NATIONALISM VIOLATES ULTIMATE REALITY

Dalai Lama, giving a talk

HOW I CAME TO MY UNDERSTANDING

OF ONENESS, RELIGION, AND NATIONALISM

Ultimate reality, which is loosely termed "God" in the English vernacular, is called by an assortment of names by other religious traditions. The Vedantists say that God is one, but sages call it by different names.

God, the all-powerful, all-pervasive, cannot be limited by anything else, so one naturally wonders "what about me?" Am I separate from God? Yes and no. The stories that we tell about God and man shift when we touch various parts - and especially when we draw close to Him.

There is a parable about a group of blind men who are tasked with the job of describing an elephant. To one man, the elephant is long and thin, like a snake, with a tuft of hair on the end. To another, the elephant is like a tree trunk. Another says that it is a long, cool and hard thing, shaped like a curved cone.

There is reality, and then there is the way in which we speak about Ultimate Reality, which forms the teaching vehicles of the various religions. Each religion arises from and naturally addresses the personality of the culture in which it is birthed. Different personalities and different cultures respond to various religious vehicles in harmony with their lived experiences and their cultural environment.

When you touch the Divine, the holy ground of all being, one naturally wants to explain it, express it, teach it. The practices that lead to that Divine Oneness, such as meditation and prayer, are remarkably similar across the different religious traditions. I would venture to say that none is "perfect" from an absolutist perspective, but nothing outside of God IS "perfect" in the way that we imagine that term might manifest. It is actually ALL perfect when viewed through the lens of a good God that is creating all of it. God, being perfect, creates outward from Himself in a constant stream of love, and there we are.

If God is omnipotent and you can't limit him - what about all of us? That's the question - and it is worthy of study, thought and spiritual practices in order to find the answer.

I have been fortunate enough to experience an array of these religious teachings. When I was 17, I joined the Scientologists, who had a psychological bent, and went to Portugal on their flag ship. Thereafter, I dabbled with a Buddhist prayer path that involved a lot of chanting.

When I decided I wanted to learn how to meditate deeply and found Vedanta (a Hindu-derived group) I stayed with them for many years and learned a lot, but the cultural accretions, though beautiful and worthy, grew to feel like a suit of clothes that did not fit quite right. This mostly had to do with unfamiliar cultural norms and expectations, some of which were quite sexist.

Obviously, it is nothing like what we are used to in our country, nor could it have been expected to be, but it remained a key sticking point in my development. I had to be willing to ignore the misogyny I felt and to practice more cultural appropriation than was comfortable, and it finally got to be too much for me.

While in the convent, I sat in rapt attention during the very intense series of talks that Bill Moyers had with Joseph Campbell, based upon his book, "The Power of Myth" which drew parallels between many of our world religions that was part of what he perceived as a common paradigm - a framework in which to examine deep Truths common to all the major religious traditions.

At the same time, I was studying the mystical teachings of some of the saints of the Catholic faith. It felt much more familiar to me, being revealed wisdom in a western context. I was very drawn to it. 

Eventually I left the Vedanta convent and began my journey with the Catholics, where parish life has been a horror. Very few people seem to be interested in the mystical life. There is all this political junk, and a near obsession with divorce and matters having to do with sex. I was most interested in the Byzantine Rite, but the new priest from the Ukraine ridiculed me in public and made loud, ribald jokes about my body parts. It was appalling.

When Donald Trump came on the political scene and I objected to his cruelty of locking up more than 5,000 babies, toddlers and children in tight little cages, the group of Catholic women with whom I'd made friends immediately shunned me. They blocked me on Facebook, and when I saw them at church, they sneered at me, tilted their noses in the air, and turned their backs on me. Evidently, their type of Christianity says that it is perfectly fine that little brown innocents should be tortured if it would punish the parents who dared to walk over our border seeking asylum.  The fact that doing so amounted to nothing more than a misdemeanor didn't seem to factor into it. Only one of these women remained friendly with me, but, for the most part, the Catholic venture into parish life has been a disaster.

Some Catholics are oblivious to the life of a contemplative. One woman, who was bringing the eucharist to my house for some time, suddenly started showing me highly inappropriate photographs one day of a teenager dressed in skin-tight, flesh-colored dress that was so low-cut and so short at the same time, it was a wonder it covered anything at all! I recoiled in horror. Honestly, I thought she was showing me a picture of a prostitute. She was insulted because, evidently, they were pictures of her granddaughter, and the flesh-colored dress was her prom dress. I was wide-eyed in shock, to tell you the truth. I hardly knew what to say, but I am sure I was not diplomatic. Inwardly, I was flabbergasted that anyone would let that child out of the house looking like that. The woman told me that "all the girls" are dressing like that - but this isn't something I am used to. Clearly, I am out of step with modern society, but I am surprised that this woman was so clueless that she was proudly showing off these pictures.

My prom photo

Nevertheless, drawing closer to God, becoming immersed in the Divine Oneness, is still the goal, albeit in a more familiar form of a Western religious tradition. It is couched in terms that speak to a person raised in a Western culture, with its own saints and sages that lead the way down a more familiar path. But the God that waits for me at the end of that path is the same God of the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Muslim, etc. By definition, there can't really be more than one God, when one distills it to the ground of all being.

Are there "mistakes" or "errors" in the different religions? Some might say so. But I would say that adulterations of pure essence are actually part of the design of the thing, the further from the oneness of God one goes. Differentiation, itself, is an adulteration. In the Divine Oneness, there can't be differentiation, otherwise God is limited and is not omnipotent. It is difficult to speak around the topic of spiritual "oneness," since, if one is looking at a thing, differentiation is at least implied. If there is oneness, there can be no "other."

Sometimes I feel as if we are all actors in a soap opera meant for the amusement of God. Every good drama has some very evil villains that make us yell at our television screens and cry to Heaven for justice. When "the good guy" rides in and saves the day, we feel so good, don't we? Is God looking at us like this? I wonder.

Some people believe that if you don't belong to their particular religion, you will go to hell! Many of us seem to be already in Hell, we are so unconscious of the Divine Presence in our lives. Likewise, the Kingdom of God is among us, according to Jesus. Heaven and Hell are an inside job, apparently. However, I do not pretend to know with certainty what happens to any of us when we die. That's God's bailey wick, and I won't opine.

What does all this have to do with nationalism? In Catholic terms, I would say that God is omnipotent, he created the entire world from his being, including us who are made "in the likeness and image of God" and therefore there is no "nation" that is more beloved by God than any other. God probably doesn't recognize "nations." A nation is an artificial construct designed to organize people who live on a certain piece of dirt. There are common understandings and agreements that solidify it, and rules (laws) about how to apply the underlying philosophy that binds the people together. It vaguely speaks to our relationship with God, but nationalism is on one of the furthest rings of consciousness - far from the ground of all being, far from Ultimate Reality.

I am quite sure of one thing, and that is that our all-loving God loves the native person who lives in the Amazon just as much as He loves the Pope in Rome or a poor brown child in one of those cages on the border. God doesn't care where they live. He cares about them.

If we are to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect, we need to at least mimic the love God has for all His creatures, loving the English, the Dutch, and the South African as much as we love our American compatriots.

We are meant to bring this understanding of the deepest spiritual realities into our day-to-day lives. This is what Jesus was all about. If we only enjoy ourselves diving into the ocean of endless bliss and do not bring it back into our lives and give its fruit to others, we are exercising spiritual masturbation and missing the entire point of the realization of the Oneness of God and all creation. The entire Bible speaks of how we are to do this. In it, we are told to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, be kind to the stranger. Jesus ALSO advises us to go off alone, by ourselves, and pray to God.

I am grateful to be living in America, a fairly wealthy country that is naturally beautiful and offers a certain amount of freedom to its inhabitants. But I wouldn't say I love Americans more than English people or Welsh people or Scottish people. All of the people are God's people, and I love them accordingly, which is why I have been absolutely bereft and have cried many times when I see the poor refugee children being abused at our borders, snatched away from their parents in Donald Trump's vile attempt to torture the refugees into thinking twice about coming here. Those children are my children because they are God's children, and I love them every bit as much as if they were born of me.

Likewise, the children of the 680 people that were arrested at the chicken processing plants in one of the Southern states. They arrived home to find the doors locked and NO provisions made for even where they were going to sleep that night or what they would eat. No after-school snack for them! Seeing at least one of those children, weeping and shaking uncontrollably, expressing the deepest torment, and begging Donald Trump to give her back her dad, who is "not a criminal," just busted me up. Even now, remembering that video, brings tears to my eyes.

These current events do not exemplify the timeless truths of the love of God. They are the evil part of the soap opera, and we must find a way to stop it.

If you are interested in topics suggested by this post, feel free to contact me and I can refer you to some good literature.

In the meantime, God bless us all.

Silver Rose

(Sannyasini Kaliprana)

Silver Cottage Ashram Hermitage

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Copyright © 2019

All rights reserved.

PREJUDICE AGAINST "BABY BOOMERS" IS NOT OKAY EITHER

Me in my early 20's

When I was young and knew nothing, I had scores of people clamoring for my opinions, my friendship, and my heart, especially when I was a young, fairly pretty screenwriter, selling my work to a major Hollywood studio. But now, despite years of experience, education, adventures and wisdom, I am fighting a general tendency of others to treat me as if I am a dunce or a mental patient, simply because I have reached a certain age. Being poor, disabled and needy probably has something to do with my sudden status as an imbecile. Too often, I am the recipient of the unwarranted rolled eyeballs. You know what I am talking about.

I am aware that, in the spiritual realm, this treatment is supposed to be good for me, and I try to bow my head to it as much as possible, but it goes against the grain, having been an entirely independent woman from the age of 17, when I walked out of my natal home with nothing but the clothes on my back and South Indian hippie purse that contained little more than a hair brush and some lipstick. It is my life experiences that have taught me to speak out against injustice and prejudice, otherwise the next gal will get an even worse time of it. I owe it to her to put the brakes on, if only just a little bit.

In the wake of the Trump era, I have experienced incidents of discrimination having to do with my disabilities, which is made worse by ageism and fat prejudice. You may remember that grocery clerk at the Smiths store who told me that he believes in "Trump's law" (whatever THAT was) and that, unless I have had "two arms cut off or two legs cut off," I am not really disabled and don't deserve to park in the handicap parking, despite being actually disabled and having a legitimate, state-issued parking placard.

Many people in our culture are making these decisions about the worthiness of others, based only on what a cursory glance tells them.

Last Friday, I had a horrible experience with a passport agent at the post office who was unreasonably nasty, personally offensive, and condescending to me in a way that I never experienced before the addition of wheels to my life; wheels on my walker, wheels on my electric scooter, and wheels on a car I cannot live without because walking has become impossible. I had nightmares for two days afterwards.

Today, I endured the sneers, rolling eyeballs and tsk tsking of fellow shoppers at Whole Foods, as I tried to maneuver down the aisles in the electric cart that is far too big, the dimensions of which were blatantly ignored when the clerks placed their food displays in the narrow corridors. One woman was so keen to circumvent my little parade, she pushed her cart with great force from the checkout line to the far wall. It neatly clipped my shuddering vehicle. She glared at me, as if it was MY bright idea to send a grocery cart careening across the waxed floors, unmanned.

When my groceries were finally rung up, I discovered, to my utter chagrin, that I'd left my debit card in my other purse, something I have never done in my life, and thereby earned a withering glance from the cashier. It was then that I learned that Whole Foods does not take checks and, though owned by Amazon, has no method of getting payment from you if you leave your card at home. It's cash or plastic, and that's it. I seem to remember it being very easy to read someone's check, in day's gone by, but apparently, that is too simple. The cashier was completely devoid of empathy. He said he could put the groceries aside for me to pick them up later or they could put them all away. He and the packing clerk exchanged ugly glances.

One of the reasons that my apartment is not suited to my needs is that I live in a food desert. There is one very small neighborhood market with highly suspect, extremely expensive fruits and vegetables. Expiration dates are very near or actually expired and I suspect that the storage in the back room is not air conditioned properly because the fruits and vegetables wilt within a day of buying them. ALL of the grocery stores that carry healthy foods are MILES away from where I live, and shopping trips are very hard on me. I was a long way from home, with no debit card. I just couldn't come back.

I couldn't see myself driving 20 minutes home to get my card, 20 minutes back to the store, 20 minutes home again. I could not do that extra hour and also put away groceries that would be half ruined from sitting out for so long. I opted to have them put it all away. Neither the cashier nor the packer uttered a single kind word. I don't know why I was apologizing, but I did - probably because they were making it clear that I had wasted their very precious time. I received no sympathy or fellow feeling or recognition that I was still a customer. No. Just those ugly glances.

I was in so much pain by this point that I was unable to walk, and when I tried to take the electric cart to my car, the stupid "sensors" did not want to let me through the door - not because you're not allowed to take the carts to your car, but because the sensors have been installed so that you won't run into the towers of groceries that I previously mentioned were placed in the aisles of the store. As I worked furiously to try to get the cart to go through the exit doors, an indignant man stood inches from me, his face black with rage. I was inconveniencing him. There was another exit door a few feet away. He could have used that, but no, he wanted to make it clear to me just how mad he was that I dared to interrupt his flow through life.  If I had been my former 21 year-old self, he would have been falling all over himself to help the pretty young disabled lady, I would bet. I finally got out the door and drove home wondering what the hell I was going to eat, since my cupboards were bare and I was hungry.

This hostility toward older and disabled people is really disturbing.  It wasn't until I'd read a sullen and resentful diatribe against "boomers" written by a Facebook connection, that I began to comprehend the strong sentiment that is being generated by our progeny and their kids. They blame all of us that were born during certain years for somehow not leaving them a nice enough world to live in, completely missing the fact that only the very wealthy among our generation had any realistic power in which to operate, and the comparative ease of the older boomer's lives was dictated by economic factors that no longer exist.

As in all ages, it is the people who have money who hold the power in the society. The rest of us just scramble to hold onto the edge of the bowl so we don't fall in. As much as I tried to educate my Facebook acquaintance about this reality, her hostility and bitterness toward all people in that generation came gushing from her in a torrent of resentful words, and I had to walk away from the negativity.

I am having a curious ride, between the ageism and the sexism and the disability prejudice and the fat shaming and the misogyny. Being a member of several vulnerable groups can be exhausting. Of course, people of color are the experts on this sort of thing, as the prejudice that is thrown at them constantly is often life threatening. At least no one has made a move to kill me when I got in their way in the grocery store.

Recently, a member of my former parish started circulating an anti-boomer meme that was couched in the form of a comic cartoon. It was really only a pretense of humor. It was bitingly mean and the kind of thing that has a corrosive effect on society, if left unchallenged. When I explained to him that it was insulting and inappropriate, he coolly told me it was a joke and that he found it funny. I tried to reason with him, but his smugness let me know that he considered this particular prejudice to be okay to cultivate and it didn't bother him if anyone was hurt by it.

I found it an odd attitude for a well-churched young man to take. Frankly, I had expected better from him, given his education, but one can't force enlightenment on anyone.  Ageism is wide spread in America. I have heard that this is less of a problem in other cultures where they revere their elders and treat them with respect, but here in the U.S., many take it for granted, assuming their prejudice has some basis in fact.

The baby boomers aren't the first generation to experience discrimination. I remember when my father hit his 40's and he was constantly telling me of the ageism that he was experiencing. He began to have trouble finding work. People dismissed him as an old hack. I discounted his constant carping and assumed that he had earned this treatment because he really did have an unpleasant personality, with no appreciation for social norms.  Clearly, I was missing some information that only experience could provide.

The prejudices expressed by those entitled young people on Facebook aren't even logical. The fact of the matter is that each generation contains all sorts of people. Some are selfish and couldn't care less about the kind of world they leave to their children and grandchildren. Some spend all their time and money on worthy causes. Some are in their own world and live for whatever hobby horse has captured their imagination. Many people - perhaps most people - just struggle to stay ahead of the daily grind.

Wages for the middle class stalled from 1970 to 2005, basically the baby boomer working years. At the same time, however, corporate profits and CEO wealth skyrocketed. Whatever value the baby boomer created by her effort benefited only the company and the executives, leaving her desperate to feed her kids and stay ahead of the repair bills on the car, which is probably why her kids resent her so much. Mom was always working. If she wasn't at her full time job, she left the kids alone in the apartment at night and on weekends while she worked her side hustle.

The kids are blaming their boomer mom for leaving them to their own devices much of the time, but it's an unfair complaint. Life got harder and harder during those working years, from 1970 to 2005. From my personal perspective, I ended up making less money in real dollars in my 40's than I had in my 20's. The economic machine was sending all the value of my work to the bank accounts of a few people at the top of the pyramid, leaving me scrabbling for table scraps that fell from above. Who can build a world for the next generation when you're survival is at stake? It is a rigged system. This is the fault of capitalism, which MUST be regulated, or it naturally results in all the money being concentrated at the top, shared with just a few people.

Older people can be repositories of great wisdom, information and inspiration. That isn't true of all elderly people, of course. You know the saying, "with age comes wisdom, but sometimes it comes alone!" To pretend that every gray haired granny is a wizened old sage would be just another type of irrational prejudice. One must recognize, though, that the wisdom of many years is certainly a latent possibility in every person of a certain age. By very definition, they have more years of experiences than the young and, even if they DO start to become a little addled, don't they deserve simple human kindness? Jesus would say so.

It would be wonderful to think that writing a blog would disabuse scores of people of the notion that older people are all losing their minds and have nothing to offer the world. I don't have a prayer of changing the entire culture, but I will do my bit here. I am the perennial advocate for the misunderstood and maligned.

If you consider yourself a spiritual person, a religious person, or a person of honor and integrity, then you must agree that prejudice is evil. Condemning someone or ridiculing anyone, based solely upon some general group to which they belong, is an injustice to that person and shouldn't be tolerated. Pretending that comical character assassinations are benign is, likewise, dishonest. Don't encourage the incorrigible by laughing and then passing on the sentiment!

Jesus clearly wanted us to be kind to one another, and that doesn't include expressing contempt toward your elders in the mistaken idea that they are somehow less than you and that therefore it is alright to be prejudiced about anyone over the age of 40. There is no prejudice that is "allowed" or is culturally acceptable. Just stop it!

My postal carrier commiserated with me today, making the observation that, "it's a very strange time in America. People are so MEAN." This is true, but we have to fight this tendency as hard as we can. This meanness is not a holy stance to take, and it is incumbent upon Christians to follow the commandments of the Lord to the best of our abilities - and that means that we are to love everyone.

Read the Beatitudes again. That's a good place to start.

God bless us all.

Silver "Rose" Parnell
"Sannyasini Kaliprana"