This one’s for Uncle Alan. My favorite philosopher, the late, great Alan Watts, sometimes spoke about Jesus as “the boss’s son” and what an advantage he has over the rest of us mere mortals. He is also known for his ideas about how the universe grows people in the same way that an apple tree grows apples, and other related ideas. I thought of Neil deGrasse Tyson with the last line about “the stuff of the stars.” I think I learned about how we are made of stardust from him, but it might have been Richard Dawkins too…

The Zen Buddhist flavor of this little rhyme is also attributable to Alan Watts, from whom I also learned that although we can improve, we cannot improve ourselves, as that would be like trying to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which I am still an inactive member, great emphasis is placed on self-improvement. In fact, we’re taught that’s why we’re here on Earth in the first place – to be tested, to prove ourselves by improving ourselves. We’ve got to make ourselves clean and acceptable for God, or he won’t be able to let us move back in with him after we die, and we won’t be able to inherit the family business and become Gods ourselves. Church doctrine is infested with this kind of thinking, that human beings can and should improve themselves, and that God will hold accountable those who do not. This is all very well and good for those who are blessed with the genetic and environmental influences conducive to growth and “improvement,” but I can see now, thanks to Uncle Alan, that this is an illusion, this idea that we can change ourselves on purpose. If we could, wouldn’t more people improve themselves more easily and more often?

The Universe Tree
If we all should become like the boss’s son,
Well that would be no fun.
Even worse if he’s perfect, for how would that work –
We’d be finished before we’d begun.
It’s all right, he might say,
Just keep trying each day,
And when you fail please admit that you’re wrong.
Then feel really bad, and be sure to be sad,
And I’ll forgive as you’re failing along.
And maybe someday when you’re dead he will say,
“Come unto me, ye blessed,”
I’ve prepared you a place in a heavenly space
Where you will worship me and adore my face,
Now that you’ve passed my test.

But should we find out who we really are,
Well, that could get us far.
We could find and face facts to help us relax,
And shine on like those billions of stars.
We could know and accept how perceptions have kept
The truth hid in so many places,
And feed ourselves then with helpings of Zen,
That help us to see through all of our faces,
And bring ourselves back where we started again.
Then when we’re awake we’ll be able to see,
How there really is nothing we really must be,
Apart from what we are –
The self-conscious fruit of the universe tree,
That grows from the stuff of the stars.