There is a famous Taoist painting called “The Vinegar Tasters”, showing together the three greatest prophets of Chinese philosophy:  Confucius, the Buddha, and Lao Tzu (the founder of Taoism).  Each of them is taking a taste from a great pot of vinegar.  Confucius tastes the vinegar and scowls; the Buddha tastes the vinegar and has no expression; Lao Tzu tastes the vinegar and smiles.

The painting is perhaps unfair to the Buddhists, for while Buddhism is sometimes characterized as cultivating a Spock-like lack of emotion, it actually encourages a lack of wrong attachments, i.e. attachments to inappropriate things and feelings; and once these attachments are dropped, what remains is not emotionlessness, but Nirvana, i.e. endless rapture.  This is why statues of the Buddha always show him smiling.  (The painting may be unfair to the Confucists, too, but I know very little about Confucianism.)

Nevertheless the Vinegar Tasters is a powerful painting, and it strongly makes the Taoist point that unpleasant experiences need not be avoided or expunged, but can be enjoyed as an integral part of the flow of the world.

What Would Jesus Taste?

I have often wondered what Jesus would be doing in this painting.  Would he scowl in anger, as he did at the money-changers in his father’s temple?  Would he react with indifference, as when he callously said “You’ll always have the poor, you won’t always have me”?  Or would he smile, as when … hmmm…  did he ever smile? … 

Or would he simply wave his hands and change the vinegar into wine?  (My girlfriend, with typical reverence, laughed and said, “You know that Jesus, always ready for a party.”)

I bet Jesus would do exactly that.  He often seems to take the easy way out — healing the sick, creating loaves and fish out of nothing, walking on water, bringing people back to life, and otherwise making the life of virtue look simple.  Frankly it would be a lot easier to follow Jesus’s example in this world if we also had his supernatural powers.

Quickening the Dead

Comparing the examples of Lazarus and Kisa Gotami is instructive in this regard.  In Lazarus’s story, his sister, Martha, asks Jesus to cure him, but Jesus arrives too late; Lazarus is dead.  Jesus grieves, but assures Martha that Lazarus will be resurrected.  Martha thinks Jesus is referring to the afterlife, and is, understandably enough, ticked off.  Then Jesus says “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”  Then Jesus brings Lazarus back to life.  Very kind of him, of course, but what does Lazarus and his family learn here?  Does this help them deal with death?  After all, eventually Lazarus will die again, and at that time Jesus won’t be around to help him.

In the story of Kisa Gotami, a grieving woman comes to the Buddha and begs him to bring her son back to life.  The Buddha agrees to do so; she simply needs to bring to him a mustard seed from a home in which no one has died.  She goes from house to house, looking for the seed, and in each home someone has died.  As she faces family after family, and hears each tale of death and loss, she finds herself oddly comforted, and realizes that death is an unavoidable part of life.  She goes back to the Buddha, now enlightened, and eventually founds a Buddhist convent.

Buddha 1, Jesus 0?  Well, it’s not that simple.  

Metaphors of the Natural

First, some Biblical scholars suggest that the Lazarus story isn’t so much about dealing with death as it is about Jesus’s willingness to sacrifice himself.  The revival of Lazarus is the last straw that causes Jesus’s enemies to decide that he would have to be killed.  Jesus knew that by saving Lazarus, he was effectively sacrificing himself; and thus, the revival of Lazarus is symbolic of Jesus dying for everyone’s sins.

But I think another interpretation is possible, too.  Jesus knew that Lazarus’s death was temporary, and Jesus’s own death would be temporary, and indeed all deaths are temporary:  death is nothing but a door between this life and the next.  By bringing Lazarus back to life, Jesus was doing nothing but demonstrating overtly a covert truth:  we all come back to life.  Similarly, when he turned water into wine, it could be viewed (as CS Lewis noted) as a supernatural demonstration of the natural process of water turning into wine through the cultivation of grapes.  The abundance of the loaves and fish would be a demonstration of the natural abundance of the Earth.  

Jesus’s miracles, perhaps, were not supposed to be showpieces of his compassion and supernatural prowess (though that might have been the primary effects).  Instead, they may have been intended to reflect the compassion and natural prowess of the world itself.

So perhaps Jesus would turn the vinegar into wine for the same reason that Lao Tzu smiles when tasting it:  when the doors of perception are opened, the vinegar really is wine.

All well and good.  But now I can’t help wondering:  what would a pagan do?

Landscape art & readings. Explore your inner landscape.
DJ Almanac 2008. Physical version now available at my printing cost: $7.29. Free download of complete PDF.

Name Analysis. Discover the history of your name, and its spiritual significance.

8 Meditations for deep peace.
Meet a Guide through meditation.
Release your fears.
Cultivate loving kindness.

Back at the beginning of April, I wrote a blog post ostensibly about global warming, but also in part about the various forms that our own complicity in and justification of violence can often take. I was amazed, and pleased, when this theme of violence was picked up by readers in the comments. After all, warriorship is a common topic of conversation in modern Paganism, especially among those practicing traditions with a particularly Norse or Celtic flavor. Given the sometimes less than subtle militaristic overtones of our modern Western culture, it can be all too easy to assume a simplistic warrior archetype that conflates nobility, honor and courage with the use of violence or the imposition of brute force. Rarely do we hear of the “peaceful warrior,” or the ways in which responsibility and strength inform the goals of practical pacifism and enable modern Pagans to prevent, circumvent and withstand violence. By focusing too exclusively on our pre-Christian historical roots and the role of the warrior in ancient sociocultural structures, we miss an opportunity to integrate into the warrior ethic a uniquely modern emphasis shaped by our more recent social history of feminism, civil rights and environmentalism.

This last (r)evolution, in particular, exemplifies the changing conversation about the efficacy of violence when working towards mutual protection and prosperity. More and more, we see the image of the valiant, spiritually-grounded eco-warrior fighting, through political activism and conscientious conservation rather than through bullying and threats, to protect the earth and its diverse environments and ecosystems from the violence of exploitation and pollution. Such an inspiring, living archetype is a powerful example of practical pacifism in action.

Impractical Violence

When I use the term “practical pacifism,” there are always those who shudder, or shrug, or laugh and declare that there is no such thing. These days it’s very common to hear that a philosophy of pacifism—that is, essentially, an ethic of creative nonviolence and loving-kindness—is at best an unrealistic ideal that can be only imperfectly realized, if at all. Some people go so far as to insist that pacifism is a kind of aberration of good intention, characterized by a weak stomach and lazy thinking, and more likely to allow harm to occur than to accomplish any actual good. “A military force,” some have argued, “is a necessity born of human civilization, and humanity may never be able to eliminate its necessity.” For those who believe that violence—not just personal violence, but large-scale, state-sponsored, organized violence—is an inevitable consequence of human society, pacifism can appear at best like a luxury of the well-protected, and at worst like a dangerous form of denial.

As a strongly-committed pacifist myself who grew up reading Gandhi and King (not to mention a certain Jesus fellow), I doubt it will surprise anyone to hear that I hold fundamental disagreements with some of the objections outlined above. The belief that any given social institution, particularly one founded on violence, must be inherently and eternally necessary to human civilization overlooks the great capacity for creativity, adaptability and freedom we humans possess. In fact, the claim artificially restricts our alternatives for peaceful action to various forms of more or less overt complicity in either individual or systemic violence. Meanwhile, to dismiss pacifism as unrealistic is to ignore our natural tendency as social animals towards imaginative empathy, and the extreme acrobatics in logic we use to justify our own acts of violence precisely in order to mitigate our instinctive sense of guilt or responsibility.

One of the more popular philosophies of necessary violence is known as Just War theory. Developed in Roman antiquity and elaborated upon by the Catholic Church, the theory attempts to lay out the conditions sufficient to establish the “right to go to war,” including such stipulations as the severity of the threat, the likelihood of success, the proportionality of response, and the failure of all peaceful attempts at resolution. All these are, of course, common concerns when determining the ethical nature of any act of individual or group violence. However, any philosophy that proposes to set out conditions under which violence may sometimes be acceptable opens the way for manipulative doublespeak and back-bending to allow leeway for “us” while strictly condemning “them.” For every act of individual violence, there is a rhetoric of fear, ignorance or spite feeding a kill-or-be-killed worldview in which violence is declared necessary. For every act of organized violence, there is inevitably an innocent civilian population back home, the domestic hearth-center of the community, in need of protection, security or increased prosperity, and willing to support violent action against “the other” in order to obtain it. Whether we call these violent acts “national security measures,” “preemptive war,” “enhanced interrogation techniques” or “terrorist attacks,” the justifications of urgency, desperation and necessity are the same: my right to life and prosperity must be weighed against yours, and yours must come up lacking. In other words, to quote a modern-day trickster-god, Captain Jack Sparrow, “Now we’re just haggling over price.”

Interconnection in Principle and Practice

Pacifism offers us an alternative to this quibbling zero-sum game, and contemporary environmentalism provides one of the clearest practical examples of the principles of pacifism in action. Our increasing understanding of ecology and the interdependency inherent in the natural physical world render it strikingly obvious that there can be no security or survival for the human species apart from that of the earth itself. A “loss” for the local environment wends its way into the global ecosystem as water systems grow polluted, animal and plant species die off, migrate or explode into monocultures, and climates worldwide readjust to compensate for changing atmospheric conditions, fluctuating wildly and setting off new local shifts, both subtle and drastic. In other words, a “loss” for the environment inevitably means a “loss” for human beings, as well. And not just those human beings who caused the initial damage, but a loss for all of us. There is no zero-sum scenario in which some of us may win at the expense of others. Action and consequence, cause and effect: environmental awareness requires that we acknowledge these as vital, and demands that we understand how our past actions have shaped the present, and how our current actions will shape the future.

This consciousness of interdependency and communal consequences is the very same principle that lies at the heart of practical pacifism. It connects us not only to each other, but to our shared histories and to the future towards which we all contribute. The ‘just’ice of most “just war” theories relies, inherently if not explicitly, on an assurance of “just this once.” But violence begets violence: destruction begets insecurity, urgency and need, and the justice of “just this once” fails again and again to make good on its promise. Yet well-intentioned citizens and political war-mongers alike continue to believe in the efficacy and practicality of violence. Rejecting lessons of the past as irrelevant, they cite history only as evidence that violence must be inherently unavoidable, since we have so far been so miserably inept at avoiding it. But because environmentalism is founded, clearly and deliberately, on principles of interconnection as well as on the practical knowledge of how these connections function in the world around us, a similar kind of “just war” approach to protecting the earth is so ridiculous as to be laughable. Politicians who attempt to drum up fear by accusing environmentalists of being “anti-human” are now increasingly dismissed as anthropocentric and ignorant, while those few who do resort to acts of violence in the name of environmental causes are denounced and ridiculed as equally confused in their priorities.

What does this mean? Something amazing, something downright revolutionary is going on here. For the first time in remembered history, it is possible not merely to imagine but to actually perceive as happening right now on a global scale a conception of protection and prosperity that does not—indeed, cannot—rely on violence for its realization. Ordinary people, whether they realize it or not, are incorporating the fundamental values of practical pacifism into their everyday lives: seeking out creative alternatives to callous destruction; practicing self-discipline and responsibility for the sake of a larger (and trans-human) community; working to realize relationships of honor, love and reverence with their local landscapes, their communities and the natural world. Campaigns for energy efficiency and alternative, sustainable fuel sources not only make economic sense, but speak to our increasing awareness of living in participation with natural forces worthy of respect and understanding which cannot be tamed or threatened into submission. People everywhere are rediscovering the joy and fulfillment to be found in the hard work of organic home-gardening and biking or walking to work. Even mainstream Judeo-Christian religions are taking cues these days from the nature-reverence of reviving Pagan traditions, abandoning the antiquated rhetoric of stewardship and dominion in favor of languages of love, gratitude and the immanent sacredness of our relationship with the thriving natural world. I for one can’t imagine a more exciting and hopeful time to be part of the environmental movement, and a diverse Pagan community that puts these concerns at the very heart of its spirituality.

Over the next couple weeks, in honor of International Pagan Values Blogging Month, I’ll be writing more on the themes of violence, ecology, nature, pacifism and the ways in which various cultural systems incorporate or undermine the goals of reverence, interconnection and peace. I hope you’ll join me over at my blog, Meadowsweet & Myrrh, to join in the on-going conversation!

Landscape art & readings. Explore your inner landscape.
DJ Almanac 2008. Physical version now available at my printing cost: $7.29. Free download of complete PDF.

Name Analysis. Discover the history of your name, and its spiritual significance.

8 Meditations for deep peace.
Meet a Guide through meditation.
Release your fears.
Cultivate loving kindness.

The path to divorce began before I even met her; I’d placed my feet on it inevitably, irrevocably, following the stars of my deepest desires and fears. I wanted to be loved; was this wrong? I wanted acceptance, approval, completion; was this wrong? I wanted to care for, and to give affection to, and to love; was this wrong? I sought these, and found these, in her. I loved her, and desired her, and cared for her, and was completed by her, utterly, as I understood love and desire and care and completion. And we loved furiously and ecstatically and laid the beautiful plans that lovers do.

If you are an animal, and not a plant, you are permanently uprooted. By choice or by doom, you must wander the surface of the earth to survive. You commit violence against living creatures to sustain yourself. You are always just a few of these violent meals away from starvation. You are always hunted, or competing against other hunters. You give what you can, perhaps, but your life is most full of taking. Did you choose this life? And if so, why?

Shady Grove, my little love,
Shady Grove, I say,
Shady Grove, my little love,
I’m bound to go away.

So many good times, so many hard times. Our first child — joy and exhaustion beyond anything I’d ever felt. And fear, because of the cyst in her perfect little forehead… And there was screaming and terror in the hospital — why are my parents putting me in this big machine? But it was benign.

Our second child — twice as much joy and twice as much exhaustion. And fear, because the towers burned and fell, and plague arrived in the mail, and I lost my job, and went to work far away, and in the confusion and depression the television turned off her perfect little mind… Invisible siezures, even today; and near-autism, slowly cured with therapy.

Our third child — how could one heart hold so much joy? And fear, because whooping cough can kill one so small, who is still learning to breathe. Two months of sleeplessness, of rocking his lungs back into motion, but he was well.

Our fourth child — if you don’t know this joy, it cannot be told. She was beautiful, sweet, smiling, and never ever cried… because she had been deafened. We still don’t know why, and we still don’t know why she was cured a few months later.

When you go through so much with someone, you think that nothing will ever sunder you.

There is an old crabapple tree - well, I don’t know if it’s actually old, but all crabapple trees seem old to me - standing out behind the house where my children live now, and I used to pass it daily on my way out to the compost heap after dinner. And a few times a week, regardless of the weather, I’d stop on the way back, and just lean up against the tree. It would only take a few seconds for all the worry, pain, weight and detritus of the day to wash away, and I could feel palpably the great Earth under me, and the eternal sky over me, and the tree so very present and alive between them.

One day it occurred to me to wonder how the tree felt about me coming by every few days and absorbing so much positive energy from it. Was it possible that it was angry? Annoyed? Afraid? I went up to it, placed my hands on it, dipping into meditation, and asked the tree to tell me…

In all this time, I didn’t really know fear. I thought I was afraid, but really, as long as she was there to love me and complete me, I didn’t know fear. I learned fear at last when she almost died in an auto accident.  Without the airbags and the seat belt in that used Honda Civic, she would have been smashed. Instead she walked away with just a few scratches and bruises, and we were thankful, and went on with our lives.

But I would wake up shaking; I had attacks of panic, frozen for no reason I could name; and I became terribly afraid of driving — I, who’d inherited the love of the road from my father and his father’s fathers.  I turned back to the Buddhism I’d grown up with, and I dug deep, and I quieted the fear.

I had feared losing her for longer than I had known her; but now the fear was gone. I no longer feared being unloved, unaccepted, disapproved, incomplete. This fear…

This fear was wound and bound into the foundation of the marriage. Without the fear, the marriage waited only for a catalyst to crumble it.

I hid from this knowledge, turned away from it. For years I turned away from it. No one and nothing could tell me, because I ordered them not to. But the more I ran from it, the more I chased it. And the catalyst came…

Climbing a mountain in meditation, a mountain of tumbled stones that cut the fingers and scabbed the knees, I came to a cave with a reflecting pool; and in the deepest chamber the High Priestess drew back the veil and showed me the last mystery; and the mountain crumbled into dust around me and would have crushed me under its immeasurable weight, but I remembered! I remembered I could fly…

And I was amazed at the force of the reply. I could suddenly feel all my worry, pain, weight, and detritus entering the tree, and feel the tree’s delight, and sense the energy flowing down to its roots and up to its leaves, orange and sparkling. It was as if all this negative, heatlike energy, this excess sludge I was dumping, was feeding the tree. Was it an energetic or spiritual reflex of the carbon dioxide / oxygen exchange? I stayed with the tree a long time that night, feeling the energy flow between us gradually ease, bringing us both peace.

The eleventh anniversary of our wedding is coming up next month. Eleven years ago, I thought I knew what joy was. When our first child was born, I realized I was wrong. And with each new child, I learned joy again. I never expected divorce to bring new joys, too, but gods above! The marriage collapsed into a shower of lotus petals. I found a wholly new joys –

The joy of the proper ending one season of life, and beginning another.

The joy of meeting her fiancee, expecting awkwardness and discomfort at best, but instead finding a good friend almost instantly.

The joy of being alone, and finding out that, yes, after a journey of eleven years, each year a thousand years long, Jeff was still there.

And the joy of suddenly, stunningly, no longer being alone…

Each new joy an ocean.

A few weeks ago my girlfriend Ali took me to the Phipps Conservatory of Pittsburgh, a huge complex of greenhouses and gardens right near the middle of the city. Here it was much easier to feel the delight of the plants inside - not only in being carefully tended and cultivated, but in having visitors come and appreciate them and release their negative energy. They fairly radiated their joy, and we walked around in a daze of rapturous blossoms.

There is one room I remember especially, the cactus room. Here my sense of release and exhalation was particularly strong. There was one cactus in particular - a huge fellow, like a bush of long fleshy leaves, each leaf’s edge studded with spikes; and I could almost hear him call out for me to come closer. I did, and it seemed for all the world like he was holding out one long leaf for me to look at. The leaf was broad and trough-like, and held within it a long, shallow pool of precious water. “Look!” he seemed to be saying, delighted as a child. “Look at my treasure!”

It is sometimes cold outside the conservatory, but the sun shines nevertheless, the plants turning their leaves as best they can, following its march to the zenith and back. The plants, like me, follow the sun; for the sun, like me, is an uprooted wanderer.

Landscape art & readings. Explore your inner landscape.
DJ Almanac 2008. Physical version now available at my printing cost: $7.29. Free download of complete PDF.

Name Analysis. Discover the history of your name, and its spiritual significance.

8 Meditations for deep peace.
Meet a Guide through meditation.
Release your fears.
Cultivate loving kindness.