> “…people need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them.” _- Daniel Quinn,_ Ishmael > “The day will come when you will trust you more than you do now, and you will trust me more than you do now. And we can trust each other. I do believe, I really do believe in the New Jerusalem, _I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous, and people are not yet willing to pay it_.” _- James Baldwin,_ James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket _(emphasis mine)_ _This is the preamble, or introduction, to part three in my three-part series on NSPM-7. You can read parts one and two here:_ * _“NSPM-7 and Capitalism (and What It Means to be an Anti-Capitalist)“_ * _“NSPM-7 and Fascism (and What It Means to be an Anti-Fascist)“_ This world is broken. It always has been. There have been times, perhaps, when for some people at certain points in history, it has not been as broken as it seems now. Yet broken it has always been, and maybe always will be. But that doesn’t mean it’s irredeemable. This isn’t a novel concept. If we’re going with a gross oversimplification, this is sort of the underlying premise of at least two major world religions, Christianity and Buddhism. (These are the two that have shaped my thinking the most, anyway.) Listen: _"Subscribe to Sticky Weather"_ It's free, and you get new posts in your inbox. No emails about anything else, ever, and I won't beg you to become a paid subscriber. Powered by Buttondown. * Christianity says (again, I’m taking a lot of liberties with my paraphrasing here), _God made the universe and saw that it was good. Humans sought to become like gods, and it became their downfall_. * Buddhism says, _Humans are basically good. But through longing, grasping, and clinging, we have caused ourselves to suffer, taking something that is naturally good and twisting it into something perverse._ Through one way of pondering these worldviews, you might conclude that the ultimate work lying before all of humanity is to get back to this natural, good state. In certain Christian traditions – the ones that ring truer to me than others – this means building the Kingdom of Heaven. Or, as Jesus said in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, _on earth as it is in heaven_.” (Matthew 6:10, emphasis mine) Christianity taught me that God created the universe and that God is _in_ the universe[1]. Consequently, Jesus also had this exchange with a group of Pharisees, who, it might be said, were the first-century versions of our modern-day mega church evangelists: > Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because _the kingdom of God is within you[2]_.” (Luke 17:21, emphasis mine) There are a million ways to interpret this quote. The one I happen to resonate with is that this is what the Buddha meant when he spoke of Buddha-nature. The Third Karmapa, Rangjun Dorje, said: “All beings are Buddhas, / But obscured by incidental stains. / When those have been removed, there is Buddhahood.” This is where I expect to lose a lot of people, but let’s bring this back to a modern context, the one I’m writing in today. Leftists often say, “A better world is possible.” I don’t mean to conflate politics with religion (though at the end of the day, they are quite similar, if we define politics as the study of power in human society and if we understand religion as something quite like that), but to me, this seems like a close enough sentiment to be deserving of our attention. If – as Jesus said, the kingdom of God is not something that will one day arrive or that we can point to as a specific place in the known universe – _and_ as the Third Karmapa, Rangjun Dorje said, that all beings are Buddhas – then what James Baldwin said, as quoted at the top of this post, that he believed in the New Jerusalem, really means something extremely important to me. It means a better world truly is possible. It means we already have everything we need to make the world a better place, if we would only be willing to pay the price. It means we all have Buddha-nature, we just don’t all realize it yet[3]. It also means, as Saint Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in _The Dispossessed_ (emphasis mine): > It is our suffering that brings us together…We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give. So what is the price for bringing about this better world, the one that James Baldwin thought we weren’t yet prepared to pay? Le Guin said it right there – “what you are” and “what you give.” Here’s some good news about the first part, if we take at least one teaching from Buddhism to heart: what “you” are is basically free, is basically love, is basically content, fulfilled. The first part is waking up to or realizing that truth. The second part is what comes after that. And I think we have no further to look than the living examples set by Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha): * In the parable of the rich young man (Matthew 19:21), Jesus said, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Jesus spent the rest of his life helping people and growing his church, or community of believers. * After he became enlightened (or perhaps I should say, realized he already was enlightened) under the legendary Bodhi Tree, the Buddha spent seven weeks meditating before starting what would become his lifelong work: teaching the Dhamma and establishing and growing the Sangha, which roughly means “community.” But we need not look only to religious figures for inspiration. Ursula K. Le Guin gave us one example of what to do next through her fictional anarchist world, Anarres. Daniel Quinn, who I quoted at the beginning of this blog post but am just now referencing again, taught us to give people a “vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them.” Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke often of his vision of a Beloved Community, something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. And I think building this community - however you call it, be it the kingdom of heaven or some other name - is the work that lies before us now for those of us who are devoted to seeking truth and justice and, through compassion, to bringing about the liberation and flourishing of all sentient beings. We need _community_. It’s up to all of us to build it. This, I think, is how we can make heaven a place on earth. This is how we can defeat fascism and tyranny, in all its myriad forms, once and for all, and create a truly just society built on the principles of love, freedom, egalitarianism, and cooperation. Let’s get to work, starting with the people who are right around us: our friends, neighbors, family members, co-workers, people living on the street under state oppression, and everyone else whose paths cross our own. ### References 1. Although in the tradition I was raised in — a strange blend of ultra-conservative, Christian-nationalist Calvinist fundamentalism from the small private school I attended and a sort of non-denominational spin on Church of Christ from my church — care was always taken to emphasize that, while God created the universe and is, indeed, _in_ the universe, God is not the universe. Rather, it was always explained to me, God is in the universe the way an artist is in their paintings. That is, one might recognize the universe as God's handiwork the same way one might recognize a certain painting as a Van Gogh or a Picasso. Poetic, perhaps, but it always smacked of apologetics doublespeak to me. [↑] 2. I should note that I've chosen to include the footnote translation of this text, as noted in the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible. The regular, non-footnote version says "…the kingdom of God is in your midst." I also find this translation quite compelling, but I thought the footnote version better suited my point. [↑] 3. Indeed, "enlightenment" means something akin to "waking up." Man, who knew the Buddha was so _woke_ 😏 [↑]