Two Conversations

Two Conversations: We missed each other

John W. Gilmore

It is my turn to speak at Sunday Meeting. It's always interesting, but I am sure I can find something better to do on such a beautiful day. As a volunteer I lead Dharma talks once a month at the temple and am labeled a Dharma Master, which is interesting. All I do, however, is just meditate and speak. It all seems to flow. Today we will have a mixture of members and expats who are thinking of making their new home in Panama. You never know who to expect there. I begin to speak by telling my story.

"Winter, spring, summer, fall. There doesn’t seem to be a difference anymore for me. I have escaped the four seasons. I am in the tropics where life is good, and there is always something to do. The biggest question I ask myself is what I am going to do today. Should I work, or play? Sometimes I'll go fishing with my friends. We’ll go out all day on the boats off the shores of Panama fishing, and sometimes we'll take people out on tours on our large cat."

We play music, we drink, we party, and then the owners will pay me sometimes for pitching in and helping, but it really isn’t my job. It's just a lot of fun. These guys are my friends. We hang out in my house in the treetop village and party most of the time when they're not working because I have a massive house. We continue it onto the boat when they go to work. I get on free because I am a friend and pitch in sometimes, and I get paid under the table, so to speak. So my life: living off of investments; YouTube Channel income; which is quite small; and under the table cash, makes life on the Island paradise for me."

I'm not married and don’t intend to be again, so I have enough money and material possessions for whatever I want. People tell me to find a woman. To settle down. I’ve tried that. I’m in my late 50s now and I would rather not. I can do bad by myself, as the old black folks used to say. I would rather sit in my lounger in front of my big treetop hut, and live."

How did I come to be this way? The way some of the more ignorant friends I left in the US ask this is “How did you become such a loser?” I just laugh. I think of it as being alive instead of working to get status in a bankrupt system and to live in quiet desperation. I think that we were all put on this Earth, by god knows who, in order to experience things like love, joy, and compassion. And especially, using our power to make things better when we see people stomped down and oppressed by a system that is more like a machine than anything else. When the system is dead, people have to kill themselves to be happy, go to sleep, and stay that way."

Not all of the people, of course. The higher functioning cerebral ones learn to operate so they can weave their way through the trickery and treachery of the system and gain a lot of things. The lower functioning reptile brain ones work so they can stay alive, and scrape, and manipulate to gain enough to try to fill their emptiness. It doesn't work. I used to be one of them. Yes, the higher and lower functions of the brain worked great in that society, but the middle part, the mammalian part, the part of the brain that feels love, compassion, and the need to work with and be with other beings was definitely being sacrificed.

That's how it is with most of our society. That part is put to sleep until we can no longer feel what really makes us human. We, in a sense, are then dead. We are more walking computers than human beings. All that is left then, is waiting for our machine bodies to die, but we even fear the release of death because of our everyday life atrocities. We are in a sad state. Not we, they, in the United States, because I have found a group of people who have somehow managed to make a good living, while still having strong friend and family ties, and making time for life."

Leaving the states the first time I did, when I was a young man, was my salvation. To be living in that hole and judging other cultures and other people’s lives, as most people do in the US, is just inaccurate and pathetic. So what I tell my friends is that I live in a real country as a human being, not as a consumer constantly running as fast as possible to make quarterly profits and to maintain the GDP. Most don’t even know what I'm talking about, and that is the real problem."

"So my question to you,” I say to the Sangha of expats thinking of moving to Panama, “is who are you really? Are you a consumer? Do you lean on just the reptile and the cerebral brains, or are you whole with all three parts of the brain integrated because in reality there is only one and it is working, or not. If all three don't work together it is not a human brain.”

"I would have to say that I disagree with that Sir," a North American man says. "We are individuals who have just come into our own. I agree that we are in a corrupt system, but if we maintain ourselves at a higher frequency we will be established and have all we can possibly need. There's nothing wrong with having a lot of money, or being strong and an achiever. Whether we can achieve or not is often a reflection of our consciousness."

I guess I am saying that we create our own realities so it isn’t a choice between becoming a consumer or not. It's about attracting what is necessary to fulfill your needs, which includes material needs and abundance."

"And what is the difference between your wants and needs?"

"I don’t know that there is a difference. At the higher level one only wants what is nourishing to oneself and one's community."

"I doubt that a big screen TV and a house with 5 bedrooms with 2 people living in it is nourishing to Self or community," I said. "It only feeds the ego which we claim to be getting beyond. So that belief system in itself is a throwback to prosperity Christianity minus the Christ. It is the same repetition of claiming superiority because one is more fortunate in some innate way, while simultaneously, by default, blaming the poor and oppressed for their condition."

"I beg to differ."

"No need for that. You may differ, but I am the one speaking and offering you the keys to enlightenment unless you are already there."

"All of us are already enlightened according to just about every teacher." His wife says." They seem to be in a little group together.

"Not you the ego, you the actual Self. The ego is not enlightened except when it remains in silence. When the ego is in silence, dialectic is unnecessary because the ego no longer exists in silence."

"We don't believe in teachers where I come from," she says. "We are all equals."

"Beyond ego, belief and non-belief don't exist because they are an illusion of the ego. I would suggest you don't apply much energy to that belief unless you want to stay locked in the ego."

"Are you enlightened?" The first man says.

"Yes, and no."

"What do you mean?"

"The Tao that can be named is not the Tao."

"I don't understand," someone from the crowd says. They murmur.

"The labels given by human beings are just labels. They are not the thing, but representations of the thing colored by culture, experiences, prejudices, wants, and desires."

"Well can we really talk about anything?" The first man says.

"No."

"Then why are we here?" His wife asks. I look at my watch.

"I'm here to go snorkeling. Anybody else coming?"

"I can't believe this guy," the man says in frustration. I pull out my mask from behind the podium and hold it up. They all look at him waiting for the next response.