©
Dick Rauscher
Middle path spirituality is defined simply as the ability
to live life in the gray of paradox, ambiguity, uncertainty, and not
knowing. A psychological place of emptiness where the love and compassion
of Jesus, Buddha, and all the great spiritual teachers of history are
encountered.
These spiritual teachers have
invited us throughout human history to do no harm and embrace a middle
path compassion by eliminating
the social caste categories of "otherness" that are used to
define who is included and who is excluded in our culture. They referred
to these arbitrary social categories as illusions1 and taught
that all reality is simply a part of the Unity we call God. If these
arbitrary categories we use to socially define ourselves are truly nothing
but illusions and could therefore be eliminated from our thinking,
then we could indeed learn to embrace the middle path spirituality of
compassion that these spiritual teachers have been trying to teach us
about.
Nobel prize winner and Buddhist peace activist Thich
Nhat Hanh, once told an audience that
"if you want to eliminate the tree of conflict
and suffering in the world, you have to chop out the roots, not trim
the branches".
Middle Path spirituality reflects
the integration of knowledge and insights from the field of psychotherapy
with the spirituality
and the spiritual disciplines of both current and ancient religious traditions…….a
spirituality that embodies the idea that
if we truly intend to live
a life that does no harm to others, then we cannot let anything
that does cause harm
to others enter into the way we think or live our life… …regardless
of our contemporary cultural values, our various religious theologies,
or our own ego’s opinions, beliefs, or certainties.
Virtually all of the conflict and violence we see around
the world is created by rigid beliefs and the certainties of black and
white thinking.2 But in
our Western culture, and especially in the Christian Church, we have
learned to blame conflict, violence, and suffering on the devil. This
practice of blaming the devil for evil and suffering effectively eliminates
any possibility of world transformation since it denies the reality that
the real source of violence is found in our own rigid beliefs
and primitive black and white thinking,. This why I refer to rigid
black and white beliefs and the certainties they create in each of us
as the enemy of compassion. I find no conflict or violence in the
world that does not have it’s roots embedded in the rich soil of
black and white thinking. Can we begin to see that truth in our own lives?
Living a life on the middle path
requires spiritual practices and mental health disciplines rarely found
within either our
world religions or our global culture. In fact, learning to walk the
middle path of compassion requires revisiting the original teachings
of people like Jesus and Buddha. For Christians especially, it means
returning to a time before the emerging theology of the early Christian
church turned the soft compassionate teachings of Jesus into the granite
certainties, absolutes, and beliefs of the "faithful". Sadly,
these rigid black and white theological beliefs have once again defined
who is included and who is excluded….this time from the Kingdom
of God and eternal life. The suffering these rigid theological certainties
have caused over the last 2000 years is incalculable.
It has been said that insanity or mental illness is
doing the same thing today that we did yesterday and somehow expecting
a different outcome. As the level of conflict and suffering in the world
continues to climb, it is clear that something has to change in the way
we teach the children in our various global cultures that compassion
is an important social and spiritual value.
It has to be obvious to anyone
seriously concerned with increasing the capacity for compassion in
the world, that teaching more
religious theology, dogma, doctrines, and individual salvation is not
the answer. In fact, throughout history, religious theology has clearly
been a major contributor to the problem of global violence and suffering.
Our news papers are filled with reports of death and suffering caused
by the increasing terrorist activities of radical conservative religious
and political groups in Ireland, India, Pakistan, Bosnia, Israel, Palestine,
and Albania…to name only a few. If we are serious about becoming
a culture that "does no harm", then we must be willing to embrace
change.
Changing the simplistic black and white belief systems
of childhood into the more complex gray belief systems of adulthood is
a very difficult journey of transformation that very few people are able
to accomplish. It requires a change in the way we think and view the
world.
There was a patient in a psyche ward of a local hospital
who insisted he was dead. No one had been successful in helping this
patient overcome his distorted thinking. One day a young psychiatric
resident asked his mentor if he could try to help this patient. The
senior psychiatrist agreed.
The young resident said to
the patient "I understand
that you think you are dead". The man responded " I don’t
think I’m dead, I know I’m dead".
The resident then asked him "Do dead people bleed"?
The man thought for a moment
and then laughed and said "Of course dead people can’t
bleed. Anyone knows that."
At that point, the resident
took the man’s hand
and pricked his finger with a needle. The finger began to bleed.
The resident pointed smugly
to the man as said "then
how do you explain the blood that is coming from your finger?"
The man looked thoughtfully
at his finger for a while and then replied "That’s easy. It’s
obvious that dead people do bleed."
The moral to this story is that when a firmly held
belief encounters reality, reality suffers, not the belief.
Psychology teaches that our behaviors
will always reflect our conscious and unconscious beliefs…..both primitive and mature.
Our ego’s simply cannot act in any other way. Even if we attempt
to change ourselves by force of will, the moment we forget we are trying
to change, our ego will return our behavior back to that which is consistent
with our inner beliefs.
If we wish to become compassion
and do no harm to others, we must be willing to dig out the roots of
violence and suffering
that harden our own hearts, and eliminate the categories of otherness
each of us create by our own black and white thinking process’.
Conflict, violence, and suffering will continue to dominate our global
culture until each of us as individuals can mature our thinking process
and grow spiritually into the emptiness of compassion. When we raise
our own ability to become compassion, we raise the compassion of the
universe. When we make compassion visible, we make the Creator visible.
The middle path is simply an
internal journey into emptiness, not knowing, silence, simplicity,
living in the moment, and accepting
reality for what it is. Middle path is a journey that each of us must
take for ourselves, no one can do it for us. It requires the painful
letting go of the cherished ego beliefs, certainties and opinions of
simplistic thinking…..the emptying and quieting of our black and
white childhood ego’s that "know" so much. Can
we learn to do this for ourselves? On the middle path, there is no "otherness" …..only
Unity and a Oneness with the Creator of the Universe. Can we recognize
for ourselves that separateness and individualism are illusions created
by our own egos?
Like all of the great spiritual teachers of history,
Jesus and Buddha invited us to "see" the world in a
new way. They knew that how we "see the world in a new way.
They knew that how we "see" would determine the paths
we would walk and the way that we would live our lives. Until we as adults
learn how to eliminate the artificial categories and caste distinctions
created by our black and white thinking, we will be unable to teach our
children the insights and wisdom taught by these spiritual teachers.
Until we learn to dig out the roots of violence that live within our
own hearts, we will continue to have inquisitions, witch hunts, crusades,
holy wars, cold wars, world wars, Tibet’s, Israel’s, Palestine’s,
Ireland’s, Albania’s, and Bosnia’s.
Only open, vulnerable hearts
can build a compassionate global community. We can be vulnerable only
when we feel safe with one
another. Compassionate communities will evolve only when we have learned
how to live on the middle path where the categories of "otherness",
and the violence and suffering they create, no longer exist. We must
learn these skills and then find ways to teach them to our children.
Only then will legislated moral values, work shops that teach us to establish
boundaries to protect us from one another, and social programs designed
to help the powerless and disadvantaged, that only trim the branches
of conflict and suffering, no longer be important and needed.
Jesus, Buddha, and all of the
great spiritual teachers and mystics of history, have spoken to us
of the same truth……….
that compassion has nothing to do with good deeds or believing in a certain
way theologically. It is the result of a first hand encounter with the
compassionate Creator of the Universe forged in the silence and emptiness
of the middle path. When we have the courage to undertake this journey
of transformation and spiritual growth that leads to the development
of a middle path spirituality, only then we will stop doing self-righteous
acts "of" compassion, and learn to "become" compassion.
A compassion that knows no categories of otherness. A compassion born
in silence and listening, not knowing, emptiness, and humility. A compassion
we call God.
To become a person who does no harm in this moment
I must learn to walk the middle path……a journey of spiritual
growth and transformation…..to a place of emptiness and humility.
May I develop the wisdom of not-knowing.
To change and grow, I must be willing in this moment
to shed my beliefs, certainties, and opinions just as a snake sheds
it skin to grow.
May I develop the courage to not-know.
To know the truth of anything I must be willing in this moment
to suspend belief and disbelief.
May I develop the skill of emptiness and listening.
To know the truth of anything, I must be willing to
live in this moment with attention, honesty, gentleness, and
compassion.
May I develop the gift of awareness.
To grow spiritually I must be willing to live in this moment
as a co-creator with the Creator of the Universe making love and compassion
manifest.
May I become compassion.
Life is like a brilliant flash of light and then it
is darkness for eternity.
May I live my wild and precious life fully awake
and conscious.
As I live this moment of my wild and precious
life, will I stay awake and do these things, or will I fall asleep
and do something else?
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