Every year come March, a curious form of nostalgia creeps in. There are memories we have that whisper of a pleasant feeling that never actually was. I can’t pinpoint what it is about Easter that makes me miss home, we never had any exceptionally unique traditions back when beyond the usual go-to-church, greet the old people with the cryptic exchange, “He is risen! followed by, “He is risen indeed!”, but every year, under the vernal equinox that ushers in Spring, I remanence about a younger me, joining the other church kids in throwing down palm branches as we watch the cooler, older “youth group” hippy walk by barefoot in a white robe.
I remember not wanting to go to church and staring at the clock for the whole time, wishing I was anywhere but there, yet strangely the feeling I get now thinking about those times invites a pleasant feeling, not one of disdain. I recall the pastor giving us oranges when we left morning church service and how excited my brother and I would get knowing that soon we would be back home hunting for little plastic eggs filled with Easter grass and jelly beans. Maybe that’s what it is! How I long for those jelly beans…
*Painting by Alex Grey
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Having grown up in the evangelical church and spent so many years surrounded by the particularly conservative translations of Christs tale that King James decided we were best fit to learn, a foggy idea still lingers within my head as to what Easter is suppose to mean for Christians. Jesus, I recall, whom is believed to be the Son of God, died for our sins and rose from the dead, ascending into heaven shortly thereafter to liveth forevermore. Pretty remarkable. There is more to it than this of course, but the rising from the dead part of the story is what Easter is all about. I think. And because he died for our sins and “conquered death”, we all are now free to do the same if we only accept Him into our hearts as our everlasting lord and savior and follow His commands.
OK. Now I have to be honest, this is where my memory evades me and I start getting confused. Or maybe there is some repressed trauma in me somewhere surrounding the church that I haven’t yet managed to address that gets me uneasy at this point as I do recognize that right about now I usually begin to show discourteous signs of sarcasm. Hmm. Hard tellin’ where such reactions initially spring forth from, certainly not from the kind people at The First Church of The Nazarene who always gave me oranges, marshmallow bunnies and the most coveted of all easter eggs, The Cadbury.
If you haven’t caught on by now, I am no expert on Christianity, or any other religion for that matter. I dare say this is intentional, as I have come to learn that once you become a so-called “expert” of anything something awful tends to happen. The ability to enjoy and learn more seems to get cut somehow in exchange for the elite title of “expert”. It’s no fun to be the expert. It was like this when I was a ski bum. At some point I was asked to teach people how to snowboard but after doing that for a few years snowboarding became work and people who didn’t ski “the right way” annoyed me. Such silliness. There is no “right way” and this all suppose to be fun. All praise to Ullr for suggesting I quit before I began to hate snow. Anywho, it’s a bit like this when it comes to my love for world religions. Goddess forbid I ever know enough to claim I know anything, for surely I will begin to loathe god and anyone who thinks other than I do. I just love religions.
I am in awe of the human capacity for making meaning. I find all religions both beautiful and terrifying. All are complex and simple and capable of offering medicine or poison. I find them all fascinating and I don’t just like to read about them. I do my best to open up and actually practice what they preach. It never made since to me how so many are ok with just having a map. What’s the point if it doesn’t get you somewhere? So I pray to Jesus. I offer marigolds to Kali Ma while ankle deep in goats blood. Every morning, after my daughter and I sing to our rising father Sun, we light a candle for Buddha. God seems too big for just one religion. Best to let a caged bird fly.
So, I dabble. Oh don’t get me wrong, when circumstances require (and oh do the circumstances of this time most assuredly require) I am very serious and disciplined about my spiritual life, but at a certain point, I stopped caring about certain surface details such as whether or not a man named Jesus actually walked on Planet Earth or if Padmasambhava actually hid encoded instructions throughout South Asia. There is benefit I’m sure in memorizing ancient texts and with great vigilance dissecting every poem and forgotten song that references a holy master with the intention of clearing all doubt as to the location of a demigods birthplace. But for me, apart from the excitement I do admittedly get from visiting such places, considering all the wars fought over trying to prove beyond all doubt where say, the Ark of the Covenant resides… I just don’t care. Let it go.
Maybe I am getting too old, or maybe I am just lazy and sacrilegious. I don’t know. I sure am amazed by how much effort religious fanatics put into winning the argument over whose version of the Big Truth is fully accurate. Truly, it is impressive. It takes a lot of energy to prove something that simply cannot be proven. Kudos to the diligent. But for me, I just don’t care where the seventh avatar of Vishnu was born. Does it make Ram any less great if we agree to disagree? What does seems to matter is whether or not the story being told, the teaching being transmitted from it, offers actual, noticeable benefit, for myself and/or others? For all races, classes and creeds? For the Earth? For animals? For the Sea? If one can prove someones existence on Earth is historically valid but the teachings offered don’t result in developing more wise and peaceful persons, than what difference does it make if they were here or not? If Israel or Ram Janmabhoomi or Lumbini can be proven places of origin for some of the most revered beings of all time yet these places can’t manage to keep peace, to keep water clean and drinkable, to keep soil health well enough to nurture a seed into a fruiting vine, than what is the ultimate reason for a pilgrimage to these places anyway? To take a selfie? Anyways. I digress.
*The earliest map of Ram Janmasthan at Ayodhya (1717 CE)
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Personally, I think the story of The Christ offers real benefit. I am not sure if He walked on water, turned water into wine, died on a cross and rose from the dead the third day after his crucifixion or if he was anything more than another archetypal godhead borrowed from much earlier myths to fit another demographic in another space in time. What do I know? All I know is I am certain that the way in which I have come to understand His story is wildly different than many. Which seems to always be true of us all. Have a hundred people stand around a big tree and all of them will see said tree in a hundred slightly different ways. An arborist will see potential dangers that need to be prevented. A biologist will see an entire ecosystem. A logger will see a resource. A poet will see a cloud. We all receive information as it fits into our understanding of life itself. Being a born again pagan whose worldview has been heavily sculpted by Buddhism, I see the Jesus story as so many other Great Myths, a Living Story that is so powerful that it doesn’t need its tale to be authentically verified by the “experts” for it to be True. And for me, the most potent boon offered from the Eater story is not the part that shines light on the resurrection but the part just prior to this great miracle that reminds us all of a truth so many of us would rather avoid; that death is inevitable.
Jesus did not hold tightly to his grand youthful days nor did he try to fight those responsible for ending his life. His was an act of noble surrender, of letting go. It seems clear that he knew deeply one of the most basic of all ecological laws. That in order for new life to rise, death must first occur.
Imagine if instead of accepting death Jesus tried to freeze his brain or use CRISPR technology to manipulate his genes into thinking he was younger than he actually was. Imagine if he wasn’t able to let go of all his wonderful memories from when he was handsome and popular and young and decided that, when his brain was finally taken out of the freezer he would keep that part of him alive and let everything else stay frozen. He would carry into the future all the good things and not allow sad memories or change, which is all so uncertain how it will pan out, to tag along. Imagine too if you will, The Christ, fully aware of His power, disgusted by all the disrespect he was experiencing from the Roman soldiers. Fed up he finally can’t take it any more and exclaims aloud, “You know what… I’m the Son of God! Fu*k you guys! You can’t kill me!!! No way in Hell I’m going out nailed to a cross! I am going to get my drones out and liberate you all from doing the wrong thing! You’ll thank me later. It’s the right thing to do!” Imagine.
Nope. None of this seems to have happened. What did happen (and I do believe this happened, literally, mythically and metaphorically) which to me is the most important take away from the whole Easter story, is He DIED. He surrendered and allowed that so unpopular phase of life’s inevitable passing to unfold exactly as it was meant to. Messy, terrifying, raw. He died. Like all living things must. No magic. No cutting edge technology. No life insurance policy. No portal in the Pyramid. No external hard drive to pretend that you can take anything with you when you go. He hung there on the cross between two criminals and suffered tremendously, crying out to his Father, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?!” He waited and rotted and returned to the earth. As all things must. His last breath whispering the most feared part of the life cycle…. “It is finished.”….
And yet, like a sprout from a seed whose previous life as a flower has long since past, He rose again. And this rising, could have never happened had He not first died. If the forest did not generously allow its blanket of leaves to die each Autumn, the soils would not be able to offer life to a new generation of undergrowth each Spring. The soil is the continuation of the dying leaf. The first pasque flower that blossoms each spring embodies within her the same miraculous/mythical/molecular rebirth, nobility, grace, and dignity as The Christ. Because of courageously dying at the appointed hour, He is risen indeed.
How often I yearn to transform, to ascend into the next phase of life with more, I don’t know, maturity or something?? Yet I don’t want to let go of my old habits, the same ones that keep me fighting away those who wish me dead. All the “shoulda, woulda-coulda’s” suggesting that maybe there is still a way to right an old wrong, utterly incapable of coming to terms with the hard-to-swallow truth that I made a mistake. I have made many mistakes. What’s done is done and I can’t go back and change the past. And then there is the annoying reality that I still carry with me the same harmful tools that got me into the old habitual mess in the first place, thinking foolishly that these tools will finally work for me if I just use them a little differently. Yes, if we just tweek the system a bit, maybe this time capitalism will work! Maybe this time the “lesser of two evils” will get us back on track! Maybe I can have my cake and eat it too! I want to change, I really do, but I kind of like this little bit of privilege right here…
Deep down we know we have to let it all go, both the regret and the peculiar notion that somehow what didn’t work in the past might work this time. How hard to just let go, to be an honest-to-goodness. mistake making humans and admit defeat. To just weep and cry out to God… “It is finished.”
We will never transform into the worthy elders the world so desperately needs now if we keep holding onto youth as though it’s the pinnacle of life’s offerings, one that needs to be carefully preserved forever. It’s not impressive to see a 65 year old man who looks like a 30 year old. What’s impressive is seeing a 20 year old who is fully 20, a 70 year old is fully 70, both knowing when it is time to let go of there former selves in order to allow for their new selves to ripen. Flowing. Knowing death is essential for life to take root.
Little deaths are happening all the time. And just behind them, little new births. Living is dying. Dying is living. No life, no death. No death no life. Know Life. Know Death…..
My father-in-law is dying. He has late stage lung cancer. He could have chosen to remain in a hospital, connected to tubes and the illusion of living, but he opted to go home, to be with his family, to live out his final days as they are. It is unclear how much longer he will be living with us. He has lead an extraordinary life. He once fought a wild board with his bare hands in the forests that divide Thailand from Laos. He helped raise three beautiful children. When he was young, he was young. When he was middle aged, he was middle aged. Now that he is old, he is old. He knows he is going to die. He isn’t unafraid, but he is aware and he isn’t fighting. He is peaceful. In watching him live/die this way, those around him are receiving a sacred gift, one of new life.
How wonderful it is that Christ did not deny his death. In a time where we glorify eternal youth and applaud old people who fight aging by working pointless jobs until the day they die, how refreshing that Christ rested, and died. Modernity is not so wise. Modernity is what killed the Christ. Modernity thinks it can live forever and cannot come to terms with the fact that nothing, not even modernity, can deny death. Yet modernity itself, to be sure, is currently dying, and there is nothing that can stop it from doing so. And from the ashes of the old, new life sprouts. So, What will rise from the dying of empire?
Christ died at His appointed hour. He was scared, which does not mean he was without courage. He was human and He gave an enormous gift. May we all be as wise. To realize when all we are clinging to is no longer serving us, that all things have there place and eventually, we must let them go. We are not meant to be here forever. And while we are here we are not meant to remain the same the whole time we are here. Eventually, we will even need to let go of our most tightly held beliefs, to make space for the Unknown.
One of the most well-known of the Buddha’s parables is about the raft a man builds to get himself to the other shore of a wide river, a place “secure and without fears.” Once he reached the other shore, the question was whether he should take the raft with him or leave it. The Buddha said, “In the same way, monks, I have taught the Dhamma compared to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto. Understanding the Dhamma as taught compared to a raft, you should let go even of Dhammas, to say nothing of non-Dhammas.”
*painting by Alex Grey
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He is Risen. He is Risen indeed.
Please, have an orange.
I highly recommend this documentary about Stephen Jenkinson and his work in the “death trade” that looks at how modern culture deals with the old and the dying.
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I also highly recommend reading this free ebook:
LIVING IS DYING –HOW TO PREPARE FOR DYING, DEATH AND BEYOND
by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
BY DZONGSAR KHYENTSE RINPOCHE