Journal rdewald's Journal: Meditations on Easter from the left out out left. 3
Payback is like a drug. There's never enough of it. It is empty. It never satisfies. Getting over it is about not doing it. The answer is spiritual, it arises from within. You can't find the answer anywhere else.
Afghanistan was payback. It wasn't enough. Iraq? Payback. Enough? Do you hear anyone saying we've done enough about 911? No, what you hear is that Afghanistan and Iraq were warm-ups compared to the problem we have with Iran. See? Its never enough.
Meanwhile, the Iranians, like the Iraqis, are just people who sprang up on a different part of this small blue planet. They're just people, like we are. Just as Christianity has lost all credibility as messenger of what was important to Jesus, Islam has lost all credibility as a messenger of Mohammed's message. It's back to our cave is better than your cave.
What transforms a teaching into a religion? Love. When love becomes the central message of a cosmology, it becomes a religion. It re-ligates consciousness to the whole. It dissolves the separation between the divine and the ordinary by making love manifest. That's what makes a religion. You don't fight over religion, you look to your religion for answers for your proclivity to fight.
What are we told that Jesus talked about during the period before the his crucifixion? Righteousness? Evangelism? Promoting a church that wasn't to really come into existence for another 300 years?
No. He talked about love. He talked about being mindful of the least among us. Love was his message, or at least that's what survived to be recorded in the gospels.
The buddha-dharma teaches that the self is an empty concept. Therefore, to harm another is a sure way to create even more pain. The Dalai Lama puts it nicely: "My religion is kindness."
If you find any meaning in honoring Jesus this weekend, do it by being kind, generous and forgiving to another real human being. Love radically. Love without regard to self, yours or others. Or, you could say "Love your brother as thyself." Jesus meant for people to follow him by modeling their behavior after his example of radical love; loving even your enemies.
That means loving Osama Bin Laden for many of us, as well as George W. Bush for another (overlapping, I might add) group of us. "Loving" in this context is not the same as "prefering," it refers instead to the active process of love, the action of manifesting love with acts of compassion, with hearts of forgiveness. Follow Jesus by treating your enemies the way he treated his: with forgiveness and compassion. If submitting to crucifixion is not enough to get your attention on that message, you have truly placed your heart beyond reach.
Drop your buckets where you're standing. Most of us don't have the opportunity to express our forgiveness and compassion to OBL or GWB, but we all have our enemies, i.e., real, personal, people with whom we are angry and/or disappointed. Jesus let himself be nailed to a cross is impress upon you the value of loving these people specifically. Hear it. He meant it.
The world is going insane with rage. As one of Jesus's true messengers (MLK) said: "We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools."
Happy Easter.
Speechless (Score:2)
What are we told that Jesus talked about during the period before the his crucifixion? Righteousness? Evangelism? Promoting a
Thank you. (Score:2)
As Unusal (Score:1)
God is Love and Forgiveness, Satan is Hate, Greed, Fear and War.
The question for each of us this Easter, as it is everyday, "Who do you serve?"
Thanks Richard, for putting it so well, as usual.
P.S.
Ain't hypocracy an amazing political tool?