People, Part Three (Why Do We {almost} All Appear To Be The Way We Seem To Be*)
I call myself an American, an 80 year old, a spouse, parent and grandparent, a radical, a retired educator, a person with autism, etc., etc Other people use some of these same labels and add others of their own choosing to describe me. But none of these roles describe who i am in my Buddha nature, none describe the "image of God" that i was presumably made in. But i know nothing about my Buddha nature, nothing about the image of God in me. I only know (in my heart, not in my brain), that all these social roles, psychological traits, and physical anomalies are part of the illusion. They are not real, they are not my (our) Real Self.
One of the ways to prepare for meditation is to start peeling back the layers of illusion. I trust that i will not, ultimately go mad or discover the chaos of selfishness that is my Freudian Id or my autism. The sages and mystics of all times and places will be my imperfect but reliable guides. First, i examine institutions: societies, states, families, educations, economies, war, religions, etc. I know that religions and the concept or original sin have not always existed. There was a time before religion, there were only people interacting with one another, talking to one another, experiencing life together,
Second:institutions possess legitimacy. There was a time when none of our existing religions possessed legitimacy. The "authorities" tried to killed Mohammed, they did kill Jesus, and there is even an allegation (Exodus 4:24) that YHWH, the very highest authority for Judeans, tried to kill Moses. So i strip away legitimacy, it is just part of the illusion.
Third, i look at history, every institution has a history. There are so many things that happened that could have happened differently. In the one thousand or more years between the time that Solomon's scribe wrote down the story of the man, the woman, the snake and the fruit to the time that Augustine of Hippo formulated the doctrine of original sin, a thousand different things might have happened to make history different. The past becomes frozen in the memories of the victors. We for get how many votes the Roman Church, supported by the still powerful state, lost before they finally able to declare the Arians to be heretics, An Arian Church would not have been interested in "original sin."
Fourtj. there is "typification.end of habitualized action." To be a "husband" there must also be a wife. And if husbands "need" to be obeyed then wives "need" to be obedient. So now we can have "weak husbands" and "willful wives" as social stereotypes instead of just people who sometimes do one thing and sometimes do something else.
Fifth, before there are role sets there are roles, if i observe myself doing the same things over and over again, i come to see myself as the sort of person who does that sort of thing. When i see another person do the same thing over and over again i begin to see him as the sort of person who does that sort of thing. Thus she is "gatherer," he is a "hunter" when typification and history and legitimacy comes into play it becomes "right" that women should gather and men should hunt. And, of course we should all be (or at least we all are) sinners.
Sixth, roles grow out of habits. we repeat "successful" actions, and we notice ourselves and others repeating these actions, so they harden into roles.
Seventh, and finally (or perhaps i should say first) there are actions; most human behavior is purposeful action and our purposes are many. We acquired speech early on, perhaps a million and a half years ago. Now we could state our purposes and coordinate them with the purposes of others. But our actions have consequences that we never see or know or imagine. If "Eve" had known that three thousand generations later her descendants would see themselves as "sinners" and experience unnecessary guilt she might have eaten some less forbidden fruit.
So institutions are built out
legitimacy, which is built out of
history, which is built out of
role sets, which are built out of
roles, which are built out of
habits, which are build out of
actions.
So the call for
careful action,
restrained action,
modest action,
compassionate action, and
non-action
In contemplation, i open myself to the Buddha or the God within,
I open to the image of God within
clouded as that image is by
society and its institutions,
by illusionary authority,
by history,
by association with others.
by roles,
by habits, and
by my own actions.
In contemplation i try to free myself from those seven veils of illusion
and expose myself, naked,to what is real.
* This entry owes much to two written sources to which i cannot possibly do justice in this entry. Edward Stevens, An Introduction to Oriental Mysticism, Chapter IV "The Way of Surrender and Self-Expression" (pp.51-69, Deus Books edition,, 1973) shows how we can, in meditation, break the bonds of Society, Culture, History, Legitimacy, and Institutions to perhaps touch our larger Selves. The fable of Ugga (A) and Bill (B) is a humanized version of the discussion which appears on pages 53-62 of Part II, "Society as an Objective Reality" in Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge This 189 page book is, in my opinion, very difficult reading, requiring either a sociological or phenomenological background, but i think that the 112 pages of Part II are worth the struggle.
(edit) Oops! i just realized that i forgot to include the story of Ugga and Bill in my post