Rather than import all the old articles and writings from my previous site, I have decided to take this opportunity to start fresh. Not as some kind of artificial destruction of what I considered important or worthy of comment on before, but simply an attempt to clean the blackboard and see what ideas, insights or expansions come from that.
This is the thing about public expressions. If we stay stagnate and concretize (yes it’s a made up word..) ourselves or our ideas into some “thing” which at best we use as a touchstone to move through the world, or at worst become convinced of their “truth”, we risk the opportunity to be different, to think different, or to be unbounded in our new thoughts or takes on the world.
It’s not like I can forget what I thought before. Those things don’t go away. Who I was yesterday and its impact on others isn’t dissolved just because I continue some process. I am still subject to the results of those activities, to those thoughts and to my impact on others. That’s the very nature of karma. I have to “own” the history I have.
However I don’t have to let this moment or the next or any “future” moment be only influenced by the “past” moment. There is always the opportunity to bring my practice into play, to bring my awareness, and my vow into alignment with this moment, so that I can move unencumbered through the world. This is how it is to “not be dragged around” by something, or someone (including myself). This is why there can never be some “state of being” we can call enlightenment or Nirvana.
Liberation happens only in moments, and then we have to liberate the next moment. My experience is that whatever “Enlightenment” is can only be an appropriate response. How I respond to each moment. Which is why so many of our ancestors have expressed “There are no enlightened people, only enlightened moments”. (I have heard this attributed to a number of teachers from Shogaku Shunryu Suzuki Roshi to Charlotte Joko Beck to Katagiri Roshi, and so on – I am sure someone could go back into history and find it paraphrased numerous times and numerous ways.)
So here we are. A new site, a new start, a new idea. I have left monastery life. I am finishing up the last bits of my academic life. And I am trying to figure out what is next. Without holding onto some fixed view of “me” as a chaplain, as a priest, as a white, queer, cis-gendered, disabled man, as an activist… etc. etc. What is next when I allow the myriad things and endless causes and conditions to come forth and awaken me? Let’s see.