January 31, 2008
Your Position In The Boat
Last night while chatting about some musicians we know and their desire to be the 'star of the show', Mack concluded, "Everyone's fighting for their position in the boat". Whether it's ego, greed or jealousy it's silly to struggle when we are all in the same boat, heading toward the same destination.
Speaking of simple truths and boats, many years ago I realized that the lyrics to a song, which most people consider a nursery rhyme, is actually a blueprint or a principle to live your life by.
Row, row, row your boat...
I remember when it dawned on me that this is not just a children's song but it is an inspiring spiritual guide based on the idea that there is a divine flow in life that is continually guiding you toward fulfillment. The trick is learning how to row with that flow.
Monotheistic faiths generally support some version of divine providence, which acknowledges that the Divinity of the faith has a profound but unknowable plan always unfolding in the world. Unforeseeable, overwhelming, or seemingly unjust events are often thrown on 'the will of the Divine,' in deferences like the Muslim inshallah ('as Allah wills it') and Christian 'God works in mysterious ways.' Often such faiths hold out the possibility of divine retribution as well, where the Divinity will unexpectedly bring evil-doers to justice through the conventional workings of the world; from the subtle redressing of minor personal wrongs, to such large-scale havoc as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or the biblical Great Flood. Other faiths are even more subtle: the doctrine of karma shared by Buddhism and Hinduism is a divine law similar to divine retribution but without the connotation of punishment: our acts, good or bad, intentional or unintentional, reflect back on us as part of the natural working of the universe. Philosophical Taoism also proposes a transcendent operant principle — transliterated in English as tao or dao, meaning 'the way' — which is neither an entity or a being per se, but reflects the natural ongoing process of the world. Modern western mysticism and new age philosophy often use the term 'the Divine' as a noun in this latter sense: a non-specific principle and/or being that gives rise to the world, and acts as the source or wellspring of life. In these latter cases the faiths do not promote deference, as happens in monotheisms; rather each suggests a path of action that will bring the practitioner into conformance with the divine law: ahimsa — 'no harm' — for Buddhist and Hindu faiths; de or te — 'virtuous action' — in daoism; and any of numerous practices of peace and love in new age thinking.
Posted by dancoy at January 31, 2008 12:20 PM