Covid meditation: Episode 4: Patience!

1. Patience in Art

One afternoon, before Covid-19 upended everything, I was driving home, and stopped at a light near my house. I had my right turn signal on; in Maryland, it is legal to make a right turn on red. Except in this case: there was a sign on the traffic light clearly marked No Turn On Red. The car behind me began to honk, and honk--and honk. I didn't move, and he didn't stop honking. Road rage, I thought, and, I admit  it, I felt scared. When the light finally changed, I made the right turn, while he honked  a few more times, as he whizzed on straight ahead, to let me know how much I had angered him.

Has that ever happened to you?

On another occasion, while driving on a highway, I witnessed a sports car weave in and out of lanes at high speed, like a hapless hare pursued by a bobcat. Why is the driver--most probably a he--risking his life and ours? Getting home a few minutes early so he can catch the beginning of his favorite show? Unlikely, since these days most shows are streamed. Rushing to get to point B from point A to taste a delicious samosa freshly prepared by his Indian wife? Unlikely; even if this unlikely pair were likely, she probably would be on the way home--at a more reasonable speed--from work as well. Speeding because he has an anxious foot on the pedal and a mind flailing about like a rabid bat? Speeding for no other reason than no reason at all? Likely, alas! indeed.

Why are we so impatient?

Our age sometimes has been referred to as "The Age of Anxiety." It is difficult to imagine anxiety without impatience. "The Age of Impatience," is therefore a synonym for our age; both adjectives apply to our impatience- and anxiety-provoking times, characterized as having more burning questions than soothing answers; as having more intractable problems than tractable solutions; as having more intangible woes, and fewer solid consolations.

It wasn't always thus. In the past, before electricity, people followed circadian rhythms, resting when it got dark and rising with the sun, rather than subjecting themselves and others to the unearthly rhythms of a Mexican jumping bean.

Patience was once considered to be one of seven traditional virtues; people were once actually expected to have the patience of a saint. Patience helped one endure difficult times; patience helped us be satisfied with inner light until sorrow's outer darkness dissipated.

One of my favorite statements regarding patience comes form Proverbs 14:29: The patient man shows much good sense, while a quick-tempered man displays folly at its height.

Our impatient age has much to learn from the much more patient past. In the sixteenth century, the Italian master Georgio Vasari painted The Allegory of Patience, which is now on display (when Covid-19 cases diminish, permitting its reopening) at the National Gallery in Washington D.C.)

The woman is chained to a rock; she patiently waits for the water to corrode the chain so she can break free. She looks down at her bound limb with an expression of supreme patience, her body conveys the peace of her mind; not a trace of tension anywhere.

Yes, she's going to have to wait a long time; and that's precisely the point.

2. Patience in Literature

There are undoubtedly many examples of patience in literature; I will list and briefly analyze two of my favorites.  The first is "On his Blindness," by John Milton.

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Master, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
"Does God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

One of the finest sonnets in the English language. Rarely does one come across a poem where technique and content are so seamlessly fused. It is one of the profoundest poems as well--The wisdom of acceptance, the lack of which in modern culture often wreaks havoc, resulting  in frenzy and despair.

Next to the sublime last line, my favorite is, "Does God exact day-labour, light denied?" The protagonist expects great things from himself, and is perhaps close to despair from his inability to accomplish great things. (The metaphor for  this inability is blindness, but many other "defects" can be substituted.) An example; the composer Salieri in Schaffer's play, Amadeus, who wantS to serve God with great works of art, but lacks the ability to do so; how unfair it is that the capricious Mozart is endowed with talent in abundance!)

Salieri murmurs a lot in the play, but the protagonist of this poem, a man of faith, will not. Patience comes in the form of accepting life as it is, not as one's fantasy demands. Replace "God" with "life" and this line applies as deeply to modern secularists. If you don't accept the Book of Life's minute entry that describes yourself, too bad. To try and replace it with a phrase such as, "I am a very stable genius," when you're anything but, is the height of folly.  Sadness turns into joy, however, when the Book of Life is accepted as a whole. Once (at least relatively) free from the ego, one delights in everything: one's mind, one's neighbors, one's world.

The exquisite last line is a good way to segue to the second poem, In honour of St. Alphonsus Rodriquez Laybrother of the Society of Jesus, by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth bears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

(After teaching a course on Hopkins, I wrote an essay for the students which can be found at the following address: https://thomasdorsett.blogspot.com/2017/10/st-afphonsusrodriquez-alias-gerard.html) What follows is a quote from that article:

Alfonso Rodriquez (1532-1617) was the son of a wool merchant. When his father died when Alfonso was 14, the latter took over the business, but was unsuccessful. The future saint married, at the age of 16, a peasant woman and had three children. When he became a widower with two surviving children, he began to be increasingly devout, which in this case included severe austerities. When his last child died, he sought to enter a religious order. He was not accepted by the Jesuits to be trained as a priest, since he had little education...Eventually, he was accepted by the Jesuits as a lay brother. He was soon transferred to the Jesuit college in Majorca, where he served as a doorkeeper, or hall porter, for 46 years.

The inner struggles of an ordinary man, (in Rodriguez's case they were considerable), do not make the news, they are, according to Hopkins, newsworthy, nevertheless. They do not escape the merciful eye of God; God hews mountains, yes, but he also veins violets. He helped overcome hardships and daily struggles of a man whom we might designate today as a manic-depressive. Yet Rodriguez accepted his lot and performed a function commensurate with his abilities for 46 years--a prodigious example of patience. His humility, serenity, and affability made him, well, saintly. His is an example of patience in enduring his Cross without complaint.

These two examples of patience fit together nicely. The first is an example of a great man, the second, and example of a humble one. Transcendent patience, however, applies to both.

3. Patience in Music: Geduld! Geduld!

In the early 60's, I bought a recording of the St. Matthew Passion conducted by Karl Richter. The recording dated from 1958. Richter favored much slower tempos than are usual today; the emotional intensity of the performance, which I listened to countless times, had a very deep impression on me. I remember calling the figured bass in the astounding opening chorus the "sore-tooth bass" for it pounded home man's inhumanity to man, an impression which is still vivid after all these years.

My brother was affected as well. One the choruses, "O Jesu, was hast du begangen" became the first line (in English, "O Jesus, what crime have you committed?") of one of his first poems.

Years later, around 1975, after I received a fatal diagnosis at Columbia Presbyterian, (which proved not to be so bad--I'm still here), I walked home, nearly 100 blocks, muttering to myself, "Selbst das Wenige, was sie haben, selbst das wird ihnen genommen"--the Biblical, "even the little they have will be taken from them." I walked through dangerous neighborhoods, and on at least one occasion, fearlessly walked through a gang of young men, all the while mumbling those words; they cleared a path before me, an apparent madman. (Later, this reminded me of  George Fox, who,  in 165o, in a fit of madness, took off his shoes before the town of Lichfield and subsequently marched through its streets screaming, "Woe to the inhabitants of bloody Lichfield!" Later, he gave the lame excuse that he did it because someone was martyred there in the 3rd century.)

When I got home on West 59th Street, I played the Richter recording in its entirety.

Bach's St. Matthew Passion has remained among my favorite classical pieces to this day. I am writing this because of a wonderful tenor aria in the piece, called Geduld! Geduld! (Patience! Patience!). The background to this aria is as follows: Jesus is on trial. The High Priest testifies against him that Jesus blasphemously claimed to reconstruct the Temple, if destroyed, in three days. Jesus remains silent. The tenor aria is aimed at Bach's contemporaries: "Patience! Patience! When false tongues injure,/ if I suffer, though innocent,/ insult and mockery,/God will avenge the innocence of my heart." To remain patient, to keep silent when mocked--our twitter culture could learn a lot from that!

Here is my favorite recording of the piece, by the late, great Fritz Wunderlich:

4. Patience in Buddhism

Buddhism stresses not sweating the small stuff, to be patient with others and with oneself, and to concentrate on the big picture, peace. The impetus for writing this article is the occasional impatience I feel during meditation. Meditation can transform the personality in a very positive sense, but it takes time. It is working, but sometimes I am almost as impatient as the driver on the highway. Negative karma, after all, has been building up over a lifetimes, and, if you believe in reincarnation, for a long time prior to birth. There are no easy fixes in the universe, and Buddhism, albeit an answer, is not an easy answer. Without patience, little progress will be made. 

In Buddhism, there is an attainable state called that of the "stream-winner" (sotapanna). The stream-winner has gained insight into the truths of Buddhism. Enlightenment is inevitable; backtracking is now impossible. But Enlightenment can take up to 17 lives at this point! Talk about the necessity of being patient!

I have written about what I consider to be a "Wizard of Id" a disembodied critic inside the head. We peek behind the curtain, and realize that the Wizard is a sham. Yet it keeps on criticizing,  and, in weaker moments before Enlightenment, which are many, we still believe that nattering sham. We need to keep patient and to keep meditating, focusing on truths! This is why I find the lyrics to Bach's aria so apt. "The false tongues" I interpret as being one's false inner critics.

Mortal creatures, however, cannot have infinite patience. Hillel's question, "If not now, when" pierces the heart. We must do our best patiently. We must have the wisdom to know what doing our best means. Buddhism, as well as other systems, provides an adequate path. Great art has a lot to tell us about how to walk this path, with humility and with patience. Vesari, Milton, Hopkins and Bach--and, of course, Buddha--remember their examples when you lose patience with yourself, or with others. Smile, laugh, and then, patiently move on.

Even Weinbergs Nod

Steven Weinberg is arguably the preeminent theoretical physicist alive today, and that, in the present age of remarkable progress in that field, says a lot. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow, for their work which unites two of the four elementary forces in the universe, the electromagnatic and the weak forces, a significant step on the theoretical journey toward a theory of everything.

(The unification of these two forces with the strong force is beyond experimental capabilities at the present time, and the unification of these three with gravity is probably beyond earth-bound experimentation forever. The only theoretical framework that unites all four is the so-called M-theory, which, for the time being, remains exactly that, a theory).

Steven Weinberg, to put it mildly, is no fool. Thomas Dorsett, however, occasionally comes close to that appellation; not very bright, he knows his place. It would be presumptuous of him to criticize Weinberg, so he requests his inner core, Ramanatom, the, figuratively speaking, impersonal personal inner core of us all, to speak whole truths to half-truths.

The title of this essay, Even Weinbergs Nod, is based on the ancient proverb, Even Homer Nods, meaning even geniuses goof up occasionally. Ramanatom will now discuss two famous philosophical quotes of Weinberg that, according to Dorsett as well as to HimHerIt, are light-years off the mark.

First Quote: The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless...The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

Did you really expect to see a Smiley Face beyond Arcturus, Mr. Weinberg?

The quote is from Steven Weinberg's book, The First Three Minutes, A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe, which first appeared in 1977 and was updated in 1993. (Books on physics need to be updated frequently, since there is so much progress being made. Most valuable popular books on cosmology antedate the discovery of the Higgs boson and the graviton, for instance). It is a fascinating book, one that Thomas Dorsett read with interest a few years after it appeared. (It has remained in his basement for many, many minutes--a long time, at least in comparison with a human lifespan--and will be dusted off and reread, if found).

It is difficult to argue with a genius. Ramanatom, however, effortlessly brushes the first quote into the dustpan of inner history.

Repeatedly trying to find something that's not there while time after time expecting a different result is farcical indeed. The Kingdom of God is within you, said a wise man long ago. He was right. Meaning is not found in outer space, but in inner space.

The condign response to the unfathomable is awe, wonder, fascination, hardly pointless reactions. It is indeed wondrous that the cosmos is so vast; Dorsett has read that if the visible universe were reduced to the size of an atom, the actual universe would be larger than the visible one!  Does that make consciousness any less wondrous? I think not, for consciousness is primary. As the great sage Ramana Maharshi pointed out, consciousness plus science equals science; stones, as far as we can tell, are oblivious to the latest finding from the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

Yes, the universe is large, but consciousness, which contains science and is more than science, is in a very real sense even larger. The near infinities of science fit nicely, as it were, between the ears. It fits nowhere else.

Searching for meaning in the cosmos is like the proverbial thirsty fish searching for water while swimming in it.

Tragedy is indeed part of the human condition; the best tragedies, however, are also cathartic. Physics is what lifts human life above the level of farce? No, Mr. Weinberg, life even without physics is no farce.

You are not going to find a version of the Nicomachean Ethics by analyzing nebulae. You will find the source of morality in only one place: in naught "but (in the) internal difference, where the meanings are," (Emily Dickinson).

Transcending--while not destroying--the phenomenal (s)elf by acts of love of wisdom is not pointless. An unobserved electron is pointless, not you or I.

Second Quote: Frederick Douglas told in his Narrative how  his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil, but for good people to do evil--that takes religion.

Ramanatom is going to let Thomas Dorsett field this one, it's that easy.

This quote might seem reasonable to some, but it is very wrong, just as the Newtonian belief, which still seems correct to some,  that inches and seconds are absolutes, the relativity of which has been proven beyond doubt by Einstein.

Replace "religion" with fanaticism, fascism, greed, hate, or delusion and the quote would make sense. Need I mention the horrors caused by Mao and Stalin, who were both avowed atheists? What about Hitler? He was ready to hang priests who disobeyed him; far worse was his persecution of the Jews, hardly the policy of a man who was even remotely religious.

Perhaps Mr. Weinberg is confusing religion with various types of fundamentalism. As a Jew, for instance, I would hardly recommend a fellow Jew to request a cup of sugar from an Ayatollah Khomeini. Any version of 'hate your neighbor and idolize yourself' is hardly what religion is about.

What is it about? According to Max Müller, the great philologist of the nineteenth century, the root of religion, the Latin religio, means nothing more than "reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety." Close, but I think the Latin comes closer: religio, to reconnect, seems to me to denote a desire to reconnect with truth. This truth, the source of morality and of deepening wonder--Gandhi referred to it as satyagraha while Martin Luther King referred to it as soul force--can be viewed theistically or non-theistically. Something found inside oneself can be designated as one's God, for as Paul Tillich taught us, God is whatever one considers to be one's ultimate concern. I must admit I am fonder of the Eastern approach, where one finds a great Silence within oneself, a Silence that bids us to accept life as it is, to accept ourselves as we are, and to strive to do good, and has no need of talk about God. 

I also contend that after the Enlightenment, it is impossible for a reasonable person to interpret any example of mythology, however revered, literally. No, I do not find the universe smiling at us in the form, as it were, of a twinkling star; we should be beyond that by now.

One of the best formulations of the essence of religion was stated long ago by Hillel: don't do anything to another that you wouldn't like to be done to yourself. This is the essence of the Torah; all the rest is commentary.

Did  Frederick Douglas's master follow this form of the Golden Rule? The command to love our neighbor as ourselves is found in the Torah as well as in the Old Testament. The talmudic interpretation is very clear: included within the definition of "neighbor" is the stranger, the foreigner. The command is thus beyond race, gender or status; it transcends all these categories. Did Mark Twain's mother follow the advice of truth, heard by her inner ears, despite what her outer ears heard in church?

What about Gandhi, what about Martin Luther King, what about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel--What about good God- or good Silence-fearing people everywhere? You really nodded on this one Mr. Weinberg!

That crimes against humanity can be done in the name of religion is, of course, beyond all doubt. But as Calvin taught, the mind is a factory of idols. The degree that greed, hate and delusion can trump their opposites while even sometimes intensifying the self-righteousness of the greedy, hateful and delusioned is equally beyond all doubt. 

I am a poet. When I think of poetry I think of Shakespeare, not of Crabs Johnson, the fictive poet laureate of Ellicott City, Maryland. Similarly, when I think of religion, I think of truly great religious men and women, who reconnected with truth and acted accordingly, not of Pat Robinson nor of Franklin Graham, who, it seems to me, worship delusion rather than truth. If, among a hundred poems, one is found to be outstanding, shouldn't one focus on that?

As I was once fond of saying, a good guru is hard to find, you always get the other kind. Does that mean there are no teachers of wisdom? That humankind has sunk so far into the valley of death does not mean that one can't look up and start climbing.

The misuse of religion, like the misuse of politics, does not mean that politics and religion are not essential or basically good. We cannot get by without them. When rooted in a form of the Golden Rule, both of these human endeavors--they are basically one--are what (almost) guarantees that the long arc of history tends toward righteousness.

You certainly deserved the Nobel Prize for physics, Mr. Weinberg. My response to your achievements in that field is a very humble Wow! My response to your views on religion, is, however, Oh, come now! You should know better.

I repeat: you really nodded on this one, Mr. Weinberg!

Buddha and Trump

I remember a song from the 1970s, composed in response to the unrest in Ireland which dominated much of the news at that time.  The words of the song went something like this: "You'd never think they'd go together, but they certainly do/the combination of English muffins and Irish stew".  Writing about Trump and Buddha, an even more unlikely combination, I came up with new words to the song, during an aural daydream, as follows: "You'd never think they'd go together, and they certainly don't/egotism's dirty puddles and wisdom's font."

Poison

In a recent article, I described what I call "The Pathological Pyramid".  We have an incompetent president at the top; for several layers below we find legislators who are afraid to contravene or even criticize him, lest they be voted out of office, The bulk of the pyramid is the many hard rocks that form its base, Trump's base, the many who still support him.  How can so many Americans continue to support a man, who, upon minimal rational reflection, is so glaringly unable to be president of our nation?  Why this is so and how Buddhist thought can provide a contrast and point in the direction of a solution to our current political malaise is the subject of this essay.

A relative of mine asked me some years ago why so many Romans accepted Christianity before Emperor Constantine forced them to in the fourth century. Several centuries before, many Romans were attracted to Judaism.  The Roman gods no longer seemed pertinent.  One such seeker approached Hillel at around the time of Jesus's birth and asked him  to relate the essence of Judaism while standing on one leg.  (The Roman apparently wasn't interested in such things as dietary laws, nor, presumably, did he look forward to being circumsised; he wanted only the yolk, as it were, not the rest of the egg).  Hillel famously replied, "That which is hateful to you do not do to another.  This is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn".

Approximately a century later, the essence of Christianity was summarized in the Saint John Gospel: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but receive eternal life."

That's why so many Romans converted.  They wanted certainty and they (seemingly) got it.  Hillel's path required that those who walk upon it have to be more or less self-directed.  The Romans who converted wanted the certainty of knowing Jesus was walking beside them and would not only guide them on their way, but forgive them when they went astray.  The wanted a god who, figuratively and literally, delivered.

Thus, Christianity appealed to many who wanted an absolute answer without having to rigorously examine whether that answer is, in fact, absolute.  As Tertullian. a third century Christian theologian wrote, "Credo quia absurdum est,"  "I believe because it is absurd".

Trump's supporters are similar.  (A striking difference is,  of course, that Jesus was a very wise man). They have accepted Trump as their savior, as it were, and ignore all evidence that indicates that they have made a poor choice.  Trump is a good businessman, and we need a good businessman in the White House.  We need to shake things up, and Trump is the man to do it.  Trump is for the little man; Trump will drain the swamp. etc.  None of these statements bears scrutiny.  Trump is the choice of those who will not think.

The Buddhist Antidote

One of the earliest symbols of Buddhism is a footprint.  This sums up the essence of this Eastern way of removing suffering: Buddhism is a path.  There is no catechism to guide you, much less a good shepherd guiding his sheep form afar; there are only guidelines on experientially proven methods for spiritual progress.  Buddha's last words of advice were "to work out your salvation with diligence."  If one goes astray, there is no possibility of divine intervention to transport you back to the path.

The goal is to eliminate greed, hate, and delusion.  Walking down a path, one has to make choices on how to continue.  Perhaps the road les traveled is the one to take.  What if there were several such roads before one?  There is no sign that says "Follow Me".  If one has made a choice that proves to be wrong, one has to think of the reasons why this is so.  The path in question, which appears to lead nowhere, might be the right one, after all.  Should one continue for some time more and risk the possibility of having gone further astray?  Should one turn back?  One has to use Buddhist guidelines to come to a decision, a decision that might be wrong, but not irretrievably wrong.

This type of analytical thinking is too difficult for Trump supporters.  They do not analyze, they simply convince themselves that they are in the right.  They are on a stony path heading for an abyss, yet they assure themselves, perhaps to a bitter end, that they are on a red carpet heading for the New Jerusalem.

Their faith in Trump is alsolute and, like theistic faiths, absolutely unverifiable as well. 

Life is ambiguous and nobody has all the answers.  Just like Trump's ego, their faith is shaky; deep down they know they might not be right, and yet they cannot entertain the possibility that they might be wrong..  They therefore demonize those ho do not share there unnuanced views.  If you believe Trump is absolutely right, his opponents must be absolutely wrong.  Absolutely wrong, is, of course, another word for evil.  This is the source of the extreme partisanship of Trump's supporters.  The Emperor is wearing the finest silks--how dare you say he's a fat, old, naked charlatan?

For those who vehemently oppose Trump, one must not follow suit and demonize his supporters.  They are all human beings, let us not forget that. It is best not to get into heated arguments with Trump supporters; one should gently point out why you disagree, and if you're not getting anywhere, talk about something else. On the other hand, one should not avoid political discussion either, since our democracy is being threatened now perhaps as never before. Respectfully asserting that tax cuts for the wealthy will likely mean that we will not be able to fund infrastructure repairs, and will likely result in cuts to Social Security and to Medicare as well, two programs that are very popular among working-class voters. It is much more important to fight for our democracy by full involvement in the political process, and, in the long term, advocate for better education and less superficial entertainment. Everyone has a Christ within, everyone is a potential Buddha. No doubts about that!  Translating that into action for society and for ourselves is undoubtedly extremely difficult, given the degree that greed, hate, and delusion are present in the world.  But one has to begin or continue the good path beginning right where one is; there is no other choice.

First Addendum: What the Buddha Said

The following is taken from the Sutta-Nipata.  These excerpts provide a vivid analysis of why that toxic partisanship is not the way to make progress!

Enquirer:         Fixed in their pet beliefs,
                        these diverse wranglers bawl--
                        "Hold this, and truth is yours,
                         Reject it and you're lost".

                          Thus they contend and dub
                          opponents "dolts" and "fools".
                          Which in the lot is right,
                          When all as experts pose?

Buddha:             Well, if dissent denotes
                           a "fool" and stupid "dolt"
                           then all are fools and dolts
                          --for each has his own view.

                          I count not that as true                      
                          which those affirm who call
                          each other "fools"--They call
                          each other so, because
                          each deems his own view "Truth".,,

                         Delight in their own views
                         Make sectaries assert 
                         that all who disagree
                         miss Purity and err.
                         
                         These divers sectaries...
                         claim Purity as theirs
                         alone, not found elsewhere.
                         Whom should the sturdiest
                         dare to call a "fool,"
                         when this invites the like
                         retort upon himself


Second Addendum

Trump supporter: 

"If Jesus Christ gets down off the cross and told  me that Trump is with Russia, I would tell him, hold on a second, I have to check with the president if it is  true.  That is how confident I feel in the president".                   

Trump:          

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and                                 shoot somebody and still not lose voters".

Democracy:  

Yikes!

Self, Love, and Wisdom: Three Interconnected Spheres

My wife recently had a serious bike accident.  She has since recovered, but she easily could have died. Such an event knocks the nonsense out of you.  I have been postponing writing this essay; I feared I was not up to the task.  That may be, but now more than ever do I understand Hillel’s famous words; If not now, when?

Three Interconnected Spheres: Self, Love, and Wisdom

1. The Self           

If I am not for myself, who is for me? –Hillel

In my long career as a pediatrician, I have seen many examples of troubled children who grew up to be troubled adults.  Houses without a firm foundation are at the mercy of unstable earth below them; if they don’t stand on solid ground, existence for their inhabitants is precarious. For human beings, a firm foundation refers to support and love during the crucial years of development.  A strong sense of self is not self-caused.

In many instances, children whom I have treated came from broken homes with little social support.  I can recall many examples of insufficient parental involvement, e.g. single mothers who slept late and expected their children to go to elementary school by themselves.  What should have been homes, were merely houses; meals entailed giving a child money to eat at McDonald’s alone. 

I am not blaming anyone, I am merely pointing out a psychological law: a healthy sense of self is necessary in order to lead a good life; without its formation in childhood, however, serious life-long problems arise.  Despite having endured a difficult childhood, even for that individual all is not lost: love that comes later can help a seriously psychologically injured person recover.  But in almost all cases, that person will never remove all the scars, and some of the injuries will remain as open wounds; we can presume that one would have had a much happier life if one had not been injured in the first place. 

Humans can hate, humans can love, but nature is always indifferent. If one falls into a ditch and cannot get out, gravity certainly will never ease up to enable the person to float to safety. Yes, a human being can lower a ladder, descend, and help the fallen stranger to get back into the world.  But that person has troubles of his own; that person has fallen into his own ditch, as it were, and is busy trying to extricate himself from his shallow pit and has little energy left over to help his neighbor out of a deeper one. 

I remember attending a Unitarian service in New York City over forty years ago.  Shortly after the service began, a seriously troubled man entered the church; he was poorly dressed, unkempt and probably homeless.  As is the case with many homeless people, he also appeared to have mental problems.  He walked up and down the central aisle without saying a word, obviously seeking help. Although he appeared to be desperate, nobody, including myself,  reached out to him in any way.  After a while, realizing that he would find as much support from us as he would from stones, he left.  The minister continued the service without ever having acknowledged the poor man, as if he had been merely static which we good Christians had tuned out.

“Nobody want you when you’re down and out” is as true now as when Bessie Smith sang the song so beautifully in 1929.  Another old saying is, "God helps people who help themselves".  
Self-reliance is certainly a good thing,  but this bromide is often used as a shaming insult to ditch dwellers.  If one lacks the wherewithal to help oneself; if one is lost in the labyrinth of an ill mind; if one lacks a functioning self,  God, that is nature, will provide no ladder to extricate the fallen individual from his prison.  Passers-by will pass by, self-absorbed with their own problems and cognizant of the enormous and time-consuming effort it would take to rescue one who has sunk so low; to assuage their conscience, many will demonize the fallen and attribute their descent to a free-will choice of depravity.  

We human beings must  be reasonably “self-fit” before we can fit in well with other selves. An important aspect of being self-fit is the development of empathy, including empathy for those who are quite different from ourselves.  Empathy for others as well as for oneself is more readily developed when one becomes more aware of the miracle of consciousness, the highest good in the universe that we know.  The realization which naturally follows,0 that one image of God, as it were, is not better than another, certainly fosters empathy.  Society demands that we must judge another’s behavior when that behavior is harmful to others; judging the person, however, is never warranted, despite the fact that this is the norm.  We don’t even know ourselves well enough to judge ourselves, much less the workings of a different mind raised in a different environment. 

Just because a person is different from us doesn’t make that person inferior or superior.  As Walt Whitman wrote, “Nor do I criticize the turtle for not being something else.”

You did not make the weed.  You did not make the redwood.  Nor did you create yourself.  The proper response to all three is awe.  Only one who has developed both self-respect and respect for others can realize, despite greed, despite hate, despite delusion, this essential inner fact: we are all intrinsically good; we are all who knows how? amazingly alive. The reality of a balanced self-hood should make us humble; if we had a different brain chemistry and a different environment, we would be a different person.  We are who we are largely due to factors beyond our control; once we realize this, how can we ever be in a position to judge others?

In summary.  to do well for ourselves and for others requires a firm foundation, a healthy sense of self.

2. Love              

If I am only for myself, what am I?

                                                           --Hillel

In nature, inanimate entities such as stones are perfect; seen from above with a transcendent eye, self is perfect as well. Seen with a human eye, however, things are different: from a humane perspective, much of our behavior is far from perfect, and, when it inflicts harm on others, even evil. No doubt about it, a cosmic eye sees perfection everywhere; from an earthly perspective, however—and we all live on earth—a self without love is, to put it mildly, deficient.

“Love, then do what you want,” ("Ama, et quod vis fac"), is an adage Augustine famously wrote well over a thousand years ago.  It is generally true, but Leviticus 18:19 is more accurate: love your neighbor as yourself.  If love is not grounded in Leviticus 18:19, love can lead one astray, as we shall see.  The biblical injunction implies a combination of a beloved self and a loving self.  As we have seen in the previous section, without a functioning sense of self, love is well-nigh impossible.  Note that the commandment does not enjoin loving your neighbor more than yourself but as yourself. 

Jesus of Nazareth taught that one should always “turn the other cheek”.  If this commandment is followed literally, one would not survive for long.  “He who lives by the sword, shall die by the sword.”  Simone Weil agreed, but added that he who puts down the sword, dies on the Cross. The middle-road interpretation of Leviticus 18:19 includes justification for legitimate self-defense.

One is perhaps closer to the truth when one interprets Jesus’s statement as a deliberate exaggeration to reduce  greed, hate, and pride.  If it is interpreted literally, it is not in accord with the Golden Rule.  Taken figuratively, however, Jesus’s advice enjoins us to significantly reduce the desire for revenge and to significantly increase the practice of love and wisdom, much-needed advice indeed.

Of the three rungs discussed in this essay, self, love, and wisdom, love is by far the one most sung about and written about.  Love is indeed a powerful emotion, but is more than a matter of feeling; it is a course of action that often requires hard work.

All of us at least on occasion worship an idol that tells us, “You’re good and they’re bad”--“they” being members of another race, class, or nationality, all neighbors whom we refuse to accept as equals.

Love must begin locally—with oneself and one’s family—If it stops there and doesn’t radiate to include others, and doesn’t continue to radiate to include the whole world, it is a poor version of love indeed.  The wonderful Native American saying that teaches us not to judge another until we walk a mile in that person’s moccasins, illustrates an essential combination of love and wisdom, that, unfortunately, is not the way of the world.

A recent example of a lapse of judgment, a failure to internalize the aforementioned Native American adage, is a recent quote by the retired neurosurgeon, Dr. Benjamin Carson.  He said that if you took everything away from a successful man and plopped him down in a ghetto, he would be back on his feet in no time.  Similarly, if you took a "typical” person from a poor neighborhood and provide him with a lot of material support, he would never get to Gold Town—his attitude would confine him to Lead Town forever.

No, Dr. Carson; you rose from the ghetto, but you had a lot of advantages: intelligence, and a mother who insisted that you work hard. One isn’t even in a position to judge oneself, much less the effect that a specific environment and a specific internal environment has had in making a person who he currently is. 

Dr. Carson is also forgetting an essential fact: if the advantaged had practiced Lev. 18:19, there wouldn’t be any ghettos in the first place.

One of the greatest moral errors is the haughtiness that arises when one compares one’s own success to the perceived failure of others.  In Dr. Carson’s case, the faulty reasoning is as follows: ‘I succeeded and came from the same neighborhood.  The reason why many have failed is simply due to laziness, etc.'  Judge not lest ye be judged, taught a wise man whom Dr. Carson worships, but not always follows.

Love is a noble emotion, yet it can lead one astray when combined with ignorance and egotism.  One of my favorite examples of this is a poem by Baldur von Shirach, the notorious Nazi of Vienna who “loved” Hitler.  (Granted that some Nazis were far worse than he, but being a rotten piece of fruit among even more rotten pieces of fruit is hardly complimentary).  He wrote a love poem to Hitler, called “Er,” (“He”) extolling in a dreadfully bad poem the virtues of a dreadfully bad man.

Love of oneself is good; love of one’s family is good as well.  But if that love is not extended to include the stranger—as Hitler’s certainly wasn’t—that love can cause a great deal of harm. When Lev. 18:19 is put into practice, however, the individual is transformed, and if enough people follow suit, society will be redeemed.  Who has ever known the meaning of life without experiencing love for oneself, one’s family and love for one’s neighbor?

We now have the image of the second sphere, love, and the combination of the two, self and love.

                 

We should strive to live in the area that is a combination of each.  For self without love is selfish; for love without a well-developed self is like sowing the seeds of happiness among thistles. We still have an essential sphere to add, however.

3. Wisdom        

                                    --Tat Tvam Asi, Thou art that

                                               --The Upanishads

In general, Western religions emphasize love, while Eastern religions emphasize wisdom.  Meditation, perfected in Buddhism, is a way to transcend oneself by objectifying personal thoughts.  Meditation thus fosters wisdom, the realization that everyone and everything are connected.

This is well expressed by a poem by Michael Ende, which I translated form the German several years ago, “The Actual Apple”.

A writer and a  realist, well known

for his literality,

searched for something found at home

to delineate from A to Z:

an apple, for instance, an organic bit,

and all that goes along with it.

He described the core, the pulp, the skin,

the stem, the leaves, the branch, the tree,

the roots, the ground the roots grew in,

and Newton's Law of Gravity--

But that wasn't the actual apple at all;

he must include spring, summer, winter, and fall,

the sun and the moon and the stars--

He filled enough paper to paper a wall,

yet the ending seemed farther than quasars:

for actually he belonged there too,

this man of prose who hated verse,

and Adam and Eve and I and you

and God and the whole universe--

Finally he became fully aware

that apples are just indescribably there;

neither he nor another shall ever define

something so common, something so sublime--

He lifts his apple to the light;

smiling now, he takes a bite.

Love and wisdom can and should work together, as they do in the Great Commandment.When we love our neighbor as ourselves, our self-orientation can no longer be selfish—We learn that the center of creation is outside ourselves—in others—as well as inside ourselves.  Just as the center of the Big Bang is everywhere, the center of an inner universe is everywhere as well. We need to realize, if we are to lead full and just lives, that everyone is central to the universe.

Wisdom provides guidance for love that has gone astray.  Let us return to Baldur von Shirach’s love poem to Hitler  Hitler’s violent antisemitism is incompatible with wisdom, the knowledge that everything is connected, and that every human being deserves respect. In the eye of wisdom, the worth of a Jew is not in any way less than the worth of a Christian.  Love that only extends to one’s group--and in Hitler’s case, that was a perverse love as well—is like comparing the light of family hearth to the light of the sun.

I do not claim that love or wisdom has a supernatural origin; they originated via evolutionary adaptation to the environment.  Both of these virtues helped the individual and the group survive—and be happy.  I am not claiming that wisdom and love are merely biologically derived, either.  One cannot deny that both feel divine.

Now we can present the venn diagram that represents the best way to live:

It is in the area that is common to all three circles where self is not selfish; where love is never foolish and where wisdom is never dry.

When we go astray, the union of love, wisdom, and self acts like a magnet to draw us back to where we should be.  For instance, if we love our family but disparage those of another culture or ethnic origin, our diagram elicits the following questions: Is that love?  Is that wise?  Is that all we are? Similarly, if we enrich ourselves while depredating the environment, our diagram reveals that we have gone beyond where we should be at all times. 

Now we can return to Augustine's famous quote: love, then do what you want.  This, as we now can see, is valid only when that love resides in the common area of self, love, and wisdom.

I invite you to internalize this diagram and use it to monitor your behavior as well as the the behavior of others.  Should a wall be built between Mexico and the United States?  If we are speaking from the joint area of the three circles, the answer is obvious.  Should we accept capital punishment; should we break up families by deporting a mother or father who has lived here for a long time; should we continue to jail people for marijuana possession; are we doing enough to decrease racism and to foster peace, etc.  The questions are endless.  If we live where we should be, however, the answer to every one of them, however, is the same.

I would be pleased to receive comments from those who live where they should be, as well as from those who are moving, or at least desire to move, in the right direction.

If not now, when?

Quotes That Help Us Understand Our Troubled Times, Part ll

The reader is advised to read part l of this essay, "Quotes to Help Us Understand These Troubling Times, Part l," before proceeding to this essay, the final part of a two-part series.  The first part is available on the internet or by googling my blog, thomasdorsett.blogspot.com.

On separate occasions, four quotes came to my mind, pertinent to the current political difficulties of the United Sates.  I discuss each of them in the context of current events.   They are, however, quotes that have universal applications; one is invited to apply them to personal as well as to societal histories, both past and present.

The first one, discussed in Part l, is a ray of light that scatters darkness: “What hands build, hands can tear down.”  This quote, from Schiller’s William Tell gives us hope, especially when interpreted figuratively: bad constructs can be deconstructed; bad situations can be reversed when good people join hands and change things for the better. The second quote is not optimistic, but it is a fact that must be faced, lest we become ineffective and naive.

Quote 2:  “Was ist das, was in uns lügt, hurt, stiehlt und mordet?” “What is that within us which lies, whores, steals and murders?”

This quote comes from the German playwright Georg Büchner, who died at the age of 23 from meningitis, barely older than Keats was when he died.  Büchner remains famous principally for two powerful plays, Danton’s Death (1835) and Woyzek (1837), the later the basis of a great twentieth century opera by Alban Berg.  Büchner was especially sensitive to the abuses of the poor and powerless by the rich and powerful. 

This quote, however, is spoken by a doomed aristocrat, Danton.  In the play, his thirst for justice led him to become an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution. As Robespierre’s Reign of Terror progressed,  he became disillusioned by all the slaughter.  His opposition to Robespierre resulted in his execution.

He utters the quote at a time when he is confronted by horrors that followed the revolution.

Danton’s words are a good counterweight to the words of Tell.  The play was written only a little over three decades after Schiller’s, but the knowledge of the good and evil that exists in all of us gives Büchner’s play a much more modern, and less naive view of the world. 

The question which the quote asks is an existential one.  Notice that the playwright states that evil lies in us, and thus cannot be explained away by a bad upbringing or by political oppression.  In Buddhism, the so-called three hindrances, greed, hate, and delusion are like three arrows which have wounded us. It doesn’t matter if a bad upbringing was the archer who wounded with arrow A; it doesn’t matter whether oppression was the archer who wounded with  arrow B; it doesn’t matter whether a bad education was the archer who wounded with arrow C—the important thing is to remove the arrows and heal.

How do we accomplish that?  By individual and collective acts of love and wisdom, of course—but I’m no Schiller, I know well that this is never easy.

We need to temper Schillerian optimism with Büchnerian realism.  When we realize defects lie in all of us, we realize that we may be part of the problem.  Our consciences must decide, however, which course of action is more informed by love and wisdom rather that by the vices Danton lists.  Sometimes the decision is rather easy…

…as in Trump’s case.  He lies all the time; he whores in the sense that he’ll say or even do anything to receive adulation from his followers; he steals in the sense that he has cheated employees many times--that’s three out of four.  And he just might murder our democracy and undermine everything that does make America great. Why this man, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and, having become the most powerful person in the world, is still controlled by his needy inner toddler remains an existential mystery.  I’m quite sure that both Schiller and Büchner would have agreed: Trump is unfit to be president.

Quote 3: “Edel sei der Mensch/Hilfreich und gut!"  "Every human being should be noble,/helpful and good!”

These are the first two lines of a famous poem, "The Divine," by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), widely acknowledged to be the greatest of all German authors. “Edel,” the first word, “Noble,” is followed by “sei”, the imperative form of the verb “to be”.  But this isn’t simply a command to be good.  “Sei” is also third-person subjunctive, denoting possibility.  Therefore, the line should be translated as “May every human being be noble,” or “Every human being should be noble.”

The conditional sense here is crucial.  If Goethe used the third person present indicative, the line would read, “Every human being is noble," etc.” Goethe was well aware not only of the good in humanity, but of the moral failings and even depravity in human beings as well.  He was not naive; we, with the horrors of the past century fresh in our minds, have even less reason to be naive than he did.

An outstanding example of the unwarranted replacement of “is” with “should be” is President Obama, especially during his first term.  He seemed really to have believed that all he needed to do was to propose good legislation, after which both sides of the aisle would, after debate, come up with something workable, possibly something even better.  

At the beginning of his first term, Democrats had the majority of both houses of Congress.   President Obama could have easily passed a better version of the Affordable Care Act, maybe one characterized by a single payer, a.k.a. “Medicare for all.”  (I assure you that we physicians—my wife and I are both pediatricians—are plagued by all the insurances we have to deal with,  which have to be billed separately—and, most annoying of all, have regulations that differ from one to the other.)

But no—the president wanted a consensus.  He believed that all decent politicians would see the necessity of health insurance, and would work together to assure the passage of a law that both parties could live with.  We know how that turned out.

President Obama should have studied Foucault, who asserted that the thirst for power is at the basis of  a good deal of human activity—in the case of politicians, it is paramount. A synonym for power, is, of course, money.  Republicans correctly saw that a health care law would demand increased taxes on the wealthy, and, as representatives of the wealthy, any health care law would therefore be intolerable.

                     President Obama, 2008 and 2016

Republican lies and propaganda did an excellent job in convincing many ordinary citizens that the A.C.A. was indeed, in Trump’s words, “a disaster.”  They promise to replace it with something better. The wealthy would receive a windfall from fewer taxes with the law’s repeal—Do you think that any plan they would devise would include increasing taxes to pay for it?  Hardly. Their plan, once they have one, would have to be far worse than the present one.

President Obama had good ideas, and nearly always came up with excellent policy proposals. He did in fact accomplish much—it remains to be seen how much of his legacy will be destroyed before the vast majority of Trump supporters realize they’ve been had.  President Obama was, however, terrible regarding “selling” his ideas to the public and explaining the policies he initiated.  He hated back-slapping, deal-making and coercion; the “schmoozing” which is an integral part of politics.  If he couldn’t do it, he should have assured that others did it for him.

This is but one example of President Obama’s placing too much trust in the general decency of human beings.  Relatively speaking, President Obama was and is a noble man: relatively speaking, many of those who opposed him were and are anything but. 

He found out rather late the difference between “is” and “should be” regarding every human being, whose lack of nobility, lack of helpfulness, and lack of goodness is so easily brought about by money and the thirst for power.

Obama was too much like Schiller and too little like Büchner.  If he were more aware of the degree to which greed, hate and delusion drives politics, many more of his “yes we cans” would have been accomplished.  

It is useless to wear ballet shoes when your opponents are wearing combat boots; it is folly to play yes-we-can with marauding hordes of hardliners who continue to attack, wound, and occupy gullible minds with salvo after salvo of noxious memes.

Despite his attempts to remain a gentleman in a snake pit, I still think he was a good president.  A noble man--and yet, as Büchner, and even Schiller would have agreed, nobody’s perfect.

Final Quote: “Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle”  “Everyone for himself, and God against all”

Although it reads like a proverb, this adage was actually written by the German director, Werner Herzog; it was the original title of his 1974 film, “The Enigma of Kasper Hauser.”  It has nothing to do with the belief in an angry God, who punishes humankind for its sins.  A better word for “God” here would be “karma.”

My interpretation of the quote follows.  Hillel’s three questions are pertinent here.  “If I’m not for myself, who will be for me?  If I’m only for myself, what am I?  If not now, when?”  Herzog’s adage indicates what happens to us if we don’t get beyond the first question— a selfish society inevitably deteriorates.  People do indeed get the government they deserve.

Many of us are far too involved with ourselves.  Many of us know more about popular entertainers than we do about the great teachers of mankind, including the founding fathers of the United States. Many of us are too politically unaware.  Many of us are too self-absorbed to fight for what is right.

Every society is responsible for its trumps.  If we ignore the necessity of a non-violent struggle for a more just society, we will all suffer.

I recently wrote a poem about the unspeakable tortures suffered by a great man, Edmund Campion, in the sixteenth century. Campion was falsely accused of treason. The poem ends as follows:

Who would dare repeat such heinous crimes?

Who’d could ever reinstate torture?  Vladimir

Putin?  The President of the United States.

Put down your cellphone.  Nobody’s safe.



Nobody is safe. Democracy and freedom should never be taken for granted!  The four quotes discussed in this essay contain both encouragements and warnings.  They can help us temper excessive optimism by viewing it with the keen eye of realism, and can help us temper excessive realism with indomitable, realistic optimism. If understood, pondered upon, and--most important-- incorporated into our actions, they can indeed help in a time of trouble --that is, now.