Layer 18 The Nature of Reality. Redefining the Goal.

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Chapter 3 of Ancient Wisdom, Modern World is concerned with ‘dependent origination’ and ‘the nature of reality’. Broadly speaking I take these ideas to mean that we are not, in reality, independent individuals, and that all life, all phenomena, and every human being, are interlinked and interdependent. Within this context, all of our actions have consequences not only for ourselves but for others, and we are nothing ourselves without other people.

With this in mind, then time has no real meaning - there is only a NOW when past actions inform the present and when what we do at any given moment has consequences for the future - both for ourselves and for others; both positive and negative.

These ideas were touched on in Layer 1 of this blog.

In Chapter 3 the Dalai Lama says, “If the self had intrinsic identity, it would be possible to speak in terms of self-interest in isolation from that of others’. But because this is not so, because self and others can only really be understood in terms of relationship, we see that self-interest and others’ interests are closely interrelated.

Indeed, within this picture of dependently originated reality, we see that there is no self-interest completely unrelated to others’ interests. Due to the fundamental interconnectedness which lies at the heart of reality, your interest is also my interest. From this it becomes clear that ‘my’ interest and ‘your’ interest are intimately connected. In a deep sense they converge.”

“Particular causes lead to particular effects, and certain actions lead to suffering while others lead to happiness. Thus it is in everybody’s interests to do what leads to happiness and avoid that which leads to suffering. And because our interests are inextricably linked, we are compelled to accept ethics as the indispensible interface between my desire to be happy and yours.”

Chapter 4 - Redefining the Goal - deals with the nature of happiness - short term and long term.

Money and material things can only bring short-term happiness. Having a lot of money and a lot of material things can even create a state of constant anxiety about their possible loss, for example. There can be no hope of gratifying the senses permanently.

The principal characteristic of genuine happiness is inner peace. Flourishing mentally and emotionally makes a significant contribution to inner peace. So does the satisfaction of love, and in order to attain it we need friends and family who can return our affection.

Our basic attitude to life is a major factor in attaining inner peace. Life consists of both light and dark elements. We can see a glass, and indeed our life, as half full or half empty. A tendency to see it as at least half full is needed in order to attain inner peace.

The other major source of inner peace, and therefore genuine long-term happiness, are the actions we undertake day to day. There are actions which contribute positively to the inner peace of ourselves and others, and actions whose impact are negative - certainly in the long run - to both ourselves and others.

Positive actions can be either ‘ethical’ or ‘spiritual’.

“An ethical act is one where we refrain from causing harm to others’ experience or expectation of happiness. Spiritual acts we can describe in terms of qualities such as love, compassion, patience, forgiveness, humility, tolerance and so on which presume some level of concern for others’ well-being. We find that the (spiritual) actions we undertake which are motivated not by narrow self-interest but out of our concern for others actually benefit ourselves. And not only that, but they make our lives meaningful.”

“Because our every action has a universal dimension, a potential impact on others’ happiness, ethics are necessary as a means to ensure we do not harm others.”

“Genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, humility and so on. It is these which provide happiness both for ourselves and others.”

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Back in the mists of time I first became interested in human well-being as a subject in itself (what some people are now calling ‘happiness studies’) when considering the ideas of the humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow who maintained that people who achieve something like their full potential (in terms of being the best human being they can be) are ‘self-actualised’.

In recent times I’ve come to see such people as being ‘3 dimensional’ - fully developed in terms of spiritual intelligence (SQ), emotional intelligence (EQ), and intellect (IQ). These three dimensions also encompass physical intelligence, instinctual intelligence, social intelligence and metaphysical intelligence. Self-actualised individuals have all of these in abundance.

These ideas concerning three dimensionality and three continuums of intelligence have already been described in Layer 2.

Self-actualised people have travelled a long way along the path towards enlightenment, and they experience satori as a day to day reality. These ideas concerning enlightenment have been described in other recent blogs, recent Layers.

In Layer 20 I’ll summarise Maslow’s work and set out a description in terms of day to day behaviour and attitudes what it actually means to be self-actualised. We can then consider which types of behaviour and which attitudes correspond with which intelligences. We will then be able to judge the proportions of SQ, EQ and IQ that are engaged in the day to day lives of self-actualised individuals. We can then take a view on the relative importance of each of the three dimensions to individual and collective well-being, happiness and enlightenment.
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Materialism [In Our Time. Radio 4 (9.00am.)]

Melvyn Bragg, A.C. Grayling, and others.

Listening to this reminds me I need to get back to reading (and blogging about) Grayling’s 2003 book, What Is Good? The Search For The Best Way To Live, which can happen after I’ve finished Richard Layard’s Happiness - Lessons from a New Science. (2005)

Notes on the broadcast:

Materialists maintain that the only thing that exists is Matter.

The universe is fundamentally material in nature.

Epicurus said that materialism also applied to human nature. But whereas Aristotle believed in permanent substances, Epicurus didn’t.

He believed that humans should follow Pleasure - meaning tranquillity, serenity.

Lucretius believed the world consists of atoms - the basic stuff out of which everything is created.

Religion is mostly about fear and it oppresses people. If people realised they’re just atoms they wouldn’t worry about gods.

Aristotle saw nature as an interlocking system.

Purposes and intelligent design? Final causes? Opposite view to atomists and materialists.

Mind/soul/spirit = good? Matter = bad?
Christian doctrine was an espousal of this dualist view.

4th C Arian persecution. The Arians thought that ‘God is just a man’. They were wiped out for this view.

16th C Descartes. It’s possible to think about the material realm through science - to investigate this realm without impugning religion.

Galileo said that science is to do with quantifiable phenomena. Analysis of the world is a long way from common sense approaches. Science should be based on mathematics? Not an obvious idea.

Descartes and Gasendi - understanding the world through the senses. “There are only surfaces - not soul.” Injecting Epicurus into scientific debate.

The church’s doctrines had been dominant for centuries.

Hobbes espoused radical atomism. The only thing that exists are bodies.

Experiences produce thoughts and ideas in our brains. Consciousness is the ability to be aware of what’s happening.

There are no spiritual or immaterial realities. Hence the need to be atheist.

18th C saw the beginnings of the organised study of psychology and the phenomena of mind. We are still researching how consciousness arises. Our experience of the world is conditioned by our physiology and our psychology.

Issues of free will. Everything we do caused by anticedal states of affairs. Endless cause and effect. There is no freedom, fundamentally. Though we need our freedom to follow our desires.

The mind (memory) is a book that endlessly writes on itself. A Palimpsest. Layers. [See Layer 1]

We conceive ourselves as free moral beings. Whereas science proposes causal explanations.

Consciousness unifies disparate activities within the brain to create a unified sense of self.

The idea that there is a thing called soul or spirit that has ‘its’ own feelings, memories, desires, etc will fall away as we find proper explanations as to how the brain itself, of itself, gives rise to ‘mental’ phenomena.

No time on the programme to discuss Hegel, Marx and Quantum Physics!

If you missed the programme catch it on the BBC website - Listen Again.

Also Start The Week on R4 this week - another ‘must listen to’.

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A recent award for best individual contribution to radio went to Melvyn Bragg. And so say all of us In Our Time devotees.

Layer 17 No Magic, No Mystery. The Dalai Lama

Shakespeare’s birthday. St George’s Day. To be or not to be. Killing a dragon?

This blog consists of more quotations from the Dalai Lama. Sub-headings are my own.

Chapter Two. A Spiritual Revolution.

This is not about religions.

In calling for a spiritual revolution am I advocating a religious solution to our problems? No.

I have realised that there are other faiths and other cultures that are no less capable than mine of enabling people to lead constructive and satisfying lives. What is more I have come to the conclusion that whether or not a person is a religious believer does not matter much. Far more important is that they be a good human being.

The influence of religion on people’s lives is generally marginal, especially in the developed world. No single religion satisfies all humanity. We may also conclude that we humans can live quite well without recourse to religious faith.

As a human being I have a responsibility towards the whole human family, which indeed we all have. Since the majority do not practice religion I am concerned to try to find a way to serve all humanity without appealing to religious faith.

Religions are all directed towards helping human beings achieve lasting happiness. And each of them is, in my opinion, capable of facilitating this. Under such circumstances a variety of religions (each of which promotes the same basic values) is both desirable and useful.

My concern in this book is to try to reach beyond the formal boundaries of my faith. I want to show that there are some universal ethical principles which could help everyone achieve the happiness we all aspire to.

Religion versus spirituality.

I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality.

Religion I take to be concerned with faith in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another, an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of metaphysical or supernatural reality, including perhaps the idea of some form of heaven or nirvana. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, rituals, prayer and so on.

Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit - such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony - which bring happiness to both self and others.

While ritual and prayer, along with the questions of nirvana and salvation, are directly connected with religious faith, these inner qualities need not be, however. There is no reason why an individual should not develop them, even to a high degree, without recourse to any religious or metaphysical belief system. This is why I sometimes say that religion is perhaps something we can do without. What we cannot do without are these basic spiritual qualities.

Concern for other’s well-being.

There is much confusion, as often among religious believers as among non-believers, concerning what spiritual practice actually consists in. The unifying characteristics of the qualities I have described as ‘spiritual’, may be said to be some level of concern for others’ well-being. In Tibetan we speak of shen-pen kyi-sem, meaning ‘the thought to be of help to others’. And when we think about them, we see that each of the qualities noted is defined by an implicit concern for the well-being of others.

Moreover, the one who is compassionate, loving, patient, tolerant, forgiving, and so on to some extent recognises the potential impact of their actions on others and orders their conduct accordingly. Thus spiritual practice involves acting out of concern for others’ well-being.

It also entails transforming ourselves so that we become more readily disposed to do so. To speak of spiritual practice in any terms other than these is meaningless.

My call for a spiritual revolution is therefore not a call for a religious revolution. Nor is it a reference to a way of life that is somehow otherworldly, still less to something magical or mysterious. Rather, it is a call for a radical reorientation away from our habitual preoccupation with self. It is a call for a turn toward the wider community of human beings with whom we are connected, and for conduct which recognises others’ interests alongside our own.

Some may object that a revolution of spirit is hardly adequate to solve the variety and magnitude of problems we face in the modern world. However, given that each problem could certainly be solved by people being more loving and compassionate toward one another - however improbable this may seem - they can also be characterised as spiritual problems susceptible to a spiritual solution.

This is not to say that all we need do is cultivate spiritual values and these problems will automatically disappear. On the contrary, each of them needs a specific solution. But we find that when this spiritual dimension is neglected, we have no hope of achieving a lasting solution.

Bad news is a fact of life. Events can be divided into two broad categories: those which have principally natural causes - earthquakes, droughts, floods and the like - and those which are of human origin. Wars, crime, violence of every sort, corruption, poverty, deception, fraud, social, political and economic injustice are each the consequence of negative human behaviour.

And who is responsible for such behaviour? We are. There is not a single class or sector of society that does not contribute to our daily diet of unhappy news. Fortunately, unlike natural disasters, about which we can do little or nothing, these human problems can be overcome because they are all essentially ethical problems.

Where ethical restraint is lacking, there can be no hope of overcoming problems like those of rising crime. What then is the relationship between spirituality and ethical practice? Since love, compassion, etc, by definition presume some level of concern for others’ well-being, they also presume ethical restraint. We cannot be loving and compassionate unless at the same time we curb our own harmful impulses and desires.

Religious belief is no guarantee of moral integrity. Looking at the history of our species, we see that among the major troublemakers - those who visited violence, brutality and destruction on their fellow human beings - there have been many who professed religious faith, often loudly. Religion can help us establish basic ethical principles. Yet we can still talk about ethics and morality without having recourse to religion.

We must be able to show that violence towards others is wrong. And yet we must find some way of doing so which avoids the extremes of crude absolutism on the one hand, and of trivial relativism on the other. Ordinary common sense should tell us that establishing binding ethical principles is possible when we take as our starting point the observation that we all desire happiness and wish to avoid suffering. We have no means of discriminating between right and wrong if we do not take into account others’ feelings, others’ suffering.

One of the things which determines whether an act is ethical or not is its effect on others’ experience or expectation of happiness. An act which harms or does violence to this is potentially an unethical act.

Emotions and motivation.

When an individual’s overall state of heart and mind is wholesome, it follows that our actions themselves will be (ethically) wholesome.

The individual’s overall state of heart and mind (or motivation) in the moment of action is the key to determining its ethical content, and this point is easily understood when we consider how our actions are affected when we are gripped with powerful negative thoughts and emotions such as hatred and anger. In that moment our mind and heart are in turmoil.

Not only does this cause us to lose our sense (!) of proportion and perspective, but we also lose sight of the likely impact of our actions on others. Indeed, we can become so distracted that we ignore the question of others, and of their right to happiness, altogether. Our actions under such circumstances - that is to say our deeds, words, thoughts, omissions and desires - will almost certainly be injurious to others’ happiness. And this in spite of what our long-term intentions towards others may be or whether our actions are consciously intended or not. The less calm we are, the more likely we are to react negatively with harsh words, and the more certain we are to say or do things which later we regret bitterly, especially if we feel deeply for that person.

When the driving force for our actions is wholesome, our actions will tend automatically to contribute to others’ well-being. They will thus automatically be ethical. Further, the more this is our habitual state, the less likely we are to react badly when provoked. And even when we do lose our temper, any outburst will be free of any sense of malice or hatred. The aim of spiritual and, therefore, ethical practice is thus to transform and perfect the individual’s kun long [spirit, disposition, motivation]. This is how we become better human beings. [Spiritual intelligence]

I trust that I have made it clear that a spiritual revolution entails an ethical revolution.