winners of our annual poetry contest - Rapid River Magazine

R A P I D R I V E R A R T S & C U L T U R E M A G A Z I N E
artful living
Kindness As Religion
Growing up, as a Christian, my great
confusion concerning religion
was simply that I could not find
enough kindness in it. I understood
fully the instructions of Jesus
to love your neighbor, to forgive, to do for
the least among us, to practice tolerance.
In my childish understanding, this is
what religion was supposed to be. What I
could not find was much evidence of these
teachings in the practice of religions. I know
that many others have experienced the same
confusion and disillusionment.
My disillusionment led to a rejection
of religion and all things spiritual, but this
left what is sometimes referred to as a “God
shaped hole” in my life; as I speculate it does
for others. Without
“My religion is kindness.”
~ The Dalai Lama
Without a spiritual
understanding at the center
of a person's life, something
elemental is missing.
BY BILL WALZ
a spiritual understanding
at the
center of a person’s
life, something
elemental is missing.
St. Augustine
spoke of this archetypal
need, describing it as, “Humanity’s
innate desire for the infinite.”
In the 1600’s, the philosopher Pascal
also described this fundamental human requirement
in this way: “What else does this
craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but
that there was once in man a true happiness,
of which all that now remains is the empty
print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill
with everything around him, seeking in
things that are not there the help he cannot
find in those that are, though none can help,
since this infinite abyss can be filled only
with an infinite and immutable object; in
other words by God himself.”
What is this “infinite” that humanity
seeks, this “God?” These are questions
humanity has struggled with since emerging
from caves, and it is perhaps humanity’s
greatest dilemma and challenge. The human
species’ entire orientation to life, society and
Nature is in the balance. Religion has been
given the responsibility to answer these
questions, but for the most part, sadly, often
tragically, has failed the challenge.
Although it can be difficult to see in
a world divided into the camps of those
where religion is separated from the secular
and political, and those that believe in political
theocracies, the failure of organized religion
to answer these questions is ultimately
modern humanity’s greatest crisis.
It is this loss of connection to the
infinite that has left the majority of modern
humanity experiencing an existential “abyss”
they attempt to fill with materialism, personal
importance, political and/or religious
affiliation. That these attempts are failures is
evident in the cruelty, competition, exploitation
and divisiveness that mark human
affairs despite religions’ claims of authenticity
and revealed truth.
Religions have failed because, just
like individuals and secular societies they
attempt to fill that hole with, as Pascal said,
“everything around him, seeking in things
that are not there the help he cannot find
in those that are…” Even our religions seek
fulfillment in a kind of materialism, in their
dogma and exclusivity that draws hungry
souls, hoping
to have the hole
filled, mistakenly
believing that absolute
obedience and
faith in the instruction
and decrees of
religion will fill it.
But the hole persists, clearly it persists,
as evidenced by the lack in the world of the
compassion and kindness that Jesus and
other fountains of spiritual light taught.
Later in life, I was attracted to Jewish
mystical traditions, Native American
spirituality and the religious/philosophical/
psychological teachings of Zen Buddhism
particularly because of its lack of dogma,
and because of its refusal to identify with
any kind of anthropomorphic God. Rather,
it, and generally the other traditions of
Buddhism, including the Tibetan led by the
Dalai Lama, seemed
to emphasize the
nature of God to be
Nature, the infinite,
the mystery to which
the answer lies only within the deepest dimension
of human consciousness and direct
contact with the mystery of life.
It emphasized, rather than religious
dogma, understanding and transcending the
aberration in nature that is human psychology,
the human ego, that creates the abyss,
the chasm, the sin (in its original etymological
meaning as separation from the divine)
that leads to suffering.
The teachings of Siddhartha Gotama,
the Buddha, recognize human egoic separateness
and the compulsion to cling to identity
in separateness as the source of human
suffering. This identity in separateness, with
all its insecurities and attempts to assuage
insecurities in attachments to the material
and to individual and collective importance,
The chasm of self, lost in
the world, can be bridged.
is the hell that humans create. As
a curative, these teachings suggest
quieting the chattering and
insecure egoic dimension of mind
through meditation and turning
inward to a place of inner
silence and stillness beneath
the noise and activity of the
human mind and the world it
has created. This inner stillness
and quiet reflects and
makes real for us the perfection
of the underlying
stillness and quiet
of the natural world
experienced non-dualistically,
where there
is no inner/outer
divide.
The Buddhist
teachings
on mindfulness
instruct us to see the world as
it is, interconnected and wondrous, not as
our delusional egoic minds represent it, as
separate objects whose only meaning is in
their utility. In mindfulness, humanity can
discover the infinite, the heaven it seeks.
Having touched the infinite within
meditation, we are instructed to be available
to the infinite that we are within, the Universe,
Creation, and so, find our placement,
at one with life. One can call it God, but not
if such a labeling suggests a force outside
ourselves, when life resides within and all
around us, all sacred. This realization is not
unique to Buddhism, but amongst contemporary
religions and spiritual practices,
Buddhism perhaps expresses it most readily
and most compatibly with modern life.
Through mystical realization and Buddhist
meditation and mindfulness, the Godshaped
hole can be filled. The chasm of self,
lost in the world, can be bridged. Separate
worlds of within and without are discovered
to be illusions. There
is only one infinity.
Religious mystics can
call it God. Buddha
called it Nirvana,
the emptiness of material and separate-self
obsession that creates human hell.
Through Buddhist teachings and
meditation, it is possible to reconnect with
and understand more fully, the teachings of
Jesus and many of the original source spiritual/religious
expressions of humanity. It is
possible to understand fully what Jesus was
teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven as
exactly what I intuited as a child, that it was
“at hand,” that it was about the way we lived
our lives and connected to each other and to
our kin, the animals and all the world.
His teaching was about connectedness
and not the many levels of separateness and
exclusion that institutional religions so often
teach. It was about kindness and compassion.
And so, how unlike the declarations
of the leaders of the Western
and Islamic churches about what is
necessary to live a religious life is the
Dalai Lama’s statement: “My religion
is kindness.” How different
the world could be if we held as a
religious obligation to treat each
other, the animals, the planet,
all Creation and ourselves with
kindness and compassion,
to realize that the infinite
is right here, the miracle
unfolding every day.
Spirituality and
psychology and politics
can be all one, but not
as the theocrats insist,
bending religious
teaching to egoistic/
political prejudice,
but rather, dissolving all
prejudice in the fire of non-dual
realization to construct a world of peace,
compassion and kindness.
The infinite is right here,
the miracle unfolding
every day.
My childhood intuition was right. Jesus
was an avatar, a Zen master, a Bodhisattva,
an awakened and compassionate Being, instructing
us to “be like the children.” To fill
the hole, to connect to the infinite, we must
reconnect to all Creation with kindness and
wonder in the manner that every uncorrupted
small child is naturally capable of.
We must love and be kind. Then, the
intellect will know what is needed and what
to do so that you can discover “The kingdom
of Heaven is within you... Seek ye first
the kingdom of Heaven and all things will
be added unto you.” (John 8:32) Nothing
else is needed.
Bill Walz teaches meditation
and mindfulness at UNCA
and public forums, and
is a private-practice
meditation teacher and
life-coach for individuals in
mindfulness, personal growth
and consciousness. He holds a weekly
meditation class, Mondays, 7 p.m., at the
Friends Meeting House, 227 Edgewood.
He will hold a “Satsang,” an opportunity
for deep meditation and issue exploration,
on Saturday, February 20, from 2 to 5 p.m.
at the Friends Meeting House.
Info on classes, personal growth and
healing instruction, or phone consultations,
at (828) 258-3241. Or send an e-mail to
healing@billwalz.com. Visit billwalz.com.
Vol. 13, No. 6 — RAPID RIVER ARTS & CULTURE MAGAZINE — February 2010 13