While There’S Still Time

By Robert Colacurcio

This collection of essays is intended to be a sequel to my previous book, On the True Nature of the Soul: Essays for the Seriously Curious. The basic themes are the illusory nature of time, its swift passing, and ways to make better use of it while we have it. The addendum at the end of each essay is meant to give the reader a way to practically apply the ideas in the essay. Everything I have written, including this book, is a development of two basic ideas: 1) we are here to see through the illusion of our separateness and 2) the soul is the potential to be one with all things. The subject matter of these essays can be succinctly stated as the timeless nature of the soul incarnate as it struggles to realize that nature in time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984554123

Robert Colacurcio

Robert Colacurcio has been practicing the methodology of the Buddha’s spiritual technology for over thirty five years under the guidance of some of the most accomplished meditation masters in the Vajrayana lineage of Buddhism. Earlier in his life he studied to become a Jesuit priest, and earned his PhD from Fordham University in philosophy. His spiritual background includes two years at the New York Zendo, extensive study in the Human Potential Movement under the direction of Claudio Naranjo and Oscar Ichazo. His journey then took him to a Sufi commune learning the disciplines of the Russian savant, G.I. Gurdjieff. He is also deeply indebted to the works of Carlos Castaneda, Robert Pirsig and Jane Roberts. He currently lives with his wife, Carol, in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, and delights with pride in the growth and constant source of revelation that are his children and grandchildren

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Copyright © 2018 by Robert Colacurcio.

ISBN:                Softcover                978-1-9845-5413-0

                          eBook                     978-1-9845-5412-3

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Rev. date: 09/22/2018

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To Khenchen Tsewang Gyatso, for blessings and teachings innumerable.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

1     Less is More: A Good Place to Start

2     While There’s Still Time

3     The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence

4     Nihilism as a Rationale for Suicide

5     Finding Timelessness in Time: A Letter to my Nephew Steve

6     The Sadness of the Word

7     The Forgetfulness of Christianity

8     Do Prayers of Petition Change the Mind of God

9     Patience is the Way

10   Spiritual Maturity: Death is Every Day

11   Spiritual Maturity: Detachment

12   Surrender is a Hard-Won Victory

13   Essay on the novel The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

14   Free Will and Negative Space

15   Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy in King Arthur’s Britain

16   Where’s the Real Magic?

17   Quid hoc ad Aeternitatem

18   Friendly Follow-up to a Conversation

Preface

According to the Buddha, we live in a fortunate eon that nevertheless is rapidly deteriorating. According to Buddhist cosmology, there are ages when nothing is known about the spiritual technology of the Buddha because there are no Buddhas on the earth; no one who teaches the method because there are no teachers. It is called a dark and unfortunate time. This is not that time. Yet. 2500 years ago Gautama Siddhartha pursued a revolutionary path to enlightenment. Known as the Awakened One—that’s what the word Buddha means—he taught the Eightfold Path, and others followed it to enlightenment. His teaching, known as the Dharma, is present in the world today; there are also enlightened beings and many competent teachers alive who make the teachings available. That’s what it means to live in a fortunate age. A precious human rebirth is what those of you reading this book enjoy. I make no claims for myself as a teacher. My blessing and great privilege is to be able to offer something of the Buddha’s basic teachings in what I hope is a contemporary English idiom making it accessible to westerners.

To illustrate the rarity of a precious human rebirth, the Buddha gave this illustration. He licked his thumbnail and dipped it into fine sand. He said those of you with access to the Dharma are like the number of grains of sand on his thumb. Those without access are like the grains of sand on the beaches lining the Ganges River. The Buddha took account not only of all the human beings who could not make contact with his teachings, but also all other sentient beings in the other five realms of cyclic existence. These include the animal realm that we can see and all the others that we can’t see.

We are in a deteriorating and degenerate period of time known as Kaliyuga. Even though there is access to the Dharma, we move towards a dark time when there won’t be. To illustrate the nature of Kaliyuga’s decline, let me talk a little about the time of my childhood in the 50’s. My brother Tom in the 7th grade already showed his prowess as an entrepreneur. He won the sales contest to raise money for the school library by selling the most magazine subscriptions. For his prize, the principal, who was a nun in the Order of St. Joseph, said he could choose anything in the gift catalog she showed him. He chose a Marlin 22 long 3-shot bolt action rifle. When it arrived, Tom was called to the Principal’s office to receive his award. He asked if he could take it out of the box. She agreed, and my brother proudly walked home with this rifle slung over his shoulder! That was sixty years ago. He was 10 and I was 13 years old. I used to regularly hitch hike the ten miles to and from my high school. Never had a problem and the police allowed it. The local movie theater was about 1.5 miles from my home. After a Saturday night double feature, I would walk home, often by myself, at 10:00. The sidewalk paralleled the main road that led past my home at the very eastern most edge of suburban Cincinnati. From there it continued into what we called the boonies where I thought the country bumpkins lived. I did this all through high school, and was never once threatened or molested. Such a different time and not all that long ago.

Thirty-five years ago I began my first instructions in the mindfulness methodology of the Buddha, and I remember a lama telling my class that in the not too distant future, kids would be shooting and killing kids. He said that’s one clear indication of Kaliyuga. So many things have changed since even then. I had no computer and there were no smart phones. I still used a typewriter, and in my sales career, I frequently made use of a pay phone.

The Buddha teaches that every sentient being is following an evolutionary trajectory that will eventually climax in the fullness of wisdom-compassion non dual known as enlightenment. He also taught that everyone who hears his teaching in this age has been suffering through literally countless rebirths to bring them to this point in time. Those with a precious human rebirth have it within their power to escape the endless wheel of cyclic existence. There is still time. The question is what will you do while there is still time. There is no guarantee that your next rebirth will be a time with this fortunate option. Only time in a precious human rebirth offers the option to take the path to enlightenment.

Introduction

The essays in this volume serve a dual purpose. First, they build upon the essays in my previous book, On the True Nature of the Soul: Essays for the Seriously Curious. Secondly, they are intended to supplement the practical suggestions developed in Applied Spirituality: Seeing Through the Illusion of our Separateness.

While the essays in this volume can be read in any order, my sense is that the philosophical and spiritual ideas become progressively more challenging as the essays go from ##1-18. Realizing this as I reviewed their subject matter, I decided to include a practical addendum at the end of each essay. It is the addition of these practical suggestions that allows me to think of these essays as a sequel to Applied Spirituality. This latter volume was actually a compilation of six small books.

Everything that I have written develops one or both these themes: (1) the soul is the potential to be one with all things and (2) we are here to see through the illusion of our separateness. The methodology of the Buddha’s spiritual technology has allowed me to unpack and develop these themes in language that is mostly free from both philosophical and spiritual jargon. Nevertheless, I don’t apologize if an occasion word requires a dictionary reference or if a given passage has to be read more than once for comprehension.

An early teacher on my spiritual journey asked me to remember this nugget of wisdom. It is not knowing many things that satisfies the soul, but rather knowing a few quality things deeply. In the Latin of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the pithy expression is non multa sed multum.

The subject matter of these essays can be succinctly stated thus:

the timeless nature of the soul incarnate as it struggles to realize that nature in time. That subject matter is inherently challenging. Anyone looking for a puff piece self-help book can spend their time elsewhere. But if the reader desires to delve deeper into what nurtures the timeless nature of the soul as it struggles to realize its liberation in and through the demands, constraints and limitations of being in time, well then, there are a few quality ideas here that I hope and pray will deeply nurture and satisfy your soul.

Many of the ideas in these essays were triggered by questions from family members. The reader will note some personal references, and I hope this helps create some context and extra relevance for these ideas. Even so, I must confess that when I write it feels like taking dictation. That is, there is a Spirit of Inspiration which uses the seemingly ordinary, daily details of my life as doorways to spacious themes that have a timeless quality about them. I feel blessed to be a conduit for these ideas, and I don’t feel able to take full credit for them. My wife says that I’m just now giving vent to what has been a lifetime of serious study, reflection and meditation. The reader can consult my brief bio on the book cover for some details. Inspiration finding expression in words is just one example, it seems to me, of how the timeless nature of the soul incarnates itself in a temporal form. In my case, however, the special blessing is that there is very little struggle involved. What inspires me to write also gives me the words. I have never known the experience referred to as writers block.

History records how each age struggles to understand the human condition. Each age gives that struggle and that condition a unique interpretation. Those in the present see it one way, while those looking back on it see it another. Time seems to create a blur. We can’t seem to achieve a timeless clarity. Our contemporary Western culture is particularly blurry. Certitudes are hard to come by. The pace of life makes everything seem topical and temporary. Nothing lasts, but then nothing is expected to. That is, until we suffer from expectations that prove untrustworthy. We realize too late how we expected something (our job, home, health, spouse, fortune) to last, and it didn’t. Technology gives us many things, but it doesn’t give us more time. We expect it to, but it doesn’t. We speed into the future at a pace driven by technology, and find it a struggle to slow the forward momentum enough to reflect on where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going. Curiously and paradoxically, it is the present moment that is timeless. At least, when carefully examined, it has no duration and can’t be found to exist. Ordinary technology has no methods for opening the magic doorway of the present moment into the spacious clarity of timeless awareness. The spiritual technology of the Buddha does have the methods of mindfulness that neutralize the illusory demon of time.

Every age struggles with old age, sickness and death. The passage of time constantly poses the impermanence of things in new and surprising forms which nevertheless repeat the same old pattern. History will record whether the negative, unintended consequences of our technological prowess outweigh its benefits. What we know for sure right now is that technology has us on a tear. I invite the reader to by-pass Google and go to a large dictionary like Webster’s Third New International and look up the word tear. See how many meanings are applicable to the fabric and momentum of society today.

If you are not ready to slow down this runaway momentum, giving yourself time to stop and think, then these essays are not for you. However, the opportunity exists to create a little spacious clarity in your mind. Why not take it while there is still time.

1. Less is More: A Good Place to Start

A recent film (Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things 2016) was produced by two thirty-something guys who step back from high powered jobs to tout the virtues of less-is-more. One friend’s exuberant happiness catches the other’s attention; and delving into the source of his friends demeanor—so uncharacteristic of the faces of his own coworkers—he learns his strategy. Get rid of accumulated stuff, yes; but continue paring away to get down to the minimal basic essentials for a comfortable lifestyle. The film profiles other professionals such as architects, designers, musicians and businessmen whose testimony witnesses to the happy result of paring down to basics. Curiously, women are not prominently featured. What is not pointed out, let alone stressed, is the difficulty that certainly arises when trying to change one’s habit and definition of comfort.

A Trappist or Carthusian monk chooses an austere lifestyle, but there is nevertheless serious adjustment to adopt and adapt to a very Spartan way of life. Some of the 400-600 sq. ft. mini mobile homes featured in the film are not much more than a monk’s quarters in their simplicity and lack of accoutrements, as well as their footprint. The film shows the craziness of holiday shopping frenzies. It stresses how advertising aligned with technology seeks to convince us that the next thing is better than last week’s thing. Currently, they say, it is fashion that is the driver behind excessive acquisition and consumption. Fashion has replaced utility. We are persuaded to get the next best thing not because we need its superior utility but because without it we will be out of step and style.

The covert assumption behind this consumption that far exceeds utility is this: having more will make us more. In other words, the abundant life you seek—one filled with satisfaction, accomplishment and meaning—can be had by acquiring an abundance of things. As a license plate shroud I once saw put it: The one who dies with the most toys wins.

Minimalism counters this assumption head on. It points out that many people living in houses over 3500 sq. ft. only use about 40% of the space 90% of the time. The point is also made about how one’s first pair of boots—like the first spoonful of ice cream—satisfies in a way that the rest of the closet full or quart just doesn’t. The two guys take to the road with their message, and by the film’s end, they are speaking to large crowds, at least by bookstore standards. They don’t proselytize, but they do exhort their listeners to experiment with less and see if, in fact, it doesn’t net out to be more.

Personally, I find minimalism a noble and worthwhile idea. Starting maximally from a global perspective, minimalism is a very useful idea to consider. For example, excess consumption feeds and fuels an economic engine that stokes monumental landfills, clutters our oceans with cast-off waste and warms the planet from fossil fuels that run our factories. The effort even to identify what counts as one’s personal and basic minimal necessities is a challenging exercise. These two guys are savvy enough to recognize that they are flying in the face of the winds driving most of the economy in the U.S. Moreover, they acknowledge that going cold turkey to a minimalist lifestyle is just not practical for everyone. Consider, for example that your partner has a very different and fixed idea about what are the basic necessities for comfort.

A gradualist approach is presented by a lady advocating an experiment called 333. Select only your basic 33 items of apparel (including jewelry) to wear for the next three months as a test. See not only if you can get by and enjoy the freedom that comes from this simplification, but also notice whether your coworkers will even take notice. This woman worked in a highly fashion conscious business, and she suspected she’d be spotted, judged and ridiculed for her diminished fashion sense. But she wasn’t. No one even noticed!

What am I implying, however, by the title of this essay? What do I mean to say by less is more…(merely? typically? only?): a good place to start?

It is easy to spot the insanity of frenzied consumption that wants to have the next best thing even before the built-in obsolescence of the last best thing has degraded its utility. Frenzied consumption—even apart from the reckless abandon of sales like Black Friday—can legitimately be called insane because it is another example of insanity’s definition as expecting different results from the repetition of the same activity. Buy more, have more, be more. The logic is there but the equation never tallies. What is harder to spot, identify and disengage from is the root cause of this insanity.

Western consumerism is not typical the world over. America may set the pace and pattern for the consumption of material goods, but half the world’s population still struggles to fill a pot with a reliable, clean source of water, let alone a cupboard full of Wedgewood cups or hi-tech thermos bottles. Even in the U.S., my experience, at least, shows that the older people become the less inclined they are to indulge in frenzied shopping. The generation that experienced the Great Depression is nearly gone, but many descendants still pattern their lives on the frugal habits they learned from their parents and grandparents. Nevertheless, even these more sober minded folks can and do suffer from an inordinate attachment to things. According to the Buddha, until Enlightenment, if you find yourself alive on planet earth, you are ipso facto attached to things. The root cause of this attachment is body addiction.

Incarnation is a sure sign of body addiction. What this means is that, according to the Buddha, given the compulsion to have a body once again, there is also the desire to have and hold those things that only a body can experience. To put a philosophical point on the issue at hand, body addiction is rooted in the perception that takes one’s own body as the primary instance of what is real.

Although the guys who produced the film about minimalism don’t drive this point home, the point they do make is that accessorizing the body with more and more stuff is a mistake. In fact, it is counter productive. Having more is meant to make one feel and be more, but eventually it does the opposite. They point out that the drive to have more ends up making one feel less somehow. It is the provocation that arises from that somehow that gives rise to their pursuit of principled action aligned with less is more.

When the Buddha exited from his profound and prolonged examination of the causes of suffering, he didn’t propose minimalism as the solution. The reason is that things per se are not the problem. Even a super abundance of things that overflow the attic and clutter the garage are not themselves the source of the problem. Minimalism is a good place to start, but the unnecessary things it discards are not the problem. It is a good place to start because having less of them can create a freedom and a mental spaciousness for acutely examining what the problem really is.

The effort and accomplishment of paring down the body’s accessories to the basic necessities is similar to the meditation experience of achieving a state of calm abiding. In the first stages of meditation practice, one must confront what the masters often call monkey mind, and I sometimes call mall mind. Having given oneself the time to just sit in meditation, the typical novice meditator can’t believe the frantic and frenzied activity going on in their own mind. Like caged monkeys at the zoo or the sales-driven shoppers at a busy mall, the mental activity going on is noisy and chaotic. Novice meditators often conclude that either meditation is not for them or that their mental state was a lot better off before they started to meditate.

In the hi-tech world of business and finance, elite university grads easily build upon their previous external metrics—SAT scores, college admissions, grade point averages, etc.—to reach the fallacious conclusion that whatever they do to bring in more money is good. Again, the measure of success is the more. In meditation practice, accomplishment starts to be measured by less is more. The less distraction, the more spaciousness. The more spaciousness, the less grasping because there is less presenting itself for grasping and the desire to have. The desire to have can still be very strong even though it’s a desire to have something very subtle. The experience of less is more really makes itself felt with surprising joy when the following happens. There is less desire to even repeat and have more of yesterday’s good meditation experience. And more subtly still, when the desire or intent to be somewhere else than resting in the spacious presence of the here-and-now diminishes away to nothing.

The sleeper in that last sentence is nothing. When the conceptual dimension of mind has reached the stage of calm abiding, the possibility to make the subtle shift into the non conceptual dimension of mind presents itself. Within this non conceptual dimension the experience of no-thing can arise. This no-thing dimension is an undeniable experience which is completely ineffable. One cannot say "it’ doesn’t exist and at the same time this no-thing is not something that exists. All that can be said is that it is both and neither. This is the dimension of mind that can completely