An email: Jim, you say the world is perfect as it is. The problem I have with the way I interpret that statement is that it sounds like it encourages people to ignore the pain of others and/or to be passive about the problems that plague our species. ?????
A good one. That is the question that must be dealt with in any approach to seeing reality as beautiful or perfect.
To say that the world is perfect as it is tends to imply to the mind that war, murder, rape, cruelty, etc. are being condoned, or that no effort would ever be made to correct hurtful situations. Yet neither of those things need be true.
To our minds, it tends to appear like this: If we make our peace with the world as it is, with all its dualities, nothing would ever get done, nothing will ever get "fixed"; we'd just lie around on the couch or something all day and accept no responsibility for anything. In my experience, though, that is not what happens.
Here's the nub of it: In our efforts to serve, if we come from an "us/them" mentality in any way, we're perpetuating the very mentality that helped to create the "evils" we see in the first place.
It is this very "us/them" thinking—"they" are wrong, bad, etc. and must therefore be suppressed or eliminated—that allows human beings to treat each other with brutality, hate, manipulation, etc. instead of love and compassion, It is the very thing that separates one human being or group from another and thus allows what we call mistreatment or "evil" to occur.
When we perceive that the world is perfect—from the perspective of the heart, which understands things which the mind cannot—it doesn't mean that there is no action. Rather, it means that action arises by itself, in recognition that we are not the doer in the first place and never were, that the infinite is the doer of everything and always has been since there is nothing else but that.
Then action arises, but it arises on its own, out of nowhere, out of the ungraspable, and there is no predicting it. It might feed hungry children, it might work for peace, it might promulgate mediation, work on the environment, drive a beer truck, sit in meditation or whatever it might do, but without the stress and separation from our fellow beings inherent in ideas of "right" and "wrong," "us" and "them."
Perhaps that is why Seng S'tan, the third great teacher of Zen, said this: "The Great Way is not difficult — only cease to cherish your opinions."
Perhaps that is why Jesus stressed compassion and tolerance. Perhaps that is why he stressed looking at the log in our own eye before looking at the splinter in our brother's eye. Perhaps because he knew that the essence of reality is divine, harmonious, beautiful, true—and filled with dualities.
An extraordinary amount of mischief and brutality in the world has been done in the name of attaining some wonderful goal by "eradicating" some perceived "evil." Just ask Hitler or the Grand inquisitor: Both thought they were building an ideal world, but hadn't looked inside first to find the heart of compassion.
In my understanding, that is why teachers such as the Buddha, Jesus, etc. have put the emphasis on seeing reality without attachment to beliefs and developing compassion for all of existence with nothing left out. Because then one's actions, whatever they may happen to be, do have a strong tendency towards harmony and love in the external world. As inside, so the actions outside.
See Reality is always right, Pt 13
—jim sloman, for 1/15/02
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