Path

We are born as single, distinct individuals, despite any familial nurturing or support. All things pass away. With age, those of us who survive longest live the loneliest lives. This is nature. Eventually we die our separate deaths. Our bodies simply give out from one cause or another.

Our conscious lives are linear, despite any meditative or holistic practice we adopt along the way. This is an inevitable human condition. We can flee into denial, drug addiction or insanity in attempts to avoid it. But, the heart beats and the lungs bellow their inevitably finite number of mechanical times before they cease, like all engines in a material world.

Should we spend our time unnecessarily preoccupied with living longer and looking perpetually young? What is the use? How does that help the human condition or promote peace for all? When the door closes on each life, it closes as relentlessly as the door of a subway train. Death comes. There's no holding it back indefinitely.

So, given the limits of our human journey, what path should we follow? Should we wallow in hedonistic pleasure? Should we see life as an endless bag of potato chips to be devoured and craved indefinitely? Should we become self-centered and get everything we can for our own pleasure in the short time we have? She would focus on fleeting fame or popularity?

Perhaps we should shed every pleasure in favor of mind expansion and understanding of the human condition. The cloister, the cave, the mountaintop. Austerity in the name of inner peace and liberation.

I believe in the Middle Path. I live immersed in the world, yet not attached to it. I care for my body and mind, but I heed the needs of those around me and respond as best I can. I savor the basic pleasures of home, mobility and social intercourse, but I am prepared at any time to move from my place or my life in the inevitable loneliness of the human condition. I try to take what I need from life. I understand that wanting, when I am full, is a disease. I work to heal that disease in my own life. I try to help others to escape from needless wanting.

This Middle Path is often hard to see in the forest of modern urban life. Deep breathing and patience afford me the time to seek it when I am enveloped in the fog of my own anxiety or the demands of others. Time in meditation and times of being touched by love form the serene pool of happiness and reserve which sustains me when a crisis has passed. All falls into perspective. I know the journey ahead. It is uniquely mine, and I must travel it alone. This is what it is. I am at peace with it and with myself.

Funerals

I attended the Catholic funeral mass for a dear relation yesterday. In the midst of his address to the assembled mourners in the deteriorating, ornate church, the officiating priest put in an obvious plug for the Catholic ritualization of burial. To paraphrase, he said, "We need the incense. We need the altar. We need the flowers. We need the music. We need the prayers.....We come here to be fed."

While I respect and understand the decision of the survivors in this case to have this ritual, I personally could not relate to this advertisement. In fact, I would have felt better if we had all convened and talked... honestly talked...about our lives, the life of the deceased, and what we feel about our own inevitable deaths. I feel that this is what we need as mortal human beings, anticipators and survivors of The Great Common Loss, Death. I believe this process would be healing medicine for the alienation and anxiety many of us feel in today's world.

The Catholic service speaks repeatedly of an afterlife, superior to the life lived. What does this say about the Catholic perspective on the life lived, the only life we have as conscious human beings? Is this a message of support? Is this a message of love? Is this a message of understanding and valuing of a life lived peacefully and lovingly? I say it is not. I also say it belies a basic deficit in Catholic charity, imprisoned in tarnished, antique dogma.

I do not mean this as an attack on Catholicism, despite Catholicism's unrelenting attacks on my integrity and moral equality as a sexually active gay man. Catholicism is not the only religion which has capitalized on unenlightened death rituals to propagate its existence. I simply wish to suggest to anyone who reads this entry that you do not have to grieve through rituals which do not support the wonder of life as it is. You can choose to mourn your losses differently. You can plan your own funeral or memorial service while you are alive to suit how you would like to honor the life you are creating in each moment now. I recommend doing this.

Embracing mortality often entails letting go of delusions of immortality, which are fostered by religions for their own purposes. I say, "Come and be fed by our commonality and mutual love as mortal brothers and sisters who will all die and can choose to live in peace in this moment. Let's work together as long as we are alive to build a wonderful world for those who come after us. Let's take joy in recognizing that better world as our memorial."

Commonality

In a recent group discussion about forgiveness, the consensus seemed to be that reaching some sense of commonality with the person who offends helps when trying to forgive that person. One member of the discussion spoke of trying to summon forgiveness for a person who had committed atrocities against many human beings. This was a hard case.

The ultimate commonality which we all share with all other beings is our mortality. I have begun to incorporate a more present consciousness of this reality in my daily practice of being. For example, when confronted with an insect in my kitchen, I struggle with the impulse to kill it. I think of the parallel between its life and my own. I question whether my ability to kill it easily is a justification for killing it. I consider that the minor violence of killing the insect brings me closer to committing future violence. If the insect poses a real threat to my own immediate well being, I may kill it. Otherwise, I will attempt to remove it without fatally harming it.

I am not a Jain, but I understand the Janist approach to defeating the impulse to violence in our animal brains. The building of patterns of behavior in daily life leads to the growth of the human condition, individually or societally. By remembering the precious brevity of all life, I find that the impulse to anger and violence is much more easily managed. Getting to the awareness and acceptance that we al die all too soon is a challenge in a world of electronic avatars and fundamentalist religions, which promote an illusion of immortality.

Politicians

The recent death of Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts gave the awake observer some tremendous insights into politics, government as we know it, and politicians. The mindful and truthful have been testifying against politics, government and politicians since these phenomena were invented. And King Solomon would again shake his head and shrug if he were alive today. Nothing new under the Sun.

At a time when politicians in the majority are taking bribes (they call these 'campaign contributions') from the private health insurance industry to keep the American people slaves to premiums which support a Byzantine insurance bureaucracy, we have heard somber, solemn and totally hypocritical eulogies about the one Senator in Congress who has consistently supported universal health care with no buts or ifs.

'That's the way our system works, ' I have heard them say in defense of their hypocrisy and corruption. They speak of the interests of corporations as though they were of equal moral and ethical merit as the interests of the population, The People. This is not only lying. It is unconstitutional. We are supposed to be a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people. Corporations are not people. CEOs and lobbyists are people, but they are an infinitesimal minority of the people. Why are their interests being held above those of all the people?

Most troubling to me is the lack of counterpoint coming from the Kennedys themselves. In order to provide themselves the glory of a state funeral, it appeared, they have allowed the most despicable celebrities of the political class to jump on the funeral publicity train. The very people who have plotted to defeat the central pillar of Edward Kennedy's career, universal health care, rushed to fill well positioned church pews in Boston.

Death is not negotiable. It has no nuance. It is not debatable. It has no Right or Left. And neither does Truth.

If Americans could grasp and internalize their mortality, stripped of all the opiates of religion, plastic surgery, hormone enhancement, and television, perhaps they would demand Truth from their politicians. Perhaps they would demand that a Truthful legacy be granted to honor a man of the caliber of Senator Kennedy. Perhaps they would demand basic human rights, like health care, for all Americans and all the people in the world.

Patience

We are finite, mortal. Our lives can be measured in seconds, minutes, hours. As the clock ticks, our lives diminish in length. This is a reality that few can face directly and consciously in every moment. The developed practice of doing this can lead to great peace and patience.

The wisdom of accepting the active death of every moment is this: Nothing is crucial or indispensable or irrevocable. In short, nothing is as precious as the present moment.

This is both a challenge and a relief. The challenge is to be, in each precious moment, a mindful, compassionate and evolving person. The relief comes with the acceptance of death as the inevitable equalizer of all things. Comprehension of these realities through practice brings great patience and peace.

Machines

We are machines. Complex biological machines. The average number of heart beats for mammals is 1.5 billion per lifetime. No matter what size or shape of the mammal. Big mammals have lower heart rates. Small mammals have higher. This explains the difference in lifespans between species. There is also a cellular metabolic factor which is proportional to size.

The human heart beats a higher amount of beats than the average, due to the human ability to consciously intervene in our mechanical operation by modifying diet, exercise and intervening in disease with biochemicals and surgery.

Once we accept that we are indeed mortal, mechanical entities, we can exert ourselves even more diligently in extending our lifespan by taking active interest and precautions. We are not simply pawns of some deity or victims of some cruel Fate. Each of us is a machine with various strengths and weaknesses to be developed or compensated for. Our equality lies in this very common denominator.

Practice is the process of machine maintenance and improvement.

Lies

The Truth is, of course, an abstract concept. I mean The Truth of a situation or an action contains many aspects. There is subjective truth, which is what the participants in a certain situation or action perceive as what really occurred or motivated them. There is the objective truth of what an observer or listener perceives about the same situation or action. This is obviously at the basis of Justice. Sorting out where the subjective and objective truths converge to create The Truth, in order to determine responsibility and accountability.

To live mindfully and compassionately in society requires constant assessment of what is truthful and what is a lie. The worst lies are those we tell ourselves. The more lies we tell ourselves, the less connected we are to The Truth of life and The Truth of being an evolving person.

One of the most common lies which we tell ourselves over and over again is a denial of our mortality. This particular lie is extremely corrupting to the human consciousness. To maintain it, people go to great lengths. The plastic surgery industry and the pharmaceutical industry can bank on that.

When I made the conscious decision forty-seven years ago to come out as a gay man, I took my first feeble steps toward the light of Truth in my life. It was a hard road then, and it continues to be a hard road now at times. Yet, I feel that I can see where I am going on that road. That makes each footstep a little easier.

Embracing the lies leads to much more confusion and pain in life. Lies require so much damn maintenance. Sharing in the lies of others layers blinding insulation over one's whole life to the point that any truth seems unreachable without a major breakthrough. For some, I suppose, this is what happens when they are 'born again'.

Taking the first step to The Truth begins in this moment, and the next, and the next. This is called practice.