activism and spiritual effort

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Over the years, a number of people have visited the zendo here and brought with them a similar malaise: They were activists in one cause or another and somehow activism had left them depleted and dissatisfied. "Burnout" was the facile terminology some of them used. Perhaps spiritual discipline would restore them to a livelier and more peaceful existence.

I wonder how often it happens that the apparent or advertised "peace that surpasses all understanding" is used as a club in spiritual endeavor. Some great big spiritual woo-hoo -- the 'unconditional realm' or emptiness or Nirvana or something similar -- is held up in the mind as a golden orb, a magic clarifier, a disperser of all anguish or confusion. Nothing can compete with this spiritual peace ... and so nothing is allowed to compete with it. "Out, damned spot!"

But of course it's just the same old problem expressing itself on some new day.

"I want."

As there is nothing wrong with activism per se, so there is nothing wrong with spiritual effort per se. But using the one to club the other over the head -- activism as a means of silencing airy-fairy theoretical thinking or spiritual effort to still the unpredictable satisfactions of activism ... it's an endless game of Whac-A-Mole ... the activist spirit seeing zombie-like introverts; the spiritual-heights crowd dissing a foolish and endless attachment. And neither is wrong.

There is a difference between carefully planning and executing some activity with an underpinning of hope that it will turn out a particular way and carefully planning and executing the same activity ... and just seeing what happens. The activity may be aimed in a particular direction, but what happens is up for grabs and it is this unknowing is important. It's not indifference (the whole-hearted activity proves that), but it is more clear-headed and less prone to anything like "burnout."

"I want."

That'll screw the pooch every time.

And then too, as my Zen teacher once observed, "Without ego, nothing gets done."

An as team manager Tom Hanks snorted with exasperation in the 1992 movie "A League of Their Own" as he explained baseball to a worn-down player:

"Of course it's hard! If it were easy, everyone would do it."
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