Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 72

Poem 72

When they lose their sense of awe,

people turn to religion.

When they no longer trust themselves,

they begin to depend upon authority.

Therefore the Master steps back

so that people won't be confused.

He teaches without a teaching,

so that people will have nothing to learn.

Commentary

Aristotle, following his teacher Plato's insight, believed that philosophy begins in wonder. The American philosopher Garreth Matthews (1929 - 2011) describes what Aristotle and Plato before him believed wonder to be: The wonder Aristotle has in mind is, he argues, "astonishment over basic puzzles or perplexities (aporia)." The actual word in Greek is "thaumazein" (wonder).  Aristotle talks about a man who is constantly wondering, namely constantly puzzled about the nature of people and things in this world.  So, it is so much more than simply having a question.  For Aristotle wonder is about the puzzlement we experience when contemplating the beauty of numbers - say the irrationality of root 2, the motion/path of the planets and so on and so forth. Basically, then, it's a "ah" moment rather than a "ha" or "aha" moment.

It is more than interesting, and not a little surprising that our Taoist poet sees religions as lacking in the sense of awe and wonder.  In other words, then, for our Taoist writer, religions attempt to domesticate wonder, capture it in neat phrases, doctrines, dogmas and formularies.  In so doing, our poet is arguing that they kill mystery and awe.

When people, he further argues, stop trusting their own native instincts and intuitions they begin to become dependent on the advice and on the recommendations of those in authority.  They become, consequently, overly dependent on external approval and begin to lack inner responsibility for themselves, their thoughts and their decisions.

In the final stanza, once again, our Taoist author takes refuge in paradox for the sake of making us flounder in a sea of confusion, that is, lest we become too complacent with our newly found insights into the awe and mystery of the Tao.  What he or she is saying is that we will, of necessity, be awe-struck and wonder-enraptured when we come to pondering the depths or heights of the mystery of life.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 31

Poem 31

Weapons are the tools of violence;

all decent men detest them.

Weapons are the tools of fear;

a decent man will avoid them

except in the direst necessity

and, if compelled, will use them

only with the utmost restraint.

Peace is his highest value.

If the peace has been shattered,

how can he be content?

His enemies are not demons,

but human beings like himself.

He doesn't wish them personal harm.

Nor does he rejoice in victory.

How could he rejoice in victory

and delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely,

with sorrow and with great compassion,

as if he were attending a funeral.

Commentary

I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, that the Tao Te Ching is some 2,500 years old dating back roughly to the sixth century B.C.  It represents a programme for living. In fact, the word "Tao" means "way" and the whole phrase "Tao Te Ching" means "The Classic of the Way of Virtues."   Jesus, the founder of Christianity, also proclaimed that he was "the Way, the Truth and the light!"  Therefore, it's nothing new to state that all religious founders suggest a programme or a way for living.  Too often, though, their followers who mostly construct the "Church" or "organization" that their founder perhaps did not visualise, often lose sight of the original basic way. 

Taormina, 2006 - Peace reigns

It is very interesting to see that Taoism is from the very beginning against the use of weapons.  The same can not be said for the histories and indeed the holy books of many of the world religions, but that is an idea for a post for another blog entirely.  Our motivation in this blog is neither didactic nor point scoring.  One would feel instinctively that the first two lines in the above poem would make a good poster for Barack Obama in his campaign to have stricter gun control laws in the USA.

As a teacher of some 36 years service, I have long been convinced that fear is a poor motivation in learning, period!  One would want to be particularly obtuse not to realise this immediately.  To say that weapons are "tools of fear" is, perhaps also, to state the obvious. 

Warring nations are adept at demonising the enemy and canonising their own heroes.  They do it to engender hate and all possible negative emotions towards the enemy.  To realise that the enemy soldiers, or indeed enemy civilians, are only all too human like ourselves is something these warring nations seek to suppress.  After all, it's particularly hard to kill, or even be mean to, people who are all too much like ourselves.  Hitler and Stalin were adept at canonising and demonising as they knew well how to get the emotions of a people going - how to whip up hatred for others especially when it was needed.  Dehumanising others is the way to excite the baser emotions against them.  Therefore, the opposite is most especially true - humanise others and we promote peace.

Bridge Building is better than War - Dusseldorf, December, 2006

Therefore, as the year 2016 is approaching in a few days time, let us decide to humanise all people we meet as best we can; to humanise even those we have not met for a long time - perhaps even people we have fallen out with; to humanise all the African refugees who are fleeing their very extinction in their own countries; to humanise as best we can even the lowliest of our brothers and sisters.  Then, now that the thought strikes me - can we even humanise those who have a very right wing gun-toting belief?  If we can so do, can we talk civilly with them?  Or are we in a weakened position de facto from the very beginning of our conversation.

They say that peace is the work of justice.  Therefore, maybe we can seek to be more just in our living in 2016.  The above poem needs to be reflected upon.  I'm not totally convinced that the policy of pacifism ever really works - if it did Neville Chamberlain would have convinced Hitler and there would have been no WW II.  Likewise, had there been no Churchill the Third Reich would most certainly still be in power.  So naive pacifism simply gets nowhere.  I believe the Taoist poet intuitively knew this, and, therefore, he recommends that the true warrior enter battle "gravely, with sorrow and with great compassion, as if he were attending a funeral."

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 5

Poem 5

The Tao doesn't take sides;

it gives birth to both good and evil.

The Master doesn't take sides;

She welcomes both saints and sinners.

The Tao is like a bellows:

it is empty yet infinitely capable.

The more you use it, the more it produces;

the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Hold on to the centre.

Commentary

Our systems of justice and indeed our systems of government in the West are adversarial and taking sides comes so naturally to us.  Some few minutes ago I listened to politicians from both sides of the divide in Northern Ireland arguing as to whether the IRA had really "left the stage" or not in that little corner of life on this wonderful, if at times so wounded, planet, often "knee-high in blood" because of one conflict or another.  One could not but indulge in a fleeting moment of despair as one remembered all the wanton bloodshed of some thirty years of Troubles that bedevilled this little island in my own lifetime.  And so when one reads that the Tao does not take sides, one is brought into a spiritual world of promise and of hope, of aspiration and inspiration, and one could, in times of desperation, entertain another fleeting thought as to how unrealistic our spiritual desires may be.

And yet, we all entertain the hopes of a better life, of justice and peace being possible if we really get our act together as human beings.  We write much about these ideals and many brave numbers of us have given their lives for the dream of peace which is, in fact, the work of justice.  And so we have many volunteers who give the sweat of their brow and often their very life's blood for the ideals of the betterment of other human beings. Indeed, some of our number are even willing to spend our energy and indeed our lives for the betterment of planet earth and its very fauna and flora.  Again, spiritually this is understandable as spirituality may be defined as the inherent native desire within every human being to engage in a tripartite connection, i.e., to connect with (i) the self, (ii) others and (iii) the very source of life, some of us dare call God.  In embracing this spiritual desire to connect, one realises that one is but an insignificant, but very conscious, speck with infinite desires and hopes among some 7.5 billion other such conscious specks with equally infinite desires to know and to connect. 

And so our spiritual desire to connect pushes us to what the Tao calls a position of "not taking sides."  This spiritual stance is no easy one to achieve and only some of us will attain that.  Indeed, we all know how hard it is to get rid of our native prejudices which obviously prevent the achievement of such a spiritual state.  However, many of us realise that the attainment of that state of consciousness is the ideal.  Another way of putting this, I suppose, would be to say that such a state of consciousness is the state of enlightenment or even sainthood.

Once again the Tao welcomes both "saints and sinners," but unlike the Bible of the Abrahamic religions, it does not call for repentance, though one assumes that there is an unwritten call to right action assumed by the text.

Once again, like all good poetry, these lines are replete with images and in the second stanza of this poem, the author uses the image of the bellows to represent how the Tao works in the world in an invisible but very capable way.  In this sense it fans the fires of life, inspiration, exhortation and aspiration in all of our lives.

Yet again, the poem warns us that all our talking and writing about the Tau is often so much hot air as really it is only something we can apprehend and appreciate by the route of meditation in action and contemplation of human experience.  Language once again is seen as such a poor tool to express the mystery.

Finally, a lot of spiritual practices emphasise the fact that it is important for the meditator to centre themselves and to find and hold onto that centre.  In short, the Tao may be found by centering ourselves.  To misquote our national poet, William Butler Yeats, it is only when we learn to meditate that we will find that the "centre will hold."

Namaste, friends.

Journal of a Soul 60

Dealing with Pain

There are no easy answers to any of the big questions.  Indeed, as I have pointed out many times in these posts we engage in good philosophy when we set about questioning shallow solutions, indeed when we suspect easy answers as not alone being the easy way out but to be a simplistic twisting of and an undermining of the truth.  Life teaches us more than "is dreamt of in our philosophy," as Hamlet perspicaciously pointed out to his university friend Horatio.  In searching for meaning, life more often than not forces us away from neat cerebral and cognitive answers to our problems and throws us in at the deep end to either sink or swim in the murky waters of its mystery.

A Mystery to be Lived not a Problem to be Solved

Clontarf, Dublin, Sat 6 July, 2014

When I studied philosophy and theology back in the late 1970s the topic I chose for my 4th Year thesis was "The Mystery of Evil," and the title of this section of my post is one gem of insight I came up with from my reading.  Another gem of a quotation I vividly recall reading was one which goes, "a mystery is not a wall against which we bang our heads, but rather an ocean into which we plunge."  Life teaches us most assuredly, and bit by inevitable bit it knocks the corners off our initial egotistical take on life, chastens our hubris, challenges our certainties and sends us deep into our spiritual and cultural reserves as human beings simply to keep going.  If we are reasonably astute and wise human beings we will learn from our mistakes and from the problems and pains life throws our way so that when we reach twenty years at our job we will have twenty years experience, not one year multiplied 20 times.  Likewise with life - hopefully I have 56 years of cumulative wisdom and not just a few years multiplied by a fairly big factor.  Hopefully, we all will have grown and learnt and deepened and heightened our experience of life and reflected on its significance and meaning with the help of others by the time we age substantially.

When I was doing that thesis which straddled the border ground between philosophy and theology, a not-so-close friend of mine called Paulene O'Rourke was undertaking her thesis on a more personal take on the mystery of evil, namely the problem of suffering and pain. None of her classmates ever got to read Paulene's opus, which unfortunately never really saw the light of day as sadly she ended her own life at the age of 21, having gassed herself in her grandmother's home where she had lived.  This young student was one of the most intelligent girls I had ever met in life and was quite sophisticated and always appeared to me as being quite brave.  Unusual for women at the time, she even rode a small motorbike.  I was not close enough to Paulene to know that she suffered from clinical depression, compounded by the fact that her Doctor father had been killed tragically in Africa and that her mother had become an alcoholic as she had never gotten over the death of her partner.  Too many painful events in life apparently conspired to bring a very sensitive human being to the tragic conclusion of her life in a lonely kitchen, suffocating from gas poisoning.

I often wonder what exactly Paulene had written in her thesis.  I wonder did anyone dare look. That's probably a useless wonderment because presumably it was heavy with pain.  I remember one day Paulene stopped and got me to ride pillion on her motorbike into college.  I remember her being full of life that day.  And yet, and yet and yet? As the Irish songwriter and singer Paul Brady puts it in one of his songs, "Nobody Knows" the chorus of which runs:

Nobody knows why Elvis threw it all away
Nobody knows what Ruby had to hide
Nobody knows why some of us get broken hearts
And some of us find a world that’s clear and bright
You could be packed up and ready
Knowing exactly where to go
How come you miss the connection?
No use in asking…the answer is nobody knows
No use in asking…the answer is nobody knows

(Listen to the song: HERE )

Creativity

The real thing: Edvard Munch's The Scream

Creativity is just one possible doorway towards the assuage of pain and suffering. Once again, needless to say, it is no instant fix or panacea for pain or suffering.  Rather, it is one very valid coping mechanism that we can employ.  How many poems, paintings, pieces of music and sculptures have been created over the years of our civilization whose provenance have been the cruel crucible of pain and suffering?  We instinctively know that the answer must lie in the thousands if not multiples of that figure.  In the field  of music we might mention the suffering endured by Ludwig van Beethoven and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and in the field of art and painting Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch and in the field of writing and letters Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway.    Anyway, these are just names that occur to me of persons who have suffered from severe mental suffering and pain. The reader can add his/her own.  An interesting article on creativity and mental illness can be found HERE.  

Beyond Creativity

Howth Village by night - from the Harbour.  June 2014

I find all types of writing therapeutic, just like an artist finds all types of drawing so.  However, such escape through creativity is just one doorway out of pain.  As a sufferer from clinical depression, I know writing or creativity is simply not enough.  Here is where we need the help from the professional medical people - be they nurses, doctors or psychiatrists.  For some people their depression may be of the reactive variety, that is a consequence of their failure to cope with life's stresses.  For most of these sufferers, talk therapy of various varieties and/or CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) will treat the mental suffering.  For those of us who suffer from clinical depression medical intervention in the form of psychopharmacology (antidepressants, and other psychiatric drugs in other words) will be the only answer.  And yet, I have found that I have needed both in my personal medical history.  I have a deep suspicion of many who, no matter what their professional qualifications push for a single answer to complex mental issues.  Either/Or has never worked for me personally.  Both/And I have found to be a more balanced position to take.  It's a fact that no depressive can write or draw their way out of depression or even illness.  Once other supports have been put in place, creative pursuits of all kinds will certainly help in one's recuperation, or in at least providing supports along the way.

Balance

Life is so much about balance, about not "going over the top" on any one simplistic solution. For me my mental health includes the following: a reasonably balanced and healthy diet (at which I work as hard as I can, but often fall so far short), good healthy physical exercise, liberal doses of meditation and visualization practices, good solid reading, working at my relationships and getting out and about doing various things to keep my mind busy.  I know how easy it is to fall into   "the slough of despond" as John Bunyan puts it so graphically in Pilgrim's Progress (1678), so I employ as many helps as possible: medical, therapeutic, mental and physical exercise as well as more creative pursuits to "keep my head above water," to use yet another cliché. I switch off immediately when I meet someone who has the perfect answer to everyone's problems.  Such people are indeed a "vexation of the spirit." Like the proverbial drunk at a party they are to be avoided "like the plague."  Apologies for the surfeit of hackneyed phrases and colloquialisms in this paragraph.

Perspective

Arguing about Justice - Dept of Law UCD

I have mentioned this quality many times before.  The other day I went into our National Gallery and viewed some of our wonderful paintings on display.  To view them properly one needs to stand back, and, of course, that's why galleries have to be places with great space, or at least have a great feeling of space about them. Perspective can only be achieved at a distance.  Is it not the same with all the problems of pain and suffering that life throws at us all too randomly?  The perspective of time often heals them.  I love visualization techniques as they are so powerful in helping us through or coping with problems.  One such visualization that I like is to do, and which I find very effective in lifting my spirits, is to sit in what I call my semi-demi-lotus position (as I am so dreadfully poor at crossing my legs!).  I then unwind by using the usual meditation techniques like relaxing the body through a body-scan or concentration on breathing etc. When I am suitably relaxed I envisage myself sitting in my little spot on the ground with my back propped against the wall, then in my library, then my house, my street, my locality, my city, my country and so on up through a bird's eye view of my ever diminishing self, and up further till I have an astronaut's view of the world. This I call my visualization of perspective. When we are depressed we are self-obsessed.  Our little world becomes the only world. Perspective is a way of zooming out of self-preoccupation and self-obsession. We are one little creature on a very small planet in a very big expanding universe, one of some 7 billion plus inhabitants.  It is often good to realize in a very counter-cultural way, at least for a while, that we may not be that important at all in the great scheme of things.*

The Great Spiritual Teachers

Reading and listening to what many of the great  teachers and indeed founders of the various Religions and spiritual traditions have had to say is also important.  I strongly believe that going back to what many of them said cannot be squared with what the so called Institutions or Churches that followed them promulgated.  On this, I recommend a good thoughtful reading of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, especially the wonderfully powerful and imaginative scene where Jesus visits the Grand Inquisitor to tell him how far the Roman Church has strayed from what he was about when he was on earth.  So going back to what Confucius, Jesus, the Buddha or Rumi said can be very inspiring.**  One can find a lot of similar profound thoughts in each of these named above, and one can only be amused that it is so hard to find proof of such teachings in the works of the churches or organizations that were built on their foundations.***

Returning to the Music of Life

Let me in conclusion return to music by way of some further clarification or elucidation of a mystery which is truly almost beyond our understanding.  Firstly, let me recall for you some of the lyrics of one of the songs, Anthem, by one of my favourite singers, Leonard Cohen:

The birds they sang 
at the break of day 
Start again 
I heard them say 
Don't dwell on what 
has passed away 
or what is yet to be. 
Ah the wars they will 
be fought again 
The holy dove 
She will be caught again 
bought and sold 
and bought again 
the dove is never free. 

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. 

(my italicization: You can here Leonard sing this song HERE )

Perhaps a trace or an intimation of an answer lies somewhere in these lyrics.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps!

End Notes

* The great thing about philosophy is that it trains the mind to ask all the most difficult and awkward of questions.  Not alone is this no harm, but it serves to deepen or to heighten our understanding and appreciation of everything.  On the one hand, we can undervalue human life as is exemplified in all the most horrific of wars we poor humans have been engaged in since time immemorial.  On the other we can over-value human life at the expense of our fellow animals and at the expense of the very environment which, unfortunately, we have almost destroyed. What a legacy we moderns have left for our off-spring!  In other words philosophically we can ask the twin questions: How do we undervalue human life? and How do we overvalue that same life?  Both questions are equally valid.

** Going back to the thoughts and/or writings of these early founders can be both enlightening and often surprising, so much so that one begins to question how far removed institutional and organized Religions have come from the vision or charism of their founders.  Confucius said much that is also found in Jesus Christ, viz., “Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire” which corresponds very nicely to what Jesus said: " Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Lk. 6:31)  There is wisdom in many of their sayings which often should not be taken out of context and which should be balance by other quotations from the same spiritual leader.  Context and balance is very important if we are given to quotations.

*** As regards the foundation of Religions and Churches it is often a moot question as to whether a so-called founder actually founded a particular religion or Church because in certain cases these were established by their followers.  It is arguable that St Paul was the great founder of the Christian Religion while its Roman version could be seen as the child of the Emperor Constantine.  I have no great interest in many of these moot points, save that in questions of truth and spirituality we must progress by taking into account all the sides of a story, all the perspectives as it were.  For me no one Religion, Church or organization can have a manopoly on the Truth.

Journal of a Soul 57

Dealing with the Past

Irish flag at full mast in ALSAA recently

Dealing with the past is always a hard task both for an individual and for a nation.  In fact, in many cases dealing with events from the past will be most traumatic for both.  On the extreme level one might mention how Germany and its people have endeavoured to tackle their felt collective grief and shame after the horrors inflicted on many sectors of humankind by the Nazi murder machine.  The same must be a case for all other nations involved in genocidal activities, a list of which you may access here if you wish to depress yourself with the horrific statistics: Genocides. Scratch the surface on any nation's sense of identity and one may encounter anger, guilt, depression, grief, hysteria and so on.  Doubtless every nation needs to engage with its guilt over its sins of commission and omission from the past.  Now, this is no easy task, needless to say.  

These reflections here will deal with the problem of dealing with the past on (i) a personal level and (ii) a national level.

Healing one's Personal Past

Evening scene on the Ionian Sea, Calabria, December 2013

The word "healing" is very important in the above heading as it is hard to move on unless one acknowledges the hurt one has caused to others, hopefully having attempted to repair the situation in as far as possible by our admission of guilt, the asking for forgiveness from those hurt and the re-establishment of some kind of mutual respect.  Often many of us need to access help from our friends, from significant others, from trained counsellors and psychotherapists, and perhaps from our spiritual and religious guides in achieving this reconciliation.  Having travelled far through life, I readily acknowledge all the helps I have received in my own personal life story on many of those listed fronts.  Of course, it is also hard to move on when we are the ones who are hurt.  In that situation we may never receive any apology or act of sorrow on the part of those who have hurt us in whatever minor or even major way.  I'm thinking in this latter case, especially, of the poor victims of sex abuse as children and those who have had the most appalling crimes like rape and physical abuse committed against them.  There are, of course, other forms of abuse like mental or psychological abuse, bullying and so on. 

However, one thing's sure, each of us must engage in healing our past memories, especially the more serious ones.  Such will involve exercises in awareness in line with the good old Freudian/Jungian definition of all therapy, namely "making the unconscious conscious." * Unacknowledged hurts from the past will inevitably surface in our dreams as we age.  Indeed, they will often send a growing minority of us to take refuge in drink and drugs and, indeed, to often in engage in hurting others in the same way that we ourselves have been hurt.  

A partial answer (please note the adjective here "partial") to problems in these above mentioned areas may be summarised in one word, "awareness."  Dr Rollo May underscores this fact in many of his books where he insightfully states that awareness is a major part of the battle to conquering anxiety, anger, bitterness, regret, spite, jealousy, egocentricity, envy and so on.** Let us put this in more colloquial terms and state in a pithy fashion that "awareness is half of the battle."  It is only when the alcoholic, or drug addict, or whoever with whatever ill or problem, acknowledges that they have the problem, that is, when they authentically face the truth of their particular ill that they can begin to do anything to change their situation for the better and start out on the journey to healing and recovery.

(ii) Healing our Collective Past as a Nation 

At the excavations at Locri, south of Siderno, December 2014

These reflections were inspired, or more correctly provoked, by the recent highlighting of the mistreating of unmarried women and their babies here in Ireland since the foundation of the state. In the last twenty to thirty years, much concealed abuse has come to light in Ireland: child clerical abuse, the plight of unmarried mothers,  Magdalene Laundries, the abuse in Industrial schools, the burial of dead young children in grounds of Mother and Child homes since foundation of the State.  To add to the mixed repressed memories and emotions, some of those homes were badly renovated Poor Houses from Famine times.  In other words, excavations or archaeological digs on these graveyards in question would be quite intricate given the presence also of Famine graves on site.

I've heard historians, sociologists, psychologists and others suggest that as a nation we Irish suffer from repressed guilt as we are the survivors of the millions who starved in their hovels and on the roadsides and in the Poor Houses during the years 1845-1848.  Our high rates of alcoholism and mental breakdown may also be attributed to this repression.  How much festers in our personal and Collective Unconscious is undoubtedly there to be discovered in our cultural expression of our identity in history, plays, novels and art (from the past, the present and the future) of all types as well as in sessions on the couch.  Art in all its richness is surely one means of expiating our repressed demons.  This, therefore, is one area where the Arts outshine the contribution of the Sciences to our well-being.  As human beings we have to be helped to flourish as individuals in the mutuality of community.  Sciences help by improving our lifestyles and standards of living, but the Arts contribute to healing our souls.

There is much we can do in helping to heal ourselves in these issues.  I shall attempt a brainstorm of possibilities here, obviously in no specific order:

• Encourage radical questioning in all areas of life.
• Listen more to what people say.
• Defend the rights of minorities.
• Radically question all power structures.
• Ask ourselves what lies we sell to one another and why.
• Sharpen our moral and ethical questions.
• Learn to be suspicious of easy answers to difficult questions.
• Join in helping one cause or another.
• Read more widely and more critically.
• Question our public representatives and politicians.
• Stand up for our principles.
• Don't take the easy way out.
• Get involved in as much as possible.
• Join the debate.
• Make our voices heard.
• Don't blame others.
• Encourage debate and other opinions besides our own.
• Try to see things from another point of view.
• Why not? as a question is as good to ask as Why?   

Journal of a Soul 55

Embracing the Magic of Hope

When I use the word "magic" here, I am in no way using it in its restricted, perhaps more correct, understanding of actions connected with manipulating normal things or forces by paranormal methods.  I am, of course, using it in its broadest sense to suggest everything that evokes wonder, beauty, mystery and love in the human soul.  In a world where destruction is more often than not the hallmark of human interaction, we need the magic of hope more than ever.  One would want to be a strong individual not to grow depressed when one even cursorily views the history of humankind where wars and crimes against humanity so obviously abound.  One would want to be equally courageous in viewing the international news which is virtually filled with accounts of the destruction of humans by other humans: from Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic and South Sudan where there are 1000+ deaths per country per year (See Here and Here)  to the destruction of our very own worldly home, namely Mother Earth, our lovely Blue Planet.

Ring-tailed lemur, Dublin Zoo, May 2014

The longer I live the more passionate I am becoming about the need to inspire hope in others.  There are too few great leaders who are doing so today in the political world.  The two most outstanding leaders to my mind, in a more spiritual context, who are attempting to cast the magical spell of hope over a very destructive, greedy and hateful world are such wonderful leaders as Pope Francis I and the Dalai Lama.  Other leaders who impress me from the political world are Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Kofi Annan.  For the life of me, I cannot think of very many more.  President Clinton still impresses me with his commitment to world peace and peace in Northern Ireland, as does the wonderful President Jimmy Carter who is constantly working for peace all around the globe. These are all leaders who inspire hope. Another group of committed "retired" leaders that much encourages the present writer are The Elders and you can read all about their wonderful work for peace here. 

As a teacher, I find that often many of our youngsters are lacking in hope.  In the wake of the downfall of the infamous Celtic Tiger, a growing number of people are mired in negativity that can all to often descend into the lower reaches of desolation and despair. Many pupils who attend our inner city working class school cannot see very much in the way of promise for their future lives. In Ireland as I write, there have been so many cutbacks, so much austerity that the presence of the Labour Party - who are partners in a Coalition Government with a centre-right party called Fine Gael - has been virtually wiped out on town councils all around Ireland.  The Labour Party has been adjudged by the electorate to have so much compromised, or indeed sold out on, their socialist principles that the voters virtually ignored voting for any of their candidates.  A very disillusioned and dejected voting public opted instead for independents and candidates from other parties, most especially Sinn Féin.

"Pp...pp. pick up a penguin," at Dublin Zoo, May 2014

One boy who comes to me for counselling suffers from a sort of low-grade depression for which he is taking sessions from a qualified psychologist in a local hospital.  I work with him once a week.  He is representative of a growing number of young people who seem to be somewhat bereft of hope.  In our sessions, we constantly talk about choosing life and hope, not despair and death.  Recently a young female contact (I never like the use of the word "friends" for "contacts" on this social network as it is a definite misnomer that can cause some young people an amount of anguish if they are deleted or blocked or even bullied by another so called "friend.") on Facebook put up a rather depressing status including the symbol of the skull: "It's mad knowing the only thing we actually are promised in life, is death I do have meself (sic) freaked to bits thinking about it!" Indeed, I notice that FB has become a sort of diary for many of our young people where they reveal their hearts to an oftentimes disinterested public.  As I say, I have my doubts about how helpful FB can be in mental health matters, but that is a debate for another post.

Attracted to the Light

It is indeed a truism to say that we are attracted to the light and repulsed by the dark. For the most part, we are all intuitively attracted by the light in good people.  Generally, it has been my experience that really good people are innately attractive, e.g., Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Pope John XXIII, Pope John-Paul II and in more recent times Pope Francis I.  I have named many others above in my opening paragraph.  I leave it to you, all you good loyal readers out there, to name your own attractive world political and spiritual leaders.  Essentially, such leaders share much with the historical Jesus and the equally historical Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), St Francis and all the present day great spiritual leaders (as distinct from Religious Leaders.  I will be contentious here by stating that I believe that Pope Benedict XVI was a Religious Leader while Pope Francis is a Spiritual Leader). I believe that the great contemporary religious writer and theologian Karen Armstrong is also an attractive spiritual leader.  Her books are widely read and she has been universally honoured for them.*

We must radiate the light of hope in our lives, especially if we are in any position of leadership.  Leadership requires those who exercise it to be real, authentic human beings, aware both of their strengths and weaknesses, to be open to encouraging those whom it is both their task and privilege of leading, being so self-assured in themselves that no one on the staff is ever a threat to their sense of authority.  They must be motivators who notice and affirm the innate talents in each and everyone of their colleagues and employees.  This may be a tall order, but after all that is why we put such people into leadership roles and pay them oftentimes extravagant salaries.

If we know that in the end, in a very real and actual way, every individual life is a physical

Chimp with orange, Dublin Zoo, May 2014

failure in the sense that we all end up in the grave, why then should we keep going on?  If, in the end, all the knowledge we have learnt in our individual brains decays into nothing with our bodies, why do we desire to learn?  A very intelligent student asked me that the other day when we attended the presentation of Green Flags for schools that had made serious efforts to cut down on waste of energy and water. We were discussing the dreadful ecological state we have got our lovely Blue Planet into in these more modern times when he asked the question.  If in the end we are all going to perish, given the horrific mess we have made of our planet, why not give up? I replied that one reason we bothered is that we did not ever wish to become victims, that we had a desire, in-built in us, for order and meaning, and that to give up hope was to admit defeat. As we continued our discussion we spoke of humankind being co-creators with the Creator of the Universe, of our being called to build up as many lovely things as we could for the sake of others, for the sake of all humankind and for the sake of all creaturely and inanimate life.

The lovely cuddly red panda at Dublin Zoo, May 2014

When we write a poem, sing a song, compose a new piece of music, protect animals, build a new building, nurse another sick human being or animal, discover a new piece of knowledge to add to the jigsaw of wonder which this life essentially is, we are lighting candles of hope. When we put out our hand to help another, when we join a cause for the betterment of someone or something or even smile in acceptance of another, we are engaged in spreading the light of hope.  When we shake hands, when we hug another, when we truly listen in acceptance, when we are truly compassionate towards all sentient things, as the Dalai Lama is wont to put it, then and only then are we a true and authentic people of hope.  All our most profound religious and spiritual traditions speak of the light of hope conquering the darkness of despair.  It is no wonder that we often turn to their wisdom traditions in times of disillusionment and despair for words of comfort like: "better to light one candle than to scorn the dark," or "every journey, no matter how long, begins with one little step."  Even if you only smiled at someone today, you are engaged in the apostleship of hope.  I have long loved the short saying of the late Medieval Catholic mystic Meister Eckhart that runs: “If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”  If each and everyone of us said this prayer as often as we can on a daily basis we would be truly embracing the magic of hope. 


Footnote:

* In May 2008 Armstrong was awarded the Freedom of Worship Award by the Roosevelt Institute, one of four medals presented each year to men and women whose achievements have demonstrated a commitment to the Four Freedoms proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 as essential to democracy: freedom of speech and of worship, freedom from want and from fear. The institute stated that Armstrong had become "a significant voice, seeking mutual understanding in times of turbulence, confrontation and violence among religious groups." It cited "her personal dedication to the ideal that peace can be found in religious understanding, for her teachings on compassion, and her appreciation for the positive sources of spirituality." 

Journal of a Soul 44

And What or Who Keeps you Going?

That is a good question indeed.  Especially when some people give up on life, while others apparently, no matter how tough life is for them, manage somehow to "keep on keeping on." In case you don't know the provenance of those last several words, they come from a song of Bob Dylan called Tangled Up In Blue.  That song is one of my favourites from the pen of Bob Dylan as it has haunting lyrics which show the deep inner longing of a drifter for love, companionship or meaning in his life.  Interestingly, Dylan mixes past, present and future tenses in this song with consummate ease, with an readiness of transition that is magical. Indeed he changes person, too, from verse to verse, even changing the "I" of the first verse to "he" and "she" in his later concerts.  But that only adds to the magic, wonder and beauty of this wonderful song.  Lest I lose my path in this post, I had better curb my musical passions here, and point out that the phrase "keep on keeping on" is an important one for me that shows the strength, persistence and determination of the traveller or wayfarer in life. Now let me turn my attention to the question posed in the title of this post.  What, indeed, you may ask, keeps me going?  Let me attempt to list those reasons in no particular order.

1. My Job.  

I remember Pat Kenny, one of our foremost broadcasters here in Ireland, remarking that he was lucky as his hobby became his profession.  He was luckier still as he is currently the best paid broadcaster in the country at 66 years of age.  While few of us can boast the contentment Kenny talks about, some of us do get immeasurable satisfaction from our work.  At the moment, I count myself one of those lucky souls.  Not that my job was always that rewarding.  It's just that I was lucky to realize that m  y job was driving me crazy at 48 and I decided to change track.  In all of that, self-awareness is of utmost importance. There is simply no sense in staying in a job that is soul-destroying.  So I retrained as a Resource and Special Education teacher and left the main stream classroom to begin working with autistic boys, mainly those with Asperger's Syndrome in the area of Social Skills and Communications.  I also do learning support in Mathematics for the school at large.  This is all extremely rewarding work as I can see the results of my labour on a daily basis.  I suppose the big thing in this work on a personal level is simply being needed.  That is why being unemployed leads to such depression in the lives of those afflicted with that dreadful problem.

2. My Creative Outlets

Creativity can never be underestimated as it is literally the food of the soul if I may use a metaphor.  Ever since I can remember I have been a writer, and over the years I have had many bits and pieces published here and there.  In these more recent days I have been engaged in blogging.  This latter has been a soul-saver for me as it allows me to instantly publish online the ideas and, more correctly and importantly, my concerns online.  I also write poems in two languages, English obviously, and then, also, in my native tongue, Gaeilge or Gaelic or as it is more commonly called Irish.  By writing, I am engaged in getting to know myself better, and consequently becoming more contented.  If one reads and writes poems as I do, then you will appreciate that poetry does not really sell, that getting published is difficult to say the least.  However, I remind myself often, as one poet wisely counselled me once, that it is more important that a person writes a poem than that many people read it.  If only a few others read it, in a writing group or in some community setting, then that is the reward.

Other creative outlets are reading, listening to music, travelling and going out with friends. Lest this become like a boring list of my hobbies as would appear on a CV, let me proceed onto the next point.

3. My Spirituality or Religion 

In more recent times, religion has become a somewhat sullied word, while spirituality has become a more positive one.  In my young day, I remember the good things about religion: (i) the sense of wonder evoked by what seemed to me as a child to be very colourful and dignified services, (ii) the sense of a mystery or something divine beyond me, (iii) the beauty of the Latin language and of the hymns and (iv) the sense of the unity within the community. I have long ceased to be a practising Catholic, but I can still tap into some of those old feelings when I attend funerals, baptisms, and Christmas and Easter services.  

However, secularization has long since consigned the role of religion in Ireland to the periphery of life.  As well as a more secularized society, there were indeed intrinsic and endemic problems within the Catholic Church itself.  Those problems in short were the corruption of power and the abuse of that power through allowing child abuse by clerics to go unchecked.  One of the most crippling aspects of any organised religion is the abuse of power. It happens in all and every religion, and let none of us forget that.  Such happens in every human organization: there will always be people who hunger for power and control over others, and they will use every doctrine under the sun to hang onto that power so that they can use it and abuse it.  In every human organization, be it church, state, government, medicine, law, or any other one, those who hunger for power will manage to get their way into the top echelons.  It is only now - in the last ten or so years - that we here in Ireland are properly watching and checking all professions. It is a truism that needs repeating that no organization can monitor or check itself Here I recall that old Latin quotation attributed to Juvenal:  "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" "Who will guard the guards?" A question still worth asking 2000 years later.

Like the Dalai Lama, the smile on Pope Francis' face says it all!!

Religion, uncoupled from spirituality, is a mere power structure that aims at controlling people, at least in certain people's hands.  That's why the election of Pope Francis was/is one of the more prophetic things that have happened in the Roman Catholic Church in the past 50 years.  For me, as for many Catholics, Francis is on a par with another prophetic Pope, namely John XXIII who inspired and opened the historic and prophetic Vatican II.   It was not by chance that Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose Francis as his name as pontiff, as St Francis was the apostle of the poor and unfortunate, with a deep commitment to ecology.  It is more than apparent by his actions that Pope Francis is a highly spiritual man who loves ministering to the poor, and all his actions speak of one with a deep conviction and commitment to Christian principles.  In short, he is Christlike, not church-like!  And there lies the difference between him and  his immediate predecessor. Here is an interesting post written by an unusual but firmly believing (non-Catholic) Christian on why he admires Pope Francis:  Boeskool.com.  His comments are really worth reading and I have signed up to be a member of his blog: they boil down to the fact that Pope Francis is Jesus-like, that is he is more interested in spirituality and in acting like Jesus than in the power structures of the Church.  He is an old man of 77, but his spirituality allows him to walk, smile, talk, and obviously think and feel like a far younger man,  Maybe, just maybe, this man can turn the tide for the Roman Catholic Church, but he must be meeting some opposition within its power structures.  Unfortunately, that is why the bigger Churches are losing so many members: they are too petrified literally - "petrified" means stone-like, unmoved and unmoving.  That is where and how power corrupts, and boy does it corrupt no matter where frail human beings belong.  Finally, it is no wonder to this writer at least that Pope Francis is a Jesuit, one of the foremost orders in the Roman Catholic Church who truly believe in discerning the signs of the times, in discerning their own relationship with Christ and with humanity as a whole.

Spirituality for this writer is all about connection or connectedness with all of creation, which obviously includes other humans.  It is about union with whatever power or spirit runs through the heart of this universe and keeps it "together."  It has involved me in community work, in helping others through the Society of St Vincent de Paul and so on.  It inspires me to meditate and do yoga practices with others.  It also inspires me to read spiritual classics from all traditions.  That's what I love about these modern times where pluralism is more important than uniformity.  I remember a scholar once informing me that unity never means uniformity, and I have never forgotten that piece of wisdom.  (Interestingly Pope Francis realizes that as he says that even atheists can get into heaven if they live moral lives. Mind you, he's only repeating the teachings of Vatican II here!) No matter what religion one belongs to, even none, everyone has a spiritual sense.  I will write later in these posts about the spirituality of atheism, and indeed this topic has been written about by a few scholars in more recent years.

And what is it all about?

I will finish this rather meandering post with this question as it was one put to me when I was only 22 and a young teacher beginning my career.  I was so innocent and "green about the gills" back then that it is almost embarrassing to remember the way I was.  However, such is life and such is the cost of experience.  Anyway, one morning a man called Ger Smith asked me that question.  I was too young and too busy to take the man seriously, far too caught up in my own little world.  It was only some three years later when I had learnt that Ger had died from a congenital heart condition that none of us his colleagues ever knew about at the time., that I realized the import of Ger's question both for him and indeed for all thinking and feeling beings.  If you like, that question, along with legions of others over the years, opened up a giant unknown world to me, a world of infinite questions seeking answers or at least seeking better forms of questions as Rev Dr. Patrick Wallace used to put it back in the day.  Really good and deep questions open us up to mystery and never confusion.  And mystery, as they say, is an ocean we dive into, and never ever a wall against which we bash our cognitive heads. And so to Ger, RIP, I owe a debt of gratitude for opening up the vistas of mystery to me all those years ago.  I do hope that someone somewhere holds you in their heart.