Our Zen story this week is about spiritual bickering.
You would think that spiritual people would be the people that would get along the most, right? You’d think that because we believe in love that everyone should magically get along. Somehow it doesn’t work out, does it? It always seems to go wrong in every single group.
One of the reasons (actually the main reason, particularly if you look at this from the point of nonduality) is because spiritual groups are working on belief. Belief systems are always divisive.
You can believe in love and I believe in love. Well, my idea of love is different than your idea of love. This leads to conflict.
How many times have you been in a situation where someone isn’t being loving enough. Note: it’s you standing there deciding that they aren’t loving enough. And the tables can turn. What if you are the one not being loving enough? Ouch.
The Zen of Mothering
One of the places where we can really see this is in being a mother. Being a good mother is an impossible task. You can’t always be good and be a mother. You’re going to sometimes make mistakes. Your kids are going to sometimes be bad. Right?
Things are gonna happen that are out of your control. It’s gonna just come up,, out of the blue. You may make a mistake. You can figure out later that maybe you should’ve dealt with it differently. But it’s impossible to do everything perfectly all the time.
You have to be willing to live in this imperfect, constant change and yet always be there as the mother.
When you apply this to spiritual circles however, it can get very very confusing because there isn’t just one mother. Everybody has a different idea. If you’re studying some particular discipline it’s going to have rules and ideas. You try to do the rules right: Do this and it’s perfect. Or do that and it’s perfect.
That’s all a pipe dream. Nobody’s gonna be able to do it so there’s going to constantly be conflict.
Inner Bickering
This is also a metaphor for what happens inside of you. You have all these ideas ideas. Ideas and beliefs. So many and you’re never gonna live up to all of them. So you live in this constantly divided state because you are letting your ideas and your beliefs be the master of your life rather than becoming the one that is.
If you if you’ve done any of my courses you’ll know about zero. Zero is the only thing that has no opposite. Or you could look at it a different way… everything is the opposite to zero, right? There’s either nothing or there’s something.
Zero is the only thing that isn’t divided. The only way you can be undivided is if you always come from this point of zero instead of coming from one of your beliefs.
In a spiritual circle the only way that could be zero conflict is if there are no beliefs. Unless, I guess, everyone is forced at gunpoint to believe exactly the same thing.
A story about being divided
The story of Rinjai’s Cat is a perfect story about how divisions play out in our lives. A thousand monks chose their fantasy, their belief system of what meditation is, over reality except for one. Rinjai was clear. Cutting the cat in two was ridiculous.
Zen Paints a Story
Ultimately it’s just a story that paints a picture in your mind. A picture of what clarity and truth look like. The simplicity of it.
This picture is now in your mind. Floating in the zeroness there. This picture is full of clues on how to live your life. Moving you you in the right direction. Peeling the onion toward full enlightenment.
But most of all this story says: stop doing really stupid stuff.