The Strange Art of Relationships, Part 3

I have been trying to relate some of my own realizations, for better or for worse, on the strange art of relationships.  This is perhaps the most difficult of the arts to grasp, for we are speaking of hearts full of hopes and wounds and ideals and misconceptions, not knowing how to even love or hate properly, being so wrapped up in a primal fear and loneliness that is but the reflection of our deepest separation from God.

To even begin to grasp this art, we must become conversant, if not comfortable, in the realms of honesty ad vulnerability.  For me, and to say for all of us, this leads us into the realm of conflict, where we can become exposed in ways that can help or harm, depending on our consciousness and our perspective. This is a frightening thing. Stuck in the fight or flee mentality of our animal genetics, we choose one or the other on a certain instinct, and without discrimination, knowledge, or sanctity, we just add to the menace that seems to flow freely through the ethers that surround us.

We can make it black or white, and sometimes, in rare moments of crystal clarity, the calling of truth demands such divides.  I am coming to learn that conflict can be something much more dynamic, and with this discrimination, knowledge, and sanctity, we can earn and find very valuable insights on our sojourn back to our spiritual identity and our spiritual home.

It is matter of finding our voice, our integrity, our calling.  Speaking to my friend and fellow monk Hari Prasada, he encouraged me, as he has encouraged others close to him, to not instinctively shy away from necessary moments of conflict when they arise.  For him, to see others having the tendency to be a continual push-over, was a frustrating experience.  He saw they were missing a tremendous opportunity to grow, to know themselves in a deeper way, and to stand up for their own integrity and the truth at hand.

The caveat here is that to find one's voice in the realm of conflict, one must be devoted a sacred principle of honesty.  We can fight and scratch and claw for what we want, for what we believe in, and there is a certain empowerment that is there, but there is a very thin line between honesty that heals and empowers, or honesty which wounds and offends.

The holy books of the Vedic spirtual culture explain numerous examples of those who had found their voice and integrity in the deepest possible way, fully saturated as they were in love of God.  Despite this, even because of this, conflict still followed them like a shadow.  Yet, when they were confronted, their responses were full of an incredible enlightening potency.  At the essence of this potency was and is the devotion to actual forgiveness.

When the great Vedic emperor Maharaja Pariksit was unduly cursed by a young boy for a mistake he had made, he did not avenge and counter-curse. He forgave the impetuous young boy and accepted his fate, to die in seven days, in the most graceful manner, and his determination to fully understand spiritual truth left us with a perfect example of behavior and a treasure trove of knowledge through the dialogue that was recorded between him and his guru in his final days.

Another classical example is Jesus forgiving those who had crucified him on the cross.  In their forgiveness, these irrepressibly divine saints are not showing weakness, or letting themselves be pushed over, but are responding with their most sacred voice, with the most honest expression of their heart.  We can begin to approach them and their example when the honesty we bring to our conflicts is balanced with the intention to forgive, not to avenge.

Relationships mean conflict, either on an one-to-one basis, or in our community settings.  The conflicts that inevitably result quite literally define the destiny of our aspirations together. There is no way to avoid this confrontation of definition, for the holy books of the Vedas tell us that we live in the age of quarrel and hypocrisy.

Every particle, every atom of our age is saturated with quarrel and hypocrisy.  We grow old and experience this reality more and more, the searing of life itself it seems.  Everything we build is so fragile in comparison to this onslaught of disarray.  We can find ourselves burrowed into a deep well of our own cynicism, firmly convinced that unity is but a pipe dream.

This is where the voice of our honesty, if couched in an understanding and a desire for actual forgiveness, is such a powerful force against this seemingly impossible nightmare. We must understand that we have been forgiven for so much in our lives by others, for so much to even enter into the spiritual realm, therefore it is our most sacred duty to be able to forgive others.

This is not cheap.  This is not easy, especially when emotions are torn asunder and raw.  It is a bittersweet and fine line to walk, and knowing how to do so only comes from the maturity that is earned through sincerity and the mistakes that come along with it.  Somehow, through the falsities of our own ego, we must develop our devotion to forgiveness.  The alternative is a universe of pain and heartbreak, and it is nothing we want to put our hearts through or anyone else's heart for that matter.

This world and all the people in it require for us a tough skin, but an open heart.  Our conflicts, if we approach them with this maturity, will give us a growth we can feel in every fiber of our being, and a surcharge in our spirit which cannot be denied.

The Strange Art of Relationships, Part 2

Continuing from our previous meditation on the strange art of relationships, let me humbly offer some straight dope. There is no way we can avoid conflict in our relationships, nor should we want to avoid conflict. Without conflict, our relationships will never grow and flower fully into the deep, sacred love that is at the essence of our shared affection and experiences together.

One of the key points we established last time was the need to understand and be in full touch with our conscience. Our conscience is our tool and our guide to the proper processing of our conflicts. Swami Prabhupada deftly defines one key element of our conscience as being able to understand the suffering and happiness of other living entities. This begins when we are in touch with our own suffering and happiness, when we are no longer afraid of our own suffering and happiness.

We walk across the desert of our own heart in order to walk hand-in-hand with those we strive to love in this world and in this life. Let's go back again to Bhakti Tirtha Swami's Four Principles of Community Building, particularly principle #2

Anytime there is a problem in a relationship, you should first see it as your own fault. Even if others are to blame, you will only add to the problem by considering them to be at fault.

This is certainly a provocative ideal. That provocation goes to an even deeper level when we step back and consider it from the philosophical perspective of the Bhakti-Yoga tradition, which tells us that when a conflict arises and we feel pain, this pain is a karmic reaction we are receiving. The other person bringing this difficulty into our relationship is understood to be an instrument of our own karma.

I know this doesn't sound good or taste good. Discussions I've had around this idea reveal, on one level, that to place or lay blame at any party in a conflict may not do much to resolve the problem. I can certainly agree with this to an extent, for blame is a very strong word, a very loaded concept. What to speak of karma, which is well beyond anyone's understanding.

What these principles encourage us to do, if we can look past our surface discomfort and misunderstanding, is to learn the value of taking ownership of our problems. Someone may be fully at fault for a certain conflict. You can objectively look at the particular situation and say “I did nothing here to cause this particular situation to arise. It is all the other's person fault, totally and truly.” How I understand BT Swami's principle here is to transcend the objective and return to a deeper look at our own subjective contribution, which is not so obvious.

We may find that the neglect and pain we have given to this person in the past has a direct link to the neglect and pain they are causing us now. In other words, if we are really brave enough to look and to consider, we can see that no conflict lives in a vacuum. Someone who is mistreating us now is simply reacting, consciously or unconsciously, to some mistreatment we have laid upon them in the past.

I'll give a recent example from my own experience: A few weeks back, I asked one of my fellow monks to cover a service I had for one of our temple's monthly meditation programs. My friend gave me a genuine response in return: “Let me think about it”, which I instantly construed as being “I don't want to.” I expressed some instant frustration at the non-committal reply, which later blew up into a full-blown conflict, featuring the shouting out of generalities, irrationalities, and accusations (I did all the shouting too-my fellow monk seems to understand that monastic life should feature a minimum of shouting).

Of course, I had been thinking about the nature of conflict at the same time, and as much as my mind was telling me that I was totally right, and that I had the right to expect everyone to drop what they're doing and help me at a moment's whim, I had to go deeper. I could understand then that this particular conflict was a manifestation of other harsh dealings I had had with this monk. His reluctance to help me with my request was rooted in previous episodes where I had not helped him when he asked, and also where I had not expressed my emotions or feelings in a constructive way.

The fact is that he and I have a good relationship, where we can and have shared our intimate struggles and inspirations in ways we don't normally share with other monks in our monastery. One wrinkle of that for me is that with those I feel closely with, I am more able to express my emotions, one of which is anger.

The silver lining there is that this intimacy in my relationship compels me to closely examine the nature of any conflict I may have with this particular person, and although it's never comfortable, I have found that this honest introspection, and taking ownership at my own feet when I offend this person, has only made that relationship grow and become more mature.

No physician hesitates to give pain in order to give health, and we must have this mentality to do the needful on our inner journey. Restoring our connection to our conscience, to the presence of the Divine within us, is not easily or cheaply won. To know of, to feel, the suffering and happiness of those we love or strive to love in our life is no small thing. Only when we take ownership of our own suffering and happiness, and its effect on the relationships in our lives, will we learn to connect heart-to-heart.

The winds of conflict are so powerful that unless we have a deep inner core, rooted to God and service to God, our fragile hearts will never survive the contradictions that come when two souls in human form try to understand and love one another in a meaningful way.

Occupy Yourself

 My latest essay at the World Faith Blog

 Nearly a decade ago, I had the fortune of reading American Holocaust by David Stannard, which detailed the horrific conquest of Native American culture behind the “founding” of America. I found the very framework of my own cultural understanding thrown asunder. I realized that the “American Dream” had been largely birthed from a nightmare of unimaginable proportions.

I felt like I had been lied to, that the real fabric behind all the myths and legends of America was something else entirely that what I had absorbed as a open-minded youth in school. I now wanted to know what the truth really was, what truth really meant, and how to grasp a truth whose meaning would not be elusive or steeped in hypocrisy.

My own search for truth took me through many experiences and personal experiments into social justice and progressive philosophy into the realm of the spiritual, where I now live as a monk of the Hindu tradition in New York City. Yet I feel my journey is far from complete, as the bridge between the spiritual and activist spaces within my mind, heart, and soul feels unwalked to me. I want to know how I, as a monk, as a truth-seeker, with an open heart, can help to effect the kind of change we need in this world which is not ephemeral, which is linked to the eternal.

This disconnect came to the fore for me as I observed the march forward of the Occupy Wall Street movement over the past few months, its nucleus at Zuccotti Park just a short walk from my own monastery. I felt both a great inspiration for the courage and clamor of the huddled masses defying the fortress of inequality, yet I also felt a distance, a certain aloofness. I couldn’t connect, or find a deep personal motivation to become involved, to put my own body on the line.

As a monk, committed as much as I am to the inner spiritual journey, to the revolution of the heart, the realm of the politic feels incomplete without the consideration of the big picture. I am having a hard enough time occupying myself, knowing that unless I rend asunder my own greed, how can I make any impact taking on the forces of avarice that dominate our world? As great as the carnival spirit of OWS was and is, I desire a deeper connection, a clear bridge between our determination and our divinity.

A recent piece by Dylan Ratigan at the Huffington Post, titled “This Thanksgiving, Occupy Yourself”, helped to crystallize some of my own feelings and hopes with our grand new social justice movement. Dylan boldly challenges our own conception of the “villain” in the struggle that we face, asking us to look within the precepts of our own heart and being.

He writes:

I would point to the concept of the villain itself as the villain. For a villain, “the other”, lets us avoid dealing with the dark part that resides in each of us.

We all have dark thoughts — individually and as a nation. Fear, lust, anger, jealousy, deceit drive much of our decision-making. Yet, these are parts of ourselves we run away from. As a society, we have crafted a culture and set of institutional arrangements to deny this part of ourselves. This is why it has taken so long to even admit we have a problem of wealth inequality. It’s the denial of the dark part of ourselves.

But diabolical energy is part of human spirit, because we are dualistic beings. You cannot know honesty without knowing deceit, good cannot exist without evil, and life is not life without death. Our challenge is to reconcile all of these forces as they all exist in each of us. Any institutional arrangement that denies this, that relies on images of perfection bereft of the shadow, will inevitably be dominated by the very forces of that darkness. Namely fear of the shadow, ironically.

He quotes from Deepak Chopra’s The Shadow Effect:

We have been conditioned to fear the shadow side of life and the shadow side of ourselves. When we catch ourselves thinking a dark thought or acting out in a behavior that we feel is unacceptable, we run, just like a groundhog, back into our hole and hide, hoping, praying, it will disappear before we venture out again.

Why do we do this? Because we are afraid that no matter how hard we try, we will never be able to escape from this part of ourselves. And although ignoring or repressing our dark side is the norm, the sobering truth is that running from the shadow only intensifies its power.  Denying it only leads to more pain, suffering, regret, and resignation. the shadow will charge, and instead of us being able to have control over it, the shadow winds up having control over us, triggering the shadow effect.

This is a deep, deep spiritual meditation, a call to face the injustice we cause to our own heart, to our own self. It echoes the tradition of the Bhagavad-Gita, which tells us that the only real enemy we face is the vicissitudes of our own mind, and which call for us to find a
radical and progressive forgiveness towards those we hope can change for the better in their thought and action.

It is my fervent hope that by occupying the secret yet potentially sacred spaces in my own heart and mind, with the courage supplied to me by the great souls around me in my monastery and beyond, that I will be able to make a humble contribution to the OWS movement and to all the peoples struggling and striving to fulfill our common destiny as a human family.

If we want to give divine solace to the pain so many people are feeling, not being allowed their inviolable right to the pursuit of happiness, we must learn to face the pain within us, and learn to speak the language of forgiveness and transcendence.

Chris Fici is a writer/teacher/monk of the bhakti-yoga tradition. He has been practicing at the Bhaktivedanta Ashram in New York City since 2009. After receiving a degree in film/video studies at the University of Michigan, Chris began his exploration and study of the bhakti tradition. He currently teaches classes on the culture and art of vegetarian cooking, as well as the living philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, at New York University.

Faith House Manhattan Tour Bus: Experience Your Neighbor's Faith to Deepen Your Own

From Samir Selmanovic and Bowie Snodgrass from Faith House Manhattan at the Huffington Post

Click through the slideshow to look at photos from the Faith House Manhattan Tour Bus:

We are coming to a realization that religious zealots cannot be fought with indifference. Extremists of all nationalities and religious persuasion feeding on prejudice, legislating exclusion, and resorting to violence cannot be prevailed upon by people with less passion. Telling them to "cool down" and to "be moderate" will not do it. We must allow fires greater than theirs to arise. Our passion for a whole and interdependent word must rise above their passion for a segregated and zero-sum world.

In Faith House Manhattan, a non-profit inter-religious "community of communities," we believe that the time of isolated faith is over. We believe that to know who I am, I must also know who you are. For three years now we have hosted more than 60 Living Room gatherings where people can experiences the practices of another religion (or path, including atheism). We invite all to join our "co-laboratory" of interdependence: "Experience your neighbor's faith, deepen your own."

Our call is to get radical. Very radical. We hold that in today's world, religious people have to remap their reality to include -- in tension and in gratitude -- 'the other.' While our ancestors may have fought for independence, ours is the great struggle for interdependence. 'The other' is not over there, but all around us. While we have been conceiving of the world in vertical terms (whose party is better, whose institution is larger, whose nation is stronger, whose god is bigger), the world is becoming increasingly horizontal, and wonderfully so. Can we learn to be a part of the whole?

This past year, Faith House started a new program with four religious communities in Manhattan, who were part of a "Tour Bus" with reciprocal visits to each of our main religious gatherings. We brought people together to trespass imaginary boundaries while preserving the real ones. From an experience of worship at a Hindu temple, to a Jewish Shabbat service, to a Sufi Zikr, to midweek "Space for Grace" at a major Protestant church -- either as "Interfaith 101″ or an opportunity for seasoned pilgrims to be hosts or guests in their own setting -- this seven-week adventure was a unique New York City experience.

One of the participants, Bhakti Center monk and teacher, Chris Fici, summarized the experience this way:

Experience Your Neighbor's Faith, Deepen Your Own. This is a personal revelation a lot of us have shared recently on the Faith House Bus Tour, as the different sounds, colors, tastes and waves of devotion we have experienced together in our different houses of faith have made a deep communal resonance in our souls.

Too often (at least from my own perspective) our own practice can become caught in the mechanical. Living as a monk, in an intense and insulated environment, I often see how my consciousness during our morning meditation is directed towards how tired I am, or how I might be upset with this monk or that monk. The beautiful essence of our prayers and singing and dancing together remains lost to me.

As I was soaking up the whirling sanctity at our wonderful Bus Tour event at the Dergah of the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order, the pain of my own disconnection in my own practice became manifest, and that void was quickly filled by the wonderful and mystical people I saw around me, deeply absorbed in the love and vision of the Divine. I came to realize that what they were experiencing was something I had access to every day, if I chose to. I saw very clearly how we were all pearls on the same thread of God's mercy. I returned to my own community and practice with a sense of renewal that has stayed with me ever since.

The interfaith experience is very important for me, and I think for all of us as a common human family. The turbulence of our age calls for a communication between peoples of faith that transcends our superficial differences and allows us to drink from the immense well of wisdom God has given us, to give solace and take profound action to help cure our shared ills.

This turbulence also calls from us a tremendous maturity from our humility, from a recognition that we cannot possibly have the exclusive answers, that the pieces of the puzzle we need come from our brothers and sisters in faith. In Thomas Merton's journals of his final and fateful journey to India and Indonesia, where he breathed deeply of the eastern faiths that had always intrigued and inspired him, he related a realization in this regard that has deeply touched me.

He says that those who are mature in their faith are able to enter into the experience, philosophy, and practice of another faith and gain a practical wisdom which they can take back into their own renewed and strengthened spiritual life. This is the essence of my own personal adventure in interfaith. To be able to see of and hear of and speak about and taste of and move within the common thread of our faiths together is one of the most profound experiences I have ever had in my life. It links me to the maturity needed to answer the spiritual call of our time, and I imagine it may do so for you as well.

I am always eager to point out to others that New York City is a deeply spiritual place. I want to encourage others to develop the vision of the great rivers of faith which run through this town, which are not always visible beyond the surface tumult and loosely organized chaos.

When you come to New York City, you can enjoy a Broadway show, walk the Brooklyn Bridge, check out that special night club you found on Google, enjoy this gastronomical paradise with more than 4,000 restaurants, but don't miss the rich undercurrent of spirituality you can find at every corner. The many religious traditions can help you understand yourself, and perhaps rekindle a passion for your own faith, an encounter that will change you forever. You might even come back to your home and do something radical like taking time to understand the faith of the other, whose life is now inextricably intertwined with yours. Read articles and reflections about each stop on the Faith House tour here.

The Thread Underneath The Pearls: Final Reflection on Tour Bus

by Chris Fici, Monk and Teacher at the Bhakti Center 
From the Faith House Manhattan blog

One of my favorite verses in the Bhagavad-Gita is when Krishna tells his warrior friend Arjuna of how He is the connecting thread behind all reality.

O conqueror of wealth, there is no truth superior to Me. Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.

I’ve noticed how this thread connects out to a recent update of the Faith House tag line, which now reads Experience Your Neighbor’s Faith, Deepen Your Own.  This is a personal revelation a lot of us have shared recently on the Faith House Bus Tour, as the different sounds, colors, tastes, and waves of devotion we have experienced together in our different houses of faith have made a deep communal resonance in our souls.

Too often (at least from my own perspective) our own practice can become caught in the mechanical.  Living as a monk, in an intense and insulated environment, I often see how my consciousness during our morning meditation is directed towards how tired I am, or how I might be upset with this monk or that monk.  The beautiful essence of our prayers and singing and dancing together remains lost to me.

As I was soaking up the whirling sanctity at our wonderful Bus Tour event at the dergah of the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order, the pain of my own disconnection in my own practice became manifest, and that void was quickly filled by the wonderful and mystical people I saw around me, deeply absorbed in the love and vision of the Divine.  I came to realize that what they were experiencing was something I had access to every day, if I chose to.  I saw very clearly how we were all pearls on the same thread of God’s mercy.  I returned to my own community and practice with a sense of renewal that has stayed with me ever since.

The interfaith experience is very important for me, and I think for all of us as a common human family.  The turbulence of our age calls for a communication between peoples of faith that transcends our superficial differences and allows us to drink from the immense well of wisdom God has given us, to give solace and take profound action to help cure our shared ills.

This turbulence also calls from us a tremendous maturity from our humility, from a recognition that we cannot possibly have the exclusive answers, that the pieces of the puzzle we need come from our brothers and sisters in faith. In Thomas Merton’s journals of his final and fateful journey to India and Indonesia, where he breathed deeply of the Eastern faiths that had always intrigued and inspired him, he related a realization in this regard that has deeply touched me.

He says that those who are mature in their faith are able to enter into the experience, philosophy, and practice of another faith and gain a practical wisdom which they can take back into their own renewed and strengthened spiritual life.  This is the essence of my own personal adventure in interfaith.  To be able to see of and hear of and speak about and taste of and move within the common thread of our faiths together is one of the most profound experiences I have ever had in my life.  It links me to the maturity needed to answer the spiritual call of our time, and I imagine it may do so for you as well.

I am always eager to point out to others that New York City is a deeply spiritual place.  I want to encourage others to develop the vision of the great rivers of faith which run through this town, which are not always visible beyond the surface tumult and loosely organized chaos.  I think we most easily get this personal revelation through the communities we keep and build and hold together, through the families we cherish and keep in our faith and interfaith communities.

In the love we attempt to cultivate together, for each other and towards God, we see we are all the same wonderful pearls on the thread of His love and reality manifest in this world, drawing us towards Him in our unique but shared pathways.

So I am very happy and grateful to be allowed to be part of the Faith House community, and very grateful to be able to share my thoughts with you, and I hope now and into the future some of these thoughts, simply chances for me to pass on the wisdom I have received, may inspire you in many diverse way in your faith, and that they may help us all in the great and wonderful task of opening our heart and opening our mind.