Wisdom of Fools

There is a world only reserved for some people walking in the streets. They are not ordinary people since they are often alienated because of how they look and behave. Their tattered clothes sometimes cover their greasy bodies, their faces smeared with dust and grime. They often sit on sidewalks, or sometimes walk naked, and they have nowhere else to go. They might stop in a garbage bin, diving on hodgepodge of rotting food and wet plastics and cartons, so they can find something to eat. They sometimes sit down at public parks, talking animatedly to an imaginary friend, as if in a fierce argument over some important life's issues; one can understand what they say, but remains meaningless stream of words and phrases. Most of us judge them as "psychotics" without any notion of their stories; once in their lives they were good fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and friends. Yet, they went beyond their sanity point, where the thresholds of their emotional and mental pains exploded as they enter the world they created as their own.

We avoid them at all cost, since we fear that the soul they bear mirrors our own.

There is always a taong grasa within us. We reserve our exclusive world where no one can enter. We feel indifferent and aloof, the same way we think the world of the sane does to us. We feel paranoid of how people judge the way we look and behave. We wear clothes to make others like us, while our inner selves are tattered with judgments of our ugliness. We stop over the garbages of this life that distract us: from making money, to gaining power and fame, to collecting things, to pleasing people and ourselves, all for the sake of surviving, for satisfying our hungry souls. We argue with people, blame them for their inadequacies, not knowing that what we say against others are all truths about ourselves; we are in an imaginary power play with God who we think has the only control on our lives, yet wondering why he or she doesn't reward us but continue to punish us. We find ourselves lunatics, without seeing first the light of our true selves; that as we blind ourselves in facing our shadows, we forget to see the infinite light within us.

We are fools who choose to be a lone castaway in the islands of our escape. We are fools who continue to starve from attention and sustenance of this world, and as we become distant, we deepen our fiery desire to be in touch again with others. We are fools trying to make sense of our true purpose, unable to move through turbulent changes of our lives. We are fools sharing the foolishness of this world, believing in the lies that we think are absolute truths. We are fools who have forsaken and forgotten the most important truth in our lives. We are fools looking for the sanest understanding of the true nature of Love.


Love is the wisdom of fools, yet the wisest knowledge their hearts ever learned.

Our eagerness to transcend our foolishness might still sound foolishness, nonetheless. But its the sheer transcendence from fear to Love that we begin to see ourselves saner, rising above this foolish world. The process transforms us, as if we reserve our world revolving in Love. We are extraordinary people because we look and behave in a way of how Love manifest from our inside out. We wear clothes of honesty, sometimes tattered by the world's prying eyes, yet remain lovely and beautiful. We no more mind of how we appear, because we are no more identified by how the world judges us. We stop over the garbages of this life, and see them as blessings that we can bury, so they can enrich the soil from where the garden of Love can flourish. We now speak to all beings, seen and unseen, and beckon the presence of Love within all of us; we trust that even we might sound gibberish, the Love's message resonates to the hearts of every being, no matter how many of them refuse to understand. We now see beyond the myths of our projected selves woven from others' judgments we are made to believe. We are now unique beings, from where Love freely expresses itself. And we now widen our thresholds into boundless distances, the only breadth where Love can be contained.

Presence of Heart

Some teachers I have met are hesitant on telling about their profession, probably because teaching is a low-paying job having insurmountable mental and financial ordeals. Others who majored in education have already abandoned their former profession, as they bear so much disgust in teaching. Some are more than proud of what they do, for they both play the roles of teachers and mothers among their students, most of whom are neglected at their homes. This rich variety of teachers have taught me about my own desire to teach. I have realized that I am both a teacher and a student, and in living the life of teaching, the path has more to teach me than what I can.

As a former student, I hated some of my teachers, to the extent that I promised myself not to become like them. That promise was somehow prophetic, because I was then steering my own journey to the world of teaching. I thought that one day I would see myself as a teacher looking forward to the welfare of my student; a welfare not just about what they learn from the class, but the welfare of how they learn them, which includes the joy, harmony and friendship brimming inside the classroom. Because of this, the teachers I used to abhor somehow taught me the greatest lesson I would ever be grateful forever: never just teach the lessons of the mind; always teach the lessons of the heart.

Dr. Leo Buscaglia, an Italian-American psychologist, is one of my greatest inspirations for the Communes. He became the foremost leader on teaching Love. In his book Living, Loving and Learning, he quotes the educator Leonard Silberman on his conclusion on the current education. That is, our education system succeeds in teaching students reading, writing and arithmetic, but fails in teaching them to become human beings. This reality has pushed one of Buscaglia's female student to become bright and brainy, only to end up killing herself. The tragedy ignited Buscaglia's desire to create and teach the Love Class, a free class that welcomes all students to explore the experience and meaning of Love.

I have been also asking the same question on why students learn a lot of things that turns out to be less practical in living one's life. It is common for a student to hate studying, since teachers and parents force them to get good grades, let alone to pass . I had learned algebra and trigonometry but I can't possibly use them to calculate my groceries. I had learned world history and literature, but they are less important to the story of my soul. Now as a teacher, I am oftentimes bothered by the fact that I have to teach the subject efficiently, to have the presence of mind; otherwise, I would lose the confidence of my students and eventually they might not learn at all. But in the 2-year process of continuous discovery, I have found out that more than the importance of the subject, it is the essence. If my students find laughter, joy, kindness, and surprise in each lesson we spend together, it is enough for them to get in touch with true essence of learning. They are not just developing the presence of mind, but the presence of heart.

I was then looking for any possibility on how to expand this new insight, presence of heart. After I heard one of my student saying the phrase "presence of mind," the word heart immediately replaced the word mind in my thoughts. I stopped wrestling with my faculties and trusted that the answer will come. And it did. It was no accident when I met Lolo Celes, a retired university professor, and homemaker Ms. Bel in the place of my solitude at the Makiling Botanic Gardens. Our small talk on life and Love became the synchronistic 20th Commune.

Lolo Celes, in his 9 decades of life, is enthusiasm in the flesh. He has condensed his teaching experiences into a soul-stirring insight. He echoed what Buscaglia wrote and what Silberman concluded, that as a teacher, one must begin teaching students to learn not just the subject matter, but to become human beings. "You must develop human beings to become part of the Creation. Creation is always a continuous process. If you teach them knowledge and skills, you must teach them greatly on the attitude, for it is the most important." He has empowered me with these simple words, which made me more confident in spreading the message of Love through the Communes.

One of the most quoted oriental proverb is this: "If the student is ready, the teacher will come." I'm still quite uncertain of the origins of this quote, but the last time I read this was from a book on I Ching, known as the Book of Changes, which contains 64 hexagrams used as a very unique Chinese oracle. At the time when I did some meditation for a particular hexagram, it turned out that the hexagram 8 bears the word "teacher," and states the same proverb. It bolted my insight into confirmation of my spiritual path: teaching. And just as I write this, I have learned that the same hexagram bears a timeless symbolism; hexagram 8 means "holding together," two words that sum up the meaning of the Communes. The soul of the student in me has become ready to learn, the time when the soul of the teacher within me has begun to teach. It is a wisdom that I am teaching no one but myself, and in the process, every person I meet, especially in the Communes, learns. Communing with each other is such an amazing way to learn Love, when each of us bares our own preconceptions, misunderstandings and innate knowing, and enables us to teach each other in the deepest presence of our hearts.

The Language of Love

I don't know much about postmodern stuff, but there's one thing I couldn't forget every time I hear that word. In a very homey Master's degree class, I was listening to my friend's professor who talked about a postmodern experience. He was on a bus ride in a busy city road in U.K. Onboard were all foreigners, speaking different languages. I can't remember much about what those languages are. Using a pinch of imagination, I can see speakers of maybe Hindi and Russian seated near the driver, and Italian and Mandarin at the back of the bus, while near the bus door were a couple of guys maybe speaking in Swahili, and of course, this young Filipino professor who might had a kababayan as a companion that moment. This is the most ironic part: no one speaks English, on a bus ride in a land where the English language was born. Such experience, according to this professor, is complex and difficult to describe. The lines that label and define our day to day lives are blurring, and expected outcomes become unexpected. He said this is a fitting example of a postmodern experience.

This multilingual bus ride is not anymore exclusive in cosmopolitan nations. I've had a similar situation some months ago. I was in an ESL (English as Second Language) class of about 10 students, four of them were Koreans, the rest were Filipinos. During breaks, Koreans would animatedly talk to each other in their language, while the group of Filipinos would watch them merrily, trying to decode their expressions through body language. I tried to imagine how both speakers of different language wonder on each others' way of understanding. What if I am a speaker of different language, how does Filipino language sound to me? Would it be strange? Would I be more curious? Certainly, I don't know. Nonetheless, every time I talk to a Korean friend, I am thankful that we can understand each other through English. Knowing that we are non-native speakers of English, it is a blessing that we have a medium where we can meet half way. We both translate our meanings so we can connect and share our human experiences.

Although the world is in convergence today, there is still a tower of Babel that crumbles before us, causing this incomprehensible language barrier. This barrier is an overwhelming debris of information overload coming from multitude of thoughts, each claiming as the main source on the nature of truth. Words become earsplitting noises, drowning out the silence that born from the truth within us. Spawned from these noises are questions that could short-circuit our sanity. A friend once fired me the same string of 'why' questions, such as why are there great opposites, why religions are different, why are there few rich and many poor people, why some people are saved and others are not, why are we here, why do we live, why do we suffer, why God doesn't show up, why evil exist, why is it hard to Love. Many established systems of thoughts and traditions have tried to provide answers using their specified forms of "language" then eventually labeled them as absolute truths. Apparently, easing the confusion has caused more mayhem than meaning.

There may be thousands of these languages, yet the very soul of their meanings has its lingua franca: Love. It is the language that speaks in many names and words, but, as Lao Tzu put it, cannot ever be named. Love translates hazy jargon into sensible insights. Religions founded in different doctrines speak the same essence of Love. Christianity calls it the Agape or Golden Rule, Buddhism calls it Metta or Intentions of Loving-kindness, Hinduism calls it Ahimsa or Nonviolence. Science has been using formulations and algorithms to lay down discoveries, attesting on the existence of invisible intelligence, the substance of the unseen Love. Love is Entanglement among quantum physicists; while many doctors, educators, psychologists, philosophers, state leaders and business magnates have proven the power of Love through prayers and healthy relationships with oneself and others.

These dimensions of our lives speaking different languages may have been speaking the same truth. We might not understand the language of each other, but so long as Love is inherent in each word, in each concept, we would remain deeply in touch even before we speak. Our desire to express this core of Love leads us to listen to its voice, reverberating across our inner, collective, cosmic consciousness. Today, the world is now listening to gifted, celebrated thinkers and luminaries, who are deeply moved by the realization of Love. As we listen, conflicting languages begin to make sense, because we can now translate them into Love as their singular underlying meaning. In turn, we as audience are tapping into our own power of speaking in tongues, where nothing but the spirit of Love can speak wisdom through us.

Solitude

Be still and know that I am God
--Book of Psalms


A lot of us are seeking to be alone, perhaps because of emotional crises we would like to shed out. We want to be alone to escape, and stay in the dreamy world of aloneness, flooded by our own tears and battered by our own pains. We want to be alone to have time to shout in silence our pleas to God, wondering where He is and if He is really listening. In our turning points we somehow feel that the world is in our shoulders, as we desire to be dumped into our graves. We want to be alone because it is the best way to come to our senses, or maybe to lose our senses all the way. We want people who are closed to our hearts to pity for us. And we are in this quiet suffering, clueless of the next step to do, more fearful of trying to move on.

Sometimes, we need to see beyond. Being alone the way we are used to can be transformed into a moment of contemplation. These deep sufferings cannot be just thrown away. Embracing these pains in silence is the best way to let them go. Rather than seeing oneself alone in this abyssmal emptiness, let a time for solitude allow us to transcend our loneliness.

I am always at ease in solitude. As young as ten, I was a weird boy who loves to hang around in the bushy garden at the back of the church. Once, my browbeating teacher sent me to principal's office after they had found out that I crossed the school wall, where the other side is a ravine leading to the river. Every summer at home is perfect when I was a high school student; I would sit on a broad, sturdy branch of our backyard mango tree while listening to the rustling bamboo leaves nearby. During full moons, I would climb up over our rooftop so I could stare at the moon for several minutes. Some years ago, I went to a well-known public park in Tagaytay with just a pen and paper to write a poem, then watched the clouds adrift over Taal lake and volcano. Whenever I go to the beach with some acquaintances and friends, I prefer to sit on the seashore away from the crowd, watching the waves glistening on sunset or sunrise.

This preference of solitude, I believe, has greatly helped me to survive through many lonely years. In solitude I am not just alone praying and pleading to an unseen force. I have learned to listen to silence; this very silence hushed by raucous noises of our busy lives. It seems paradoxical when in silence I often hear the voice of the Divine, whispering softly in my heart. This is more than just being alone. I would cry for a while, but as tears dry up, peace springs forth. Years have passed and now I have learned through meditative experience that solitude is possible wherever I go. For the solitude within the depths of my being are always in harmony with the ultimate truth of Love.

Just this morning, I was walking on a trail, going down to the creek in a park at the foot of Mount Makiling. As I walked alone, I could only hear the sound of forest crickets singing high-pitched tones in chorus, along with some rare cries from wild birds. A small black-spotted white butterfly (whose wings like the Yang symbol) welcomed me with its gentle wings flapping as it flew towards where I stand. As I reached the creek, I jumped over small and medium sized rocks, some of which are wrapped in green mosses. Then I chose a flat boulder, where I sat down cross-legged. I looked above and saw trees and their towering canopy; occasionally, they were dropping dried leaves like oversized confetti spiraling until they reach the river. Later, I focused my attention to where the water flows. While watching the small cascade of white, foamy water, I paid attention to its soothing sound; I felt it washes my erratic thoughts just as its sound continuously gushes in my ears. All sounds I heard were like coming from a single orchestra, whose music penetrates deep down to my soul. I was the only witness to this phenomenon. My consciousness was graciously energized.

I immersed myself to the wonder of this moment, when no one but me and Nature are in this peaceful encounter. I was again in solitude, not for the reason of being alone, but to be "all One" with silence, to be all One with Love.

Lightsphere

I was standing in an empty street in a town one June night four years ago, naively looking for a jeepney ride. As I look around, a couple of teenage boys went straight ahead where I was standing. In a flash, one of them hit me on my temple, but it was lesser than a blow. It felt just like someone tapped me, since the boy's fist went simultaneously as I bent my head down to avoid the hit. I ran quickly to avoid them, then stopped a few meters away. I saw them running back, calling for "back-up." I was thinking of going after them, but the big driver who witnessed the incident, told me otherwise. Inside my chest, my heart was beating like a large kettledrum, yet along with it was a different calmness I had never felt until that time. I was fearful yet contemplating, and it was a very strange experience.

Thoughts ran in my mind, since fright, anger and calmness were all mixed up in my blood. I recalled then my interest in martial arts, and somehow dreamed to become a deadly street fighter. At the same time, I remembered Rizal's virtue of being a pacifist, and I still wanted to be always at peace. Since the incident, I had always felt upset of going home late at night, fearing that someone would hit me. I became cynical, and I found faces of disheveled strangers lined with evil intentions. I had tried to warm up my reptilian instincts to get ready for any attack that I might come across. At home, I had been disturbed by thoughts of violence, particularly when I heard news and watched movies with violent themes. And at one point in my life, with so-called "deep-seated anger," I just thought that my dangerous shadow was ruthless and murderous, just waiting to be unleashed.

Truly, it is always darkest before dawn.

In the movie "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," the most unforgettable scene for me is when the Fellowship entered Moria, a dark, underground lair of dwarves now garrisoned by vicious Orcs. The wizard Gandalf used his staff as a luminous torch, where the light comes from a crystal atop to light their path. In the later part of the scene, Gandalf confronted the gigantic, fiery demon Balrog. Gandalf raised his staff and a strong sphere of radiant white light glowed around him. The light became his powerful shield against Balrog's sword. The fight was reminiscent of David and Goliath, it inspired me a very eccentric practice.

About 3 years ago when I started this imaginative practice. I haven't named it since, but now allow me to call it the Lightsphere. The Lightsphere is my protective light that I extend every time I go home in the wee hours. I can't anymore recall how it started, but somehow extending light help a lot in my safety on my way home. One night on a jeepney ride, I recalled riding with three scruffy men. I might be so judgmental then, but I felt the fear and found them suspicious. Still with fear beating wildly in my chest, I began to establish the Lightsphere. Minutes later, they dropped off, as if disappointed. I still didn't know what they had in mind, but I realized the more I cynically judge people, the more I expect danger to come my way. The Lightsphere has changed my thoughts, and it has been intensified through my meditations of Metta or Loving-kindness.

Charging myself with Lightsphere, I have been able to refine my thoughts about the evil in this society. While wishing myself unharmed, I wish the people who might be nursing the idea to harm not to continue their plans. At first, I thought I was just thinking of my own safety, but in the process, it is not just about me. As I wish freedom from any harm, I have learned now to intend happiness for those who are bedeviled by evil thoughts. It dawned on me that as I intend Love for those people, they would likely to let go of harming others, for once they harm they cannot be happy. At nighttime when my friends and I part our ways, I still feel that speck of fear. Yet my intentions of happiness, safety and Love for them extends to the strangers they meet on the streets; it is then I realize that the Lightsphere I imagine they have would envelope them in blessings and lighten the hearts of every person they encounter.

Just two weeks ago, an incident happened on the road near our office. It was just around 4:00 p.m., and gunshots snapped the usual busy, noisy street. A woman was shot dead inside her car, while the shooter went in a motorbike together with an accomplice. The shooter reportedly stolen cold cash worth 2 million pesos. I felt a surge of fear that time, but when I saw the perp running away a surge of calm flowed as well. My boss was standing next to me, teary-eyed and angered as she blurted, "Why men are so evil?" The very moment reminded me of what went on my thoughts and I was deeply grateful of what I had discovered. Men are not evil. People who do evil are still in the process of discovering the Love within. Evil is just absence of Love, as Gary Zukav said. We must begin to send blessings, not just to the victim, but also to the perps. Forgive them Father, for they do not know what they are doing. What happened was palpable evil, but eventually it brought me to profound awareness of Love. It was the very chance of the Lightsphere to manifest into thoughts and words.

As I write this, I checked again my journal entry about the hitting incident. A personal statement just struck me: Do not think of revenge...violence begets violence, peace begets peace. Learning this, I recalled how my deepest convictions on peace began ever since. This statement somehow inspired the Lightsphere and its current mantra:

I am peace wherever I go. Wherever I am, I bring peace.