And with that the seekers took leave of the priests, turned hand in hand, and began what would become the most wonderful of journeys.
In a classic Indian parable, three blind men have the opportunity, one by one, to encounter a majestic elephant. The first blind man, passing his hands up and down the beast’s mighty leg, returns from the experience convinced that an elephant’s nature is that of a tree trunk, stout and solid. The next blind man, feeling the sharp tusk protruding from the beast, concludes that an elephant’s nature is that of a warrior carrying a spear. The last blind man, grasping only the bristled tail, is certain that an elephant’s nature is that of a length of rope. Afterwards, they contend with one another over the true nature of the elephant each claims to have encountered. Satisfied that they have correctly understood this magnificent beast, they return to their respective homes and each founds a new religion.
Here ends the classic parable.
But let us imagine what might happen next:
In one part of the village, the first man’s encounter has prompted him to plant groves of date palms. He eagerly instructs his throngs how to pat their hands appreciatively up and down the smooth trunks of the palms. “This,” he teaches them, “is the proper way to experience what I have experienced.”
In another part of the village, the second man’s encounter has convinced him that his followers should be properly armed at all times with a sharpened spear. “Only in this way,” he tells them, “can we emulate the nature of an elephant.”
And in another part of the village, the third man’s encounter has inspired him to reveal the proper way to worship the elephant. He instructs his believers to carefully gather jute fibers and to braid them into coils of sturdy rope. “Entwining these fibers into rope like this,” he explains to his followers, “has been ordained by the elephant as the proper form of worship.”
And so it goes.
Generations pass, and the blind men—each a beloved seer and revelator to his people—live on only in hallowed memory. Priests now carefully preserve correct beliefs about the elephant and regulate the proper forms of worship.
From time to time some of the adherents—often the most sincere and devout—seek further light and knowledge about the elephant.
Is it possible, they ask, that there is more to the elephant than we have understood?
“Nonsense,” the priests reply.
Some of us are imagining a creature so vast that neither a spear nor a rope nor the trunk of a tree can adequately describe it.
“Your imagination will only deceive you,” the priests warn, “and distract you from what has been revealed.”
Then will you yourselves seek out the elephant that our founders encountered, and report to us if there is more that can be known?
“How dare you dictate to us what ought to be done,” they snap.
But the seekers were not to be dissuaded. Then we ourselves will seek out this magnificent creature.
And with that the seekers took leave of the priests, turned hand in hand, and began what would become the most wonderful of journeys.
In a world where religious differences divide, how refreshing to encounter people like Steven Kapp Perry who hosts conversations that build bridges of understanding. Through Steve’s radio show and podcast, In Good Faith, I’ve been introduced to insights on living well and wisely from people of every imaginable background and faith tradition. It’s rare and wonderful to be in conversation with someone whose generosity opens up a space for talking about the the deepest part of who we are.
In this half-hour conversation, I open up about . . .
– How I understand my Mormon upbringing – How Buddhism helps me be a Christian – How my two religions are NOT basically the same, and why that’s good! – How contemplative approaches to spirituality allow for growth and change – How Einstein says we can be free from our prison – How recognizing the Light of Christ or Buddha Nature in ourselves and others moves us from a spirituality of addition and anxiety to a spirituality of subtraction and surrender.
Religions define their boundaries. They establish orthodoxies, prescribe acceptable discourse and conduct, and assert claims about what makes their patch of real estate holy ground. While I understand this tendency, it seems sun-blind to the grace and abundance blossoming beyond our own borders.
Ten years ago a roofing shingle came loose and began flapping in the wind like an injured pigeon. I propped a ladder against the house, climbed up to the second story with some roofing sealant, and patched things up.
But before I climbed back down, I stood and looked out over the neighborhood. The tidy backyard fences divided the neighborhood into a sprawling patchwork quilt. It was spring, and every backyard splashed with color. My neighbor Pam was out, kneeling in the bright daffodils with a trowel. A neighbor to the west had planted a crabapple tree and now its profusion of buds appeared to hover like hot-pink bees. Some yards had dormant lawns greening again. Others were mostly bare except for yellow sprays of forsythia or the waxy leaves of laurel or emerald euonymus. Inside my own fence, delicate pink peach blossoms brightened the yard. Looking out over the neighborhood that morning, I was struck how each backyard hosted its own kind of beauty.
The realization that morning ten years ago came when I had just finished serving as an LDS bishop. The neighborhood, of course, was largely made up of the families I’d come to love and I knew many of the stories that made their lives distinct and special. This was also the time I became more and more convinced that the sacred experiences I’d enjoyed as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were more freely available than I’d supposed. Friends who sincerely engaged in other wisdom traditions were also cultivating what Paul describes as the “fruits of the Spirit,” such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and generosity.
So this image of bright backyards, each a distinct field of beauty, has stayed with me. It reflects how I was beginning to view the rich diversity of faith traditions. But it also reminded me that our faith traditions insist on fences, too.
Religions define their boundaries. They establish orthodoxies, prescribe acceptable discourse and conduct, and assert claims about what makes their patch of real estate holy ground. While I understand this tendency, it seems sun-blind to the grace and abundance blossoming beyond our own borders. It’s as if we think Divine Goodness could be confined to the tidy lines we’ve drawn, holding our crayons like children trying to circumscribe the Infinite.
Whenever I fall into this constricted view, I think back to that expansive morning ten years ago. The birds flitted in and out of backyards, heedless of those fences. And the sun rose over it all, spilling light without discrimination into every yard. Every neighbor who cultivated the ground under her own feet witnessed growth and loveliness; no one’s yard, no matter how lush, stopped the sun from shining in someone else’s yard, too.
Of course, we can’t live on our roofs. That day ten years ago I had to climb back down to earth, and lovingly tend my own backyard. And the roots of my Christian faith continue to nourish my spiritual life. But I’ve never forgotten that in every culture and in every wisdom tradition, the conditions are present for beauty to manifest.
Over the next few months I’d like to share what I find fruitful about following Jesus and what I find fruitful about my Buddhist practice. Please subscribe (it’s free!) if you’d like to notified whenever I share new posts.
When others love us unconditionally—especially those who see, as God sees, our warts and wrinkles in high-def resolution—then the seeds of our divine goodness are watered. We want to more fully become what they have already perceived is possible.
I offered the following scriptural reflection (homily) today at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Provo. The lectionary’s assigned epistle featured Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13.
In this week’s assigned epistle, Paul reminds the Corinthians that they don’t see themselves or each other with enough clarity and enough compassion. “For now,” he says, “we see through a glass darkly,” or as our modern translation puts it, “we see in a mirror, dimly.” (1 Corinthians 13:12, New Revised Standard Version)
In Paul’s day, mirrors were made of polished metal. In fact, Corinth, the rich Greek port city, was noted for manufacturing these mirrors of hammered brass or copper – so the Corinthians’ ears probably perked up when they heard Paul use this analogy in his letter.
Let’s pass this mirror around so you can take a good look at yourself. [I passed a crude homemade mirror around.] Go ahead, take a look at your reflection. Have you all had a turn? Okay, can you understand now why Paul would say that our image of ourselves isn’t quite right? And consider that this hazy, warped perception of ourselves—glimpsed at only in distorted mirrors and mud puddles—has been shaping our sense of self all our lives.
The Bible tells us we are created in the image of God, but how rarely we see ourselves in that divine light. So much obscures the reflection. I learned that in Roman times they would attach to their mirrors a sponge with some abrasive grit from a pumice-stone so they could frequently rub away any dust or film or oxidation clouding up that image.
Where is the sponge to clear away the corrosive layers under which our true identity hides?
And what happens when we do get a glimpse of who we really are? What visions might be ours if our eyes were unveiled, like the blind man’s under Jesus’ touch, and we could see truly and well. And what if we knew that someone else could see us with that clarity and could hold us in their gaze—not with flinching and disgust, but with unfeigned acceptance and love?
What visions might be ours if our eyes were unveiled, like the blind man’s under Jesus’ touch, and we could see truly and well.
Buddha in the Beehive
The Franciscan contemplative Richard Rohr says that “being totally received as we truly are is what we wait and long for all our lives.” What if we believed that’s how God saw us? Not with disgust or disappointment at our inadequacy, but with loving clarity? Rohr continues:
Like a true mirror, the gaze of God receives us exactly as we are, without judgment or distortion, subtraction or addition. Such perfect receiving is what transforms us . . . The One who knows all has no trouble including, accepting, and forgiving all. Soon we who are gazed upon so perfectly can pass on the same accepting gaze to all others who need it.
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
(And after this wonderful simile, I must beg our C. S. Lewis fans to forgive me for entitling today’s homily “Mirror Christianity.” It seemed apropos for this, um, reflection. And we’ll hear from Lewis himself in a minute.)
Are we hearing then what Paul is saying to the Corinthians? “Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” It’s both an admission and a reassurance: I admit I don’t comprehend my intrinsic goodness and my divine potential, Paul is confessing. I don’t fully see it in myself and I don’t fully see it in you. But someday I will. And so will you. We will know, even as we are known.
Now hear what C. S. Lewis says:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities . . . that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people.
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Little wonder Paul shares this insight in the context of his sublime hymn about love. Love awakens in us a sense of our own worth. When others love us unconditionally—especially those who see, as God sees, our warts and wrinkles in high-def resolution—then the seeds of our divine goodness are watered. We want to more fully become what they have already perceived is possible.
When others love us unconditionally—especially those who see, as God sees, our warts and wrinkles in high-def resolution—then the seeds of our divine goodness are watered. We want to more fully become what they have already perceived is possible.
Buddha in the Beehive
That kind of love, that pair of charitable glasses through which Christians are called to view the world and everyone in it, “is patient, is kind, is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” It “bears all things” –including others’ imperfections – and “believes all things”–including the foundational truth that we are all created in the image of God. That kind of love holds out hope that we ourselves, and everyone else around us, are Divine masterpieces even if our Creator hasn’t yet finished her work.
As we read in John’s first epistle,
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when Jesus is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is”
(1 John 3:2)
We won’t need mirrors in that day, for as Paul said, we will see face to face. We will recognize the imago dei, the divine image, in one another.
But why not start seeing that way today? Why not recognize that this is already how God sees us?
This week many Buddhists have been reflecting on the loss of Thich Nhat Nhan, the Vietnamese Zen Master who passed away one week ago. In the Plum Village tradition he founded (and of which I’m a part) there is a custom when we greet someone of bringing our hands together at our heart to form a lotus bud. Then we say, “A lotus for you, a buddha to be.”
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, author of Living Buddha, Living Christ
To recognize the buddha nature of another person is to recognize their capacity for awakening, for blossoming like a lotus into perfect wisdom and perfect compassion. The hands form a lotus bud because this is a process of becoming what it is already our nature to become; when we recognize this in one another, and show reverence for the goodness in one another, we nourish the conditions that help that divine seed grow and blossom.
The hands form a lotus bud because this is a process of becoming what it is already our nature to become; when we recognize this in one another, and show reverence for the goodness in one another, we nourish the conditions that help that divine seed grow and blossom.
Buddha in the Beehive
As a parish of all-too-human brothers and sisters, may we come “to know and to be known.” May we acknowledge that we don’t know the full storyor the full glory of ourselves or of each other. May we practice seeing with the pure love of Christ, which never fails, until we behold everything and everyone – wondrous and warty – with the eyes of “faith, hope, and charity.”
From the laziness that is content with half-truths,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Oh God of Truth, deliver us.
~ Ancient Prayer
IN 1633, THE ROMAN INQUISITION CHARGED Galileo Galilei with heresy. His crime? Entertaining the notion that the sun “does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world,” and for espousing a theory deemed “false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scripture.”
While Galileo didn’t invent the heliocentric model of the universe, he discovered plenty of evidence for it. His own powerful telescopes were showing him things never before encountered, and mathematical reasoning confirmed what others, like Copernicus, had been saying. To a rational mind, there was no denying the soundness of the astronomer’s conclusion, but it was an inconvenient truth, to say the least, in an age where burning heretics, not fossil fuels, contributed most to global warming.
To be fair, scientists and philosophers, not just the Church, opposed him. But it was the Church with the power to coerce and intimidate. As the sole mediator of rites essential to salvation, God’s priestly representatives could strip Galileo of his eternal salvation. What could man do more?
I can imagine Galileo’s family and friends pleading with him to stop studying the heavens. It’s dangerous, they must have said. Put away your telescope.
Inquisitive Latter-day Saints hear that, too. Why study the night sky when its constellations have already been named, catalogued, and described in our Church-approved manuals? Why look at the heavens when Deseret Book publishes thousands of titles on Astronomy? There’s no need to look for yourself. And it could be dangerous: You could lose faith in the truthfulness of the Star Map. Put away your telescope.
And yet, like Galileo, the urge to know the truth by our own experience, to understand what’s really out there, compels us to look for ourselves. So we look. And then we begin to understand why there was so much institutional hand-wringing over what we might find.
We’re discovering some stars in the night sky that don’t correspond to the official Star Maps we’ve been issued at Church. Certain constellations have been left off the official charts, and it appears that some stars have even been redrawn to suggest patterns that aren’t present in a clear reading of the starry sky. Not only that, but those who’ve traveled far and wide report that what we see printed on our Star Maps constitutes only one perspective, from a Northern line of latitude, and that skywatchers in the Southern Hemisphere see an entirely different set of stars. The discrepancies are not easily dismissed.
We are confused.
We hear leaders telling us not to trust our own eyesight, to doubt our faculties of reason. We hear apologists pat us on the head and explain that there’s really no contradiction between what we’re seeing in our telescopes and what’s on our official Star Maps. Then we go to Church and hear people bearing testimony of the Star Map. And we sing, Praise to the Cartographer. And what we hear most of all is that we shouldn’t be looking through our own telescopes in the first place, but instead should exercise faith that the Star Map is True.
That last point prompts me to ask: Should we have testimonies of the Star Map and its Cartographers? Or should we have direct encounters with the Heavens they attempt to describe? Isn’t it rather like going to a restaurant and worshipping the menu instead of savoring the food?
I’VE BEEN AIMING MY OWN TELESCOPE at the spectacular cosmos that is Mormonism, collapsing its distance, but until recently I’ve been reluctant to share an honest account of what I’ve seen. For one thing, I realize my view is filtered through a particular lens, shaped by my personal and cultural biases, faulty reasoning powers, and limited perception. For another, I haven’t wanted to force anyone to look through the telescope with me, believing it’s the prerogative of each person to decide if and when they look for themselves. But mostly, it’s fear that has kept me–and so many like me–from giving an honest report of our experience. We stand much to lose by admitting that we see things differently. We are branded as arrogant, faithless, deluded, disloyal, and dangerous.
I get it. I’ve been there myself. By discrediting a person, we don’t have to grapple with the questions he or she raises. And when our most crucial claim as an institution is that we’re right about everything, it’s simply not permissible to allow someone to suggest we may be wrong about anything. The community protects itself from the vulnerability of uncertainty by marginalizing anyone who doesn’t reinforce their sense of certainty. And if there’s one thing out of which we Mormons fashion a Golden Calf, it’s our personal and collective certainty.
Fortunately, astronomical charts can be redrawn to more closely reflect reality. At the institutional level, curriculum and resources are being re-written to acknowledge some of the more egregious discrepancies between our traditional narratives and more honest tellings. No doubt, this change comes as the Church is hoping to earn back the trust of those who have been far more more troubled by the lack of openness than they are by a clear reading of the stars. I applaud this forthrightness for its own sake, and am persuaded that whenever institutions resist transparency they will lose credibility with Millennials for whom unrestricted access to information is seen as a birthright.
Call me crazy, but I still find value in those Star Maps. They fire my spiritual imagination. They bestow a mythic power on our collective narrative. And the awe they’ve instilled in me over so many years has become the prime motivator for me to seek my own direct, unmediated experience with the Universe.
Put away our telescopes? Not a chance. The Heavens are calling!
~
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HAVE YOU EVER STOOD BEHIND a Buddhist at a hot dog stand? It’s always the same thing:
What would you like?
Can you make me one with everything?
This craving for a sense of one-ness is at the heart of my spiritual practice. I want to dissolve the boundaries of self that separate me. I know that sounds like New Age mumbo-jumbo, but I’m hard pressed to think of any spiritual tradition that doesn’t try to tackle the problem of alienation.
Christianity, for one, explains this alienation as the “fruit of man’s first disobedience” and nothing less than the sacrifice of God’s Beloved Son could appease the decree of Divine Justice and thereby reconcile us to God. And in the Jewish narrative, alienation takes the form of exile and the promise of return, a theme woven throughout Hebrew myth and history. In the East, Vedic traditions (Hinduism) make Yoga–or Divine Union–the aim of their spiritual disciplines, which entails penetrating the facade of individual selfhood to realize the Divine Spark that infuses the whole of creation.
Buddhism, for its part, understands this sense of separateness as a dream, a delusion from which we must awaken. The notion of having a “self,” some enduring entity, is considered to be a trick of the mind, just a deeply entrenched mental construct. I find myself resisting this idea, sometimes viscerally. Other times, I’m drawn to it. Especially as I come to understand the idea more clearly.
You see, it isn’t so much that Buddhism rejects the notion of a self, but it rejects the notion of a separate self, a self-contained, independently existent identify. The truth, in this way of thinking, is that we are not independent, but interdependent. This is a spiritual ecology: we are woven into the web of all existence, and each strand is inextricably linked to the whole.
And yet, how persistent is the delusion, how unshakeable its resulting feeling of isolation. Einstein offered us a Humanist’s lens through which to understand this phenomenon when he observed that:
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
I know this. I bow to the beauty of this. So why am I still locked up inside that prison? Why do I persist in labeling everything in terms of “Me” and “Not-me,” depending on which side of my epidermis it happens to be? Am I destined forever to view myself, to borrow a phrase from Alan Watts, as an “isolated ego inside a bag of skin”?
Ah, the ego. That “I” which renders us so utterly myopic. There’s a term in Vedic philosophy—ahamkara in Sankskrit —that means, literally, “I-maker.” It refers to the part of us that creates a sense of selfhood. So, does the universal instinct to create a sense of self arise because this, in fact, accords with reality? Or is it merely a mirage? an abstraction? a term for something imaginary, like the number zero, which doesn’t actually exist but is nonetheless useful? And whether real or imagined, how do we keep the ego from overstating its place in the cosmos?
For Zen Buddhists, the practice of zazen, or seated meditation, is one way to silence the ego, or at least blur the lines between us and other. In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Roshi Suzuki explains that, during breathing meditation,
When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say “inner world” or “outer world,” but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, “I breathe,” the “I” is extra. There is no you to say “I.” What we call “I” is just a swinging door…”
This is part of my spiritual practice, and it works for me. At least it works until I notice it’s working. Then my ego stands up to take a bow (Look at me! I’m so . . . enlightened!) or else, ignored too long, it throws a tantrum and starts banging its tin cup against the bars of my mind.
If sitting cross-legged isn’t your cup of green tea, I’m happy to let you in on a secret: the prison warden has also (temporarily) let me out of my ego-cell at the following moments:
drifting in a kayak at Monterey Bay with sea otters
partaking of the sacrament of communion
sitting in a field of birds (without my field guide and lists)
those first two minutes of the “Adagio” in Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, as interpreted by Julian Bream
in the union of love-making with my beloved
watching a camp fire when everyone’s done talking
lying on my back facing a big sky
bowing to a bowl of soup at Deer Park Monastery
These are fleeting moments of liberation, to be sure. But they suggest more is possible. What they teach me is that, regardless of whether that “bag of skin” I call myself in fact envelopes an enduring identity or is just a soul-stunting illusion, I can experience times when I am deeply connected to those around me—indeed, with the whole universe.
For now, I choose to think of my identity as a constituent cell of some vast and beautiful organism. That cell has shape and definition, and perhaps a crucial function to perform, however small. But the vitality of that cell—that individual self—requires that it be encapsulated in a membrane that is not sealed off from the rest of the organism. In biology, these kinds of cell walls are said to be semi-permeable. The osmotic exchanges upon which life depend happen only when a cell is willing to give and willing to receive—to remain open and vulnerable to possibilities.
In the meantime, if I can’t be subsumed like a dewdrop into the ocean, then let me, like the poet, say to all the universe, Let there be commerce between us.
You know how a small child can make the rest of us disappear simply by shutting her eyes? Psychologists tell us that babies lack the capacity to conceive of perspectives beyond their own field of vision. It’s something they must develop as they mature—understanding that their perspective is not the only perspective, that they are not the axis around which the universe turns.
Civilization passes through developmental stages, too. As hunter-gatherers, family and clan affiliation were sufficient for our success. But in making the switch to agriculture, success meant cooperation across family lines. Family and clan loyalties extended to tribal loyalties, chiefdoms, and city states. A robust population could now undertake labor-intensive enterprises like erecting walls and building infrastructure, and, critically, when attacked by marauding bands, a strong city-state could defend itself.
And so it went. City-states waged war with their nearest neighbor. Then a greater threat would inevitably come along that threatened to destroy them both. Leaders that could see past their mutual differences would form an alliance with their erstwhile enemy, ensuring their mutual survival in the face of a common enemy. Create a confederation of such alliances, and . . .voila! . . . nations are born.
And the cycle continues. Nations fight neighboring nations. A common enemy threatens their destruction. True leaders see past their mutual differences and form alliances with their erstwhile enemies, working together to solve global problems, collaborate on mutual interests, and increase the likelihood of an enduring peace.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Is civilization now poised to make the next leap? Can we transcend the arbitrary boundaries of ethnicity, religion, and geo-politics? Can we conceive of an identity so inclusive that it circumscribes the whole human family?
In 1968, on Christmas Eve, the crew of Apollo 8, in lunar orbit, snapped a picture of Earth rising from the moon’s surface. This was humanity’s first chance to see ourselves from a distance. (Shout out to Bette Midler) Beamed from the lunar orbiting capsule, it was as if the people of earth were the recipients of a Divine Greeting Card.
If this was humanity’s attempt at launching into a new era of pax cosmos, it soon became apparent that, to achieve escape velocity, we’d need to overcome the gravitational pull of old paradigms. When we landed on the moon that next summer, Neil Armstrong announced one giant leap for mankind, and then promptly jabbed an American flag deep into the moon dust.
Still, it’s often the wide-frame perspective that we get from space that best expands our vision of what it means to be a citizen of Earth. I know of no more stirring call for a global ethos than that offered by Carl Sagan, whose Voyager I project afforded us a view of Earth as seen from the edge of the solar system. We were just a pale, blue dot.
I’ll close with Carl Sagan’s stirring words:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
~ Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, (1994)
If you enjoyed this, stay tuned for my next post, in which I explore the challenges of dissolving personal boundaries of self that prevent atonement. “Follow” this blog to receive updates on new posts, or subscribe through email.
Buddha in the Beehive 