HAVING NO DESTINATION, WE ARE NEVER LOST

Having no destination,
I am never lost.

    --Ikkyū.

I am an iconoclast and a heretic. I reject all claims and assertions of supernatural religion and authority. In the words of Thomas Paine, my own mind is my own church. So, it is no surprise that I have a soft spot—no, not that one—for other iconoclasts, heretics and freethinkers. Ikkyū [pictured left] was one such man. He was a 15th century Japanese Zen Buddhist monk. He not only revitalized Zen but also had a profound influence upon the Japanese tea ceremony. 

Now, Zen has always sought to cut through the crap so as to arrive at a direct, immediate and largely intuitive experience of life, but Ikkyū’s radical approach was really something to behold. He was an iconoclast extraordinaire. In any field of any endeavour we need the man or woman who says, ‘But the Emperor has no clothes!’ That is why I’ve always loved the American comedian Groucho Marx, who spent his entire life deflating the pompous, the pretentious and the phony. We need more people like that.

Here’s the second most profound piece of metaphysical wisdom---there is nowhere to go. I’ve told you this story before, but I’ll tell it again. A young man is on his way home. He comes to the banks of a wide, and very deep, river. He finds he is on the ‘wrong’ side of the river. The river is fast flowing, with numerous rapids. There is no bridge or other means available for crossing the river. The young man sees an elderly Buddhist monk standing on the other side of the river, so he yells over to the monk, ‘Oh, wise one, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river?’ The monk ponders for a moment, looks up and down the river, and yells back, ‘My son, you are on the other side.’ Yes, wherever we want to 'go', we are already there. The young man wants to get to the other side of the river, only to be told that he is already on the other side of the river. To reach the other side of the river is to see that this very side here is the other side. When there is no separation in our mind between one side and the other, then in that very moment we are one with the very livingness of life flowing through us and all things. 

The author at a Japanese tea ceremony.

And the first most profound piece of metaphysical wisdom is this. Well, it follows directly from the first. It is this---truth is right where you are. People strive for worldly success and for the approval and admiration of others but those things will not take you away from yourself—not for long, anyway. Truth—also known as reality and life—is right where you are. All we need to do is to see things as they really are in all their directness and immediacy. That’s where mindfulness comes in.

Listen to these words from Ikkyū:

Like vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning -- already gone --
thus should one regard one's self.

The folly and blind hope of supernatural religion is that we are going to live forever in one place or another, with one such place supposedly being more attractive than the other. I do not believe that. We come from dust and to dust we return. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In one sense, we remain part of life’s self-expression—for life cannot other than be. That, as I see it, is the true meaning of those words, ‘The spirit returns to God who gave it’ (Ec 12:7), but I am in absolutely no doubt that at the point of death our consciousness as a separate, thinking, feeling individual together with what we call our personality, comes to an abrupt and very final end. If you want to believe otherwise, that is your prerogative. As I see it, we are, in the words of Ikkyū, like ‘vanishing dew’, a ‘passing apparition’, a ‘sudden flash’. In the words of Shakespeare, taken from what is my favourite play of his, The Tempest:

…       …       …       …     We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Ikkyū is, however, saying more than that. He is making a comment about how we should regard ourselves. Most of us take ourselves far too seriously, thinking that we will be remembered long after we are gone. A few of us will live on longer in the memories of others. As George Eliot expressed it in her poem 'The Choir Invisible':

Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues.

That is very sweet sentiment but the plain and simple truth of the matter is this---most of us will be completely forgotten in two or three generations. How's that for a reality check?

Lake Ashi, Kanagawa Prefecture, Honshū, Japan.

Photo taken by the author.

Ikkyū had much to say about so-called sacred texts. Now, don’t get me wrong. Most sacred texts contain some helpful advice on the art of living—along with a lot of unhelpful and divisive nonsense. The task is to separate the wheat from the staff. Listen to what Ikkyū has to say about sacred texts:

Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.

…       …       …       …

I've burnt all the holy pages I used to carry 
but poems flare in my heart.

The concept of ‘original mind’ in Zen is a most important one. Imagine for a moment that you had not been brought up in the faith or belief system of your parents or particular culture. Indeed, imagine that you had not been inculcated in any way to believe this or that about life. You would then have a mind which was entirely culturally free and unconditioned. Such is the nature of your ‘original mind’. Is it possible to have such a mind today? Well, people such as J. Krishnamurti say that it is indeed possible for the mind to decondition itself entirely. For my part, I am still working on the task.

I love what Ikkyū has to say about poetry. My late father used to say that there was more wisdom in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám than in The Bible. Maybe. Maybe not. I think Dad was telling me more about what he didn’t or couldn’t believe as opposed to which work contained more wisdom. After all, The Bible contains some great poetry as well, and the Book of Ecclesiastes has a similar tone to much of its writing as the Rubáiyát, although the latter does seem to be promoting a more earthy approach to life and its fleeting pleasures.

Take a good look at the religious fanatic. It does not matter which religion he or she is fanatical about. The fanatic has completely lost their original mind. He or she can no longer see and appreciate things as they really are. Everything gets filtered through, and distorted by, their belief system. Yes, the same thing can happen to the atheist and nonbeliever. However, Ikkyū is making the point that any study of sacred or spiritual books, as well as meditative practices, can result in your losing your original mind. One good way of deconditioning your mind, and returning bit by bit to your original mind, is to spend more time communing with nature. That is very good advice.

Well, I haven’t burnt all the ‘holy pages’ in my home library. There are still hundreds and hundreds of books on religion and spirituality, as well as on many other subjects, on my bookshelves. However, I have burnt something, and that something is this---the mindset that says, ‘This, you must believe’, ‘The Bible says …’, ‘God has spoken His final word in …’, and ‘There is only one way … .’

You are never lost when you know the way home. And where is ‘home’? Well, it is right here, where you are now. Look around you. Look within you. What do you see? What do you feel? It is life. You are an expression of the spirit of life. That life did not begin with your birth. It will not end with your death. Recover your original mind, and start seeing and experiencing things as they really are.

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MINDFULNESS IS TASTING THE STRAWBERRY---EVEN IN THE JAWS OF DEATH

Seize the moment! How often we hear those words, yet how rarely do we heed them.

Here’s a Zen kōan that’s all about the importance of seizing the moment. It’s said to be a parable told by the Buddha:

A man travelling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, the man caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

This is a very powerful story. Here’s this man, facing imminent and certain death---and death in a most unpleasant manner---and what does he do? He plucks and eats a strawberry. And how sweet that strawberry tasted!

Now, this is a parable. It has an ‘inner’ meaning, so to speak. The strawberry represents the present moment which before we know it becomes the past. The tiger above the man is birth, and the tiger below is the man’s imminent death—and our death as well. And what of the mice some of which are black and the others white? As I see it, they represent our days on this planet. Some days are good (‘white’) while others are, well, terrible (‘black’). Remember the words of Omar Khayyám [pictured below]? ‘Tis all a Chequer-board of nights and days.' Black or white, the mice symbolise the passage of our days while we are here on earth. Sooner or later the mice will gnaw through the vine of our life's breath and then ... death. Yes, life is damn short, even if many of us are living longer than in years past. Here are some more lines from Omar Khayyám:

Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain — This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

 

Mindfulness is living with awareness, and being fully and consciously present, from one moment to the next. Life is all the more precious by reason of the fact that we will ultimately lose it. ‘Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?’, asks the dead Emily in Thornton Wilder’s wonderful play Our Town. Sadly, most of us don’t. Most of us live mindlessly. We don’t really live. We don’t even exist---we subsist. In the words of Thoreau, we ‘lead lives of quiet desperation,’ and go the grave not having ever known the joy of living with choiceless awareness of the present moment.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating hedonism. Not at all. I am simply asserting that living mindfully is better than the alternative. Facing certain and imminent death our hero in the parable continues to live mindfully. He looks. He observes. He tastes. In similar circumstances I suspect that most of us would not even see the strawberry, and if we did few of us would have any interest in eating it. ‘How can I think of eating at a time like this?’, I hear myself saying.

Seize the moment ... before it’s too late.

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ALBERT CAMUS’ GOOD ADVICE ON LIVING FOR THIS PRESENT MOMENT

Ever since studying French in high school some 45 or more years ago I have loved the works of Albert Camus [pictured left] and, in particular, his novel L’Étranger (The Stranger/The Outsider).

There is a philosophical tension in Camus’ philosophy of life. On the one hand, life is absurd, irrational, futile, and manifestly unjust, but on the other hand we are rational beings—at least in potentiality—and therefore not absurd. Additionally, it is possible for us to be happy even in a world of tragedy, irrationality, manifest injustice, and suffering.

There is also a creative tension, both in Camus’ works and in life itself, between oppression, bondage and oblivion on the one hand and freedom and joy on the other. Each of us will die, and death is a process which begins the very moment that we are born. Still, we are ultimately free, and ever the more so if, paradoxically, we learn to live without hope. Yes, we must abandon hope but yet not despair.

The ‘hero’ of the book, Meursault, is condemned to death. He eventually comes to terms with his impending and inevitable death by realizing that life, indeed the entire universe, is benignly indifferent to our fate. Toward the end of the novel, just a short time before he is due to be executed, and after he has put that pesky priest in his place, Meursault soberly reflects ...

I’d passed my life in a certain way, and I might have passed it in a different way, if I’d felt like it. I’d acted thus, and I hadn’t acted otherwise; I hadn’t done x, whereas I had done y or z. And what did that mean? That, all the time, I’d been waiting for this present moment, for that dawn, tomorrow’s or another day’s, which was to justify me. Nothing, nothing had the least importance and I knew quite well why.

Now, do you have regrets about the past, perhaps about certain acts or omissions on your part? Well, let the past stay in the past. So, you could have lived that way, or this way, but what does it matter? You are here now … and that’s all that truly matters.

Do you have certain hopes and expectations for the future? What if those hopes and expectations are dashed and never fulfilled, which could well happen? Face it. You are here now … and that’s all that truly matters.

You are … here … now. Now is the only moment you truly have. Now is the portal through which we experience the present moment, indeed every moment … but only one moment at a time.

Do we have free will, or is everything a matter of fate and destiny? Or are both ideas true? Having studied philosophy deeply for many decades, I say this---we really don’t know. Those who think it is one or the other or both are really making what is only an assumption. The truth is, none of us knows for sure whether determinism is true or free will is true. But one thing we do know is this---life is short and death is inevitable and invincible.  In the words of Omar Khayyám:

Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain — This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

In other words, every thing passes, withers, and dies. And that includes us. Despite what some would have you believe, we cannot change that destiny, but we can, I assert, still choose how we will spend the present moment, and each and every one of the present moments between now and death. Yes, it is in the present moment that you are 'justified'.

So, here you are … right here … in this present moment of the eternal now. Why not live mindfully---that is, in and with full and choiceless awareness and appreciation of the present moment … and for the present moment ... and the one after that … and the one after that … and the one after that ... until you come to that day when all moments cease and you are engulfed by the fulness of the enormity of eternity.

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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO GROUCHO

Dedicated to my friend,

the incredibly talented Frank Ferrante,

who brings Groucho back to life in his performances

For as long as I can remember I have loved the comedian, humorist and writer Groucho Marx [pictured] and his movies, TV shows, and writings.

Groucho, who was Jewish, was not into formal, institutional religion---'organized religion is hogwash,' he was heard to say more than once---but he did start attending services at a Reform synagogue, Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, in the final years of his life. It seems, however, that his attendances at the temple were largely to please his then secretary and companion, the controversial Erin Fleming, who had converted to Judaism. None of Groucho's three wives were Jewish, nor was he ever married by a rabbi. And he sent none of his three children to schul or, to my knowledge, Jewish schools. But he was certainly not anti-Semitic or a self-loathing Jew of whom there are more than a few these days.

Groucho would occasionally attend or even hold a Pesach [Passover] Seder but his attitude toward the matter was largely indifferent. For example, when asked to attend one such Seder he said, 'I went to a Seder last year, and it's the same material.' That was Groucho. As Groucho saw it, being an observant Jew meant being a conformist, and that was something Groucho simply couldn't, or rather wouldn't, be.

The truth is Groucho hated institutions of all kinds. For example, the thrice married Groucho, forever the satirist, had this to say about marriage: ‘Marriage is a fine, upstanding institution, but who wants to live in an institution?’ That is what he thought of institutions. As for his three marriages and three divorces, he quipped, 'Take the wives out of marriage and there wouldn't be any divorces ... In union there is alimony.'

Groucho was a realist and cynic---the 'high priest of rationalism' in the words of famed humorist, academic and writer Leo Rosten. ‘I’m the brash, realistic type,’ he once said. 'Whatever it is, I'm against it.' Of that there was no doubt.

A number of persons, including his son Arthur and the actor Stanley Holloway (with whom Groucho starred in a 1960 Bell Telephone Hour television production of The Mikado), have written that Groucho was an agnostic. On one occasion, when speaking about his father Sam, Groucho said, ‘Sam was a great cook. He could convert leftovers into something fit for the gods, assuming there are any left.’ And he had this to say about the last film in which he appeared [see image below]: ‘In my last film [Skidoo] I played God. Jesus, I hope God doesn’t look like that.’ (By the way, lest there be any confusion on the matter, the character 'God' that Groucho played in that 1968 film---a film which at the time it was released was a bomb but which has since acquired quite a cult following---was a top mobster who lives on a yacht in international waters and gives orders to have people liquidated.)

If there's any doubt about what Groucho thought of organized religion, there's this priceless gem:

I was in Montreal and a priest came up to me, put out his hand, and said, 'I want to thank you for all the joy you've put into this world.' And I shook his hand, and said, 'And I want to thank you for all the joy you've taken out of this world.' He said, 'Could I use that next Sunday in my sermon?' I said, 'Yes you can, but you'll have to pay the William Morris office ten per cent.'

Although not formally religious Groucho did identify very closely with the Jewish people and during his long lifetime he donated generously to a number of Jewish charities and causes. He was also the victim of anti-Semitism. He would often recall the time when a country club manager told him he couldn't use the swimming pool. His reply has made it into countless books of quotations. ‘Since my daughter is only half-Jewish, could she go in up to her knees?’ He would also tell this one:

Two Jewish men in Israel are in adjoining urinals. One says to the other, ‘Are you Jewish?’ He says, ‘Yes.’ So the first man says, ‘How is it you’re not circumcised?’ ‘Well,’ says the other guy, ‘I’m not sure I’m going to stay.’

Groucho would tell a lot of jokes about being Jewish. Here's another one:

Two men--one a hunchback--were passing a synagogue. One of them turns to the other and says, ‘You know, I used to be a Jew.’ And the other says, ‘Really? I used to be a hunchback.’

Groucho certainly did not believe in an afterlife. ‘You only live once, despite what Jesus or somebody said … Go out to the garden and tear a flower in four. It won’t be a flower again.’ He said that in a 1969 New York Times interview. A few years later he was asked by Bill Cosby whether he believed in life after death---this was in 1973 when Groucho appeared on Bill’s TV show---and this was Groucho’s reply: ‘I’m beginning to have serious doubts about life before death.’ Love it. Then there’s this whimsical quip: ‘Someday we’ll meet in Heaven. New York. Or Philadelphia.’ 

Occasionally Groucho would undisparagingly use religious language, more so in his later years. For example, in his book The GrouchoPhile, published in 1976, Groucho had this to say about his brother Chico:

Chico was a rogue and a scamp. Had the Lord spared him and allowed him a few more years, he wouldn’t have changed. I can imagine that after being rescued from death’s door, he would look God straight in the eye and ask, ‘What odds will You give me on another ten years?’

I’m sure Groucho did not pray in any traditional way, despite once having asked, somewhat facetiously it seems, his eldest daughter Miriam to pray for the success of a certain Broadway show written by some friends of his. However, he did write this in his 1976 book The Secret Word is Groucho:

There’s a prayer of sorts I recite to myself every night. I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s me: ‘Unborn tomorrow, and dead yesterday, why fret about them if today be sweet?’

Well, I do know where that ‘prayer of sorts’ comes from. It’s from the The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. (I've written a post on that one.)

On another occasion Groucho expressed it this way. ‘Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, and I’m going to be happy in it.’ On yet another occasion he expanded on the same theme:

Each morning, when I open my eyes, I say to myself I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead. Tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

As for the past, it was a case of letting the past stay in the past, which is very wise. So many people can't do that. Anyway, Groucho expressed it this way in a letter that he wrote to his daughter Miriam in 1954:

There’s an old saying, ‘Let the dead past bury its dead,’ and I am a firm believer in never looking backward. There are too many horrifying things lurking there.

But here's a paradox. Groucho once penned a magazine article---one of many---entitled 'Bad Days are Good Memories,' in which he wrote that the memory of a dreadful, miserable experience can be a happy one. Yes, a happy one. The memory in question---his 'happiest memory,' he said---was when he was a boy actor, stranded in Colorado, hungry and broke. Not only that, but ...

For me, a happy experience does not necessarily mean a happy memory. On the contrary, I am sometimes jealous of my past.

If you think about that for a while it kinda makes sense. 

The 'secret' of life, said Groucho elsewhere, is to stay happy ... and have fun. As Groucho put it, ‘If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.’ So, if you are not having fun, look within to find out what needs changing ... in you. Ditto me. (It was only during Groucho's last hospitalization in mid-1977, having already endured several strokes, a major heart attack, a broken hip, respiratory problems, and various other maladies, that he was heard to say plaintively to his literary collaborator and biographer Hector Arce, 'This is no way to live.')

Groucho once told the veteran showbiz writer and celebrity interviewer Pete Martin that he got the advice about choosing to be happy one day at a time from a 100-year old man who appeared on Groucho’s TV show You Bet Your Life. It’s damn good advice. No matter what happens to us in life, we all have choices. We can always choose how to respond to what happens. As Groucho expressed it:

When we get up in the morning we have two choices. We can either be happy or unhappy. We make our own choice. The more times we choose happiness the longer we’ll live.

But is that easy to sustain? No, it's not, said Groucho:

It’s hard to choose happiness when you get up in the morning with a hangover or the market has dropped down a hole and taken your lifetime savings with it.

The latter actually happened to Groucho in the stockmarket crash of 1929, so he was talking from personal experience.

You know, each of us is in the manufacturing business. We manufacture our own happiness or unhappiness every moment of every day. You determine whether you're happy, and I determine whether I'm happy. It's as simple as that. Not easy, but simple.

Groucho may not have believed in religion or the hereafter but he did believe in life---and in living fully and deeply. ‘I intend to live forever, or die trying,’ he once quipped.

He died trying. But his legacy will live on forever.

Material owned and controlled by the Estate of Groucho Marx
or other rightsholders is copyright. Fair use permitted. All rights reserved.

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THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH US!

For once, a relatively short post.

We all want to be happy, but most of us regularly engage in certain self-defeating behaviour (including self-sabotaging subconscious programming) that prevents us from being happy ... as well as from seeing things-as-they-really-are.

I recently came across this gem from the Indian mystic and spiritual leader Maharaj Charan Singh [pictured left]:

‘There is something wrong with us. We never want to be happy at the present moment. Either we are worried about what we have done or about what is going to happen to us. We don’t want to make the best use of the present moment. If we make this moment happy, our past automatically becomes happy, and we have no time to worry about the future. So we must take life as it comes and spend it happily. Every moment should be spent happily. …’

Dr Emmet Fox [pictured right], the famous New Thought minister, lecturer, and author, made a similar point when he wrote:

‘Has it ever occurred to you that the only time you ever have is the present moment? … What that means is that you can only live in the present. It means you can only act in the present. It means you can only experience in the present. Above all, it means that the only thing you have to heal is the present thought. … All that you can know is your present thought, and all that you can experience is the outer expression of all the thoughts and beliefs that you are holding at the present time. 

'What you call the past can only be your memory of the past. The seeming consequences of past events, be they good or bad, are still but the expression of your present state of mind (including, of course, the subconscious). What are all the future things that you may be planning, or things that you may be dreading? All this is still but a present state of mind. This is the real meaning of the traditional phrase, "The Eternal Now." The only joy you can experience is the joy you experience now. A happy memory is a present joy. The only pain you can experience is the pain of the present moment. Sad memories are present pain. Get the present moment right. …’

There is no 'way,' as such, to happiness; rather, happiness is the way. Things do not 'make' you happy. Happiness depends upon 'no-thing,' and 'no-thing-ness'---the latter being a munificent state of consciousness---is synonymous with happiness, peace of mind, and serenity. So, choose to be happy---now! (Yes, it is a choice.) In this very present moment. Make the most of the present moment---and make every moment count! If you do that properly, your past, as well as any fears you might hold about the future, will disappear---instantaneously! Forever! Make a decision to do only this---heal the present thought. Get that right. Get the present moment right.

That’s all you have to do. Simple, isn't it? Well, get to 'it.'