Many thanks to Mardía, Rafa, Luchy and all the collaborators for the organization of this Psychology and Spirituality Meeting and for giving me the opportunity to share with you.
I am very sorry for not being able to be with you in Madrid, as it was my intention. You already know the terrible tragedy that is happening in the Valencian Community, in the metropolitan area of the city of Valencia in particular and also in the region of Requena-Utiel where the zen temple Luz Serena is located, where I am at the moment. Train transport is cancelled and many roads have been closed to traffic. Fortunately the internet has been reestablished only a few hours ago, which allows me to be with you now, even if only in online presence.
Although the Serene Light Zen Temple and its residents have not suffered any damage, the magnitude of the destruction around us is so great, there is so much pain and suffering in the hearts, so much loss of life and in such a painful way, that we are deeply shocked. Until Wednesday 30th I had prepared a certain script for my presentation today, but, after knowing the devastation caused by the dana, I felt I had to throw it to the wastebasket and approach my intervention from a vision that includes the Dantesque situation that is affecting so many thousands of people in the Valencian Community, in Spain, in Europe and in the whole world.
Mardía and Rafa are determined to unite Heaven and Earth. When I received their invitation I immediately thought, “Heaven and Earth have never been, are not and will never be separated. How could we pretend to unite something that has never been separated?”
I understand that the term Heaven we are using to refer to the spiritual, the spirit, the consciousness or the invisible and the term Earth to refer to matter, the concrete, the visible and measurable.
Traditional Chinese philosophy affirms that human beings are children of Heaven and Earth, the fruit of the alchemical wedding of Heaven and Earth: we are biological organisms endowed with material bodies with concrete and visible forms and, at the same time, we are the invisible and immaterial consciousness that reflects reality, the mirror consciousness or witness of reality.
Reality, as it is, is called Dharma in Buddhism and Dao in Daoism. For Buddhism and Daoism, the life practice of human beings consists in knowing the laws of Dharma, Dao, Reality and living in harmony with them, respecting them and accepting their limits.
When human beings ignore and disobey the laws of the Dharma, of the Dao, we produce all kinds of imbalances that generate an immense mass of pain and suffering. The Hopi Indians of the central plateau of the United States call our civilization Koyaanisqatsi, “life out of balance”. I still remember the deep impression made on me by the documentary film of the same name that I saw in a cinema in Madrid in 1982.
Although Heaven and Earth have never been, are not and will never be separated, we feel, think and live as if they were. We believe that the emotional, the psychological or the spiritual belong to a different order from the material. We believe that the body-matter is separate from the mind or consciousness. We also believe that “what happens out there” has nothing to do with “what happens in here”. We ignore that everything is connected, that everything is interdependent. We ignore, consciously or unconsciously, the laws of nature and that we are part of it. We do not live in nature: we are nature. Because of our ignorance, we have created a lifestyle that is out of balance. We are altering the balance between the basic elements that make up life such as water, air, earth and fire. We live in a permanent altered state of consciousness, in a cognitive distortion, a collective hallucination that is turning life on this planet into a living hell.
For example, the nature of water is to flow, to cleanse, to moisten. Anything that hinders the free flow of water is destined to be destroyed. On a psychological level, water is equivalent in the human world to the fluidity and nourishment provided by the emotions. When the human heart dries up, it becomes rigid. This stiffness is a symptom and becomes the cause in turn of a greater emotional dryness.
It is significant that most of the deaths caused by the dana in the Valencian Community have occurred in areas and in buildings built in flood zones, that is, in areas where water should be able to flow naturally. Why do people have to live in these areas, why have they built in them, why have the political authorities allowed it and continue to allow it? Because, in our blindness, we believe that we are above the laws of nature.
The cause is also the force of desire, of greed, of ambition.
Desire is the form that the fire element takes in the human soul. Since ancient times, sapiential traditions have considered fire as a sacred principle to be taken into account, understood, respected and used reverently. The Vedic Hindu tradition calls it Agni. Agni refers to the power of physical fire, but also to vital energy and clarity of consciousness. In Hindu mythology, Agni arises from the sky and descends to earth as a flaming arrow, thus representing the connection between the invisible world and human beings. Agni is a means of communication between Heaven and Earth, between the invisible and the visible, between celestial powers and human beings, between spirit and matter. Its power is both regenerative and life-giving as well as destructive, depending on how it is used.
Global warming is a perverse and destructive manifestation of the fire element. And human action is the cause, as everyone who is well informed knows. Human beings are overheating the planet and this warming is what makes the danas, which are natural phenomena that have always occurred in the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula, currently acquire such a destructive power. The Mediterranean Sea does not stop heating up. This past summer it set a new all-time record with 28.47º on August 15, two degrees above average. The dunes occur when the evaporation that this heat produces in the sea meets with cold air troughs from the North Pole. The warmer the water in the Mediterranean Sea, the greater the impact with the cold air and, therefore, the more virulent the drought will be.
But, in short, what is it that generates global warming of the planet and, in particular, the rise in temperature of the Mediterranean Sea? Mainly the use of fossil fuels, but also the huge number of factories producing consumer goods, the logistics needed to transport and market them, i.e. this economic system based on unlimited growth in production and consumption is the main cause of global warming. And, ultimately, what is the fuel that feeds the infernal wheel of production-consumption? Here it is: human desire over-stimulated by the capitalist economic system! On the one hand, the industrial revolution brought about the mass production of consumer goods. This was a milestone in human history that made it possible to satisfy the basic needs of millions of human beings. But the aim of the economic system to which it gave rise is not simply to satisfy basic needs, but to continue producing and producing consumer goods beyond purely human needs. This enormous productive capacity would be useless if the goods produced were not consumed. Therefore, this system exacerbates human desire to the point of paroxysm, so that, using techniques of manipulation, co-optation and hijacking of attention, advertising and marketing continually induce us to desire and consider as indispensable goods and things that we do not really need. The world’s population – that is, you and me, ourselves – are suffering from a system of continuous stimulation of our capacity to desire, we are being milked of our desire. We are being systematically excited by the fire of desire and the need to satisfy them is directed towards the consumption of experiences, sensations, objects, properties, travels, etc. The fire of desire is overheating ourselves, at the same time that it overheats the planet to the point of calcination.
On the other hand, when the waters of our emotions and deep existential aspirations do not flow naturally to their natural outlet, a pernicious and dangerous damming occurs. What is the ultimate goal of our innermost longings? That feeling of plenitude that overwhelms us when we open and widen our consciousness to embrace the totality of what exists, that is, the experience of the numinous, the religious or spiritual experience. However, the rationalist dictatorship that reigns in most of the so-called developed world affirms that there is nothing beyond reason, nothing beyond science, nothing beyond technology, nothing beyond matter, nothing beyond empirical experiences. This constitutes in fact a gigantic socio-cultural dam of containment of the spiritual or religious instinct of human beings, an institutionalized repression of our innate intuition according to which we are not material beings having sporadic spiritual experiences, but spiritual beings having a virtual material experience. The prevailing materialism wants us to believe that there is nothing apart from physical objects, nothing beyond our sensoriality. Materialism implies a toxic and perverted relationship with material objects and with natural resources, which it considers as mere inanimate objects at the service of human ambition. It is this dissociation of matter from spirit or consciousness, of Earth from Heaven, that is at the root of the fact that Planet Earth, its waters, its mountains, its subsoil, its ecosystems, are being prostituted, subjugated, exploited on the altar of the corrupt fire of ambition and unhealthy desires.
And this is how we find that the excess of the fire of desire in the human heart produces global warming of the earth. Global warming of the earth produces evaporation and condensation of the waters in the heavens. The condensed waters in the skies rush over the earth and flow swiftly towards the sea, but they meet with solid and material buildings constructed by human beings in flood zones, with commercial and industrial estates, and with highways that connect the peripheries with them and with the urban centers, urbanized zones to receive the flood of human beings caused by the rural exodus towards the metropolitan nuclei, raised where the waters rule.
What happens outside is what happens inside and vice versa. What happens above in the Heavens is a reflection of what happens below on Earth, and vice versa. „That which is above is as that which is below. That which is within is as that which is without,” states the Kybalion. Everything is connected. Nothing is separate from anything. We are an undifferentiated existential fabric in which every tiny molecule of dust has its function and meaning. If we alter this, we alter that. If we do not respect the laws of nature and its balances, the imbalances produced destroy us. It is a simple law that should be taught in schools.
It is urgent to transform our perception of the world and our place in it. It is vital that we become aware of our cognitive distortions and the socio-cultural-political-economic system we have created from them. It is urgent that we assume our individual responsibility and adopt a lifestyle based on voluntary simplicity, on the reduction of desires and whims, on the principle of “just what is necessary”. It is urgent that we become aware and learn to live accordingly with the reality that we are not aliens living on Planet Earth but that we are this undifferentiated existential web that is life, encompassing Heaven and Earth, the material and the spiritual, self and others.
My first teacher Taisen Deshimaru used to say that Zen is not a spiritualistic answer to a materialistic world, but a way that dissolves and transcends both spiritualism and materialism, that is, the two poles of this duality, in a non-dual perception, or what is the same in the perception of the original unity of all that exists.
To conclude, I would like to invite you to a simple meditation of recognition and gratitude to Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Mother Earth, Father Sky, we thank you for life, for all life and for our life as human beings.
Mother Earth, we thank you for the mountains, minerals, rocks and stones.
Father Sky, we thank you for your empty space that contains everything.
Mother Earth, we thank you for the trees, plants and herbs.
Father Sky, we thank you for the Sun, for the Moon, for all planets, systems and galaxies.
Mother Earth, we thank you for Water, Earth, Air and Fire.
Father Sky, we thank you for the air that breathes and breathes us.
Mother Earth, we thank you for all the food you give us, for the fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts.
Father Sky, we thank you for the nights full of stars and for the days full of colors and precious shapes.
Mother Earth, we thank you for the bees that pollinate the flowers and provide the fruits, and for all the insects that surround us, including mosquitoes.
Father Sky, we thank you for the clouds and the rain that refreshes and fertilizes us.
Mother Earth, we thank you for the fish large and small and for all the algae in the oceans.
Father Sky, we thank you for the wind that pushes the clouds and sets life in motion.
Mother Earth, we thank you for this beautiful world in which we can live, breathe, move, feed, and love all living things.
Father Sky, you who envelops all in your infinitude, we thank you for the ineffable mystery of existence.
Mother Earth, we thank you for human life and consciousness and we ask you to inspire and guide us so that we may learn to live together in your bosom, in the good and happiness of all that exists on earth and under heaven.
Heavenly Father, help us to open the eye of knowledge of your laws and teach us to respect them and to live in harmony with them.