It's not the words so much as the hidden meanings they hold in which I take a sublime pleasure. Some of my associates consider that I live the life of a monk. Passersby may look at the temporary vehicle used for physical conveyance and remark on its beauty. These two extremes are in the eyes of the beholders, though I do recognize that I drive a nice car. The truth is I made the purchase a long time ago and probably wouldn't do it again. It's easier for me to be a renunciant if I don't put things in my name. That way the title to the car doesn't enslave me in entitlement.

Can there be any anchor more effective in stopping internal progress than our right to ourselves? It's the compost in which our negative emotions grow, thrive and bear abundant fruit--the fruit of violence. Perhaps I've written before that Buddha in his discourse on lovingkindness said, Live lightly with few duties. The reason I say it so often is because it's a foundational ingredient to a life of peace. He starts off his discourse by saying, To reach the state of peace . . .People talk about peace and usually mean the cessation of war or conflict of some kind. Peace isn't a place outside ourselves but an inner state that must be reached, attained and then inhabited with gratitude or it will be as fleeting as peace on earth. I'm not saying there is such a thing as peace on earth. I can't remember a time when the world was at peace. The best we do is contain the conflicts between nations. Now we put a rope around the ring and hope the violence and hatred will not spill outside of it. It's a step I suppose and a step is all an infant learning to walk can take in the beginning. The price of peace is generally too high for modern man. Monks have peace. Renunciants have peace but only if they have genuinely given up their right to themselves. It's a very difficult path if done from the outside-in rather than the inside-out. A woman sat in my office yesterday and told about the latest spiritual fad that has attracted her attention and admiration. Having known her for nearly twenty-five years and watched her toy with one discipline after another it was easy to contain my excitement. I didn't have any. This was just another thing. You see, she is punctilious (showing great attention to detail or correct behavior). Stupidly I said something about it. As any good punctilious person will do she smilingly demurred on the outside while she violently objected on the inside. It's like I said last time, sometimes we're not ready to grasp the truth.

When I was a child there was a film titled, I Led Two Lives. It was about a transvestite who revealed his secret to his unsuspecting financee. The two lives that we all lead are the inner and outer life. We have the side with which we face the world and a darker, internal side that rarely sees the light of day or consciousness. Amazingly we often buy our own facade and defend it even internally to ourselves. It's because when you tell a lie long enough people start to believe it. We are people and we believe our own lies. If there is no light to see the difference between the truth and a lie there's no way to become aware of the difference. Even if we do get some light inside it's very difficult to face something that goes against years of crystalized belief, habit and the attitudes they manifest. There can be no lasting change on the outside until there is first a change that takes place on the inside. It's not enough to change because we so quickly change back to what is familiar because it is more comfortable, habitual, established and agreeable. An inner change requires outer adjustments as well as inner adjustments. Many otherwise sincere people turn back when they face resistance from their friends and family after making a substantial inner change. We must take into account what an inner change is going to cost us and assess if we are ready and willing to pay the price both inwardly and outwardly. When Gandhi gave up his lucrative law practice and wealth his wife, Kasturabai, did not object when he failed to set aside any part of it for the use of herself and their children. It seems to me the more diffiult part of his decision was what his ideals might have meant to his wife and children. It takes courage to change. It's much easier to be punctilious.

On Wednesdays I begin thinking about what I'm going to talk about on the weekly Phat Podcast. Sometimes I start making notes in an outline program I use. Sometimes all I get is the basic idea and a title which may or may not be permanent. Today I got the idea but I can't remember the details of a story someone told me recently and I want to get it right. It's important to me not to misrepresent someone whenever possible. Some people change so quickly no matter what you say it misrepresents them because their center of gravity is a flux. Others have fossilized and it's easier. There you have both of the extremes to which we, as human beans, go. Not a pretty picture but the story must be told. Speaking of stories, I was reading, The Anurag Sagar of Kabir. It's a long poem but not long by Eastern standards. Rumi's poem is in three volumes while Kabir's is just one. Part of it is a creation story. Because spiritual adepts aren't interested in making scientific sense of things they often use poetic allegory and license to tell their stories. After all, spiritual things must be spiritually understood. The problem for those of us who have not fully realized our spiritual nature is that we're stuck here in the physical world. It's really a mock world. It may be useful here to remind the reader of the meaning of mock that I'm using. Not authentic or real, but without the intention to deceive. The bit I wish to emphasize is, without the intention to deceive. This can be very difficult for us to grasp in our current state because we live, move and have our being in negative emotions. It makes us suspicious about everything and everyone. It would seem obvious that makes us very closed, contracted, but it does need to be said because we can't see ourselves as we are. In many ways we're like the king in the story of The Emperor's New Clothes. Rather than being naked we're over dressed and equally encumbered with all that we've put on.

When most of us think of Truth we don't usually associate it with a corrosive quality. I'm not talking about the other truth. It takes big brass ones to think about absolute Truth if you can think at all, which most of us can't. Oh, I don't mean the spaced repetition of acquired phrases, images and ideas. I'm talking about the ability to direct thought, to concentrate. You know, the very thing we imagine we have and do all the time until we're really called upon to concentrate. If we were able to look at it objectively we would see that our powers of concentration are vastly over estimated in our own eyes. Others will more easily recognize our spaciness even if they can't recognize their own. We're subjective to ourselves and a tiny bit more objective to some others, if they're not too close to us. If we're not too identified with them. To identify means to make the same as, identical. When we identify with someone or something we make ourselves the same as that with which we are identified. Do we actually become the same, identical? No, but that's the power of imagination, which in our case is nothing more than illusion. This very paragraph holds the corrosion. The nature of Truth is corrosive to illusion, imagination. It's probably why we resist it so much. Oh, I don't mean you. I know you don't resist the Ttruth. You're not like all the others. That's why you're reading this and all the other aren't. Did you detect a note of sarcasm? Pardon me, please. I don't intend to be sarcastic. I much prefer to see this critical approach to human nature as facetious but not everyone can.What the Truth will corrode, and why so many people will not go near it, is our image of ourselves. Even those who actively seek Truth have to take a break from it from time to time to insure their insanity. If we were to see what we were really like, to see all our contradictions all at once, I think we really would blow a gasket, lose it, come undone, unglued, unhinged. All the time the Truth is corroding our image of ourselves it is revealing what is underneath that image. Rumi wrote an allegory about the Greeks and the Chinese. Roughly it goes like this:

We are better artists, declared the Chinese. We have the edge on you, countered the Greeks. I will put you to a test, said the Sultan. Then we shall see which of you makes good your claim. Assign to us one particular room and to the Greeks another, said the Chinese.

The two rooms faced each other, door to door, the Chinese taking the one and the Greeks the other. The Chinese demanded of the king a hundred colors, so the worthy monarch opened up his treasurey and every morning the Chinese received of his bounty their ration of color. No hues or colors are suitable for our work, said the Greeks. All we require is to get rid of the rust. And so saying they set to work polishing. There is a way from multicolority to colorlessness; color is like the clouds, colorlessness is a moon. Whatever radiance and splendor you see in the clouds, be sure that it comes from the stars, the moon and the sun.

When the Chinese had finished their work they began drumming for joy. The king came in and saw the pictures there; the moment he encountered that sight, it stole away his wits. Then he advanced towards the Greeks, who thereupon moved the intervening curtain so that the reflection of the Chinese masterpieces struck upon the walls they had scoured clean of rust. All that the king had seen in the Chinese room showed lovelier here, so that his very eyes were snatched out of their sockets.

The Greeks, my father, are the Sufis; without repetition and books and learning, yet they have scoured their breasts clear of greed and covetousness, avarice and malice. The purity of the mirror without doubt is the heart, which receives images innumerable. The reflection of every image, whether numbered or without number, shines forth forever from the heart alone, and forever every new image that enters upon the heart shows forth within it free of all imprefection. They who have burnished their hearts have escaped from scent and color; every moment, instantly they behold beauty.