From the January 2003 Ordinary Mind Newsletter

Caitríona Reed  

There is a creation story attributed to the Cahuilla people, whose land Palm Springs now sits on. It tells of two old women who were sharing a cigar one night. In a moment of clumsiness and hilarity one of them drops the cigar. Sparks fly everywhere. Suns and moons, planets and stars are born. The universe comes into being.

Those old women are probably still laughing, especially at anyone who takes their cosmology too seriously . . .

Indigenous cultures tend to take their own stories, not lightly, not seriously, but with an ethos entirely different from the literalism urban folks are accustomed to–we, who must be right; we, who seek the ‘truth.’

. . . as though the truth were an entitlement by which we might dispel uncertainty, irony, ambiguity, complexity and contradiction . . .

The most important choices we make in life are seldom easy. Kindness and compassion involve taking risks that often stretch us beyond our familiar comfort zones. No matter how we describe our process–spiritual practice, morality, living with integrity, learning–it can never be merely mechanical.

The moments of greatest danger or despair often lead to our deepest insight. Yet, all too often we approach religious teachings, including Buddhist ones, with an unconscious expectation that they will affirm dualistic notions we already hold; such as, “mind is real, world is an illusion;” or “world is real, mind is an illusion.” “Government is real.” “Government is not real.”

It has been suggested that the Buddha was attempting to revive ancient ‘indigenous’ ways. He instinctively understood the pitfalls of hierarchical religions based on Sky Gods, and blind attachment to rituals and abstract doctrines.

Perhaps his intention is clearer than ever, as constructs derived from Sky Gods religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) are exploited and distorted for the benefit of nationalistic agendas with unprecedented ruthlessness and violence.

What is uniquely valuable about Buddhist teaching is that it gives us–not just a theory, but a practice, a curriculum of embodiment–to experience everything as real. Reality lies within the relationship things have to each other. Everything is filled with, and echoes, the other. Everything reveals itself.

This pushes us to remain unrelentingly committed to our spiritual and moral practice, while at the same time being completely political. As Gandhi remarked (approximately), “to claim that spirituality and politics are separate is to demonstrate your lack of understanding, both of spirituality and of politics.”