The Good and Bad of the Human Condition!

Tuesday 21 Oct 2014

I was discussing the recent spate of beheadings, crucifixions and general atrocities currently going on in the Middle East. This stuff is being brought into my consciousness one way or another through various media feeds and friends. For those immune, I acknowledge your good karma. The conversation I was having was with a much respected friend of our family; she is a woman who helps many people in a very positive way. I was telling how I had been looking at some of the images and film of these events, in the attempt to understand why so called civilised people would do such a thing to one another. She brought me up quite strongly by saying, “you should not look at that kind of thing as you only give it more energy and more power!” This lady is a very strong and insightful woman so it did cause me to stop and reflect. I had felt quite chastened by the advice, even though I had known that my intentions in looking at this imagery, was to understand. I was not being a voyeur, but I do admit that there may have been some fear playing out in me, even though, on the face of it, I have nothing to do with anything happening in the Middle East.  I live in Australia, a long way from what is happening.

Once I had thought about it a bit, I was discussing the issue with my wife and told her that I thought our friend was wrong and that we should not shy away from looking at this sort of stuff if we can help it. I am not suggesting to seek it out but if we are confronted with it, rather than recoil in horror, it can be viewed with the right intention and as long as it does cause us mental trauma that we cannot deal with, then I think we should look at it thoroughly and work through any fear it raises.  I argued that I was not giving the act energy but rather trying to understand why one human being slaughtering another human being may seem like a good thing to do. I knew it could not be morally justified but it does seem to be something that is prevalent in our human condition. I wanted to understand the mind of the people doing it. My wife told me that my view was as bad as our friends view, we were both being righteous. I know in a way she was right, so this blog is the resultant reflection.

The Universe is a very natural place. Nature holds sway and I think we can all see the perfection that is “present” in this fact. This moment is perfect. It is just the way it is; it cannot be any other way! Our reflection from it is what conditions and makes our future. Sometimes the reflection from nature is ugly and when we judge it to be this way we are inevitably bringing conditioning from the past. The same is true when we judge it to be pretty. Our judgements are formed from our past conditioning. It is our conditioning that drives us in the world. Understanding this conditioning and then developing a view to let it go is what brings us back to the truth that is present in the moment. The more we can let go of the past, the more truthful and peaceful is the reflection from the present.

For most of us, our past views opinions and actions are generally filled with idealism. We think that they will make us happy. We think they will make others happy.  Then more often than not we start to see that our idealism has conditioned ill will in us or in others. Things don’t go as we planned, or we fail, or we see the disagreement in others who choose not to believe what we think is right. They may be more powerful!  When we see and understand this reflection, we have a choice. We can both stick to our guns and forge a more fundamentalist view, or we can start to refine the way we think and feel.  We do this to the point where we can learn to balance our minds with compassion and empathy for the way others see things and then create a space for them in our worldview. This is not an argument for appeasement, it is a calling to be wise and do what is right to make us and others happy and peaceful. Sometimes it may be necessary to make a stand, but when the view is correct we start to see that the entire universe is there inside us and trying to reject any part of it is a recipe for trouble. It is like rejecting a piece of ourselves. We start to notice that the way to peace and truth leaves us full of the stillness and spaciousness that can accommodate everything.

The present is filled with this still and powerful energy and getting to live with it means we do need to forgive and let go the past. This is often hard and often we do need to find ways of bringing our energy back to a balance point. We Practice to develop compassion, loving kindness, sympathetic joy that shares ours and others happiness, and equanimity!  These four qualities do help us to align our energy in coherent and balanced way. Then we can start to see and appreciate the pure consciousness that is there in the heart of the moment. It is the same conscious energy that flows through all others and indeed the Universe that we create! We see that we are truly interconnected.

So coming back to the cruelty that we are witnessing at the hands of these fundamentalist people! We may think that we are better than them, that we would not do such things. However they are showing us the opposite. They are showing the potential of the human condition after “ill will” has taken hold. We saw this in Yugoslavia not so long ago when supposedly civilised people, steeped in the beauty and certainty of the European Renaissance were able to descend back to a base consciousness of ill will and hatred.   The barbaric slaughter that happened with the return to slavery and sexual brutality was such that even the rich cultural heritage of the Sarajevo library was sacked in the blind ignorance that prevailed.  

2600 years ago the Buddha showed and demonstrated the full potential of a human being. He showed that as human beings we all have the ability to gain enlightenment. How many wars and atrocities have been committed since then?  As human beings we always have a choice. The human condition can be brutal but it also offers a rare chance to be free. Paradoxically it is because of the suffering of the human condition that this is so. We do need to look closely at our conditioning. We do need to understand our fears and work with our limitations so we can expand them to include all the conditions that can prevail. If we do not work to understand ourselves we are at the mercy of blind instinctual feelings, and depending on the conditioning we bring from the past, we could easily find ourselves cultivating the hatred being demonstrated. Such is the human condition!

If the imagery coming out of the Middle East causes a trauma for us, then we need to be circumspect and work with our fears and anxieties.  There will be some of us that are immune (due to good karma) from having to think about these things, however for those of us that are not  we will eventually need to look at and understood it for what it is, because paradoxically it is the material that will lure some of us to join them. The fear it invokes has a counterpoint in excitement, power and righteousness. Any cursory examination of this material will show the immediate suffering taking place, but then we realise how it spreads out into the communities to condition a similar revenge.   It is ignorance and cruelty that will bring the perpetrators no joy, no satisfaction. The Karmic result of doing these deeds has the potential to deliver lifetimes of hell realms. When we understand this we can feel as much compassion for the perpetrators as we do for the victims. We ignore these lessons at our peril.

The following is a poem to illustrute my point. A poem by Thich Nhat Hahn called:

Call me by my true names

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow

because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second

 to be a bud on a spring branch,

 to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,

 learning to sing in my new nest,

 to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

 to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

 in order to fear and to hope.

 The rhythm of my heart is the birth and

 death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,

 and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time

 to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,

 and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,

 feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

 my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,

 and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,

 who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,

 and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,

 and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people,

 dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.

 My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,

 so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,

 so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,  so I can wake up,

 and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.