"other power"

.
This morning, I received an essay by Alfred Bloom, emeritus professor at the University of Hawaii. I probably did not read "Higan: The Festival of Virtue" with as much care as Al exercised when writing it. I don't read well any more. The delicate meanings ascribed to one thing and another in a Buddhist context ... well, let's you and him do it.

Despite my inferior appreciations of the essay (which I cannot link here so as to allow others to point out what a doofus I am) still there were things that jumped up off the Internet page at me. One was "virtue," of course. But the other was "Other Power." The very term made my heart sink and yet who can escape its beckonings and implications and insistence in a spiritual endeavor?

Other power is the power of God or Mohammed or righteous men and women of the past. Other power is the sun and the moon. Other power is when things are in balance, such as yin and yang, or the equinox that provides a day and night of equal length. Other power is "equality" or a "peace" and "equilibrium" in which two things participate. Other power is the stuff that quasi-savvy students deride even as they assert "one-ness" or "none-ness" or an "unconditional understanding."

Other power.

Who can escape the blandishments of something else? Who can escape what is not something else? Anyone I ever met who lowered himself into the spiritual-endeavor hot tub was seeking some sort of relief or peace or joy or ... well, something other than the current, unsatisfactory state of affairs. That's just how things got off the ground because those were the tools available in the human tool box.

Other power. The power of a better mouse trap. To suggest that some other something-or-other was actually at play strikes me as play-acting. The power of something or somewhere else puts gas in the spiritual-endeavor gas tank.

This morning, a friend sent along a review of a book by a Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Emmett Coyne. "The Theology of Fear" is not likely to endear Coyne to the Vatican under whose aegis he worked for so many years.

“I’m on the last lap of life and eternity is facing me. It’s my last chance to speak up and speak out,” said Father Coyne, who was ordained in 1966 and is retired at age 73....

Father Coyne expects church authorities will not be happy with his book. “One has to follow the truth wherever it takes him,” he said.

How thorny and difficult Coyne's path must have been -- to work so many years for what is seen in the end as manipulative and false and worse, a false thing in which good truths abounded. Anti-Catholics or other non-believers may scoff in glee: "Toldja so!" But for my money, such criticisms could use a good dose of looking in the bathroom mirror. Which of us has not signed on to some other-power entity only to find, with luck, that the castle is made of sand?

The assertion of an other is nothing more than an assertion of self. The assertion of self is nothing more than the assertion of an other. This is not good or bad. I just think it is factual: Two lovers, arms entwined, walking down some flowered path. It is human and the only question remaining is, "Is it humane?" There are no intellectual or emotional answers to such a question or, if there are, they amount to little more than piss in a snowbank. Each is left to examine his or her own Vatican and find out what is actually true. Those who claim that all castles are built of sand merely add fuel to an inhumane conflagration.

Other power. It is like the old male sexist observation about women, "Can't live with it. Can't live without it." If  other power cannot ease the shaken heart and self power cannot ease the shaken heart, what is it that eases the shaken heart? My distinct thought is that only individuals can do that and that probably attention and responsibility and patience are woven into the curative mix.

But what do I know? I'm just the 'other' guy.

.