Wrestle With Your Spirit
“You don’t come to church to be entertained. You come to wrestle with your spirit.” (James Cone)
I was sent a link the other day to an online article about James Cone. At the end of the article the author talks about Cone’s response to the concept of ‘prosperity’ religion. What caught my eye and got me to thinking was the quote I shared above.
When I think about our Buddhist practice and what we try to do every day, it is on some levels as if we are indeed wrestling our spirits. Though of course we try to do so gently and so wrestle may not be the best choice of words, but the concept is pretty spot on.
Every day we try to take advantage of opportunities to examine our perspective and our responses to those perspectives. And as I said, we try to do this with the kindest and gentlest of ways. However sometimes there may be a particular obstacle we are facing and so we find we need to apply a bit more effort into its solution. Yet even still we should be kind to ourselves.
Part of the trick with ‘wrestling with our spirit’ is to on the one hand be aware, be motivated to change, and then make effort, all the while being forgiving if we don’t achieve perfection. In some ways it isn’t about achieving perfection it is about trying, about the striving.
If we ignore ourselves and make no effort then we are bound to continually finding ourselves in situations that cause us suffering. If we notice those situations and then begin to work on them, even just a little, then our karma has changed; our action has changed. What results is a different outcome due to a different behavior. These different outcomes then provide us with fertile ground upon which to strengthen these behaviors, our karma.
Without effort there is no change; with even the smallest of efforts there is change.
“In the presence of the people, they pretend to have the three poisons and wrong views. They save them with these expedients. They change themselves into various forms. If I speak of all their transformations, the listeners will doubt me.” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter VIII)
Chanting Odaimoku with a concentrated mind we can awaken to the fact that all of these things, all of these poisons in our lives, are merely expedients to cause us to seek enlightenment.
Be the Buddha you are!
