Forgiveness with Garbage and Roses

"What is real remains." --Buddhist saying


A principle text of Buddhism, the Prajnaparamita "Heart" Sutra, perhaps the principle text for all practitioners on the way is also called "the Heart of Understanding." This text is central to many and universal in its wisdom. It traces its roots within the Buddhist Canon back 2,000 or more years. Surely other traditions at that time had some access to it, and other like teachings. Technology may have changed over that time, but the Heart, or Perfect Understanding Sutra in its reflection of human nature and practice has not. Despite the passage of time, it remains a reality.

For me a student of the Way, and a learner of the teaching, I have used other study texts to understand and learn more; however, the best one I have used whether in Zendo or on my own, is the 1988 translation and commentaries by Buddhist monk and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding. It is written with emphasis to make the teaching more accessible to the Western mind. By writing the commentary on Garbage and Roses, he seeks to further our understanding of emptiness. "To be empty does not mean nonexistence... Emptiness is the ground of everything... if I am not empty, I cannot be here [in this moment] writes the philosopher, Nagarjuna... Empty is quite a positive concept... because you are there, I can be here."
"Neither defiled nor immaculate"

"Defiled or immaculate. Dirty or pure. These are concepts we form in our minds... A beautiful rose is pure, immaculate." A garbage can is dirty, evil, rotten. These are experiences that may fill our mind with the idea of the word. Looking more carefully, more deeply, you will see that the rose is born out of the garbage. The garbage is composted, and forms the base of humus for the soil that the rose needs to survive. Organic gardeners know that in a few months, plant matter, and natural things, decay into compost. Thus roses and garbage inter-be. They need each other! Likewise, the Buddhist teaching of the genesis is very short and simple, yet it is very deep:

This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not. This is like this, because that is like that.

Meditate a while upon this and you will see more clearly the inter-being of things. Sometimes, we in our lives, are like that because this is like that. We all inter-be. So, "we must be very careful. We should not imprison ourselves in concepts. We can only inter-be. We cannot just be." Only through the eyes of inter-being can we be freed of suffering, can we find forgiveness and blessings.

For example, many of us want to "be good." But we forget that part of good is evil. For without evil, what then is the good? "You cannot be good alone,' Thich Nhat Hanh states, 'you cannot hope to remove evil, because thanks to evil, good exists and vice versa...
So Buddha needs Mara to take the evil role so Buddha can be a Buddha. Buddha is empty; Buddha is made of non-Buddha elements... Buddha needs Mara in order to reveal himself... When you perceive reality in this way, you will not discriminate against the garbage for the sake of the rose."

Saint Paul needed Saint Matthew to become Saint Paul, who first was a vicious persecutor of Christians himself, yet through a vision, and contacts with the disciples, with Saint Matthew the Evangelist, became transformed into one of the early Fathers of the Christian Church. Without Saint Matthew and others to open his eyes, like Mara and Buddha, he would not be Saint Paul of the Bible. Clearly that is because this is; it is the work of inter-being that we may look deeply to perceive that. The Feast of Saint Paul is June 29 in the Roman Church Calendar.

"So do not hope that you can eliminate the evil side. It is easy to think that we are on the good side, and that the other side is evil. But wealth is made of poverty, and poverty is made of wealth." And if we look very carefully into the world, into ourselves, we may see that we suffer, we bear the pains of all.

Working To See More Clearly

"Take up the way of meeting others on equal ground."
--Buddhist precept as discussed by Diane Rizzetto in her book, Waking Up to What You Do.

In her book, Waking Up to What You Do, Abbess Diane Rizzetto writes on the precept of meeting others on equal ground. She quotes the writer Dag Hammarskjold, Markings:

"To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in

its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, 

than any thing else in the universe. It is nothing; at the same time, 

one with the universe." 

What are the obvious and not so obvious ways that we regard ourselves in light of others? Do we gain self-worth in measuring ourselves against others? Do we consider our own thoughts, our own way? Do we praise ourselves at the expense of others? Or while not praising ourselves, abuse others?

What keeps us from meeting others, from meeting the stranger on equal ground? What about competition--are there winners and losers in the world? How does anger, insecurity, fear, shame and blame block the way of meeting others on equal ground? 

Why must we meet equally? Despite our sometimes fearful and anxious experiences of meeting others with pounding heart and cold hand, adrenaline flowing, making us feel like ice, meeting others on equal ground is important.

Even so, there are many ways we either subtly or overtly avoid our feelings and perceptions of unease with ourselves; we measure, we criticize, blame and shame our way through life. Putting others down will pull us up, it seems--maybe.

 By learning more about the reality of inter-being we come to find that this isn't so.

  Making you dirty, makes me dirty; disrespect to you is disrespect to myself. I am the doing, the making of it all, the dream of self. Considering this perception, we find it isn't limited to speech. Behavior is also a means of competition and measuring ourselves to others.
 Dag Hammarskjold Video 

Create in Me a Clean Heart

When Character Assassinating, Pass the Salt

 When we, for a long or short period of time due to anger, envy or other resentments, speak out about others in ways that are false or misleading about that person, we commit character assassination. Gossip has the same effect, and that is the reason many, if not most, spiritual traditions either ban it or take a dim view to its practice. It is corrosive and damaging to community.
For this discussion assassination is defined as: to kill in a surprise attack for political or religious reasons; to gossip for same or similar personal reasons.

Today the overwhelming presence of technology in our lives and the easy access to the internet makes the opportunities for character assassination, gossip or outright slander easy, and increasing. Even when things are posted that are untrue, oddly over time people's beliefs may be swayed and their former good opinions altered to a more negative tone. How does that happen?

Lori Andrews writes about this subject in her new book, I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did,  primarily about privacy issues and the internet. She discusses at length the 1890 legal briefs written by then young Boston attorneys Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren in a chapter titled Technology and Fundamental Rights. Recounting the young Brandeis' life, author Andrews talks about his concern for his family when in 1889 his first child was born and the Kodak Brownie portable camera simultaneously made its first appearance. No longer was it necessary to go to a photo studio to be photographed with large, cumbersome cameras. Now they were portable and increasingly every where. He was concerned about the indiscriminate photographing of his children while in public. Doesn't a person have a right to "their own face," he mused. Surely there must be a legal answer to this new question brought by technology.

Prior to portable cameras a person could hardly be photographed without their permission, largely due to the limits of the technology. After 1888 when the Brownie appeared, all changed. These photo enthusiasts were called "photo fiends" by the popular press. As Warren and Brandeis assessed the impact of the portable camera in modern life, their instinct told them several things: people should be able to have control over their images; they also should have the simple right to be left alone, and the right to control the information others could collect about them; in short theirs was a conception of the privacy rights, and rights of due process that today we all now enjoy.

Their 1890 legal brief advanced theses ideas:

"The intensity and complexity of life attendant upon the advancing civilization have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; modern enterprise and invention have, through [various] invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury."
They continue their thought that there is indeed an essential right for individuals to be simply left alone, like the legal protections against assault or beatings or malicious prosecution. The right of a person to control what is said or written about him long has had a place in law. The suits of slander and liable address traditional wrongs to others committed by would be character assassins when in public speech or in traditional publications such as books, newspapers or magazines. One's reputation is among the very first of property rights an individual must, and ought to protect. It is indeed the very first form of property rights possessed by individuals. Brandeis and Warren later went on to become members of the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Warren and Brandeis also demonstrated how gossip, "even apparently harmless, when widely and persistently circulated, is potent for evil." Like the pouring of salt into a wound, gossip can and does create harm where perhaps there was previously none. Those of us on both sides, those who have placed others in a false light and those who have been so placed, can attest to the evil potential of gossip. Today we now contend with "social networks," the likes of which were unknown a short 20 years ago, which now claim hundreds of million users. Between social networks and "data aggregators" the potential for evil in our modern age is on a scale unimaginable by Brandeis and Warren.

Many have been already been harmed by this mode and many, many more are sure to be next. Often the internet attackers are nameless and faceless; they are invented identities, multiple accounts--sock puppets who ordinarily couldn't be taken seriously, and yet somehow they are. There is the salt, and the evil of it all. When we relay information that is scurrilous and false about others, maybe because we're angry or resentful, do we really think that it could fly back in our face? Most times no, because the methods typically chosen place the evil-doer in the shadows; hidden in their perch where they comfortably complete their task. 

When jealousy or other strong emotion is the prime mover for this behavior, does the perpetrator slow down long enough to engage their brain, question what may or may not be true? Most often they do not; their grief propels them to return the perceived hurt to those whom they believe may have injured them.
But what if, over time it's uncovered that the accusations, the beliefs prompting the actions were with error, or while possibly true, held unintended consequences, then what? Can we forgive our self? 

Can we "out" our self into the bright sunlight, give up our dark perches for a more honest and truthful self appraisal, appraise our relationships which prompted us in the first place? What part do we play? How have we contributed or failed? What, or even how can a morass of gossip be retracted or corrected?

Are we now just a little bit shamed or embarrassed that we spoke without facts, that we were perhaps a bit ignorant? And do we, to some degree, continue in resentment towards our "maybe" enemy? Does this prevent us from taking the point of view that the right to be left alone is basic? Why are we engaged in such mean, petty behavior to begin with--can we just leave well alone if we aren't liking something?

So there is the hook-- we're in it with both feet! How so? Unable to leave well enough alone, we've plunged in. For example, I know a lady who thought that her son and another's daughter while young, schoolmates and neighbors were not suitable playmates. 

So she sought to disrupt their amiable regard for one another by various means. Sometimes she told her son that the neighbor girl wasn't very nice; sometimes she called the girl names when speaking about her; often when she saw the girl around, she was cool and unfriendly; sometimes she complained to others that she wished that the girl would find something else to do--somewhere else; a few times she said things to the young girl that were confusing and hurtful.
The little neighbor girl was sad. She could not quite understand the woman's attitude or her wish that she not play with her schoolmate and neighbor friend. 

After a time it became more clear to the young girl's mother that the neighbor woman felt her daughter was an unsuitable associate for their son. On what basis, the girl's mother was mystified. She could clearly see however the harm that gossip prompted not only for her family, but also in the other family, as more people heard the boy's mother complain, the more they focused not only on the children but both families as well.

The truth about gossip is in the fact that "dirt flies in all directions." To dirty others, you must also dirty your self.

Beginning with Self-Forgiveness

"Self-forgiveness is a process that can co-exist when others forgive us for hurting them, or when god is at work." 

Have your words or your actions at times driven others away? Have you been at times blind to your own weakness, your own limitations? "Does your reluctance to see yourself realistically prompt a disintegration of what you typically assume about yourself?" If you experience these events, then you are likely a candidate for self-forgiveness, writes Beverly Flannigan in her book, Forgiving Yourself. Flannigan writes passionately about a subject which she explains is at the very core of peacemaking.

Self-forgiveness can "restore peace within a person, and when peace is restored and hatred eliminated, even self-hatred, good things can result. Self-forgiveness is a process that can co-exist when others forgive us for hurting them, or when god is at work." Yet being forgiven by others does not exclude the need for self-forgiveness. Flannigan writes that the process takes some typical twists and turns on the road to peacemaking for self and others. First, self-forgiveness "results in your being able to finally feel that you have paid your debt to those you think you have owed. Second, self-forgiveness ends the desire to continue punishing yourself for letting your flaws or mistakes hurt other people. Third, self-forgiveness requires a commitment to personal change, and once you have changed, you will feel better about yourself. Fourth, when you have changed, the things you believed about yourself and others begin to make sense again."

Once again, maybe for the first time in a long time, the ideas you hold about yourself and others coincide; your life is no longer troubling, secret or in duality. And your life's meaning fits into a clearer view. The process that Flannigan outlines is not easy. To take the walk into self-forgiveness, is a way without short-cuts. Many unpleasant and even painful moments arise; this is the result of an honest, realistic confrontation of our own being, our functioning, life as it is. This self-confrontation is greater and deeper than the forgiveness of/for another may require. We may be forgiven, but only we know the depths of our meanness, pettiness and deceit. "It's this knowledge that makes self-forgiveness so hard."