[AUDIO AND TEXT]
This is the first talk given by Nona Strong Roshi at the August 2023 East-West meditation retreat at Mercy Center Burlingame.
Most of you probably are familiar with the opening line of Charles Dickens’ classic novel A Tale of Two Cities. I knew that line – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” – from hearing it in quips or references from various people and places. Recently I watched the film adaptation of that novel (the one with Ronald Coleman as Sydney Carton), and they used that line as an epigraph to the film. I confess I hadn’t paid much attention to it previously, but this time it struck me as holding something worth considering. So, I looked it up. Here’s the entire first paragraph from the novel:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Now, the final phrase kind of escapes me, but everything that precedes it seems as though it could have been written in this morning’s newspaper or news magazine. Talk about history repeating itself! Dickens’ novel was published in 1859, barely more than 150 years ago. The Ronald Coleman film adaptation was released in 1935, barely less than 100 years after the novel was published. But the conditions described – in this opening paragraph, at least – seem to be timeless. We are and always have been mired in a swirling sea of seemingly irreconcilable dualities. I mean, really…
How can a time be both the best and the worst simultaneously? We’re either wise or we’re foolish, aren’t’ we? Can hope and despair coexist as this paragraph clearly states? Or is the author simply trying to point out the inconsistencies of the time? And remember, he wrote in the mid-nineteenth century about events set in the late eighteenth century. But where this particular story falls in the timeline of history doesn’t seem to matter, does it? From the point of view of the human condition, these seeming dualities must indeed be timeless.
And these are the seeming contradictions that humans have struggled to reconcile since the beginning of recorded time. We want to find a way to live in order and harmony, but we seem to be convinced that one way is always better than another way. And so often, those various ways we envision are in direct opposition to one another. And so we have division, often violent division. I’m right, you’re wrong, so just do it my way. Period! This may be a simplistic way to look at things, but I think it basically tells the story.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we first run into the notion of duality in Genesis, when God begins Creation. Heaven and Earth; Light and Darkness; the waters and the dry land. And on and on. And then we get the Garden of Eden, with all its occupants. Adam and Eve could distinguish among the creatures in the garden, but it wasn’t until they engaged the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (which I interpret to mean until they discovered that they could compare and judge one thing to be better than another thing) that their innocence and peace had disappeared. Distinctions became differences.
Also, they started wanting things, often things that belonged to another. Cain and Abel. Abraham and Sarah and Hagar. Noah and the rest of the people of Earth. Even to God and Man: Love of God versus love of self (which in our tradition has become no difference at all; but that’s another story).
It seems to me that every religion we humans ever practiced has as its central tenet and ultimate goal the creation of order and harmony, which in the end can only come from resolving the contradictions that Dickens so artfully suggests in his opening paragraph. And the time of which he wrote, the days of that pivotal French Revolution, saw the irreconcilable differences between those in authority and those over whom that authority was wielded. Privilege versus want. Duality prevails, and duality rules.
Our East / West traditions suggest there is a middle way which, if it doesn’t reconcile our fundamental contradictions, at least provides us a base from which to view them. And this middle way discourages us from comparing and judging what we see on either side. It seeks to imbue us with equanimity, the ability to see both sides and be undisturbed by the differences we think we perceive. Get that: we think we perceive and we think we understand. There are, in fact, no sides here. There is only what is.
Here’s one translation of the opening of the ancient Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching, which I think shows us how we can regard the contradictions and dualities such as the ones Dickens cites. This translation appears in a book titled One: Essential Writings on Nonduality, edited by Jerry Katz (pp 73-74):
The ways that can be walked are not the eternal Way;
The names that can be named are not the eternal name.
The nameless is the origin of the myriad creatures;
The named is the mother of the myriad creatures.
Therefore,
Always be without desire, In order to observe its wondrous subtleties;
Always have desire, So that you may observe its manifestations.
Both of these derive from the same source;
They have different names but the same designation.
Mystery of mysteries,
The gate of all wonders!
Maybe Dickens was, in his own British way, trying to show us that the seeming contradictions, these irreconcilable opposites, don’t have to live for us as irreconcilable at all. They exist in co-incidence with one another; they are co-happenings. And if we could but see them as such, clear of the comparisons and judgments we picked up from the serpent in the Garden, we might be okay. Maybe not always at peace among ourselves; perhaps that’s too much to ask. But at least we can take things with a bit of equanimity, as Dickens’ Sydney Carton did when he ascended the scaffold in place of his friend: “… it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
EMPTY CLOUD ZEN 