Article - Bad Joke, Great Punchline

[Guest guest]

Ultimate Intelligence, Ultimate Love, that exists within, around, above, below,

and throughout everything else. We can touch It. We can know It directly. This

is not just sweet mystical poetry. It is the only true success that is possible

in life. Everything else is vulnerable to hurricanes and earthquakes and

politics, or to betrayal and greed and jealousy and decay and corruption and

loss. Everything else gets ripped away from us in the end – even our own sight

and hearing and the ability to walk, talk, or think clearly. Nothing is

complete and lasting, nothing is final, except the transcendent reality that

most of us call God. A prisoner in Corcoran wrote me recently that his life

sucks. I wrote him back, “everyone’s life sucks!” The key is learning the

Mystic’s Way to move through this world where life generally sucks, learning

how to “suffer gracefully,” how to groan good-naturedly like you do when a

friend tells you a really bad

joke that ends with a great punchline. That’s life on Earth: A bad joke that has

a GREAT punchline. What do I mean by the “bad joke?” Well, there’s cartoonist

Gahan Wilson’s classic remark, “Life essentially doesn’t work; that’s why it’s

the basis of endless humor.” Or the fact that cooked carrots are better for us

than chocolate. Or the old German saying, “Too soon old, too late smart.” Or my

brother’s saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Or “nice guys finish last.” Or

why the girl you’re in love with says “I just want to be friends.” Or why we

lock children up in classrooms day after day and then we complain that they

don’t feel a connection to Mother Nature. Countless ironies could be written

to illustrate why it’s accurate to call life a bad joke. Not just the cute

stuff, either. Racism and poverty and injustice and fear, children dying,

millions starving, all of it – a joke often not funny at all, a joke not in

good taste. For countless millions of

people, a sick joke, a cruel joke. The joke is Jesus up on the cross in what

seems to be total failure, misery, broken idealism, shattered hopes. And then –

The Punchline: He comes back three days later and calmly says “Even death is not

final in my Father’s Kingdom.” Not death, or blindness or imprisonment or

capital punishment or any of the rest. Jesus really did die on that cross. Yet

that death wasn’t lasting. Nothing lasts except His Father’s Kingdom. So what’s

the deal about this Great Punchline? Well, the Ultimate Goodness, the Divine

Love, that exists within, beyond, above, below and throughout everything else,

is SO good, SO wonderful, SO impossibly joyful, that by comparison, even the

worst, most horrible suffering we can imagine seems small, trivial. In his book

The Great Divorce (the separation between Heaven & Earth), C.S. Lewis uses the

imagery of size to make this point. Standing on the ground of Heaven, he shows

a newly

arrived soul a tiny crack in the ground near their feet, and says that all of

Earth and Hell, all negativity and suffering and problems and ambitions and

limitations, all our wars and famines – everything in the world of time and

humanity – exists in that tiny little crack in the ground. Life in this tiny

crack is compressed and stifling. The ground of Heaven is expansive and

unlimited. The greatest joy or worst sorrow in worldly life only takes place in

that tiny little crack in the ground of Heaven. Even the death of a newborn

baby, the execution of an innocent man, the starvation of millions of people –

these things are profoundly negative in that little crack, but that doesn’t

make them any bigger. They are part of the compressed world; they are contained

entirely in that world. In that crack, we cannot even conceive of the vastness

of the Divine Goodness, the Divine Joy. One moment’s experience of that

vastness is millions of times more positive

than the negative on Earth is negative! It’s like the size of a planet to the

size of a pea. It’s not like a “balance” to it or anything like that. What’s

positive is infinite and unceasing, and what’s negative is compressed and

constantly changing. Goodness is an enormous mountain, and evil is no more than

an annoying mosquito with a life span of a few hours. That’s why, when some of

us directly experience that mountain, or “Promised Land,” as Dr. Martin Luther

King called it, there is nothing – NOTHING – in the tiny world of the mosquito

that ever holds much fear for us again. Dr. King knew he was going to be

assassinated, and it didn’t change his mission at all, because even

assassination is trivial after seeing what he saw. Once we have seen the Larger

Reality, it is SO much larger than the compressed world of all our hopes and

fears, it holds no power over us anymore. Pontius Pilate screams at Jesus,

“Don’t you know I can crucify you or set you

free??,” and Jesus replies calmly, “You have no power over me at all.” Don’t

you want that to be true for you? And so He gives us instruction: Don’t focus

all your time and energy, hopes and dreams, on the world that does not last.

Focus instead on what does last. It may be very frustrating to want to touch

that Divine Reality when it just doesn’t seem to be happening. For some reason,

that’s part of the bad joke – God doesn’t necessarily reveal Himself the moment

we say “Okay, I’m ready!” So when our patience wears thin, whether that takes a

day or fifty years, we tend to give up and go back to focusing our main energies

on the stuff that does not last. We think, “I’m just going to be a realist from

now on! Enough of all this spiritual crap. It doesn’t work!” But is it

realistic to look for our keys under the streetlamp because it’s brighter there

than in the dark alley where we actually dropped them? Dark or

not, even if it takes all night, the alley is the only place we have a chance of

finding the keys. It doesn’t matter how light the street is under that lamp,

they will not be found where they do not exist. Our joy, our peace, will not be

found in the mundane world even if we become the wealthiest or most powerful

person in the world, or head of the world’s largest charity, or the new Gandhi

who brings peace to the Middle East. The eternal will not be found in the

mundane. The absolute will not be found in the relative. So I certainly did not

intend for the last newsletter to simply lay out all the misery, point out how

the world is falling apart at the seams, and leave it at that. There is a

Treasure awaiting each and every one of us, closer than our own breath. We’re

getting sick and tired of the Bad Joke within and around us, but it is vitally

important not to lose faith in the Great Punchline. We have an opportunity to

live in this world but not

of it, as Jesus advised. We have an opportunity to respect and deal responsibly

with the problems and limitations of this worldly life, without being run into

the ground by them. And that’s the only value of separating “worldly” and

“Divine,” or as Jesus put it, “Mammon” and “God.” There is a point when we

cease to see or talk about “two worlds” at all. Remember, Jesus said “When

thine eye be single, thy body will be full of Light.” When we awaken fully to

the Big Truth, there are not two worlds at all; there is Spirit alone, no

second thing. The mundane world is realized as a mysterious, shifting

embodiment of the Divine. In The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis points out that once

we arrive in Heaven, we look back at our lives and see that we were never

anywhere other than Heaven. The whole thing – our tragedies, betrayals,

depression, suffering – was all like a mosquito bite in the beautiful realm of

God. Not just the future, but

even our history changes when our vision clears and we see what life has really

been about. We experience this in little ways all the time. You have a little

car wreck that ruins your day and pisses you off, cursing your bad luck, but

then later that week you fall in love, and when your lover asks you about the

car wreck you say, “Oh it was nothing.” And you really mean it, when you think

of it from such a positive state as being in love. Well, imagine being in God’s

Infinite, Unceasing Love! The past thirty years of imprisonment for a crime I

didn’t commit? Oh, it was nothing! My wife running off with my best friend? Oh,

it was nothing. Being diagnosed HIV+ and Hep C+? Nothing. The world falling

apart at the seams and about to destroy itself? Nothing. So let’s not let the

world’s ills make us completely lose sight of the Positive, of the Great

Punchline. If we make it a high enough priority, we have an opportunity to walk

through this valley of the

shadow of death with a rod and staff that profoundly comfort us, that empower

us. We can be in the world of bad news and decay, but not of it. We must

function in this world, it is our sacred duty. We’re supposed to help and

comfort and solve problems and make peace and feed our families and all the

rest. But we do not belong to any of that. We belong solely to God. None of

that can harm whom we really are, it can only affect the material world, it can

only affect the part of us that is physical and temporary. That’s why Jesus said

that what is born of flesh must die of flesh, and we need to be born again in

Spirit to find our eternal nature. It’s right here, always waiting for us to

awaken to it. My deepest Christmas wish for you all is to discover even a

shred of your Bigger Nature. A shred of that is bigger than this whole world

with all its hurricanes and earthquakes and planes and bombs. Until you

experience it for yourself, hold firmly to your

faith in the experiences and advice from the sages and saints who have directly

experienced it. As one of my favorite elders, Father Murray Rogers, has put it,

“Faith is not the most important thing; it is the only thing.” This is not just

wishful thinking or using religion as a crutch to help us cope with hard times.

This is the only thing that really matters. -Bo Lozoff (Bo Lozoff is a

spiritual activist and co-founder of the Human Kindness Foundation, which

sponsors the Prison-Ashram Project (founded twenty-five years ago with Ram

Dass), a quarterly newsletter, and Kindness House (a spiritual community that

is open to visitors). He holds an honorary doctorate from the Chicago

Theological Seminary. He has lectured in hundreds of prisons, universities,

churches, and spiritual centers around the world and his work has been featured

in many national publications. He lives outside of

Durham, North Carolina.) Source: http://www.humankindness.org/winter05.html

[Guest guest]

article enclosed from Bo Lozof is fantastic & this is what

our dear Swamy has always been stressing that He alone is permanent

& love -embodyment & the whole creation though seems infinite

is temporary ,transient &ever changing & hence

cling on to that which is permanent ,that is Swamy Himself ( even the

avataric body form is temporary) who is Sat chit ananda

Parabrahman ,namely formless nameless infinite intelligence

consciousness bliss absolute .This is to be attained thro' worship of

all forms thro' selfless service to entire creation in utter

humility ,thinking & thanking Lord Sai at all times ,Ananya

chintha .thank you again with love &best wishes Jai Sairam .

S.Ramachandran ,USA On 3/13/06, Mangala Ramprakash <gamsetmach (AT) (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

Sairam, I came across this

colourfully pungent article that makes a very valid point -

one that Baba keeps stressing on in all of His discourses - i.e.

focusing on what is permanent through all of the impermanent

distractions.....

[Guest guest]

sai ram

 

that was truly and amazing article. i went to their website and the

whole concept of ther program is mind-blowing. thank you for the point

in the right direction. much appreciated.

 

very powerful stuff!!

 

May Baba be with you always,

 

Carishma