Phronema

A thought struck me yesterday – a frustrating day because I was unable to get away to read and write and think. It suddenly struck me that so many of us most of the time spend our lives doing frivolous and unimportant things. The train of thought began with noticing the seriousness of football players. People approach the World Cup, the World Series, Wimbledon as though they were events of supreme importance. Around the world there are daily dramas of the struggle for survival, against famine and hunger, against political oppression and discrimination of all kinds, against poverty, sickness and death – yet for so many only sport matters at weekends. Is it for this that millions of years of evolution have produced a mind that can calculate the distances of the farthest galaxies, penetrate the interior of atoms, journey into space and transplant hearts? I wondered what, if anything, had meaning and significance, because we can’t all be astronauts or brain surgeons. What is the point of all those millions of years of evolution if the vast majority spend their time in trivial pursuits, slowly destroying the planet that gave us existence?

Viewed from above we seem no better than ants scurrying about on self-appointed tasks. There seems to be no concerted goal, no combined effort to use those wonderful minds, which can penetrate the secrets of the universe, for anything more than making money and having pleasure. When it comes to science, culture, medical research, money is the absolute criterion. If it will make money – do it, otherwise forget it, or leave it to enthusiastic amateurs. What gives significance to the lives of all the ordinary people who are unable to extricate themselves from this seething ant-heap, nor mentally rise above it? Surely, a mind that can comprehend the cosmos can only find meaning in something of cosmic significance. Anything less is a travesty. Is winning at Wimbledon of cosmic significance, or winning the lottery? What about hours spent gambling, or mindlessly watching television? Few would agree that these add much to human dignity. Perhaps some might disagree about prowess at sport. There is something noble about extending human achievement to the limits; climbing where no one has climbed before, running faster, jumping higher than anyone has previously. There is something noble too about sportsmanship, about selfless effort and losing gallantly. But a life dedicated solely to sport as a means of making money – that is another matter. Where is the dignity in becoming a millionaire, in becoming a connoisseur of fine food and wine, in being able to wear the finest clothes and the most exclusive designer labels, in living in luxury while every fourth person has to live in abject poverty?

If the human mind is the most complex organism in the cosmos, more complex than the cosmos itself, then surely the person who inhabits that mind is of cosmic significance. With the human mind the cosmos has become conscious of itself. The electro-chemical energy, which originated in the hearts of the stars, in the human brain gives rise to thought, affections and love. In every human being, however ordinary, or insignificant, the cosmos has become aware. A lifetime dedicated to making money is of less importance than hours spent comforting a sick child? The achievements of an Alexander the Great, or a Napoleon are of less significance than a lifetime looking after people mentally sick and disabled? We know this instinctively although we may not articulate it. Elitist ideologies may try to declare some people as inferior, or even sub-human, and for a while some may even believe this, but most of us, most of the time, whether we are religious or not, have a profound feeling for the sacredness of human life. Is it only enlightened self-interest that urges us to spend billions on the medical the emergency services, that scrambles helicopters and diverts ships to rescue just one person?

The question of poverty has, perhaps, best been explained in Gabriel Marcel’s and Erich Fromm’s books on Being and Having. Stripped of all possessions the individual is naked, defenceless and vulnerable. For an infant this does not matter because total dependence on another, in this case the mother, is appropriate. The infant is at the beginning of the process that will ultimately lead to individuation, independence and responsibility. But for an adult it is another matter and it would be irresponsible for an adult to make himself indigent. This is saying, ‘I refuse to be responsible for my own well-being. Others must take over responsibility for feeding, clothing and sheltering me otherwise I will die.’ Yet Jesus asked his disciples to do precisely this. They were told not to take any provisions with them, no extra clothing or money. They were to make themselves totally dependent on others. If the people in the villages they visited were not happy with this they were to move on, ‘shaking the dust of the town off their feet.’ What might this imply? For the disciples it required the absolute trust that the rich young man could not give – a blind trust because, as we know from other passages, that they did not fully understand what it was they were doing. We know also that while they may have abandoned their possessions they were still attached to them, and to their lives. For some of the people it implied that these men were fools, for others it implied that they had found something more valuable than gold.

There is much in the Gospels that reminds me of the story of the man who had a dream about finding diamonds.

There is an Indian story about a man on a journey through the forest. He came across an old man, a sannyasin, or holy man. I cannot remember the details now, but this old man had a collection of what looked like pebbles. The traveller recognised that they were in fact uncut diamonds. As he left the old man he asked if he could have one. ‘Of course’, said the old man and gestured for him to take one. The man took the largest and went on his way delighted at his good luck and the fact that he was now rich. As he walked he began to berate himself. ‘I should have asked for more. He had many. I should have taken several.’

For the rest of the day he could only think of the diamonds. Where had the old man found them? Were there more? That night as he tried to sleep a new thought surfaced. Why had the man given the diamond so easily? Why was he still in the forest instead of living a life of luxury? The next day he made his way back to the old man and returned the diamond. ‘Old man, tell me what you have that allows you to give away such wealth without a thought.’

I think Jesus had a similar affect on his disciples as the guru, who could so easily give away vast riches, had on the man. What had he found that was more precious than gold? We all search for the elusive secret of happiness. Jesus had found it and his disciples had blindly followed his instructions hoping that they too would discover it. I think that at Pentecost they did, not before. By Pentecost they had been emptied of their possessions. They had left everything, lost everything. As prisoners of fear in the Upper Room they no longer even had the freedom to roam the streets and the countryside. Only when they had been emptied could they be filled with the Holy Spirit.

It is noticeable that the New Testament begins from within the perspective of the Old and the Covenant. Although the Covenant is a two-sided arrangement between God and his people, the emphasis tends to be on what God has done, and will in the future do for them. This is especially true of those passages dealing with Messianic times. Then all will be gift. All will sit down to the Messianic banquet – provided by God. They will enjoy peace and prosperity – brought about by God. The sick will be healed; the blind will see; the lame walk and the poor will be blessed. It is only necessary to repent and to believe in order to accept.

But with Jesus a new note is heard – give. You have received, it is now your turn to give; to give of what you have – not even to ask back what is taken from you. Give of yourself, of your time and energy; above all, give witness to the Good News. The Good News is more than an announcement, or a proclamation. It is a new state of being. There is the feeling that here Jesus has similar advice to that of the Buddha. In practice his conception of what it means to be human is not very far from the Buddhist. For both self has to be lost. For Buddhists the pragmatic self is an illusion and it is necessary to see through this illusion. For Jesus the self is a hindrance, an obstacle in the way of salvation. The Parable of the Rich Young Man is very interesting here because it implies that there are different states of attainment. The young man asks what he has to do in order to be saved. He is told – keep the commandments, an answer straight from the OT. Keep the rules and you will receive. But the young man wants to do more than that. Why? He must have glimpsed something. He must have seen that being good in the sense of keeping the Law did not really change anything existentially. The Jews were not philosophers. They did not agonise over the nature of being, or the meaning of existence. In their most profound exploration of the mystery of suffering and evil (the book of Job) they could not arrive at any answers, or rather they found that all their answers were inadequate. They could only fall back on the inexplicable actions of an all-powerful and transcendent God. And this is where the OT perspective fails. The rich young man has found that neither wealth, nor living a good life is ultimately satisfying. There is an emptiness within him that neither of these can fill. So he asks Jesus, who tells him to give everything he has away to the poor and follow him. This the man cannot bring himself to do.

There are a number of interesting points here. Why does Jesus stress the importance of poverty? What does he mean by ‘losing one’s self’? And why could this good, well-meaning young man, who had glimpsed something of the transcendent, not let go of his possessions? To take the last point – it is not enough to say that the young man was possessed by his possessions. It goes deeper than that. He identified himself with his possessions. His existence depended on them. Without them he would not be himself. He would be destitute and utterly dependent on others. As a wealthy man he had never been dependent on anyone. He was being asked to let go of everything that sustained him and made him what he was and make a sustained act of trust in a person who had no visible means of support. Ultimately he was being asked to trust in God, but God was an item of belief, not a dimension of his existence. It was too much. Only by entering into a state of poverty would he be able to transcend the limitations of his wealth.

What is love and why is so essential for growth, development and happiness? This is tied in with love’s polar opposite – hatred, rejection and abuse, which are so destructive and damaging. There is something here that cannot be explained in physical or biological terms. What? It can be discussed at an empirical level as sociologists like Bowlby and Goffman, and psychologists like Fromm and Maslow have done, but this only provides a description, not an explanation. I suspect the importance of love has to do with the fact that it transcends the limits of individuality. The process of individuation helps us to become relatively free and autonomous individuals – seen by some as the goal of human development. But there is more. There is a yawning emptiness within the individual. Many try to fill it by seeking the physical intimacy of sex, but sex without love is empty, or by seeking power, or wealth. These too are empty. Like sex without love they touch only the exterior of the individual. Love is a reciprocal relationship involving openness and commitment. There is a tension between the desire to be an individual, in control and able to manipulate people, situations and events to one’s personal advantage (but always conscious of something lacking, of being empty), and being open and loving, surrendering control for negotiation, power for fulfilment. We are social beings but, unlike ants and termites whose society is determined by purely biological and environmental factors, we are not determined wholly by our biology. Our sociality depends on openness and voluntary co-operation – on love.

Another characteristic is openness to religious experience and the transcendent. The work of Alister Hardy and Will Hay are relevant here, as is the study of comparative mysticism. Our sociality extends beyond human interaction to include – what? Nature? The cosmos? God? Each of these has been put forward as the key to what it means to be human.

Yesterday I was very forcibly struck by the urgency of the crisis stressed by Jesus in the Synoptics. His whole emphasis was on the importance of making the decision now. Later is too late. After his resurrection the focus of this urgency changes and eventually the urgency itself disappears. Why was the situation so critical and urgent for Jesus? What exactly did he mean by the Kingdom of Heaven, or Reign of God? What did he believe was the effect on the individual as a result of a decisive commitment for the Kingdom of Heaven? Gradually in the post-Resurrection Church the focus changed to an expectancy of, and preparation for, the Parousia. This would be an event, initiated by God, which would transform the world. It was necessary for the individual to have made a decision for God before this time if he was to enter definitively into the Kingdom.

With Jesus the urgency is now. The culminating moment would be later but its outcome depended on the attitude now. In the parable of the Sheep and the Goats the decision as to who was saved and who was not had been made long before by the individuals themselves. The judgement was simply a confirmation of that decision. Jesus was the first existentialist. He called for a fundamental change in attitude and lifestyle. Each moment is an existential encounter with God who is present in every person and every event. This presence may not be recognised. In the parable it was not, but that did not matter. What mattered was the attitude towards others and towards events.

First – what attitude? This is never spelled out in a systematic way. It has to be gleaned from sayings, from parables and from Jesus’ own attitude to people and events.

Poverty in spirit – awareness of dependency, of lacking what it takes to be self-sufficient.
Gentleness – delicacy of touch when it comes to the feelings of others.
Mourning – more than just sorrow. It is the result of being open and vulnerable to others and the feelings of others. It is not having the hard shell of indifference. It is empathy.
Hunger and thirst for justice – the result of being situated not just within the narrow confines of one’s own situation but within the wider community. We are all members one of another and when one is wounded all bleed.
Mercifulness – we all make mistakes and need to be allowed to recover from them.
Pure in heart – being transparent, open and honest with no guile or deceit.
Peacemakers – healers.
Courage – to stand against persecution and injustice.
Love – even of enemies, i.e. the well-being of others is of primary importance.
Non-violence – recognition of the autonomy of others, even when they abuse it, by a refusal forcibly to impose one’s will on them.

What sort of person does this set of attitudes denote?

Someone who is aware of the presence of God within himself and each individual, a presence more intimate even than that of a loving father.
Someone with deep roots in the community, who does not see himself as an isolated individual, dependent on his personal attitude, skills and possessions for survival.
Someone who is aware that this present existence is only a stage in a process that does not end at death.
Someone with a set of values based on loving inter-personal relations, not on material possessions.
In sum – a person who sees himself as a nexus of relationships, all of which have their origin in God.

Second – why does the attitude have such existential importance? When I first started following this I was struck by the urgency of Jesus’ call for metanoia. It was not concerned with the future but with now. Well, he did speak about the future judgement but it was so imminent that a decision could not be postponed. Later this urgency dropped away. The coming of the Kingdom was either death, or some future event. Previously I had assumed, as have others, that Jesus believed the end time was imminent and, when it did not arrive shortly after his death, it was projected further and further into the future. However, having just read so much on Buddhism and its insistence on mindfulness, I began to wonder. The Buddhist insistence stems from an awareness that this present reality is not as it seems. Everything is characterised by impermanence. There are no enduring substantial essences, neither of things, nor of persons. Suffering and unhappiness lie in clinging to what is not ultimately real. Only by penetrating the illusory surface could one see it for what it was – a mirage. But the mirage seems so real, one moment breathtakingly beautiful, another frightful. Dream or nightmare, waking up requires the realisation that one is asleep. Hence mindfulness. By means of the focused concentration of meditation one can become aware. Of what? That the Buddha could not say. It could only be experienced. It was not a concept that could be expressed in words.

Mindfulness by itself was not enough. It required right action (sila), a very high standard of morality. At first this intrigued me. One’s first impression of Buddhism is that it is all about meditation and therefore enlightenment must be an intellectual event, a coming to know. Practically everything one reads about meditation deals with mental states and with what goes on during meditation. Hardly ever is anything said about everyday life – about how meditation affects and is affected by it. Meditation would seem to involve a private and inner journey apart from the bustle of day to day living.

But one soon realises that there is no apart from everyday living, even in a monastery. Wherever we go we carry with us the baggage of a body, thoughts, feeling, emotions, fantasies, desires, dreams and regrets. Whether we live with others or alone it makes no difference. The mind is filled with a constant chatter, seething with memories, desires, feelings and emotions and there is no difference between those stemming from the imagination and those from real experience. What we are mentally – that is what we are. If your fantasies are about committing the perfect crime you are a criminal even though you may never have stolen a penny in your life. If your fantasies are full of lust you are a philanderer even though you may have never touched another woman. In ordinary life fantasies are not taken into account because people can only judge by outward behaviour. But to you it matters because what is in your mind shapes the way you see the world. Hermit or city dweller, it makes no difference as St. Anthony found out. You carry yourself with you wherever you are, wherever you go.

This is why sila is so important. The ‘enduring and substantial self’ as it seems, the source of all our desires and dreams, is neither enduring nor substantial. But we will never come to see this as long as we cling to it. When we are selfish or greedy, lazy or vindictive we are clinging, tight-gripped to this self, putting it before all others. Again, it makes no difference whether this is a purely mental thing, or whether it is actual. The effect is the same. We are reinforcing our way of seeing things.

The interesting thing about Jesus, particularly in Matthew chapters 5 to 7, is that he seems to have a very similar approach. Right actions are not enough; in fact they are useless if in our imaginations we have lust and hate. Likewise he advises people to pray alone in their room with the door closed. It has been said that this attitude was a reaction to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who loved outward show and elaborate liturgies. Jesus wanted sincerity, a transparent honesty. Fine, but I wonder whether there is more to it than this. Had Jesus discovered something? His stress on a complete metanoia goes deeper than simple justification. After all, God is merciful. He will forgive the repentant sinner, as Jesus pointed out again and again. A perfect life is not required in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Repentance and desire are enough. But in the Sermon of the Mount Jesus is asking far, far more. Why? The Good News is the message that the Messiah has come to offer forgiveness and to inaugurate the Reign of God. But what exactly did he mean by ‘the Reign of God’?

Here we encounter, not only the inadequacy of words in describing experience, but also the problems of translation. Although it has the weight of tradition ‘Kingdom of God’ is misleading rather than enlightening as a translation of ‘basileia tou theou‘. It fails to convey the dynamic, interpersonal and reciprocal quality of the relationship with God suggested by ‘reign’. It is here we must look for the reason for the urgency in Jesus’ preaching.