What If?

 

Dualism— Old Man Zen snorts and says, “You just can’t get away from it, can you?”

(Old Man Zen isn’t really real, but he is—— (Really!)

Abbot Andy just wrote a blog post in which he sets evil in opposition to good, and describes violence as an obstacle to non-violence. He proposes a world of well-being without violence, in which “human rights are respected, where fairness reigns, where everyone's capabilities are nourished and flourish, where care for the Other is paramount. I say, too, that nonviolence removes the obstacle of violence and paves the way for a better world.”

I can’t figure out why Old Man Zen doesn’t get pissed off when people don’t understand him. I mean, he’s not a kind person, but he just never gives up. I asked him if I could give it a shot— to describe the deep, dark, illusionary fissure of ‘either-or’ that I see dividing the world: heart against mind; up against down; kind against cruel; hope against fear; grief against pride; good against evil.

He said, “You can certainly try,” — and then it was my turn to give a skeptical snort.

I’m not certain at all, you see, and I’m certainly not going to hold out much hope that I might be understood— but— You see, there’s this tocsin resounding faintly, down in the very deepest, farthest well of reality. Sometimes I can hear it clearly, and sometimes it’s nothing more than the muffled whine of an insect in my ears but, always, I recognize it. So, I’d be deeply mistaken to ignore it. (But, that’s another whole topic: ‘the pervasive depths of error’….) Anyway, I think the only way to come at this is sideways. Let me beg right at the outset for consideration without judgment.

What if there’s no such thing as opposites? What if everything depends on everything else? What if human rights proceed from conquest, and conquest gives birth to human rights? What if unfairness arises from fairness, falls, melts, swirls around, and then fairness arises from unfairness, only to whirl and fall in its turn? What if violence is only violence in the presence of non-violence? What if non-violence depends entirely on the existence of violence? What if nourishment depends on decay, and decay on nourishment? What if there is no flourishing without grief and death? What if the Other isn’t ‘other’?

What if obstacles only interfere with each other? What if they have nothing to do with our dreams, our longings, our sorrows, our joys? What if the world itself is better because it’s worse, and worse because it’s better?

What if kindness and fairness and gentleness are important, not because they are the opposites of something else, but because they are a kind of universal language? What if they aren’t ideas or concepts at all, but something more serviceable? What if they aren’t conditions that human beings experience, but instead are gateways through which we may come and go?

What if there’s something Beyond all these so-called opposites?

Something without a Name; Being itself—beyond time?

Something that’s always existed, before mortal creatures ever gained the knowledge of opposites?

Something that’s the Source of everything that is?