a difference actually take the time to look into and question whether he was right or not or question anything else for that matter.

However, I am willing to grant you that perhaps it is not as one-sided as I am saying. Probably the truth of the matter is more of a balance between questioning yourself, your own motives, etc AND action. You have to act. You're never going to have complete perfect information, you're always being forced into acting on less than ideal knowledge of yourself and your own motives. But nonetheless, you have to "walk, not wobble" and act in the best way you know how and learn from that along the way. And that's the great thing about acting in a way that forces others to question life, it continually reminds you to question it as well. Maybe asking the two people in the abortion debate to question more doesn't end up working, then at least you can reevaluate and try and come up with some other way. Otherwise, like Jon says, you just end up sitting on the fence all day and saying that you still need less of an ego or you still need more pure motives before you can know for sure what to do. From what I hear, the Buddha went and tried out every other spiritual system in India at the time, before, fed up with them all, he sat down to figure out his own. But the important difference was that he questioned and so the important, most selfless work for us isn't to just sit and question because it's good for us to do. If it's good for us to question ourselves, it's even more important for us to get others questioning. It's the same logic that your father used when he began teaching others how to teach others how to teach. It's FAR more effective than keeping all the good teaching (or questioning) limited to just himself. And far more humble than just thinking that I can sit down and do what the buddha was able to do and get a complete system before acting.

I want to respond because it's be a while since I've heard really good philosophical debate (except in my own head ;) ) and I'm really enjoying reading all this. That said, I've got some time constraints and some very jumbled thoughts, and I'm a little rusty on expressing myself in a remotely eloquent manner, so I'm sorry if this is confused! First off, this "Chuck Eesley" character whose name I see below: this is the same tall, skinny, curly-blond-haired guy I knew a few months ago, right? The one who defended searching and self-examination when I declared myself sick of the spiritual path and a disciple of hard work and simple goodness? Chuck, what happened?! I'm shocked to the bones! Anyways, when I read the very end of Peggy's article, about the man who said certain deeds "stay God's hand," my mind instantly went to Merton's Seven Storey Mountain; in it, he described the work of monks in exactly the same way. Their prayers are staying God's hand. If you believe in a God who listens and who intercedes, the best and most selfless work you could be doing is praying ceaselessly, and this could be far more effective than running a soup kitchen or putting up posters. Of course, that's a big "if."

I agree heartily with Kenny that "service" without careful self-examination is pretty risky. And there seems to be something circular in your argument, Chuck, though I can't quite put my finger on it. You seem to be saying that, on the one hand, your life should be spent on others and not on examining yourself, and on the other hand, you need to examine yourself so you don't do more harm than good in your attempts at "service," so the best thing to do is to work really hard to help others examine themselves. So then there is supposed to be this chain effect of people serving people serving other people, right? And an overall decrease in selfishness and self-obsession? Something here seems jumbled. I think you still haven't escaped the "service vs. search" debate. Are we supposed to start from the assumption that the well-lived life is the one that alleviates the suffering of others? Or are we supposed to start from no assumptions and simply examine? Do we alleviate our own suffering by questioning the source of our own suffering or by forgeting our suffering and focusing on others? Yes, many teachers teach that if we do examine the source of our suffering, we will find that it is in our selfishness, and we will discover that the best way to alleviate it is to forget ourselves. But it took most of them years of serious self-work to find this out. So do we take their word for this? Or do we check it out for ourselves? If you want to help the world by teaching others the way, do you teach them to question or do you teach them also to forget themselves and teach others? If you know for sure, by listening to the teaching of others, that service and self-forgetting is the way, then why teach others to question first, instead of to simply serve as you do? Alternatively, if you're sure that what you want to teach others is to question everything and hold no assumptions, then how can you yourself assume that your purpose in life is to alleviate suffering? These might seem to be nitpicky questions, but only because we all hold certain common assumptions and reject others. If I replaced the words "alleviate suffering" with "destroy the Great Satan, the United States," or "do whatever my religion tells me" or "do whatever my country tells me" (and realize that there are people for whom these assumptions are as natural and obvious as the assumption that it is good to alleviate suffering), how do you feel? I don't know which side I am for, but I think, Chuck, you're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

For a while I was convinced that people really really deep down know what is right, and just need to do it. i.e., I think I've been on Chuck's side of this—you don't need to meditate and carry water and chop wood, you're just trying to make it easier to do what you already know is right. And that's mostly not to think so much about yourself. And I'm not sure if I've changed my mind. But a few weeks ago my great-uncle asked me what I knew about Buddhism, and we got into a discussion about philosophies that question the reality of the everyday world, is the green I see the same as the green you see questions, etc. And my poor grandpas, who don't have any interest in philosophy, were stuck listening to this. Finally, my grandpa Heniusz said, "Yes, but then there's everyday living. You have to have a job, support your family, build a house." i.e. philosophy is all well and good, but has no practical application. And I thought I would be all for this kind of "just do right" approach to life, Old World values about supporting your family etc. But I wasn't. Instead I thought about how lucky he was that he was born on this side of the Poland-Germany border, because with that kind of unquestioning approach to life, he'd have been a Nazi if he'd been on the other. This is serious shit. You're lucky if you live in a country and a time period where the basic assumptions you hold about what is good and right never ever run the risk of turning you into a demon.

And on the other hand, it seems like assuming that a spiritual search dedicated to self-examination and constant questioning is the answer makes you run the risk of becoming callous, arrogant, and self-centered. You can become so sure you know more than others, are ahead of the game, are above the everyday cares of the soup kitchen worker or your parents who put every one of your needs before their own, that you become an asshole.

All I can think is that total, total vigilance is necessary, whatever you choose. "God will come like a thief in the night." Yes, you must act in the world and not spend your life on your meditation pillow, but you can never cease to be vigilant in examining your motives and beliefs.

Well, I think I've overstayed my welcome, so that's it for now.

<I'm going to do something really confusing now and go back and reference Kenny's reply, and it kind of relates to Anna's reply, and so....>

At first when I read your response, Kenny, I agreed with everything you said about the pro-choicers and right-to-lifers just kind of canceling each other out. But now I'm not so sure....

If you are pro-choice or right-to-life and are actively fighting for your beliefs, are you wasting your energy? Are you Wasting Your Life, and if so, to what degree? If you asked someone who is a right-to-life activist, they would say that what they do matters because it saves lives in a very obvious way—and EVERY individual life matters. If you asked a pro-choice activist, they would save lives by allowing parents (and the children they eventually might have) to have much more fulfilling and developed lives—and EVERY individual life matters.

And at least they are DOING something for goodness sake, in an age where if you really care about something and act on it, rather than being relativistic and agnostic and stand-offish, you are seen as, well, not quite normal and maybe a little soft up there (or part of a CULT).

I think about people who are active in their spirituality....It's easy for me to say "yeah, I definitely think Mohammed/The Buddha/Jesus/etc wasn't wasting his life as much as they were." (Actually for me it's even easier to say "Jan Hus"/"Madeleine L'Engle"/"Beethoven"/"anyone else I admire and can really wrap my mind around" wasn't wasting his life as much.) But if I look at a Crusader or someone like that, or a Nazi or one of the Islamic extremists that contributed to Sep 11^th, or someone slaughtering in Rwanda, in my mind they aren't as high up there as someone that I admire, and for that reason I am apt to say that Yah, they're a waste. But you can't accuse them of not being a fervent believer, or of not fighting for what they believe. In fact if you are a Crusader and go out and risk death, then you are pretty much putting it all on the line for what you believe. And you can't say that they haven't thought about what they are doing, because I'm sure they have. I'm like Anna. When I was younger, I used to write plays about how if the crusaders would have just listened to what they really thought was right in their hearts....But you know, like Anna, I just don't believe, as much, that deep down they DID know what the right thing was. Or maybe at one time, long long ago, they stifled those feelings. Or they were brainwashed by society when they were young, the same way most of us have been. Or maybe they were just good guys trying to do what was right for their families—no matter what that meant—because they weren't thinking hard enough about The Truth, or maybe just because they were involved enough in the world to really, really care about their families.

But I still hate Crusaders and the terrorists of Sep 11^th etc. and think Jerry Falwell is assinine, and Yes I think they're all WRONG. And the question remains: To what degree are Crusaders and Jerry Falwell and terrorists and such WASTING their lives? More so than the Buddha? Okay I can buy that. But more or less so than, say, Beethoven? They put more on the line than he did. They believed more than he did. The Crusaders certainly made the world safer for Christianity than he did (not a big thing in my book, but in a lot of people's it is). And maybe even they cared about particular people more than he did, because maybe they were also fathers and husbands and so on, and maybe they changed people more that way. I'm being devil's advocate. So:

So is my standard for "whether or not you've wasted your life" as simple as "how strongly do I admire what you are doing"?

If this is true, then how do you separate out "That's what's important to me" from any kind of absolute measurement? Because it is likely that the only reason an abortion activist might be higher in my book than a Crusader, or vice versa, has a lot to do with my own life experiences, the fact that I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to religion, etc. I have a very hard time with Chuck saying that even someone just putting up posters for the SKS is "wasting their life less" than someone who is daily going out there and risking their life to change the world. And how, on my scale of "what matters," do abortion activists rank against the education cause I'm willing to fight for. I mean, women and children's lives are important and all that, but don't forget about the schools!

I want to say that it doesn't matter what your cause is, as long as you are out there in the ring, "participating in the sorrows of the world," taking a stand and helping the world go round, like sex adding that bit of randomness the world needs to keep evolving, get closer to the truth, etc....But that isn't enough. Because then you come to the question of whether Nazis, terrorists, Crusaders and Jerry Falwell are necessary to make the world a better place.

And I know a lot of spiritual people who would say that Yes, they are necessary. Who would argue that without the terrorist attack, we wouldn't have this swelling of spirituality being important, this national and yes even global consciousness, unity, etc that we may feel in the coming times. Maybe something has to fall—be torn down even—for something better to emerge. Or maybe that is wishful thinking, and there is no answer to the "ritual sorrow to no avail." Just Andromache suffering, over and over again, with no answer anywhere. Or maybe the answer is Voltaire's—just work in your garden. Or the monk's—just love God. Or the parent's—just love your children.

Is it too trite to say that the answer could just be Just Love? And does that have to be combined with Just Act?

And what happens if in Just Loving and Just Loving God, you decide that you therefore have to go attack the twin towers to save the world from itself, or kill a few abortion doctors to save all those unborn children, or....

And I think that my friend who works for an animal shelter, and really suffers along with the animals, and saves SO many, and sacrifices SO much to do it, is Wasting Her Life less than, probably, I am, even though her "cause" is pretty low on my list. To me "Her Actions" > "Putting Up Posters."

I do think there is an objective measurement. It's just sometimes very hard to see it clearly, or to be sure that you are seeing it clearly. Contemplation helps. Maybe praying helps. But you still get things like the Crusades declared by the Pope, and the Inquisition run by the priests, and heck even the Buddhist warrior-monks of medieval times, and you've got to wonder just what it is that is really Enough to get your head clear.

Hey Skorupa! Really good to hear from you. I've missed your thoughts. (By the way everyone, I just talked with Mandy Schleifer the other day. She's doing well out in Arizona, but she's not really using her email right now, so you probably want to take her address off your list for the moment.)

What I want to respond to is going back to Anna's comment about how her grandfather would have been a Nazi if he had been born on the other side of the Poland-Germany border. That really hit me. Because suddenly it did matter what I think and what I do in the world. It isn't just a philosophical debate. I know that everyone has been saying that. But I know that for me, so often I get caught up in what is the right thing and what is the wrong thing and how do I know that what I feel is right is really right, and the terrorists think that they are right, and Hitler thought he was right, but they are so clearly wrong. Why? Because they killed people? Because they were just evil? Yeah, something like that. So what does that mean for me? Does that bring me any closer to doing the right thing or to living the right life? Maybe a little bit. It helps me clarify where I stand. It does draw me into the ambiguity that Chuck was talking about in his Symposium submission. It shakes up my world a little bit so that I see more clearly . . . at least I think I do.

At the same time, I want to throw up my hands every time we get so deep into a philosophical discussion that seems to be heading to more and more abstraction (I'm aware that my tendency is away from intellectual debate because I don't think I'm good at it :)). I think that is also what I really liked about what Anna said about her grandfather. It just made it real for a moment.

I told this story last night at the UNC meeting . . . The other night I was listening to NPR, trying to keep myself awake driving home. Something came on called the Cinncinatti City Club or something like that. I was convinced that it would be boring and would put me to sleep faster than driving in silence. I flipped through some other stations, found no music I wanted to listen to and for some reason, I just turned it back to NPR—maybe just a default or something. I wish I could retell the story I heard better, but I think you'll understand. FX Toole (I'm not sure how you spell his name) is a 70 year old guy who spent years as a cutman in boxing, stopping the fighters' bleeding so that they could go back out in the ring. He recently got a book of his short stories published. I think the name of the book is Rope Burns, but I'm not sure. Anyway, he was talking about one of his stories called "The Million Dollar Baby." I honestly can't remember what that story was about. I think it had something to do with a female fighter who ended up paraplegic or something and asked to die. She didn't want to live any more because of her condition. Then Toole began to read a letter that he got from one of his readers. As soon as he started reading the letter, he got all choked up and really read it through tears, I think. It was from a war veteran who thanked him for writing his book, particularly the story about the million dollar baby. And he began to tell this story about being in the trenches in the war (I don't remember which one). A grenade or something exploded near him and suddenly he was faced with this mangled body in front of him. The man didn't have much of a body left, half his face was gone, but he was breathing. And the man who wrote the letter said that the only real movement was this guy's eye going from his gun to his face over and over. He knew what the man was asking him to do. And then he said in his letter, thank you so much for writing that story. When I read it, it was the first time that I could really tell myself that I made the right decision.

I still can't articulate exactly why I just started to cry again about that story. It is so beautiful. And when I hear a story like that, why do I need to philosophize about what might be right and what might be wrong and whether I'm doing something out of selfishness or selflessness or whether I should be meditating or acting or if meditating is acting or whatever. Maybe FX Toole is all about his own fame and he just happens to be able to string words together well, he just happens to have had experiences that publishers are excited about publishing. At any rate, he couldn't possibly have planned in the writing of his book to touch someone the way he touched that man who wrote him the letter. I still don't know what to make of it. You can't plan anything. You can't plan how you are going to react to someone, how your life philosophy will affect other people, whether you will be enlightened through your meditation practice, whether, if you are enlightened you will really help anyone else. You can't know whether your prayers will stay the hand of God. You can't decide which side of the Poland-Germany border you will be born on. You just can't know anything for sure, no matter how much thinking you do on it. You also can't just act on your every whim and never think about anything before you do it. You can't just throw spiritual practice out the window because you don't know whether there is any use for it or not.

I have no idea where I'm going with this except maybe to say that I'm not sure what to do sometimes but pray and hope and have faith that somehow that opens doors for right action, for beauty, for gratefulness because there is so much that you don't know, that you can never know, no matter how much you grind on it.

Hey Kenny,

Thanks for sending this around—it's a terrific article. My response here is not a reply to anyone in particular, just some thoughts it generated:

It's true, of course. In this country we've been taking a vast amount of pleasure in material goods and comforts, and, as Noonan points out, they've commanded a high price—as all pleasures do—both in the hectic tension of our disjointed lives along the way, and perhaps now with the balloon payment of September 11 and beyond. This World, this Universe, this illusion of Creation is a wish-fulfilling jewel that bestows upon us anything we desire. But it is a world built on the strict law of opposites, and balance will forever be maintained. There is no way to cheat the scales. Pleasures taken must be paid for with angst and sorrow.

But pleasures are not limited to the obvious kind associated with affluence and sensuality. The most powerful and dangerous pleasures are taken equally by the rich and poor alike in all countries. The pleasure of feeling separate, special, unique, the desire to be victorious in conversation and commerce, to feel the righteous obsession of religious or political fervor, to rejoice in the misfortune of your enemies and friends, to speak and act as if you have knowledge, to conjure respect or fear or envy in the eyes of your beholders...taking pleasures like these exacts heavy ballast.

The only remedy is to cease to take. No need to give. Just cease to take. Those who say they want to give to others are up to no good. What they mean is they want to continue to enjoy the sly pleasures of a separate self, but want to pay for them in an orderly manner on their own terms rather than risk the uncertainty of random payment schedules from a capricious deity. They hope that doing good works—as they define them—will control and appease the gods and keep the cosmic accountant from their door. Even humble gratitude is a ploy. It says to God: "See how grateful I am for your blessings. And in my humility, see how worthy I am of your graces. Please, keep 'em coming, and do not hurt me!" It's a rare person who does not take from this world, and who asks no special mercy in his secret prayers.

We should not seek to do good if we don't know what good is—and if you are operating from the illusion of a separate self, you don't. Do not presume you know what is good for another unless you know what is good for the All. Just be still. When you are called upon to act you will know it. Pay attention, listen for the call, do what is in front of you. If called, respond from the highest place you can feel in your current state. There is nothing more we can or should do. Ramana Maharshi said: "What is not meant to happen will not happen, no matter how much you wish it. What is meant to happen will happen, no matter what you do to prevent it. Therefore, the best path is to remain silent."

Of course, by all means pray, and to the extent of your capacity, pray unceasingly. But do not waste your prayers on yourself and your desires. If they are answered they will have a price. And do not waste your time on pseudo-selfless pleas for world peace and the end of suffering, or on platitudes about helping your fellow man or doing God's work or making the world better. These, too, are prayers by and for the fictional separate self. They are the prayers of a frightened child begging God to make the World a more comfortable, less fearful place in which to pretend to exist. They are prayers asking God to please make the illusion more like a pleasant dream and less like a nightmare.

Nothing that can be conceived of or named exists. Name a thing, any thing—Man, God, Universe, Love, Creation—and it is merely another shadow in the illusory veil of tears through which we blindly stumble. Do not bother to pray to an illusion within an illusion. You are alone, completely and utterly alone, and the entire world is of your own making. The only prayer worth praying is to be allowed to know this, to know who you are. It is a prayer from the fictional separate self to the witness of that self—the One who is real. It is the most dangerous prayer imaginable because when answered it results in the annihilation of the one who prays it. But it is the only true prayer. So pray it unceasingly and pray it with all your heart and all your might. And be ready.

I, also, heard the "Million Dollar Baby" story and the Vietnam story that followed. Before they got to that part, I was listening to this guy talk about boxing and about the attitudes and the code of behavior and about stopping the blood (regardless of the harm to the boxer who is sent back into the ring) and people dying from their injuries and being addicted to "testing their manhood" in the ring and I was fascinated but I was really rather disgusted because I really have no respect for boxing or the whole way people who box seem to look at the world. It seems neanderthal and stupid and pointless...well, you get the idea. Then he tells these two stories, yes, speaking through his tears, and I was also moved to tears. It made me realize my hubris—I could so easily dismiss these guys as barbaric and not worth my consideration, when so much honest humanity came through there at the end of those stories. I was blessed by hearing that story, as the vet was blessed by reading "Million Dollar Baby" in this guy's book and Thank God for those unexpected blessings! It is so easy to say that we are better than someone else, to dismiss people as barbaric or evil or pathetic or whatever. But all that is self-centeredness, closing down doors, doing all that we can not to see what we don't want to think about, the "terrible beauty" that is existence! Bad things happen, people commit unspeakable acts—yes we judge those acts, we are human. But have we yet walked a mile in their shoes? We thank God every day that we don't have to, but that doesn't absolve us from needing to transcend our humanness, to see with God's eyes, it doesn't absolve us from having to learn to get out of our own, stupid, self-centered consciousness and go beyond all our bullshit, does it?

No matter what we choose to do as humans, isn't that the whole point?

I think this response is colored by emotion. Anger to be exact. And since I'm not sure where to direct this almost subconscious anger (and I can't seem to sleep), I'll channel it into a response to Barton's email.

Sounds to me like the quintessential SKS email. The kind of thing written by someone who is either enlightened (and intentionally ambiguous) or someone who theoretically knows what it takes to be enlightened—whatever that means—but hasn't actually gotten there yet. Find balance. Do not take. Pray unceasingly. Don't pretend to know God. Ok. Don't give. Don't bother to pray for peace. You lost me bud. It seems to me there's a really fine line between making peace with the unknown and sitting on your ass and waiting for someone else do what you can't be sure is the 100% right thing to do. I can't help but think this response falls just this side of sitting on your ass.

I'm the last one to pretend to have figured God out. As someone born and raised Catholic, I've had (and have) my fair share of points of contention about religion and spirituality. Who hasn't? But try as I'd like, I just can't seem to ignore the little voice inside of me that says, "no, it's not all right to sit by and watch a woman get the shit kicked out of her because her face is not covered by a veil" or "no, it's not right to be okay with teaching a class full of students who are worried about getting shot," etc. (Enter any number of past or current events here). (Barton, can you seriously tell me that you are okay with these things?) So I will continue to look for ways to give and I will continue to pray for peace. I don't see this as a weak response for people trying to pretend the world is idyllic. (What is it about people being so down on the idea of praying for peace?) It's not as if working for peace is easy. My guess is that the lives of hardcore peace-seekers (be it in prayer or works) is a lot less idyllic than that of most desk jobs I can think of. My guess is that they're also a lot closer to understanding God than your average Joe or Josephine. Because when it comes down to it, we're not alone. At least not in the world that most of us inhabit. And until I find that magical place where I'm alone, I have to deal with "others," real or imagined. And until I find that magical place, I'm going to pray for peace—in every sense of the word.

Perhaps I don't quite understand why people get so concerned about upsetting this balance that allegedly exists in the universe. 'Good' and 'Evil' especially. Is that to say that there's automatically an equal amount of good and evil in the world, and that's just the way it is? From where I stand, it seems like "doing evil" (should I define that or is it safe to assume that it encompasses selfish and cruel acts—some people might argue that selfish is okay) is that much easier than "doing good." Maybe evil is the default. Maybe this equilibrium that we assume isn't, in fact, equal. Maybe, just maybe, experiencing a positive feeling from "doing good" is more than just us appeasing a discipline-loving god. And maybe the real reason we insist on this balance is because we don't believe that it could be any different—or that we've lumped suffering and evil into the same group and we can't distinguish between the two anymore.

Thank you Becky and Bart. This is awesome, I find myself being swayed this way and that. After Bart Marshall's email that had such a strong ring of been there, done that truth to it I thought man, well, I guess that's it, that'll probably be the end of this discussion. But then after Becky I thought yeah dammit, wait a minute here!

First of all I think that all of this is just getting too nickpicky. I mean shit, if you're really on fire for God and truth, then you just can't help yourself from doing all of it—questioning, self-analysis, helping others on a physical level, helping others on a spiritual level, asking who am I, meditating, praying unceasingly for this that and the other etc, etc. If you're burning for God I don't see how you can keep yourself from doing it all! It's the old analogy with Arnold Schwarzeneger and the reporter who asked him if he took such and such a vitamin and he answered, "yes." And the reporter asked him, do you think it helps? and he answered, "I take no chances."

The thing that pisses me off about those who say something along the lines of "everything is consciousness, good and evil are always balanced, there's nothing you can do but stop doing," is that yeah, on some intuitional level it seems like that might possibly be the truth eventually . . . BUT for most young seekers that's a very very dangerous thing to be preaching simply because like Becky eluded to, it lies way too close to laziness. And all that saying it does is either in the rare case, trigger some sort of spiritual opening, or it's going to make someone question a little more or a little differently, or it's just going to make someone think that there's nothing that they can really do, so they say what's the point and maybe they remember to pray to see who they really are every once in a while, but they don't really mean it because nothing in their lives has really been staked or sacrificed towards finding out. From what I understand about Andrew Cohen, in the beginning of his days teaching he used to think that a powerful spiritual experience in and of itself was enough for people to be transformed. But later, he realized that it was relatively easy for someone to have a deep spiritual experience, but much more difficult for them to live according to it and manifest that truth. Many of his initial students were getting glimpses of the aloneness and illusion of this world and then were taking that as an opportunity to act extremely irresponsibly and maybe that's fine for them cause they're alone and enlightened, but it can be an extreme pain in the ass for those of us stuck in a seemingly real world with real other people. So he has chosen to focus more on morals and character and the like.

And perhaps you can't have a hill without a valley, perhaps you can't have a one sided coin, but nonetheless I think if you can look a beaten woman or a starving child in the eye and live with risking being wrong when you say that you just can't decrease the amount of suffering in the world, and not say to yourself I am at least going to be on the good side, I'm going to be in the mountain and not the valley, I'm going to look and question and do everything I can to find out how to deal with these horrible things, then . . . then I don't know, you've got more faith then I do. Because that's what that sort of statement takes for me right now, accepting it just because it sounds true . . . I might as well just take on faith that Jesus is the one and only son of God and call it a day.

Makes me think of the thing Aug's said a million times. Something along the lines of, "saint, sinner it doesn't matter, the only thing is that it is so much easier for a saint to admit to being a saint then a whoremaster to admit he's a whoremaster."

And I hear in this yet another iteration of the whole SKS argument that asks whether it's worth it to do such and such an act if you're doing it for selfish motivations. And I'm here to say again, that's still making it too much all about YOU! I don't care if I have to sacrifice my own spiritual enlightenment, if I can get 10 more people questioning life more and acting on the results of that questioning, then it has been worth it. You've got to make your life into a symbol, into a light in the darkness, into some kind of sign that there's something else out there! Even if all of our helping others ends up not really mattering because we are alone or whatever, nonetheless, it's worth it if you become a sign or a manifestation that there is something more. And you can't just wait around for that to happen to you. You've got to call everyone to the quest, everyone and in every way possible, a calling that forces questioning, you've got to make your life into a calling out into the wilderness, a calling to arms, a calling to get up and stand up!

Bob Marley lyrics come to mind . . . :)

"Most people think, great God will come from the sky, take away everything and make everybody feel high. If you know what life is worth, you would look for yours on earth. And now you see the light, stand up for your rights."

And I don't think it's as circular as Anna seems to think when she writes:

If you want to help the world by teaching others the way, do you teach them to question or do you teach them also to forget themselves and teach others? If you know for sure, by listening to the teaching of others, that service and self-forgetting is the way, then why teach others to question first, instead of to simply serve as you do? Alternatively, if you're sure that what you want to teach others is to question everything and hold no assumptions, then how can you yourself assume that your purpose in life is to alleviate suffering?

The whole service vs. search debate just isn't THAT complicated! It is just getting others to question life more seriously, because even if you try and tell them it's about self-forgetting, they're still going to question that! It's just about questioning and living the questions . . . getting them to come face to face with the mysteries of it. And then yeah, ideally it would start a chain of them getting others to question, but maybe it doesn't. Maybe they decide for themselves that alleviating suffering is the thing to do, maybe some of them decide that finding God is the thing to do, maybe some decide the abortion debate is the thing to do. That part isn't up to you. All you can do is everything you can to point at the mystery, to point at the false, to point at the real with your words and with your life. The actions are yours, but the fruits do not belong to you.

The minister in a church in my home town once began a sermon talking about the wise men who went to see the baby, Jesus. They went to see this grand mystery that everyone was talking about. And when they were there they left to go back and tell others about Him and then a vision or a dream or a voice or something came to them and told them that they had to go back by a different route. And they did. They went back by a different route.

And to me, that's all that I can do right now, some sort of mystery presented itself to me and has forced me to go back from it by a different route and has forced me to go back and tell everyone else I can get my hands on about it. And all that I can do is point them as closely as I can to that mystery and help them to see it as much as I can. What effect that mystery has on them and whether or not or by which different route they go back is not up to me. All I know how to do is to bring them to the mystery. And perhaps, through more self-inquiry and spiritual practice I might be able to point a little more deeply and clearly to the mystery as Cohen or Rose seemed to be able to. But even for them the effect and the different route taken as a result of that mystery is up to the mystery and not to them.

And so all I know how to do is to call people to get up and stand up and look into this mystery. And yeah probably it is motivated by both impure, selfish motivations and pure, unselfish ones, but nonetheless I think it's not about me. It's about bringing people to turn down the radio, turn off the TV and bringing them to this grand, glorious mystery, this mystery that somehow causes those who glimpse it to be filled with awe and to burn, burn, burn for the truth no matter what it turns out to be to be manifested, and to go back by a different route, telling all others who will listen on the way about the beauty found within.

I was thinking about what Chuck said about what Anna said. Chuck, I don't know if people would automatically question what you teach them—and that's where the awesome responsibility of teaching comes from. There are quite a few obnoxious people like myself who ask, "but why?" But I think there are just as many—if not more—examples of people buying into what they are told, be it in a classroom, a newspaper, a home, etc., and not questioning what they are told (even if it is about self forgetting). I think that people are more comfortable with having someone else tell them what is true/what needs to be done than not knowing, and I find myself looking for that 'advice' sometimes. So I do think the question 'do you teach people to question or do you teach people to serve/forget self' is an important one. But are they necessarily mutually exclusive as Anna suggested—why can't you do both? It seems like most holy people/prophets/wise people suggest that you do both.

I was thinking some more about the 'don't take' ideology. I thought maybe it would work in an 'ideal world'—but now I'm not so convinced that it would even work there. Initially, I thought my issues with the idea came from a Christian bias of sharing, asking for mercy, etc. But then I started thinking about a faith formation class that I organized for some high school students. A Buddhist monk came to talk about his experiences, and he mentioned that part of his lifestyle demanded that the monks put themselves in the position of needing to rely on others—especially for food. They would have to go into town and put themselves 'at the mercy' of the townspeople—in part to insure that they did not cut themselves off from the community and in part to remind them that they were dependent. I can't help but think that taking (not necessarily in a greedy way—but a 'needy' way), be it emotional or physical in nature, is in some ways a spiritual lesson. One that is espoused by different religions and philosophies. Maybe the idea of not taking sounds good—but does it really work?

Hi Becky,

Thanks for your response. Your anger is understandable and well expressed. I don't like the plot of this movie much either, but I reluctantly accept that it is the sum total of all of our earthly desires—and even more depressing, that it is the sum total of all MY earthly desires—just as it is. I think somewhere inside you know this, too: that the world is a perfect reflection of all your subtle and sub-subtle desires and if it didn't have suffering and war and injustice you would be unable, for example, to enjoy feelings of pathos or righteous wrath, or inhabit the character of a peace-loving seeker.

It's okay to desire earthly change, to work for earthly change. I just think that it is nearly impossible to accomplish on my say-so, and that even if I could change the world I don't trust myself to have thought through all the implications and repercussions and side-effects of my proposed changes. Would it really be better when I was done? Can I outdo God? Should I spend my short time here working to shrink Creation to fit within my narrow view, or to expand my view to encompass all Creation as it is?

All of our views about good and bad are based on the false concept that we are separate selves. As Nisargadatta says: "You must give up the idea that you are a person, that you were born, have parents, have history and memories, and that you will someday die." If this is true, if everything we think we know is wrong, if we in fact don't even exist as we thought we did, then how reliable are the thoughts and desires of this false entity we claim to be?

This does not mean we should do no good. When need arises within a good man's sphere of influence, a good man will always respond with goodness. Our task, however, is not to look for good to do, but to be a good man. When this is accomplished, the world will send the needy to our door.

Hey Bart.

You've put forth some insightful comments, many of which ring true on some level. But I still question the conclusions that you are deriving from them.

You say that "our task, however, is not to look for good to do, but to be a good man. When this is accomplished, the world will send the needy to our door." That's a cool way of looking at it. It reminds me of the 'if you want to change the world, you first have to change yourself' ideology. To some extent, it also shifts the emphasis from the seemingly frantic act of trying to justify yourself to a more subtle—and possibly more effective—attempt to grow as a person first. However, I can't help but think that the needy are knocking whether we're ready or not. Sometimes it's extreme (starving refugees). Sometimes it's literal (homeless knocking on the door asking for money and food). And sometimes it's subtle (the needs of a friend or significant other).

So, if you think our task is to be good people, my questions are—Assuming that you are correct—that everything we think we know is wrong, and our assumptions about good and evil are potentially false—how do you go about 1)defining what it means to be a good person, 2)being a good person, and 3)dealing with 'the needy' while you're trying to figure out how to be a good person?

Again, I think you are right on the money with the statement that 'the world is a perfect reflection of all of your subtle and sub-subtle desires.' In fact, the other day, I was having a discussion (ok, so it was more like a rant) with Brian about how angry I was that the Taliban regime was oppressive (slight understatement) to the Afghan women. And for a couple of moments, I could feel an intense rage and a desire to personally destroy those responsible. The scary thing was, I could picture myself doing it without remorse—on some level, there was very little difference between me and 'the bad guys'. However, I think there is a difference between truthfully acknowledging the full range of thoughts and emotions within (even if it is done reluctantly) and deciding that all of the thoughts and emotions are okay to act on—or condone them when they are acted out by others. It sounds as if you are validating war and injustice (I think suffering is related but separate) so that some people can feel peaceful or righteous. I would argue that 1)people who truly act in a way that promotes peace are not the 'happy little clams' that they're written off to be and that 2)"righteous wrath" does not necessarily manifest itself in people who seek a higher good. It manifests itself in people who fail to acknowledge their own humanity and the humanity of those they oppose. I think you're right—that there are those people who may 'hiding behind peace.' I read a brief article in the newspaper about alleged peace-lovers who burnt draft cards in Vietnam only to turn patriotic and defend military action in Afghanistan in light of present events. Perhaps some of these people fit the bill? Regardless, for you to argue that the uglier side of humanity is a-ok because it allows some of us to feel good about ourselves is a pretty weak argument.

Finally—and I guess I touched on this last time—I don't buy the 'I don't think I can make a difference so why try' approach. This is probably the case for a couple of reasons.

• I do not like to feel useless
• At the end of the day, I have to make some choices. (I am of the opinion that choosing not to choose is still choosing—or having someone else choose for me.)
• I believe in God. And while I don't fully understand the nature of God, I am willing to believe that God, in some respect, is love. I can't help but think Bush's "you're either for us or for terrorists" was a pompous statement, but I'm going to go ahead and do it too if you're not for love, you're against love (or "you're for not-love").

Thanks, all, for this discussion. It's helping to keep me honest ;)

Hey Becky,

The three questions you ask are good ones and I'll take a shot at answering them in a second, but I can't help but notice what it is you ignore and don't want to talk about. None of the references to the illusion of a separate self seem to touch you. I mean, when a person reads that Nisargadatta quote she should come three feet out of her chair. "Jesus H. Christ, what the...?! I'm not a person? I don't have parents? I was never born? I don't have a personal history or memories, and I'm not going to die? What the hell is going on here?"

As we talk about good and evil and being nice to people and such, we need to constantly keep in mind that what we are discussing is the plot and characters of a passionate, funny, sad, violent, heart-wrenching puppet show in which we are performing—as puppets. As puppets, we treat the play with great seriousness because it is our only world, it's all we know. It's a compelling, complex world in which we are completely absorbed, and we're convinced that it's real. In this puppet world there is certainly good and evil, bad guys and good guys, darkness and light. This is the stuff from which stories and plots and characters are woven and we love it. It is only because of opposites that this world exists at all. Duality is the architecture of Creation just as binary numbers are the architecture of computers. Would it be wise, or a good use of one's time, to decide that "1" is better than "0" and spend a lifetime lobbying to get those round bastards expunged from our micro code?

Don't get me wrong. I am not an apologist for evil, nor do I advocate shirking one's duty or turning your back on your fellow man. I fought a war, raised a family, volunteer with Hospice, keep a five in my pocket for panhandlers, try to be there for friends and strangers, and am easily moved to tears by small human gestures and the general pathos of existence. But these things, and everything else I do—good and bad—are just part of my puppet character in the play.

Okay, enough already. Here's my shot at answering your questions:

1. A truly good person is one who is empty and transparent, one through whom the will of God can flow freely, unimpeded by the desires and neuroses of a separate self.
2. Being as good a person as possible is to act in accordance with your current highest understanding of the Truth at every moment, and to seek always to increase that understanding.
3. As for those you feel need your help in the world, by all means do whatever you can and feel you must. Give money, volunteer your time, write articles for Atlantic, adopt an unhealthy child, become a doctor and move to Africa. None of these things will necessarily get in the way of finding out who you are if you keep your eye on the prize. But if you never find out who you are, none of them will end up meaning much either. As Christ said, "The poor will be with us always."

Hey again everyone.

Bart, I guess you're right. I don't really address the separate self issue. It's not so much that I don't want to talk about it—I just didn't know what to say (for once ;). Like anything else that's not 'rational' (not sure what other word to use—perhaps 'counterintuitive'?), I try to figure out how it fits into the picture. I guess that's where I'm stuck. I didn't jump three feet out of my chair or ask that Christ explain it to me. In part because I've heard it suggested so many times that it doesn't have the same shock value that it used to have. In part because I just don't know how to look at it. I don't know who Nisargadatta is. I guess I could assume that Nisargadatta does have the answer, and as a result, I could just accept this statement. I could also assume that Nisargadatta's statement is just a load of crap. Or I could realize that I have no way (at least no way that I'm aware of at the moment) of knowing if it's truth or crap. The fact that your message seemed to reach me at some gut level that the others haven't seems, if nothing else, to be a reminder that I really don't know. I don't know if I'll ever know.

There are people who claim to be enlightened and claim to understand—but there again, the matter of deciding whether or not to believe that person still remains. Who's to say that the state of enlightenment—whether it's attained by myself or someone else—isn't anything more than another faulty way of relating to life? Maybe enlightenment is nothing more than a biological/psychological event that is so powerful that people who go through the experience are convinced that they understand the secret of consciousness. So maybe we are puppets, and maybe we're not. Maybe we're just romanticizing "The Matrix" because we don't want to believe that this is it.

I guess I can't answer these questions, but I can continue to ask them. Maybe you're right—I think I need to continue to direct effort into the questions without answers because the questioning may be more important than the answers. Maybe Chuck has it figured out ;)

Anyway, I really like your answers to the questions. I guess what I keep getting caught up in is the response to number 2—the how do you go about being a good person response. I don't know that I disagree with it, but I think I am scared by it. What you seem to be saying is that there is Truth, and that to be a good person you have to continually seek out that Truth and live in such a way that your life reflects that Truth. Does the act of seeking and reflecting the Truth make you good, or is it the seeking and reflecting the goodness of the Truth that makes you good? I think it is an important distinction. (It's probably obvious, but I want to read that there is absolute Truth that is good, and that to be a good person you have to continually seek out the Truth and live in such a way that reflects the goodness of the Truth.) If the argument is that seeking and reflecting the Truth as you understand it at the time makes you a good person, then you would have to allow for the possibility that those who committed what could be deemed atrocious acts are good people (many of them would claim they are acting in accordance with their understanding of the truth). (This distinction makes me think of what Anna was talking about. She considered the idea that being born in a different location could influence one's actions, and, perhaps one's 'Truth'?) There is a Catholic teaching to love the person, but not the act—and that is consistent with this. But is that to say that being a good person is in no way affected by what you do, providing you do it 'truthfully'? I guess that is where my discomfort with that answer stems from. It seems that if you accept this interpretation, you accept that any 'evil, bad, hurtful, any adjective with a negative connotation' act done in the name of one's Truth is acceptable. It also seems to open the door to a relative, as opposed to absolute Truth. (Why capitalize Truth if it's not absolute?) And that is where part of my struggle to understand lies. Am I struggling to find a Truth that is relative, or am I searching for a Truth that is absolute? It seems like a Truth would only be relative if we insist on our separate selves. But if it is absolute, what makes it absolute? Maybe all of these questions are irrelevant if you believe in un-separate selves. But what if we're not?

Becky,

Wow. I feel like I just heard you exhale after holding your breath for a very long time. Your thoughts and questions here are the kind that lead to true knowledge and realization. They are questions and paradoxes that cannot be answered and resolved with words, so I would encourage you not to look for logical sounding explanations from anyone else, including your own separate self—which, like everyone's, is eager for easily digestible answers so that it can get on with its fantasies. As Chuck pointed out in an earlier note, living with these kinds of questions is the key to the kingdom. Hold on to them and do not settle. Demand of God a personal answer so complete and staggeringly self-evident that it leaves you breathless, empty, and utterly transformed.

Hello to everyone who spends beautiful Saturday afternoons reading these things.

I have been trying to fend off my little obsession for these email discussions, however....

First, I want to join Augie in thanking Bart and Becky for providing the fuel for this fiery and profound discussion. Kudos also to Kenny for being able to spot the hot topics and frame them up for the rest of us. I enjoyed the Noonan article. Thanks guys.

Like Becky, I struggle with the stuff about wanting to, and feeling obligated to, help people, while simultaneously feeling the self-doubt that I don't really know what that means (and then wanting to write about it all). Also like Becky, I have sufficiently drowned myself in mystical literature so that a quote from Nisargadatta, or anyone in his crew, usually doesn't give me that, "holy shit! things are not as they seem, where are the walls in this freakin' place!?" feeling. That doesn't mean that I am not occasionally plunged into that "life is but a dream" place, where this guy James seems awfully frantic for a dream character. It IS spooky when I get the sense that living, breathing human beings are appearing and disappearing in my life according to some story that I am vaguely involved in writing. The spooky feeling turns creepy when I watch CNN and find myself enthralled by, and somehow complicitous in, all this stuff with the suicide planes and bunker bombs. I AM quite convinced that "life is but a dream" in the sense that the solidness of life can drop away at any moment. During the first twenty-six years of my life, my world has mostly melted and then reemerged entirely fresh a few times, and I suspect that that will happen a few more times before I head out. I basically buy the ending of "American Beauty" where the Lester character watches his life completely melt away in a series of vaguely connected vignettes. All those people and noble aspirations and pangs of guilt and powerful emotions in Lester's life are "out there" in a world that is sinking out of existence.

While life may be dream-like, the dream is undeniably real in the sense that our nightly dreams are real. We do factually dream. We do see, touch, hear, smell, feel, think, and act in dreams and in our waking lives. And, according to me, what you do in those dreams affects your waking life. It matters if you decide to jump off the cliff, have sex with the vampire woman, kill the sleeping child, or whatever other kinds of trouble your dream-self decides to get to get into. No, I don't know exactly how dream-actions affect waking life, but I am convinced that they do. I am also convinced that the analogy holds for the dream-life I am living right now: what I do in this life will determine my state in the next, that is whether I will land in Heaven or Hell. And since I mentioned Heaven I know that Cheely—if he reads these things—will want me to cough up a definition. I am not a Heaven expert, but as best as I can tell it is a real place—even more real than this dream-world—that is eternal and a good spot to end up at. Since it is eternal, it existed before I was born, it exists right now, and will be waiting there when I die. The Kingdom of Heaven is the imprint that this eternal place has on the world I walk around in right now. We know about Heaven to the extent that we participate in the kingdom on earth. (OK, I admit I got most of the Heaven stuff from C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce.)

So I guess I should wade into the self/no-self debate, if I am going to talk about eternity....

I basically agree with Bart's list of three points about being a good person (Bart, whatever happened to the list of "The Top Ten Things to Do While You are Waiting to Wake Up?!" ;) ). A good person is one who completely surrenders to God's will (current events note: Islam means submission or surrender—as in submit or surrender to God. A Muslim is one who does so, according to the Koranic understanding of God). And yeah, it's tough to say much more about His will than that it's that stirring inside you of what is good and true. Being able to discern that stirring (the Holy Spirit) is something we can get better at, but we must always act based on our current, imperfect understanding of it and have faith that God accounts even for our shortcomings (sins). These shortcomings will become apparent, as our discernment improves and we move towards the truth. We will look back on our past actions and see, on the surface, a series of frantic, small-minded motions. We will see the selfishness embedded in our trips to Africa, our volunteer hours, and other attempts at charity.

So where I would disagree with Professor Marshall is the part about the becoming a good person means becoming "enlightened." If "enlightened person" means someone who realizes that he is dependent on God and generally submits to God's will, then, sure, there are enlightened or holy people. But if "enlightened person" means someone who no longer has a separate sense of self and therefore is God, I call bullshit. Being human means having an ego, a separate sense of self. I say that because I have not met an ego-less person. I say that because I am convinced that each person experiences the world uniquely and individually—I will never peer through another's eyes, nor will anyone else see through mine. And I say that because this is where I am placing my theological bets: the separate sense of self is real and essentially good. We are not the One who creates the world, including ourselves. That is God. We are separate selves (children of God) who are completely dependent on this loving God that can do ANYTHING at any moment. We can even have an intimate relationship with this God so that we can become familiar with His ways and be agents of his creation. That's good news (The Gospel). It says that we can participate in the wish-fulfillment jewel that is creation, but we do not do the creating nor are we the Creator. Ultimately it is God's wishes that are fulfilled. The best we can do is accept His wishes (His will) as our own.

I more or less agree with Bart's point number three on being a good person, with one stipulation (Bart, I can't tell if this is what you mean or not): it does matter if you follow your impulse to go to Africa, volunteer, adopt a child, etc. God can call you at any time to do ANYTHING. There is no line between searching for understanding and acting on your impulse to serve God. For example: I have sat here reading emails and composing this essay for most of the afternoon. Soon I will go to Harris Teeter to buy food for dinner (and receive valuable savings with my VIC card). I will eat with friends tonight, go to church in the morning, and visit with prison inmates on Tuesday evening. On the surface it appears that the reading and writing I am doing right now is to gain understanding, the time with the inmates on Tuesday is "helping" people, and dinner and church fall somewhere in-between. But writing this email could be the greatest service I could do if it hits the right person at the right time, and conversely I could gain more understanding listening to prisoner for an hour than reading fifty-two deep emails. (And yes, I could be wasting everyone's time on both sides of the prison wall with self-righteous words and deeds.) But still, I see no difference between searching for understanding and action: you act because of your understanding and understand because of how you act. The only thing that runs through my list of activities is that I feel, in an imperfect way, it is what I am called to do. I probably will look back on what I am doing right now and think, "Bless his heart—all that effort driven by so much naïve presumption." But that doesn't make my current efforts a waste. Below the surface of my seemingly random actions will be an intention, an aim, a prayer—and that will matter.

I definitely disagree with Bart's use of what Jesus said about the poor. Bart, your scriptural quote is only half the sentence. The full sentence of John 12:8 is, "You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me." Even more important is the context of the quote. Jesus has arrived at Mary, Martha, and Lazarus' house in Bethany just before the Passover. This guy Lazarus, who is "reclining at the table," used to be dead and Jesus had brought him back to life. So everyone in the house is, to put it mildly, psyched to see him and is preparing a big meal in his honor. True to her nature Martha is busy serving everyone. And true to her nature, Mary does something a little impulsive in the middle of this dinner party: she takes a big bottle of expensive perfume, pours it all over the guest of honor's (Jesus') feet, and starts wiping his feet with her hair. Oops—that's kind of socially awkward. Judas gets indignant about Mary's nutty move and says, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages." (That's from a guy who is already stealing from the disciples' communal treasury and will later betray Jesus to the Romans.) That's when Jesus tells Judas to back off and says that the poor will always be among you, but I won't. In one stroke he is condemning Judas' hypocrisy and praising Mary's intuition that he is a really important guy. He can give the world something way more valuable than a few meals for the poor, and Mary is acknowledging some understanding of that by anointing him so lavishly—that's what John 12:8 is about.

And that brings me to my last point in this becoming good discussion: you can become good by being called by God (grace); you can become good by hanging around good people and receiving the goodness in them by osmosis; and you can become good by having a personal relationship with someone who is good. You may be familiar with the last one as the guru-disciple relationship. You may also know that that relationship is tricky and explosive because you have all kinds of personal emotional baggage that can blow up in your face AND your guru can have his "issues" that can poison the most important part of you. So here's the miracle: there is a perfect guru from whom you can learn to be good, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth. Yes, the Jewish woodworker of that name has been dead for quite a while, but that personal relationship is still possible because that first-century Jew is also the eternal Son of God, the human face of God. If you think this is an "unprovable" assertion, you are right. I am now making a theological assertion that can only be "proven" true or false by taking it on faith and seeing what happens. That is a risk. Of course believing that Nisargadatta (or anyone else) is a completely transparent instrument of God is also a theological assertion that is (on the face of it) equally risky—and so is believing that the world is a consequence-less dream or any other belief about the ultimate nature of life. There is no option but to place your theological bets and take your eternal chances. Veterans of the "Seeking vs. Christianity" email discussion know that I am placing my bets on the God who revealed himself in Jesus the Christ.

Thanks again to everyone who is participating in this discussion.

I want to take James up on his (implicit) challenge to define enlightenment.

To me, enlightenment means you know the truth. Not "place your best bet on" the truth. No guesswork, no wishful thinking, no choosing the least probable or the most appealing or the best advertised. Absolute knowledge, as certain as "I think therefore I am" or even more so.

Is that possible? I don't know—many have suggested that is, from their own experience. I choose to place my bet that way: I want to see if I can get there myself. Not to become God, but to know Him with unimaginable certainty. Anything less would just be settling.

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