About Reality

About Real­i­ty: learn­ing to be in the present moment, in the real, is key to wak­ing up and liv­ing a full life

For more on today’s top­ic, check out:

I’ve been read­ing Brad Warn­er’s books on Zen for decades, and also sub­scribe to his blog. He isn’t writ­ing blog posts as much these days; here’s an old. inter­est­ing one: “The Age of Real­i­ty.”

Here’s a quote:

Nishi­ji­ma Roshi: If Bud­dhism per­vades through­out the world, reli­gions will van­ish. That is my idea. Reli­gion is a kind of belief, but Bud­dhism is believ­ing in the fact in front of us. So the atti­tude is dif­fer­ent. I think human his­to­ry is going to enter into the age of real­i­ty.
Q: And the age of real­i­ty means the age of look­ing at what’s in front of us?
Nishi­ji­ma Roshi: Yes, based on the fact at the present moment. And in that sit­u­a­tion reli­gious thoughts can­not exist.

It’s a key Buddhist principle that what is right in front of you is all that there is.

Which is a hard thing to swal­low, giv­en our desire for things like per­ma­nence, secu­ri­ty, and spe­cial­ness. All of these things require some­thing “oth­er” than reality.

Religion is Belief-based, not Reality-based

Reli­gions devel­op, typ­i­cal­ly, after the death of the guy who start­ed things off. 

Back in my Sem­i­nary days, I stud­ied the chronol­o­gy of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings. (Paul’s let­ters came way before the writ­ing of the Gospels. Paul wrote from around 48–67 AD. Mark, the first Gospel, was writ­ten around 70 AD.)

It’s clear Paul had­n’t a clue about the his­tor­i­cal Jesus–he did­n’t real­ly quote him, and nev­er knew him. 

Paul was build­ing a reli­gion, but he had a prob­lem: he had to deal with a dead guy, or a res­ur­rect­ed but no longer around guy. So, almost imme­di­ate­ly, he start­ed writ­ing, and we pre­sume, preach­ing, that Jesus was going to return, and bring jus­tice, oth­er­wise known as crush­ing Rome. 

In Paul’s earliest letters, he promises this “immediately.” Then, a bit later, he promised a return in Paul’s lifetime. 

Years lat­er, at the end of his life, hav­ing looked and looked and not seen any such “return of the hero” Paul wrote, “soon.”

It’s now 2000 years lat­er, and “soon” is not here yet.

I’m not dis­parag­ing Chris­tian­i­ty. I’m just say­ing that lots of peo­ple, Paul includ­ed, want a venge­ful, sword-wield­ing Christ, as opposed to “Gen­tle Jesus, meek and mild.” They want him to crush “Rome” — a Rome made up of peo­ple they hate.

The nuts and bolts of “do unto others” living as Jesus instructed pales, for many “Christians,” when compared with avenging gods. 

All that “do unto oth­ers” stuff is hard to stom­ach when “oth­ers” are judged to be infe­ri­or, espe­cial­ly if they are a dif­fer­ent race or reli­gion or gender. 

So, bet­ter to focus on met­ing out “jus­tice.”

You get this in Islam, too, where you see stuff about 72 vir­gins and par­adise, as a reward for attack­ing and killing “infi­dels.”

Bud­dhism, as a phi­los­o­phy, or life-focus, skirts away from this “oth­er-world­ly” focus. Sure, some strains of Bud­dhism have added in rein­car­na­tion, but that’s arguably not real­ly Bud­dhist. In fact, the Bud­dha was pret­ty cool about oth­er-world­ly things:

“I do not care to know your var­i­ous the­o­ries about God. What is the use of dis­cussing all the sub­tle doc­trines about the soul? Do good and be good. And this will take you to free­dom and to what­ev­er truth there is.…”

I like this… and it’s my point. 

There’s noth­ing wrong with believ­ing in God, or heav­en, or what­ev­er. But sim­ply rec­og­nize that what you believe about any­thing that isn’t right in front of you is what you believe, and is there­fore imag­i­nary.

Peri­od.

Real­i­ty, on the oth­er hand, is pret­ty obvi­ous, as it’s right here, right now. It’s what you see and hear. It’s also the feel­ings that arise in you, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly your thoughts. 

The sto­ries, fan­tasies, dreams, etc. that go on in my head are not real­i­ty. They’re con­structs, invent­ed by me. 

Just because you can imag­ine a giraffe with the head of Don­ald Trump, does­n’t mean such a thing exists. 

What exists, what is real, is all that is of importance.

We there­fore encour­age every­one to get real and to be real. To stop with all of the “I’m sure my sto­ries are real,” or “Here’s what going to hap­pen” stuff, and to sim­ply act in this moment.

Not for any pressing, future-based reason, but because this situation, right now, will be addressed by me like this, right now.

We resist all of this because real­i­ty can be messy, bloody, nasty… and hav­ing some mag­ic sto­ry about it all seems the bet­ter option. Or pray­ing about it seems like a good choice. Or grip­ing and complaining. 

And as we play all of these games in our little heads, reality is still… reality. 

As our self-gen­er­at­ed dra­ma goes away, we’re back to the real­i­ty of life. And the next ques­tion: giv­en this infor­ma­tion, what do I need to do?

Real­i­ty… that which is right in front of us, wait­ing to be seen, heard and respond­ed to.

The Age of Real­i­ty. The place we real­ly live.

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