Not Yet Ready, If You Meet Him On The Road

Here are two poems about human nature. The Taoist vision is of Man between Heaven and Earth. Man looks to heaven with feet planted firmly. That is his ideal state, and so this Taoist trinity is the first, most fundamental one. Divinity (Yin) beneath and divinity (Yang) above. In the middle, in balance within the forces, man rides the ebb and flow of things.

It is said, even when they soar heavenward, the highest birds still look back to Earth from which they come, to which they return. Only Man looks to Heaven in the Divine Way that he does.

Not to rise, nor to descend, but to remain poised in the balance, because it is necessary, that is the fulfillment of the triune nature of the cosmos. Hence the Chinese called their land the Middle Kingdom. That our position betwixt and between is actually in itself divine is a very strong draw for me to the Taoist world view. It would be a reply to the Christian world view of the journey of the elect to another kingdom, the Kingdom of God, except that this Taoist view is so much older than the Christian view. In both views there is much to do and a balky human nature to deal with in the doing.

Notice, I said the position we best fit in is Divine. Man in His true place is Divine. I did not say that we here now are Divine.

In this context, I offer

Not Yet Ready

Sometimes I look at
The wide blue sky and feel my
Toes curl, grow long claws.
I know I must sink
My claws into the prairie earth
So deep, lock so tight
That this whirling world
Will not throw me off headlong
Into some unplanned
Future. My soul knows me well.
I am not ready to go.

-written Dec 17-
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I have a little problem with authority. The bumper sticker, years old, was made for me: Question Authority

There is an old Buddhist saying that comes from the heart of the teaching. Most of that saying is the title of this poem and the poem is a story that describes the last two words of the title. This also I like very much. Buddhism insists that in the most basic analysis, I am to be my own authority even to this point, that before I actually achieve my highest potential, I will have to kill all residual forms of devotion to any master or any belief, any dogma and any rule, because they will at the last be hindrances. They will stand in my way.

Thus, even though I must accept guidance and community along my way, because there is utterly no hope of my journey's success without that, and even though because I must accept guidance and community, there must be authorities, I am called also to remember that these are all TEMPORARY and they cannot take dogmatic position in my life if my journey is truly spiritual. If I meet the Buddha on the road, at the last I must kill him.

This is the spiritualizing of a human shortcoming. The shortcoming is a failure in the maturation of the adolescent in us all. It is natural for adolescents to rebel against authority. In the spirit life this rebelliousness transforms rather than disappears. That is the point. To outgrow adolescent rebelliousness as most societies prefer is to lose something divine. But to stay in that rebellion is to fall far short of the divine. To transform adolescent rebelliousness first into self-actualized but other centered living, and then to lift that into the spirit realms is the purpose of all true religion. If that path is lacking, if the religion cannot act as the mother does letting the adolescent go into adulthood, letting the child truly go, letting the spiritual traveler move beyond the childhood home, then it cannot be a true religion.

We tend to not understand.

If You Meet Him On The Road

Why is it like this?
I see some serious man
Have his earnest say,
Speak as deeply as
He knows, perhaps deeper than
I ever would go,
Demonstrate his grace,
His position in God's world
If not in my own,
And what do I do?
Sling snowballs, or mud
Right between his hazel eyes,
Down his gray suede coat.

-this poem was written in the fifteen minutes following the last poem-