Photo credit: Tyson Barrett (my 8-year-old son) in Baja California Sur

What's Behind A Book's Inscription

(or What It Means to Me to 'Point Toward the Moon')

After every book reading/talk the journalist/author takes out a favorite pen and begins signing books, usually on the title page somewhere beneath his/her name. Any author worth his ballpoint will also scribble a personal motto or inspirational sentence directly above the signature. For example, W.P. Kinsella wrote in my wife's paperback copy of Shoeless Joe, "Go the distance."

Being a rookie author and reader who'd never bothered to have a book signed, this motto thing had escaped my attention. So on the spring night that Father Joe and I launched The Gospel of Father Joe: Revolutions & Revelations in the Slums of Bangkok at the Royal Thai Embassy in Washington, D.C., I was thrown for a loop when I noticed Father Joe writing something* above each autograph he gave. At the very second I leaned in to see what the devil he was writing, a book was thrust in front of my nose.

"Could you please sign this for me?" a woman asked cheerfully.

I noticed a line had formed behind her. I felt instantly panicked. My face flushed. Quick, quick, what to write, whaaat to write. Then it hit me; I didn't need even the full three seconds that I'd spent staring at her in dumb silence. Nearly every book I've signed since has offered this same inscription:

Point toward the moon and others will point with you.

On really busy (read: good) nights when the line backs up and readers stir impatiently, I shorten it to keep the line moving. Point toward the moon! Unfortunately, those nights are the exception.

Handing the book back to the cheerful woman at the Thai Embassy, I smiled and explained, "You might not understand what the heck that inscription means. You'll have to read the book."

(Eventually I worked an explanation of it into my book talks because it seemed ungrateful to tell people who'd just bought the book that the inscription came with a price: You have to read the book. Of course I want the book read, but I don't want to twist arms.)

I'll summarize the meaning here. However, like I stress every time I discuss it, my understanding of Point Toward the moon might be different than yours. We might both be right ... or we both could be wrong. Knowledge/understanding and all the intangibles that feed wisdom are personal; everyone's journey and perception are his/her own. Our experiences are different. Hopefully, though, we still all merge eventually into streams of Divine energy. And one surefire way into that stream is to Point toward the moon. Every day. Every waking hour.

In the book, Father Joe spends a lot of time explaining this to me, so I'll begin with an excerpt from Chapter 9:

     From its inception in 1973, Father Joe's Mercy Centre had functioned like a new religious order, swimming in such a blend of Buddhism, Catholicism, and Islam that no one dared color it the sunny yellow of the Vatican flag. Buddhist, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, something else, anything else — it didn't much matter to the priest who burned joss sticks and kept shrines to the Buddha on the deck of his Mercy house.

     Sanskrit or Scripture; Buddhism's Pali Canon, Judaism's Torah, Islam's Koran, or Father Joe's tattered King James — its black leather worn by use and age — all point in the same direction.  And as he was telling me this, Father Joe began pointing there too. He raised his right arm like a rifle, squinted down the barrel of his forearm, and used his index finger as the front sight.

     "This is what you and I are supposed to be," he said, holding the pose. "We are to be a finger pointing toward the moon. We can't let ourselves get distracted looking at the elbow. Don't focus on the hand. Don't get hung up staring at dirt under your fingernails. Don't do anything except point toward the moon."

     So the moon is . . . what? I asked. Our universal expression of light and goodness?

     "Don't worry about that now. Just focus. Point toward the moon. Don't allow the other stuff to distract you. You have to concentrate on form, practice form, maintain form, keep your focus, keep your form. . . . Just point toward the moon."

     I was jotting notes, and when I looked up, his arm had dropped. He was staring at me.

     Oh. You mean me?

     "Point toward the moon."

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"Point toward the moon" is advice/counsel attributed to Siddhartha, the first Buddha. Ultimately, it means that we need to live minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day mindful of the most important lessons taught to humanity by its great prophets, leaders and/or savior. Dating at least back to Confucius, then Siddhartha, Jesus Christ, Rabbi Hillel (a great scholar of Judaism in Biblical times) and, finally, to Muhammad, one lesson trumped all others. In various words and lessons they all stressed this:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, i.e. Be kind and thoughtful and caring and selfless.

The law of karma is the lifeblood of Buddhism and Hinduism: What goes around comes around. Muhammad in his final pilgrimage to Mecca told followers: "Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you." In Buddhist scripture, Siddhartha says, "Consider others as yourself." The supreme philosopher of ancient China, Master Kung (Confucius), said, "What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others."

Rabbi Hillel, a religious leader during in the days of King Herod, was asked to sum up all the lessons of the Torah, i.e. the first five books of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, written by Moses and revered all three Abrahamic faiths. He replied, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man: this is the whole law; the rest is just commentary."

Point toward the moon.

It's really very simple. Pure energy and/or polluted energy flows constantly through our consciousness and our decisions (selfless or selfish, driven by Spirit or ego) determine which energy dictates our thinking, feeling, talking, i.e. our subsequent behavior. We are co-creators. Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Where do you think the Holy Spirit resides? In us. But we need to tap it; that's called free choice.

Selfless energy is Divine, i.e. holy. It's what produces the fruit of the spirit described by Apostle Paul in the Chrisitan Bible, Galatians 5:22, e.g. love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

The selfish energy is egocentric. It isolates and wants to protect and comfort only itself. It hoards needlessly and out of fear, e.g. the root of all evil is the love of money. At its core, Tibetan proverbs tell us the same thing as Galatians:

"All happiness comes from cherishing others. All suffering comes from cherishing yourself."

Just focus. Point toward the moon. Maintain good form. Don't allow the other stuff to distract you.

To understand this stuff I don't need to believe that a Christian apostle named Paul wrote most of the so-called "New Testament" or, even, that Paul wrote the Book of Galatians. I can live in a selfless manner (denying myself laziness, lust, gluttony, etc.) and know that the advice given in Galatians the Torah or the Pali Canon is valid and produces joy, peace, patience, etc. 

Who wrote Galatians 5:22-23 or who translated it or what religion owns first rights to "God" becomes irrelevant. Belief is obsolete because when I live the lesson (Point Toward the Moon) I can see/feel/touch the Divine energy. I am at peace. I have self-control. I feel a sense of joy and goodness. Suddenly things intangible are tangible.

Father Joe says in the book, "We have this tendency in us to goof off, and we have a tendency in us to do really dumb things — in some of us, that tendency gets really strong. But life is not about suffering. Jesus came along and said, I will give you a way of thinking and a way of acting and a set of ethics, and if you live this way, yes, shit is going to happen, but you will basically be happy. If you live this way, act this way, treat people this way, it will all be OK."

But I don't have to be dipped backward into a baptismal or walk lockstep with my religious tribe to tap the Divine. God is not something out there, Father Joe explains. The Divine is in our actions; in the kneeling eye-level comforting of a child, in the rescue of the poor, in our shared laughter and love and collective swells of knowledge.

"You can't say (Jesus) died only for fifty or sixty or seventy percent of the population," Father Joe told me. "You can't say He died for this one and not for that one. Like rain and sunshine, (Divine energy) is for everybody, not just some people."

For Catholic, Muslim, Protestant, Buddhist, Jew, . . . agnostic, atheist? 

"Jesus said that anyone who is doing good stuff is on our side. Anyone. He is our example. The way to the Father is through the Son? He's saying to follow His example, follow His ways. Do good stuff."

In effect, live selflessly.

"Yes," he replied. "Point toward the moon."

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* I never saw what Father Joe was inscribing in each book. By the time the lines faded we were discussing other matters. I forgot to go back and check.