In his Autobiography, the yoga master, Paramahansa Yogananda, recounts a story from his childhood about a rare disagreement between his mother and father. The story is best told in his own words:
“Please give me ten rupees for a hapless woman who has just arrived at the house.” Mother’s smile had its own persuasion.
“Why ten rupees? One is enough.” Father added a justification: “When my father and grandparents died suddenly, I had my first experience of poverty. My only breakfast, before walking miles to my school, was a small banana. Later, at the university, I was in such need that I applied to a wealthy judge for aid of one rupee per month. He declined, remarking that even a rupee is important."
“How bitterly you recall the denial of that rupee!” Mother’s heart had an instant logic. “Do you want this woman also to remember painfully your refusal of ten rupees, which she needs urgently?”
Not surprisingly, Yogananda’s father gave in.
I have written about the mechanism of evil, which is to deny responsibility for the pain and failure that come to us in life, assume the identity of victim, and project the responsibility and blame onto an oppressor who becomes our embodiment of evil. Our sense of victimhood and lack of responsibility allows us to "justify" our own violence and evil, which is to say it is "just" under the circumstances. Yogananda's story demonstrates that mechanism, but it also demonstrates the mechanism of goodness.
The mechanism of goodness begins with an acceptance of whatever comes to us in life. This is easiest to do when we understand that the law of cause and effect extends to human actions, and that all of our experiences are the effects of past causes – whether in this life, or in some other. If one does not accept this, it is extremely difficult to avoid feeling that one is a victim of an unjust world. If one feels the world is unjust, one cannot really feel that God is just. And one cannot feel either secure or loved if one is fundamentally alienated from God.
A curious corollary of “victimhood”, is that it tends to focus the entire attention of the “victim" on him or herself – his or her suffering, the injustice that has been visited upon him or her, the unfairness of his or her situation. Completely self-focused, the “victim” is unaware of his or her effects on others, and also to their suffering.
This is well demonstrated in Yogananda’s story. Though his father had a vivid memory of how he felt at having his request for a rupee denied by the judge, he was more than willing to deny the request for ten rupees of the woman at the door. I call this mechanism the “law of equal suffering.” I went through it, so why shouldn't you? The “equal suffering” principle is widespread, as any army private, law firm associate or resident physician will attest. However it may be justified by its practitioners, the fact is, it is retribution and nothing else.
The mechanism of goodness is quite the reverse. Rather than focusing on oneself as the victim of past suffering, it focuses on the one who is suffering in the present. Rather than requiring equal suffering of one’s fellowman, it seeks to avoid it. “Given that I know what it feels like to suffer, I will do what I can so that others do not have to suffer.” This is empathy. And its application can truly change the world.
Empathy was perhaps most famously expressed by Jesus on the cross: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” In the extremity of dying, he thought not of himself, but of his murderers. Every Christian knows these words, but most feel it is beyond them to practice. “Christ was divine,” they would say. “But we are human.” But those who would say this are not truly Christians, for they are ignoring the words of Christ spoken at the Last Supper.
“This is my commandment,” he said, “That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
THE MECHANISM OF EVIL
On June 5, 2009, President Obama visited the site of the infamous Nazi death camp at Buchenwald. With him were German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and well-known Holocaust survivor, Elie Weisel. Following the visit, all three made public remarks.
In her remarks, Chancellor Merkel described the “horror and shock” she felt at the camp's atrocities. “We, the Germans,” she said, “are faced with the agonizing question how and why – how could this happen? How could Germany wreak such havoc in Europe and the world?”
However, Ms Merkel suggested no answer to the question. Rather, she seemed content with the idea that the act of remembrance, in itself, somehow guards against the repetition of evil.
“[L]et me emphasize, we Germans see it as part of our country's raison d'être to keep the everlasting memory alive of the break with civilization that was the Shoah. Only in this way will we be able to shape our future.”
Elie Weisel saw a similar value in remembering the Holocaust, but his outlook was darker. Referring to his father, who died at Buchenwald, he said, “I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I will speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will [but]…. What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure …. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.”
In his remarks, Obama also repeated the refrain of remembrance. He referred to a great uncle who had been among the American forces that liberated Buchenwald, and “returned from his service in a state of shock, saying little and isolating himself for months.”
Obama spoke of Eisenhower’s intuitive understanding that people would be reluctant to confront the horror of what had occurred. “[T]hat’s why he ordered American troops and Germans from the nearby town to tour the camp. He invited congressmen and journalists to bear witness and ordered photographs and films to be made. And he insisted on viewing every corner of these camps so that -- and I quote -- he could ‘be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever in the future there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.’”
Obama went on to speak of the good that occurred at Buchenwald, the risks prisoners took and the sacrifices they made for each other. Then he said something else.
What he said was not picked up in the press or replayed on the nightly news or even taken out of context and debated to death by the talking heads on cable. It was one unelaborated sentence. But when I heard it, I was thunderstruck. Because in a few short words, he identified the REAL value of remembering the Holocaust. He said: “[J]ust as we identify with the victims, it is also important for us, I think, to remember that the perpetrators of such evil were human as well, and that we have to guard against cruelty in ourselves."
In other words, Obama was suggesting that the lesson of the Holocaust is not the “human capacity for evil” in some abstract sense. Rather, it is for us to reflect upon our OWN capacity for evil. Until we have done that, until we have seen and understood the source of evil within ourselves, that evil will be repeated.
* * *
The 1920s was a time of prosperity in the United States, but it was not so in Germany. Germany had lost World War I and, under the Treaty of Versailles, had been forced to accept responsibility “for all loss and damage” suffered by the allies. As a result, it was required to pay reparations. Initially, these were set at 269 billion gold marks, or about $382 billion in current dollars, and it was demanded that this sum be paid in annual installments over about 60 years, in gold. Within a year, the mark declined from 60 to the dollar to 8000 to the dollar, as the government printed money in an attempt to pay the debt. In a period of 6 months, between June and December, 1923, the German cost of living increased 1600%.
Despite what it said in the Versailles Treaty, the German people never accepted responsibility for World War I. In fact, many weren’t even convinced they had lost it. Since they didn’t feel they were at fault for their situation, when the hyperinflation came, they needed someone to blame. This turned out to be the government, the bankers, and the speculators. Many in the latter two groups were Jews.
Historically, the Jews had been barred from owning land in Europe, so they tended to engage in commerce and hold their wealth in precious gems and gold. (Reflected in common Jewish names like Gold, Silver, Pearl, Diamond, Ruby and various offshoots). At the same time, Christians were barred by the Church from lending money at interest. This combination of factors lead to the rise of Jews in the banking sector. Fortunately – or perhaps ultimately, as it turned out, unfortunately – gold and jewels don’t lose value in a hyperinflationary environment, while government bonds do. As a result, the German hyperinflation in the 1920s made the Jews wealthier than ever relative to the general population. This situation fueled the rise of anti-Semitism, and contributed to the rise of its chief proponent, Adolph Hitler. By the time of the German defeat in 1945, six million Jews, or about 72% of the Jewish population, had been murdered.
Soviet forces were the first to liberate a major Nazi death camp, reaching Majdanek, Poland, in July 1944. In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also overran the Bellzec, Sobibor and Treblinka death camps.
In January, 1945, the Soviets liberated largest camp of all -- Auschwitz. The Nazis had previously forced the majority of the prisoners to march away from the advancing Soviet troops (the so-called “death marches”), and Soviet soldiers found only several thousand emaciated prisoners alive when they entered the camp. But there was abundant evidence of mass murder. The retreating Germans had destroyed most of the warehouses, but in the remaining ones the Soviets found hundreds of thousands of men’s suits, more than 800,000 women’s outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.
Nevertheless, the discovery of these horrors did not end anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.
Anti-Semitism and attacks against Jews occurred in Eastern Europe through the 1940s and 1950s. A pogrom organized by the secret police in Kielce, Poland in 1946, resulted in the death of 42 Jews and the injury of 40 others out of a population of 200. The perpetrators of the attack were Catholics, who had, themselves, been persecuted by the Nazis.
Soviet anti-Semitism is well documented, even though the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, and even though the Soviets suffered greater casualties than any other nation in the war – 23 million people, including over 11 million civilians.
Did these people learn anything at all?
The Zionist movement, seeking “to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law” got started in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. At the time, Palestine was ruled by the Ottomans, who were less than enthusiastic about a group of European Jews making trouble among the local Arabs.
During World War I, The British needed Jewish financial support in their fight against the Germans. This lead to the adoption of a declaration stating that the British Government “views with favor the establishment of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.” The Balfour Declaration, as it was called, was formally endorsed by the League of Nations after the end of the war, but nothing was done to implement it.
As Jews drifted into Palestine over the next several decades, they were met with a series of riots among local Arabs. The British, who had been given the mandate to rule Palestine by the League of Nations, saw their financial interests more closely allied with the Arabs, as oil was developed in the region. Finding the Balfour Declaration an inconvenience, the British ignored it. Jewish immigration to Palestine was sharply curtailed under the so-called 1939 White Paper, and in March, 1940, the British High Commissioner for Palestine issued an edict banning Jews from purchasing land in 95% of region.
After the end of the second World War, some suggested that British restrictions on Jewish migration to Palestine had contributed to the loss of life in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the British continued to thwart it, imprisoning attempted immigrants at prison camps on the Island of Cyprus.
Meanwhile, several groups of Jews who had made it to Palestine formed armed militias. Fed up with British intrigue and intransigence, they undertook a program of armed resistance. This took the form of kidnappings, acts of sabotage and bombings – the most infamous of which occurred in 1946, when the Irgun bombed British Headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. 92 people died, most of them civilians.
Many of the Jewish terrorists – it is hard to see why the term doe not apply – were victims of Nazi atrocities. A great majority of these men had relatives who died in the camps; some were survivors themselves.
What had these people learned?
Ultimately, it was not Jewish terrorism that lead to the creation of a Jewish homeland, but the negative publicity generated by the heavy-handed British attempts to halt Jewish migration. In the U.S., this publicity led to a Congressional delay in granting Britain desperately needed economic aid. Caught between the U.S. Congress and its Arab allies, which continued to oppose a Jewish homeland, Britain finally decided the best course was to wash its hands of the issue and refer it for resolution to the United Nations.
In November, 1947 a General Assembly resolution called for the evacuation of the British and the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish sectors. On May 14, 1948, the last British forces left Haifa, and the creation of an Israeli State was declared.
But the creation of an ethnically-defined state required that those who were not of that ethnicity be removed.
War between Palestinian Arabs and Jews broke out as soon as the General Assembly resolution was passed. Following declaration of the Israeli state, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq declared war. Saudi-Arabia and Sudan also sent forces to participate in the invasion. But at the same time, Jews were streaming into Palestine in increasing numbers from the battlefields of Europe. Ultimately, the tide turned and the Arab forces were defeated. In March 1949, a permanent cease fire went into effect and two months later, Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations.
By that time, over 700,000 Palestinians had moved out of Israeli-controlled territory according to United Nations statistics. How many left voluntarily and how many were forcibly evicted will never be known.
The Jews did not start the 1948 war with the Arabs, but they were not forgiving victors.
“Never Again” has become something of a rallying cry for many Jews since the Holocaust. Indeed, it is the official slogan of the militant Jewish Defense League. But what does it mean? Does it mean that the Jews will never again tolerate behavior among themselves that is reminiscent of the Nazis? Not at all. Rather – as explained on the JDL website – “Never Again means first and foremost that Jews will never again go quietly and submissively to our deaths. … JDL upholds … all necessary means – strength, force and even violence as a last resort.” So, in other words, the learned is not the necessity of treating other people with humanity, but the necessity of fighting against others people’s inhumanity.
This is not much of a lesson.
Since the declaration of the State of Israel, the Jews and the Arabs have fought four major wars and have lived in a constant cycle of attack, reprisal and belligerence.
This is not to blame the Jews. In human affairs, their behavior has been the rule, not the exception. What the Israelis have done is no different from what the Pasestinians have done. What Bin Laden has done is no different from what George Bush has done and none of it is different from what the Nazis have done.
Rather than taking responsibility for what life has brought to them, rather than trying to deal with life constructively, all of them took the easy course. They took the course that requires no introspection, no self-analysis, and no humility. They saw themselves as victims and others as oppressors. They saw themselves as right and others as wrong. Rather than understanding their own capacity for evil, they externalized that evil and projected it onto someone else.
This is the fundamental mechanism of evil. This is how evil reproduces itself.
In her remarks, Chancellor Merkel described the “horror and shock” she felt at the camp's atrocities. “We, the Germans,” she said, “are faced with the agonizing question how and why – how could this happen? How could Germany wreak such havoc in Europe and the world?”
However, Ms Merkel suggested no answer to the question. Rather, she seemed content with the idea that the act of remembrance, in itself, somehow guards against the repetition of evil.
“[L]et me emphasize, we Germans see it as part of our country's raison d'être to keep the everlasting memory alive of the break with civilization that was the Shoah. Only in this way will we be able to shape our future.”
Elie Weisel saw a similar value in remembering the Holocaust, but his outlook was darker. Referring to his father, who died at Buchenwald, he said, “I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I will speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will [but]…. What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure …. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.”
In his remarks, Obama also repeated the refrain of remembrance. He referred to a great uncle who had been among the American forces that liberated Buchenwald, and “returned from his service in a state of shock, saying little and isolating himself for months.”
Obama spoke of Eisenhower’s intuitive understanding that people would be reluctant to confront the horror of what had occurred. “[T]hat’s why he ordered American troops and Germans from the nearby town to tour the camp. He invited congressmen and journalists to bear witness and ordered photographs and films to be made. And he insisted on viewing every corner of these camps so that -- and I quote -- he could ‘be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever in the future there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.’”
Obama went on to speak of the good that occurred at Buchenwald, the risks prisoners took and the sacrifices they made for each other. Then he said something else.
What he said was not picked up in the press or replayed on the nightly news or even taken out of context and debated to death by the talking heads on cable. It was one unelaborated sentence. But when I heard it, I was thunderstruck. Because in a few short words, he identified the REAL value of remembering the Holocaust. He said: “[J]ust as we identify with the victims, it is also important for us, I think, to remember that the perpetrators of such evil were human as well, and that we have to guard against cruelty in ourselves."
In other words, Obama was suggesting that the lesson of the Holocaust is not the “human capacity for evil” in some abstract sense. Rather, it is for us to reflect upon our OWN capacity for evil. Until we have done that, until we have seen and understood the source of evil within ourselves, that evil will be repeated.
* * *
The 1920s was a time of prosperity in the United States, but it was not so in Germany. Germany had lost World War I and, under the Treaty of Versailles, had been forced to accept responsibility “for all loss and damage” suffered by the allies. As a result, it was required to pay reparations. Initially, these were set at 269 billion gold marks, or about $382 billion in current dollars, and it was demanded that this sum be paid in annual installments over about 60 years, in gold. Within a year, the mark declined from 60 to the dollar to 8000 to the dollar, as the government printed money in an attempt to pay the debt. In a period of 6 months, between June and December, 1923, the German cost of living increased 1600%.
Despite what it said in the Versailles Treaty, the German people never accepted responsibility for World War I. In fact, many weren’t even convinced they had lost it. Since they didn’t feel they were at fault for their situation, when the hyperinflation came, they needed someone to blame. This turned out to be the government, the bankers, and the speculators. Many in the latter two groups were Jews.
Historically, the Jews had been barred from owning land in Europe, so they tended to engage in commerce and hold their wealth in precious gems and gold. (Reflected in common Jewish names like Gold, Silver, Pearl, Diamond, Ruby and various offshoots). At the same time, Christians were barred by the Church from lending money at interest. This combination of factors lead to the rise of Jews in the banking sector. Fortunately – or perhaps ultimately, as it turned out, unfortunately – gold and jewels don’t lose value in a hyperinflationary environment, while government bonds do. As a result, the German hyperinflation in the 1920s made the Jews wealthier than ever relative to the general population. This situation fueled the rise of anti-Semitism, and contributed to the rise of its chief proponent, Adolph Hitler. By the time of the German defeat in 1945, six million Jews, or about 72% of the Jewish population, had been murdered.
Soviet forces were the first to liberate a major Nazi death camp, reaching Majdanek, Poland, in July 1944. In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also overran the Bellzec, Sobibor and Treblinka death camps.
In January, 1945, the Soviets liberated largest camp of all -- Auschwitz. The Nazis had previously forced the majority of the prisoners to march away from the advancing Soviet troops (the so-called “death marches”), and Soviet soldiers found only several thousand emaciated prisoners alive when they entered the camp. But there was abundant evidence of mass murder. The retreating Germans had destroyed most of the warehouses, but in the remaining ones the Soviets found hundreds of thousands of men’s suits, more than 800,000 women’s outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.
Nevertheless, the discovery of these horrors did not end anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.
Anti-Semitism and attacks against Jews occurred in Eastern Europe through the 1940s and 1950s. A pogrom organized by the secret police in Kielce, Poland in 1946, resulted in the death of 42 Jews and the injury of 40 others out of a population of 200. The perpetrators of the attack were Catholics, who had, themselves, been persecuted by the Nazis.
Soviet anti-Semitism is well documented, even though the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, and even though the Soviets suffered greater casualties than any other nation in the war – 23 million people, including over 11 million civilians.
Did these people learn anything at all?
The Zionist movement, seeking “to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law” got started in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. At the time, Palestine was ruled by the Ottomans, who were less than enthusiastic about a group of European Jews making trouble among the local Arabs.
During World War I, The British needed Jewish financial support in their fight against the Germans. This lead to the adoption of a declaration stating that the British Government “views with favor the establishment of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.” The Balfour Declaration, as it was called, was formally endorsed by the League of Nations after the end of the war, but nothing was done to implement it.
As Jews drifted into Palestine over the next several decades, they were met with a series of riots among local Arabs. The British, who had been given the mandate to rule Palestine by the League of Nations, saw their financial interests more closely allied with the Arabs, as oil was developed in the region. Finding the Balfour Declaration an inconvenience, the British ignored it. Jewish immigration to Palestine was sharply curtailed under the so-called 1939 White Paper, and in March, 1940, the British High Commissioner for Palestine issued an edict banning Jews from purchasing land in 95% of region.
After the end of the second World War, some suggested that British restrictions on Jewish migration to Palestine had contributed to the loss of life in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the British continued to thwart it, imprisoning attempted immigrants at prison camps on the Island of Cyprus.
Meanwhile, several groups of Jews who had made it to Palestine formed armed militias. Fed up with British intrigue and intransigence, they undertook a program of armed resistance. This took the form of kidnappings, acts of sabotage and bombings – the most infamous of which occurred in 1946, when the Irgun bombed British Headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. 92 people died, most of them civilians.
Many of the Jewish terrorists – it is hard to see why the term doe not apply – were victims of Nazi atrocities. A great majority of these men had relatives who died in the camps; some were survivors themselves.
What had these people learned?
Ultimately, it was not Jewish terrorism that lead to the creation of a Jewish homeland, but the negative publicity generated by the heavy-handed British attempts to halt Jewish migration. In the U.S., this publicity led to a Congressional delay in granting Britain desperately needed economic aid. Caught between the U.S. Congress and its Arab allies, which continued to oppose a Jewish homeland, Britain finally decided the best course was to wash its hands of the issue and refer it for resolution to the United Nations.
In November, 1947 a General Assembly resolution called for the evacuation of the British and the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish sectors. On May 14, 1948, the last British forces left Haifa, and the creation of an Israeli State was declared.
But the creation of an ethnically-defined state required that those who were not of that ethnicity be removed.
War between Palestinian Arabs and Jews broke out as soon as the General Assembly resolution was passed. Following declaration of the Israeli state, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq declared war. Saudi-Arabia and Sudan also sent forces to participate in the invasion. But at the same time, Jews were streaming into Palestine in increasing numbers from the battlefields of Europe. Ultimately, the tide turned and the Arab forces were defeated. In March 1949, a permanent cease fire went into effect and two months later, Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations.
By that time, over 700,000 Palestinians had moved out of Israeli-controlled territory according to United Nations statistics. How many left voluntarily and how many were forcibly evicted will never be known.
The Jews did not start the 1948 war with the Arabs, but they were not forgiving victors.
“Never Again” has become something of a rallying cry for many Jews since the Holocaust. Indeed, it is the official slogan of the militant Jewish Defense League. But what does it mean? Does it mean that the Jews will never again tolerate behavior among themselves that is reminiscent of the Nazis? Not at all. Rather – as explained on the JDL website – “Never Again means first and foremost that Jews will never again go quietly and submissively to our deaths. … JDL upholds … all necessary means – strength, force and even violence as a last resort.” So, in other words, the learned is not the necessity of treating other people with humanity, but the necessity of fighting against others people’s inhumanity.
This is not much of a lesson.
Since the declaration of the State of Israel, the Jews and the Arabs have fought four major wars and have lived in a constant cycle of attack, reprisal and belligerence.
This is not to blame the Jews. In human affairs, their behavior has been the rule, not the exception. What the Israelis have done is no different from what the Pasestinians have done. What Bin Laden has done is no different from what George Bush has done and none of it is different from what the Nazis have done.
Rather than taking responsibility for what life has brought to them, rather than trying to deal with life constructively, all of them took the easy course. They took the course that requires no introspection, no self-analysis, and no humility. They saw themselves as victims and others as oppressors. They saw themselves as right and others as wrong. Rather than understanding their own capacity for evil, they externalized that evil and projected it onto someone else.
This is the fundamental mechanism of evil. This is how evil reproduces itself.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
THE WISDOM OF BASEBALL
I was listening to the Dodgers post-game show on the radio last Sunday. Charlie Steiner and Rick Monday were talking about how hard it is for young pitchers to make it in the Major Leagues.
“It’s not about talent,” Monday said. “Because if they didn’t have talent they wouldn't have got to the Big Leagues to begin with.”
“Right,” Steiner agreed.
“At every stage on the way up, these players face the very best hitters. From Little League to Pony League, college ball and into the minors – Single A, Double A, Triple A. At each stage, EVERY guy they’re facing is like the VERY BEST guys they faced at the stage before. “
“And they keep moving up.”
“So when they get to the Big Leagues ….”
“The best of the best.”
“Sure. But my point is, in the end, whether you succeed isn’t really about that. Are there differences in ability? Of course. And there are other factors as well – injuries and so on, but I’m not talking about that.”
“No.”
“The point is, that no matter how good you are, you can’t strike everybody out. You have to rely on your teammates. And you’re going to have bad days. And you’re going to make mistakes. Batters are going get hits and score runs and on many days, YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE."
“Baseball is a game of failure.”
“It is. Sooner or later, it comes to everyone. And the point is, you have to learn to deal with that. What I'm saying is, in the end, that’s what separates the players who make it in the big leagues from the players who don’t. You’ve got to learn how to deal with failure. And coaches need to teach young players that.”
* * *
I was listening to this, and at first I was thinking it was just another baseball platitude. But then it suddenly jumped out at me how deep and true it was.
Because when you think about it, life is a game of failure, too.
Whether you operate in the creative realm, the business realm, in government, the military, the academy, failure is a lot more common than success. And the more ambitious the things you undertake, the more likely you are to lose. So, in a sense, your ability to deal with failure is a pretty good measure of the upward limit of your success.
If this is true in worldly endeavor, it is even truer on the spiritual path.
When we enter the spiritual life, whether we know it or not, we begin a journey upstream, against the current of our habits and tendencies, even against the natural direction of our energy and attention, which is accustomed to flow outward, while we seek to direct it inside.
In the first few years, the momentum of our enthusiasm operates to overcome our habits. But those habits are not gone. They are only superseded temporarily. As the enthusiasm inevitably recedes, they begin to reassert themselves. And when this happens, we begin to wonder if our spiritual efforts have accomplished anything at all. Old ways of thinking and acting – ways we thought we had changed – are still there, impossible to ignore. The energy we were trying to redirect inside is still going outside, the same as before. When we sit to meditate, we often seem to get little or no results. In short, it appears we are failures, that our years – perhaps decades – of self-discipline have been wasted. And we have to find a way to deal with that. Because if we don’t, our spiritual life will be over. We will have defined the upward limit of our spiritual success.
So how do we deal with failure?
I don’t know about baseball, but from a spiritual perspective, what helps me is an understanding of the ROLE that failure has on the spiritual path. I remember on one occasion, I was very depressed about some failure or other, and I was pouring out my heart to God about it when I found the following thought powerfully imprinted in my mind:
“And how shall I teach you humility? Through an unbroken string of successes?”
That thought changed my life. Because when I reflected on it, I realized that success --exhilarating though it is -- has never taught me anything. It has only been through failure that I have learned. So it is failure, and not success, that is our spiritual friend. Failure teaches us the things we need to change; failure shows us our weaknesses; failure shows us the limitations inherent in egoity and physical life.
Above all, failure teaches us to surrender our will to God, because in the end, the manifestation of God's will is the very definition of success.
“It’s not about talent,” Monday said. “Because if they didn’t have talent they wouldn't have got to the Big Leagues to begin with.”
“Right,” Steiner agreed.
“At every stage on the way up, these players face the very best hitters. From Little League to Pony League, college ball and into the minors – Single A, Double A, Triple A. At each stage, EVERY guy they’re facing is like the VERY BEST guys they faced at the stage before. “
“And they keep moving up.”
“So when they get to the Big Leagues ….”
“The best of the best.”
“Sure. But my point is, in the end, whether you succeed isn’t really about that. Are there differences in ability? Of course. And there are other factors as well – injuries and so on, but I’m not talking about that.”
“No.”
“The point is, that no matter how good you are, you can’t strike everybody out. You have to rely on your teammates. And you’re going to have bad days. And you’re going to make mistakes. Batters are going get hits and score runs and on many days, YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE."
“Baseball is a game of failure.”
“It is. Sooner or later, it comes to everyone. And the point is, you have to learn to deal with that. What I'm saying is, in the end, that’s what separates the players who make it in the big leagues from the players who don’t. You’ve got to learn how to deal with failure. And coaches need to teach young players that.”
* * *
I was listening to this, and at first I was thinking it was just another baseball platitude. But then it suddenly jumped out at me how deep and true it was.
Because when you think about it, life is a game of failure, too.
Whether you operate in the creative realm, the business realm, in government, the military, the academy, failure is a lot more common than success. And the more ambitious the things you undertake, the more likely you are to lose. So, in a sense, your ability to deal with failure is a pretty good measure of the upward limit of your success.
If this is true in worldly endeavor, it is even truer on the spiritual path.
When we enter the spiritual life, whether we know it or not, we begin a journey upstream, against the current of our habits and tendencies, even against the natural direction of our energy and attention, which is accustomed to flow outward, while we seek to direct it inside.
In the first few years, the momentum of our enthusiasm operates to overcome our habits. But those habits are not gone. They are only superseded temporarily. As the enthusiasm inevitably recedes, they begin to reassert themselves. And when this happens, we begin to wonder if our spiritual efforts have accomplished anything at all. Old ways of thinking and acting – ways we thought we had changed – are still there, impossible to ignore. The energy we were trying to redirect inside is still going outside, the same as before. When we sit to meditate, we often seem to get little or no results. In short, it appears we are failures, that our years – perhaps decades – of self-discipline have been wasted. And we have to find a way to deal with that. Because if we don’t, our spiritual life will be over. We will have defined the upward limit of our spiritual success.
So how do we deal with failure?
I don’t know about baseball, but from a spiritual perspective, what helps me is an understanding of the ROLE that failure has on the spiritual path. I remember on one occasion, I was very depressed about some failure or other, and I was pouring out my heart to God about it when I found the following thought powerfully imprinted in my mind:
“And how shall I teach you humility? Through an unbroken string of successes?”
That thought changed my life. Because when I reflected on it, I realized that success --exhilarating though it is -- has never taught me anything. It has only been through failure that I have learned. So it is failure, and not success, that is our spiritual friend. Failure teaches us the things we need to change; failure shows us our weaknesses; failure shows us the limitations inherent in egoity and physical life.
Above all, failure teaches us to surrender our will to God, because in the end, the manifestation of God's will is the very definition of success.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
TOXIC ASSETS
In 1960, a psychologist by the name of Walter Mischel tested a group of four-year olds at Stanford University. The kids were each given a marshmallow. They were told they could eat the marshmallow right away if they wanted, or they could wait 20 minutes. If they ate it right away, that would be the end of it, but if they waited, they would get another marshmallow. As you’d expect, some of the kids ate the marshmallow right away, and some of the kids waited. The interesting thing is, the researchers followed both groups through high school. It turned out that the kids who waited to eat the marshmallows tended to be better adjusted and more dependable than the kids who ate them right away (as determined by surveys of parents and teachers). They also scored an average of 210 points higher on their Scholastic Aptitude Tests.
A baby cries when it’s hungry, fidgets when it’s uncomfortable, and urinates when pressure builds in the bladder. As it matures, it learns to control these responses. If it didn't, it would have a hard time functioning in the world. The ability to endure discomfort and delay gratification is essential for all productive endeavor – from baking a cake to buying a home to writing a book. It is a measure of our ability to exercise free will, plan for the future, act like adults. Or not.
Most who are reading this post no doubt believe in linear evolution: man has evolved in steady progression from ape to his present exalted, rational state. This belief is false – and it is a measure of our present limitations that we’re unable to realize it. According to our present belief, electricity was “discovered” 400 years ago and atomic energy only within the last century. But this belief ignores the fact that Thales of Miletus described electric phenomena 600 year before Christ, and an atomic theory far more profound than our own can be found in the Vedas thousand of years before that. A Golden Age is described in the mythology of every ancient culture. If we find no artifacts, it is because the people of that Age had no need to create them. After all, books are for those who cannot remember; computers are for those who cannot compute; roads, bridges and airports are for those who need to drag the body hither and yon.
What is true of mentality is also true of emotion. Sorry to say, in the present age, we are not emotionally mature. In fact, we are just now entering what I would call an Age of Adolescence. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “teen-ager” didn’t even exist until 1941, and teenage culture didn’t really arrive until well after the end of the Second World War. In adolescence, we blithely disregard the wisdom of the ages, because we are convinced we can do things better on our own. We indulge ourselves because we can. And when the consequences of our indulgence come, we find a way to blame someone else.
Sound familiar?
Actually, as I said, the Age of Adolescence is still arriving. Some have entered it and some have not. Those who have not are still passing through an Age of Childhood. In childhood, we delay gratification not because we genuinely appreciate the benefits of self-control, but because an authority figure told us to. Unfortunately, whether the authority figure is a church, a parent, or someone else whose values we have internalized, those values are not truly our own. So we’re not really sure they’ll work for us. We’re not really sure there’s a gain in the pain; that delaying gratification will pay off. So when we see other people indulging themselves and seeming to “get away with it”, we become outraged. We want to run to Mommy and tell her, so they can be punished. We want them to suffer as we are suffering in proscriptive self-denial.
This is the source of the famous “culture wars”.
For the few who have escaped adolescence into adulthood (however tentative and precarious), the culture wars do not exist. From a personal perspective, they are content to let the adolescents do what they will because the adults are secure in their own values. Unfortunately for the adults, however, when a vast majority of the planetary inhabitants are adolescents, the world will suffer the consequences of adolescent actions, and the adults along with it.
The world functions according to laws, and that includes the laws of economics. There is a price to be paid for instant gratification. And we are now embarked upon the process of paying that price (though most of us don't yet know it).
The law is, that if we want something, we have to exert the energy and will to acquire it. In a money economy, this means we have to pay for it. Since we are unwilling to live according to this law, we have invented the institution of credit. If we want something now but can’t pay for it, we find somebody who can, and we sell ourselves into indentured servitude to get what we want. In return for the extension of credit, we agree to pay the lender not only the amount advanced, but a consideration of forbearance, called interest, which ultimately increases the amount of work we must do to get what we want.
The level of a debt in a country can be viewed as a measure of its citizens’ collective inability to delay their gratification. By that measure, we Americans have the lowest level of self-control in the world.
In 2005, the personal savings rate in the United States fell below zero. Since then, it’s been bumping along below 1%. In the first quarter of 2008, Americans earned a little under $12 trillion and spent pretty nearly every penny.
Given that America is a democracy, it should come as no surprise that the American government, as representative of its people, also lacks the will to curb its spending. According to the numbers commonly reported in the press, in the last half-dozen years, the government has been spending more than it takes in to the tune of several hundreds of billions a year. Unfortunately, the numbers reported in the press don’t tell the whole story.
Though most people don’t know it, the U.S. Treasury is required by law to publish annual financial statements prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). These statements are prepared in exactly the same way publicly traded business corporations are required to prepare their statements by law. The numbers are hard to find, however, and never disclosed in press releases or other public reports.
The GAAP statements show that the federal government’s annual fiscal deficit is about TEN TIMES HIGHER than commonly reported – averaging $4.6 trillion (thousand billion) dollars each year for the six years through 2007. In fact, so out-of-control are governmental expenditures at this point, that were the government to raise taxes to 100% of all wages, salaries and corporate profits, it still wouldn’t be able to cover its expenditures on an accrual basis.
Yet somehow or other, all of this must -- and will -- be repaid.
The created universe may be conceived as a vast sphere comprised of an invisible etheric medium that radiates outward in all directions the magnetic waves of thought and action generated at each point within itself. As these waves of causation ripple from their points of origin, they necessarily encounter other waves, creating complex patterns of interference, changing their appearance and direction. Nevertheless, the sphere is a closed system. Therefore, each causative charge originating within it inevitably returns as effect to its point of origin.
In the created universe, there is no cause without effect and no effect without cause. The very notion of it is ridiculous because the cause contains the effect within it. Nevertheless, in the realm of men, we continuously think and act as though we can get away with something. We buy things on credit, then wonder why we feel stressed out. We drink and wonder why we feel hung over; we overeat and wonder why we have indigestion; we over indulge in sex and wonder why our nerves are on edge. We lie, cheat, steal, and injure our neighbors, then express outrage and amazement when the same sort of thing is done to us.
Since we don’t want to acknowledge the real cause of our problems, we take a pill and assign the whole bloody mess to subconsciousness. When the pill wears off or the side-effects kick in, we run to the doctor for a stronger pill, or perhaps we dive into another round of self-indulgence to ease the pain or temporarily forget. But as ingenious as we may be in our ignorance, we cannot fail to suffer the consequences of what we have done.
The older I get, the more I mistrust the intellect. It's not bad in itself, of course; it can be used for good or ill, like a knife. It can cut a prisoner’s bonds or it can cut his throat. In itself, the intellect has no judgment. It can be used to solve problems or sell condoms, to build bridges or prisons, to develop cures for disease or weapons that wipe out the human race. The intellect can do all of these with equal efficiency, duly noting the benefits and costs (and, in the economic realm, duly including them in Gross Domestic Product). The intellect is like a knife, and in this age, we have honed that knife to a sharp edge. Unfortunately, we have yet to develop the vision and self control to use it properly. Therefore, we will suffer.
There is a law of reciprocity embedded in the geometry of the universe. It cannot be avoided. It cannot be gamed. It cannot be spun. It cannot be danced around. Until we acknowledge the inevitability of that law, until we use our intellect in accordance with that law, our intellects are not just useless.
They’re toxic assets.
A baby cries when it’s hungry, fidgets when it’s uncomfortable, and urinates when pressure builds in the bladder. As it matures, it learns to control these responses. If it didn't, it would have a hard time functioning in the world. The ability to endure discomfort and delay gratification is essential for all productive endeavor – from baking a cake to buying a home to writing a book. It is a measure of our ability to exercise free will, plan for the future, act like adults. Or not.
Most who are reading this post no doubt believe in linear evolution: man has evolved in steady progression from ape to his present exalted, rational state. This belief is false – and it is a measure of our present limitations that we’re unable to realize it. According to our present belief, electricity was “discovered” 400 years ago and atomic energy only within the last century. But this belief ignores the fact that Thales of Miletus described electric phenomena 600 year before Christ, and an atomic theory far more profound than our own can be found in the Vedas thousand of years before that. A Golden Age is described in the mythology of every ancient culture. If we find no artifacts, it is because the people of that Age had no need to create them. After all, books are for those who cannot remember; computers are for those who cannot compute; roads, bridges and airports are for those who need to drag the body hither and yon.
What is true of mentality is also true of emotion. Sorry to say, in the present age, we are not emotionally mature. In fact, we are just now entering what I would call an Age of Adolescence. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “teen-ager” didn’t even exist until 1941, and teenage culture didn’t really arrive until well after the end of the Second World War. In adolescence, we blithely disregard the wisdom of the ages, because we are convinced we can do things better on our own. We indulge ourselves because we can. And when the consequences of our indulgence come, we find a way to blame someone else.
Sound familiar?
Actually, as I said, the Age of Adolescence is still arriving. Some have entered it and some have not. Those who have not are still passing through an Age of Childhood. In childhood, we delay gratification not because we genuinely appreciate the benefits of self-control, but because an authority figure told us to. Unfortunately, whether the authority figure is a church, a parent, or someone else whose values we have internalized, those values are not truly our own. So we’re not really sure they’ll work for us. We’re not really sure there’s a gain in the pain; that delaying gratification will pay off. So when we see other people indulging themselves and seeming to “get away with it”, we become outraged. We want to run to Mommy and tell her, so they can be punished. We want them to suffer as we are suffering in proscriptive self-denial.
This is the source of the famous “culture wars”.
For the few who have escaped adolescence into adulthood (however tentative and precarious), the culture wars do not exist. From a personal perspective, they are content to let the adolescents do what they will because the adults are secure in their own values. Unfortunately for the adults, however, when a vast majority of the planetary inhabitants are adolescents, the world will suffer the consequences of adolescent actions, and the adults along with it.
The world functions according to laws, and that includes the laws of economics. There is a price to be paid for instant gratification. And we are now embarked upon the process of paying that price (though most of us don't yet know it).
The law is, that if we want something, we have to exert the energy and will to acquire it. In a money economy, this means we have to pay for it. Since we are unwilling to live according to this law, we have invented the institution of credit. If we want something now but can’t pay for it, we find somebody who can, and we sell ourselves into indentured servitude to get what we want. In return for the extension of credit, we agree to pay the lender not only the amount advanced, but a consideration of forbearance, called interest, which ultimately increases the amount of work we must do to get what we want.
The level of a debt in a country can be viewed as a measure of its citizens’ collective inability to delay their gratification. By that measure, we Americans have the lowest level of self-control in the world.
In 2005, the personal savings rate in the United States fell below zero. Since then, it’s been bumping along below 1%. In the first quarter of 2008, Americans earned a little under $12 trillion and spent pretty nearly every penny.
Given that America is a democracy, it should come as no surprise that the American government, as representative of its people, also lacks the will to curb its spending. According to the numbers commonly reported in the press, in the last half-dozen years, the government has been spending more than it takes in to the tune of several hundreds of billions a year. Unfortunately, the numbers reported in the press don’t tell the whole story.
Though most people don’t know it, the U.S. Treasury is required by law to publish annual financial statements prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). These statements are prepared in exactly the same way publicly traded business corporations are required to prepare their statements by law. The numbers are hard to find, however, and never disclosed in press releases or other public reports.
The GAAP statements show that the federal government’s annual fiscal deficit is about TEN TIMES HIGHER than commonly reported – averaging $4.6 trillion (thousand billion) dollars each year for the six years through 2007. In fact, so out-of-control are governmental expenditures at this point, that were the government to raise taxes to 100% of all wages, salaries and corporate profits, it still wouldn’t be able to cover its expenditures on an accrual basis.
Yet somehow or other, all of this must -- and will -- be repaid.
The created universe may be conceived as a vast sphere comprised of an invisible etheric medium that radiates outward in all directions the magnetic waves of thought and action generated at each point within itself. As these waves of causation ripple from their points of origin, they necessarily encounter other waves, creating complex patterns of interference, changing their appearance and direction. Nevertheless, the sphere is a closed system. Therefore, each causative charge originating within it inevitably returns as effect to its point of origin.
In the created universe, there is no cause without effect and no effect without cause. The very notion of it is ridiculous because the cause contains the effect within it. Nevertheless, in the realm of men, we continuously think and act as though we can get away with something. We buy things on credit, then wonder why we feel stressed out. We drink and wonder why we feel hung over; we overeat and wonder why we have indigestion; we over indulge in sex and wonder why our nerves are on edge. We lie, cheat, steal, and injure our neighbors, then express outrage and amazement when the same sort of thing is done to us.
Since we don’t want to acknowledge the real cause of our problems, we take a pill and assign the whole bloody mess to subconsciousness. When the pill wears off or the side-effects kick in, we run to the doctor for a stronger pill, or perhaps we dive into another round of self-indulgence to ease the pain or temporarily forget. But as ingenious as we may be in our ignorance, we cannot fail to suffer the consequences of what we have done.
The older I get, the more I mistrust the intellect. It's not bad in itself, of course; it can be used for good or ill, like a knife. It can cut a prisoner’s bonds or it can cut his throat. In itself, the intellect has no judgment. It can be used to solve problems or sell condoms, to build bridges or prisons, to develop cures for disease or weapons that wipe out the human race. The intellect can do all of these with equal efficiency, duly noting the benefits and costs (and, in the economic realm, duly including them in Gross Domestic Product). The intellect is like a knife, and in this age, we have honed that knife to a sharp edge. Unfortunately, we have yet to develop the vision and self control to use it properly. Therefore, we will suffer.
There is a law of reciprocity embedded in the geometry of the universe. It cannot be avoided. It cannot be gamed. It cannot be spun. It cannot be danced around. Until we acknowledge the inevitability of that law, until we use our intellect in accordance with that law, our intellects are not just useless.
They’re toxic assets.
Monday, April 13, 2009
A JOURNEY TO SAANEN
In the summer of 1971, I went to see Jiddu Krishnamurti at Saanen.
 |
| Saanen Valley, Switzerland |
Through the lens of memory, I see a train pulling into a picture postcard Swiss valley, sloping to steep grassy hills, and tree clad mountains beyond. Walking from the station through a quaint village, the afternoon is radiant, the landscape painted in vivid greens, the sky a brilliant blue, dotted with puffy clouds of the purest white.
In the campground, strolling past rows of comfortable looking tents, I find a spot by the river. There I unroll my sleeping bag and tie my humble tarpaulin to a tree – more fitting than a tent, it seems to me, for a serious seeker after truth. And that is how I see myself in these halcyon days: a seeker, a wanderer, owning nothing he does not carry on his back; one who has paid the price, renounced the world in quest of something higher. There is more than a little pride in this, though it is utterly invisible to me, safely hidden behind the wall of my identity. If it is true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, then I am a dangerous man.
* * *
“Shaeffer ....” A voice floats into the cluttered room. I look up.It is March, 1971, I’m sitting in the Editors’ Room at Gannett House, Harvard Law School, reading the New York Times. There is a saying at the law school in those days: “The first year they scare you to death, the second year, they work you to death, the third year they bore you to death.” The saying has come from simpler times.
“Telephone.”
In the Spring of 1971:
- Alan Shepard is hitting golf balls on the moon.
- The Manson family is on trial in sunny California.
- The Weather Underground is bombing public buildings (most recently a men’s lavatory at the U.S. Capitol).
- Nixon is trying out dirty tricks for his reelection campaign.
- Second Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr. is on trial for the massacre of 500 civilians at My Lai Village.
I have made myself something of an expert on such things in March of 1971. My Lai is the focus of my senior thesis, dealing with chain of command responsibility for human rights violations. Not that I’ll have more than theoretical involvement with the issue myself. In the year prior, after years of successful angling for draft deferments, I crap out in the lottery. I get called in for my physical at the Boston Navy Yard where, to my shock, awe and amazement, I am found physically unfit to die for my country – leaving me free to practice law in safe and righteous indignation.
“Hank?”
“Yeah.”
“Tom Harper.” (not his real name)
"Harper?" Why on earth would Harper call me? I hardly know the guy. Yeah, he had my job at the Review a year earlier, but he's long gone ... clerking for a big time judge on the D.C. Circuit.
“Listen,” Parker goes on, “I heard you don’t have anything lined up for next year. Is that true?”
It’s common knowledge I’m not interviewing, on a sure and certain course for near term career destruction. I assume Harper knows this, so I don’t deny it.
“Here’s the thing,” he says. “The Judge finished his last interview this morning, and he’s less than underwhelmed with the material. I told him about you, and he said to get you down here.”
“You told him about me?” Again, a disconnect. Around here, I am the enfant terrible.
“Can you get on a plane this afternoon?”
“This afternoon?”
“If you're going to repeat everything I tell you, this going to take more time than I have. Yeah, this afternoon. Now or never. Look, I don’t know if anybody told you, but I’m moving over to the Court starting Fall Term and I’m already under water --”
"Court" meant the Supreme Court. “Oh, right, congratulations ....” my voice trailed off.
“Yeah, well the thing is, I can’t promise .... What I'm saying is, if get your ass down here, there’s a good chance, the job is yours.”
* * *
At the time, I wasn't interested in spiritual things at all . I was interested in psychotherapy, and particuarly the Gestalt Therapy of Fritz Perls:
My sentiments at the time, exactly.I do my thing and you do your thing.I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,And you are not in this world to live up to mine.You are you, and I am I,And if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.If not, it can’t be helped.
 |
| Jiddu Krishnamurti |
I had also been exposed to Rinzai Zen, with its iconoclastic meditation koans. (What is the sound of one hand clapping?) Krishnamurti was different.
A guy I knew from a therapy group gave me a book called, “Freedom from the Known”. It started out this way
"Man has always asked the question: what is it all about? Has life any meaning at all? He sees the enormous confusion of life, the brutalities, the revolt, the wars, the endless divisions of religion, ideology and nationality, and with a sense of deep abiding frustration he asks, what is one to do, what is this thing we call living, is there anything beyond it?"
- "We human beings are what we have been for millions of years – colossally greedy, envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious and despairing, with occasional flashes of joy and affection. ... There has been outward progress from the bullock cart to the jet plane but psychologically the individual has not changed at all, and the structure of society throughout the world has been created by individuals."
- "For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We are secondhand people. … The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosophers or saviors. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself and that is why you must know yourself."
At first, “know yourself” seemed a bit hackneyed. Inscribed at Delphi, that sort of thing. But Krishnamurti gave it a meaning. As I understood it, the idea was somewhat akin to what the Buddhists called “mindfulness,” – observing the thoughts and emotions in ordinary daily activities, and doing this without any sort of naming or judgment.
"Most of us walk through life inattentively, reacting unthinkingly according to the environment in which we have been brought up, and such reactions create only further bondage, further conditioning, but the moment you give your total attention to your conditioning you will see that you are free from the past completely, that it falls away from you naturally."
Freedom from conditioning – freedom from family, education, culture; freedom from authority, freedom from professors, from precedent, from the establishment; freedom from conflict, freedom from conformity, freedom from fear. Looking back, I am not so much struck by the word, “freedom” as the word, “from”. I was young, I suppose, and more concerned with what I was NOT than what I WAS. I didn’t know how I was going to live my life, but I did know what I was NOT going to do. I was NOT going to wind up like that Wall Street lawyer, looking back on my time at the Law Review as the best years of my life.
I began to form a vague idea in my mind that after graduation I could visit Krishnamurti in Saanen, but it was only when Harper called that day and I saw a fork in the road, that I realized I was actually going to do it.
* * *
- “You say that you are seeking? But who is seeking? You say you are seeking freedom from the self. But who is the seeker if not the self? Whatever you are doing to free yourself from the self is the self. How can I make you understand this simple thing?”
Silence.
“Then what … what is the way? How can we ….?”
“How can we do it? What is the ‘way’? What is the ‘method’? The hows, the ways, the methods, these things are the ideas, the divisions that separate you from life. And they will remain as long as you think that there can be answers given by others – by me, by Buddha, by Jiddu Krishnamurti. But these are not answers; if they were answers, they would destroy the questions, yet the questions remain. And why do they remain? They remain because you are the question. Because you are the seeker. And the seeker must have a quest. He must have questions or he will cease to exist. But the seeker wants to seek, wants to exist. The questions are nothing but your self. Self-realization – if there is such a thing – can only be the perception that there is, in fact, no self to be realized.”
- “Jiddu Krishnamurti says that by watching the process of thought, the thinking will come to an end, and in that process there is a freedom ….”
He laughs. “So thought divides itself? The thought that is 'you' watches the thought that 'you' are thinking? Really, are there two thoughts, or one thought? And what creates the apparent division between 'you' and your thought? Is not the division created by thought itself? The thought of mortality creates the thought of immortality. The thought of the known creates the thought of the unknown. The thought of time creates the timeless. The thought of thought creates the thoughtless.”
“Then what are we to do?”
“You are asking me what you are to do?” U.G. laughs again, this time as though this was the funniest thing he has ever heard. “Please! Anything I say will only add to your misery. Go home, please! Stop listening! You only add more misery to the misery you already have by listening to me.”
He shakes his head. “You see, my motive for talking is not what you think. I am not eager to help you understand. Not at all. I am only interested in making it crystal clear that there is nothing you can get from me. Only if you reject all the paths can you discover the path which is your own path. You are not ready to accept the fact that you have to give up – a complete and total surrender. You must arrive at a state of hopelessness in which there is no way out, nowhere to go .... You must realize that any movement in any direction, on any dimension, at any level, only takes you away from yourself...”
He points to a tree, where the leaves are rustling in the breeze, catching the light of the late afternoon sun. “All you want, any of you here, is to tremble like the leaf on that tree. Who can give that to you? Can I give it to you? Can anyone?”
I am gazing at the leaves on that tree.
Then, for a moment, I look at U.G.
And I am gone ....
* * *
Thank God, no more.
U.G. was right. Seeking, striving, the guru, the journey, the path, even the truth -- are unreal. Just as the mind itself, is unreal. Just as time and space -- and the particles of individual existence -- are unreal. But once individual existence is accepted, they're all, also equally real.
U.G. went the way of wisdom. And wisdom must deny the reality of creation from the start. But I had not the fortitude for that. When the rains came, I needed the sun.
Yet luckily for me, there is another way: a way that proceeds through creation, down a path created along with the world itself, and as real, and unreal, as the world is. This is the path of seeking and striving, the guru, the journey, and yes, the truth. This is the path that expands the heart before dissolving it. Through family and community, through nationality and humanity, through the husband and the wife and the parents and the children and the dog, finally, through the guru. This is the path that reaches detachment not through a blinding flash of intuition, but through daily tests and trials and disillusionments.
This is the Journey to Saanen; indeed, the journey to anywhere. As real and unreal, as you are, and --
I am.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY
All created beings face a fundamentally untenable situation. They arrive, more or less helpless, in a hostile world, teeming with creatures – plants, animals, bacterial and viral microorganisms – struggling to survive, at times symbiotically, but more often at each others’ expense. Somehow, through a series of harrowing and precarcious experiences, they gradually improve the skills they need to survive, until at last they arrive at maturity. Then, regardless of how skillful they have become at survival, they reach the predefined terminus of their existence, at which point they die (often after a debilitating final illness).
I would emphasize that this is the fate of ALL created beings, not just humans. But humans have the additional characteristic that they are able to perceive, ponder and fret about their existential situation. This ability allows them to anticipate and alter to some extent the natural course of events, thereby averting an occasional disaster, but it also adds a serious potential for anxiety and frustration. After all, if the human condition is fundamentally untenable, we cannot expect the human reaction to it to be altogether positive.
In fact, given the appearance of the human situation, it’s surprising that mankind as a whole has not embraced a philosophy of egotism, conflict, sensory indulgence, abject despair, or some combination of the foregoing. But while there have been periodic forays in these directions, the overwhelming philosophical response has been quite the reverse. Whether it is the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant, the Four Noble States of the Buddha, or “Love thy neighbor as thyself” as taught by Jesus Christ, the dominant morality of mankind has always been one of unselfishness. Against the apparent odds, mankind has embraced, almost without exception, a morality of love, compassion and self-sacrifice, even though a majority has rarely been able to turn this philosophy into action.
Of course, there is a reason for all this, as readers of this blog will already surmise. Neither mankind’s untenable situation nor the content of his morality is a result of chance, nor is either a product of the human mind. Rather, both are parts of the drama through which consciousness evolves from identification with the particular (i.e., each of the various particles of creation) to the universal (i.e., the universe, creation as a whole). Egotism, conflict, selfishness and despair all express the viewpoint of the particular which is born, grows, changes and dies. Unselfishness, love, compassion, and patience express the viewpoint of the universal, which is changeless and eternal. That these find themselves in conflict is no accident, as the struggle of consciousness to lift itself from the individual to the universal is the fundamental drama of creation.
Another of creation’s dramas is, of course, the cycles by which mental capacity is elevated and debased as the planets revolve around their stars, stars revolve around each other, and their galaxies revolve around the grand center of the universe (known in Sanskrit as vishnunabhi – the energetic source of the created worlds). In ascending ages (like the present one) as our earth approaches the grand center, the mental power of man gradually increases. He discovers new materials, new sources of energy, new technologies. Of course, none of these is really new. The materials and energies and ideas have been there all along. The only thing that has changed is man’s ability to cognize and utilize them.
As the mental capacity increases, the power to effect change increases along with it – and this can be good or bad. You can make a heart valve or a Big Gulp out of plastic. An internal combustion engine can run a battle tank or an irrigation pump. You can use atomic energy to light a city or to blow it up. It is only the evolution of morality that can keep the abuse of mental capacity in check. If morality does not keep pace with mental power, what results is rampant selfishness, sexual indulgence, drug abuse, disintegration of the family, political and social conflict, war, environmental degradation, increasing disparity of wealth, decreasing quality of life. In other words … the world we see today.
But once again, this is the drama. Man has free choice. He can control himself or not; he can compete, he can cheat, he can fight, or he can cooperate for the common good.
And on the brighter side, everything in the universe is ultimately self-regulating. If man does not choose to control himself, he will kill himself – or at least, kill a sufficient number of his species that its effects on the system will be reduced to manageable proportions. It’s important to note that it is not the universal intelligence that will destroy mankind. It is mankind that will do it. The universal intelligence is infinitely patient, kind, compassionate and loving. These are the qualities that uphold the universe. But it is the universe they uphold. They do not uphold any species that chooses to ignore them.
I would emphasize that this is the fate of ALL created beings, not just humans. But humans have the additional characteristic that they are able to perceive, ponder and fret about their existential situation. This ability allows them to anticipate and alter to some extent the natural course of events, thereby averting an occasional disaster, but it also adds a serious potential for anxiety and frustration. After all, if the human condition is fundamentally untenable, we cannot expect the human reaction to it to be altogether positive.
In fact, given the appearance of the human situation, it’s surprising that mankind as a whole has not embraced a philosophy of egotism, conflict, sensory indulgence, abject despair, or some combination of the foregoing. But while there have been periodic forays in these directions, the overwhelming philosophical response has been quite the reverse. Whether it is the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant, the Four Noble States of the Buddha, or “Love thy neighbor as thyself” as taught by Jesus Christ, the dominant morality of mankind has always been one of unselfishness. Against the apparent odds, mankind has embraced, almost without exception, a morality of love, compassion and self-sacrifice, even though a majority has rarely been able to turn this philosophy into action.
Of course, there is a reason for all this, as readers of this blog will already surmise. Neither mankind’s untenable situation nor the content of his morality is a result of chance, nor is either a product of the human mind. Rather, both are parts of the drama through which consciousness evolves from identification with the particular (i.e., each of the various particles of creation) to the universal (i.e., the universe, creation as a whole). Egotism, conflict, selfishness and despair all express the viewpoint of the particular which is born, grows, changes and dies. Unselfishness, love, compassion, and patience express the viewpoint of the universal, which is changeless and eternal. That these find themselves in conflict is no accident, as the struggle of consciousness to lift itself from the individual to the universal is the fundamental drama of creation.
Another of creation’s dramas is, of course, the cycles by which mental capacity is elevated and debased as the planets revolve around their stars, stars revolve around each other, and their galaxies revolve around the grand center of the universe (known in Sanskrit as vishnunabhi – the energetic source of the created worlds). In ascending ages (like the present one) as our earth approaches the grand center, the mental power of man gradually increases. He discovers new materials, new sources of energy, new technologies. Of course, none of these is really new. The materials and energies and ideas have been there all along. The only thing that has changed is man’s ability to cognize and utilize them.
As the mental capacity increases, the power to effect change increases along with it – and this can be good or bad. You can make a heart valve or a Big Gulp out of plastic. An internal combustion engine can run a battle tank or an irrigation pump. You can use atomic energy to light a city or to blow it up. It is only the evolution of morality that can keep the abuse of mental capacity in check. If morality does not keep pace with mental power, what results is rampant selfishness, sexual indulgence, drug abuse, disintegration of the family, political and social conflict, war, environmental degradation, increasing disparity of wealth, decreasing quality of life. In other words … the world we see today.
But once again, this is the drama. Man has free choice. He can control himself or not; he can compete, he can cheat, he can fight, or he can cooperate for the common good.
And on the brighter side, everything in the universe is ultimately self-regulating. If man does not choose to control himself, he will kill himself – or at least, kill a sufficient number of his species that its effects on the system will be reduced to manageable proportions. It’s important to note that it is not the universal intelligence that will destroy mankind. It is mankind that will do it. The universal intelligence is infinitely patient, kind, compassionate and loving. These are the qualities that uphold the universe. But it is the universe they uphold. They do not uphold any species that chooses to ignore them.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
THE REAL YOU
You were alone. You had been alone. You would be alone always.
Because there was no one else, nothing else. You were all that existed, all that would ever exist.
And you knew it.
There was no time. No change by which to measure it. Nothing to change, no past or future within which change could happen. Only the present.
And there was no space. No separation between and no things to be separated.
And there was no motion. Nothing to move, no dimensions, no acceleration, no velocity.
There was nothing but — you.
You alone. Formless. Complete. Eternal.
Beyond words or thoughts. Beyond concepts, beyond qualities, beyond everything except
Consciousness.
You were conscious. Aware of your existence and your consciousness.
Aware of your immeasurable, unassailable, immaculate, immortal existence. And in that awareness – that perfect clarity, purity, transparency and completeness – you were at peace, utterly content and secure . . . and alone.
It was indescribable, this state of yours. Perfection. It went on forever, and you knew it. Unlimited, unconditioned existence.
For you, no desire, no grasping, no striving. Nothing to attain, or avoid, nothing to want or need or fear. There was only satisfaction, a contentment, a causeless, wholesome, happiness.
You experienced an eternal fulfillment that within the contemplation of itself became a self-renewing, ever-expanding joy ….
And from that joy, something emerged – and eternally emerges – a desireless desire, a selfless urge to share your bounty, your beauty, your limitless, expanding joy. A desire to create a multiplicity of beings to enjoy what you enjoyed.
And so it was that Creation emerged – and emerges forever – from what Hindus call Parambrahma, Christians call Eternal Spirit, and Buddhists call, the Void. And so it is that this little life you think you are living emerges from the vastness, the causeless, featureless essence, that you will eventually discover.
That is the real you.
Because there was no one else, nothing else. You were all that existed, all that would ever exist.
And you knew it.
There was no time. No change by which to measure it. Nothing to change, no past or future within which change could happen. Only the present.
And there was no space. No separation between and no things to be separated.
And there was no motion. Nothing to move, no dimensions, no acceleration, no velocity.
There was nothing but — you.
You alone. Formless. Complete. Eternal.
Beyond words or thoughts. Beyond concepts, beyond qualities, beyond everything except
Consciousness.
You were conscious. Aware of your existence and your consciousness.
Aware of your immeasurable, unassailable, immaculate, immortal existence. And in that awareness – that perfect clarity, purity, transparency and completeness – you were at peace, utterly content and secure . . . and alone.
It was indescribable, this state of yours. Perfection. It went on forever, and you knew it. Unlimited, unconditioned existence.
For you, no desire, no grasping, no striving. Nothing to attain, or avoid, nothing to want or need or fear. There was only satisfaction, a contentment, a causeless, wholesome, happiness.
You experienced an eternal fulfillment that within the contemplation of itself became a self-renewing, ever-expanding joy ….
And from that joy, something emerged – and eternally emerges – a desireless desire, a selfless urge to share your bounty, your beauty, your limitless, expanding joy. A desire to create a multiplicity of beings to enjoy what you enjoyed.
And so it was that Creation emerged – and emerges forever – from what Hindus call Parambrahma, Christians call Eternal Spirit, and Buddhists call, the Void. And so it is that this little life you think you are living emerges from the vastness, the causeless, featureless essence, that you will eventually discover.
That is the real you.
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