Saying For Today: We know we are not a doing that is but a being who does.
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Should this surprise us? The noun and verb "use" derives from a word based on a Latin participle, "make use of, profit by, take advantage of." In secular cultures, is it not true that being esteemed useful or useless is related to using things and persons as objects for profit? Hence, implied is a widespread being taken advantage of, a being taught of the illusion of chasing the dollar, even at the cost of our relationships, health, and connection with our Source. When serving as a pastor, I found the church dominated by this use-and-profit mentality. How could it not be, when the god-image often presented to parishioners plays the same game?
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There is that you are which is not useful or useless, or able to be used. You are that. We are that. To return to God, is to return to that.
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A Buddhist wisdom story -
An elderly farmer could not work the fields anymore. He would spend the day sitting on the porch. His son, still working the farm, would look up and see his father sitting there.
"He's of no use anymore," the son would think, "he doesn't do anything!" One day, the son built a wood coffin, dragged it to the porch, and told his father to get in.
Without saying anything, the father climbed in. After closing the lid, the son dragged the coffin to the edge of the farm, where there was a cliff.
As the son neared the drop, he heard a tapping on the lid. He opened it. Lying peacefully, the father looked up. The father spoke, "I know you are going to throw me over the cliff, but before you do, may I suggest something?" "What is it?" replied the son. "Throw me over the cliff, if you wish," said the father, "but save this coffin. Your children might need to use it someday."
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What we esteem as useful or useless regarding persons and what they do or do not do is relative. We learn such judgments. There is nothing absolute about those two words.
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When we sit in silence, doing nothing, we choose to be useless, as others esteem the doing-nothing practice. When this doing nothing is doing something heartfully, we are doing something worthwhile. We challenge the ideas of "useful" and "useless." We see we struggle to know who we are unless we are doing something others see as productive. We affirm our dignity is innate, not related to a narrow understanding of utilitarianism. We trust our doing-nothing practice is a valuable work and practical in a manner unmeasurable, intangible. Whether recognized by others as a useful practice or not, we keep with it. We know we are not a doing that is but a being who does. In doing nothing, we train ourselves in the joy of being.
We do nothing, practicing uselessness, to disengage from the collective fiction that equates self-worth with efficiency and productivity. Also, the practice can help prepare us for when we may not be able, as the aged farmer, to work as we did in the past.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
