“Resist not evil” is an explicit Christian directive from the lips of Christ himself, though it is almost universally ignored and rejected by Christians. “It’s not practical. It doesn’t really mean what it says. It only applies to saints, not ordinary mortals. Etc., etc.” Honest, strong, Christians struggle and squirm like a hooked fish when they confront it; most quickly rationalize it away, usually with the prompt help of clergy that have never honestly confronted it themselves.

I’ve often been glad to free of this directive as non-Christian. I don’t have to play dodge ball with this commandment, rationalize it away or ignore it to get rid of the discomfort it imposes.

Yet, after reflection, I think there may be truth here. Franklin Wolff, in Experience and Philosophy , succinctly states it this way.

My experience with Buddhism during the last several years can most simply be characterized using the words “mind mirror.” No other religion that I’ve come across asks one to persistently look at how the mind works with tools to help one clear away the fog and see more clearly. Even psychology as a discipline (except perhaps for Jungian psychology) is strongly tainted with cultural values that are so deeply embedded they are unstated.

It’s not been a pleasant process. It’s been demanding in the sense of being willing to see honestly, without the affective overlay that usually colors and shapes things to our liking. In my case that “liking” includes my pet ideas about how things “should be”, even when some of my “should be” springs from noble aspirations.

The “heart” has never made a lot of sense to me. Intelligence, intellect, thinking, mind — these are terms I use and understand growing out of normal consciousness.

But recently the “heart” matter has seemed to come to my attention from several different sources. (I’ve learned to pay attention when the same subject seems to converge out of nowhere from multiple sources.) One important source was a newsletter from the resident monk at the temple I attend. Another was a talk on CD by Bo Lozoff at the San Francisco Zen Center. But there were more subtle pointers too. Finally I decided to spend some effort reflecting on it.

Recently a couple of incidents underscored that equanimity is a practice rather than an endpoint. Prior to this, I had viewed it as an eventual result of practice — rather than a practice itself.

The first occasion was a mind storm while running. It was the usual gloomy doom musings of the mind that show up now and then. Like a gathering thunderstorm where the clouds and cooling sweep of the wind spawn ever increasing condensation and precipitation, thoughts swept through consciousness finding signs of impending calamity everywhere. As I realized what was happening, I also realized I had choice about the matter. I could indulge this runaway train of thought sounding its horn of urgency or I could deliberately choose a path of equanimity by focusing on what I was actually doing. With some effort I chose to pay attention to the moment, the natural setting of the run, the breath as it changed cadence in response to variations in slope and pace.

From Transformations in Consciousness by Franklin Wolfe

The new sacred content of consciousness radically affects the reality evaluation without altering the photographic image of the sensible world. The consequences that follow are enormously important, though they are of such a subtle nature that they do not readily lend themselves to description. For instance, one knows the universe to be the best possible world, and everything is as it should be, despite all the seeming disharmony and barbarism. It is Realized that the out-of-joint world is an effect of an incomplete consciousness – the kind of product one receives by the collaboration of conception and perception when the introceptive function is not awakened. The latter is like the reverse side of an embroidered cloth where the effect is chaotic and there are many loose threads. However, on the other side we have a perfectly orderly design. One one side it seems that mere chance accounts for the pattern and that humankind lives in a alien world that has no inner sympathy with our purposes and yearnings, while the other side reveals a perfect order in complete sympathetic rapport with the deepest human yearnings and aspirations. In the sacred world, one is at home and nothing feels strange. There is no need of melioration. There is no problem of making a better world, since that which is, already is the best that possible could be.

Thank you for your comments.

As you live within your awareness, so I must live within mine. Your mind has some comforts that my mine does not afford me. While you exist effortlessly within each moment, my mind reaches to a speculative future and a remembered past in its attempt to aid survival. You live mostly unencumbered by these spans of attention I cannot ordinarily avoid.

Just as you believe your senses implicitly, I’ve learned to believe in the normal reach of my mind; it has seemed so advantageous in reducing the insecurity of ordinary daily life. I cannot ignore this insecurity or return to a state of ignorance. The only avenue open for me as a human is what I would call transcendence – i.e., deliberate development of a different perspective that will free me from somewhat destructive preoccupation with these normal realms of imagination.

I read your blog on my morning flight above the valley.

Twit! Twit! What an imagination!

You make up a sermon in your own mind and attribute it to me. Please don’t humiliate me with credit for this.

I do not mind you coming to my valley. You are too big to eat, but otherwise you’re just a curiosity. You’re in poor condition. You’ve lost all your feathers, and your skinny wing bones are pretty comical. You have two legs, but you also seem to need to carry a wooden leg to help you walk about. I don’t see how you manage to eat, but since you obviously can’t fly to spot food, and are way too slow to catch it, you aren’t any threat to my territory.

I watched the hawk circle in the valley below Fishers Peak. It seemed majestic, soaring effortlessly, patching the green below with a dark shadow as it neared earth before circling and gliding again. In my imagination, I wandered to Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and thought of independence and freedom – the image of rugged individualism we prize in our American culture. We have a special day to worship it each year – July 4 – just a few days away.

As I mused about this freedom, this magical mirage dissipated in the inrushing tide of scientific knowledge. There really was not much freedom there at all. Only in my mind did this fanciful notion have much reality at all.

Sometimes the only thing to be done is to hermitize yourself for while, to try to put the pieces back together yet again. If you do hermitizing correctly, you let the pieces float away, and then eventually molt to the next layer of understanding.

If there’s some temporary insight gained, it will likely be posted here.