With palms together, Good Morning All,
“You cannot be a hero unless you are prepared to give up
everything; there is no ascent to the heights without prior descent into
darkness, no new life without some form of death.”
Armstrong, “A Short History of Myth,” P.37
There is no shortage of this mythic truth. Gilgamesh, Jacob,
the Hebrews, Buddha, and Jesus all descended into darkness, wrestled with that
darkness and emerged changed in dramatic ways. It is no different today with
each of us. We are struggling in the
darkness of a pandemic, a world threatening ecological disaster, and a threat
to our democracy. Some of us put our heads in the sand, some of us hold up
signs, some of us do nothing but get through our day. What we do reveals our character.
The Three Pure Zen Buddhist precepts teach us we are to be
responsible human beings. We are to
cease doing evil. We are to do good. And
we are to bring about abundant good for all beings. Let these resonate for a
bit. Let them arise from within us. Let
us each, then, explore the meanings.
What is evil? What is good? How can we assist others by bringing about abundant
good?
I am not here to answer these questions for you. They are yours to answer for yourself. What I can say is that to address these
questions with integrity requires us to struggle with our own moral foundations
and it is in this struggle that we gain strength, clarify our understanding,
and are able then to set forth on the Eightfold Noble Path. We die to ourselves and are born anew; we become
bodhisattvas.
May we each establish a daily intention to step into our
darkness and rise into the light.
Daiho