The Politics of Compassion

As I experienced Ethan's transmission through the study-at-home recording of the Vajrayana practice of visualization, I found myself cataloging contexts in which I had encountered similar ideas. One was Miguel de Unamumo, Jesuit philosopher, who avers in "A Tragic Sense of Life" that humanity "creates this God of Love and Eternal Life by believing in Him, and He in turn helps us to be better human beings". Not too long afterwards, I received an orientation to the Greek mystery traditions (Hellenismos), which also saw humanity as participating in co-creation with our deities.

In all three traditions, there is a sense of striving to bring compassion, reason and love into a material world that is dominated by "jealous gods" (how Unamuno arrived at his conclusion in the face of the declarations of Exodus is somewhat befuddling). The struggle be simply a fascinating projection - why should that process be fruitful? Particularly when historically it has been so easy for the temporal powers to separate us from the avatars that exemplify those practices. Are we just fooling ourselves?

One answer is that the jealous gods and/or people, when they hold sway, get bored and eventually turn on each other. They are like froth on the ocean - dramatic and violent - but pretty much irrelevant in the context of the overall body of water that is poured out by the compassionate deities and/or people.

In fact, I believe that the situation of the jealous gods is far worse than that. They hold on so desperately to this place because they know that they're trapped in it. The possibility of escape is also a common theme in the great practices of compassion: Buddha spoke of escaping the wheel of Dharma; Jesus of Heaven on Earth. The Greeks invested in the project of Dionysus, a human personality of sufficient maturity that it could interact directly with the fundamental principles of reality, freeing us from the tyranny of the jealous gods.

The story in Islamic philosophy resonates most strongly with me. It is that on the Day of Judgment each soul must pass along an infinitely narrow bridge into Heaven. Those that cannot negotiate the span fall into the abyss. But they are not lost. Allah sends his angels again and again into the abyss until every last particle that can be saved is redeemed.

This sounds to me like a rescue operation or a hospital. There are parts of us that refuse to submit to the transformative gaze of another's love, that gaze that gives us to understand "Here - this is why you hurt so much." Sometimes we find ourselves identifying with the hurt, and seek its validation by propagating it into others.

This reality seems to be a place in which the separation of our parts occurs. Obviously, as in any process of healing, the worst moments are just before the cure becomes effective. I fear that we are being granted the opportunity to live through such a transition.

So my interpretation of Tara is as a projection of a healing principle that is woven into the deepest layers of this reality, and that facilitates the separation of jealous and loving aspects of our personalities. Why and how that weaving was accomplished is a mystery to me. But it is my experience that aligning myself with that principle is a source of great power, sublime joy and co-creative validation.

Thank-you so much, Ethan, for the work that you do in bringing students into contact with that principle. I hope that others interpret my comparative theology as validation of your relation of the second and third aspects of meditation deities that ended last week's session.