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.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
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.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
AUTHENTICITY
When we have achieved the ability to see ourselves as we are – which is to say, when we have integrated our attachment to being this or that and our fear that we may never achieve it – we no longer need to seek our identity in the mirrors of others peoples' eyes. We KNOW what we are. And when we KNOW what we are, we also know that what other people THINK we are cannot possibly change it. At this point the perceptions of others are reduced to what they really are – the perceptions of others. They are not our SELVES, and they cannot in any way define us. At this point we become authentic. Authenticity leads to peace of mind.
I suspect people in public life have an especially difficult time with authenticity. After all, the very phrase “public life” means, “life in the public eye,” which is another way of saying, “life in the public perception.” People who seek a life in public perception tend not to be very introspective, and it is introspection that leads to authenticity.
This is not an introspective age and we Americans, in particular, aren’t very introspective. We live in the world of matter. We believe in science, the quantifiable, the “objective” – by which we mean, the external. We want our achievements and abilities graded: batting averages, football rankings, opinion polls, report cards, achievement tests, IQs, SAT scores.
Interestingly, this obsession with the external “objective” is the flip side of an internal myopia. The need to see ourselves mirrored in other people’s judgments of our abilities and achievements masks our inability to see the abilities and achievements themselves. Having abandoned our inner life, we have exiled ourselves to worrying about what OTHER people are thinking, rather than what WE are thinking. We spend our lives trying to manage OTHER peoples’ perceptions and expectations, rather than taking time to discover and enjoy the unique, idiosyncratic being WE are EXPRESSING. Make no mistake: inauthenticity is not a respecter of identities. Slavery to the opinions of others manifests equally in the aspiration to be a high school politician, a cheerleader, a bad-boy or a clown. If we are trying to manage other peoples' perceptions, we have not achieved authenticity.
One interesting thing about authenticity is that if we have it, we immediately recognize and appreciate it in others, and if we don’t have it, we don’t recognize or appreciate it at all. That’s because when we are authentic, we see other people as they are. When we are inauthentic, we are so busy trying to figure out what we SHOULD be thinking (because of what OTHER people might think of others and what other people might think of US if we think this or that about others) that we cannot possibly see anyone as they really are. What's possibly even worse, we can't trust what other people tell us, because we aren't sure that if we were in their place we would say something truthful ourselves.
It has become something of a national pass-time among Americans to disparage politicians. Yet the undeniable fact is, America is a democracy and every single politician in America was elected. So sorry as I am to say it, if we Americans want our politicians to be more authentic, we're just going to have to become more authentic ourselves.
I suspect people in public life have an especially difficult time with authenticity. After all, the very phrase “public life” means, “life in the public eye,” which is another way of saying, “life in the public perception.” People who seek a life in public perception tend not to be very introspective, and it is introspection that leads to authenticity.
This is not an introspective age and we Americans, in particular, aren’t very introspective. We live in the world of matter. We believe in science, the quantifiable, the “objective” – by which we mean, the external. We want our achievements and abilities graded: batting averages, football rankings, opinion polls, report cards, achievement tests, IQs, SAT scores.
Interestingly, this obsession with the external “objective” is the flip side of an internal myopia. The need to see ourselves mirrored in other people’s judgments of our abilities and achievements masks our inability to see the abilities and achievements themselves. Having abandoned our inner life, we have exiled ourselves to worrying about what OTHER people are thinking, rather than what WE are thinking. We spend our lives trying to manage OTHER peoples’ perceptions and expectations, rather than taking time to discover and enjoy the unique, idiosyncratic being WE are EXPRESSING. Make no mistake: inauthenticity is not a respecter of identities. Slavery to the opinions of others manifests equally in the aspiration to be a high school politician, a cheerleader, a bad-boy or a clown. If we are trying to manage other peoples' perceptions, we have not achieved authenticity.
One interesting thing about authenticity is that if we have it, we immediately recognize and appreciate it in others, and if we don’t have it, we don’t recognize or appreciate it at all. That’s because when we are authentic, we see other people as they are. When we are inauthentic, we are so busy trying to figure out what we SHOULD be thinking (because of what OTHER people might think of others and what other people might think of US if we think this or that about others) that we cannot possibly see anyone as they really are. What's possibly even worse, we can't trust what other people tell us, because we aren't sure that if we were in their place we would say something truthful ourselves.
It has become something of a national pass-time among Americans to disparage politicians. Yet the undeniable fact is, America is a democracy and every single politician in America was elected. So sorry as I am to say it, if we Americans want our politicians to be more authentic, we're just going to have to become more authentic ourselves.
Friday, October 17, 2008
THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AS METAPHOR
First, the economic truth. The mainstream formulation that lays responsibility for the current economic crisis on excessive debt, or leverage, is only half right, because that debt could not exist without excessive global savings and the misguided government activities that have facilitated and perpetuated it.
Here’s the formula:
— Concentrations of wealth and export driven government policies result in savings that cannot be productively invested
— Savings that cannot be productively invested are unproductively invested , resulting in asset bubbles
— Unproductive investments fail, asset bubbles burst
— Financial intermediaries whose capital is tied up in overpriced assets are threatened with collapse
— Governments intervene to shore up financial intermediaries and purchase overpriced assets
— Assets are reflated, preserving wealth concentrations and excessive savings
— Excessive savings result in new, uneconomic investments
— New asset bubbles inflates, and so on
As noted above, most commentators blame the current situation on excessive debt, and there is a grain of truth in this. If human beings – particularly in the United States – did not want to consume more than can afford, we would not be facing the current problem. Advertising driven consumerism is an inherent aspect of modern American culture. And the apparent inability or unwillingness of many Americans to delay gratification has created an ever-increasing demand for consumer credit. But consumer credit is only a small part of the problem.
It is common knowledge that the United States has become a debtor nation. As widely reported, on September 30, 2008 the federal budget deficit crossed the $10 trillion threshold. But this number doesn’t include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other unfunded obligations. If these unfunded obligations are included – as they are in the Government’s audited statements (which are well hidden, but nevertheless available on the Treasury’s website) the accumulated negative net worth of the federal government is now $59.1 trillion, or about $516,000 per household. Compared with this, the additional $112,000 per household for mortgages, car loans and credit card debt looks small! Nevertheless, all in, the average household debt of $628,000 is more than twelve times median household income ($50,233 as reported by the Census Bureau for 2007).
But this debt could not exist unless someone was willing to lend the money, for the undeniable fact is, every dollar of debt represents a dollar of savings. To the person who borrowed it, it's a debt, but to the person who lent it, it's an asset. And it is actually these assets, and their relentless pursuit of an economic return, that has created the situation in which we find ourselves.
According to the Federal Reserve’s most recent Survey of Consumer Finances, the richest one percent of families in the United States own 34.3% of the nation's net wealth (equivalent to accumulated savings). The top 10% of families own 71%. And the bottom 40% have virtually no savings at all (2/10s of 1% of total wealth to be exact). Concentrations of savings like this have not been seen since in the U.S. since just before the Great Depression.
But dislocation of savings is even more pronounced on an international level. In 2005, Ben Bernanke gave a speech in which he discussed the steep upward trajectory of the U.S. balance of payments deficit (from 1.5% of GDP in 2000 to 5 3/4 % in 2004). He asked the question, “Why is the United States, with the world's largest economy, borrowing heavily on international capital markets – rather than lending, as would seem more natural?” Although most commentators had ascribed the external borrowing to a low domestic savings rate and accompanying U.S. budget deficits, Bernanke didn’t buy it, pointing out that the U.S. current account deficit continued expanding during Clinton’s second term, when the U.S. budget was actually running an aggregate surplus of $300 billion. So if a low savings rate wasn’t the answer, what was? Bernanke’s answer was interesting:
"Although domestic developments have certainly played a role … over the past decade a combination of diverse forces has created a significant increase in the global supply of saving – a global saving glut – which helps to explain both the increase in the U.S. current account deficit and the relatively low level of long-term real interest rates in the world today. … [A]n important source of the global saving glut has been a remarkable reversal in the flows of credit to developing and emerging-market economies, a shift that has transformed those economies from borrowers on international capital markets to large net lenders."
In other words, rather than investing their savings at home, rich people in emerging-market countries were investing them in the United States. And in fact, their governments were facilitating the process by issuing debt and using the proceeds to buy U.S. Treasury securities and other assets “Effectively, governments have acted as financial intermediaries,” according to Bernanke, “channeling domestic saving away from local uses and into international capital markets.” From a governmental perspective, this was done, at least in part, to build up foreign exchange reserves to protect against possible capital outflows. But the fact is, it would not have been done to the extent it was if the power elites in those countries had not wanted to protect their savings.
In any given society at any given time, there are a limited number of investments that will yield an economic return. Exactly what those investments are will depend on the state of economic and technological development in that society at that time, as well as the distribution of wealth and income. When the demand for economic investments (determined by the level of saving) exceeds the supply, the prices of investments are bid up to a point where they no longer yield an economic return. When that happens, savings begin to flow into uneconomic investments.
While this sounds theoretical, if we take a look at what happened in the recent housing bubble, we can clearly see the process at work. As the bubble reached its zenith, the supply of savings flowing into collateralized mortgage obligations had become so great that economic returns could not be provided based on the current incomes of prospective borrowers at all. Rather, loans could be justified only on the assumption that the borrower’s income would increase in the future (so-called Alt A loans) or that the future savings of the borrower – measured in terms of increased asset values – would be depleted to make the payments. This was clearly an extreme situation.
In a free market economy, excess savings are automatically drained out of the system through asset deflation, as investments that do not provide an economic return decline in value. But we do not have a free market economy in the United States. Rather, what we have seen in recent decades is a pattern of government intervention on behalf of certain preferred groups – primarily well-to-do American and foreign citizens and foreign central banks – designed to prevent asset deflation, preserve excess savings and protect existing concentrations of wealth.
Whatever the problem has been – the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s, the Dot-Com Bubble of the 1990s, or the Housing Bubble of the early 2000s – the cause has always been the same: excess savings that drove down the cost of capital and encouraged uneconomic investment. And the “remedy” has always been the same as well: reflation of asset values through the injection of money borrowed by the public sector. Actually, this “remedy” has not only protected existing concentrations of wealth, it has tended to concentrate domestic wealth further, because, as deficits were increased, taxes were decreased on those with high marginal rates of saving (i.e., the rich) while the increase in public sector debt forced cuts in expenditures favoring those with high marginal rates of consumption (i.e., the poor), further reducing their savings.
As stated above, the quantity and character of investments that will yield an economic return at a given point in time depends to some extent on the state of economic and technological development in a society. But I would argue that it also depends on the distribution of wealth. People who have not yet met their basic needs spend all of their income to meet those needs, while people who have already met their basic needs don’t have to. And while savings are necessary to finance capital investment, consumption is necessary to provide investment opportunity as well. There is a story that Henry Ford decided to give his workers a half day off on Saturdays. Asked why he did it, Ford replied that if his workers had no time off, they would also have no use for his cars. In other words, he recognized that his employees were also his customers, and it was their consumption that provided him with an economic investment opportunity. This way of thinking is notably lacking today – in the United States, and in emerging-market economies.
As noted, concentration of wealth and excess savings is not just a problem in America. The so called “export driven” model in emerging-market economies – based on keeping domestic wages low in order to capture an ever-increasing share of foreign markets – has resulted in excess savings in the form of foreign exchange surpluses. Invested in dollar denominated obligations, these savings have served to keep U.S. interest rates artificially low, encouraging uneconomic investments, whether in technology, consumer industries, or housing. The savings of emerging-market nations should be used to build infrastructure and raise wages at home, thereby increasing domestic demand. They should not be squandered on nonproductive foreign assets. And if they are, the U.S. government should certainly not intervene to perpetuate the misallocation of assets at the expense of future generations.
Debt is often reviled, and legitimately so – it enables irresponsibility, promotes anxiety and culminates in guilt. But make no mistake, debt cannot exist without savings to fuel it. And when excessive concentration of wealth drains resources away from what is needed to finance basic expenditures, it creates dislocations.
As people acquire wealth, they also acquire power. If they do not embrace philanthropy, they seek out ways to justify inequality. They buy media outlets; they endow chairs at universities; they finance think-tanks that promote their way of seeing the world. If their efforts are successful, they can wholly or partially define the universe of discourse within a society. This is also what we have seen in America.
Tax cuts, deregulation and free market economics have been mantras in the Unites States since the 1980s. But tax cuts have not been accompanied by decreases in public sector spending. And when unwise economic decisions have resulted in market crashes, free market principles have been cast to the winds, with governments borrowing money helter-skelter to protect existing wealth concentrations against loss at the expense of the general public – nearly half of whom do not even have appreciable savings.
Here’s the formula:
— Concentrations of wealth and export driven government policies result in savings that cannot be productively invested
— Savings that cannot be productively invested are unproductively invested , resulting in asset bubbles
— Unproductive investments fail, asset bubbles burst
— Financial intermediaries whose capital is tied up in overpriced assets are threatened with collapse
— Governments intervene to shore up financial intermediaries and purchase overpriced assets
— Assets are reflated, preserving wealth concentrations and excessive savings
— Excessive savings result in new, uneconomic investments
— New asset bubbles inflates, and so on
As noted above, most commentators blame the current situation on excessive debt, and there is a grain of truth in this. If human beings – particularly in the United States – did not want to consume more than can afford, we would not be facing the current problem. Advertising driven consumerism is an inherent aspect of modern American culture. And the apparent inability or unwillingness of many Americans to delay gratification has created an ever-increasing demand for consumer credit. But consumer credit is only a small part of the problem.
It is common knowledge that the United States has become a debtor nation. As widely reported, on September 30, 2008 the federal budget deficit crossed the $10 trillion threshold. But this number doesn’t include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other unfunded obligations. If these unfunded obligations are included – as they are in the Government’s audited statements (which are well hidden, but nevertheless available on the Treasury’s website) the accumulated negative net worth of the federal government is now $59.1 trillion, or about $516,000 per household. Compared with this, the additional $112,000 per household for mortgages, car loans and credit card debt looks small! Nevertheless, all in, the average household debt of $628,000 is more than twelve times median household income ($50,233 as reported by the Census Bureau for 2007).
But this debt could not exist unless someone was willing to lend the money, for the undeniable fact is, every dollar of debt represents a dollar of savings. To the person who borrowed it, it's a debt, but to the person who lent it, it's an asset. And it is actually these assets, and their relentless pursuit of an economic return, that has created the situation in which we find ourselves.
According to the Federal Reserve’s most recent Survey of Consumer Finances, the richest one percent of families in the United States own 34.3% of the nation's net wealth (equivalent to accumulated savings). The top 10% of families own 71%. And the bottom 40% have virtually no savings at all (2/10s of 1% of total wealth to be exact). Concentrations of savings like this have not been seen since in the U.S. since just before the Great Depression.
But dislocation of savings is even more pronounced on an international level. In 2005, Ben Bernanke gave a speech in which he discussed the steep upward trajectory of the U.S. balance of payments deficit (from 1.5% of GDP in 2000 to 5 3/4 % in 2004). He asked the question, “Why is the United States, with the world's largest economy, borrowing heavily on international capital markets – rather than lending, as would seem more natural?” Although most commentators had ascribed the external borrowing to a low domestic savings rate and accompanying U.S. budget deficits, Bernanke didn’t buy it, pointing out that the U.S. current account deficit continued expanding during Clinton’s second term, when the U.S. budget was actually running an aggregate surplus of $300 billion. So if a low savings rate wasn’t the answer, what was? Bernanke’s answer was interesting:
"Although domestic developments have certainly played a role … over the past decade a combination of diverse forces has created a significant increase in the global supply of saving – a global saving glut – which helps to explain both the increase in the U.S. current account deficit and the relatively low level of long-term real interest rates in the world today. … [A]n important source of the global saving glut has been a remarkable reversal in the flows of credit to developing and emerging-market economies, a shift that has transformed those economies from borrowers on international capital markets to large net lenders."
In other words, rather than investing their savings at home, rich people in emerging-market countries were investing them in the United States. And in fact, their governments were facilitating the process by issuing debt and using the proceeds to buy U.S. Treasury securities and other assets “Effectively, governments have acted as financial intermediaries,” according to Bernanke, “channeling domestic saving away from local uses and into international capital markets.” From a governmental perspective, this was done, at least in part, to build up foreign exchange reserves to protect against possible capital outflows. But the fact is, it would not have been done to the extent it was if the power elites in those countries had not wanted to protect their savings.
In any given society at any given time, there are a limited number of investments that will yield an economic return. Exactly what those investments are will depend on the state of economic and technological development in that society at that time, as well as the distribution of wealth and income. When the demand for economic investments (determined by the level of saving) exceeds the supply, the prices of investments are bid up to a point where they no longer yield an economic return. When that happens, savings begin to flow into uneconomic investments.
While this sounds theoretical, if we take a look at what happened in the recent housing bubble, we can clearly see the process at work. As the bubble reached its zenith, the supply of savings flowing into collateralized mortgage obligations had become so great that economic returns could not be provided based on the current incomes of prospective borrowers at all. Rather, loans could be justified only on the assumption that the borrower’s income would increase in the future (so-called Alt A loans) or that the future savings of the borrower – measured in terms of increased asset values – would be depleted to make the payments. This was clearly an extreme situation.
In a free market economy, excess savings are automatically drained out of the system through asset deflation, as investments that do not provide an economic return decline in value. But we do not have a free market economy in the United States. Rather, what we have seen in recent decades is a pattern of government intervention on behalf of certain preferred groups – primarily well-to-do American and foreign citizens and foreign central banks – designed to prevent asset deflation, preserve excess savings and protect existing concentrations of wealth.
Whatever the problem has been – the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s, the Dot-Com Bubble of the 1990s, or the Housing Bubble of the early 2000s – the cause has always been the same: excess savings that drove down the cost of capital and encouraged uneconomic investment. And the “remedy” has always been the same as well: reflation of asset values through the injection of money borrowed by the public sector. Actually, this “remedy” has not only protected existing concentrations of wealth, it has tended to concentrate domestic wealth further, because, as deficits were increased, taxes were decreased on those with high marginal rates of saving (i.e., the rich) while the increase in public sector debt forced cuts in expenditures favoring those with high marginal rates of consumption (i.e., the poor), further reducing their savings.
As stated above, the quantity and character of investments that will yield an economic return at a given point in time depends to some extent on the state of economic and technological development in a society. But I would argue that it also depends on the distribution of wealth. People who have not yet met their basic needs spend all of their income to meet those needs, while people who have already met their basic needs don’t have to. And while savings are necessary to finance capital investment, consumption is necessary to provide investment opportunity as well. There is a story that Henry Ford decided to give his workers a half day off on Saturdays. Asked why he did it, Ford replied that if his workers had no time off, they would also have no use for his cars. In other words, he recognized that his employees were also his customers, and it was their consumption that provided him with an economic investment opportunity. This way of thinking is notably lacking today – in the United States, and in emerging-market economies.
As noted, concentration of wealth and excess savings is not just a problem in America. The so called “export driven” model in emerging-market economies – based on keeping domestic wages low in order to capture an ever-increasing share of foreign markets – has resulted in excess savings in the form of foreign exchange surpluses. Invested in dollar denominated obligations, these savings have served to keep U.S. interest rates artificially low, encouraging uneconomic investments, whether in technology, consumer industries, or housing. The savings of emerging-market nations should be used to build infrastructure and raise wages at home, thereby increasing domestic demand. They should not be squandered on nonproductive foreign assets. And if they are, the U.S. government should certainly not intervene to perpetuate the misallocation of assets at the expense of future generations.
Debt is often reviled, and legitimately so – it enables irresponsibility, promotes anxiety and culminates in guilt. But make no mistake, debt cannot exist without savings to fuel it. And when excessive concentration of wealth drains resources away from what is needed to finance basic expenditures, it creates dislocations.
As people acquire wealth, they also acquire power. If they do not embrace philanthropy, they seek out ways to justify inequality. They buy media outlets; they endow chairs at universities; they finance think-tanks that promote their way of seeing the world. If their efforts are successful, they can wholly or partially define the universe of discourse within a society. This is also what we have seen in America.
Tax cuts, deregulation and free market economics have been mantras in the Unites States since the 1980s. But tax cuts have not been accompanied by decreases in public sector spending. And when unwise economic decisions have resulted in market crashes, free market principles have been cast to the winds, with governments borrowing money helter-skelter to protect existing wealth concentrations against loss at the expense of the general public – nearly half of whom do not even have appreciable savings.
If we were to take all the assets and all the liabilities in the world at any given time and put them on a spreadsheet, they would cancel each other out. It does not matter who owns and who owes. In good times and bad times, prosperity and depression, booms and busts, the same economic resources exist on earth. And except in times of war and natural disaster, there is always enough to provide the essentials. Luxuries, perhaps not.
So the problem is never one of resources. It is one of trust. Regardless of why or how savings become concentrated, why and how liabilities are created, when the distribution of wealth becomes sufficiently unbalanced that debtors can or will no longer meet their obligations, trust is lost.
If we step back and view the last decades as metaphor, it is not a pretty picture. Grasping, striving, manipulation, abuse, ever-deepening anxiety, ever-increasing greed – a veritable gumbo of unholy emotions. It is easy to see the dark side. But what’s the point of it all?
From a spiritual perspective, the point is to let it go. The point is to turn away from this Halloween show and realize that what is gained on this earth is left on this earth, and what is lost on this earth can never be a loss to our souls. We arrived here with nothing and nothing is what we will take when we leave. Our relationships with loved ones and most important, our relationship with God -- that is what matters. And until we realize it, we will suffer the nightmare of gain and loss.
In this world, Mother no one can love me
In this world, they do not know how to love me
Where is there pure loving love?
Where is there truly loving me?
There my soul longs to be
There my soul longs to be
-- Paramahansa Yogananda
If we step back and view the last decades as metaphor, it is not a pretty picture. Grasping, striving, manipulation, abuse, ever-deepening anxiety, ever-increasing greed – a veritable gumbo of unholy emotions. It is easy to see the dark side. But what’s the point of it all?
From a spiritual perspective, the point is to let it go. The point is to turn away from this Halloween show and realize that what is gained on this earth is left on this earth, and what is lost on this earth can never be a loss to our souls. We arrived here with nothing and nothing is what we will take when we leave. Our relationships with loved ones and most important, our relationship with God -- that is what matters. And until we realize it, we will suffer the nightmare of gain and loss.
In this world, Mother no one can love me
In this world, they do not know how to love me
Where is there pure loving love?
Where is there truly loving me?
There my soul longs to be
There my soul longs to be
-- Paramahansa Yogananda
Friday, August 29, 2008
The Secret You Don't Want to Hear
I’m going to tell you something that nobody has ever told you. Something that nobody ever will tell you. Something you probably don’t even want to hear it. Nevertheless, I'm going to tell it to you.
You’re not real.
That’s right. You - which is to say, all the dear little qualities, opinions, talents, abilities, gifts and graces, plans and schemes, hopes and fears, successes and failures, likes and dislikes – all the things that make you that incomparable, delectable, indefinable “you” – the ideals you cherish, the memories you treasure, the feelings you hold onto – none of them are real. They are like bubbles. They are flights of fancy, castles in the air, dreams within a dream. And the dream, my friend, is you. The myth of your separate existence and the time and the space it inhabits, it is all a dream. And the dreamer is God. The only real and lasting Being, the only Source, the only Power, the only Substance, the Beginning and End, Alpha and Omega, it is God. And the only point of view from which creation can be reconciled or justified, the only perspective from which it makes the slightest bit of sense, is God’s.
Consciousness is God. Awareness is God. The dimensionless dimension in which this colossal show goes on, is God. And the same eternal Awareness that permeates all space and time, also permeates the dream that is you. Locked in the cage of your body and mind, playing the role of your existence, that Awareness has come to believe it is you. And it will go on thinking it is you, seeking conditions that appear congenial, avoiding conditions that appear hostile, exploring the potentialities of your dream-existence, life after life, until it finally exhausts them all. And it will exhaust them. First, because it has eternity to do it in, and second because nothing individuality can offer will ever satisfy the aching need for Eternal Omniscience that is in God.
Thirty-five years ago (or 35 lifetimes, or 35 millennia, whatever) when I first understood by inference the truth of what I have just written, frankly, it scared the hell out of me, I can tell you. Because it seemed to mean that the only goal of individual existence was that one reached the end of it. Given the suffering that comes with any degree of self-examination, that seemed cruel to me. I couldn’t see why God would so delude himself as to create such as me. What’s more, I couldn’t imagine what the end of me might mean in terms I could understand or appreciate. Locked in the labyrinth of my life and my mind, I had no way to experience that pure Awareness that lay behind it, and which is God.
Things are different now. I will not say I have found God, because I have not. But in meditation, there have been glimpses. Finding God is not like finding a penny - or a dollar, or a diamond. It is not an event; it is not an act. It does not have a beginning or an end, because God does not have a beginning or an end. God is Eternal Awareness, and the only way to find God is to remain in unbroken awareness of that Awareness. In that Awareness, individuality is dissolved. Eternal Awareness of Eternal Awareness. That is what it means to find God.
You’re not real.
That’s right. You - which is to say, all the dear little qualities, opinions, talents, abilities, gifts and graces, plans and schemes, hopes and fears, successes and failures, likes and dislikes – all the things that make you that incomparable, delectable, indefinable “you” – the ideals you cherish, the memories you treasure, the feelings you hold onto – none of them are real. They are like bubbles. They are flights of fancy, castles in the air, dreams within a dream. And the dream, my friend, is you. The myth of your separate existence and the time and the space it inhabits, it is all a dream. And the dreamer is God. The only real and lasting Being, the only Source, the only Power, the only Substance, the Beginning and End, Alpha and Omega, it is God. And the only point of view from which creation can be reconciled or justified, the only perspective from which it makes the slightest bit of sense, is God’s.
Consciousness is God. Awareness is God. The dimensionless dimension in which this colossal show goes on, is God. And the same eternal Awareness that permeates all space and time, also permeates the dream that is you. Locked in the cage of your body and mind, playing the role of your existence, that Awareness has come to believe it is you. And it will go on thinking it is you, seeking conditions that appear congenial, avoiding conditions that appear hostile, exploring the potentialities of your dream-existence, life after life, until it finally exhausts them all. And it will exhaust them. First, because it has eternity to do it in, and second because nothing individuality can offer will ever satisfy the aching need for Eternal Omniscience that is in God.
Thirty-five years ago (or 35 lifetimes, or 35 millennia, whatever) when I first understood by inference the truth of what I have just written, frankly, it scared the hell out of me, I can tell you. Because it seemed to mean that the only goal of individual existence was that one reached the end of it. Given the suffering that comes with any degree of self-examination, that seemed cruel to me. I couldn’t see why God would so delude himself as to create such as me. What’s more, I couldn’t imagine what the end of me might mean in terms I could understand or appreciate. Locked in the labyrinth of my life and my mind, I had no way to experience that pure Awareness that lay behind it, and which is God.
Things are different now. I will not say I have found God, because I have not. But in meditation, there have been glimpses. Finding God is not like finding a penny - or a dollar, or a diamond. It is not an event; it is not an act. It does not have a beginning or an end, because God does not have a beginning or an end. God is Eternal Awareness, and the only way to find God is to remain in unbroken awareness of that Awareness. In that Awareness, individuality is dissolved. Eternal Awareness of Eternal Awareness. That is what it means to find God.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
What Child is This?
If the world is metaphor, as I have written, the primal metaphor is family. Our relationship with the father – provider of the vital essence that becomes our life – is our relationship with the Heavenly Father, the divine Intelligence that dreams our existence. Our relationship with the mother – who nurtures us in the womb, and provides for our needs in infancy – is our relationship with the Divine Mother, the infinite Compassion that sustains us throughout eternity. If we have a loving relationship with our earthly Father and Mother, it is because, in the past, we have developed that relationship with God. And if there is something lacking in our relationship with our parents, there is something lacking in our relationship with God.
Yet whether the relationship with our parents is good or bad, perfected, or a work in process, sooner or later, they die; and sooner or later, we are left alone. There is a profound finality in this, whether it comes when we are 7 or 70; and there is an indelible poignancy in it – whether acknowledged or not. For in the end, we are each one of us orphans. We are each one of us alone. Each one of us will leave this world as we came into it – in utter isolation, in the presence of God alone. And if we feel inadequate, if we feel bereft, it is because our relationship with God is not yet deep enough.
My own Mom passed away June 29th in Boston. It wasn’t a surprise; she was 93, and for the last few months, her health wasn’t good. But she soldiered on to the end, singing “Blue Skies” to my wife on the phone a day before she died, making it a point to tell me what a great son I was, and how beautiful her life had been – as I told her she’d been a great Mom. “I’m not going to say goodbye,” she said. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
If life is a school, as they say, then death is the final exam. You can’t fake it, you can’t cheat, you can’t cram. Your whole life is a preparation for it. She passed the test, my Mom. What can I say? I miss her terribly.
Which is to say, I still have work to do. I am not close enough to God.
Yet whether the relationship with our parents is good or bad, perfected, or a work in process, sooner or later, they die; and sooner or later, we are left alone. There is a profound finality in this, whether it comes when we are 7 or 70; and there is an indelible poignancy in it – whether acknowledged or not. For in the end, we are each one of us orphans. We are each one of us alone. Each one of us will leave this world as we came into it – in utter isolation, in the presence of God alone. And if we feel inadequate, if we feel bereft, it is because our relationship with God is not yet deep enough.
My own Mom passed away June 29th in Boston. It wasn’t a surprise; she was 93, and for the last few months, her health wasn’t good. But she soldiered on to the end, singing “Blue Skies” to my wife on the phone a day before she died, making it a point to tell me what a great son I was, and how beautiful her life had been – as I told her she’d been a great Mom. “I’m not going to say goodbye,” she said. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
If life is a school, as they say, then death is the final exam. You can’t fake it, you can’t cheat, you can’t cram. Your whole life is a preparation for it. She passed the test, my Mom. What can I say? I miss her terribly.
Which is to say, I still have work to do. I am not close enough to God.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Justice in Gehenna
The good die young.
The rich get richer.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Behind every great fortune is a great crime.
Is the world ruled by law? Justice dispensed according to a law of cause and effect?
Seriously, what do you think, yes or no?
Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, you does less time for a fraud that costs ten thousand investors their life savings than you do for selling an undercover agent an ounce of crack cocaine. And you won’t do hard time, either.
If you buy a company in Ohio, fire the workers and move their jobs to China, you make more money than if you don't.
If you drop a bomb on an Iraqi grandmother, throw the wrong guy into a cell in Guantanamo, or distort the available intelligence to start a senseless war, chances are, you’ll retire on a pension.
These things are true. Indisputable phenomena. The question is, why?
Most of us believe in a God of righteousness. We believe this God has laws. We believe the laws are just. We believe there exists a law of cause and effect that applies to human actions – what they call in the East, a law of karma. This is a universal belief. The whole world believes in a justice of one form or another.
Why on earth would we believe that? I’m not denying that justice seems to prevail sometimes. But other times it surely doesn’t. If it’s a law, why isn’t it reliable? If the world is just, why don’t we SEE more justice in operation?
Let’s say you’re dumped on an island with a bunch of people you never met before. You have no idea how you got there. You just wake up one morning and there you are. Not being the nosey type (or particularly sociable) you decide the best thing is to just go about your business, keep you head down, and fend for yourself.
You build a little hut and enter survival mode – hunting, fishing, eating coconuts. Everything is alright for awhile, but then unpleasant things starts to happen. You go spear fishing one day and when you get back, the coconuts you gathered that morning are gone. A couple days later, the extra spear you made is missing. And a couple days after that, there’s a guy there WITH the spear – telling you he’s taken over your hut, and you’d better get the hell out now unless you want to fight him to the death for it – which he seems eager to do. So after a minute, you swallow your pride, turn tail and head off to start work on a new hut – and a new spear. But no sooner do you get yourself settled, than the pattern repeats itself. Except that this time, instead of one guy with a spear, its two guys, and the time after that, it’s five guys. And pretty soon, it becomes clear to you that this particular island is populated by a bunch of lunatics and criminals – and they are starting to band together. It seems your basic choices are to fight for your rights (individually or in some form of group), find a better way to hide, or give up building huts and become a nomad. Unless, of course, you could find a way off the island.
This is not a baseless story. A year ago, I spent a couple weeks on Molokai, the least developed of the Hawaiian islands. Molokai is known (among other things) for having the highest sea-cliffs in the world, with waterfalls cascading two thousand feet in a sheer drop to the sea. While I was there, we took a boat around to the windward side, where the cliffs are. It’s a beautiful, but forbidding place, of high winds, a heaving sea and crashing surf. As we headed around the point into the full force of the wind, I saw what looked like ruins, perched on a spit of isolated flatland that lay at the foot of impassable cliffs, the only access being by sea. It looked like some kind of settlement, and I asked the boatman if that’s what it was. He nodded, and I asked him why anyone would live in such a God forsaken place.
He smiled. “To get away from the wars,” he said. And I thought about that.
As I’ve suggested elsewhere, (Gehenna posted here April 24, 2008), the world is our island, and the message of Jesus Christ, Bhagavan Krishna and the rest of the saints and sages throughout the ages is, “If you want to find happiness, get off the island.”
"My Kingdom is not of this world," Jesus said (John 18:36). “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth …. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9-20).
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells his disciple, “O devotee: Get away from My ocean of suffering, death and misery!” (Ch XII, Yogananda’s translation)
Now the truly peculiar thing about the island we live on is, we can leave any time we want to. There’s no forbidding ocean around it, no mighty wind, no crashing surf. True, people will try to talk us into staying – our family, coworkers, friends. They’ll tell us we’re crazy. And they’ll mean what they say. They’ll have our best interests at heart. There will be no reinforcement. Our culture will engage us, dissuade us, entice us. But the bottom line is this: the only thing that can keep us on the island of this earth is our desire for the things we think we can get here and our fear of giving them up.
Now, suppose you were a just and loving God, and for that very reason, you had created this island with its mélange of troublesome inhabitants. (You could call it hell, or Gehenna, for example.) And suppose further that a principal characteristic of the inhabitants you had created was that you had given them something called “free will” – the apparent ability to decide what they would do and not do, based on their own perceived self-interest. Of course, having created this island and these inhabitants, you would know that the only hope any of them would have for achieving lasting peace would be to get the hell off the island and move on to a place where the inhabitants had learned to identify their self-interest with the interest of a larger group. But having given the inhabitants free will, there wouldn’t be any way you could force them into doing it.
Now taking all that as given, the question is, what would “justice” look like on the island?
The answer is, it would look pretty much the way it does on earth. Virtue would apparently be punished and vice rewarded, because the real punishment would be getting what you wanted (this would motivate you to stick around and suffer some more) whereas the real reward would be getting disillusioned (which would motivate you to get out of the place for good).
This is why the great masters agree, the best thing is not to get involved with the world. Renounce it. Give it up. It is fundamentally irredeemable.
I admit, it’s a hard truth, but then, when was truth ever easy.
The rich get richer.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Behind every great fortune is a great crime.
Is the world ruled by law? Justice dispensed according to a law of cause and effect?
Seriously, what do you think, yes or no?
Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, you does less time for a fraud that costs ten thousand investors their life savings than you do for selling an undercover agent an ounce of crack cocaine. And you won’t do hard time, either.
If you buy a company in Ohio, fire the workers and move their jobs to China, you make more money than if you don't.
If you drop a bomb on an Iraqi grandmother, throw the wrong guy into a cell in Guantanamo, or distort the available intelligence to start a senseless war, chances are, you’ll retire on a pension.
These things are true. Indisputable phenomena. The question is, why?
Most of us believe in a God of righteousness. We believe this God has laws. We believe the laws are just. We believe there exists a law of cause and effect that applies to human actions – what they call in the East, a law of karma. This is a universal belief. The whole world believes in a justice of one form or another.
Why on earth would we believe that? I’m not denying that justice seems to prevail sometimes. But other times it surely doesn’t. If it’s a law, why isn’t it reliable? If the world is just, why don’t we SEE more justice in operation?
Let’s say you’re dumped on an island with a bunch of people you never met before. You have no idea how you got there. You just wake up one morning and there you are. Not being the nosey type (or particularly sociable) you decide the best thing is to just go about your business, keep you head down, and fend for yourself.
You build a little hut and enter survival mode – hunting, fishing, eating coconuts. Everything is alright for awhile, but then unpleasant things starts to happen. You go spear fishing one day and when you get back, the coconuts you gathered that morning are gone. A couple days later, the extra spear you made is missing. And a couple days after that, there’s a guy there WITH the spear – telling you he’s taken over your hut, and you’d better get the hell out now unless you want to fight him to the death for it – which he seems eager to do. So after a minute, you swallow your pride, turn tail and head off to start work on a new hut – and a new spear. But no sooner do you get yourself settled, than the pattern repeats itself. Except that this time, instead of one guy with a spear, its two guys, and the time after that, it’s five guys. And pretty soon, it becomes clear to you that this particular island is populated by a bunch of lunatics and criminals – and they are starting to band together. It seems your basic choices are to fight for your rights (individually or in some form of group), find a better way to hide, or give up building huts and become a nomad. Unless, of course, you could find a way off the island.
This is not a baseless story. A year ago, I spent a couple weeks on Molokai, the least developed of the Hawaiian islands. Molokai is known (among other things) for having the highest sea-cliffs in the world, with waterfalls cascading two thousand feet in a sheer drop to the sea. While I was there, we took a boat around to the windward side, where the cliffs are. It’s a beautiful, but forbidding place, of high winds, a heaving sea and crashing surf. As we headed around the point into the full force of the wind, I saw what looked like ruins, perched on a spit of isolated flatland that lay at the foot of impassable cliffs, the only access being by sea. It looked like some kind of settlement, and I asked the boatman if that’s what it was. He nodded, and I asked him why anyone would live in such a God forsaken place.
He smiled. “To get away from the wars,” he said. And I thought about that.
As I’ve suggested elsewhere, (Gehenna posted here April 24, 2008), the world is our island, and the message of Jesus Christ, Bhagavan Krishna and the rest of the saints and sages throughout the ages is, “If you want to find happiness, get off the island.”
"My Kingdom is not of this world," Jesus said (John 18:36). “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth …. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9-20).
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells his disciple, “O devotee: Get away from My ocean of suffering, death and misery!” (Ch XII, Yogananda’s translation)
Now the truly peculiar thing about the island we live on is, we can leave any time we want to. There’s no forbidding ocean around it, no mighty wind, no crashing surf. True, people will try to talk us into staying – our family, coworkers, friends. They’ll tell us we’re crazy. And they’ll mean what they say. They’ll have our best interests at heart. There will be no reinforcement. Our culture will engage us, dissuade us, entice us. But the bottom line is this: the only thing that can keep us on the island of this earth is our desire for the things we think we can get here and our fear of giving them up.
Now, suppose you were a just and loving God, and for that very reason, you had created this island with its mélange of troublesome inhabitants. (You could call it hell, or Gehenna, for example.) And suppose further that a principal characteristic of the inhabitants you had created was that you had given them something called “free will” – the apparent ability to decide what they would do and not do, based on their own perceived self-interest. Of course, having created this island and these inhabitants, you would know that the only hope any of them would have for achieving lasting peace would be to get the hell off the island and move on to a place where the inhabitants had learned to identify their self-interest with the interest of a larger group. But having given the inhabitants free will, there wouldn’t be any way you could force them into doing it.
Now taking all that as given, the question is, what would “justice” look like on the island?
The answer is, it would look pretty much the way it does on earth. Virtue would apparently be punished and vice rewarded, because the real punishment would be getting what you wanted (this would motivate you to stick around and suffer some more) whereas the real reward would be getting disillusioned (which would motivate you to get out of the place for good).
This is why the great masters agree, the best thing is not to get involved with the world. Renounce it. Give it up. It is fundamentally irredeemable.
I admit, it’s a hard truth, but then, when was truth ever easy.
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