Can We All Get Along?
In the early evening of April 29,1992. I loaded up my little Geo Metro with essential things and headed from San Pedro to Long Beach. I was moving into a new apartment on Roycroft Avenue in Belmont Shore, which is only one block from the ocean and just a few minutes drive from where I was interning at Family Service of Long Beach. This was an exciting moment, and a new chapter in my life. That night was one of those perfect evenings we frequently experience in Southern California.
The news of the day was filled with stories about the jury in Simi Valley that had acquitted four LAPD officers for using excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King, but the trial was in Ventura county, north of LA, and it seemed far away that night when I was moving to safe and secure Long Beach. My only focus was on the task at hand, moving into my nice new apartment and moving on with a new career as a psychotherapist.
By the time I was on the road, the riots in south central had just begun, and although my memory of that evening has faded, I think the main bridge from San Pedro to Long Beach was already blocked, or perhaps I heard that it would soon be blocked. If so, I would have taken a detour through the port in Wilmington, hardly the safest route. I vaguely remember some police barricades blocking the main entrance into Belmont Shore on 2nd Street, but, in any case, I had no problem reaching my new apartment. Most likely, I had no problem because I am decidedly white, as was, and still is, tony Belmont Shore.
Moving to a new apartment during a riot may sound risky to you, but this is the guy who had to crouch down low in the back of an old pickup truck on his way to Kabul, Afghanistan, one late night twenty years earlier. I discovered that there was no bus to Kabul from the village where I had spent a couple of nights, so I had to hire someone to drive me there in his truck. In addition to whatever fee he charged, his only condition was that I could not sit up front in the cab with him. Instead, I had to crouch down low, covered by an old woolen blanket in the bed of the truck. This was due to the many robbers who frequented those isolated roads at night. A robber with any eyesight at all would have noticed that I was not exactly an Afghani.
As I unpacked, the news got increasingly worse, and a pervasive feeling of tension and fear became palpable. I still remember an eerie silence in the air, as if sound itself was gathering into a storm. The rioting got worse and continued into the following three or four days. By the time the riots had ended, 63 people were dead, 2393 people had been injured, more than 12,000 people had been arrested, approximately 3.600 fires had been set, and 1,100 buildings had been destroyed. As minimizing as it may seem to those who who believe that the riots in Washington DC were potentially another Civil War and the end of our democracy, I suspect that those who went through the riots in LA would demure and say, “seriously?”
What continues to be a lasting memory from that time is the moment Rodney King asked, in a quiet, halting voice, “Can we all get along?” I remember reacting to his question with a mixture of sympathy, empathy, surprise, and, sad to admit, some condescension. What a sweet and naive question it seemed to me! “Can we all get along?” “Well, No” was my instinctive answer. Clearly, we cannot all get along, or as my favorite meditation teacher, U Vivekananda used to say, “Obviously not!”
I grew up in a small town in mountainous East Tennessee, an area which, during the Civil War, gave sons to both the North and the South. East Tennessee has always had an inclination toward moderation, situated as it is between the north (Cincinnati ) and the south (Atlanta) and between the east (Charlotte) and the west (Memphis).
It’s “middle” tendency seems to have become part of my DNA. My mother gave me the middle name ”Lee,” which is the same as my father’s middle name. It used to be a southern name of great respect. So I watched the tearing down of Lee’s statue in Charlottesville this past week, with a certain ambivalence, the same ambivalence that must be felt by many southerners. Notice I did not say “southern white racists,” a label which seems to have been quite neatly tacked onto our foreheads. I share this only to suggest that ambivalence in the midst of opposite feelings is probably not that unusual.
The expression, “like Sherman to the sea” means something quite different to a people where one of their main cities was burned to the ground, a catastrophe that occurred as General Sherman burned a giant, black swath of destruction from Atlanta to Savannah. It probably has no meaning, let alone sting, to people in Manhattan or San Francisco. That is, unless General Sherman had chosen those beautiful cites to be destroyed.
An approximate number of boys and men from the north and the south who never returned home from the Uncivil War is estimated to be somewhere between 600,000 to 750,000, which is to say, they died. It is interesting to wonder how many mothers, wives and children also died, but that does not seem to be a matter of great importance for the statisticians.
One sees many monuments in small New England towns such as Barre, Massachusetts where I have meditated for many years, but this one always feels a certain ambivalence, standing before memorials to the Uncivil War. Glad for this nation that survived such horror, but also sad for a land that suffered ruin and defeat. I suppose it is true that to the victor belongs the spoils, but it is also true that to the victor belongs the narrative. The North good. The South bad and, after all, didn’t they deserve what they got? We live in a time of intense fighting to control the narrative. Have you noticed?
The memory of defeat lasts for generations, as people from Scotland or Ireland know in their bones. They do not tend to trust the English. Blacks who were dominated and subjected to slavery for over two hundred years (two hundred and forty six years to be exact) tend not to trust Whites. It’s in their bones. Native Americans whom we effectively diminished by labeling them “indians” with a small ‘i” and “civilizing” them into near extinction, know something about defeat. What sane Jew can possibly trust in the better instincts of a people who want to destroy them? I remember playing the organ for High Holy Days in a synagogue in Far Rockaway, N.Y., when the rabbi warned the faithful, “you may think that they are your friends but in the end they will turn on you!” And Rodney King asked, “Can we all get along?”
His was not a rhetorical question. In other words, it was not merely an interesting question for psychologists, theologians or intelligent talking heads on cable news to ponder and pontificate over. Nor was it the complaint of a child whining “why do I have to?” while trying to hook the parents into delaying the dreaded moment of having to go to bed.
Actually, Rodney King’s question feels like an invitation: “Can we?” For me, it also feels like a koan. Perhaps you already know that a zen student has to repeat a koan over and over, sometimes for years, until it gets under his or her skin. If you stick with a koan, it eventually corners you and becomes urgent. You go to sleep with it on your mind and wake up with it still knocking at the door. The brilliance of an old zen master’s technique of demanding that the student respond spontaneously and immediately to what the koan means is that it stuns the conscious ego, which relentlessly tries to delay and obfuscate with answers from the rational intellect. “I need to think about it” is our eternal mantra.
To tell the truth, I imagine we would all prefer that Rodney King had asked a different question: “Why can’t we all get along?” Now there’s a question that the ego can sink its teeth into. It’s a veritable garden of delight. Our ego loves, adores, delights in, relishes in, and wallows in the mud of thought. In psychology, such a question is called “ego syntonic,” and, as mentioned above, thinking about it is the ego’s favorite way of avoiding what the present moment is asking of us. We feel that we need more time. Perhaps this is why Nisargadatta said that what takes time is false. So my immediate and spontaneous response to his question was “of course not,” but at least it was the beginning of a journey rather than a dead end.
Actually, we already have the “why” answer. The Buddha nailed it nearly twenty-six hundred years ago. He said that our minds are conditioned by greed, hatred and delusion. During the years that I taught at Long Beach Meditation, I gave the ‘“three poisons” talk at least once a year. Eventually, I began to realize that very few of us can bear such a dreadful assertion: The mind is conditioned by greed, hatred and delusion? Was he talking about my mind? “Nah! I may not be perfect, but at least I am nice and sincere,” says my ego as it politely asks for a definition of delusion.
So we pretend not to understand how we got into such a mess. How could he, she, they do such a thing? “How could?” is another of the ego’s brilliant strategies. It asks a question with no intention of seeking the answer, just as when the children we once were first discovered that “why?” is a very smart delaying tactic. If the answer is greed, hatred and delusion, is it any wonder that we have no real interest in finding the answer? It’s too depressing! We ask “how could Global Warming have reached such a critical point? Really? Perhaps this is why the old zen masters said that the answer is always in the question.
In addition to the Buddha’s “Why” answer, Carl Jung nailed the “How” question. If the ego is unable to bear the reality that greed, hatred and delusion are part of its nature, it is forced to push all that ‘bad stuff” out of its awareness. Most of us started pushing the “bad” parts down when we were very young. Anger is bad and we must not be bad boys or girls. Being greedy or needy is bad. Envy is bad, and let’s not even mention lust which is very bad indeed! But since energy can neither be created or destroyed, and since the bad stuff is part of every energy system, at least according to the Buddha, where does it go when it is activated or triggered? According to Jung, if it cannot enter into our conscious awareness, because the ego simply is unable to tolerate it (remember that every ego is nice and sincere), the bad stuff can only be projected outward. Thus we see greed, hatred and delusion, not in ourselves, but in other people, other religions, other countries and in other political parties. Evil is always and only seen in the Other. If split off parts of ourselves have an upward urge toward the light of consciousness, but are blocked by an ego system that does not have the psychological strength to embrace reality, there is no mask, no social distancing, and no vaccination that can stop the unconscious from projecting the virus of greed, hatred and delusion into this world. Perhaps this is the most crucial insight Jung added to what the Buddha’s saw.
Is it possible that Rodney’s question could become a koan and get under our collective skin? As we said earlier, koans must be internalized and embodied, which is to say that its meaning must not remain in the intellect only, but must move into the very core of ones being. But where are the Zen masters to patiently whack our relentlessly thinking heads with a zen stick until something deep within can find its own authentic truth?
It may seem like a stretch, but I am quite certain that Jung wold have said that the zen master is intrinsic in each of us, at least in potential. The zen master is an urge to truth that keeps moving us back to our koan. It is an archetype. If we can hold onto the question without dismissing it, as I once did when I first heard Rodney’s haunting question, or not forget it, as do most of us, including me, our ancient zen master will keep knocking on the door of our hearts, asking with Rodney King, “Can we all get along?”
I eventually came to realize that I cannot answer his question until I first make it personal. My question has to be, “Can I get along?” I was pulling into a parking lot, literally only a few hours before writing this, and saw that a driver had not given me enough room to turn. My immediate reaction was, “how inconsiderate and stupid,” words that flow from my mind with the greatest of ease. Then a new thought came, “Can I get along?” It was almost shocking, and surely good. It was as if the old zen master had knocked on my door, and the koan had cornered me. It became my koan to grapple with.
Carl Jung had a favorite story he loved to tell at dinner parties about a rainmaker. He would ask, “Has everyone heard my story about the rainmaker? and they would all say, “No!” Of course they had probably heard him tell it many times, but they wanted to hear him tell it once again. Who wouldn’t want to hear Jung tell a story!
I close with his metaphor.
“There was a drought in a village in China, so the people sent for a rainmaker who lived far away. When he arrived, he found that the village was in a dreadful condition. The crops had wilted, cattle were dying, and everyone in the village was miserable. The villagers gathered around him, but soon he asked to be given a little hut where he could stay quite alone for a few days.
So he went Into the hut and disappeared for the entire day. The second day arrived and the intense heat and drought continued. “What is he doing in there?” the villagers must have wondered. Perhaps they began to be filled with doubt as the blazing sun finally began to set on the second day. But they stayed away from the rainmaker’s hut, giving him the space he had requested.
The third day it began to rain! One could feel the parched earth moan a sigh of relief as the rain poured down and the heat softened into a gentle breeze. The rainmaker came out of his hut, and the villagers rushed to greet him. “What did you do? How did you make it rain?” they asked with joy mixed with wonder.
“Ah. Nothing really,” he said. “Where I come from, we live in balance. Where there is balance there is just enough sun and just enough rain and no chaos. When I got here, I felt your chaos and despair and I needed to find a place where I could be quiet and meditate and find inner balance again. When I get myself in order, everything around me is set right and is in balance. So then it rained.””
