The God Box

A question I usually confront myself with when assessing my religious views is, “What is my God box?” What is a God box? A God box is an individual’s current image of God and everything that God is.  For instance, a simple example would be a God in a toga, who looks like Zeus and lounges on top of a cloud throwing lightning bolts. This God answers your prayers and controls every facet of the universe. Many of us have shared this God box before.  Another God box would be “God is Love”.  In this image, God is more than just a concrete being. He transcends reality and becomes a concept as well. Depending on how you say “God is Love”, this could be seen as a more mature God box. These two examples are what I meant by  ”God box”.

My God box is constantly under evaluation, constantly evolving. Currently I see God as many things: He is the omnipotent father of all things, He is the historical/spiritual Jesus, and It is a spiritual entity that is nebulous in nature and can only be described by what It is not. This could be referred to as the Trinity. My God box is meshed with the concepts and realities of Allah and Buddha, not because I extract what I like from each religion to make my own “cafeteria-style” religion, but because I see how they are the same.  I say He is Love, but I don’t say it like others usually do. My image of God is One who does not do what you ask of Him. He helps you, but not in the way you often want. His will is beyond our will, implemented on behalf of not only our own sakes but everything else’s.

The best way to describe it is the will of a doctor and the will of a patient. We ask the doctor to cure us of our ailments. He cuts us up, he tears things out, he gives us pills. We go through all this invasive treatment with promise of feeling better… and at the end of the day we still feel nauseous and dizzy. Our sutures burn with pain, our insides are roiling inside of us, and the adverse effects of the medication makes us feel even worse. “How does this make me feel better?” the patient asks. The patient and the doctor shared the same goal in curing an ailment, but there was a difference in wills. The patient’s will was to be comfortable. To FEEL better. The doctor’s was to actually fix the problem. The patient was looking for instant gratification while the doctor was addressing the immediate medical priority AND the long term health of the patient. The doctor’s will may not be immediately inherent, but when you stand back and look at what all is going on and also realize that he is not just diagnosing you but hundreds of others don’t you think that what the doctor provided the patient was ultimately more beneficial than what was asked for? Trying to keep myself from writing a novel of a blog, this is the best I can describe what I see God as right now. There’s so much more to God than what I can describe at any point in time.

That’s what determines the scope of my God box: my ability to intuit God. My God box only exists to break God into digestible, bite-size pieces. It’s like a television, which is only capable of showing you what is able to fit onto film. What you see on the screen implies so much more, but you are not able to experience it in its entirety. As time passes, my God box seems to grow bigger and bigger to accomodate for my rapidly expanding image of God, and with each passing evaluation He becomes harder to contain into a box. My God box becomes more strained as I stretch it out. So what is going to happen when it reaches it’s limit? Is it going to halt in it’s tracks? Or is it going to split at the seams and bottom out? Is it going to be too much for me and I’ll just give up on it all? The problem becomes more than just being able to find out what God is. It also becomes an issue of preparing myself to experience more of what He is. It becomes an issue of my integrity as a vessel for God.

And after all that is said and done, after we have established a God box…what does it matter? What was it’s purpose? All we did was construct an image of Him, we never found Him. Wasn’t the God box constructed to help us see God in His entirety? How does it do that by cutting it into pieces? How does it help us see the big picture when all it is capable of doing is showing us a small window into what God is? How can we know who God is by making up our own idea of Him? One thing we must be aware of when constructing this God box is that what we see in it IS NOT GOD. It is our projections that we place onto what we believe God is. What we see in the God box we are more than willing to name God Himself. As DeMello said in Awareness, “people fall into idolatry because they think that where God is concerned, the word is the thing.” We construct a description of who we think God is then we fall into the rut of worshipping that, forgetting that it was only a guess at who He is. DeMello wrote about how he was confronted by a world-renowned scripture scholar. “It never struck me that I had been an idol worshipper all my life! My idol was not made of wood or metal; it was a mental idol.” DeMello reminded his readers that those that had constructed their own mental idol were the more dangerous idol worshippers because “they used a very subtle substance, the mind to produce their God.”

Maybe I was never meant to contain God in a box. Maybe I wasn’t meant to contain Him within me, this body serving as a Temple. How could all of what God is be within me? Maybe I’ve been using the wrong word this whole time. I’m not a vessel, I’m a conduit. I am a channel through which He flows through. Right now, the God box seems irrelevant. My experience and my ideas of God right now have surpassed any words that I am capable of expressing right now.  Right now it doesn’t feel like I could fit what I’m feeling inside a box and I’m all the better for it.

On Nonduality

I was rereading Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hahn with my philosophy group when a friend of mine posted to our email listserv about her confusion over the concept of self-compassion in nonduality in response to Hahn’s quote, “If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others.”  Here was what she had to say:

To me, compassion requires a separate entity that acts as the object receiving the compassion.  I looked up the definition, and compassion is ’sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.’    Compassion comes from compati, meaning ‘to suffer with.’  But if there are not two, there can be no ‘with,’ there is only one ‘nondual’ thing, and that is everything; therefore compassion and sympathy are impossible.

And here was my response:

I think you saw compassion as distancing because the definition used the word “sympathy” as opposed to “empathy”. Whereas empathy is where you feel what the other person is feeling, investing themselves in you, sympathy implies at least some degree of objectiveness or disinterestedness. It is my impression that the accuracy of words is something that is important to you right now. I.e. there is a difference between the words “beautiful” and ”pretty”. If my supposition is true, then that could be a big factor as to why you can’t fully make the concept of nonduality your own. Here we have a concept called nonduality claiming that we only perceive that there are dichotomies, and we are working on dichotomizing the building blocks of communication: words.

Even though I don’t fully grok nonduality, myself, I’ll try to explain what I can understand about it. I think what the concept of nonduality is trying to say is that we are not different from each other, we are not separate. However, we do not exist as one being. We are all connected. We are part of a cycle. Each individual is not separate; he is part of something bigger. He is part of a circuit that could not exist without him. He can not exist as his own separate entity, because if the circuit cannot exist without him, likewise he cannot exist without the circuit. So we do not exactly exist as one; we exist in relation to each other and all compose a sum greater than its parts.

In terms of an analogy, a picture I get of the compassion/nonduality complex is like the body. The heart pumps oxygenated blood to the extremities of the body. From the cor of the body to the fingertips and toes. Like compassion, the heart is affecting something beyond itself. It is supplying oxygen rich blood to the limbs. However, it must also supply oxygen to itself (coronary arteries). If it cannot supply oxygen to itself, how can it supply oxygen to something distal to itself? You must start at the center before you can radiate out. This applies to both the heart and compassion. Furthermore, on the theme of “oneness”, the heart and limb vascularity are both apart of the same system, connected in a continuous loop….I’m not too happy with my own analogy but I think it does its job well enough.

On another, complementary level the dichotomy of self/nonself does not exist in the concept of nonduality. Having said that, reevaluate what TNH said: “”If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others.” Also, with the concept of nonduality, does the dichotomy of duality/nonduality exist?

Personally, I just can’t make this concept mine at this time, and I’m fine with that. I think I resent the concept for reasons I’d have to sit down and think about, and I’m not about to make something I resent a fundament of my life. I’m not going to try to make it mine because Thich Nhat Hahn said I should. I might never make it mine, but if I do one day, I will make it mine because I chose to, not because a monk, regardless of his wisdom, told me to do so.

The Dōkkōdō

So I’ve found something really cool. It’s called the Dōkkōdō or “Path of Aloneness” which is a series of 21 Precepts the famous swordsman Miyamoto Musashi wrote a week before his death.

I liked it because the precepts are very similar to my own values (although mine are not quite as ascetic) and puts into simple words what I strive to achieve. I’ll color code each precept to show how I feel about it and then follow up a little more in depth after each one.

What I strictly follow/agree with
What I’m working on
What I don’t strictly follow/agree with

1. “Accept everything just the way it is.” - I often waste too much energy worrying about the past or how things will happen in the future, but….there’s not much I can really do about all that. I snap my fingers and try to center myself whenever I find that I’m straying too far away from the present.
   
2. “Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.”
   
3. “Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.” - I don’t fully understand what Musashi is trying to say here. I can see how it can apply to swordsmanship, but I’m still trying to see how it incorporates into everyday life.
   
4. “Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.” – Naturally, this is how I am, but not nearly as much as I think I should be. I’m not personally looking to take this as far as constant self-sacrifice on behalf of the world, but I could be doing a whole lot more to benefit it.
   
5. “Be detached from desire your whole life long.” - Well, I agree kinda, but not enough to make it a precept to live by. I’d try my best, but it’s one of those things that I’m not gonna kill myself over if I don’t follow it full heartedly.
   
6. “Do not regret what you have done.” - If you live your life right, there’d be nothing to regret anyway.
   
7. “Never be jealous.” - Okay, I’m guilty. I find myself getting jealous over my sister’s preferential treatment or friends’ more fortunate lives a lot, but then I ask myself “Why am I being so materialistic. Worldly possessions don’t really matter. They’re nice to have, but not the difference between life and death. Also, why would I want to be more like anybody else other than myself?”
   
8. “Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.” - I think what Musashi was trying to say here was that it’s okay to feel sadness after separation, initially. It’s a healthy part of life to mourn, but don’t let it linger for too long. It becomes an unecessary burden. there’s more that I’m trying to say here, but I don’t know how to say it yet. Best I can get to is an analogy: Leaves falling of a branch in autumn. (Soooooo Japanese of me, right?)
   
9. “Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself or others.” - Instead of resentment, either set a course of action to make things right or let go. Most of the time, it will probably come to the latter. Same goes for complaints. Nothing good comes of them, and are counterproductive.
   
10. “Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.” - Heh, if he was influenced by samurai at all, then he was probably referring to celibacy. I don’t intend to take it that far at all, but I know where he’s coming from. Also, I think I know a little bit about what happens when you let love take the reins coughcoughrachelcough
    
11. “In all things have no preferences.” - Say what now? Anywho, it just seems like this wouldn’t really apply to me enough to make the precept my own.
    
12. “Be indifferent to where you live.” - Here, I think what he’s trying to say is that you miss out on too many of life’s experience if you stay in one place too long. Also attachment to worldly possessions can apply to real estate as well. All in all, a sedentary lifestyle is not that worthwhile. However, I do find value in settling down nowadays. A big difference in the way it was back in Musashi’s time and today is the sheer amount of experiences at our disposal. Now, we have a surplus of experiences. I think the task at hand in the present day is weeding out the worthwhile experiences (world travel, community service) from the wasteful ones (most of the trash that’s spouted from teh boob tube)
    
13. “Do not pursue the taste of good food.” - Musashi. Dude. You’re crazy. Call it my greatest vice, but I love food. However, I do believe in all things moderation. This applies to food especially. Also, quality of food counts (enriching foods vs. McDonalds).
    
14. “Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.” - it’s not that I disagree with it, I just don’t support it as strongly as Musashi does about it. I guess you could say it’s too ascetic for my tastes.
    
15. “Do not act following customary beliefs.” - I can see where he’s coming from with this one, too, but I do see where it is beneficial to follow customary beliefs. Those beliefs hold value as well, and most were founded with good intention. However, customary beliefs should NEVER hold you back from progressing.
    
16. “Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.” - I’m already breaking this. I have some ornamental katana, wakisashi, etc. from Chinatown on display on my dresser. Really, though, i’m kinda iffy on this precept. With martial arts especially, I believe in only learning practical uhhh…..practices. It’s good to be practiced in CQC, some jujitsu, and even to go so far as to say trapping. However, to learn swordsmanship today serves no practicality. It’s all for show. On the other hand, there are other lessons to be learned from these now impractical martial arts styles that apply to other aspects of life that I don’t think should be overlooked. As its name conveys, martial arts is an ART and unlike most art it is functional AND serves a purpose. Oy, I could go on and on about this so I’m gonna end it on this note: This precept does not just apply to weapons and fighting, but to life as well. I’ll leave it up to you to determine how (cuz I would probably end up with an essay length explanation)
    
17. “Do not fear death.” - Sure, I still get scared sometimes, but for the most part I don’t fear it anymore. The problem is, my METHOD for not fearing it. This lack of fear sprouts more from ennui, and that’s something I’m trying to change. I’m still in the process of fully accepting death and all that comes with it, but for the RIGHT reasons.
    
18. “Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.” - this one is just obsolete. Nuff said. (although alot can be said about hoarding wealth)
    
19. “Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.” - This also applies to other religions. I’m not saying this is how everybody should believe, but it is definitely how I believe. I’ve always believed in God, but I don’t see Him as answering to my every beck and call. I think it’s kind of disrespectful. I mean, I think we were left here alone to learn, not to be babied around and holding His hand the whole way. It’s not that He’s completely detached from this world’; He still has a hand in it. However, I think there’s a reason why He’s not as involved as we’d all like to believe. I’m sure that could have been more delicately put, but I don’t know how to explain this one any other way. Hopefully you understand what I mean?
    
20. “You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honour.” - I still have trouble defining what exactly honor is, but I do know that mine at the present is different from the traditional Japanese definition. Now, some of you may be thinking “Well this precept conflicts with what he was saying in precept 15.” I’ll tell you one thing. Honor is NOT a customary belief. Methods of preserving it are. I personally do not believe in seppuku.
    
21. “Never stray from the Way.” - The way is a razor’s edge. On one side is a wall of great fire while the other is a torrential wave of water. I do believe I’ve burned myself quite a few times, and gotten wet to say the least. However, I’ll keep on trying for as long as I live.

Does any of this apply to the rest of you guys?