Just a Portuguese farm boy from Los Angeles

I was born in the Azores Islands—a colony of Portugal 800 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. Some people claim the Azores are the peaks of the lost continent of Atlantis.

My father left the Azores for America before my mother and me. He got a job milking dairy cows in Southern California. When I was 2, he sent for us. Our first American home was a dairy farm in Los Angeles County, once known as "Dairy Valley," now the city of Cerritos. A huge shopping mall squats where our dairy farm was. All the open fields are solid tracts of houses, and a local community college.

Still, I remember the magic of the open fields, the smell of the cows and barns, the muddy roads in the winter, the smell of alfalfa ripening in the summer. Even more, I remember feeling connected to the universe, as I stared up at the planets and stars in the clear dark night sky. In this realm there seemed to be no problems. Until I went to school.

All my life I've felt like a minority within a minority. I grew up in a mixed community of Portuguese, Mexicans, and Dutch. The Portuguese were the fewest. First grade stunned me: my first encounter with English-speaking kids. The first word I learned in English was "stupid." They didn't understand why I didn't understand them. Eventually I learned English, and became a translator for my parents and the world around them.

When I was eight, my parents considered moving back to the Azores. I thought: Why should "I"—this particular self—be in America rather than the Azores? Why was I born "there" rather than "here"? Thus began my philosophical quest. That I would even think of asking such a question made me different from the other children. I tried to like baseball and football, but my appetite for reality became more intense, and refused to go away.

When I was much older, I realized that my parents had never really left the Azores. They talked about life on the Islands all the time—the physical beauty, the deep sense of community. Part of that community had rebuilt itself in Southern California. Those who were here kept sending for those back there. Yet they remained alienated from mainstream American culture.

I watched television for hours, wanting to be like the English-speaking people on the screen. Why couldn't my family be like them? I loved newscasts from New York City. In my high school public-speaking classes, my ideal was to deliver a speech like a New York City newscaster. Just like many American farm boys, I wanted to go to the big city. But I was already in the middle of a big city—Los Angeles. I just didn't realize it yet.

Philosophy in My Life

In my last year at the University of California at Irvine, I switched majors from biology to philosophy. Friends asked me, "What good is philosophy?" What they really meant was, "Can you make any money at it?"

I knew people with lots of money, but little meaning in their lives. They seemed to be lost in games and pastimes. They worked without questioning the purpose or value of their work. I was interested in meaning, not money, but the people around me didn't share my feeling. Most of them believed that only money was real.

In my search for meaning, I first turned to the study of logic, mathematics, and science. In my teenage years I encountered logical positivism. Logical positivism was an early 20th Century school of philosophy that claimed all the grand questions of traditional philosophy were meaningless. Questions like "What is the meaning of life?" or "Is there a God?" were meaningless, logical positivists asserted, because the answers cannot be verified. But questions like "Does the moon have an opposite side?" are meaningful because we can construct tests to prove or disprove any answer. We can build a rocket to the moon. But how can we verify the meaning of life, or the existence of God? The logical positivists saw no true/false test for these matters.

Of course, just because we can't prove or disprove God's existence doesn't mean He doesn't exist! Logical positivism lost its hold on me while I was a graduate student at San Francisco State University in 1970. I was moving toward 'meaningless' questions like: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the purpose of life? Why is there evil in the world? Then I discovered Buddhism and other ancient spiritual traditions that addressed such questions. I was beginning to find real philosophy.

Philosophy is not a word game. It is, as Plato explained, the "love of wisdom". Few students get to study real philosophy at college. Philosophizing is an extraordinary act. It requires re-thinking issues at the most fundamental level -- right down to questions of being. One winds up asking simple-sounding, childlike questions like "What is real?"

The world is adrift, without meaning. That is why so many become victims of political ideologies and extreme religious viewpoints that offer a sense of meaning at the expense of compassion, truth, and justice.

All the really amazing jobs I've held came from my grounding in philosophy. I became a computer programmer because my boss assumed that philosophy made one logical. I got promotions to higher levels of responsibility because I saw the "big picture" in the organizations I worked for. One day I found myself the acting CEO of several small technology companies in trouble. Why? Because my philosophical perspective gave me a high tolerance for ambiguity, which allowed me to go into unknown and almost unknowable situations again and again. So yes -- philosophy can help you make money. But meaning, understanding, and wisdom are the real payoffs.

Hippie Days

"That was a long time ago", Americ

Living the truth (Happy Fathers Day Americ 21’)

"Jesus was going to speak at the Bank of America World Headquarters."
--Black Velvet Dreambook

After years of working in a large organization, a conflict broke out between my inner self and life with my corporate career. I got good money as a database computer trainer in the corporate headquarters. I was unhappy with life in my "organization." I wanted my organization be an organism -- alive and interconnected. My daily experience, however, was more like the "night of the living dead."
On the bus to work I read a passage from Krishnamurti, "Live the truth." That phrase exploded in my mind. I must say "No!" to those aspects of life that are false or do not work. That same day I got up before my trainees and felt a pit growing in my stomach that gradually moved up to my mouth. After writing a sentence on the blackboard, I turned around and said, "I can no longer do this work. We are not real with each other in this company. We ignore each other. There is no love in this place. I quit." As I walked out, half the class looked stunned while the other half applauded.
Back at my desk, I felt a powerful stillness. I saw everything in a new light. The desk, the walls -- everything present was suddenly there. An emotional and spiritual fog had lifted. Gradually, people came by and wished me well. Some felt that I had contacted a deep need in themselves.
Socrates showed us that thinking the truth is not enough. Truth demands to be lived. He was tried and condemned to death by his community for his fearless inquiry into the truth. The decaying democratic society of his time would not hear the questions he had to ask. Partisanship won the day. His friends arranged to bribe the jailer -- Socrates could have walked out. But he argued that to do so at that moment would undermine the very principles for which he had lived.
Our living philosophy is in how we live life. The philosophy that we claim should pull us toward a new way of life. Too many words make talk cheap and eventually crowd out silent lived wisdom. Philosophy becomes hypocrisy when its labors are an avoidance of life's duties or a flaunting of mental ability. Wisdom comes from a humble acceptance of reality. The truth of our lives is stated in how we are rather than by what we say.
Truthful living begins with an enlightened view of life, immediately followed by enlightened action. For example, cultivation of the ability to see one's self in others. Skin, bones, temperament and social status do differ. Tolerance, patience, honesty, respect, and love allow us to recognize our "basic self" in everyone -- this leads to empathy and compassion. We become naturally concerned with fairness in our sexual, family, social, and cultural arrangements.
Just before leaving my corporate job, I would often sit on the 38th floor of my Market Street office building in San Francisco. I would look down from my sealed window. One day I realized that if that window could open, I would have been tempted to jump. I was having a crisis of meaning. My work paid the family bills, but did not tie into some greater sense of meaning other than economic security.
In my spare time, I attempted to create meaningful projects for myself and my friends. A serious conflict developed between the time and energy consumed by the company and my other more meaningful life. My best friend suggested the importance of "abandoning doing for being". This meant that to cultivate stillness and let action spring from the well of stillness rather than being driven from one blind activity to another.
In the months and years following my corporate resignation, I searched for my "basic self." I spent increasing amounts of time in the backyard with my friends contemplating being, truth, God, and the study of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time . I began to understand the power of stillness within myself.
One night I dreamed about a large audience gathered in the Auditorium at the World Headquarters of the Bank of America in San Francisco. The speaker was Jesus. He was dressed in pinstripe suit and was clean cut. The financial world was gathered to hear him talk.
The years have unfolded around that dream. I have imagined what Jesus might have said to that crowd. He spoke from the fullness of lived experience. Jesus put on a suit and tie to get a hearing. The message went beyond the appearances of clothes and social status. A finance of compassion would proceed from the spirituality of compassion. A strong ethic of sharing across all boundaries.
What does it mean to live the truth? If it is a mere matter of acquiring more knowledge, the place to find the most truthful living people would be behind the walls of universities. If it's being fearless, the ranks of the military infantry would be the best place to find the truthful. If a contemplative life is equated with living the truth, then monks would probably rank higher than the rest of us.
Corporations have shaped our world. Can we humanize ourselves to the point of humanizing our institutions -- rather than having ourselves institutionalized? Living the truth is almost impossible in this life. We are paid to lie to ourselves by "dressing for success" and pumping ourselves up with positive thinking sales lectures.
T. S. Elliot used the phrase "the timekept timekeepers." The exacting control of time can destroy a person's authentic sense of self-existence. There is a deep conflict between family time and working time. To advance in the corporate or institutional ladder, the price is our time, our life. Time is now controlled by institutional rather than organic life circumstances. Family life has become monetized. We pay baby-sitters and nursery schools for the job of fathering and mothering. We give our money over to junk food instead of cooking. "Time is money." The time of mothers and fathers is sold in the market place.
We manifest obsessive acquisitive behavior similar to mad gamblers mesmerized by slot machines. The more we attempt to acquire, the higher the costs of living. Consider what would happen if we dropped this acquisitive madness: The heart of humanity would become more concerned with quality, rather than quantity. Objects would be made and exchanged with a sense of the value of life all around. We would need fewer luxuries, since our contact with life itself would be more fulfilling. Saints and yogis need little, not because of self-denial, but because of a greater satisfaction level due to few trivial desires. Want less, and the economics of consumption would fail. GNP would drop. People would indeed produce less, but would feel more productive. Life would slow down. More attention would be paid to the direct production of food and shelter. People concerned with cornering markets with the intent of raising the prices would be considered antisocial rather than honored members of society. There would again be time for the great pleasures of conviviality, reading, music, and family growth.
The self is like a seed that grows in response to its environment. Maple seeds produce maple trees. Whether a tree is healthy or ill depends upon how the genetic material in that seed responds to its soil and climate. In the corporate world, I lost myself in a maze of daily entanglements. As I became still, I returned to the financial district after a seven year absence. Being in the world need not mean being lost in the world.
My resignation was needed so I could remove myself from the center of action -- out toward a quiet zone to recreate myself. One of my teachers suggested that in this life we are "either businessmen or employees." It may be possible, however, to find a way of life in terms of doing work as love and service.
Organizations can be organisms. They can and often do provide a sense of community. One of the keys is development of basic human trust rather than relying on the application of managerial control. This is true of families, institutions, and entire societies. Speaking the truth is easier when we trust each other. We are mirrors of one another. But when trust fails, we demand control. Our conversation becomes corrupted by a passion for mastery over each other through intellectual and physical display of power.
Trust grows from seeing our common basic needs for love, food, shelter, wisdom, enlightenment, joy, and freedom. We are often afraid to drop pretenses. Miracles occur when trust happens between people. The walls of our false personalities start to come down -- we begin to work together. Due to lack of trust, people often need drugs in social gatherings to help drop their personas. We have built psychological wall against psychological wall, showing to each other somewhat dull and gray faces. As the years pass, the laughter of childhood gets pushed down until it is gone.
There is something very impersonal about life -- at any moment our lives may be ended by forces completely beyond our control. But we can add a great deal of dignity to our fate by admitting and facing reality with a good heart and clear mind. We become stewards of the small acre of creation that is our very own individual life. As we respond, we are responsible and whole human beings. This is living the truth.
"Living the Truth". First published as an article in Footsteps. October 1992.

Looking For Moment Of Stillness

Talking to Myself

While shaving in the morning, I noticed I was rushing. Why was I rushing? I had no fixed appointment for the day. I realized that many years of early morning commuting trying to catch the subway to the city had, in fact, embedded the habit of rushing while shaving. Here was the rushing without reason to rush.
I started talking to myself silently, "Say you!" Looking more deeply at myself in the mirror. "Yes, you! You are rushing. Why are you doing that? You've no reason to rush. You're free now. No appointments or schedule today."

I relaxed, wondering about this. My self-voice continues, "See it's not so bad talking to yourself. You're not mad. Besides you can mention this in your philosopher-at-large blog." There I was, talking to my best friend (and sometimes worst enemy). Certainly, it was not madness - as long as I know what I'm doing.

Talking to one's self has practical value -- beats listening to the radio, which eliminates the possibility of tuning into channel KSELF! Of course, we are not always ready for so much self-knowledge -- that's a lifework.

Learning To Talk

Speaking From a New Place

Lonelier Than Ever

My childhood was spent on a dairy farm in Los Angeles County. Telephones were still luxuries. It was a big deal when we got a four-party line (yes! four households shared the same line). Phone bandwidth was expensive. Only the wealthy had private lines. On Sundays friends and neighbors would drop in on each other unannounced. In those days, existence had a more tangible personal feel to it. Phones became cheap; and the Internet made communication faster and even cheaper. Today we send messages everywhere on Earth at a moment’s notice. But, are we closer now than the neighbors who knocked at each other’s doors on Sunday for a visit? Are we getting more “free time” by flooding each other with more email and cell phone messages? I don’t think so. In fact, I suspect that we are now lonelier and more confused. We think we’re more connected – but spend more time skimming massive quantities of messages and images coming to our computers screens, cell phones, portable audio headsets, televisions, and radios everywhere. Less and less time, do we spend face-to-face with each other.

Atlantis revisited

It's been said that the Azores Islands are the tip of the lost continent of Atlantis – home to a civilization of the highest technology. The Atlantians, like the citizens of Babel were overpowered by their technology. By divine power or human ingenuity both were brought to total destruction.

The Azores are in the Atlantic ocean about 800 miles east of Europe, in the middle of nowhere, which makes them a stepping stone between North America and Europe. Columbus’ last stop before proceeding to the New World was the Azores Islands. His sailing ships where the high technology of the time.

I was born in the Azores Islands as World War II ended. I immigrated from the Azores to the U.S.A. with my parents at the age of two. As I grew up in America on a farm in Los Angeles County, I fell in love with science and technology. To me it was magic. Happily learning to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen, building a radio transmitter and receiver, looking into the deep sky with a telescope, and creating electricity by moving a magnet through a wound coil of copper wire. I wanted to be a wizard; my magic wand was a pen.

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(Image of Terceira Island, Azores. From Oceandots.com.)

A humble start

I began elementary school with no knowledge of English. I never played with any other children until the first day of class! The world had many adults and one child – me. My first English word was “stupid” – the name the kids called me on the playground. No one on the playground spoke Portuguese. I hid in cupboards and lost weight from nervous distress. Eventually, I was placed in the equivalent of a retarded group of students. I’d go to bed praying to God to make me smart. A few years later I became the class “nerd” or “brain”. Intelligence or the sense of belonging to a group can’t be taken for granted. I now see that true intelligence is not in doing “class assignments” well, but in manging our own self-transformation toward “being all that we can be” – that is, to full actualize.

Calling

To recall, to think
that all my life I've been
writing notes and journals.
I don't know if this is good
or bad - don't care.
It's what I do.
Everyone does something.
Everyone has a karma.
We are placed in a
context as we come into
this life. No choice
about it. No freedom it seems,
but, if conscious, if aware
freedom comes with training,
restraint; the ability to
wait and watch for
an opening to our
heart's desire comes.
Follow it. It's your calling.

Walk In Now

On the eve of my middle school
graduation I discovered the practice
of walking-in-now. It was afternoon.
I was feeling a little tired and
depressed. Graduation was soon happenning,
but I had apprehension about the
future - as is likely before going
through a ritual of transformation. Like
any young person, I took to watching
television for relief. On the tube was a
motivational speaker who made a
remarkable recommendation for
moving forward in life. It went like this:

"Imagine a line on the floor.
Stand on one side of the line.
Bring to mind some
aspect of a new life you
want to live out. Imagine that as
you cross that line, your are
actually walking in, stepping into,
your new life right now."

Ocean of Love

At age two
I lost my way

The next 30 years
a journey back to
the source of Light
the river of Life

The next 30 years
a journey back out
into the marketplace
the Ocean of Love

Party Line

When I was a kid living on a diary farm in Los Angeles, our telephone line was shared by four families. It was called a "party line".

The World Wide Web opened up social networking sites that expose us to each other's private worlds and fantasies. But, when I was a child we had the four line party line. I loved it! When my parents where in another room, I would quietly pick up the phone receiver. Suddenly, I'd hear a phone conversation between two people who where strangers. It was exciting! A glimpse into another personal world. Actually, I was too embarrassed to listen for more than a few seconds. Just to know that they were there - to know that I could hear them was enough. A bridge had been made between two private worlds. Today's technologies provide more and more tools to hear and see each other's private worlds. Even mainstream broadcast television offers "reality TV" - we can look in continuously the life of a family as they go about their days. Now, we've got lots of "party lines"!