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| Perhaps an artists impression of a Portable Satcom |
Back in the 1970's, working for an electronic company, we in the office would always have a chuckle as one of our state of the art "portable" satellite communications units would be pulled through from the workshop on a trolley. Two large suitcases, but the suitcases did have handles, so yes, "portable" if you fancied your chances.
Technical details? One suitcase was virtually all satellite dish, which opened like an umbrella whenever and wherever you wanted to make a call; and much of the second suitcase was the battery.
Well, I can laugh now, but in those days many of these units were used on the roof-tops of banks in Lebanon, most other means of communicating between the banks themselves and the wider world destroyed in the civil war that raged in the country.
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| Calling almost anywhere |
Now, holding just a tiny mobile phone in our hand we can chat with friends on the other side of the world, even see them at the same time. All taken for granted by the young who have grown up in this world of technological acceleration.
It is said that an infant taken from a cave in pre-historic times and placed in a cradle now, would develop much as any other child would in our own times. Which brings up the contrast and relationship between nature and nurture. Another aspect of this can be introduced by consideration of my two grandchildren, both "nurtured" much the same yet different in many other ways. Genes acted upon by life unfolding around them, first in a totally receptive and passive way, gradually transforming into decisions and choices as a "self" comes to be. All this is old hat of course.
But when "salvation" and "enlightenment" - even the path of "no calculation" - are thrown into the mix, it all becomes a melting pot of possibilities.
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| A melting pot, possibilities optional |
For me this is when the parable of the dharma as raft comes into its own, a raft for crossing over not for grasping. Cling on too tight, identify too closely with beliefs, even justify ourselves by holding them, and the game is up. Living from them and as them, we could be anybody, born during pre-historic times, or born now. Switch the cradle, switch the "self". Yet prepared, often, to kill and die in defense of what we are, or think ourselves to be.
But to have no beliefs, no convictions, to leap from the raft too soon, and equally, all seems lost. It does not seem to be an option.
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| Rafts in choppy seas |
However, what is claimed, at least by the Buddha, is that when the "other shore" is reached we have no need to carry the raft around with us any more. One assumes what is "right" becomes spontaneous.
"What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?"
"An appropriate statement".
Some of course fall back upon THE Word. The correct and definitive beliefs have been given, once and for all. All that then remains is to transfer the words, the commandments, from tablets of stone to those that become written upon the heart, fulfilling the great prophecy found in Jeremiah in the Old Testament.
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| A depiction of Jeremiah, in less reflective mood |
When I, in judgemental mode, look around me, now and through history, both near and far, I see such hearts, hear such appropriate statements, in many places. Certainly not confined to those of any one creed or Faith. "The Lord knows his own" is a common cry, yet often those that we perhaps consider that the Lord "knows" always bare a striking resemblance to our very own self.
Which makes me think of the opposite (in many ways), of the beauty of difference, diversity. Where we can in fact be surprised by joy that others, of different ways, paths and creeds - and of no creed at all - give evidence of a true heart, of an appropriate statement; expressed in ways that are new and life giving.
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| An appropriate moo? |
As I see it, the starting point, the ground, can never be restricted to just one book, however "true" the word, but only to Reality-as-is. Our cosmos is the complete "revelation". Seeking to restrict revelation to words found just "here", interpreted in just "this" way, leaves us grasping at straws, seeking to justify creedal formulas that time will always finally erode. Not to mention wars and inquisitions.
Well, I don't really think that I have solved anything at all about nature and nurture, certainly no conclusions. I'm consoled that even Carl Jung remarked once that many problems, personal and otherwise, are not so much resolved as just taken to a new level - where they can sometimes dissolve of themselves (And if we are to mention levels, I would definitely say new, rather than higher) Whatever, that would be the way of "no calculation", where the earth brings forth fruits of herself. How else, in an otherwise purely logical world, can faith deepen?
As an afterthought, this all seems to relate to realisation rather than attainment, gift rather than prize, of whatever is of real value always being a by-product. Trying to grasp "enlightenment", or morality, the "right" and the "true", simply makes them disappear and slip through our fingers. A "by-product" of what? Reality-as-is.
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| Carl Jung, looking for the next level, or perhaps just for his glasses |
Related Quotes:-
If you want to find satisfactory formulas you had better deal with things that can be fitted into a formula. The vocation to seek God is not one of them. Nor is existence. Nor is the spirit of man.
(Thomas Merton)
A second quote is from Stephen Batchelor, from his book "Buddhism Without Beliefs". After speaking of a psuedo integrity that responds to a moral dilemma only by repeating the gestures and words of a parent, an authority figure or a religious text, Batchelor speaks of:-
"(Sometimes acting)....in a way that startles us. A friend asks our advice about a tricky moral choice. Yet instead of offering him consoling platitudes or the wisdom of someone else, we say something that we did not know we knew. Such gestures and words spring from body and tongue with shocking spontaneity. We cannot call them "mine" but neither have we copied them from others. Compassion has dissolved the stranglehold of self. And we taste, for a few exhilarating seconds, the creative freedom of awakening".
Finally, the "Parable of the Dharma Rain" from the Lotus Sutra:-
I bring fullness and satisfaction to the world,
like rain that spreads its moisture everywhere.
Eminent and lowly, superior and inferior,
observers of precepts, violators of precepts,
those fully endowed with proper demeanor,
those not fully endowed,
those of correct views, of erroneous views,
of keen capacity, of dull capacity -
I cause the Dharma rain to rain on all equally,
never lax or neglectful.
When all the various living beings
hear my Law,
they receive it according to their power,
dwelling in their different environments.....
..The Law of the Buddhas
is constantly of a single flavour,
causing the many worlds
to attain full satisfaction everywhere;
by practicing gradually and stage by stage,
all beings can gain the fruits of the way.
Do we need an "umbrella"?
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