Personally, I do not watch television, nor do I regularly surf the web, so I end up having a lot of time to read and think about what I read—yet it is never enough. With the schedule I keep, which feels insane, there is rarely a moment when I do not feel the existential dread of constantly being in a hurry. Always on the offensive, in a state of perpetual motion, forever moving from one place to the next or anxious of the awareness of knowing the next place I have to go—all while I try to just breathe. This is more or less what is like for everyone in this postmodern era, at one time or another, literally traveling at breakneck speeds day after day. No one is foreign to this I am sure.
Such times don’t have to be aggravating though because these moments that usually feed our contempt for the world we live in too can prove meaningful. They can even become moments of serious spiritual attainment that confirm something sacred at the basic level of experience unifying all things. Or so Thomas Kelly’s A Testament of Devotion and Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation contend.
These short spiritual achievements, easy to read yet inspiring, presents the reader with a practical guide in how to center one’s life around God’s Presence. In this feverishly hectic world it difficult to find a place that is not overrun with constant noise and perpetual motion. Thomas Kelly and Thomas Merton, on the other hand, implore us to find this space so that we may obtain the lasting fulfillment of conversing with our Creator in a time in which God was thought dead—a death caused not by Science but by technology and the onslaught of information. Yet Kelly, does this gently, at least when compared to Merton who offers a brand of tough love that cares enough to be cruel when needed.
Merton’s writing is mostly negative in that he spends most of his energy telling the reader what the contemplative life is not and what we should not do, following or followed by a concise declaration of its opposite in positive terms. For instance, one of Merton’s most famous lines on the topic, “not a heaven of separate individuals, each one viewing his own private intuition of God; it is a sea of Love,”[1] works in precisely this way. This sophisticated technique both diagnosis and then cures the problem at hand. Not all instances of this device play out this quickly, some unfold the course of the book.[2] Both this style and Kelly’s more positive, grandfatherly approach—It is a light within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon our faces[3] (ah, that’s the money melon)—have their merits and compliment the other in a harmonic way because what they reveal is ultimate the same message—that it is belief that counts and it is necessary to validate existence. They affirm that in an age of disbelief such as ours, the most
The ritual, undogmatic, unspecific, does not need to be intellectualized to be useful in shaping meaning into one’s life because we already possess it. Kelly tells us that “by inner persuasions He draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizing His burdens in us,”[4] implying it is what we are meant to do and should come relatively through its very nature. In fact, such abstract thought is part of the problem: it is wholly other to from the loneliness of self-satisfying drive; it cannot be expressed by words alone; it must be experienced to even relate to description. Of this type of over intellectualizing, Merton writes “the whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate…the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth… for the work of rescuing the inner man from automatism belongs first to the Holy Spirit.[5] In other words, to really devote one’s self to the contemplative life, one must actually accept the Holy Spirit as it is instead of trying to make it fit in a way that we choose by intellectualizing it’s nature thereby justifying a degradation of that Spirit. Again Merton tells us “this experience is beyond the reach of verbalization and of rationalization”[6] so to try to experience it by intellect alone is as futile as Ulysses’ efforts to reach the shores of Purgatory by way of boat, a metaphor that Dante uses to warn us that mere intellect will not guide us to the Divine: Using his famous resourcefulness, here equated with intelligence, to “pursue virtue and know the world,”[7] he “rejoiced, but soon it turned to grief,”[8] as the fated journey ended up costing him and his men their lives. Readers of Merton and Kelly’s texts are therefore supposed to open them from ground-zero of their spiritual journey, first learning the basic way to Nothingness, void of self-consciousness, cynicism, of knowing anything in order to dismantle the thought process and hold up to cynical speculation and basically just works.
They doesn’t throw Jesus’ name around all that much—I don’t even recall Kelly mentioning Him. Penance doesn’t seem to matter a great deal either. What is of vital importance though is connecting with the Divine voice in a way that is accessible to all who are listening. Shaped by Kelly’s Quaker faith and Merton’s Trappist monasticism along with Romantic ideals, they attest that there is something else out there that transcends the rat-race, helter-skelter, existentially loathsome modern existence where the only apparent significance one seems to have is economic. Merton corrects us, saying contemplative experience is not “something you can buy,” rather, “it has to be a gift.”[9] And Kelly comforts, “is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself.”[10] In this eternity pressing upon our hearts, one can detect a Wordsworthian message suggesting that focusing on the Heaven and Hell to come after we cease to be is to not only miss the point but to totally have the wrong way of looking at the world and the precious and fragile gift of life. Heaven and Hell are not just here with us, they are actually in us; thus, when we go through life unaware of our own little personal skull-sized prisons and paradises inside our brains or hearts or wherever, religion actually becomes nothing more than the bars to another cell instead of freedom it promises.
To go through life unaware and unmindful of the basic reality of our nature that lies deep within is akin to going through life as though having “had and lost some infinite thing.” In truth, this is exactly what happens when one resorts to their default way of thinking which is how people tend to live for most of their conscious existences. We are so culturally used to thinking like this that Merton calls it a “cliché.” In the following passage, Merton explains that late-date-Americans, in essence, do not think for themselves, instead giving in to the conditioned, negative type of thinking:
immersion in the general meaninglessness of countless slogans and clichés repeated over and over again so that in the end one listens without hearing and responds without thinking. The constant din of empty words and machine noises, the endless booming of loudspeakers end by making true communication and true communion almost impossible. Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility. He doesn't care, he doesn't hear, he doesn't think. He does not act, he is pushed. He does not talk, he produces conventional sounds when stimulated by the appropriate noises. He does not think, he secretes clichés.[11]
As individuals, we, as Americans, are beginning to realize that there is some “cosmic-unconscious” that is making it more and more difficult to attain true satisfaction in default mode and those of us not already dead inside are searching for a better way. But through God’s presence, “we are reduced, as it were, to nothing, for He is all,” and “self is emptied into God, and God in-fills it,”[12] thus our primal needs to connect with something larger are relieved. In this sense, this feeling means fulfillment, contentment, and an end to a deep seeded disappointment that is becoming more common as the culture’s spiritual decline increases toward oblivion.
Lacking existential fulfillment, we lack something that is fundamental to our very being. Deprived of wholeness due to missing one-to-one connection in both a spiritual and an interpersonal sense, an endless cycle of alienation occurs as substitutes instituted in place of the missing piece. The stand-in, lacking substance, always proves inadequate in squelching a hunger hardwired into the human condition, which Merton echoes when he writes:
common life can either make one more…or less of a person, depending whether it is truly common life or merely life in a crowd. To live in communion, in genuine dialogue with others is absolutely necessary if man is to remain human. But to live in the midst of others, sharing nothing with them but the common noise and general distraction, isolates a man in the worst way, separates a him from reality in a way that is almost painless. It divides him off and separates him from other men and from his true self… / The complacency of the man who has no self-esteem because he has not even a superficial self which he can esteem. He is not a person, not an individual, only an atom…It produces a kind of peace which is not peace, but only the escape from an immediately urgent sense of conflict. It is the peace not of love but of anesthesia. It is the peace not of self-realization and self-dedication, but of flight into irresponsibility.[13]
Disappointment permeates in the secular-disconnected world of material plentitude as the surrogate continues to operate. Replacements—e.g. other deserted people, material goods, entertainment, drugs, etc.—appear as comfort foods to the abandoned soul. Such feelings originate, according to Kelly, because “We are not integrated. We are distraught…And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow. For over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.”[14] The need to fill the void ends up turning solitary beings into worshippers unaware that their chosen idol has been eating them alive. However, the substitute itself is not something that is loved in the way flocks love their protector but the consequence of electing nothing over themselves to truly love. Merton says as such when he writes “keep me from the sins that eat a man's flesh with irresistible fire until he is devoured”[15] Long before taking their last breathes, the substitute becomes their agent of self-annihilation for the desperate indefinable desire. The thing coveted—whatever that may be—robbing the individual of its will, is something that is freely embraced as the new deity.
when forced to endure infuriating hassles that require stress inducing urgency within irritating, inconsiderate hordes of people tearing thru the streets in an insane rush to get God only knows while the person in this hypothetical situation must stomach something that has just got to be more important because they think “this is happening to me!” Other people have no place in such think since the individual’s needs and desires are of the utmost importance with impacting consequences that have substance. As such reasoning has it: “My objectives are of greater meaning with higher stakes as mine are the only ones that I understand. Other people’s thoughts must be communicated to me in some way while mine are already here so are more authentic and real; thus my need is more valid, more pressing.” This makes it “easy to identify the sin with the sinner when he is someone other than our own self. In ourselves, it is the other way around; we see the sin, but we have great difficulty in shouldering responsibility for it…[We] tend to interpret our immoral act as an involuntary mistake, or as the malice of a spirit in us that is other than ourself.[16] Again, to this individual, every person who sits at a traffic light or impedes in any form is “in the way.” Tied up with selfish thought, people end up becoming very bitter very quickly since the world does seem to be out to get them. Never does concern that they are in fact the ones obstructing the someone else’s path ever come into their reasoning. Kelly describes this sentiment noting that “there is an inexorable amount of suffering in all life, blind, aching, unremovable, not new but only terribly intensified in these days… But there is also removable suffering.”[17]
Demands placed upon people who think this way tend to suspect that these competing and tedious day-to-day necessities are in some way personal, as though the cosmos were taking out some karmic vendetta against them or perhaps the inconveniences were Divinely Inspired. It is to think selfishly, which Merton venemently berates saying Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost. In every man there is hidden some root of despair because in every man there is pride that vegetates…Self-pity as soon as our own resources fail us… is the ultimate development of a pride so great… that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God.”[18] This naturally results from selfish thoughts due to the fact that everything in their immediate perception of reality, they literally find all sensory evidence to place them at the absolute center of the universe. Thinking about things in this way is culturally so heinous that one can’t even admit to it. But nonetheless, we continue to carry on in this way because it is very easy to let ourselves get carried away in our own little imaginary worlds. I know I do when I am not aware of how truly egotistically and inconsiderate my accepted beliefs really, truly are. The ideas that enter into my semiconscious—i.e. fully awake but lacking attention—mind may corroborate beliefs I have that I am the absolute most interesting and entertaining and wise and profound and inspiring person who has every lived. This is even provable and logical when one really thinks about this phenomenon assuming one can think long enough and hard enough in a way that is so culturally repulsive that to acknowledge it is to feel somehow immoral and unjustly exposed as depraved. The worst of it though is that to think in this way is also to think about it and confront this dimension of ourselves that is as undeniable as it is excruciatingly upsetting. This means that we actively end up denying “God the initiator, God the aggressor, God the seeker, God the stirrer into life, God the ground of our obedience, God the giver of the power to become children of God.”[19]
These situations of hopeless inability in the face of societal demands are always, for me anyway, accompanied by existential dread that deals with the necessity to perform a role in said society that lacks any sense of purpose and is void where at a level where well-adjusted people operate and behave as though there is nothing amiss. All the while there is the stressful, incessant, pitiless noise slowly disabling the capacity to function without some degree of rage. Thus, we are thinking but not contemplating when we think about things in a way that is harmful or negative or oppressive to anyone or anything, including ourselves; we are illustrating the exact type of thinking we are not supposed to be undertaking. However, Kelly promises us “there is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship, with a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.”[20] But unless the interior voice is turned off, self-conscious thinking, not contemplation, results; instead of the intended self-discovery, one remains closed and hidden, or in Merton’s words, these people will “never succeed in being themselves.”[21]
Their message is really pretty simple when one thinks about it—a cliché even. For instance, Merton writes:
The way to contemplation is an obscurity so obscure that it is no longer even dramatic. There is nothing in it that can be grasped and cherished as heroic or even unusual. And so, for a contemplative, there is supreme value in the ordinary everyday routine of work, poverty, hardship and monotony that characterize the lives of all the poor, uninteresting and forgotten people in the world.[22]
But like most statements of profound wonder, the simplicity of it is what ends up paradoxically making it so profound in the first place. This is often the reason we tend to overlook truths that are so significant. Having been there all along, they become banal and people lose sight of their importance with so many other things demanding our attention. The deepest realities in life are always the ones most difficult to hear.
Once one obtains the ability to actually listen, many a door to happiness and contentment will open up and liberate the soul from its confinement. All one has to do is use their inner ear. When this takes place, life becomes simplified and the noise pollution becomes bearable. With obedience to the voice’s call comes a peace making one appear poised and calm. In Merton’s words:
There is only one true flight from the world…the flight from disunity and separation, to unity… the ‘world’… [Christ said] His disciples were in but not of it? The world is the unquiet city of those who live for themselves and are therefore divided against one another in a struggle that cannot end, for it will go on eternally in hell…But if you try to escape from this world by leaving the city and hiding yourself in solitude, you will only take the city with you into solitude, and yet you can be entirely out of the world while remaining in the midst of it, if you let God set you free from your own selfishness and if you live for love alone.[23]
The outward reflects the inward in such a case as the mind becomes tranquil having turned off the incessant inner monologue that is by sheer ontology 99% selfish thought because in some way, almost every thing that pops into one’s mind is implicit or explicitly about one’s self. In learning to truly listen, individuals naturally become less self-centered as they consciously attempt to dispel the regular modes of thinking in favor of infinitely deeper ones.
Deciding the thing to put absolute faith in becomes even more important since both manifestations of our inner longing, positive and negative, find residence within the individual. Choose wisely, the object of affection liberates the soul and releases it into the next life; choose poorly, the object kills the host amounting to a victim of a bloodless utilitarianism good is equated with literal “cash-value” in that it is nothing more than satisfying demand. For Merton, the only alternative is contemplation which he calls the “highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive…a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source.”[24] There is no way around the fact that people are, utterly and only, the thing that gets chosen to love that one would die without. But when people choose correctly, they paradoxically experience “this total Instruction proceeds in two opposing directions at once. We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions – contemptus mundi. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for the world – amor mundi.”[25]
But, living without knowing any inner voice other than our own is a recipe for disaster since our species is notoriously horrible at determining what is actually good, and considering America’s addiction to pleasure, the likeliness of choosing something beyond immediate self-gratification is remote. Therefore, Kelly is correct in asserting that “An awful solemnity is upon the earth, for the last vestige of earthly security is gone. It has always been gone, and religion has always said so, but/ we haven't believed it.”[26] Such denial has lead to an unhealthy relationship with the mind and thought in hyper-self-consciousness obsessing about one’s self and about continuing to do it. That much despair in a life with few exterior threats to existence takes residence in the head comes as little surprise with constant commentary going on all the time. More disturbing, although no more staggering, is the fact that the majority of suicides occur by firearm shots to the head, identifying satisfaction in this case with desiring not wanting to suffer being a self at all.[27] The illusion of self-erasure, in any form, provides not escape but leads to a state of oblivion—i.e. more despair. This ultimately results, according to Merton, because the individual “tried to be like something else, which it was never intended to be, it would be less like God and therefore it would give Him less glory.”[28] “Therefore,” he adds, “ the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.” Because he sees God as granting us free will, we are “free to be whatever we like. We can be ourselves or not, as we please. We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear one mask and then another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own face.” But choosing such an existence will guartee a life filled with isolation and unhappiness and “if we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that true eludes us when we finally come to need it!” One must choose to listen to that inner call since “the secret of my full identity is hidden in Him…But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with Him and in Him, the work will never be done. The way of doing it is in secret I can learn from no one else but Him. There is no way of attaining to the secret without faith. Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and happiness depends; to discover myself in discovering God.”
One of the major hindrances keeping us out of touch with our inner, spiritual selves, I contend and believe Merton and Kelly would concur is our cultural addiction to entertainment. As stated previously, when the spirit goes untapped and one is shut off from a Higher Power which allows that person to function in society without going completely insane, it is a major problem indeed. The main factor in not achieving this for the majority of Westerners is a direct result of constant being distracted so as never to develop a spiritual connection or a true understanding of self. In living such an inundated life, Merton says “Mere living in the midst of other men does not guarantee that we live in communion with them, or even in communication with them. Who has less to the communicate than the mass-man? Very often it is the solitary who has the most to say; not that he uses many words, but what he says is new, substantial, unique. It is his own. Even though he says very little, he has something to communicate, something personal which he is able to share with others. He has something real to give, because he himself is real.”[29] The problem with entertainment then, as opposed to contemplation, is not gaining encyclopedic knowledge for such information communicates the least.
If that were the case, the advantage would clearly way in a viewer’s favor since television fires constant information open its audience while it takes time to read a book and absorb its hidden meaning—that is to say what it affirms/encourages as well as diagnoses/critiques within ourselves—while there is too much to take in through a fast-paced medium. The really important kind of knowledge is based on a deeper understanding that mere facts could never convey—some degree of experience must be involved. It is through such experiences that one develops the true ability to empathize since undergoing this transformation “plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And He hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together carry it in infinitely tender love.”[30] 20 Yet, spending time in deep thought is taxing after a while but the difficulty of it grants access to much of its pleasure because it is demanding; television, conversely, adheres to a strict pleasure-seeking-agenda and is therefore immensely more unimposing.
Further more, the only stipulation before internet made spontaneous transmission a reality was the fact that one had to be in front of a TV at a certain time to watch a certain show. Now, via internet downloads, viewers now control 100% of what they watch at any given time in coddled environments that are increasingly cage-like. That is the real point of spiritual refinement, to step out of one’s cage and find that there are no more bars holding him/her in another prison but a way out of the skull-sized cell that we all must escape for true liberation. Once this is experienced, “one emerges from such soul-shaking, Love-invaded times into more normal states of consciousness. But one knows ever after that the Eternal Lover of the world, the Hound of Heaven, is utterly, utterly real, and that life must henceforth be forever determined by that Real.[31] Because there is nothing more important than to really live and know you are alive; this is a well-being that is unattainable through commerce. In fact, it is proof that life really does mean something.
[1] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 65
[2] The first two chapters, “What is Contemplation?” and “What Contemplation is Not”, are telling by their names alone, displaying themes that appear throughout the book.
[3] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 3.
[4] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 43.
[5] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 108.
[6] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 6.
[7]Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. C. H. Sisson, (Oxford: University Press, 1998), Inferno XXVI. 120.
[8] Dante, Inferno XXVI: 136
[9] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 185.
[10]Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 3.
[11] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 55.
[12] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 31.
[13] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, pp. 55-6.
[14] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 92.
[15] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 44.
[16] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, pp. 112-3.
[17] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 42.
[18] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 180.
[19] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 26.
[20] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 9.
[21] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 98.
[22] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 250.
[23] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, pp. 78-9.
[24] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 1.
[25] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 19.
[26] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, pp. 41-2.
[27] http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/ss/ss5002.pdf
[28] The following series of quotes are taken from pages 35-36 of Merton’s text.
[29] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 54.
[30] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 20.
[31] Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p. 31.
During my research, I found a review by one D. Findlay on Amazon which you can read here that was pretty hilarious and spot on. Had this not been for a class where professors tend to be pretty sensitive about the texts they assign, I would have been more critical of Merton's negativity. But such were the facts and I can't deny the reality of that situation.
Showing posts with label Contemplatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Contemplatives. Show all posts
Friday, October 3, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Sor Juana's Poetry and Prose
When studying Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz—her poems, letters, autobiographical stuff, biographies written about her, the Penguin edition’s introduction to her body of work, etc.—it becomes pretty clear that while spiritual in nature, her real identity is that of a scholar.
Sor Juana’s “Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz,” which appears in letter form, is apparently written with the intention that Sor Filotea would not be the only person to read the work but instead is written with an awareness that it would circulate throughout the Catholic community, at least in New Spain (present day Mexico) in any case. In this regard SJ seems to be Keats-esque in that when she pens a letter to an acquaintance, here being an acquaintance whom she never meets for interesting reasons (see below), its contents become well known indeed. The entire work is predicated on an important point that cannot be overlooked which she makes clear by mentioning it numerous times throughout the text. The fact is, SJ never really intends for the original letter that prompts Sor Filotea’s letter that “Response” depends on to circulate as widely as it does since she (1) did not herself have it published and (2) not intended for a wide circulation it lacks the necessary arguments and support for those arguments and fact checking that her exposé the “Response” has in plenty.
Throughout these little revelations of fact, she reflects on the question of who would do such a thing as publish a letter without the author’s permission. This is where things get pretty interesting in a behind-the-scenes sort of way. “Response” is a letter that is a response to the Athenagoric Letter which is a response to another letter that she had written earlier. SJ’s original letter had been mysteriously published by one Don Manuel Fernandez de Santa Cruz y Sahagun, the Bishop of Puebla, who, as the introduction suggests, probably penned the AL himself under the Sor Filotea pseudonym.
Arguably, SJ’ s knowledge of the letter’s true author is clear in that she goes way beyond what would normally seem excessive in terms of flattery into a kind of meta-flattery which comes off as ironic if not patronizing. Opening her letter with overemphasis on the “loving letter” and her “appreciation” of that letter in which its author openly tells her that her poet pursuits are frivolous and that her time should be spent studying theology seems a bit over the top. Even in its body the constant humility (at times) descends into a holy-than-thou-turn-the-other-cheekiness yet these instances, which do admittedly develop into an effective form of deceptive mockery, point to self-protection. After awhile, the apologies and the unworthinesses start to look like hidden contempt.
At times in “Response”, SJ basically all but screams she does not want to write anymore like a John Barth Lost in the Funhouse character who would just as soon give up the task of writing down the events that transpire as, well, weave through the obstacles that impede them.[1] However, though she would like to discontinue the writing of letters, specifically this letter, the impulse to go on does not relinquish itself because it has been, she claims, placed there by God.[2]
A student at the age of three, SJ begins to experience the inequalities and inferior status that her sex requires her in New Spain and by the Catholic Church. SJ’ s status as a woman (as opposed to a man) and later as a nun (as opposed to a priest) means that obstacles and societal expectations persist throughout her lifetime. The two inequalities which most affect SJ are her inability to study at the university level which only men are privileged and the authority that the male clergy have over her as a nun. She becomes so despondent due to the former that she attempts (unsuccessfully) to convince her mother to dress her as a man with fake mustache and all and send her to Mexico City to study. Despite the inability to earn some sort of an advanced degree, this unfairness actually (in some ways) ends up being a sort of blessing in disguise depending on how one looks at it.
While denying anyone the right to attend school is pretty high up on the scale of evil and/or manipulative control units that are degrading and corrupt in every sense; surprisingly, SJ finds that the impotent situation actually has some advantages. This becomes apparent when she writes “as I was not directed by preferences, nor, forced by the need to fulfill certain scholarly requirements, constrained by time in the pursuit of any subject, I found myself free to study numerous topics at the same time.”[3] When one thinks about what everybody says about contemporary universities and liberal arts colleges, that they “teach you how to think”, her little statement here in an odd way forces you to really think about what on earth this really means. It is clear that SJ, like most of us, already knew how to think, but the thing is, what they really do is teach you what to think about. They show one what has meaning and what does not and that you can choose to place it where or on what. The fact that she does not follow a set curriculum then means she can study anything she has a passionate interest in and leave the things she does not to others. However, having not attended university, she has to find what is important by trial and error which it appears she does very well. In other words, hers really is an education of a lifetime; hers is one that no amount of diplomas can illustrate and no amount of words can express.
One of the more interesting episodes described by SJ is the time limit with specific consequences she sets for learning rules of Latin grammar which relate to gender and societal expectations. The reason this is gender related is because she cuts off her hair, of which women’s are typically longer than men’s, and if she doesn't learn such and such a rule by the time it grows back, well, it gets cut off again. Thus she writes “there seemed to me no cause for a head to be adorned with hair and naked of learning.”[4] Hair today, gone tomorrow, as it were, but this statement makes an interesting point. While teaching herself Latin, she enters into the male world of scholarship because despite the fact that she makes later on in the text that she had no teacher to guide her nor can she ever become a teacher because of her female status, what she does in fact do is become a teacher: she does, after all, teach herself. In cutting off her hair she symbolically enters into the male dominated academic world while at the same time taking up a scholastic path which marks a literal entry into that world.
Another way SJ basically gives the middle finger to the way the RCC perceives the world comes as she writes about context in literature within the play “Loa for El Divino Narciso.” In said play she raises the question of whether things change when a work of fiction changes when taken from one culture to another. Taken literally, her words say that culture has little or no relevance in interpreting the text as a whole. In the examply she uses, when a piece of fiction is taken from New Mexico to Madrid; the text does not become something else but retains the same value even though the world is vastly different for the two groups. In contemporary understanding, this way of looking at literature is totally insane. Context is everything and I suppose that SJ knew this to be unquestionably true. To say otherwise would be equivalent to one saying that on 9/11/2001, the terrorists who commandeered planes and then crashed them into the World Trade Centers were bombing the same America that my grandmother with her innocent, sixth grade education, whose only method of birth control was the rhythm/pull out method is the same America as my angsty, graduate program, Generation Y with our vaginal ring BC which makes the female’s menstrual cycle optional. In other words, in the age of the meme machine, the only thing that divides our issues is that our medias have gotten more complex.
The fact that everyone in the play “[worships] the all-powerful God of Seeds!”[5] makes the point that everyone within the play has the same God when you come down to it. The Gods, great in number, worshipped by Occident, are not without their theological problems—i.e. with the “cruelest sacrifice:/ two thousand gods are satisfied,/but human blood must be the price”—but the whole practice of Zeal and Religion of forcing their beliefs upon Occident and America is imposition of the rankest sort and reminds the contemporary reading of African colonialism (AC). Like the twentieth century phenomenon of AC, when colonization came to the Americas it started out as a force to be ignored. After all, the people who lived in these lands were many and the colonizers were few. But they came in in greater numbers and their technologies had their advantages.
Because this is an allegory, the fact that Religion actually antagonizes Zeal, asking how he can “tolerate [the]… Idolatry”[6] of the people they happen upon, it is difficult to see the Church here in a positive way. Yet at the end of the drama everyone sings and is happy in way that is pretty creepy since the manipulative practices of both Religion and Zeal destroy the culture that it imposed itself on in the first place. While constantly professing peaceful resolution and mercy, Religion lets Zeal first break these people after reason fails and then after they have been conquered, Religion goes about reasoning again. After being forced to bow down to “boom-sticks” and men on horseback that are referred to as “Centaurs”[7], I suppose Religion’s original offer doesn’t seem too bad considering the alternative: death. So when Religion says to Zeal “allowing her to live/ is witness to my clemency,”[8] she is really taking part in the same kind of systematized control that Christianity has a long enduring reputation for. However, SJ is a nun and is a part of that system, which in part explains the happy ending. The fact that she is both a colonizer and among the colonized makes her both critical of Christianity and a part of it: thus she writes about the way Christianity came to the Americas negatively but stresses that its results of it have been positive.
When reading SJ in 2008, it is almost impossible not to think of the African fiction stuff—that has been so articulate and eye opening and interesting and depressing and cool since Things Fall Apart and so many more that it is probably better to just take my word for it—since many of the same issues facing the African continent since at least British imperialism have come about , are the same things that SJ writes about several hundred years before anyone even heard the phrase “blood diamonds” or anything like that. When you think about it, isn’t it the same? When cultures clash, the results are often conformity at the price of both blood and the loss of identity. SJ knows this, the Church knows this, indigenous people figure this out, and the modern reader knows this. With such a dark history it has become increasingly harder for people to rally around the Roman Catholic Church if not the entire Christian faith which has serious complications for postmodernity.
[1] If this comparison survives the final cut, considering the issue of length here, the less said the better, maybe, except it should be known that the two writers make so many references to the process of writing as a craft and are so eerily similar in the way they say it that it is hard to decipher who specifically writes what. To be frank, while reading both at the same time it’s almost impossible for me to separate the two, which maybe you have to be studying them simultaneously to see. Ok, the heck with it, here is a particularly relevant example from SJ to illustrate the similarity from page 11 when she talks about how she, being called to write in order to defend herself, has not the desire to triumph: “If, then, I err, I suffer neither blame nor discredit: I suffer no blame, as I have no obligation; no discredit, as I have no possibility of triumphing—and no one is obliged to do the impossible.” And just one random example here from Barth on page 39 of LF in his story “Autobiography” when the narrator contemplates giving up the story (thus life) and says “May the end come quietly, then, without my knowing it. In the course of any breath. In the heart of any word. This one. This one.” The point here is that in that same tone/voice, both narrators are pushed to write not by their own hands but those of other people.
[2] “Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz,” p. 11.
[3] “Response…,” p. 23.
[4] “Response…, p. 15.
[5] Loa for the Auto Sacramental, p. 197.
[6] Loa…, p. 201.
[7] Loa…, p. 213.
[8] Loa…, p. 215.
Sor Juana’s “Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz,” which appears in letter form, is apparently written with the intention that Sor Filotea would not be the only person to read the work but instead is written with an awareness that it would circulate throughout the Catholic community, at least in New Spain (present day Mexico) in any case. In this regard SJ seems to be Keats-esque in that when she pens a letter to an acquaintance, here being an acquaintance whom she never meets for interesting reasons (see below), its contents become well known indeed. The entire work is predicated on an important point that cannot be overlooked which she makes clear by mentioning it numerous times throughout the text. The fact is, SJ never really intends for the original letter that prompts Sor Filotea’s letter that “Response” depends on to circulate as widely as it does since she (1) did not herself have it published and (2) not intended for a wide circulation it lacks the necessary arguments and support for those arguments and fact checking that her exposé the “Response” has in plenty.
Throughout these little revelations of fact, she reflects on the question of who would do such a thing as publish a letter without the author’s permission. This is where things get pretty interesting in a behind-the-scenes sort of way. “Response” is a letter that is a response to the Athenagoric Letter which is a response to another letter that she had written earlier. SJ’s original letter had been mysteriously published by one Don Manuel Fernandez de Santa Cruz y Sahagun, the Bishop of Puebla, who, as the introduction suggests, probably penned the AL himself under the Sor Filotea pseudonym.
Arguably, SJ’ s knowledge of the letter’s true author is clear in that she goes way beyond what would normally seem excessive in terms of flattery into a kind of meta-flattery which comes off as ironic if not patronizing. Opening her letter with overemphasis on the “loving letter” and her “appreciation” of that letter in which its author openly tells her that her poet pursuits are frivolous and that her time should be spent studying theology seems a bit over the top. Even in its body the constant humility (at times) descends into a holy-than-thou-turn-the-other-cheekiness yet these instances, which do admittedly develop into an effective form of deceptive mockery, point to self-protection. After awhile, the apologies and the unworthinesses start to look like hidden contempt.
At times in “Response”, SJ basically all but screams she does not want to write anymore like a John Barth Lost in the Funhouse character who would just as soon give up the task of writing down the events that transpire as, well, weave through the obstacles that impede them.[1] However, though she would like to discontinue the writing of letters, specifically this letter, the impulse to go on does not relinquish itself because it has been, she claims, placed there by God.[2]
A student at the age of three, SJ begins to experience the inequalities and inferior status that her sex requires her in New Spain and by the Catholic Church. SJ’ s status as a woman (as opposed to a man) and later as a nun (as opposed to a priest) means that obstacles and societal expectations persist throughout her lifetime. The two inequalities which most affect SJ are her inability to study at the university level which only men are privileged and the authority that the male clergy have over her as a nun. She becomes so despondent due to the former that she attempts (unsuccessfully) to convince her mother to dress her as a man with fake mustache and all and send her to Mexico City to study. Despite the inability to earn some sort of an advanced degree, this unfairness actually (in some ways) ends up being a sort of blessing in disguise depending on how one looks at it.
While denying anyone the right to attend school is pretty high up on the scale of evil and/or manipulative control units that are degrading and corrupt in every sense; surprisingly, SJ finds that the impotent situation actually has some advantages. This becomes apparent when she writes “as I was not directed by preferences, nor, forced by the need to fulfill certain scholarly requirements, constrained by time in the pursuit of any subject, I found myself free to study numerous topics at the same time.”[3] When one thinks about what everybody says about contemporary universities and liberal arts colleges, that they “teach you how to think”, her little statement here in an odd way forces you to really think about what on earth this really means. It is clear that SJ, like most of us, already knew how to think, but the thing is, what they really do is teach you what to think about. They show one what has meaning and what does not and that you can choose to place it where or on what. The fact that she does not follow a set curriculum then means she can study anything she has a passionate interest in and leave the things she does not to others. However, having not attended university, she has to find what is important by trial and error which it appears she does very well. In other words, hers really is an education of a lifetime; hers is one that no amount of diplomas can illustrate and no amount of words can express.
One of the more interesting episodes described by SJ is the time limit with specific consequences she sets for learning rules of Latin grammar which relate to gender and societal expectations. The reason this is gender related is because she cuts off her hair, of which women’s are typically longer than men’s, and if she doesn't learn such and such a rule by the time it grows back, well, it gets cut off again. Thus she writes “there seemed to me no cause for a head to be adorned with hair and naked of learning.”[4] Hair today, gone tomorrow, as it were, but this statement makes an interesting point. While teaching herself Latin, she enters into the male world of scholarship because despite the fact that she makes later on in the text that she had no teacher to guide her nor can she ever become a teacher because of her female status, what she does in fact do is become a teacher: she does, after all, teach herself. In cutting off her hair she symbolically enters into the male dominated academic world while at the same time taking up a scholastic path which marks a literal entry into that world.
Another way SJ basically gives the middle finger to the way the RCC perceives the world comes as she writes about context in literature within the play “Loa for El Divino Narciso.” In said play she raises the question of whether things change when a work of fiction changes when taken from one culture to another. Taken literally, her words say that culture has little or no relevance in interpreting the text as a whole. In the examply she uses, when a piece of fiction is taken from New Mexico to Madrid; the text does not become something else but retains the same value even though the world is vastly different for the two groups. In contemporary understanding, this way of looking at literature is totally insane. Context is everything and I suppose that SJ knew this to be unquestionably true. To say otherwise would be equivalent to one saying that on 9/11/2001, the terrorists who commandeered planes and then crashed them into the World Trade Centers were bombing the same America that my grandmother with her innocent, sixth grade education, whose only method of birth control was the rhythm/pull out method is the same America as my angsty, graduate program, Generation Y with our vaginal ring BC which makes the female’s menstrual cycle optional. In other words, in the age of the meme machine, the only thing that divides our issues is that our medias have gotten more complex.
The fact that everyone in the play “[worships] the all-powerful God of Seeds!”[5] makes the point that everyone within the play has the same God when you come down to it. The Gods, great in number, worshipped by Occident, are not without their theological problems—i.e. with the “cruelest sacrifice:/ two thousand gods are satisfied,/but human blood must be the price”—but the whole practice of Zeal and Religion of forcing their beliefs upon Occident and America is imposition of the rankest sort and reminds the contemporary reading of African colonialism (AC). Like the twentieth century phenomenon of AC, when colonization came to the Americas it started out as a force to be ignored. After all, the people who lived in these lands were many and the colonizers were few. But they came in in greater numbers and their technologies had their advantages.
Because this is an allegory, the fact that Religion actually antagonizes Zeal, asking how he can “tolerate [the]… Idolatry”[6] of the people they happen upon, it is difficult to see the Church here in a positive way. Yet at the end of the drama everyone sings and is happy in way that is pretty creepy since the manipulative practices of both Religion and Zeal destroy the culture that it imposed itself on in the first place. While constantly professing peaceful resolution and mercy, Religion lets Zeal first break these people after reason fails and then after they have been conquered, Religion goes about reasoning again. After being forced to bow down to “boom-sticks” and men on horseback that are referred to as “Centaurs”[7], I suppose Religion’s original offer doesn’t seem too bad considering the alternative: death. So when Religion says to Zeal “allowing her to live/ is witness to my clemency,”[8] she is really taking part in the same kind of systematized control that Christianity has a long enduring reputation for. However, SJ is a nun and is a part of that system, which in part explains the happy ending. The fact that she is both a colonizer and among the colonized makes her both critical of Christianity and a part of it: thus she writes about the way Christianity came to the Americas negatively but stresses that its results of it have been positive.
When reading SJ in 2008, it is almost impossible not to think of the African fiction stuff—that has been so articulate and eye opening and interesting and depressing and cool since Things Fall Apart and so many more that it is probably better to just take my word for it—since many of the same issues facing the African continent since at least British imperialism have come about , are the same things that SJ writes about several hundred years before anyone even heard the phrase “blood diamonds” or anything like that. When you think about it, isn’t it the same? When cultures clash, the results are often conformity at the price of both blood and the loss of identity. SJ knows this, the Church knows this, indigenous people figure this out, and the modern reader knows this. With such a dark history it has become increasingly harder for people to rally around the Roman Catholic Church if not the entire Christian faith which has serious complications for postmodernity.
[1] If this comparison survives the final cut, considering the issue of length here, the less said the better, maybe, except it should be known that the two writers make so many references to the process of writing as a craft and are so eerily similar in the way they say it that it is hard to decipher who specifically writes what. To be frank, while reading both at the same time it’s almost impossible for me to separate the two, which maybe you have to be studying them simultaneously to see. Ok, the heck with it, here is a particularly relevant example from SJ to illustrate the similarity from page 11 when she talks about how she, being called to write in order to defend herself, has not the desire to triumph: “If, then, I err, I suffer neither blame nor discredit: I suffer no blame, as I have no obligation; no discredit, as I have no possibility of triumphing—and no one is obliged to do the impossible.” And just one random example here from Barth on page 39 of LF in his story “Autobiography” when the narrator contemplates giving up the story (thus life) and says “May the end come quietly, then, without my knowing it. In the course of any breath. In the heart of any word. This one. This one.” The point here is that in that same tone/voice, both narrators are pushed to write not by their own hands but those of other people.
[2] “Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz,” p. 11.
[3] “Response…,” p. 23.
[4] “Response…, p. 15.
[5] Loa for the Auto Sacramental, p. 197.
[6] Loa…, p. 201.
[7] Loa…, p. 213.
[8] Loa…, p. 215.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Community Spirits: Living Buddha, Living Christ Review
Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, in his work Living Buddha, Living Christ bridges the teachings of two of the worlds most popular and peaceful religions. With the Buddha and Christ as his spiritual guides, Hanh illustrates how Christians and Buddhists can learn from their founders that will improve and inspiring human lives the world over. In this powerful work, Hahn brings the reader to the realization that not only do these faiths share the same goal, at the core of human existence, we all do.
As Hahn makes clear, at some base level, all of existence shares in the same “body of God,” also referred to as “the body of ultimate reality,” (31). In this way, every life is connected as an extension of the spirit flowing through us all. The hobby of the Dali Llama proves to be a good of metaphor of how the community is one interconnected being that shares the same ultimate fate. Timepieces made up of gears and springs and many other parts perform together to move the hands of the clock. If a gear breaks or spring comes loose, the timepiece no longer works. Similarly, communities of people assign certain tasks to individuals who provide a service for that community. For Hahn, the teachings of the Buddha and Christ serve to enlighten the people of the world to the fact that the things that make up the university are all within the same community.
All Christians, Buddhists, and people the world over as an interconnected entity should recognize that “every act is linked with the whole humankind and the whole cosmos,” (106). However, because we delude ourselves in insisting on our individuality while ignoring the nature of reality, people the world over experience pain and suffering. Seeing ourselves as individuals, we take sides that are often based on self-interest because we “misunderstand the will of God,” (80). Many religious people throughout the world see themselves as having a superior belief system making a true interfaith dialogue impossible. In insisting on words and concepts, people miss what is truly important insight into the nature of reality” and “a way of responding to [that] reality,” (55).
Having the ability to choose where we place true meaning usually leads to a path of least resistance because implementing a practice that requires a change of the heart and the way we think makes us complacent and causes us to suffer. Jesus spoke of this in his warning “where your treasure is, there will be your heart also,” (Luke 12:34) while Buddhism teaches that our attachments to things is the root of all our suffering. This makes what we choose to worship, that which we find of most importance, of the utmost importance. If one is constantly striving for wealth or power, this person will never have enough; beauty or intellect are also no better choices since both fade as time goes by. People grasp onto these things because they fail to truly experience. Always putting off our spiritual happiness for transitory delusions causes a failure to realize that “we are already in paradise,” (19).
Paradise, as Hahn explains, is found in this world that is filled with the Holy Spirit. To understand or experience that spirit is to be truly alive. This spirit is what makes all things equal in the eyes of Mother Nature and what makes all things resemble God. True understanding of this concept cannot be done purely by intellect; “it must be experiential” as well in the form of “prayer, contemplation, and meditation,” (112). Once action is taken to awake to this realization and “we become truly aware of our hearts, we feel comfort and release right away,” (18). This must take place in order to become compassionate souls willing and able to produce real change for a better, happier existence for all transient beings. In order to make the world a peaceful and merciful place to live, our hearts must first become peaceful and merciful. For Hahn, this is an essential ingredient to a formula for progress. Like the gears of a clock, we are parts of a larger whole, and like the gears, if we are not each working to move forward, movement stops.
Mindfulness, the term Hahn gives to this state of inner peace, is living the examples of both Christ and Buddha which is an extraordinarily hard thing to do. Liberating ourselves from a deep self-centeredness is to resist the default way most people live their entire lives. The example Hahn gives to illustrate the concept of this kind of enlightenment is that of a wave. Waves crest and fall as a part of the fluid body of water that cannot separate itself from the sea that enables its existence. It must discover and then remind it self “I am water.” By way of this example, Hahn’s argument is at its most lucid, which forces the reader to spend time intensely reflecting on and search the obvious realities that over intellectualizing has kept us from being truly alive. What concealed truth have we overlooked, what great, infinite reality in plain sight has been lost, in what ways are we imprisoned without even realizing it? To be mindful, on must ask these questions, because the truth is, oftentimes the most significant, visible components of life are the hardest to see and realize. Becoming aware of the universal oneness takes cognitive effort to achieve and discipline to sustain. But this is true experience.
In unconsciously going through the motions of a seemingly meaningless existence, one is a lonely slave to the self and unable to experience the Holy Spirit. Attentiveness to our ability to exercise control over where we place meaning will free us of repulsive, closed-minded certainties that cause our suffering. Being completely conscious through the examples of Christ and Buddha in mindfulness allows us to see all experience meaningful and sacred in focusing our energy on improving life before death. The disregard for the gift of life and domain over the world is perpetuated because the consequences of humankind’s selfish, wasteful neglect of natural resources is probably wrecking the climate to a point where reconstruction will be impossible. Viewing the world through our own set of lenses, policies are determined by immediate, selfish priorities.
In exhibiting tolerance of diverse beliefs, we accept the differences in the ways we construct meaning from our experiences instead of insisting that our one interpretation is the truest thing in the universe while the other is false or unsound. When tolerance does not take place, the unexplainable, deep down light inside all of us is obscured and progress is thwarted. As part of a universal community, everyone is connected “to the causes of our suffering” and implicated to “find ways out,” (114). For this quest to bear fruit, ecumenical dialogue and peaceful, noble intentions are absolutely necessary. I agree full fledged with Hahn’s faith that we have the power to perform such a righteous work since “understanding and love are values that transcend all dogma,” (198).
As Hahn makes clear, at some base level, all of existence shares in the same “body of God,” also referred to as “the body of ultimate reality,” (31). In this way, every life is connected as an extension of the spirit flowing through us all. The hobby of the Dali Llama proves to be a good of metaphor of how the community is one interconnected being that shares the same ultimate fate. Timepieces made up of gears and springs and many other parts perform together to move the hands of the clock. If a gear breaks or spring comes loose, the timepiece no longer works. Similarly, communities of people assign certain tasks to individuals who provide a service for that community. For Hahn, the teachings of the Buddha and Christ serve to enlighten the people of the world to the fact that the things that make up the university are all within the same community.
All Christians, Buddhists, and people the world over as an interconnected entity should recognize that “every act is linked with the whole humankind and the whole cosmos,” (106). However, because we delude ourselves in insisting on our individuality while ignoring the nature of reality, people the world over experience pain and suffering. Seeing ourselves as individuals, we take sides that are often based on self-interest because we “misunderstand the will of God,” (80). Many religious people throughout the world see themselves as having a superior belief system making a true interfaith dialogue impossible. In insisting on words and concepts, people miss what is truly important insight into the nature of reality” and “a way of responding to [that] reality,” (55).
Having the ability to choose where we place true meaning usually leads to a path of least resistance because implementing a practice that requires a change of the heart and the way we think makes us complacent and causes us to suffer. Jesus spoke of this in his warning “where your treasure is, there will be your heart also,” (Luke 12:34) while Buddhism teaches that our attachments to things is the root of all our suffering. This makes what we choose to worship, that which we find of most importance, of the utmost importance. If one is constantly striving for wealth or power, this person will never have enough; beauty or intellect are also no better choices since both fade as time goes by. People grasp onto these things because they fail to truly experience. Always putting off our spiritual happiness for transitory delusions causes a failure to realize that “we are already in paradise,” (19).
Paradise, as Hahn explains, is found in this world that is filled with the Holy Spirit. To understand or experience that spirit is to be truly alive. This spirit is what makes all things equal in the eyes of Mother Nature and what makes all things resemble God. True understanding of this concept cannot be done purely by intellect; “it must be experiential” as well in the form of “prayer, contemplation, and meditation,” (112). Once action is taken to awake to this realization and “we become truly aware of our hearts, we feel comfort and release right away,” (18). This must take place in order to become compassionate souls willing and able to produce real change for a better, happier existence for all transient beings. In order to make the world a peaceful and merciful place to live, our hearts must first become peaceful and merciful. For Hahn, this is an essential ingredient to a formula for progress. Like the gears of a clock, we are parts of a larger whole, and like the gears, if we are not each working to move forward, movement stops.
Mindfulness, the term Hahn gives to this state of inner peace, is living the examples of both Christ and Buddha which is an extraordinarily hard thing to do. Liberating ourselves from a deep self-centeredness is to resist the default way most people live their entire lives. The example Hahn gives to illustrate the concept of this kind of enlightenment is that of a wave. Waves crest and fall as a part of the fluid body of water that cannot separate itself from the sea that enables its existence. It must discover and then remind it self “I am water.” By way of this example, Hahn’s argument is at its most lucid, which forces the reader to spend time intensely reflecting on and search the obvious realities that over intellectualizing has kept us from being truly alive. What concealed truth have we overlooked, what great, infinite reality in plain sight has been lost, in what ways are we imprisoned without even realizing it? To be mindful, on must ask these questions, because the truth is, oftentimes the most significant, visible components of life are the hardest to see and realize. Becoming aware of the universal oneness takes cognitive effort to achieve and discipline to sustain. But this is true experience.
In unconsciously going through the motions of a seemingly meaningless existence, one is a lonely slave to the self and unable to experience the Holy Spirit. Attentiveness to our ability to exercise control over where we place meaning will free us of repulsive, closed-minded certainties that cause our suffering. Being completely conscious through the examples of Christ and Buddha in mindfulness allows us to see all experience meaningful and sacred in focusing our energy on improving life before death. The disregard for the gift of life and domain over the world is perpetuated because the consequences of humankind’s selfish, wasteful neglect of natural resources is probably wrecking the climate to a point where reconstruction will be impossible. Viewing the world through our own set of lenses, policies are determined by immediate, selfish priorities.
In exhibiting tolerance of diverse beliefs, we accept the differences in the ways we construct meaning from our experiences instead of insisting that our one interpretation is the truest thing in the universe while the other is false or unsound. When tolerance does not take place, the unexplainable, deep down light inside all of us is obscured and progress is thwarted. As part of a universal community, everyone is connected “to the causes of our suffering” and implicated to “find ways out,” (114). For this quest to bear fruit, ecumenical dialogue and peaceful, noble intentions are absolutely necessary. I agree full fledged with Hahn’s faith that we have the power to perform such a righteous work since “understanding and love are values that transcend all dogma,” (198).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)