How Left and Right Go Wrong

Time To Let Go of Failed Political Ideologies

The Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki summarized the dharma with the pity statement:

“Not always so.”

Because of this eternal Truth, the political Left and the Right are both bound to fail.

Always and forever.

Conservatism is based on nostalgia. The Right Wing is based on the idea that the past was better than the present. Make America Great Again.

Liberalism is based on a yearning for the future, on a belief that the future will be better than the past. Forward Together.

Unfortunately, the past isn’t coming back, and the future never arrives.

It is always, only and forever, Now.

“All is change.” - Euripides

“There is nothing permanent except change.” - Heraclitus

No amount of aversion will stop the flow of change. No amount of grasping after the future will make change happen faster.

Change happens at its own pace.

“Don’t push the river, it by flows itself.” - Fritz Perlz

The people in both of these camps are bound to remain frustrated and unsatisfied, as long as they remain identified with these ideologies, because they think their satisfaction can only be had in two times that don’t exist:

The Past and the Future.

For conservatives, things are always getting worse.

The golden days gone by are always getting further away, never to return.

For liberals things aren’t changing fast enough, and even when the change they want finally arrives, it isn’t satisfying. Satisfaction only happens in the present, and how could you appreciate the present when your mind is constantly oriented towards the future?

They are just on to the next thing that must change.

Consider the words of the Old Boy:

Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.

The world is sacred.
It can’t be improved.
If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.

There is only one thing that doesn’t change. And yet it is no thing. It transcends the boundaries of being and nonbeing.

The purpose of human life is to come to know this thing.

There was something formless and perfect

before the universe was born.

It is serene. Empty.

Solitary. Unchanging.

Infinite. Eternally Present.

It is the Mother of the universe.

For lack of a better name,

I call it the Tao.