I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high wall that I was imprisoned; no, it was God who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I knew it was God. It was God whom I saw standing there and holding over me His shade. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a bed and felt the arms of God around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover…It was not the magistrate whom I saw, it was God, it was God who was sitting there on the bench. I looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for Prosecution that I saw; it was God.

- Sri Aurobindo, 1908

Dear Family,

Many years ago, before he died, my father-in-law said there was one thing I had told him in the 1960’s which made him look at his life differently. I asked him what it was and he replied, “You told me not to take my life so personally. That was the strangest thing anyone had ever said to me. But it affected me deeply.”

The above description by Sri Aurobindo (imprisoned for revolutionary activities against British rule in India), is the ultimate direct experience of not taking things personally. His description is not daydreaming or poetry or philosophy; it’s as real and clear as seeing your own hand in front of your face. It’s not something merely to believe in; we must understand that one day we will see with those same eyes.

Impersonal Love

Those of us who have had the good fortune to spend time in the presence of a holy man or holy woman, a true spiritual master of some sort, have had at least a glimmer of the experience of impersonal love. On the one hand, the love of such people is immense and intense and incomparable; that’s what draws people to them. Yet on the other hand, it is not in the least bit personal. You know that they love the person next to you just as intensely and totally as they love you, and the next one after that and the next one after that…

The love we feel from a master is not because we are pretty or rich or smart or clever or good; it’s not a love based on anything personal. Rather, it’s an oceanic and impersonal love based on the Big Truth of the Universe: God alone exists. And God is Love. That’s what they see in every direction: It’s all Love, and it’s not personal.

We are caught in our small identity, while they are seeing our Large Identity. We are concerned with getting what we want, avoiding what we fear, protecting our lives at all cost; while they simply love us whether we are dead or alive, happy or unhappy, addicted or not addicted, in prison or in the White House — these are all meaningless trivial details to that sort of Love.

The Holy Ones love because Love Alone Is. And they teach us that such Impersonal, Unconditional Love is the only kind of love which does not lead to endless suffering.

Impersonal Conflict

When Aurobindo, in the above story, saw the jail and the prosecutor and judge as God, he was freed from the personal drama entirely. He was then acting in a play written, produced and directed by God, and starring God as all the characters. That doesn’t mean he passively accepted injustice or evil; quite the contrary. I’m sure he turned in a brilliant performance for his own defense.

But like Jesus, it no longer mattered to Aurobindo whether he personally was found guilty or not guilty. His defense was not to save his own skin, but rather it was to defend right versus wrong, oppression versus democracy. He didn’t care whether he spent his life in prison or in a palace; he was already free, he would be much the same in either environment. So without personal fear of any consequences, he could be the very best champion of his cause. He was fighting for something larger than himself.

Total truth is necessary. You must live by what you say. Men will hate you for telling the truth. They will call you names. They may even kill you, but you must tell the truth. If you live in truth, God will always stand with you.

— Neem Karoli Baba

If you have ever watched a true martial arts master (not the movie guys, but rather the ones who would never glorify violence by doing such a movie) in action, then you must have noticed how impersonal their behavior was. They are calm like scientists, focused like meditation masters, and free from the clutches of anger or fear.

The bulk of training in martial arts is to move beyond personal anger and fear in order to heighten one’s powers of attentiveness and gracefulness. It is never another person whom you are attacking or defending against, but rather you are taking a stand against aggression and hostility. That’s why every genuine martial art stresses peacemaking first and physical conflict as a very last resort. No martial artist is anxious to harm or humiliate another human being if it can possibly be avoided. Violence is never used in service of a personal grudge, but only to defend the weak or uphold order and justice.

A noble Samurai warrior pledged to track down and kill the man who had murdered his master. He spent every waking moment for three years hunting his prey. To avenge his master’s death was the most sacred duty to a Samurai. His life would be a failure if he did not do so. Finally, after tracking him through cities and towns and far-flung ports, he cornered the killer in an alley. It was definitely the right man, there was no doubt about it. The Samurai drew his sword and prepared to fulfill his duty, when suddenly the murderer spat in his face.

The Samurai hesitated for a moment, then sheathed his sword and began to walk away, his head hung down in shame. The man was so shocked that he ran after the Samurai and said, “But wait; I am indeed the man you sought. Why did you not kill me?” The Samurai replied, “Because I got angry when you spat in my face.”

The moment it became personal, the Samurai was no longer upholding honor or justice. The moment it became personal, he was no longer a Samurai, but just an angry man with a sword. He knew, from his own training and the spiritual teachings of the sages and saints, that his action and its consequences changed completely in that one moment.

It’s Not About “US”

What a hard teaching to explain — that life is not really about “us,” it’s not about people and events, as we think it is; it’s actually about Divine Principles being played out on the stage of people and events. As people and events, we are essentially meaningless – “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” But as agents of the Divine, as characters in the never-ending “Play of God,” we are heroes and heroines grappling with good and evil, loss and gain, pleasure and pain, hope and despair, compassion and apathy, generosity and greed, perseverance and laziness, courage and cowardice, love and hatred — the classic, universal forces which naturally oppose each other in each of us and in the universe as a whole.

All we know of historical figures, biblical figures, ancient martyrs and tyrants, is what they stood for. We don’t especially know how tall they were or what their voices sounded like or their favorite color or whether they had bad breath, because our interest in them is not personal. All that’s relevant for us are the principles they lived and died for; the inspiration or lessons they left behind. The story of Daniel in the lions’ den is not meant to teach us about a man named Daniel, but rather about the power of faith. When our parents tell us about the boy who cried wolf, it’s to emphasize the consequences of lying, not to tell us about a tragedy involving some boy and a wolf. The characters are not personally important, just the principles. The same thing applies to the events. If it had been Daniel in the wolves’ den and the boy who cried lion, would it make any difference?

If Only We Could See That About Our Own Lives!

We have a very short life-span, really we do. As Shakespeare put it, “We strut and fret our hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more.” Yet we put all our attention on personal concerns, and on an endless chain of specific events which are no more important in themselves than whether the boy cried wolf or lion or locomotive. Our lives are about sacred principles, just like the lives of the characters in those stories.

We are given moment-by-moment opportunities to choose well or poorly. Choosing well, according to the saints and sages of all religions, is to choose the unselfish, the compassionate, the merciful and generous. Choosing poorly is to choose the selfish, the fearful, the short-term gain, the vested interest. It doesn’t matter what our excuses are or what others have done to us. If you choose well, you represent the best of the sacred principles; if you choose poorly, you represent the worst of them.

All suffering comes from cherishing ourselves.
All happiness comes from cherishing others.

— old Tibetan saying

We are put here to love, respect and help each other. If we love, respect and help each other, we experience the connectedness between us and we touch the deeper meaning of life. If we don’t love, respect and help each other, but instead get lost in fending for ourselves, protecting ourselves, acquiring riches for ourselves, etc., then we miss the point of being born, we miss the meaning and purpose of life by a mile. It’s not personal. It’s just the way we are designed.

Impersonal First

This is the teaching of India:

A God not only impersonal, but personal also —
personal more perfectly, because Impersonal first.

— Swami Kriyananda

A friend once asked, “You and Sita and Josh have such a strong bond. What’s the secret?” My response was, “The secret is that we all love the Dharma (Spiritual truth, the Way) more than we love each other.” Even as it came out of my mouth, I could hear how awful that sounded in our contemporary culture. Wasn’t I supposed to say, “We love each other more than anything else?” But the truth is, first the impersonal, then the personal. Loving God, truth, Dharma, the path, first, is what gives a proper context to the love we have for each other. Without a context, personal love can be the road to hell. “Baby, I love you more than anything. I would do anything for you. I’d lie, cheat, steal or kill for you.”

That sort of love never ends well. It always ends, but not well. It is emotion without intelligence. Emotion can be wonderful when guided and controlled by wisdom, but without it, it’s as dangerous as a sportscar careening all over the highway with no driver.

Our lives must be about something bigger than the emotional self. Jesus said, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and everything else will be provided.” In other words, recognize the biggest, loftiest, eternal principles first, then play your part with gusto.

Be as quick to defend the rights of a stranger as you would a member of your family. It’s the rights you’re defending, not the person. Be generous to the poor, whether you know them or not. It’s mercy you’re expressing, not personal affection. Forgive those who have wronged you, not because they deserve it, but because forgiveness is on the side of the saints, while grudges and vengeance bring the world one step closer to destruction. Take sides constantly with what is highest, noblest and good. Then see what happens.

Impersonal Practice

And this is always the central purpose of spiritual practice: To be clear-minded and courageous enough to uphold what is right and good. It’s often hard to tell the difference between right and wrong. If our minds are fogged by drugs or alcohol or lust or anger, then it’s virtually impossible. We stumble around in confusion, and even when we try to do good, most often we’re like a bull in a china shop, blundering about wrecking things.

To choose well, we must live well. We must respect our minds, bodies, and spirit. Self-discipline is essential. True tolerance and goodwill are essential. These qualities don’t come about by reading a book. We must devote ourselves to practice and study and good works. We must take care of ourselves, not for selfish reasons, but simply because if we’re not in good shape we won’t be very helpful to others either.

It’s not personal. It’s much bigger than that. Each of us is the full repository of good and evil, each of us is the hero of God’s divine drama being enacted on Earth, each of us is creating the future of the world with each decision we make.

Jesus in word and deed was almost violent in his call for death, for denial, for stripping, for abandoning, for letting go, for leaving all, for the journey up by going down. . . . This whole dialogue runs deep in us and all things. One could say, with complete honesty, that life is really no more than a series of heart-breaking good-byes, so full is it of having and letting go, of embracing and parting.

– from My Song is of Mercy by Father Matthew Kelty

Dear Family,

If only we could have what we want and not have to change so much for it! “Lord, I’m a decent person at heart. Oh, sure, I have faults, but I don’t mean anyone any harm. Why can’t you just help my life to work better? Why does everything have to be so hard?”

Is this your usual conversation with God? Do you want the joy of resurrection without the pain of crucifixion first? Why must life require so much constant work? Why must change require so much change? It’s exhausting! Life often seems to be one enormous obstacle standing in our way. Or as Father Kelty put it (above), life is really no more than a series of heart-breaking good-byes, so full is it of having and letting go.

On the one hand, take comfort from all of this. If your life seems to be an unending struggle, a ceaseless procession of hurdles requiring you to jump higher and higher, well, don’t feel so alone. This is life. Life is hard. We all face a lot of difficulties, it’s not just you.

And on the other hand, take even greater comfort, because the sages and saints of all time have assured us there is a great purpose to all of this; it’s not just “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” Not at all. Once we surrender to what life is really about ¾ which is the spiritual journey ¾ then we find there is plenty of advice, instruction, and comfort amid the difficulties. When we take the advice of the great religions, we discover that 90% of our obstacles and pain are caused by us in the first place.

It’s easy to call yourself a Christian or a Jew, a Buddhist or Muslim or Hindu, a Taoist or Wiccan, but it’s another thing entirely to really live according to the teachings of any genuine religion. Christ said that many will come in His name, but we must look for the ones actually doing His Father’s work. When the American sage Joseph Campbell was asked whom he considered to be the greatest living Christian, he replied, “His Holiness the Dalai Lama.” The Dalai Lama is the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, he’s not considered to be a Christian at all. Campbell was using Jesus’s own instructions about who is and who isn’t a Christian: the Dalai Lama’s life is entirely dedicated to compassion, mercy, love, justice, charity, humility, forgiveness ¾ all the qualities which Jesus described as His Father’s work.

Many people go to church on Sunday and then pass by a beggar on their way home without stopping to help in any way. They choose a church which will comfort them in a self-centered lifestyle rather than challenge them to be true Christians. Being a true Christian is a terrifying prospect. Being a true Buddhist, Jew or anything else is a terrifying prospect. All the religions stress that we must die as self-centered little idiots in order to discover new life as selfless, loving, generous, fearless souls.

Die to my own plans and dreams? Die to my countless preferences and aversions? Die to my pride and greed? Yes, yes, and yes. Die.

Father Murray Rogers, the beloved elder on our board of directors, had a powerful experience along these lines many years ago. Father Murray is a Christian who has been involved in the interfaith dialogue for over fifty years. As part of his interfaith experience, he went to Japan to spend time in a Zen Buddhist temple for a few months. The Temple was a serenely beautiful place, extremely neat and orderly, extremely quiet, like most Zen temples.

The abbot, a small, courteous man of few words, showed Murray around for a half-hour or more, whispering “This is where you will eat,” “This is where you will be meditating,” “This is your room,” and so forth. In his room, just before turning to leave, the abbot leaned forward toward Murray and whispered, “There is just one more thing.” And then he thrust his face directly into Murray’s with a wild look and screamed at the top of his lungs, “YOU MUST DIE!!!!!”

The abbot turned and left, with young Murray trembling like a leaf, thinking, “Oh no, I’ve gotten myself into some bizarre cult, this man is crazy, what do I do now,” and so forth. But after a while, as the adrenaline settled and his mind regained a little composure, Murray began to think, “Well, isn’t that actually what my Lord Jesus said as well? ‘You must die to self and be born again of Spirit?’ Perhaps I have just never taken it seriously before. Perhaps this Zen Master is not so crazy after all. Perhaps Zen and Christianity are not so different. Every Christian prayer I have ever uttered is essentially my willingness to die and be reborn in Christ.”

Father Murray did complete his stay in the Zen Temple. Today he is an eighty-one-year-old joyful and humble Christian elder who has recognized that this message of dying into Christ is found in one form or another in all the great religions.

No great sage or prophet has suggested that this “dying into life” is fun. Obviously, Jesus’s own crucifixion and resurrection were no light matter. That’s why being a good Christian or anything else is a terrifying idea. We are called upon to actually give our lives away in duty, service, devotion; to worship God through kindness to His creation. Jesus was not vague about this at all; he made it crystal-clear: “Whatever you have done for the least of my brethren, you have done for me.”

In the free world, “the least of my brethren” include the growing numbers of homeless people, the hookers and ex-cons, the crippled and disfigured. In prison, the “least of my brethren” would apply to sex-offenders, homosexuals, snitches. Anywhere we ever find ourselves, there will be a population we can conveniently exclude from our glance, from our friendship, from our respect; a population we can frown upon and feel superior to.

I assure you, if Jesus appeared in a prison today, he would offer his friendship to the very lowest cons on the totem pole, and most of the supposed Christians would scorn him for it. When will we learn that “everyone is invited to My Father’s table?”

That does not mean everyone accepts the invitation, but that is not our business. It is our business to be respectful to all, open to all, no matter what they look like or what they may have done in the past. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” And most of us have plenty to be judged for!

It is very easy to fall into hatred, superiority and racism, especially in a place like prison, where we hardly have any power over who does what to whom. But easy or not, it’s the “broad way which leads to destruction.” We must resist the impulse with all our might. Keeping a daily discipline of practices and readings can help a great deal by giving us a bigger view than what we see out on the yard.

True tolerance and respect are not easy in today’s world, especially in prison. The Christmas Story is not an easy story: The perfect child, the lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, is born in a barn among cattle, then has to be hidden in foreign lands for many years, then comes out to get scorned and crucified. What was easy or fair about that? And he didn’t even do anything wrong!

You and I have done lots of wrong things, lots of selfish things which have hurt others, and yet our life is still easier than the life of Jesus. He showed us that Love is superior to power, yet we constantly struggle for power in our lives rather than open ourselves into His Love. He showed us the way which leads to life and the way which leads to death, and we continue to choose death over life. God’s patience with us is amazing.

Christmas season is a good time to give birth once again to the Christ child in ourselves. Born in a manger or a lock-up cell, what’s the difference? What needs to be born is our willingness to die, in a sense. Our willingness to dedicate our lives to the common good, our willingness to spend our time giving rather than taking, comforting rather than abusing.

You and I make dozens of these choices every day, and you know that’s true. May we be blessed to feel this Christmas season seriously enough that we surprise (and even frighten) ourselves with the way we make those choices. Study spiritual truths every day. Look upon all beings with kindness and respect. Pray not for things to go your way, but for yourself to go God’s way, even if that takes you to the cross.

The world is very much in need right now for ordinary men and women like ourselves to take the great teachings seriously. Anger, selfishness and religious divisiveness are choking the planet. It’s time to be the teachings instead of arguing them. “No greater love hath man than to lay down his life for his fellow man.” And what happens when we do? That’s the Great Irony: We discover all the freedom, peace and bliss we had been unsuccessfully trying to find through selfish living. We die as self-centered little insects and we are born into Life as children and servants of the Living God.

“Humanity grows more and more intelligent, yet there is clearly more trouble and less happiness daily. How can this be so? It is because intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom.

When a society misuses partial intelligence and ignores holistic wisdom, its people forget the benefits of a plain and natural life. Seduced by their desires, emotions, and egos, they become slaves to bodily demands, to luxuries, to power and unbalanced religion and psychological excuses. Then the reign of calamity and confusion begins.

Nonetheless, superior people can awaken during times of turmoil to lead others out of the mire. But how can the one liberate the many? By first liberating his own being. He does this not by elevating himself, but by lowering himself. He lowers himself to that which is simple, modest, true; integrating it into himself, he becomes a master of simplicity, modesty, truth.

Completely emancipated from his former false life, he discovers his original pure nature, which is the pure nature of the universe.”

-Lao Tzu, Hua Hu Ching 2500 years ago (translated by Brian Walker)

Dear Family,

In this Christmas season, I invite you to reflect on Lao Tzu’s teaching (above) and to consider how clearly it describes the life of Jesus Christ, even though it was spoken in China 500 years before Jesus was born.

Jesus looked around and saw “calamity and confusion,” just like Lao Tzu had described. Also as Lao Tzu had described, Jesus first awakened and liberated his own being ¾ he studied the scriptures, was baptized by John, went into the desert to be tempted by Satan ¾ and then “lowered himself to that which is simple, modest, and true.” He lived like the poor, not like the high and mighty. And he wouldn’t let his affection or friendship be bought by people in power who practiced “unbalanced religion and psychological excuses” (Washington DC, take note!).

Then Jesus showed us how to be “completely emancipated from (our) former false life.” He knew his own “original pure nature” and showed us a way to know ours as well. He fulfilled Lao Tzu’s advice perfectly.

Consistent Advice Through the Ages

How could Jesus’s way and Lao Tzu’s way be identical? The answer is simple: That sort of advice doesn’t change through the ages. From the beginning of time, sages have urged us to free ourselves from every form of false identity and tyranny of the senses. First, they have urged us to take proper care of body, mind and spirit. Second, they have all said that the spiritual part is the most important.

Without it, we’re on an important journey without a map. Yet in each age we seem to forget the importance of the spiritual, and we do indeed lose our way. We lose our way so much, for so many years, that most of us forget we’re on a journey at all. That’s when the “reign of calamity and confusion” takes over.

We are not here to amass fortunes. We are not here to win wars or competitions. we are not here to earn rewards or make for ourselves a great name. We are here to know God. We are not an accident.

- Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Open Secrets

What does that look like? Well, pick up today’s newspaper or turn on the evening news and you’ll see. Chaos. Violence. Children killing their parents. Society using education money to build prisons. Millions of people homeless on the street, while a young man just out of high school signs a $125 million dollar contract to play baseball. Peppermint Prozac for children (true!). Sad, crazy times. Time for us to wake up and remember!

You wouldn’t think, to look at us, that we are actually the living, breathing manifestations of the One Living God. We suffer and snivel our way through life as though we were tiny little “clods of ailments and grievances,” to borrow a phrase from George Bernard Shaw.

We have such profound amnesia of who we really are, that it may seem to us that since money and possessions rule the world, we may as well just get our share.

But our share of what? Calamity and confusion? A poisoned cake? Endless debt? Why would we want our share of unnecessary misery? This is where we need to understand what Lao Tzu meant about lowering ourselves to that which is simple, modest, true. This advice never goes out of date.

Legal, Voluntary Slavery

Would you like to save the world from the degradation and destruction it seems destined for?
Then step away from shallow mass movements and quietly go to work on your own self-awareness.

-Lao Tzu, Hua Hu Ching

Perhaps the saddest, most disturbing “shallow mass movement” of our day is personal consumer debt. While on a flight to Nebraska to do some talks and workshops recently, I read a cover story in USA Today about the problem of personal debt. The average American is something like $10,000 in debt, mostly on credit cards. Most people pay the minimum monthly payment.

The article showed on a graph that with a debt of $10,000, paying the minimum of $200/month – which is a pretty big chunk of most people’s salary – it would take fifty years to pay off the total. That’s $120,000 to pay off $10,000. Is that okay with you? Are you willing to pay $6,000 for that $500 washing machine? $4800 for that $400 television set? That’s how much you’re really paying when you buy things on time.

Peddling credit cards to college students is also a big new industry. The article said modern students no longer want to live “on the cheap” while in school. No more old jalopies, mattresses on the floor. Now, minimum monthly payments enable them to live in whatever style they like. But again, at what cost? Their whole lives? Besides such credit debt, according to the Boston Globe, American college students also have an average debt of $18,000 in student loans upon graduation with a bachelor’s degree, and $40,000 average debt for masters’ degrees or PhD’s.

Amazing. Millions of people, young and old – precious, divine vehicles of God – are rushing to enslave themselves to big corporations for the rest of their lives, to support a lifestyle which has little to do with joy or truth or freedom. Have we gone nuts?

What’s the Alternative?

There is certainly an alternative to being consumer sheep fattened for the slaughter. We can “step away from shallow mass movements” both internally, through simple spiritual practices which clear our vision and cultivate our courage and faith; and externally, through creating a simpler lifestyle which not only requires a lot less money, but also gives us more time for the things that really do matter. We can go from “loving things and using people,” back to “loving people and using things.”

It takes work, of course. Anytime we step aside from the crowds there will be work involved. Maybe people trying to discourage us. Fellow slaves mocking our efforts to be free. Mahatma Gandhi called his autobiography, “My Experiments With Truth.” That is the opportunity each of us has. Not just what we read in the evening, not just in church on Sundays, but to make our everyday lives a grand, noble, good-humored, experiment in truth ¾ where we live, what we do for a living (and how much time we spend doing it), how our children are educated, the causes we embrace and support, how we spend our free time; all one thing. An undivided whole. A deliberate life. A rare thing in today’s world.

Many people say, “Oh, I could easily live in a simpler way or dedicate my life to a cause I believe in, but it would be unfair to my children. What about health care? What about their college education? I don’t want to limit their opportunities.”

Raising our kids to be indentured servants of the credit card companies and prostitutes to the dollar seems extremely limiting to me! I know perfectly healthy people in their twenties taking jobs they don’t like because the employers offer the most “bennies” – benefits like health insurance and retirement plans. Do we want our kids to sell their lives to the highest bidder? Is that all life is about? We have seriously lost our “Big View.”

Joyful Risks

The truth is, no matter how we live, we risk limiting our children’s experience. Poor kids think there are no bad parts to being rich; rich kids think there are no good parts to being poor. Kids on a farm don’t know the benefits of travelling, and kids who have seen the world may not have the deep connection to one place they can call home. Our personal interests and values necessarily define much about our kids’ lives, so we must make sure we have deliberate and deep values rather than the “default” values of a dysfunctional, unhappy culture.

How often do we really step aside from the mass insanity in any major ways? When women come to power, they act pretty much like the men before them. Blacks act white. Native Americans use their tribal rights to build casinos on the land which was so sacred to their ancestors. The “reign of calamity and confusion” swallows up all these balancing forces before anything can ever get balanced. Poisoned cake for one and all.

It is a great time in human history to take some joyful risks with our experiments in truth. Perhaps we can use this very Christmas season to begin reclaiming our sanity, dignity and true freedom before our kids become absolutely convinced that such words are foolish or old-fashioned.

Be bold. Plan a non-materialistic Christmas this year. Take a stand against slavery and greed. Let your image of Christ this season be of His fury toward the money changers: You have turned my Father’s House into a den of thieves! In modern America, He may have said, You have turned my Father’s Children into a den of slaves!

May you all have a wondrous, modest, joyful and deep holy-day season.

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.

If you seek to understand the whole Universe, you will understand nothing. If you seek to understand yourself, you will understand the whole Universe.

This principle applies in a related way to Bible study and the study of any religious principles. If we seek to memorize chapter and verse, if we seek to discuss and argue about abstract passages that have endless interpretations, we will understand nothing. But if we take a few words of any bible and pray on them, wrestle with them, struggle over them for years, however long it takes to experience their meaning in our hearts, then we will understand the whole bible from which those few words come.

For example, if you are interested in being a real Christian, you could make your entire study of Christianity the following thirteen words spoken directly by Jesus:

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.

Or the following nine words, also spoken directly by Jesus:

Be in the world but not of the world.

Or if even nine words are too many, try the following five, spoken by a Hindu saint:

Everyone is poor before Christ.

What I mean by making one of these passages your entire study of Christianity, is: Just take one of these sentences and pray every day for God’s help, for Christ’s help, in experiencing the meaning of that brief passage. Not an intellectual understanding, but the experience of the passage. Struggle with it as you walk through your day. Muse over it, make it your hobby to mull it over while you’re driving or jogging or falling asleep. Write it out thousands of times in a little notebook. Devote yourself to one brief passage for years, begging the Lord to give you the experience of what it means. One day, your prayers will be answered and you’ll be given that experience. And when you know the one brief passage, you will know the whole bible, and you will know what it means to be a Christian. But if you memorize chapter and verse from all over the bible, and have intellectual understandings about their meanings, you can spend your whole life “studying” that way, and you may know nothing of the bible or of Him.

This is true of the study of any religion. General rule of thumb – study fewer words and teachings, and take them more deeply. There is an old Sufi story about a first-grade class on the first day of school, and the teacher says “We’re going to study the numbers, and we will take one number a day. Today we will learn about the number 1.” She teaches the students all sorts of things about the number 1, and next morning says “Is everyone ready to move on to number 2?”

One small boy raises his hand and says “I am not finished yet with number 1, teacher.” The teacher says he’ll have to move on with the class anyway, and she goes on with the next lesson. As the class goes to 3, 4, 5 and so on, the boy raises his hand every morning and says he is still working on the lesson for number 1. Finally she gets so annoyed she sends him home and tells him not to come back to school until he is ready to move on to the other numbers.

About six weeks later he returns to class, and the teacher asks him sarcastically, “Well, I see you have returned. Have you finally learned all about the number 1?” The young boy says “Yes, I think so, teacher.” The teacher says mockingly, “Well, then come up to the blackboard and show us what you have learned.”

The boy walks to the blackboard, picks up a piece of chalk, writes a ‘1’ on the blackboard, and the blackboard cracks and falls to the floor at the power of his touch.

This is what we constantly miss in our practice and study of religion. Religion is not about just being a nice man or nice woman, it is about a force and power that is bigger, deeper, more wonderful, than anything the mind can understand or the world can reward or punish. Every religion is about the Mysterious, the Eternal, that which can never be threatened or harmed. But it is a quiet force that remains forever out of reach of the mind. We must practice, study, and follow religion from the Heart. There’s no shortcut. The broad way most people are taking truly is leading toward destruction. In this Holy season of Mystery and Birth, let’s take the narrow way, let’s become strong, calm, quiet, humble and kind, and then see whether we have any problems with our friends of other faiths. (We won’t!)

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.