We live in a great time; we’ve come so far. Because of transportation, mass communication, the world is becoming a single village. Most of us have access to the sacred teachings of basically any tradition, any religion that has ever existed. We can use that access, not to scatter ourselves, but to see “My God, it is the same, the Spirit is the same over here, the same over there.”

There’s an old saying about digging one well 200 feet deep rather than 20 wells 10 feet deep, and sometimes we’ve used that as an excuse for religious intolerance. But many of us have come to see that while it is true we should dig one deep well, we can use a shovel from Japan, a spade from India, a pick from Israel — tools and insights from any tradition to dig down to our depths.

What is this deep well, what is the Sacred Water it yields? The idea of living in spirit, the outlandishness of really living in Spirit, in the One, is an impossibility for our minds to grasp. We’ll read things in the Bible like:

My own peace I give you, such as the world cannot give. This is a peace which surpasses understanding.

and we go “Oh right! I get it!” No, let’s do it again:

This is a peace which surpasses understanding.

We go, “OH…now I see!” Nope, nope.

This is a peace which SURPASSES understanding!

Confused, deflated of pride, we say, “But I don’t understand…!” Ahh, finally! Now we’re beginning to get it.

I dissolved into the Emptiness, and discovered it was filled with Love.

- Father Dom Bede Griffiths

Going Full-time, Full-tilt

The most complex understanding I can imagine sustaining in the heart would be something like, “I have no idea what’s going on, but it has something to do with Love.” There’s no point arguing about the difference between this religion and that religion, this practice, that practice. Like the old saw, “Excuse me sir, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” Do you remember the answer? PRACTICE! How can we simultaneously be a poor and nameless devotee of the one living spirit, yet be bursting with energy for making positive contributions to the world? Practice!

When Sita and I visited His Holiness the Dalai Lama earlier this year, I put all my attention into being present, open, receptive in the presence of such a great spiritual elder. I tried to look very practically — “He’s got two legs, two arms, a head, a nose. We both wake up in the morning, both go to sleep at night. What is the real functional difference between his experience and mine?”

One of the things I noticed is simply that he’s “full-time.” You and I will come together here this morning, and with enough mutual support and encouragement, we may open and open, and gradually be willing to feel the Living Spirit with each other, open and trusting and experiencing the preciousness of being together in this mystery where we are God yet we are separate, and we can’t figure it out but it has something to do with love.

And then the service ends and we go out to our cars and on the way home we stop for gas or at a bagel shop or whatever, and you and I are then willing to pretend with the gas station attendant or with the waiter or waitress at the bagel shop that life isn’t so sacred, that this is just a bagel going on, this is just getting gas; we won’t look in their eyes, we won’t be intimate; it’s like an unspoken agreement not to feel how precious we are to each other.

The Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa simply don’t turn it off! They go in there and see a Precious Child of God taking their Divine Credit Card for the Sacred Gas, and they don’t hide it from that person taking the credit card! Their whole presence says “It’s all equally sacred. Getting gas, praying in church, buying a bagel, all the same Mysterious Miracle. I live in Love, so of course I am in Love with you, and when I walk through that door then I’ll be in Love with whomever or whatever is through that door.”

A popular American Buddhist meditation teacher recently asked the Dalai Lama a question which seems to be a favorite notion in our culture — “Your Holiness, how do you feel about the issue of needing to take time for ourselves? You know, our need to drop out of our roles and just take time off, how do you feel about that?”

The Dalai Lama turned to his translator, Tenzin Geyche, who explained it a little more in Tibetan, but he still couldn’t understand the question. So the fellow rephrased it about four different times, and finally the Dalai Lama got it. He burst out laughing and said “Buddha time off? Bodhisattva time off? hahahahahaha.” What a concept!

Do we need time off from breathing? What would happen if we take time off from breathing? Every movement, every thought, every breath we take is our only begotten Son of God, God’s expression into the world. Why create separateness between “me and the community,” or “me and life,” with expressions like “I need time for myself, and I deserve it!” That just reinforces our duality.

Sure, we need to eat, relax, play with our family — but because it’s natural, not because there is any inherent conflict between altruism and self-care.

Besides, the only real rest from all our roles and identities would be, as the monk Father Theophane would put it, “to throw away our silly smiles, fall to our knees, clutch his hand and whisper, ‘Father!’”

That’s a perfect description of a period of daily spiritual practice: “I throw away my silly smile” — all my clever ideas, what I’m wearing, what I look like, who Bo Lozoff is, what I drive, how much money I earn, how much good I want to do in the world, what I’m going to say in this sermon… I throw away my silly ideas, fall to my knees, clutch his hand and whisper “Father”. That’s the opportunity we all have to take a real break from the tediousness and weariness of our worldly lives. Nothing less is truly “time off.”

The Great Equalities

One of the things I love most about the spiritual journey is the humbling equality with which we are born. Regardless of wealth or race or culture or era, we are all born with several conditions exactly the same:

The first Great Equality is that the moment we are born, whether we are born in a crack house or the White House, we have no idea when or how we will die. Thank you. Thank you, God, for making us so equal. We have no idea whether we will live to be 6 months old or 105. The Greatest Humbler of all!

The second Great Equality is that we have no idea who or what the most important influences of our lives will be. Looking back on the past, we may say, “Wow, little did I know when I woke up that one fateful morning, that was the day my life would change forever…” But when we actually woke up that morning, it was impossible to see. It takes practice to realize equally every day of our lives, every moment, every person we meet, “This could be the most important experience of my life.” That attitude of perpetual openness is reflected in the core of both the Jewish and Christian traditions, of being ready every moment for the appearance of the Messiah — the instrument of our deepest salvation. It can come in any form, from joy or sorrow, success or failure, alone or with multitudes. We must therefore have infinite respect for the spiritual potential of all people and experiences.

The third Great Equality — our Common Tasks. We also are born with several equal duties. One of the interesting ideas that has come up over the past 30 years in the West is “I create my own reality.” There is, of course, some truth in that. We surely create some of the mind-body attitudes which can lead to illness or health, but to take that idea into the realm of the deepest spiritual truths is to miss the boat by a mile.

We don’t really create all our own reality. If you say “I choose for my heart to digest food instead of pump blood,” that’s simply not going to work. There is a certain obedience and surrender required to the natural and spiritual laws. The stomach digests food, the heart pumps blood, the lungs process air. Everybody is born with many equal physical responsibilities.

Everyone is born with a spiritual responsibility also, as specific as our hearts pumping blood: We must learn to love one another, to receive and express goodness. It doesn’t matter whether we believe in it or not. Obey it and we will thrive, disobey it and we won’t. Period. Isn’t that wonderful? Our human justice system may be all screwed up, but the Divine Law treats us absolutely equally.

Look all over the world and see the people who unselfishly receive and express goodness, who are dedicated to the cause of love. They’re the only people who are truly happy. They have tapped into the one mysterious, wonderful connectedness that frees them to live full-time in love. Some of them had great childhoods, some were horribly abused, some are pretty, some are homely, some tall, some short, rich, poor — our situations are always unequal, but life does not judge us by where we’ve been, what we own, or what has been done to us; life judges us by what we do.

When the Flesh Becomes Word….

Every religion tells us in one way or another that “the Word becomes flesh.” But we, the flesh, must become the Word as well. That’s what happens when we are enlightened — a constant loop of the Word becoming flesh and the flesh becoming Word endlessly. Nobody home but God; no ego-self experiencing fear and selfishness; nothing going on but the Sacred being con-scious of being Sacred, of existing simultaneously as formless and form; word and flesh; Divine Love and Human Compassion.

There’s something in the East called Sanatana Dharma, which roughly means “Eternal, Universal Truth,” and it consists of only three principles:

1. There is indeed something transcendent, beyond comprehension, something divine. It’s real. It exists.
2. Each of us —you and I, not just the Dalai Lama, St. Francis, Mother Teresa — but you and I, can and must directly experience this divinity.
3. That is the only purpose of life. Everything else, who we are, what we look like, how old, how wealthy, how poor, how much or how little we suffer or find happiness, what we do for a living, what we do in the world, how many children we have, EVERYTHING else, everything is a support system toward our direct experience of the eternal Great Mystery.

There are so many compelling forces pushing us to forget that all life is sacred, that this is all just a process of our experiencing God. There are so many compelling forces saying “You need this” and “you need that,” and “be wary of that” and “be afraid of her” and “be upset over what they did to you.” How can we possibly remember that we are the flesh becoming the Word of God? PRACTICE! It takes a lot of practice to remember our depth when we’re being constantly hustled to be shallow and materialistic toward the goals of a culture built around consumerism.

We Need Some Elders, and It’s US…

Coming out of retreat and looking around at my own culture, looking at the crises that we are in, the problems that exist in the American family, I saw that on one hand, many of us have come a long way in order to be able to acknowledge Eastern masters, saints from other traditions. But where are the American realized beings? Where are our enlightened elders, where are the “Word become Flesh” in people who share our cultural experience, who share the bombardment of Ninja Turtles and McDonalds and all of that, who come from the same place, yet have transformed entirely and died into the living spirit “for the benefit of all beings?”

I started thinking, “I’ll bet there are some in monasteries, convents, caves right now who are from the American culture and are just about ready to come out and say “Here we are, ” but that didn’t really fly, because a little voice in me said “Schmuck, you’re it!” Me. You. Little old us. If not me or you, it’s not going to happen.

The American realized beings, people whose motivation is so compassionate toward our own people, our own unique situation of being brought up in this bizarre combination of unparalleled affluence amid vast spiritual loneliness and confusion — they’ve got to come from among us. Are we willing? Our people are so confused and dismayed, so fearful, jaded, and unhappy, can we take that as inspiration and encouragement to get on with our awakening?

What is it that turns us into a being whose very presence quietly, modestly evokes the best in others? It’s practice, and then putting what we practice into expression. So that’s what I mean by Sacred Living, Sacred Practice.

What this country needs more than anything else is for us to become elders, walking the streets and doing our jobs, really happy, classic, ageless spiritual human beings. So that’s the opportunity we have and I don’t think any people in the history of the world has ever had more access to the methods and ideas for how to do that. We are very fortunate in that way, even if you’re in prison. I love you very much and I thank you for being right where you are.

When I was younger and I heard the passage from St. Paul, “Man hath no greater love than this, to give his life to his fellow man,” I used to think laying down your life for your fellow man meant like stopping a train, or taking a bullet for somebody, or running into a burning house to save a baby. It’s really noble and takes a moment of great courage but that’s actually kind of easy. That’s giving your death to your fellow man. As I began to realize what this passage is about, lay down your life, it’s a little more persistent and involved. It means waking up every day and saying I dedicate my life to others today and then doing it again tomorrow and the same the next day.

There was a meeting of some western Buddhist teachers with His Holiness the Dalai Lama a few years ago and one of the teachers was asking him, “Isn’t it necessary for us sometimes to step out of the roles we’re in of teachers, preachers, ministers, and just be somewhere where you don’t have that role?” His Holiness couldn’t actually understand the question for quite a while, so they went back and forth with a translator’s help, and finally His Holiness burst into laughter and said, “Buddha time off? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.” He thought that was a hoot, the idea that we would take time off from our Buddhahood, from our Christhood-that we feel we need time off from the role of laying down your life, not your death, but laying down your life for all creation. I’ve registered that more deeply as I’ve grown older because I think all of us are operating against the flow of a culture that insists it is psychologically unhealthy to give our lives for each other.

I can’t tell you how many people ask me, “Well, Bo, how about time you take for you, some me time,” with a tone of pride. I might say to somebody, “I’ve got next Tuesday off,” and there’s this immediate culturally approved celebratory response: “You’re taking some time for you. Good, good for you.”

I can’t tell you how ugly that is to me. It is like a repudiation and a mockery, as though everything I’m doing for everybody else is sort of effortful and obligatory. “I’m being a good boy to please God, and boy, it’s a great day when I get a chance to kick back and be selfish as hell!” What happened to “Man hath no greater Love…?”

Jesus says, “I lay my commandment upon you: Love one another as I have loved you.” Somebody without a self was saying that. Somebody who never took a “me day!” My Guru used to talk about Jesus constantly. He’d say, “Jesus gave everything away, even His body.”

Jesus says, “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” I just wonder whether it is natural for us to take for granted something like, “I have overcome the world.” Jesus also says, “Be in the world but not of the world.”

That’s very nice, poetic stuff, but then do we ever actually sit for an hour puzzled by the question, “What world am I of?” What does He mean? Is it just flowery words, some abstract concept? Or could it possibly be literally, not metaphorically, not symbolically, but literally true that right now, today, Sunday May 21st, 2006, you and I have within us literally a power, a glory, a kingdom of heaven? His disciples said, “Tell us more about this kingdom of heaven Lord,” and he said, “Well, don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not out there, up there, over there, this kingdom I’m trying to describe to you is within you, and it’s not later, it’s at hand.” Think about that: He said, “It’s within you and it’s at hand.” Do we settle for too little, you and I?

The Dalai Lama stopped at one point in the middle of an interview a few years ago, and he said, “Sir, the Buddha was not just a nice man.” Do we try to make Jesus into a nice man? Do we try to domesticate Christ, domesticate God, so that religion serves us instead of us learning how to serve God, and literally giving up the self? Not “I’m going to take some me time today.” “Oh, congratulations, good for you.”

I mean really, next time you’re in an encounter with somebody and you feel that popular sentiment, try to experience it as viciously anti-Christ as I do. Because it’s a vicious attitude, this “congratulations for being selfish.” That’s how the Antichrist is speaking through our culture of consumerism. “You need to be selfish. Let’s all pay some lip service to this unselfish crap, but man, when you take off to do what you want, that’s great!”

I spent three years in retreat many years ago reading all the bibles of the world’s religions. I never came across that one. Yet Oprah, who is considered one of the good forces in our culture, says to her audience, “Learn how to say I want!” I searched the bibles of the world, never came across “Thou shalt learn how to say I want.” I came across plenty of things saying, “Lay down your life for your fellow man.”

So I wonder, do most of us religious people settle for something that’s a fraction of the way there? We settle for being a nice man, a nice woman. We settle for taking these vaguely inspirational, abstractly inspirational messages that’ll help me cope with this difficult world of events, but here He’s saying, “I have overcome the world.” Now He obviously didn’t overcome it just for himself. It wouldn’t be inscribed on the stained glass if it was just a personal message that He broke free of this. He’s telling you and me, “I have overcome the world for you.”

“I have overcome the world.” The fellow who said this died on a cross. When we pray for God’s mercy, when we pray to be healed of cancer, when we pray for our loved ones to be safe or whatever, are we settling for too little? Are we forgetting what it means or never reflecting on what it means? He overcame that world. It’s okay. We can die of cancer. Life may indeed crucify us. We’re supposed to strive for peace and mercy and justice every day of our lives, like Mahatma Gandhi strove to free India from British domain. But when somebody asked Gandhi, do you think India will be liberated from British rule because of your effort, he said, “That’s none of my business. My part is to strive to do this because it’s right, not because I think it’s going to work.”

“I’ve overcome the world.” Pontius Pilot just wants to see Jesus tremble a little. He says “Don’t you know I have the power to free you or crucify you?” Jesus says, “You have no power over me. I’ve overcome the world.” The night before, in Gethsemane, Jesus has a conversation with God and says, “I’d rather not be crucified, nobody would want to be crucified, but I submit to Thy will.” That’s what it says at the bottom there (pointing to bottom of stained glass window): “Thy will be done.”

And so He’s already said, I know we can’t control this mortal world. When He tells Pontius Pilot the next day, “You have no power over Me,” Pontius Pilot thinks, “Well, how wrong can somebody be? Crucify Him!” And they do. Pontius Pilot certainly wasn’t one of the people in his lifetime who recognized the resurrection, who understood that Jesus made trivia out of death, who understood what Jesus meant when He said, “You have no power over Me.” That torture, crucifixion, and death are trivial to this power that I am. “I’ll come back in three days. The temple will be rebuilt.” There is nothing that can touch this. This mundane world is small and the eternal world is huge and glorious.

Pontius Pilot didn’t understand any of that. Pontius Pilot went to his grave thinking how wrong he proved that scraggly guy who said “You have no power over Me,” because then he exerted power over Him and Jesus died. We understand what Jesus was referring to when He said, “You have no power over me.” It goes along with, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”

Even the body itself is Caesar’s. We cannot control what the world does to it. But what is God’s? Our Love, our attitudes, our generosity, all our good and noble qualities.

This is supposed to be a model for you and me when we look at imprisonment, at cancer, at grief, at loss, at failure, at insecurity, at the fragility of life. Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. Jesus is saying to us, “You’re going to die, you’re going to get sick, you’re going to lose everybody you love, everything in the world may go wrong, and I have overcome that. Be in that world, show up to work in it, serve it with your last breath, strive for what is right: peace, mercy, justice, love. But that’s not where you live, that’s only where you work. You live in Me and I have overcome that world. Don’t worry about a thing-even when you are facing Pontius Pilot and he says, “Crucify Him!”

So I ask again, do we settle for too little? Are we in front of Pontius Pilot quaking at the power he has over us, saying, “But where is Jesus? God, help me!” Are we trying for, “The world has no power over me” to mean that as long as I have faith in God this isn’t lung cancer that’s in my lungs? That Pontius Pilate will say instead, “Spare his life?” Are we settling for too little? T

There is a modern wave of Christianity, where ministers are assuring their congregations: “You don’t have to believe in miracles to be a good Christian. You don’t have to believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection or walking on water or raising the dead. These are metaphorical things. I mean, we all sort of rise from the dead when we’ve been addicted and go into recovery, or when we have a trauma and we recover. You don’t have to stretch your credibility. You know, if that all seems hokey to you, just set it aside.”

Oh sweethearts, are we settling for too little? That’s being in the world and of the world. That’s assuming this world is all there is and that all the rest is just poetic, flowery words for children. What He came to show us by the resurrection, which I absolutely take literally is, “This world is trivial to the love that I am.” And we are never safe in this world of Caesar’s. Forget that. In fact, the only reason that we have a group of vicious people in charge of the country right now is because they played to our fears about wanting little Johnny to be safe. Johnny can never be safe in that way.

You sit here and think, hmm-I feel a little lump in my neck. Suddenly next week your whole world is doctors and nurses and chemotherapy and cancer and surgery. I leave here in my car and I stall at an intersection and get wiped out by a truck and this is the last group of people I ever talk to. We are never safe in this world. That’s not what Jesus ever promised us. He died on a cross and He said, “Do you want to be my followers? There’s a cross waiting for you. Pick it up and follow me.” Now, the symbol of Christianity is not the shroud and it’s not the sepulchre. It’s the cross and He said pick up your cross and follow me. But then He tells us: “Be of good cheer as this world destroys you, because I’ve overcome that world, and you live in Me. So I want you to show up for work everyday to be in that world. Serve all my brothers and sisters.” You don’t have to take any “me time.”

I certainly take days off-for my service to you, because I can’t function going 20 hours a day, every day. It’s natural. It’s not prideful and it’s not selfish. The only way that I can show up at the prison in decent shape in two days is if I take Tuesday off. This is the 7th event that I’ve had since Friday night, so Tuesday is a complete day off for me. It’s not “me time.” There’s no difference between “me time” and “you time.” I’m taking a day of rest because this is a physical body. I need to crash, play some music, go for a walk, so that I can be fresh for the next group of people the next day.

Obviously we have to take care of ourselves. But I think most of you probably know the tone that comes across when you tell people you’re taking some time off. I’m just saying let’s start questioning that. Next time someone congratulates you on taking some “me time,” say, “Oh, I’m only doing this so I can be a better servant, a better citizen. This is just part of the balance; just how it all works best.”

But we have only one life, and that’s in God. Christ doesn’t say, “Make sure some of your motivation is for yourself.” Christ says “Love thy neighbor as thyself. Love one another as I have loved you.” But remember, this is not just about being a nice person, this world we see around us is not all there is. He tells us, “Be in the world, but try to spend a little bit of time every day silent and humble before Me. Know that I am with you until the end of the world.”

“I am with you,” not, “I’ll come to you.” I am with you. Are you spending enough time opening to where He is with you, or are you settling for too little, thinking all of this is just a bunch of flowery words? Jesus is saying, “I have a force inside of you that can literally walk on water, move mountains, raise the dead. It’s in you right now, and I’m here, I’m a’waitin’ for you, babe. I’m waitin’ for you to find that balance with being in the world but not of it. You live and you breathe and you rest in Me and you work out there on My behalf and it’s none of your business whether it is going to go in a better direction or not.”

Somebody asked me this morning: “Do you see any hope in changes for the better in what we are doing in prisons? Is there any light on the horizon?” I said no, absolutely not. It’s horrible, it’s brutal, it’s stupid. We’re paying dearly for it, and we’re going to continue paying dearly for it. I don’t see any light on that horizon, and yet I will keep going into these brutal, stupid institutions and have some of the richest, most wonderful loving human experiences that people can ever have with each other.

And so that’s why we do it. Not because we have hope that things will get better, that’s not our business. We’re in a dim age as far as that’s concerned. We’re in a dim age as far as lots of things are concerned. Is it going to overwhelm you and me so that it saps our energy? “Be of good cheer. I have overcome that world. I’ve done it for you. That’s not where you live and belong. Don’t tie your activism, don’t tie your generosity, don’t tie your charity to results. Do it because you do it for Me. Leave the mystery of how it all works up to Me. But know that I am in you. I love you, and you can feel Me directly if you believe in it, make time for it, and persevere in that. You can touch Me directly.”

Mother Teresa said, “When I look into the eyes of the dying I see Christ.” She was not being a sweet old woman with flowery words for children. Imagine literally, “I look into the eyes of the dying and I see Christ already in there looking back at me.” That’s why Mother Teresa committed that most heinous sin of the Catholic Church all those years: ministering to thousands of dying people and not inviting them to accept Christ as their savior.

What’s she going to do, look at a dying man and say “Do you accept yourself as your savior?” She’s seen Christ there. The love that Mother Teresa brought with her is a mystical force. This isn’t just being a nice woman. She brings Christ’s love to this dying beggar and she cradles him in her arms and Christ is there inside the beggar and looks back at her saying, “That’s what I want you to do.” So it’s redundant for her to say, “Do you accept Jesus as your savior?” Jesus already accepted this person because of her love. She’s carrying His love to them.

Do we settle for too little by glossing over the mystical? Mother Teresa was a mystic, not a nice lady. You and I, ultimately, have a mystical connection with Christ, right here and now. It’d be nice to take a little time every day to explore that, wouldn’t it?

God Bless You.

I hope that every time we have a meeting like this, we change ourselves – not just learn more about some subject like prisons. I’m hoping to be a deeper, more inspired and committed person when I leave the room tonight, and I invite you to do the same. We all have subconscious, semiconscious and unconscious metering devices in our heads. For example, if it were the Dalai Lama sitting here, your metering device might be set to change more, and with me sitting here your metering device is set less than with him, but maybe a little more than with somebody you’ve never heard of. Well, my metering device is hardwired at full tilt, because I want to change as much as possible every time I meet somebody or engage in any kind of activity, experience or exchange, because that’s really what it’s about – changing. Constantly. Shedding the layers of the onion until we’re ripe, deep, compassionate, unafraid, simple people. I have never seen a time in our national life that it’s more appropriate or would be more beneficial to do that. There are people in horrendous suffering all around us, all over the world.

There’s also a lot of groundswell among religious people and religious clergy to get rid of the mystical, the transcendent, the miraculous. There’s an Episcopal bishop who’s just about made his whole career out of telling Christians they don’t have to believe in “hokey” things like the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection to be a good Christian – he says religion is just about goodness; about human ethics.

Well, no, it’s not. The Virgin Birth and Resurrection are child’s play to the Holy Force that all religions are about. Nothing difficult about believing that at all. This is not a secular world; this is a mystical world. And it’s not like, “Well, if I believe it, it’s true for me but if you don’t believe it, it’s simply not true for you.” That’s like saying if I believe my heart pumps blood, then that’s true for me but if you believe that your heart digests your food, that’s true for you. There are certain absolutes that we don’t get a choice about. The Transcendent, the Deep, the Real is an absolute. Tens of millions of us, through the ages, have touched that Reality directly and we’re called mystics.

What in the East is called the Sanatana Dharma – which roughly means “universal religion” – has merely three principles: One, that there is a Divine Reality whether you call it God, Buddha Mind, the Great Spirit, the Divine Mother; it is real. Like the Dalai Lama told an interviewer a few years ago, “Sir, the Buddha was not just a nice man.” We’re trying to make Jesus and Buddha and all the mystics and masters into nice men. We’re trying to say, “I don’t need anything deeper than human ethics to believe in. I don’t need a crutch.” But it’s not a crutch. It’s all that’s real.

So that’s one thing I just want to lay out at the beginning: I’m not secular. My life is about touching a Power and a Force that is absolutely real. I’ve touched it many times and it’s the only thing that makes sense out of all the tough and crazy stuff we go through in the course of our lives. Kabir says, “A moment with the Beloved and the river changes her course.” I like to add: “A moment with the Beloved is worth anything that you and I could possibly risk or sacrifice to touch it.” I’ve spent three years in retreat. I’ve spent over a year in total silence. I’ve fasted almost to death. I’ve spent months at a time in total isolation. It’s all nothing compared to a single moment of touching what is Real.

So don’t settle for the psychological spirituality that’s popular these days: “Whatever you’re comfortable with is fine.” No, it’s not. The Absolute is Real. And you know something? Being comfortable is pretty dull. It’s really nice  to live without fear. It’s really nice to stop worrying about your comfort. It’s really nice to know what Jesus meant when he said, “Be in the world but not of it.” We never think about the second half of that sentence – “but not of it.” I’ve been an activist since the 1960’s. I’ve dedicated my life to working in the world. But what did He mean, “Be in the world but not of it?’” There is something to be of that’s so much bigger that we never get burned out on our activism, that we’re not just so frustrated and tense. We keep doing this work in the world, but, sweet friends, that’s not the world we’re of. Thank God.

And the world we’re of is not a crutch for those who are unable to face the ugliness of the reality of this world. This world and all its good and evil, all our hopes and dreams, the noblest ideals of how people can live together – it’s the size of a pea. And the world we are of is the size of the galaxy. We have unlimited strength to draw on when we know where we are of, in order to work in this really struggling, suffering, challenging world of all the contradictions and evils that we are in.

After Sita and I came back from a meeting with the Dalai Lama in India in 1994, I was on the phone with one of my most intimate elders, an eighty-five year old British Anglican monk, and I said, “You know, Father Murray, His Holiness is so completely in touch with the suffering of his people and the world, he’s not in any way detached from anybody’s suffering. And yet he’s the happiest human being I’ve ever met in my life. He can hardly say ten words without laughing.”

Father Murray’s instant response, being a wise man himself, was, “Yes, Bo, and can you imagine how much pain that man has been willing to endure in order to become this happy?” And I got it. There’s no Resurrection without the Crucifixion. And so I’ve just lent myself to that pain. I’ve shown up time and time again. I’m walking around in a much bigger world than I’ve ever walked around in. I’m no longer “of this world.” It’s not just rumors – the things that the wisest, most loving people have handed down to us, like, “Take courage and be of good cheer;” “I’m with you until the end of the world.”

It’s all literally true. We’re so worried that it’s going to hurt. Yes, it is. But we’re bigger than anything that can possibly kill us, and that’s the secret. There’s a lot of fear in meeting God. There’s a lot of fear in splitting every atom. Every one of the atoms we split within ourselves to open up power – it’s a fearful leap. But it’s okay. We can do it again and again. After we do it the first few times, then we say, “Yeah, I’m afraid but I really want to know God. So yes I’m afraid, but I don’t care. I’m going to keep saying ‘yes.’ I’m going to keep opening up.” We just change our relationship to fear.

Ram Dass used an analogy of skydiving: We’re free falling, and you suddenly reach for your ripcord, and you find you don’t have a parachute at all. You start freaking out and you call out to someone like me, “I don’t have a parachute!”, and I call back to you, “It’s okay: there’s no ground.”

That’s us – we do have to leap, but we never hit ground. Life flows. Life flows and we flow with it, and it’s okay because we’re people of faith. What it means to be a person of faith is, Life is Good. There’s an ultimate Good, not an ultimate randomness or neutrality or chaos. This enormous explosive power of the universe, what Hindus call Krishna Consciousness, it’s not neutral. The Buddhist “Shunyata,” the emptiness, is not a void. It is filled with Good. The emptiness is filled with Goodness. The whole flavor of Light is Goodness; it’s Holiness beyond our wildest comprehension. It’s just so Good.

And the Light is at hand; it’s available to all of us and it’s only our false self-protection that keeps us small and limited. We have this popular word, “boundaries.” Forget about boundaries; boundaries are for volleyball. George Bernard Shaw has a beautiful quote that we put in We’re All Doing Time:

This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

It makes you squirm because it really hits the nail on the head. A “selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” Tonight is the time to do something about it. It always seems like it’s not quite yet.

Tonight is the time to decide: “I’m a person of faith; I do believe in this ultimate Good. Self-protection is a lie.” And how that looks in your life – living more simply, opening your heart more – that’s your adventure every day. But the intention and the commitment are very simple. Applying it may sometimes be complicated. But with daily practice, we strengthen our intention and commitment – they remain forever simple. You say, “I’m a person of faith; I want to give up this self-protection that’s keeping me so tiny and afraid. And I’m doing it; this is it. I’m signing up, and I’m gonna sign up every single day of my life.”

We can do that. It doesn’t ever have to get more sophisticated than that. How does it look as we walk around with the enormous number of decisions we have to make?: What is selfish here? What is unselfish? Does it mean I let everybody take advantage of me? Of course not. So that’s your adventure movie. That’s going to be different for everybody. The application is a different adventure for everyone, but the commitment is the same. Life is Good. It’s going to bring ups and downs, but Life is Good, even when it takes me through poverty or suffering or loss or grief. Life is ultimately good. That is not up for debate.

I see meetings like this as just this very classic, traditional situation that’s been going on since the beginning of time: there’s a world that’s gone mad, and small pockets of people meeting here and there to talk about the Great Rumor. There’s something incomprehensibly real and wonderful at the heart of everything and the ugliest stuff going on. Governments and societies and cultures have always been sort of going mad and falling apart at the seams. There’s enormous suffering and cruelty. Enormous. This isn’t new. The stakes may have increased since we have the capacity to destroy the planet, but we always knew the planet wasn’t eternal anyway: the sun is going to go out. So we have this situation that has always been going on. What we call civilization has always been about self-protection and self-gratification and aggression and fear, and we’re all raised into that, pretty much. Our parents want us to be safe, though it’s impossible to do in the world as it has always existed. It’s not safe. It’s not safe out there. It’s not even safe in here, I promise that.

And they’ve wanted us to have stuff to make us happy and comfortable, although stuff has never made anybody happy or comfortable for more than a few minutes. American children are statistically the unhappiest children on the face of the earth: the most suicides, the most homicides, the most drug addiction, the most antidepressants. And American children have more stuff and more comfort than any other kids who have ever existed. Denial is an amazing thing.

So against this backdrop of total illogic and futility, there’s this dream: have a nice little place and a little picket fence and maybe a boat. People will like me and I’ll get raises and all that. Meanwhile there are children being sold into slavery to make the shoes that we’re wearing. So the dream has never been real or true and it’s absolutely impossible to sustain. What we call the “American Dream” is unsustainable, and has never been real for anybody. So against the backdrop — “Well then, life doesn’t work” — there have been small pockets of people getting together saying: “Have you heard also? I have.”
“Did He really rise from the dead after being crucified?”
“Did He really sit under the Bodhi Tree until all illusion and ignorance fell away?”
“Did He really receive the revelations of the Koran in a cave from an angel?”
Are these just rumors or is a single one of them literally, precisely true? If one of them is true it doesn’t matter whether we decide that all of them are true or not. If one of them is true then it means YESSSSSSS! GOD IS REAL!!!

Now I know that at least one or more of them are true and I can’t explain or defend how I know. It doesn’t matter because if you don’t know, you have the age-old, wonderful, traditional decision to make of whether you believe somebody who says “I know.” Many people know. Many people have known. It’s faith until it becomes knowledge. Once it’s knowledge, you can be crucified and not give up that knowledge.

There is a reality that doesn’t just offset this world of duality and struggle. It is impossible to describe how much bigger it is — how much bigger is good than evil, how much bigger is union than separation, how much bigger our divine nature is than our temporal nature. It’s like a mountain and a pea — there’s no balance at all.

And we have the opportunity, without looking away from those who need us and all the suffering that goes on in this world, to open into that larger realm and learn how to be in both at the same time, in a way that works, in a way that is sustainable. And that, to me, has always been what Dharma practice is about, what meditation and yoga are about, what scriptural study, spiritual study, and studying with a guru or teacher are all about. Every one of the beings who has broken through has said, “And this is your nature too; it’s not just me.” The Buddha said, “Don’t follow in my footsteps: seek what I sought.” Jesus called Himself the Son of Man as well as the Son of God. The Dalai Lama honestly refers to himself as a simple Buddhist monk. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with the Dalai Lama and he really is a simple Buddhist monk and simultaneously he’s a genius, a very rare person and the repository of all the Tibetan traditions which are incredibly complex and esoteric.

The Human Kindness Foundation was founded upon three principles. After reading the scriptures of most of the great traditions of the world, I saw three principles just singing off the pages of the Bible, the Koran, The Bhagavad Gita, The Mahabharata, Greek mythology and the writing of the Greek philosophers. I saw three principles that were just indisputably identical. If you distill any of those great philosophical or religious traditions down to some practical advice, one thing they all agree on is: don’t want too much stuff—it’ll get you in trouble. It puts you into a dynamic of wanting and acquiring and protecting and defending and repairing and replacing. And all this precious divine energy, this mysterious energy that can move mountains and raise the dead, winds up paying off a BMW. So all the great traditions have said live simply, live modestly. You have an inefficient use of your energy when you spend too much of it around your comfort and your toys. Live simply.

The second principle they ALL agree on is, for your own sake, don’t devote your life to your personal success. Devote your life to the common good. If you devote your life to personal success, you will never ever have enough to satisfy you. There’s always more. If you devote your life to the common good, you’ll have plenty of personal success, and you’ll be in tune because you’ll magnetize toward the part of the common good that draws you and you were created for. Each of us was born with an individual nature as well as being born with a universal nature. And our individual natures, like magnetic shavings, get drawn by certain stimuli: working with the environment or working with prisoners or working with the elderly or working with children or selling shoes with a great deal of compassion. I don’t have as much skill talking with children as I do with convicts so I gravitated toward a life with convicts. By the end of this tour I may have been in a thousand prisons. I haven’t been in a thousand day care centers. It’s not my pull. I’m glad there are people ho go there. So we naturally gravitate toward our individual Dharma and here we are, that little thread in this enormous tapestry that we can never see the whole of with these eyes. So dedicate yourself to the common good and you’ll find your niche.

The third principle they all agree on is: spend at least a little time every day being humble, alone and silent before the Great Unknown. I’m always telling people it takes time to be deep. If you’re not willing to spend time to be deep, you know what’s going to happen? You’re not going to be deep. You may philosophically think you’re deep. You may intellectually believe in being deep. But it’s not free. It takes time — especially in as noisy and agitated a world as we live in today, where multi-tasking is a positive thing. If we don’t commit ourselves to some time, even if it’s ten minutes, of truly humble spiritual introspection every day, we’re not going to become deep. Don’t think that you’re above this, because that would be really arrogant. Don’t think, “Oh, not me.” Every good person who has ever been caught by the world is just as deep as you and me by nature. And we have to give some of our time to reminding ourselves that we really are like children before the Great Mystery. And we submit ourselves to the intelligence, the beauty, and the profundity of Life.