Wow, I have merited my very own Mike Essig poem — that goes on the Literary resume! And a Robert A. Heinlein epigraph, to boot. A double-win!
What you point out in your poem is pretty much what I meant in the essay by (the admittedly somewhat throwaway line):
I’ve read enough Buddhism to recognize this is probably somehow a good thing…
The whole idea that we really are someone who came from somewhere can definitely be considered an obstacle to truth from a spiritual point of view, especially of the Eastern variety. In response to the line “I don’t have a real name,” Pure Spirit Dharma responded:
And it’s true, I recognize that. Certainly on a spiritual level.
But it’s also true that our bodies, these unique physical expressions fixed in time and space, are like buds pushed out along specific stems, that are like no other stem or bud anywhere, and that reality has value, too. Sure, trace every stem to the one great source, and our bodies all come together on the African steppes a few hundred thousand years ago. But I think that romantic notion by no means steals the romance belonging to each stem, or each bud, or the unique historical streams along which Mitochondrial Eve’s DNA flowed into my veins, or yours. The not even 250 year old myth of the American Mulligan stew melting pot that suggests nothing prior to 1776 contributes to who we are or affects our identity reflects a kind of national megalomania, I think. These bodies of ours may have been born on this continent (mine in 1963 in Illinois, a fixed place in time and space), but unless we are Native American (which I now know with relative certainty I am not), we are not from here… As long as I can remember, even as a kid, I have envied Europeans who can drive past several thousand year old dolmens set up by their ancient ancestors on the way to the office, or Chinese kids who learn 5,000 years of their People’s history in school. But in (white) America, it’s like we have a cultural taboo against not only knowing where we came from, but even admitting to ourselves that we came from somewhere other than here. Our understanding of ourselves as a People, and of our place and value in the world, demands we act as if time itself began with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “America first, America first”… My God, really? Not referencing you personally, Mike, just this weird time we live in, and the mentality that maintains it.
Staying focused on the spiritual VS genealogical identity question, I don’t think it’s a matter of choosing, either/or. To my mind (right now, anyway) it’s a both/and proposition. To know and value the history by which our bodies came into being does not contradict our spiritual oneness. Mining our ancestry for hidden gold does not alienate us from the Diamond Sutra... That’s the dualism Buddha warned us about! Both/and!
As Heinlein wrote in Methuselah’s Children:
“There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can’t poke his nose into — that’s the way we’re built and I assume there’s some reason for it.”
