Avoid the Box

“Abide not with dualism,

Carefully avoid pursuing it;

As soon as you have right and wrong,

Confusion ensues, and Mind is lost.”

― Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures

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The unbearable weight of being trapped in a world

That is only black or white

Right or wrong

Good or bad

If you want to ruin anything thing

Be dualistic

Just try to live in an “either / or “ world

“I am good, or bad!”

You will inexorably end up bad, and in despair

Or in rare cases, totally good (fundamentally a narcissist)

All of us have our dark places

Our twisted parts

And we do best when we understand and see

Both sides of ourselves

That keeps us humble, that keeps us human

A country that is dualistic

is almost always tribal, arrogant, rigid, and blind

and ultimately immoral

“My country right or wrong!”

I have no problem with that, as long as we can see

That sometimes we are wrong

Without that critical pluralism that allows us to see our own failures

We end up destructive and abusive

Jesus was not dualistic

No way

He was sacred AND human

Demanding and comforting

And when we follow Jesus, we cannot be dualistic either

And this is where we go wrong

Those of us who try to stumble in the footsteps

Being black and white in the world of faith

Does not clarify

It confuses

Can we have certainties?

Of course

I am certain there is a power greater than myself

I am certain that this power is love

I am certain that all people carry Sacred DNA

I am certain that we all come from this reality, from Love

(many call it God)

And I am certain that we return to Love when we die

In the time in between

All bets are off

The more certain we are, the more dangerous we are

The more we try to hold on to black and white formulas

The more likely we are to end up in contradictions

And in places that are not Love

Dualism pushes us into a world of righteous or sinful

Innocent of guilty

Good or bad

Zygotes are innocent and must be kept alive

(unless they are the product of IVF, then we throw them away)

Women who are pregnant are somehow not innocent, and should live with the fact that they had sex, tsk, tsk

(although I am puzzled how an 11 year old who was raped and beaten is not an innocent)

People are death row are definitely not innocent

Just kill them!

We are good, they are bad

So we can impose our values and beliefs on them

Even as we devalue them as human beings

We are good they are bad

So we can bomb them, shoot them, exclude them

We are in, they are out

God loves us, God hates them

So we can minimize and oppress

But the reality is this is a “both/and” world

We are both good and bad

Right and wrong

Weak and strong

And it is in this place of uncertainty that we must live

We have only one compass point

That can lead us through this fog

Love

Love, and an openness to the complexities

Love and an understanding that it is not always black and white

Love and an willingness to enter into the pain of the other

And understand

Love

If we cannot do this

We will end up being very unloving

In the name of love

How crazy is that?