empire • freedom • imagination

Blessed are people who renounce their old way of life,
for they shall rejoice in their freedom.

Renunciation is not a popular word in America. To renounce anything (besides addiction) is not common in our society. Yet, renunciation is central to loving god. It is the second step on the Path of Love at the heart of every major wisdom tradition. Why? Because until we renounce empire, we are caught in its delusion and we serve it instead of god or the common good.

how two wisdom traditions center renunciation

Buddhism and Christianity agree that freedom requires renunciation.

According to the Buddha, after adopting the world-changing worldview of the Four Ennobling Truths, renunciation is the very first place to focus.

Ennobling Eightfold Path: factors 1 and 2

1. Right understanding: Life includes suffering. Suffering has a cause. The cause of suffering can be removed. This very path removes the cause of suffering.

2. Right thought: Thinking about renunciation, freedom from illwill, and harmlessness. (Nobel Eightfold Path – Wikipedia)

The Beatitudes of Christianity express the first two factors this way:

1. Blessed are selfless people, for theirs is the land of god’s love.

2. Blessed are people who renounce their old way of life, for they shall rejoice in their freedom. (Matthew 5:3-4)

(Note: Speaking of freedom, I have taken some liberty in the translation of these two Beatitudes while aspiring to preserve their intent. Recognizing that initial English translations of Hebrew and Ancient Greek were inexact and biased (as all translations are), I believe these renderings capture the spirit of the Messiah’s teaching more faithfully than common interpretations of these words in English.)

Why is renunciation the first thing to consider after right understanding and selflessness? As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman says, empire is an “ideological totalism that intends to contain all thinkable, imaginable, doable social possibilities. That totalism always wants to monopolize imagination, and it wants to monopolize technology, so that there are no serious alternatives.”

Now neither the Buddha nor the Messiah name empire as the enemy. As healers of consciousness, they locate the enemy much closer to home. The mind, they say, is both our best possible friend and our worst possible enemy.

“More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an untrained mind does greater harm.

More than your mother, more than your father, more than all your family, a well-trained mind does greater good.” Dhammapada 3 (42-43)

Empire’s operating system is like an untrained mind: it is oppressive, it does harm. On the other hand, Pure Land – a Buddhist vision of freedom – is liberating and free from all suffering.

Here are Christian expressions of mind as vehicle of freedom and captivity:

“If your mind’s eye is pure, there will be sunshine in your soul. But if your mind’s eye is clouded with evil thoughts and desires, you are in deep spiritual darkness. And oh, how deep that darkness can be!” Matthew 6:22-23

enter the prophet

Prophets know that empire has its roots in our soul, and it is our consciousness (aka soul) where we can intervene immediately and to the greatest effect. Just as empire is a totalizing system, the Path of Love at the center of The Way with a Thousand Names offers liberating alternatives to every aspect of empire living, otherwise the Path of Love would not be fruitful or even desirable. But in struggle between empire and the land of god’s love, the key battlefield is consciousness, the key activity is imagination, and the key players are prophets.

Prophets “refuse to accept the totalization” of empire as the collective goal because it is harmful. Instead, prophets “imagine the world other than the way that is.”

“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” (The Prophetic Imagination)

What does this prophetic imagination look like today in everyday life? What does it look like in movements for collective liberation today? In a word, prophetic imagination looks like wisdom.

Prophets are steeped in the stories and teachings of wisdom traditions. But those stories and teachings are not applicable to our time and place, not exactly. Ancient wisdom texts ...

“... are not to be directly replicated and reenacted. Rather, they are to be seen as materials that might fund the would-be prophetic voice, to give wisdom and courage, but which then invite immense imagination to know how to move from such texts to actual circumstance.”

Liberating ourselves from empire today begins with liberating our minds from the worldview of empire. Freeing ourselves from the worldview and mental models of empire begins with renewing our mind. Renewing our mind comes from concentration, aka meditation. So on one hand, freedom is simple. A daily stillness habit will do.

But daily individual stillness will not get us to the promised land. Liberation is collective or not at all. What was the first thing that both the Buddha and the Messiah did after reaching enlightenment? They invited anyone who would listen to join them in co-creating a new wisdom tradition, renouncing empire in the process. That is much more challenging, and more thrilling.

empire or freedom?

Empire is not so easy to overcome. Most of us cannot break free, and, according to the Messiah, there is no middle ground. We must choose one or the other:

“You cannot serve two masters at the same time. You will hate one and love the other, or you will be loyal to one and not care about the other. You cannot serve god and money at the same time.” (Matthew 6:24)

Fortunately, prophets show us how to resolve the dilemma. Remember the vision of the Path of Love in the Tao Te Ching? That is a classic example, and a wonderful illustration of collective renunciation: “There may be an arsenal of weapons, but nobody ever uses them,” etc. That sounds a lot like Isaiah and Jeremiah, prophets of Israel, who imagine beating swords into plowshares and promising to not learn war anymore.

A little more recently, consider Martin King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. “It is a dream that imagined a world that was completely alternative to the one in which he lived,” a world that required our society to renounce legal segregation.

Back to our time and place, my exercises in renunciation are examples of actions I think are necessary for renewing people and renewing wisdom. Renouncing air travel is just one example, as is renouncing speech on the day of the new moon. They are beginnings not ends. To be truly free, everything empire must go. I just happened to start with these two activities because they appeal to me on many levels, and they seem to heal parts of my divided consciousness and its complicity with the domination systems of empire.

So here we are, caught in empire yet free to imagine new ways of serving the common good, not money. What does collective liberation look like for you? For me? For us? We may not be able to see all the specifics yet. But in general, we know it includes renewing our minds, renouncing empire, and co-imagining the future.

May we too be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old African-American spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”