The spouse of someone I know very well passed away today as a result of complications due to cancer. In writing about his struggle to overcome the cancer, someone wrote in tribute

He never stops being positive! It also never ceases to amaze me how genuine and authentic he naturally is....But we need more people like him in the world. There isn't time to waste not being a mirror of God's love for others with patience, kindness and grace.

The impression he made on me the few times we crossed path was pretty much similar.  Needless to say, today has been a somber one.  The demands of life, however, continue and we push forward while trying to come to terms with something like the passing of someone in this fashion. We all deal with these things in our own way, and as is my proclivity, I retreated into my head, thinking it out.  The wish for people still here to be a mirror stuck with me.  Other thoughts of which I have blogged about and have been swirling around in my mind gravitated to it.  The aspiration to be a mirror of God's love for others with patience, kindness and grace is one path for what I like to call the struggle to appear.

In a thread the other day the topic of writing blogs (and commenting on them) can at times be approached as something akin to journal writing.  Although one is technically putting one's thoughts out to the whole world to read, whether someone reads it is nearly irrelevant.  As Verified Atheist put it: "Sometimes we write more for our own sake than for any reader's sake."  So below is the train of thought that can resulted from reading the above passage.  Rather than take the time to hammer out a flowing essay, I have just put the thoughts into little fragments that are somehow tied together.

Being and Becoming

There is much philosophical and spiritual thought on the matter of being and becoming.  I don't intend to discuss any of that, but merely put out the way I prefer to see these terms.  Being, in the grand sense, is another way saying one has arrived at the destination where one is fully aware of one's being, we become in a moment to the next a pure expression of our being.  It is in the Buddhist sense it means to fully present in the here and now.  In other words, an awareness and expression most of us will only touch for a brief and fleeting moment if we strive hard enough (or our lucky enough).  

Becoming on the other hand is our common experience, an unfolding towards that full awareness and expression of our being.  The question we have to ask ourselves is what path are we on.  What are we unfolding towards? 

The Unattainable Aspirations

One can choose (is it an authentic choice?) to avoid a consciousness of our unfolding.  We can just go through the motions, so to say, without reflection or contemplation.  Few live solely in this realm - it an extreme end of the spectrum with the fully reflective and contemplative individual on the other end.  Most of us move along the spectrum, a little more reflective in this moment, a little more going through the motions in the next moment.

What is important here is not only how aware are we to the particular path of becoming, but what path we have chosen for ourselves, towards what are consciously unfolding towards.  Another way to look at it is to ask ourselves - to what being do we aspire to?

Not to get into the details, but a good portion of my adult life it seems I simply aspired to get through the day, or as I was fond of saying 'to keep treading and not sink below the surface of the water.'  (There were times I wasn't so successful at this, and this reminds me of something I read by Amy Hempel: Just because you've stopped sinking doesn't mean you're still not underwater.)

One can go on and on listing the various aspirations people embrace - from the mundane to the not-commendable to the righteous. For the moment, I am thinking of the aspiration to be a mirror God's love. And this is what I would call one of the unattainable aspirations: we will always be approaching, always striving and never arriving. 

In regards to these unattainable aspirations, Zen Buddhist priest Norman Fischer offers these thoughts:

Why not have aspirations so lofty they are impossible to fulfill? To have aspirations any less lofty would be to sell ourselves short.  The trick is to keep on making effort in the direction of fulfillment of the aspiration but not to think that you will  actually complete the job – and not to be dismayed or discouraged by this but instead to be encouraged by it!   This is a good approach because you will always have more to do, and always be spurred on by the strength of your commitment.  To commit to something you actually could accomplish is too small potatoes for a lofty  sacred human being like yourself.

Failure

Yet there is something else which comes with embracing an unattainable aspiration: failure.  If we are always approaching, never arriving, never fully being a mirror of God's love (or whatever the aspiration), then we must face the failure of our actions.  We tend to see failure as a negative thing.  Success is good.  Failure is bad.  To make us feel better, we say "we learn from our failures" - but how many of us really believe it. 

Jack Kornfield related a Buddhist master who told him Buddhism is the practice of failure. Our life is failure.  We fail to meditate perfectly.  We fail to be truly compassionate at all times.  As we grow older, our eyes may fail us.  Eventually, for everyone, our body fails us and we experience the ultimate failure: death.  The practice is to be with this failure. 

Caitriona Reed wrote of failure this way:

There is a wonderful aspect to the mindfulness trainings: they are actually impossible to keep! To refrain from harming others? What a profound practice! We receive the Five Mindfulness Trainings knowing that by doing so we are opening up to our own failure. We cannot fix the world, we cannot even fix our own life. By accepting failure we express our willingness to begin again, time after time. By recognizing failure, we change, renew, adapt, listen, and grow. It is only by practicing without expectation of success that we can ever truly open to the world, to suffering and to joy. What extraordinary courage there is in risking losing what you know for the sake of the unknown; risking what you think you are capable of for the sake of your true capability! What profound freedom — not having to get it right all the time, not having to live for the sake of appearance! By opening to our own failure, we open to the magnificence of the unknown, participating unconditionally, renewing our life.

Western Thought - Eastern Thought

One might get the impression from the above thoughts that I gravitate towards Eastern thought.  There might be some truth to that at times, but the truth is that like just about everybody else in this country my mind's framework is definitely Western.

Most of us are familiar with the differences, and that it a broad generalization that has some usefulness.  I do believe both approaches have their value and we would all benefit from working toward a synthesis of the two.  I do believe if we follow each one to their end we find ourselves in the other.  The Tao of Physics was one of the influential books of my past, as it opened up a path toward a spirituality which was divorced from the rigid Christianity I was raised in.

The Personal is Political, The Political Personal

When we look out at the political environment of our country, it can be discouraging to say the least.  Failure comes to mind.  And no one seems to be learning any lessons. 

In my previous blog, I ended it with:

We need to learn to risk the disorientation that comes from momentarily finding ourselves without our normal anchors [of self-identity].  Only in this way can we consciously be active participants in the unfolding to something better.

I meant this as to be a sweeping comment that encompassed the multitude of approaches and perspectives.  Focusing on becoming the mirror of God's love or others with patience, kindness and grace can be one such approach.  It would require a dedication, a commitment, a perseverance of practice, unfolding through failure.  And this is another way of understanding how I ended another blog:  

I believe, however, that the nature of this struggle to appear is what is commonly missed in our lives.  Many of us attend religious services, attend plays that grapple with the big themes, and gather together to recognize the transformations of time and values of our community.  But are we really struggling to appear?  Or are just going through the motions?

As we engage in that which we call "the political," it is if anything else part of our becoming.  We cannot separate (as Westerners are apt to do) out the political from our spiritual lives, our daily lives from our philosophical lives, our history from our future.

Our aspirations, those ideals toward which we actually strive (as opposed to those which we would like to believe we aspire towards), will manifest themselves. 

If we are just going through the motions, we may be becoming a mirror, but what we reflecting back to world may be something less than beautiful.  Yet if we struggle to be patient (and fail), to be kind (and fail), to be graceful (and fail), to be compassion and just (and fail), then our becoming will reflect in ways that can only improve something like our political environment.  In that I have to have faith.