In his Morning Meditation, our Unitarian Universalist friend David Markham had a particularly wise and important seeing, that has sparked some additional seeing for me, and so I thought to bring it to here... he said:
"that suffering is the result of stupidity, ignorance, and lack of awareness"
and reading this, brought up again my ever-favorite meditation: "relationship is a mirror"
it rings true in these ears, when I read David describe being:
"utterly amazed at how stupid people are. They are narcissistic, arrogant, willful, full of hubris, and then wonder why they suffer."
yes, this lives in me too...
and we travel together as well, when we see his obsevation that:
"Whenever our politicians would divide the world into us and them, and in our personal lives we divide our families into us and them, and at work we divide the world into us and them, we are contributing to the suffering in the world."
ah yes!
here we have it right- where we say that it is this basic division of "us and them" that brings about all of this suffering...
so, if this is true, if what I see "out there" in "them" is truly not separable from what is "here" in "me", then it is there that I "Suffer" the stupidity, ignorance, lack of awareness of humanity... but when I see that these things are here in ME, as proved by the very FACT that I see it in "them" (relationship is a mirror), that I am the one now creating an "us and them" when it comes to this stupidity... then it gets to be seen that I and the stupidity, ignorance etc are one in the same...
it is there, and only there, that compassion can act... and it is only compassion, that has any wisdom to offer this situation of suffering... certainly not my cleverness in being able to point it out to others, how stupid they are and thus they suffer... the "they" in that VERY pointing out, is "me"... it is "I" who suffer the stupidity that is inherent in missing the mirror, in not seeing that it is me who suffers this separation, and not them... "I" am the one who compassion cannot act through- "I" am the one who is woefully unaware, whenever I make an "us and them"- whenever I separate my 'wise and clever' seeing, from that stupidity which it believes it can identify...
but when we see that there is NO separation- that the stupidity is ME, that it is "I" who suffers, then that ends it- that ENDS it, right there... there is nothing more for "them" to do! Compassion now comes in and acts- Love now comes to know itself- "I" am now out of the picture... this and only this will end the suffering- will end the separation that creates the stupidity...
did you know, that the root of the words "Satan" and "Devil" both, have this sense of separation with them, of "pointing outwards" to "other"? ... according to wikipedia "The name "Devil" derives from the Greek word diabolos, which means "slanderer" or "accuser"" and "The word 'Satan', and the Arabic "shaitan", may derive from a Northwest Semitic root meaning "to be hostile", 'to accuse.'" ... isnt the very picture in your mind of "accuser" a man or woman pointing their finger at a person in a crowd? ... I know thats the first image that comes to my head ...
This is what it is to "miss the mirror"... to separate what we see, from ourselves- and assume it is someplace "out there" that we are seeing it... this is the very lack of awareness in our own seeing, that will add itself to the stupidity- because there is no room for compassion to act in this... we have effectively walled it out, from our outward pointing- from the separation of "that" and "me" - "I" and "thou"...
This I think, is what Gandhi was seeing, when he said to "be the change you want to see"... to end the outward pointing- to see that the lack of awareness can ONLY come from believing that there is something that separates what I see from me- that there are things "out there" that need to be fixed, as if I didnt have that very trait, stupidity, ignorance, lack of awareness RIGHT HERE in me, BY the very seeing of it!!!
by the very seeing of it, it is me
relationship is this mirror... I pray to give my every living breathing moment, to polishing this mirror...
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