It’s funny how the mind works. When I was a young geek buck tearing down the road in my friend Brian’s Toyota Corola we would often blast the 80′s pop-rock and sing along to our favorite top 40 songs at the top of our lungs. One of our favorites was a song by Mr. Mister. It would come on, we would grapple for the radio controls and spin it to the max and bellow. The chorus is where we really got into it -

Carrying a Laser

Down the road that I must Travel

Carrying a Laser

Through the darkness of the night

Carrying a Laser

Where I’m going will you follow

Carrying a Laser

On a highway in the light

We were sci-fi gamer freaks, and we loved it.

The problem is, those weren’t the lyrics. The actual title of the song, and the refrain we mistook for “Carrying a Laser” was “Kyrie Eleison“, which is Latin for “Lord have mercy.” The song was a fine example of Christian rock. And, when we found that out, it died for us. We tried to sing with the right words, just two words different, but it was no where near as exciting. We tried singing it our way still, but that didn’t work either. I don’t know about Brian, but I know I felt an odd embarrassment about the whole thing and the song promptly lost its magic. I had an understanding of the song, one that was important to me, and it was wrong. I reacted to being wrong by shutting down. But, there is another way…

Several years ago, at the beginning of my study of Aikido, I came across a book that was right up my alley: Cheng Hsin Tui Shou: The Art of Effortless Power by Peter Ralston. He is a renaissance man of a martial artist, with black belts in Judo, Juijitsu, and Karate. He has also studied Northern Sil Lum Kung Fu, T’ai Chi, Hsing I, Pa Kua, Western Boxing and Aikido. The book concerns his attempt to distill the concepts from the various disciplines he practiced into something new. Since I came up through Judo, then T’ai Chi, and finally to Aikido with side trips into Western Fencing, Western Boxing, Hsing I, Pa Kua, Wing Chun and Muay Thai I figured it was a perfect fit. The book is a good read and I highly recommend it to any thinking person of a martial artist. One of the fields of study that Peter Ralston has a passion for is Ontology. That was a new word to me. I looked it up, I’m not really sure where, but I received the following definition – “The Ontological argument is that the first knowledge, the only knowledge from which all other knowledge can possibly arise, is the knowledge that there is a God.” That definition is not quite right. Ontology is a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of being, or existence, and the first, most basic knowledge that derives therefrom. Some great minds have used the Ontological Argument (and variations of it) as proof of the existence of God. Ontology is also sometimes translated as “first knowledge”. Descarte summed up his ontology with the famous phrase, “Cogito ergo sum.” “I think, therefore I am.” So, I had a wrong understanding of the basic Ontological Argument and its implications, but I didn’t know it at the time. All I had was this basic whiff of an idea that caught me at a deep level. It became for me a kind of koan, and lodged itself in my throat, a “red hot ball of iron that I could neither swallow nor spit out.”

I grappled with that idea, that the first knowledge must be the knowledge that there is a God, in varying degrees for years. I haunted me, pleased me, gave me a yearning and solace in turn.

Recently the koan turned on itself. I was sitting in front of my computer, contemplating the meaning of web 2.0 and social networking on grand scales when it occurred to me that the idea that knowledge that there is a God had to come first was simply wrong. The first knowledge, the source of all knowledge is simply, “I Am.” This powerful realization that I exist as a distinct thing is the pivot on which all knowing spins. Without knowing that I am, I can know nothing. This is how it occurs for me know. The realization was deep and complete, and very, very quiet. More like an, “oh…” than an “AH HAH!!!!” But, deep and real nonetheless. I can sincerely say that I am not the same man I was before. For me now, the basis of my Ontology is, “Sum”. “I Am.” This is the same bold declaration that Jesus made, and what Buddha was pointing at when (as legend has it) immediately after birth he walked seven steps in each direction, pointed one hand at the sky and the other at the earth and said, “In all of Heaven and Earth, I alone am the honored one.” “I Am”, and the fact that I know that, know that I am an individual point of knowledge, and that that knowledge is the source of all knowledge makes me realize that everyone else, in all of the world, also is “I Am”. Of course, a quad cappuccino still costs me $4.25 at Starbucks. Knowing is only worth so much.

Now, being me, I of course excitedly looked up the Ontological Argument, and very swiftly realized that I had been mistaken in the definition I had carried all those years. I was wrong, but this time being wrong was alright because it was so damn useful to me. My reaction to being wrong this time is much better, it simply means I still have much to learn. (Thank God!)

Now, bear with me for a moment. I recently finished Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Bloody brilliant book! Again, I highly recommend it, this time to any thinking person of an eater. It was good on so many levels that I really should write a proper review, but there is a part pertinent to this discussion. Michael Pollan goes into the distinction of recognizing the modern habit of relating solely to individual of a species rather than the concept of the species as a whole. One of his examples is the Native American mythical concept of Buffalo, and Coyote, and relating to those animals as that concept rather than as a group of individuals. The Native American had respect for the Buffalo as they hunted the great beast, and demonstrably strengthened the breed as a whole with a symbiotic relationship. That is, until the White Man came on the scene and started paying good money for buffalo parts. This individualization is part of what contributes to modern industrial farmings inhumane treatment of a cow, or pig, as a machine good only for producing protein, rather than a Cow as concept, and makes it easy to treat the animal in a way that denies its basic creaturely suchness. There is strong argument for the moral correctness of eating animals as long as they are treated as Pig, Cow, and Chicken with gratitude and mutual respect rather than a pig, a cow, and a chicken suitable only to be rapidly forced to a size appropriate for slaughter.

This concept of Buffalo rather than buffalo, mixed in with the recognition of “I Am, and so is everyone else” into a blossoming understanding of what the mystics have referred to as the Self, as opposed to the self. The world is a better place when you start to comprehend the concept of Person rather than person, I rather than i, and Self rather than self. You begin to see that we are all, on a very real level the same, and that each of us (Pig included) is merely striving for what is good in life and to be happy. Each, and every thing in this world deserves that, and deserves to be seen as equally deserving that.

But, a quad cappuccino still costs $4.25, and that is alright too.