Recently--you've all heard about it by now--somebody at NBC edited out the words "under God, indivisible," from the Pledge of Allegiance, as recited by a group of kids and broadcasted before a golf tournament. It unleashed a firestorm of complaints. I watched--briefly, I can't take it for long--a right-wing talk show, during which the Godless left were accused of attempting to undermine our country's hallowed traditions. They were hysterical. Remove these three words, they seemed to say, and the republic is doomed. They depicted those who were responsible as dangerous subversives, and demanded that they be fired.
There are many examples of the current poisonous political climate; this is only one of them. I am sometimes amused by the nonsense, but am also saddened--after all, though some of the right-wing contumely is so far-out as to be weirdly funny, one mustn't forget that the joke is on all of us.
I would like to discuss the incident and the reaction to it in a rational way. First a little background.
The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by a man named Bellamy, who considered himself a socialist. (He toyed with the idea of adding the word "equality," but this was shot down by lawmakers since they strongly believed, well, that some races were a lot more equal than others. Incidentally, Bellamy had the children--the Pledge first appeared in a youth magazine--give a salute almost identical to the Nazi salute, which of course came into existence much later. President Roosevelt put an end to that.) There were three later changes to the Pledge. One changed "my flag" to "the flag of the United States." The second change was the addition of "of America" The now controversial phrase--it didn't result in any significant opposition at the time of its adoption-- "under God," was only added in 1954, to contrast a God-fearing America with godless communism. So for the first half of its life, the Pledge had no mention of God. (Was God discovred in 1954?)
It is interesting that the Protestant minister who lobbied Eisenhower to include this phrase reasoned that "America's greatness lies not in its arms, but in its spirit."
Now it's time to state my opinion. You might have guessed by now, if you don't know me already, that I am, for want of a better word, a liberal. You might also assume that I am just as adamant and even irrational about the Establishment Clause as liberals are wont. I would like to make it clear, I am for the strict separation of church and state. But does "under God" violate this? I think not.
I am a poet. We are known to apostrophize the moon, etc--why can't we--and everyone else--apostrophize what's best in all of us? There is no better word than "God" for this, as Martin Buber pointed out long ago. It does not necessarily mean a separate, interventionist, even a sometimes angry being called God--this deity Blake referred to as Nobodaddy, a term of which I am very fond. (To me, as a believer, if a rather heterodox one, the term goes much deeper than mere apostrophe and cannot be put into words--but can and should be put into deeds.)
My argument boils down to this: "Under God" means that there is something higher than the nation. "Under God" means that if people worship greed and power and abuse justice, they stand under judgement and risk their own true happiness, not to mention the happiness of those less powerful and "succesful" as they. It is interesting that the minister who advocated the addition of the word God thought that one nation, indivisible, under God was a fait accompli, while it is actually only a promise; something to live up to, not possess.
Mentioning God in the Pledge puts much-needed brakes on nationalism. It indicates that nationalism is good provided that one goes beyond nationalism; mere nationalism, as we know, can cause great harm. Without God, which can be viewed at the very least as the thirst for justice within us, nationalism can become demonic.
I am not passionate about this issue; I know that, whether the word is there or not, there will be little or no effect on behavior. A good example of this is the demand of some who consider themselves God's defenders that the hapless editor or editors be fired. Is this compassion? Is this love? An even sadder example: the mention of God in the Pledge hasn't stopped bombs from being dropped on people since 1954.
One might object that many use the Pledge in an idolatrous way, even with, or even more so with, the mention of God. American exceptionalism often entails viewing God as a sort of cosmic Uncle Sam, which borders on blasphemy. The world and all countries thereof, mine included, is in a fallen state; things of the spirit are very often interpreted in an idolatrous way. (A good example: Islamic terrorists often shout "God is great" before a heinous act. But that doesn't mean that God isn't great, nor does it signify that the phrase is unable to encourage the good to do better.) I hope this makes clear that statements that reflect the best within us are admittedly readily misused but are not idolatrous per se. To those who know that the love of God must be realized through wisdom and deeds of love for all beings, the Pledge can be an inspiration for just action. I therefore don't believe it should be tampered with.
For God's sake, leave it in! But if most want to remove it, remove it. But please, stop yaking and fighting about it. If you're not religious--or poetic--eschew that word, if you believe you must. The important thing is to act; to work together to bring about a world in accord with, arguably, the greatest commandment attributed to God. And we all know which one that is.
6.21.2011
6.16.2011
"HAS ANYONE HERE COMPLETELY TRANSCENDED EGO?"
1.
That was the question that was recently asked during a philosophy discussion group. OK, to be honest, the name of the group--it has been in existence for decades--is "Modern Mystics." A student of arts and music but also a student of science as well, I am uncomfortable with the title. I don't know what a mystic is and am not too interested in finding out; if ours is a mystic group, however, we are a strange group of mystics indeed. I belong to two other book discussion groups and two music performance groups, and I must say that without a doubt the mystic one is the most cantankerous group of them all. (All of us, especially the men, have been at fault to varying degrees.) One of the members, a good friend, referred to us in his Christmas card poem (in the shape of a holiday tree) as "a bunch of mystic buffs who levitate through fisticuffs."
I am not sure what the motive was of the member who asked the ego-transcendence question. He is a good man, who does a lot of good things--we are all quite fond of him--but he is arguably the most belligerent member of the group. The question might have been rhetorical, but more likely was asked as a trap--if someone answered that he or she has transcended the ego, I am sure the questioner would retort with something like the Dana Carvey Church Lady's famous ego-smashing comment, "Isn't that special?"
We all kept quiet, having no desire to be levitated through fisticuffs. But I thought about the question, and decided to answer it in this essay. It contains information that I hope will be of use to young and old alike.
Before we discuss ego-transcendence, we must first address what the ego is. I have written at length in previous essays about the origin of the ego, so I will only give a brief summary here. In short, the ego is a fantastic software program during the playing of which the self forgets that it is "merely" pixels among pixels on a screen. When, during the course of evolution, our bodies became sufficiently complex, we began to think of ourselves as more and more separate from our environment. Self-consciousness, a chance byproduct of our genes, provided an enormous improvement in our ability to adapt to the environment, and has been passed on and gradually improved upon by our genes ever since. As most scientists would agree, there is no separation between ourselves and the environment. It is obvious that a sense of, and a belief in, individuality is necessary for our survival as a species. And since there are so many competing individuals, without a considerable degree of "me first" behavior there would soon be no "me" left to seek out the "you." Simone Weil put it beautifully: Those who live by the sword die by the sword; but those who put it down die on the Cross." A good way for a group to disappear is to really turn the other cheek and not just talk about it.
But wait a minute. We are fascinating creations of our genes, not the genes themselves. Good people always appreciate those who act relatively selflessly, and as George Price's scientific formula indicates, there is undoubtedly a genetic component to altruism. And what if someone acts so strongly for the common good as to risk his/her own life? Fowler, in his great book, "Five Stages of Faith," reserves the fifth stage for those who understand religion symbolically, but are not only tolerant as in stage four but are readily willing to face death for a great cause. I cannot imagine a good human being who is not awed by the sacrifice of self for the greater good as exemplified by the likes of Martin Luther King and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
However impressed we are by them, we are not able to concede that they have completely transcended their ego. They had weaknesses--a fact, I think, that makes them all the more inspiring.
Has anyone in the history of humanity transcended ego completely? Such is attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, Gautama Siddhartha (the Buddha) and various sages such as India's great twentieth century sage, Ramana Maharshi. Maybe they did, I'm not sure; the records which attribute this transcendence to them were written by followers and are full of historical inaccuracies. (Less so in the case of Ramana Maharshi, since he is roughly a contemporary, and I must say, he seems to have come very close to the transcendent ideal.) My belief is that utter perfection--that is what complete self-transcendence would entail-- is a goal which the line of humanity, as it were, can in some cases come very close to, but never touch. Certainly Jesus of Nazareth is miles ahead of the farthest point on the path than you or I will reach in this lifetime! When individuals like Ramana Maharshi get so close to ego-transcendence, our minds might be unable to appreciate the small distance that remains between the actual and the ideal, and thus convince ourselves that the goal has been reached. This gives those who are so inclined an object of worship. That is how I see it.
Since perfection, if it ever occurs, is rarer than the geniuses we know and love, we get an idea of how inappropriate the question, the title of this essay, is. If our friend had asked, "Has anyone here written better operas than Mozart?" or "Does anyone here write better than Shakespeare?," everyone would realize the fatuousness of the question. The likelihood of a positive--and accurate--response among us to these two questions, though extremely low, is much more likely than a positive--and accurate--response to the ego question, which is virtually impossible.
2.
Although utter transcendence is impossible for the vast majority of us, it can, as I have discussed, be approached. All of us, in fact, could and should come a lot closer to this ideal. We can readily imagine what this ideal would entail as well as we are able to imagine a perfect sphere. So it would help to discuss what mystics have called "self-realization" which I will do now. For the self-realized, there is no separation--the game (lila) of self is what Hindus call maya, illusion. Having gone beyond duality, the 'person" at this stage identifies with the world, nay, has become the whole universe. He or she will indeed turn the other cheek, much as a tree will "turn the other leaf," as it were, to a voracious caterpillar. Now we can appreciate the ridiculousness of the transcendence question. Since the sage has become the world, it is just as likely that another component of the world, say, a stone, would reply. Stones are silent, God is silent, sages are silent.
The question is asked by one individual of another. Having transcended individuality, how could a sage respond? Even we, wordlings that we are, know better. It would be like someone (consciousness) in a house (the body) looking at the world through an open window with utter delight. A neighbor in the next house asks, "Have you overcome the ego?" Saying yes would be like closing the window, getting on a footstool in a rather dark room and telling one's dusky reflection in the mirror, "Oh, I knew it! You're a sage." It is ridiculous enough if a young person exhibits such vanity; in an old person such adolescent self-absorption is truly farcical.
As an older person, I think I am much more practical and much more realistic. It is very difficult to maintain a sense of false pride when one realizes that next year--who knows? one might become an urnfull of ash. My advice to the young and the old is this: forget about idle questions. You will never make progress through chatter. Develop a balanced sense of self--don't ever accept anyone's attempt to make you feel inferior since the aggressor is trying to aggrandize himself and thus find relief from his own sense of inferiority. Develop wisdom and practice compassion. The way to do this was beautifully expressed by Freud: the most important things in life are work and love. Stop all the ego talk! Work as hard as you can at something that you are interested in and in which you, with much effort, can and will develop a just sense of pride. (Make sure it's something that at the very least does no harm.) And love. And love. And love!
That was the question that was recently asked during a philosophy discussion group. OK, to be honest, the name of the group--it has been in existence for decades--is "Modern Mystics." A student of arts and music but also a student of science as well, I am uncomfortable with the title. I don't know what a mystic is and am not too interested in finding out; if ours is a mystic group, however, we are a strange group of mystics indeed. I belong to two other book discussion groups and two music performance groups, and I must say that without a doubt the mystic one is the most cantankerous group of them all. (All of us, especially the men, have been at fault to varying degrees.) One of the members, a good friend, referred to us in his Christmas card poem (in the shape of a holiday tree) as "a bunch of mystic buffs who levitate through fisticuffs."
I am not sure what the motive was of the member who asked the ego-transcendence question. He is a good man, who does a lot of good things--we are all quite fond of him--but he is arguably the most belligerent member of the group. The question might have been rhetorical, but more likely was asked as a trap--if someone answered that he or she has transcended the ego, I am sure the questioner would retort with something like the Dana Carvey Church Lady's famous ego-smashing comment, "Isn't that special?"
We all kept quiet, having no desire to be levitated through fisticuffs. But I thought about the question, and decided to answer it in this essay. It contains information that I hope will be of use to young and old alike.
Before we discuss ego-transcendence, we must first address what the ego is. I have written at length in previous essays about the origin of the ego, so I will only give a brief summary here. In short, the ego is a fantastic software program during the playing of which the self forgets that it is "merely" pixels among pixels on a screen. When, during the course of evolution, our bodies became sufficiently complex, we began to think of ourselves as more and more separate from our environment. Self-consciousness, a chance byproduct of our genes, provided an enormous improvement in our ability to adapt to the environment, and has been passed on and gradually improved upon by our genes ever since. As most scientists would agree, there is no separation between ourselves and the environment. It is obvious that a sense of, and a belief in, individuality is necessary for our survival as a species. And since there are so many competing individuals, without a considerable degree of "me first" behavior there would soon be no "me" left to seek out the "you." Simone Weil put it beautifully: Those who live by the sword die by the sword; but those who put it down die on the Cross." A good way for a group to disappear is to really turn the other cheek and not just talk about it.
But wait a minute. We are fascinating creations of our genes, not the genes themselves. Good people always appreciate those who act relatively selflessly, and as George Price's scientific formula indicates, there is undoubtedly a genetic component to altruism. And what if someone acts so strongly for the common good as to risk his/her own life? Fowler, in his great book, "Five Stages of Faith," reserves the fifth stage for those who understand religion symbolically, but are not only tolerant as in stage four but are readily willing to face death for a great cause. I cannot imagine a good human being who is not awed by the sacrifice of self for the greater good as exemplified by the likes of Martin Luther King and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
However impressed we are by them, we are not able to concede that they have completely transcended their ego. They had weaknesses--a fact, I think, that makes them all the more inspiring.
Has anyone in the history of humanity transcended ego completely? Such is attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, Gautama Siddhartha (the Buddha) and various sages such as India's great twentieth century sage, Ramana Maharshi. Maybe they did, I'm not sure; the records which attribute this transcendence to them were written by followers and are full of historical inaccuracies. (Less so in the case of Ramana Maharshi, since he is roughly a contemporary, and I must say, he seems to have come very close to the transcendent ideal.) My belief is that utter perfection--that is what complete self-transcendence would entail-- is a goal which the line of humanity, as it were, can in some cases come very close to, but never touch. Certainly Jesus of Nazareth is miles ahead of the farthest point on the path than you or I will reach in this lifetime! When individuals like Ramana Maharshi get so close to ego-transcendence, our minds might be unable to appreciate the small distance that remains between the actual and the ideal, and thus convince ourselves that the goal has been reached. This gives those who are so inclined an object of worship. That is how I see it.
Since perfection, if it ever occurs, is rarer than the geniuses we know and love, we get an idea of how inappropriate the question, the title of this essay, is. If our friend had asked, "Has anyone here written better operas than Mozart?" or "Does anyone here write better than Shakespeare?," everyone would realize the fatuousness of the question. The likelihood of a positive--and accurate--response among us to these two questions, though extremely low, is much more likely than a positive--and accurate--response to the ego question, which is virtually impossible.
2.
Although utter transcendence is impossible for the vast majority of us, it can, as I have discussed, be approached. All of us, in fact, could and should come a lot closer to this ideal. We can readily imagine what this ideal would entail as well as we are able to imagine a perfect sphere. So it would help to discuss what mystics have called "self-realization" which I will do now. For the self-realized, there is no separation--the game (lila) of self is what Hindus call maya, illusion. Having gone beyond duality, the 'person" at this stage identifies with the world, nay, has become the whole universe. He or she will indeed turn the other cheek, much as a tree will "turn the other leaf," as it were, to a voracious caterpillar. Now we can appreciate the ridiculousness of the transcendence question. Since the sage has become the world, it is just as likely that another component of the world, say, a stone, would reply. Stones are silent, God is silent, sages are silent.
The question is asked by one individual of another. Having transcended individuality, how could a sage respond? Even we, wordlings that we are, know better. It would be like someone (consciousness) in a house (the body) looking at the world through an open window with utter delight. A neighbor in the next house asks, "Have you overcome the ego?" Saying yes would be like closing the window, getting on a footstool in a rather dark room and telling one's dusky reflection in the mirror, "Oh, I knew it! You're a sage." It is ridiculous enough if a young person exhibits such vanity; in an old person such adolescent self-absorption is truly farcical.
As an older person, I think I am much more practical and much more realistic. It is very difficult to maintain a sense of false pride when one realizes that next year--who knows? one might become an urnfull of ash. My advice to the young and the old is this: forget about idle questions. You will never make progress through chatter. Develop a balanced sense of self--don't ever accept anyone's attempt to make you feel inferior since the aggressor is trying to aggrandize himself and thus find relief from his own sense of inferiority. Develop wisdom and practice compassion. The way to do this was beautifully expressed by Freud: the most important things in life are work and love. Stop all the ego talk! Work as hard as you can at something that you are interested in and in which you, with much effort, can and will develop a just sense of pride. (Make sure it's something that at the very least does no harm.) And love. And love. And love!
6.09.2011
SUFI WISDOM
1.
I've been reading a collection of Sufi sayings--I belong to a book club that reads such things on occasion--and have been favorably impressed. (The book is "Essential Sufism," edited by James Fadiman, HarperOne, 1997.) Many of the terse sayings are familiar to me, some are new. I would like to discuss one of them, which has gotten me thinking. And thinking. And thinking.
First a few words about Sufi sayings in general. They have been a source of wisdom for almost a thousand years. The roots are in Islam, but they go so deep that they reach an area of bedrock which is the foundation of the wisdom common to all cultures. They take up elements of this bedrock from the depths and bring it through the surface, into ordinary stems and leaves; truly extraordinary flowers are a frequent result. The basic tenet of Sufism--similar to the advaita school of Hinduism which has influenced it--is that once one transcends the ego, ecstasy--Oneness with God--is attained. The fact that this wisdom surrounds us like the air we breathe--we need only figure out who (or what?) is doing the breathing--is beautifully expressed by a saying of Kabir included in this anthology: "I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty."
Although the roots are multicultural, the flowers are definite products of Islamic soil--and I do mean this as a compliment. There is a tension, though, between faith in a Creator-God and the belief that All is One. I would like to illustrate this tension with two quotes from the book. One, by Sheikh Muzaffer, ends with the following: "Abraham said, 'My Lord is the one who changes things and brings them back. My Lord is the one behind all changes'." A theist of any culture would have no problem with this statement. But what can a theist make of the following: "The same eye which you see God is the same eye which God sees you?" The goal is absolute self-transcendence, but I enjoy how the Sufis play duality both ways. Sometimes they talk of an apparent God who intervenes. This makes sense to many and addresses the needs for the vast majority of humanity for which the ego is an insoluble enigma, resulting in a good deal of pain-and, it must be admitted, when things go right for a while, resulting in (temporary) joy, too. It seems to me that a sense of God and a sense of Ego developed at the same time, thousands and thousands of years ago. They go together, which means that when the ego is transcended, so is God. A Sufi philosopher once summed up the ultimately illusory nature of dichotomies by stating that free will exists on our relative, human plane, but not on the absolute, divine plane. This is, of course, in agreement with the view of most scientists. Separation is illusory. We and our entire world might indeed, according to the latest theories, only exist as holographic representation of information on the surface of a very distant sphere.
2.
Now let us introduce the saying, which is the subject of this essay. It is deceptively simple:
He who knows three things is saved from three things:
Who knows that the Creator made no mistakes at Creation is saved from petty fault finding.
Who knows that He made no favoritism in allotting fortune is saved from jealousy.
Who knows of what he is created is saved from pride.
--Ansari
Deceptively simple, no? If it sounds to you almost like a cliche, remember that a profound saying becomes a cliche only when spoken by someone who doesn't practice it. For instance, "Love your Neighbor" spoken by Leona Helmsley is a cliche; spoken by Martin Luther King it is an astonishing fact that we ignore at our peril.
Yes, the above is the Sufi saying that got me to think and think;
but first, as a student of wisdom traditions, I needed to translate this from theistic into secular terms. Thus translated, the maxim reads as follows:
He who knows three things is saved from three things:
Who knows that the universe follows inexorable laws, is saved from petty fault finding.
Inexorable laws are incompatible with favoritism; who realizes this is saved from jealousy.
Who knows of what he is made of is saved from pride.
Let's discuss the three parts. Regarding the first part, I am reminded of an incident about forty years ago. I was listening to Handel's marvelous oratorio--his last--Jephthah. At the end of the first part is one of the best choruses Handel ever wrote--and that is indeed saying something. The main words of the chorus is "Whatever is is right." I loved the music, but I was furious. So much suffering in the world, and there I was having a tough time of it, too. How can anyone ever believe that, in a world of rampant injustice, whatever is is right? Once again, we have the absolute plane in conflict with the relative plane of life as the ego experiences it. But when one realizes that inner laws, psychological laws, are just as inexorable as physical laws, one puts things into perspective. The universe is the way that it is, and we are the way that we are. Sure it is our nature to try to change things--it is a glorious part of our nature--but that has more to do with software "games" rather than hardware reality. What drives us to make things better, what drives us to make things worse? Our nature, not us; more correctly, nature alone. So the first step toward wisdom is accepting things the way they are. After this is done, there is no petty fault finding, no fault finding at all. What if we perceive our situation to be intolerable? This problem is answered by the second part of the saying.
Who knows that there is no favoritism is saved from jealousy, (better: envy). Envy is a very personal reaction, so let's discuss first the origin of the person. Life has been present on the planet for over three billion years; for all but a tiny fraction of that time, envy, to say the least, was not a problem. To be envious, matter first had to say "I." When and how did this occur? It might antedate humans, but certainly not our hominid ancestors. How did it occur? When nervous systems became more complex, the brain began to get more and more information from internal stimuli. We developed a very sophisticated system of proprioception, which made the organism more and more aware of its position in space. We began to store memories of what our senses presented, very extensive memories. Since nerves can exchange information with many other nerves, we began to think. At a critical point we became "aware" that we are separate from the environment, i.e. individuals. Remember this did not involve any decisions on our part. This "pseudo" separation was a great biological advantage that greatly increased our chances of survival--we could think, create, build--and destroy. Our consciousness is the product of our genes; since we became more adapted to our environment, our genes survived better--and this, from a Darwinian perspective, is what it is all about. Once we thought of ourselves as separate from the environment, we viewed the world as an extension of our selves--and thus were able to create God in our own image. But all this is a choiceless process of our adaptive genes--there is no favoritism here. (Luck and chance are our interpretations of an objective process.) Our sense of competition, will to power and will to love are all biological drives. But for those without power and love--or who imagine themselves so-are, without wisdom, in a very painful state. Jealousies arise--genes are selfish--that can destroy the object of jealousy or, more often, destroy the envious individual form the inside. It is indeed painful, but it helps a great deal when we know it is a natural process. But it also helps to know how we can transcend it--as Freud wonderfully put it, what really matters is work and love. The more we work at something worthwhile and the more we love, the more empowered we feel and the more envy dissipates. But we must remember that the latter is a normal process and not our fault. Not blaming ourselves for our negative emotions, such as jealousy, is an important first step toward wisdom. Once again, there is nothing but nature and her laws; there is no real reason to be jealous.
Let's finish with the last part of the maxim. What are we made of? Nietzsche wrote that God is dead, which many believe. But the soul--the personal self--must die when God as a factual King dies; as discussed before, the two go together. Most scientists do not believe that we are more than matter. Sure, our software is fantastic, but the programs are what Indians call maya. If the show we are watching is so richly complex that we think we are one of the characters of the very earthly play our software presents, this does not make that thought a fact. We should also recall that we are made of elements, and no atom that is within us is different from an atom of the same element that occurs on the outside. Once we realize that we are conscious vehicles created and driven by our genes, pride vanishes.
All this might sound a bit reductionist to you. But recall the purpose of Buddhist reductionism: Buddhists, Sufis, and others like them deconstuct the ego to become gloriously united with something that cannot be put into words, the very opposite of reductionism. If I am a reductionist, I am definitely one of the Buddhist--Hindu--Sufi sort.
What a profound Sufi saying this is! I hope it is making you think and think, too! I am reminded of a poem I wrote years ago, with which I will close:
STONE AND RIVER
Metaphors that help us live here
are chiefly two: stone and river.
Aware of change, afraid to be alone,
most opt for the permanence of stone.
"A boulder at the center reigns;
however fast the current, it remains;
countless unique pebbles at each side
retain their shapes, even if dislodged."
I, I, this is the language of rock.
But everything is swirl and flux:
despite appearance all is sea;
no Me. Fluid all reality.
Nothing to transcend our going?
Everything is water flowing?
Nothing but fate, nothing but chance,
nothing but change? And ecstasy: dance.
I've been reading a collection of Sufi sayings--I belong to a book club that reads such things on occasion--and have been favorably impressed. (The book is "Essential Sufism," edited by James Fadiman, HarperOne, 1997.) Many of the terse sayings are familiar to me, some are new. I would like to discuss one of them, which has gotten me thinking. And thinking. And thinking.
First a few words about Sufi sayings in general. They have been a source of wisdom for almost a thousand years. The roots are in Islam, but they go so deep that they reach an area of bedrock which is the foundation of the wisdom common to all cultures. They take up elements of this bedrock from the depths and bring it through the surface, into ordinary stems and leaves; truly extraordinary flowers are a frequent result. The basic tenet of Sufism--similar to the advaita school of Hinduism which has influenced it--is that once one transcends the ego, ecstasy--Oneness with God--is attained. The fact that this wisdom surrounds us like the air we breathe--we need only figure out who (or what?) is doing the breathing--is beautifully expressed by a saying of Kabir included in this anthology: "I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty."
Although the roots are multicultural, the flowers are definite products of Islamic soil--and I do mean this as a compliment. There is a tension, though, between faith in a Creator-God and the belief that All is One. I would like to illustrate this tension with two quotes from the book. One, by Sheikh Muzaffer, ends with the following: "Abraham said, 'My Lord is the one who changes things and brings them back. My Lord is the one behind all changes'." A theist of any culture would have no problem with this statement. But what can a theist make of the following: "The same eye which you see God is the same eye which God sees you?" The goal is absolute self-transcendence, but I enjoy how the Sufis play duality both ways. Sometimes they talk of an apparent God who intervenes. This makes sense to many and addresses the needs for the vast majority of humanity for which the ego is an insoluble enigma, resulting in a good deal of pain-and, it must be admitted, when things go right for a while, resulting in (temporary) joy, too. It seems to me that a sense of God and a sense of Ego developed at the same time, thousands and thousands of years ago. They go together, which means that when the ego is transcended, so is God. A Sufi philosopher once summed up the ultimately illusory nature of dichotomies by stating that free will exists on our relative, human plane, but not on the absolute, divine plane. This is, of course, in agreement with the view of most scientists. Separation is illusory. We and our entire world might indeed, according to the latest theories, only exist as holographic representation of information on the surface of a very distant sphere.
2.
Now let us introduce the saying, which is the subject of this essay. It is deceptively simple:
He who knows three things is saved from three things:
Who knows that the Creator made no mistakes at Creation is saved from petty fault finding.
Who knows that He made no favoritism in allotting fortune is saved from jealousy.
Who knows of what he is created is saved from pride.
--Ansari
Deceptively simple, no? If it sounds to you almost like a cliche, remember that a profound saying becomes a cliche only when spoken by someone who doesn't practice it. For instance, "Love your Neighbor" spoken by Leona Helmsley is a cliche; spoken by Martin Luther King it is an astonishing fact that we ignore at our peril.
Yes, the above is the Sufi saying that got me to think and think;
but first, as a student of wisdom traditions, I needed to translate this from theistic into secular terms. Thus translated, the maxim reads as follows:
He who knows three things is saved from three things:
Who knows that the universe follows inexorable laws, is saved from petty fault finding.
Inexorable laws are incompatible with favoritism; who realizes this is saved from jealousy.
Who knows of what he is made of is saved from pride.
Let's discuss the three parts. Regarding the first part, I am reminded of an incident about forty years ago. I was listening to Handel's marvelous oratorio--his last--Jephthah. At the end of the first part is one of the best choruses Handel ever wrote--and that is indeed saying something. The main words of the chorus is "Whatever is is right." I loved the music, but I was furious. So much suffering in the world, and there I was having a tough time of it, too. How can anyone ever believe that, in a world of rampant injustice, whatever is is right? Once again, we have the absolute plane in conflict with the relative plane of life as the ego experiences it. But when one realizes that inner laws, psychological laws, are just as inexorable as physical laws, one puts things into perspective. The universe is the way that it is, and we are the way that we are. Sure it is our nature to try to change things--it is a glorious part of our nature--but that has more to do with software "games" rather than hardware reality. What drives us to make things better, what drives us to make things worse? Our nature, not us; more correctly, nature alone. So the first step toward wisdom is accepting things the way they are. After this is done, there is no petty fault finding, no fault finding at all. What if we perceive our situation to be intolerable? This problem is answered by the second part of the saying.
Who knows that there is no favoritism is saved from jealousy, (better: envy). Envy is a very personal reaction, so let's discuss first the origin of the person. Life has been present on the planet for over three billion years; for all but a tiny fraction of that time, envy, to say the least, was not a problem. To be envious, matter first had to say "I." When and how did this occur? It might antedate humans, but certainly not our hominid ancestors. How did it occur? When nervous systems became more complex, the brain began to get more and more information from internal stimuli. We developed a very sophisticated system of proprioception, which made the organism more and more aware of its position in space. We began to store memories of what our senses presented, very extensive memories. Since nerves can exchange information with many other nerves, we began to think. At a critical point we became "aware" that we are separate from the environment, i.e. individuals. Remember this did not involve any decisions on our part. This "pseudo" separation was a great biological advantage that greatly increased our chances of survival--we could think, create, build--and destroy. Our consciousness is the product of our genes; since we became more adapted to our environment, our genes survived better--and this, from a Darwinian perspective, is what it is all about. Once we thought of ourselves as separate from the environment, we viewed the world as an extension of our selves--and thus were able to create God in our own image. But all this is a choiceless process of our adaptive genes--there is no favoritism here. (Luck and chance are our interpretations of an objective process.) Our sense of competition, will to power and will to love are all biological drives. But for those without power and love--or who imagine themselves so-are, without wisdom, in a very painful state. Jealousies arise--genes are selfish--that can destroy the object of jealousy or, more often, destroy the envious individual form the inside. It is indeed painful, but it helps a great deal when we know it is a natural process. But it also helps to know how we can transcend it--as Freud wonderfully put it, what really matters is work and love. The more we work at something worthwhile and the more we love, the more empowered we feel and the more envy dissipates. But we must remember that the latter is a normal process and not our fault. Not blaming ourselves for our negative emotions, such as jealousy, is an important first step toward wisdom. Once again, there is nothing but nature and her laws; there is no real reason to be jealous.
Let's finish with the last part of the maxim. What are we made of? Nietzsche wrote that God is dead, which many believe. But the soul--the personal self--must die when God as a factual King dies; as discussed before, the two go together. Most scientists do not believe that we are more than matter. Sure, our software is fantastic, but the programs are what Indians call maya. If the show we are watching is so richly complex that we think we are one of the characters of the very earthly play our software presents, this does not make that thought a fact. We should also recall that we are made of elements, and no atom that is within us is different from an atom of the same element that occurs on the outside. Once we realize that we are conscious vehicles created and driven by our genes, pride vanishes.
All this might sound a bit reductionist to you. But recall the purpose of Buddhist reductionism: Buddhists, Sufis, and others like them deconstuct the ego to become gloriously united with something that cannot be put into words, the very opposite of reductionism. If I am a reductionist, I am definitely one of the Buddhist--Hindu--Sufi sort.
What a profound Sufi saying this is! I hope it is making you think and think, too! I am reminded of a poem I wrote years ago, with which I will close:
STONE AND RIVER
Metaphors that help us live here
are chiefly two: stone and river.
Aware of change, afraid to be alone,
most opt for the permanence of stone.
"A boulder at the center reigns;
however fast the current, it remains;
countless unique pebbles at each side
retain their shapes, even if dislodged."
I, I, this is the language of rock.
But everything is swirl and flux:
despite appearance all is sea;
no Me. Fluid all reality.
Nothing to transcend our going?
Everything is water flowing?
Nothing but fate, nothing but chance,
nothing but change? And ecstasy: dance.
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