Friday, October 21, 2005

More thougths, bibbiddy bobbiddy








Today I learned some Japanese sign language (“finger language”) from one of my special students (she has some sort of mental disability). Then we sang together with a CD a crazy version of “ABCs” then “twinkle twinkle little star” then the real version of “ABCs” and, I tell you, for the first time in my life I discovered that those two songs have the exact same melody. I had no idea! Then we sang take me out to the ball game, Head shoulders knees and toes, Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, If your happy and you know it”(that’s a great song), bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, which was hard to sing, and then, Country Roads, which is also a karaoke favorite here. I am currently listening to a kid’s version of bridge over troubled waters in the teachers’ room. (These are notes form my notebook). The vice principal just gave me English Newspapers from the past three days, and, considering I haven’t been keeping up, I put down Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix and flipped through them enthusiastically. My shoulder is still sore from carrying taiko (I heard that ten people were severely injured this year from the festival.) . Before I dive into the paper and my thoughts, some interesting observations. Everyday the food ladies, dressed in surgery-style uniform, truck in all the school food from the city kitchen, and use a type of lazar gun to measure the temperatures, (to make sure no one will get burned). Then, they prepare one meal for the principal, who eats it alone, thirty minuets before lunchtime, to make sure it is safe.

A 12-year-old boy confessed to beating his mother to death (he hit her several times in the neck and she fell over onto a table) because she told him to get out of the house if he did not feel like studying at about midnight on Tuesday. I bet he didn’t mean to kill his mom. Poor kid. Rumsfeld visits China, and so does Snow, and both I bet forgot to talk about Tibet. China (as well as half of Japan) is angry with Koizumi (this story has been front page all three days) because he visited a shrine dedicated to dead solders (some of which were probably morally corrupt). But war victims all the same in my book, even if they did rape and pillage. Greenspan visits Tokyo, and America doesn’t want china in space. Speaking of space, please check out the link to information about aliens.
September was the hottest month on earth since 1880 (hence the hurricanes?) A butterfly flutters past an open window, and a cool breeze carries in the fresh breath of fall. Today is such a beautiful day.

And Saddam Hussein’s trial begins. I see a picture of a mean, grumpy old man, who allegedly ordered the torture and killing of hundreds if not thousands of human lives. And suddenly I feel moved to hug the man. Why this sudden care for this old dictator. I consider compassion; I consider his own humanness, that he too, like me, wants happiness and doesn’t want to suffer. I think that maybe he regrets what he did, but that doesn’t matter. God is working that incarnation out. (He is connected to the earth, and we all grow together from catastrophe.) And if Saddam doesn’t regret, all the more reason to love him. Not pity. Not arrogant I'm better than your poor, ignorant, suffering ass. But compassion, where, I know what is it like to be blind. To be trapped. To project. TO want power. To want happiness. He just is not yet capable of seeing and loving. I don’t want him to die. I don’t want the death penalty. But why not?
I consider Ram Dass’s idea using the image of a television with different channels. And we can see and meet people on different channels. He says we all live on a number of plains of reality (like how you dreamt last night and then woke up to this reality. That was one flip of your receiver, your TV receiver).
For the most part we are 1 or 2 channel receivers, or we live in one or two channels. The first is bodies. We see men, women, hair, body size, shape, features: the physical plain. You meet other people on that channel, and you identify, to some degree, with that channel because you dress it and bathe it and use it to go to work. Physical reality. Channel two; we have personalities and social roles. You’re cranky, you’re peaceful, you’re a mother, you’re a lawyer, you’re a doctor, you like music, you kill people, you lecture people, you help others, you don’t do anything. That is real. Those are real psychosocial positions and realities, and you meet othr mothers, other workerss, other personalities and social roles. Now, if you shift channels again you get to the soul. The thing behind the personality. And here you see just souls. You look into another person’s eyes and you see another being in there, just like yourself; a being that is in a package made up of their body and personality, but is not exclusively those things. You look through the veil of individual difference and you see a being just like you. On that channel we are a group of souls that have met here in our vehicles to do some sort of work, or play, or something, we don’t know, I don’t know, but we seem to be playing out a type of drama. And souls are not good or bad, they do good or bad things on the other channels, but a soul is just a soul. So you cant hate people, you can only hate there actions, because the are just fellow souls, fellow beings on the earth like you. Interestingly, if you change the channel on more time you begin to see that behind all our separateness there is Unity. You look at another dnyou see part of yourself. All our souls are made of the same substance, the same beingness. There is only one of it, and we’re it. This is all permutations of one stuff. You can call that stuff many names because it doesn't have a name. Call it energy. Call it Consciousness, Emptiness, God. Love. (In fact, we will kill each other over what to call it.) Some traditions, like the Jews, refuse to call it anything. I think Paul said God is the All in all. The All. In All. The Isness. The I AM. The One. Behind the many there is the One. (Before the many, before good and evil, there was only the One. The Alone. One more channel and there is no longer “the One” there is no longer God, there is just this. Here, Now. (for in order to see a “One” you must be a separate entity that can SEE the one. I wont get into that stuff right now. The point is that as human incarnates we have all these channels. We have access to all these channels and we can meet on all these channels. And I think I just met Saddam Hussein on the soul channel, where he is a being like me. I know him because there is a channel of reality where him and I are the same Self.

Tonight some Mormons are coming over to read me scripture. I invited them. I think I will talk to them about this kind of thing, and how that relates to god’s plan.

At home I found the new book by the Dalai Lama waiting for me. “The universe in a single atom.” With a quote from The Great Flower Ornament (an ancient Buddhist text) “In each atom of the realms of the universe, there exists vast oceans of world systems.”



the pics are from the festival at Ikku shrine (the shrine with the 1000 year old trees), and our neighborhood taiko parading around my appartment at night. This weekend i am hiking in the mountainns of my neigboring prefecture with some buddies. you will be updated. Be well.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Boldy said. You know, you verbalized almost exactly how i feel about the nature of the souls of all humankind. I love all people for the sake of God, that God did create us all. That if God can forgive all human errors, why do i need to focus on the horrible actions people can do? I'm not those people, there's no way for me to know how/why they function the way they do. Unless they're mentally disabled, they KNOW what they're doing, to some extent. Trials shape the spiritual progress of everyone on this earth. This is the only plane of existance in which these chances for progress are possible. Some people grow from their refusal to give in to power, wealth, and greed. Others succumb to it. Some people realize, eventually, the true nature of these tests and the true nature of these people. Ohters wil go their whole lives without feeling empathy for anyone.

so, with that in mind, i've always wondered what i would say if someone asked me "so if you love everyone, what about hitler/saddam/insert'evil'being here...?"

And that's just the problem: how to reply without seeming cold and 'unhuman', because in society there is a certain ethic awareness that the general populace has.That it is wrong to kill millions, hundreds, even one person(s). Helping people to understand their connectivity with the other souls around them, whether they like them or not, isn't an easy thing to do.

In the past i have replied saying i feel that, not only is God all forgiving, but that he created all things 'from the same dust'. I continue explaining that i believe the soul is the only thing to go to the next world, which is neither heaven nor hell. It is simply where we go next. it is a realm of the spirit a 'kingdom of glory', and how close you are to God depends on how you lived your life here and what choices you made throughout it. The 'good' you do, the 'striving to be an example for humankind', the 'striving to be close to God', the 'loving all of creation'... all of that goes with you. The animal nature, the side to us that resists the learning of our true spiritual realities, is what stays with the earth, because it is of the earth. If someone does nothing but horrible things all their lives then are they going to be close to God in the next world? I'd think not (although one's relationship with God is theirs alone, so who's anyone to say anything about anyone elses spiritual achievements), but when we do go to the next world, we WILL see that everyone has a soul and that everyone has a certain capacity of realization. So the important thing is to not focus on why these other people aren't doing good things. Because maybe it's the best they can do, as sad as it sounds. What you should focus on in your own lives is doing the best you can for your own spiritual progression and helping others to do the same. Because that's really what matters the most: human brotherhood and the spiritual growth of mankind as a whole. If everyone was perfect, what would be the point of this life? Although, personally, i'd rather be the one suffering than the one inflicting it.

Good luck explaining your ideas to the mormons tonight.

~lau

Anonymous said...

love from cambridge.

*bow*

ajg

Anonymous said...

hate the sin, love the sinner
don't hate the player hate the game

Anonymous said...

woah, i just noticed the little kid with the toy gun innocently in his mouth. that's pretty heavy stuff. especially with their high suicide rates.

May all beings be Free and in Love.



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