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 intensiļ¬es 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.
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.
