The Art of Decency (con’t.)

In a dictionary I read that decency is a woman who does not wear a dress showing cleavage to a job interview. Rules. Virtue is not following a morality code taught  by reward and punishment by society during one’s lifetime. All such is nonsense. The decent person is just that because he or she eyeballs every moment.  Their actions may astound men and women of the time. Beyond the reach of all who would control them, they are seen to be extraordinary by any who follow the codes of the place they reside  codified by fearful ones who believe they need to control others with a view to making everyone like them.  And fail and fail and fail.  Why, a decent human being does not even need a name in order to explode into a timeless legend. 

Morality is created from words memorized inside a system meant to control behavior and that has no similarity even with true virtue, which any actor knows who speaks his lines authentically. One who is caught by thoughts lives in the past or future and has no clue of true virtue for it is beyond the power of thought. Did you guess there is a power bigger than thinking? The decent thing happens… now. It is in the hearts of all people. It is found by any who search there for it. And that is the approach to decency.

You may wonder why a swan would even want to write notes to humans.  

But I do. 

The Art of Decency (con’t.)

Albert Camus in his novel, The Plague, wrote of an epidemic in a fictionalized large city.  The main character is a doctor working very hard to save as many of its citizens as he can at great risk to his own life under horrible circumstances. The present world-wide pandemic has called to my mind Camus’ great work. The doctor there was asked why?  Why do you do this when so many are dying? Camus has the doctor tell that the only way to truly face a plague is with decency. To the doctor decency requires of him to work at a furious pace to save as many as he can.  The doctor realized that even when the dying is finished for a time and people believe their trouble is over and things can return to normal the cause of the plague he is facing is not going to be defeated at all, but will return with further fury to bring more unwanted disaster to the door of all who choose not decency. That is the point. You see, the doctor did not just realize I am a doctor…he realized I am a human being and nothing else matters. 

In that sense, we, all of us alive on Earth at this time, are given a rare and wonderful opportunity by the COVID-19 virus that has brought us to a standstill. I heard a storyteller name it a beautiful thing when seen with another set of eyes. It has to be beautiful because it is reality, he said simply. We may see it as horrible and unfair and evil but… those who make a serious and profound change will see it as a blessing of enormous value to them. For from now on they will see with new eyes everything. They will sober up. 

Let’s take a brief look at our history. To these shores came some truly drunken Europeans who could care less what are  going to be the consequences of behaving indecently. You know how the story goes. Indians were annihilated. The Mexican citizens living here after the War with Mexico ended were treated indecently.  Rich men who never rode a horse brought cattle in very large numbers to feed a ravenous demand for beef back East and fill the needs of a military force who would be ordered to make all Indians dead because the settlers who were promised free land for a new start were so very certain that all red people were savages. To Hell with the changes to be wrought to the land and climate. And railroads were hurriedly constructed by the sellers of a dream nobody wanted in the first place but the masses were enticed aboard an imaginary bandwagon going west with progress the drug and all the while it was really thievery tied to Washington D.C. and newspapers. All of it most foul.

The eventual society created is one that is willing to be fooled every part of every day into thinking they want every new thing commerce can build and sell with no concern for the real cost for themselves and the generations that have followed and no thought to the quality of that merchandise. Just prior to the virus that brought us to a lockdown the world was busy as beavers who build dams of wood creating a robotic driven society which robots will eventually tell all persons what is to be considered to be decent and what is not…so can it not be seen that this world we live in is a clear and simple consequence of indecency?  So indecent it led to a November Day in Dallas when a President was murdered in broad daylight and no one can understand and tell the children what went wrong and what decent thing we did to address it. It is left by silence as “oh, well, in this world nothing bad can be prevented”. And what else can we call ourselves except drunkards? 

Are we not those trees?  Have you ever really seen a tree? Beheld one with your brain still and completely aware? Until the day you do you will not be ready to begin a life of decency. Once you see it as it is you will then and forever after know yourself to be decent naturally and so behave as nature intends, a free person responsible for making his own contribution to life. Ignorance of our own identity is the source of all our troubles: past, present and future.  We are like a drunk king riding a drunken elephant each without a care where they will go. Just along for the ride. Then the big, drunk elephant stumbles. At that moment we need only a glimpse of what in us is human to know the jig is up. Our time has come and this is the greatest opportunity for us humans so far.

The Art of Decency

First. Let us give a sample of Indecency-

“Rain at Night” by W.S. Merwin

after an age of leaves and feathers

someone dead

thought of this mountain as money

and cut the trees

that were here in the wind

in the rain at night

it is hard to say it

but they cut the sacred ‘ohias then

the sacred koas then

the sandalwood and the halas

holding aloft their green fires

and somebody dead turned cattle loose

among the stumps until killing time

So, now, what is Decency? We know it not. We are certain that if we had left the Garden as we found it there would be absolutely nothing to get excited about and no fun. But Merwin reminds us in the first lines of his poem-

This is what I have heard

at last the wind in December

lashing the old trees with rain

unseen rain racing along the tiles

under the moon

wind rising and falling

wind with many clouds

trees in the night wind3

Are we not those trees?  Have you ever really seen a tree? Until the day you do you will not be ready to begin a life of decency. Once you see it as it is you will then and forever after know yourself to be decent naturally. Ignorance of that fact is the source of all our problems, past, present and future.  We only need glimpse what in us is human.

It is like this-someone complains of a problem. SOMEONE WISE REPLIES YOUR REAL PROBLEM IS THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO YOU ARE. FIND THAT OUT FIRST THEN SEE FROM EYES THAT ARE AWAKE TO REALITY. IT WILL BE ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT. YOU REPLY, BUT WHAT IF I DO NOT LIKE WHO I AM? THE WISE ONE TELLS YOU THAT TO DECIDE NOT TO DISCOVER WHO YOU REALLY ARE BEFORE YOU JUDGE YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES IS ABOUT THE DUMBEST THING ANYBODY EVER CONSIDERED DOING AND REFUSES TO WASTE ANY MORE TIME WITH SUCH A ONE AS YOU. THEN TELLS YOU TO GO AWAY AND THINK ABOUT IT. COME BACK IF YOU FIND YOU ARE READY TO SAY GOODBYE TO ALL THE NUMEROUS AND CONTRADICTORY CONCEPTS OF WHO YOU THINK YOURSELF TO BE TO MEET A STRANGER YOU ACTUALLY LIVE WITH.

A Simple Story

Once I could not stand myself. 

I mean I could not stand being me. Do not get me wrong.  I was not in a situation that anyone else would think to be a horrible one insofar as the outside circumstances of my life were concerned.  Many would have envied me.  But I could not stand to be me. Nobody could persuade me otherwise. Many tried. No good came of it. 

What was wrong with me? Everything. 

I was not even close to understanding who I am…who you are…what is life for…nor how to live it well.

I was educated. It was not a question of reading the right books. It was a question of how to read a book from a situation of peace inside of me so I might bring wisdom to bear on the words of a book. It was actually a question of whether peace could ever be felt inside of someone like me. It had nothing to do with a book. 

It was, for me,  like I lived in a tunnel. I operated by habit I called self will. Such a joke! It was not remotely true and somebody inside me knew it. And that one loved me enough to spoil my  every attempt at doing my life as someone else’s  robot or puppet.

That one turned out to be the artist inside me that is inside you. I dedicated then whatever  remained of my life to making art every day with a glad heart. Want you try? Imagine a world filled with artists. Stretch as far as your mind will take you. Do it again. Repeat such wild, chaotic silliness every single day for all the tomorrows given you. 

I cannot take you to be here with me but I can invite you. I do so from love, not the four-letter word, love itself, which is a part of no language of man. It is wild.  It is free. It is bold. It serves nobody. 

To love’s ear, all nations are called by one name. By nation is meant any attempt, whatever, to organize people. Trust one another as I trust in you who has within at this moment a living artist, one who knows what you came here to do.

World History: When the chicken cannot even be proved to have been a fowl entitled to its brand name then it’s only about loving what we love and laughing off the rest of it. 

Somebody says we need to create community.  How? Well, we could sell addictive drinks for 5 dollars each and attract people to come and gather every morning. Who would come?  What kind of community is that? Sounds like escape to me, not community at all. 

I explode in Meditation!