Kinnaird

Movements seeking to change the world often begin by rewriting history, thereby enabling people to reimagine the future. Whether you want workers to go on a general strike, women to take possession of their bodies, or oppressed minorities to demand political rights – the first step is to retell their history.

The new history will explain that ‘our present situation is neither natural nor eternal. Things were different once. Only a string of chance events created the unjust world we know today. If we act wisely, we can change that world, and create a much better one.’

This is why Marxists recount the history of capitalism; why feminists study the formation of patriarchal societies; and why African Americans commemorate the horrors of the slave trade. They aim not to perpetuate the past, but rather to be liberated from it.

~ Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens and Homo Deus

The profound truth lies in this very moment, and nothing more: we have embraced profound and transformative spiritual encounters, reshaping our entire perspective on existence, our connections with others, and the boundless cosmos of the divine. The core reality of our existence today rests in the unwavering knowledge that Creation has gracefully dwelled within our hearts and souls, a truly miraculous unfolding. Creation living within us has begun the wondrous task of achieving what we alone could never fathom accomplishing.

~ Bill Wilson channeled by Thích Nhất Hạnh via ChatGPT

It is one’s own readiness that makes an experience exoteric or esoteric.

The secret isn’t that you’re not being told.

The secret is that you’re not able to hear.

~ Ram Dass

Went last night with loved ones to the holy ground of City Lights Book Store to again see poet Gary Snyder. These days a giant of letters like Snyder usually has readings at libraries and University auditoriums. However yesterday as part of the 60th Anniversary of City Lights’ founding, he returned home to San Francisco to read his works in the funky little storefront so many people love. (“I first walked into this place in 1953” he said. “I’m surprised we are both still here.”)

The place was packed to the rafters with publishers, editors, aged members of the beat and hippie generations, college students and professors, poetry aficionados, bag ladies, street hustlers and millennial hipsters. A typical San Franciscan crowd. In the small main room of the store, bookshelves were pushed aside, some folding chairs set up and a barely working microphone was wired to a speaker in the alcove where people stood three deep for over an hour waiting to hear the evenings readings.

Snyder was wonderful. As always. Although he said “I have lived too long to remember much of my life” (he is 83) he spun wonderful tales of his journeys through the American West, India and Japan. He spoke movingly of his commitment to Buddhism. He recalled his early days in San Francisco and marveled at a City that could still sustain a literary community of poets and radicals…and still keep a small independent bookstore like City lights thriving after all the decades. “This place ” he said talking of San Francisco’s North Beach, “has a special cultural and spiritual presence.”

Then Snyder read poems from his collection “Mountains and Rivers Without End”. Afterward he took questions which ranged from his thoughts on Walt Whitman (“It all started with Whitman. He freed us to develop an American language for poetry”) to a wild eyed boy asking if Snyder had any metaphysical experiences in his travels throughout the far east (“Yes, but I won’t tell you about them. They are my secrets.”)

Afterwards he met with people and signed books. I was very happy to have a few moments with Snyder before he was enveloped by fans and well wishers. A magical evening.

~ Tony Head, Dec 5, 2013

In this world of onrushing events the act of meditation – even just a “one-breath” meditation – straightening the back, clearing the mind for a moment – is a refreshing island in the stream.

Although the term meditation has mystical and religious connotations for many people, it is a simple and plain activity. Attention, deliberate stillness and silence. As anyone who has practiced sitting knows, the quieted mind has many paths, most of them tedious and ordinary. Then, right in the midst of meditation, totally unexpected images or feelings may sometimes emerge, and suddenly there is a way into a vivid clarity.

…whatever comes up, sitting is almost always instructive. There is ample testimony that a practice of meditation pursued over months and years brings increased self-understanding, serenity, focus, and self-confidence to the person who stays with it. There is also a deep gratitude that one comes to feel for this world of beings, teachers, and teachings.

…Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in both the white water and the quiet pools. Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally into it.”

~ Gary Snyder

In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else’s mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one’s own place and economy.

In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers.

Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else’s legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed?

The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth – that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community – and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.

― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Death is not an error.
It is not a failure.
It is taking off a tight shoe.

– Ram Dass

Take our understanding of intelligence. We think it’s the ability to reason in an abstract fashion, something you can measure with an IQ test. So we remain blind to the impotence of reason in areas of vital concern to us. You cannot reason your way into being present. You cannot reason your way into love. You cannot reason your way into fulfillment.

~ Philip Shepherd, philosopher, author, actor

Three years ago this summer, a good friend shared a profound metaphor with me, which is our “bug body.”

As Robert Heinlein wrote, “specialization is for insects,” and when we’ve done one thing for a very long time our environment can shape us into a form of specialization, enabling us to navigate and survive in that environment. Like a bug.

And, when that environment dissipates — whether we change jobs, discontinue relationships, move to a new city, or deal with new health realities — we’re often left with a specialization (a bug body), which is no longer appropriate for our new environment.

It’s not that the specialization was good or bad, it’s that chances are good it’s no longer appropriate. The same response to our new environment no longer fits. Sort of like how dung beetles need claws, while lady bugs don’t, so a dung beetle would feel awkward bringing their big dung-moving claws to lady bug town.

Recently, a friend told me she hadn’t seen me on social media much and she wanted to make sure I was ok. I told her I was very ok and I had simply diversified how I spend my time online. My goal was to hopefully avoid the awful polarization of people that continues to rise with no end in sight. And, I told her I’m listening more and declaring less. She was actually noticing the process of me dismantling my own obsolete bug body.

What I realized this morning and want to share with you while it’s fresh on my mind, is neither you or I are our bug body. That is to say, our authentic self does not equate to our environment.

Though our environment shapes us and can mash us into a form of specialization that’s hard to release or transform, we shouldn’t identify so completely with any specialization that we mistake it for who we really are. And, although our specialization might be rigid, it doesn’t have to dictate our future.

Most importantly, although we have to muster the courage to disassemble our specialization when it know longer serves us in new environments, we must do it with patience and compassion for ourselves. Removing those dung-tumbling claws can be a painful process. We should always show ourselves the same understanding we would show any friend or loved one struggling to make adjustments to their own response to change.

We are all dealing with some sort of struggle right now, on some level. We are all in the same boat. We can also modify our responses to new environments. We can respond more appropriately with compassion for ourselves and others and experience more contentment in the face of continuous change.

~ Scott Kinnaird