Snowflakes in a Raging Fire

Hear me read this post.

It behooves us in this world of Desire — for accom­plish­ment and self-real­iza­tion, for pos­ses­sions and love — to know which parts of our­selves are dri­ven by self, and which are expressed from Self. We are so good at fool­ing our­selves in this hall of mir­rors, fail­ing to notice the self-inter­ests in our altru­ism, the ommis­sions to our truths, the embar­rass­ing con­tra­dic­tions in our val­ues and incon­sis­ten­cies of our actions. The point is that we are dri­ven too often and by too much, dri­ven by inner needs that are actu­al­ly still stronger than we would like to believe — and this, of course, is what makes the hall of mir­rors so pow­er­ful. We can’t real­ly tell the dif­fer­ences between self and Self, par­tic­u­lar­ly on some of the most impor­tant things.

An exam­ple. I once was asked to make a speech for a cou­ple of hun­dred top man­agers at a big tobac­co com­pa­ny. The con­fer­ence opened with the pres­i­dent mak­ing an impas­sioned speech about how the indus­try had been maligned and how the peo­ple in the room were not just good man­agers, they were great ones, some of them the best in the world. He denounced the media for sug­gest­ing the com­pa­ny adver­tised smok­ing to chil­dren. He denounced recent law­suits and bit­ter­ly com­plained about how unfair­ly he and oth­ers had been treat­ed, and then he also crowed about how gen­er­ous and for­giv­ing he and the com­pa­ny had been. The man­agers were moved and applaud­ed long and loud when the speech was done.

Of course, I thought, this is all “fear in the work­place” stuff. After all, they have to applaud. But I was wrong abut that, at least in part. I could­n’t help but notice how dur­ing the break after the speech the man­agers were talk­ing to one anoth­er and sup­port­ing one anoth­er. One woman was indig­nant that peo­ple in her church had recent­ly become out­spo­ken about smok­ing and were crit­i­cal of her employ­ment. She called them “right­eous” and “unchris­t­ian.” Oth­ers com­mis­er­at­ed with her. And while they talked, the room became bluer and bluer with smoke. A long time ago I used to smoke, but it was real­ly begin­ning to get to me.

After the break, the next speak­er got up, a senior mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive who sum­ma­rized recent sales fig­ures from around the world, includ­ing pen­e­tra­tion of the “YAS” mar­ket, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Japan and oth­er East­ern coun­tries. I did­n’t know what YAS smok­ers were so I had to ask the man­ag­er next to me. He whis­pered back: “young adult smok­ers.” I felt like I was sud­den­ly thrown into a new dimen­sion where it was entire­ly pos­si­ble to think in con­tra­dic­tions. It’s the oth­er peo­ple who are right­eous. We don’t sell to chil­dren, we sell to YAS’s. We are the ones who have been treat­ed bad­ly and have had to rise above it all. A part of me was say­ing, “You’ve got to be kid­ding.” Anoth­er part just twist­ed in my gut — or was that just the smoke?

Lest you and I find our­selves get­ting too right­eous about all this, what it clear­ly demon­strat­ed to me was exact­ly how the hall of mir­rors works, per­son­al­ly and with­in groups.

How can this hap­pen except that our Desire is so strong, whether that Desire is to believe in our own right­ness, to ful­fill a cer­tain image, to have stature or influ­ence, to have our ways of think­ing, feel­ing, and believ­ing con­firmed. If we tell our­selves enough times that we are absolute­ly right and we’re the ones that have been wound­ed, we give over our ener­gy and pow­er to what has no busi­ness at all being empow­ered. Form a com­mu­ni­ty around this mantra and dark ener­gy is mul­ti­plied count­less times.

How to begin stop­ping this? I’m not sure, but there were clues, one of which had to do with hav­ing some one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions, qui­et­ly. When I asked a cou­ple of ques­tions about the con­tra­dic­tions, one very senior man­ag­er acknowl­edged his pain by pulling out his wal­let and show­ing me a pic­ture of his back­yard. I saw a beau­ti­ful­ly land­scaped gar­den and lawn with a white Greek col­umn promi­nent­ly posi­tioned at the cen­ter. It was an image of his own dig­ni­ty, he sug­gest­ed, and he reflect­ed that this was where he kept it: in the “back­yard” that was his sanc­tu­ary from the com­pa­ny and his job. And the woman who had com­plained about peo­ple in her church also acknowl­edged to me pri­vate­ly that although she smoked at work, which was close to an expec­ta­tion, she would­n’t smoke at home in front of her chil­dren. In such a deep for­est of con­tra­dic­tions, peo­ple often find ways to pre­serve some part of an essen­tial Self.

We all get tripped up. It’s all too easy to think we are bet­ter than the peo­ple who work for tobac­co com­pa­nies, espe­cial­ly the rel­a­tive­ly wealthy man­agers who could cer­tain­ly find work some­place else if they want­ed to. But we all have self. We all have our rea­sons for our behav­ior. We all have Desire that caus­es striv­ing and pride and yet more striv­ing. Maybe because we don’t all work for such firms it is actu­al­ly eas­i­er to deceive our­selves. The con­tra­dic­tions aren’t so easy to catch. We don’t have any­thing as graph­ic as that Greek col­umn to remind us of the dig­ni­ty that’s been lost.

I hap­pened to be read­ing again the com­men­taries on the ten oxherd­ing pic­tures from a Zen mas­ter, Kaku-an, in the 12th cen­tu­ry. One of the pic­tures is just a cir­cle with white space with­in, repe­sent­ing “both bull and self tran­scend­ed.” Some say the bull rep­re­sents life-ener­gy, our pas­sions; some say the bull is our untamed mind. You’ll see this pan­el if you access the link and scroll down. The poet­ry beneath the draw­ing remind­ed me how all our desires, our pas­sions, cause us to lose our­selves, live in con­tra­dic­tion, and also that these desires of self real­ly are no more than snowflakes in a rag­ing fire. I believe very deeply that once this is not just under­stood intel­lec­tu­al­ly but real­ly lived, trans­for­ma­tion of self and soci­ety is pos­si­ble. But first you have to stand in that fire and acknowl­edge your pur­pose which is to burn, evap­o­rate, notice how self is exact­ly that snowflake, how frag­ile, how tem­po­ral it is against big­ger, more sacred ener­gies, ener­gies per­haps that are what this uni­verse is all about.

Maybe it is just a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with our­selves that begins this under­stand­ing. Per­haps it is tak­ing a look at a pic­ture we have been car­ry­ing a long time, one that we cher­ish, a lit­tle torn at the edges but one dear to us, one that touch­es us and reminds us who we are.

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