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By Den Frumen
July 16, 2000
As you may have already
noticed the title of today’s sermon is NOT “It Won’t Hurt You,” as
was advertised. As I began to write and develop my ideas, the sermon
took a different direction and deserved a different title. Those of
you who have dogs in the family will be particularly interested, I
think. Those wishing to find out more about God or gods may also
welcome the new sermon topic. If you could care less about gods OR
dogs, stick around anyhow. As my mother often says, “It won’t hurt
you.”
from the UPANISHADS (Hindu)
The Lord of all,
The knower of all,
The beginning and end of all—
That Self dwells in every human heart.
Look out—it’s gone.
Look in—it’s gone.
Don’t look—it’s gone.
It cannot be remembered,
It cannot be forgotten,
It cannot be grasped be any possible means.
It is beyond all limits and bounds.
It is the pure oneness
where nothing else can exist.
To know it, you must become it!
It is the final resting place of all activity,
peaceful and unchanging,
the ultimate good,
one without a second,
It is the Supreme Self.
It, above all else, should be known.
A very close friend of mine, who knows how my life has ‘gone to the
dogs,’ so to speak, gave me this little book of cartoons titled Bad
Dogs: A Collection of Canine Pranks and Practical Jokes. The first
cartoon shows a man arriving home to find the house in shambles, the
floor littered with broken lamps and flower pots, chewed-up shoes
and books, etc. The only thing left untouched is a fish bowl and its
lone occupant. The dog, sitting near the door, looks hopefully at
his master and points to the fish.
We like to bestow upon our dogs the best, and sometimes the worst,
of human traits, don’t we? And why not? After all, we humans CREATED
dogs. From Great Danes to Bulldogs to Chihuahuas, they’re all
wolves, genetically,…our own very special wolves. Sometimes it even
seems that we’ve created them in our own images,…as best we could.
Our household is the pack. Our dogs serve us. We provide for them.
They bask in our love and attention. They suffer our meanness and
neglect. They incur our wrath. We usually forgive them. WE are the
gods in the canine world.
What would it be like to live among gods, imperfect ones at that? In
Greek mythology, mortals interacted with their gods and goddesses.
Sometimes they even mated, producing the likes of Aeneas, the son of
the goddess Venus, Achilles, son of the sea goddess Thetis and
plenty of other heroes and demigods. The real rulers, though, were
human emotions.
The ancient Greeks, who so profoundly colored the thought and psyche
of the Western mind, created gods and goddesses in their own image.
I believe this reflected the view of human beings as the measure of
all things. Many other ancient or primitive cultures depicted their
deities in animal or part animal/part human form. This was a nice
way to acknowledge the power and importance of other species in the
environment. The same was done for the sun and moon and forces of
nature like rain, wind and thunder. The Greeks, however, became
scientists, nature became less of a mystery and mankind became more
and more important. Humans still deferred to the gods, but the new
gods were physical and EMOTIONAL reflections of their creators.
When I said that my life had ‘gone to the dogs.’ I was referring to
the fact that dogs have always been part of my family. Meisha was my
canine companion for 18 years. Currently there are three canine
members of our household. And yes, the situation in the cartoon has
happened to us… more than once. Of course, when dogs commit their
sins, it is usually OUR fault. The improper behavior is due to lack
of attention or poor training. If dogs had a savior to speak for
them, he or she would undoubtedly say, “Masters, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.”…Or do they?
It’s true that Beau, the male Beagle, and Brandy, the female
mixed-Beagle, don’t seem to have a clue. Beagles are cute and
lovable, but not the smartest of dogs. But Breezy, the
mixed-Shepherd-Airedale, Alpha female, and most wolf-like of the
three, DOES seem to know when she’s done something naughty, like get
into the garbage. She doesn't come to the door to greet me on those
occasions. She has that look of…shame, I guess, and she seems to
accept full responsibility.
With the exception of a few really disgusting habits that I won’t
mention, I generally regard dogs as noble creatures and good
companions, more loyal, trustworthy and sincere than many of my
fellow humans, present company excepted, of course. I’ve had this
little plaque since I was a child. It contains the following poem
called ‘Loyalty’ by Douglas Baine.
Sweet the affection that lies deep in my little Dog’s eyes,
He’d suffer till death to defend the life of his grateful Old
Friend.
Dogs and humans have a number of things in common. First of all, we
share some of the same emotions, such as joy, melancholy, fear,
jealousy and shame. Secondly, we both dream. The rapid eye movement
of a sleeping dog is, for me, one of the most compelling reasons for
compassion and special regard for dogs and other intelligent species
on Earth.
There is another thing we have in common. Dogs, like their human
creators are part of nature in one sense but separated from it, in
another sense. We don’t have to believe in Creationism to
acknowledge that we humans have built for ourselves a niche in this
world that, due to our technology, has set us somewhat apart from
the usual ways of nature. We’ve taken the dog with us into our
realm.
For the sake of analogy, let’s say that WE, too, were a special
creation. We received some personal instruction from our divine
mentor many, many generations ago. A training manual was left behind
for our use since we can read and rationalize and learn and choose.
But many of us have been naughty or down right wicked. Was it poor
training? Lack of attention? When the master returns home and sees
the mess we’ve made, do we try to look innocent and point to the
fish? Or maybe we should blame it on the dog.
Well, that’s one way of looking at morality and sin and divine
intervention. Do we really learn goodness and morality, in some way,
from divine instruction? Or is morality a human invention? Is
morality part of an evolutionary process that may or may not be
divinely inspired?
The question of whether morality is unchanging and absolute OR
evolving and relative frequently sparks heated debate. But to
suggest that notions of
right and wrong have NOT changed in the past two thousand years and
are NOT relative to culture is to ignore history. Absolutism and the
Christian Church were firmly entrenched in Europe during centuries
of bloody wars, persecution, abuse and neglect. In the 18th Century,
the French philosopher Rousseau dared to condemn mainstream
Christianity for “detaching people from earthly concerns, laying
them open to tyranny and slavery.” He regarded amoral nature as
preferable to so-called moral civilization.
In the 20th Century, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa
recalled that “when the white European Christians arrived in Africa,
they had their Bibles and we had our land. They taught us to close
our eyes and pray. When we opened our eyes, WE had their Bibles and
THEY had our land.” For nearly a century after the establishment of
our own country, the ‘Land of Liberty,’ freedom and slavery were
strange bedfellows. That was back in the days when prayer in school
was legal. Now there are contradictions like ‘protect the unborn
fetus, buy more guns!’ Although we try to toss the ball back in
God’s court, so to speak, it’s always human beings who decide what’s
moral and what’s ‘absolute.’
Sometimes I like to get down on the floor to bond with my dogs and
see things as they see them, albeit in color. Actually, it’s the
smells, not the sights, that are most important and interesting to a
dog. Most humans recognize only three basic smells: food, perfume
and stink. Most dogs, however, do not seem to mind this particular
human shortcoming.
Popular religion has devoted much time and energy to bringing the
GODS down to OUR level. We even make our gods as pompous and
self-righteous as we are. This could be a real insult to any god who
actually cared about being insulted. I would think that the ego trip
of being believed in versus the disappointment or indignation of
non-belief is of little concern to a supreme being. My dogs can’t
understand why I don’t like to roll in dead fish or deer feces… and
I swear I don’t. Why would a divine being necessarily share human
values and beliefs?
All three of our dogs were orphans, so to speak, and they came to us
with quite a bit of emotional and psychological baggage. Beauregard,
the Beagle, brought the most baggage. I rescued him along
Surrattsville Road about five years ago. He was skinny, covered with
ticks, glassy-eyed and terrified. It took me more than an hour, most
of it on my hands and knees, before I was able to pick him up and
put him in the car. Soon we were home and he was asleep on the back
seat. Moments later, when released into our backyard, he ran and hid
in the farthest corner of the fenced-in yard, afraid to even look at
anyone.
Beau has come a long way in his therapy, but still reacts with fear
to loud noises and sudden movements and will eat only when left
alone in another room. He’s very attached to Breezy, his protector,
and, to a lesser extent, me. Beau had some bad experiences with the
gods.
People carry lots of psychological baggage, too, as individuals, as
cultures and as a species. RELIGION has burdened us with a lot of
this baggage. Consider the following episodes from religious history
or mythology. First, here’s a new transcript of a conversation
between God and Abraham.
“Abraham, if you believe in me and want to be my head servant, KILL
your son Isaac.”
“But, Lord, I thought you said ‘thou shalt not kill.”
“Did I? Well, there are always exceptions to the rule. Besides,
those commandments aren’t written in stone, you know,..not yet.”
In the old version, God spares Isaac when he sees that Abraham is
actually going to kill his son. In the new version, God saves Isaac
by striking Abraham dead since an old man who hears voices and goes
around killing relatives is a danger to society.
The Old Testament god was certainly a believer in ‘spare the rod,
spoil the child.’
“If you kids don’t stop it, I’m gonna...I’m gonna drown all of you.
Noah’s the only one who listens to me anymore.”
Later, Jesus came along, evidently singing a different tune. It
appears he had some great ideas. He talked more about what to do,
instead of what ‘thou shalt not’ do. But, alas, he was a radical, a
revolutionary, and he wasn’t just out to make a sheckel, or whatever
they made back then. He was the kind of guy who could never get
elected, too honest, too concerned about others. Too bad he didn’t
write his own gospels, then we’d know for sure what he did or did
not say.
Jesus was followed by Paul who disliked homosexuals, bisexuals and
women…and probably dogs, as well. He was familiar with Greek
mythology and the ways of the Romans. He knew how to package his
goods and make a lot of sales.
Then we had a long line of popes, commanding armies and acting not
at all like Jesus. The Crusades provided Christians and Moslems
ample opportunity to slaughter each other over respective religious
baggage, as if there weren’t enough infidels and heretics to kill on
each side. After the Reformation, the Crusades ended so Catholics
and Protestants could stay home and kill each other, when they
weren’t killing the Jews.
Every century has had its share of wild-eyed, self-proclaimed close
personal friends of Jesus, all of them unloading their baggage on
our religious and psychological well-being. It’s enough to make you
want to run off and hide in the farthest corner. Now, I’m speaking
from the standpoint of someone who grew up and continues to reside
in a Christian-dominated society, but people in many other parts of
the world with different religious traditions could tell similar
stories.
The philosophy of Jesus, as I understand it, was love and kindness.
That’s not psychological baggage. Its best practitioners come from
lots of different cultures and religions. Many know nothing of Jesus
and Christianity. Most are unknown to all but those whose lives they
have personally touched. They are all people who live according to
the purest essence of their respective faiths which, at their cores,
concern love and kindness in THIS world. In doing so, they become as
noble, as divine as any human can hope to be.
Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book, Living Buddha, Living Christ,
distinguishes between the historical human beings and the spirit of
the divine, SYMBOLIZED by the example of each religious founder. He
explains that both sets of Buddhas and Christs, the historical and
the living, are of great value.
I am reminded of something a Spanish friend once told me. His name,
by the way, is Jesus. It was in the late 60’s or early 70’s and he
was involved in a sort of underground religious community, led by an
ex-priest, in Barcelona. “I can’t relate to Christ, the god,” he
said, “but Christ, the human being, says a lot to me.”
Thich Nhat Hanh explains that “Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, is
not the only Buddha or “enlightened one.’ All beings in the animal,
plant and mineral world are potential Buddhas.” He takes issue with
the Pope, who, in his book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, insists
that “Christ is absolutely original and absolutely unique. If He
were only a wise man like Socrates, if He were a ‘prophet’ like
Muhammed, if He were ‘enlightened’ like Buddha, without any doubt He
would not be what He is. He is the one mediator between God and
humanity.”
“Of course, Christ is unique,” responds Thich Nhat Hanh. “But who is
not unique? Socrates, Muhammed, the Buddha, you and I are all
unique. The idea behind the statement, however, is the notion that
Christianity provides the only way of salvation and all other
religious traditions are of no use. This attitude excludes dialogue
and fosters religious intolerance and discrimination. It does not
help.”
Many God experts and absolutists would do well to remember these
words of Socrates: “The admission of ignorance is the beginning of
wisdom.”
The ‘Hymn of Creation’ from the Hindu Rig Veda, composed in the 15th
Century B.C.E (or B.C., if you prefer), ponders the great mystery.
Who here knows? Who can say for sure?
When it began and from where it came—this creation?
THE GODS CAME AFTERWARDS,
So who really knows?
There is both comfort and danger in creating gods. Comfort in having
a protector. My dog, Beau, knows about that. Comfort in the
expectation of immortality. The danger lies in the absolutes we
inflate from our opinions and speculations, our hopes and fears.
I believe the divine is as personal as you and me only when we find
it within ourselves. The religious forms on the outside are
illusions. On the subject of gods we have invented, including
monotheistic types, we humans may be experts, but we can only begin
to imagine the Ultimate Truth.
Another book of Hindu scripture, the Mahabharata, contains a
definition of the Supreme Being as “that one whose form is the
entire universe.” I think I like this idea. God as the Ultimate
Truth is the sum of which we and everything else are parts.
Earlier I posed the question, ‘What is the nature of morality?’ In
my humble opinion,…I see morality as an evolutionary development,…a
manifestation of our awakening consciousness,…divinely inspired
insofar as WE are expressions of the Prime Mover. May we use it to
help us live peacefully and harmoniously in THIS world.
The Spirit of Life will go on evolving. Meanwhile, we humans
continue to live as gods among OUR gods…and much of what I know
about gods…I learn from the dogs.
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