Helen Keller once said “I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time.” Rejoicing has a lot of connotations. It is often perceived as an exuberance that throws caution to the wind, the very definition of getting caught up in the moment. I posit there is an intelligent, thoroughgoing,simple path of rejoicing. There is a sensitive aspect to rejoicing.
Crazy wisdom based on the name can too seem like a way of being that seems unconcerned with who you are or where you are or what is happening. But I don’t think that is the true meaning and power of what is called crazy wisdom. This term became popular in the 1960’s when a Tibetan lama was exiled from his home in Tibet and found refuge in the West. Trungpa Rimpoche came out of a culture of nearly complete isolation of practicing Buddhism, and found himself in the midst of revolution in the United States. Young people were participating in a sexual revolution that challenged Puritanical ideas of relationship. Young people were marching for CIvil Rights, Women’s RIghts, they were speaking about the great wealth inequality that existed and the poor who suffered most. Young people were growing their hair out, growing facial hair, dressing in loose clothing, and imagining an alternative America. They protested war, and talked about building a society based on peace and understanding. I know many of you were there. You know it much better than I do. I tell you all this as a context because crazy wisdom is a way of teaching truth that does not conform to normal expectation or behavior.
Trungpa Rimpoche embodied this teaching. He did what Buddhists were not expected to do: he drank to the point of drunkness, he smoked, he listened to rock n roll, jazz, he hung out with beatniks like Allen Ginsberg, he was not celibate, he got married, he had numerous sexual partners, including his students without shame or secrecy. In short, he embodied the revolution that was happening at that time. He embodied the counterculture. But that is not what impresses me most about Trungpa Rimpoche. I think it would have been seductive to completely join the counterculture without question, and pass that off as wisdom, but that is not what he did. He offered unexpected, challenging wisdom to the counterculture.
One day he invited all the students to bring marijuna into the meditation hall. Many were giddy and thought this was going to be a time once again when he would join them, and they would all get high together but then one by one he asked his students to put their marijuana in the fire and dispense with it. Many were very angry about this. On another occasion an important Buddhist teacher from Tibet was coming to visit. He demanded that all the men cut their hair and buy suits at the Salvation Army to prepare for the event. This demand saw the largest exodus from his community. They were unconcerned with his drinking or sexuality, but couldn’t imagine wearing a suit. Towards the end of his life he put together a Buddhist army, where he would dress as a general and run drills, 8-10 hours a day like the military. He told them he was creating peaceful warriors. He put those who protested the war through a different kind of basic training. That is what impresses me most: he challenged people’s limitations: limitations of vision, limitations about who they thought they were and how they should behave.
We live in a different time now. The actions that may have been wise teaching tools in a given moment may not be wise in our moment. Drinking and doing drugs once seen as a way of liberation, is seen now also as an impediment, a limitation that can have dire consequences. Sex between teacher and student then seen as a liberation from oppressive morality is now seen thanks in large part to the Metoo movement as a form of abuse, an abuse of power where there is a clear power dynamic between someone in a postion of authority, especially spiritual authority, and someone seeking to learn. Today this kind of behavior is not seen as a sign of enlightenment or liberation because today it’s not.
We need to have a healthy respect for the time we are in, if we are to learn what wisdom is. As I’ve said before, I think this is the most exciting time in American history. We are undergoing one of the most profound mass sense of disillusionment our country has ever seen. We are losing illusions about our political parties, about our economic system, of our skewed legal system, our illusions about who is protecting us, and who are holding us back. We are losing these illusions, and this is a good thing. Today, wisdom, whatever it will look like, will look very different from anything we’ve seen before.
The wisdom I speak of is not just about politics, about who is elected and who is not. It is about our vision, a clarification of what we see when we look at ourselves and when we look at our neighbors. That sharpening of vision, which is profoundly spiritual as well as literal, is what I’m most excited about. We are beginning to ask questions now that have been outside the norm of typical conversation for American culture. Some say the questions are absurd or crazy, but I think there is great wisdom to be found in the questions we are beginning to ask. The questions are so basic, and that is what makes them so wise. Some of these questions have been asked before, but never with this amount of energy: Questions like: Why am I poor, and why do I see so much poverty? Why do corporations receive payouts from our government while our communities suffer and languish? Why are we so afraid of immigrants? How do we become truly anti-racist? Is healthcare a human right or a privilege for those who can afford it?
Some say the center no longer holds today, we have lost a tolerance for moderation. I see it differently. I think we have lost a tolerance for inadequate questions and inadequate wisdom. We have lost a tolerance for the same habitual responses to dire need, the dire need, struggle and shame that is a lived reality for many of us. So many of our people feel shame to work so hard for so little, and they think their poverty is their fault. This is not the complete story though it has been the dominant American story up until this moment. That story is cracking on a national level, and that is a reason to rejoice. We need to see this clearly. It’s the least we can do, and we must do much more. We must respond. We are beginning to lose the myth of the individual who has no social ties or social responsibility. We are losing patience with individuals like that, and we now see we don’t really want to be that kind of individual. We want to practice a new way.This time is ushering forth a new way of being a person, a new form of wisdom, a new way of understanding ourselves and understanding our country. It is showing us the center was never meant to hold: only the margins can do that. Some find this deeply unsettling and disturbing. They see the crumbling of our democracy. They see a crazy moment. I see something else. I see wisdom. I hope I can respond like Helen Keller, with wisdom: “I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time.”
