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Trump and Transendence

Been reading a lot of Zen literature lately. And then a lot of political junk. And the two are just so incongruous. They are opposites really — the mundane and the transcendent. But they also pull each other; too much Trump-inspired despair and I need Zen. Too much Zen and I need a jolt of the reality which begs for enlightenment in the first place.


***


Just got back from a 3 week road trip from North Carolina to Colorado and back. The tribal nature of our country struck me vividly. We have the Red and Blue, with some subtribes of each. It helped to remind myself that this is what I was seeing. Tribes. Not ideologies or positions or even political parties, but tribes. Like Hutus and Tutsis or Sunni and Shia or Iroquois and Algonquin. That’s what the flags and the signs and the bumper stickers are all about. The separations don’t really mean anything fundamental, but nonetheless they are all encompassing. And as a member of one tribe it’s almost impossible to see the other for whom they are. The tribal overlay completely envelopes their being. That’s all they really are.


I tried so hard on this trip to move past that, but I don’t think I was very successful. When I got gas and saw someone in a pick up with goat tee, overweight, and smoking, I just instinctively think: “Trump guy, hates masks.” And then it’s over— I notice little else. It’s a sorry state of affairs. And of course he sees me in my sandals and loose blue Patagonia pants and I know what he thinks. Similarly unkind thoughts I’m sure.


We’ve always had divisions and humans always will. But it’s so clear now, so stark, so full of animosity, that going the other way feels very hard. But I guess I’m still somewhat optimistic. I’m trying here — trying to remember that “they” are just people like me, with families and histories and stories they tell themselves about why they think the way they do and why the world is how it is and why that all makes the Red tribe the best tribe. In the end, only some kind of reality — a pandemic perhaps — will cause whatever corrections need to occur.


Back to Zen. We’ve had this tribal shit forever. It’s part of the wheel. Samsara. And it brings up the doubts about all these phenomena that are why anyone turns to Zen at all. 


“I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round. I really love to watch them roll.” — John Lennon

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