Acting So We and Our World Awaken Together: Patience is Powerful

We all know we’re living through one of the craziest, most dangerous times in recent or maybe all of human history. I keep asking myself, what am I missing? What more could I do? Where is it all going?

 

We understand mostly by placing one moment in the context of time and memory, by discerning implications and possible futures. But so many of the possible futures being predicted by the news, social and intellectual media are too dismal to consciously consider. Maybe we can help change the future we are seeing by changing how we think about the   present we are living.

 

I am drawn here to a book I mentioned in an earlier blog, The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers, by Eric Weiner, and his chapters on two philosophers not often paired together: Simone Weil and Mahatma Gandhi.

 

The chapter on Simone Weil is about “How to Pay Attention.” Our culture is hooked on speed⎼ and speed, according to Weil, is the enemy of attention, careful consideration, and even joy. Due to the speedy pace of our lives, we can lose so much. We can get caught in, addicted to this repeating cycle, speeding up to catch what is speeding by. And what makes this even worse is the pandemic, added to the injustices, lies, shocks and constant chaos manipulated by DJT and his allies to undermine our sense of stability and our belief in democracy.

 

Desiring is not the problem. The problem with desire is that we can lose ourselves in it, lose even the object we desire in the desiring itself. It robs our attention. A heroin addict doesn’t crave heroin, Weil argues, but the experience of having it. Even more then heroin, the addict craves the relief of the mental and physical agony of not having it. Buddhist teacher, author, philosopher David Loy explained that desire, craving can cause us to feel we are lacking, wrong, powerless, or deficient.

 

The Latin roots of patient are suffering and endurance. When we are more patient, we feel stronger, more in control. We can endure even suffering, and find ourselves happier, clearer in mind, calmer in heart. We can be present in the moment, and thus feel more open to what might come.

 

And then we pay better attention to what or who happens. Weil shows us that inattention is in fact selfishness. When impatient, we reduce others to what we can get from them. When patient, others are fellow travelers who teach us about our own journey.

 

When impatient, we focus on the fruits and yoke action to results. When patient, we make progress even if there are no visible fruits.

 

And how do we fight, now, for our rights, our freedom, and our world?

Gandhi was the father of the movement to free India from British rule and establish an independent nation. He believed he must try to root out the disease of oppression even if it meant suffering hardship himself….

 

*To read the whole article, click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Models of Who We Might Be: Finding the Quiet that Reveals Truths and Informs Our Voice

We are all influenced by others, constantly, and more often than we like to admit. It doesn’t matter if we’re young or old or the time or place. When we’re with certain friends, we act and respond one way. When we’re in school or work or with parents, we present ourselves differently. As the philosopher Aristotle said, we’re political or social beings, even the shyest and most independent of us.

 

Yet, even surrounded by others we can feel alone, isolated inside our heads as if our joys and pains were what separated us from others, not united us. We might breathe in and out as if each breath secluded us from the world instead of weaving us together. Our minds can feel filled with static when we haven’t learned how to adjust the channels to a receptive station.

 

The French philosopher and author J. P. Sartre had a character in his play No Exit say that hell is other people. What if this hell was caused by an obstructed or inauthentic view of our self? What if we had a model to follow who could show us how to live and think in authentic ways that are now hidden by contemporary culture?

 

And sometimes, there is just silence inside us, which can be frightening⎼ or wonderful. Frightening as it reveals that so much is unknown and unknowable, not as set and secure as we might like it to be. And other times, silence is welcome, calming, freeing, or exciting and full of possibilities. What if there are models out there of how to hear silence as the natural sound of mind in tune with the world?

 

I was recently in a bookstore and found The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers, by Eric Weiner. It is about dead thinkers, mostly men, mostly white, unfortunately. But the book is fun to read and examines not only what the philosophers said but who they were and how they lived.

 

Socrates was a monumental figure in Western thought, and in my own life. Or maybe it’s just the myth of Socrates. Because he died 2421 years ago, and he wrote nothing. We know him only through what others said of him. It’s not the living person that we know but an image carved by history to serve our collective needs. Or maybe he has become what  psychiatrist Carl Jung called an archetype or pattern of thought and behavior that can guide us to develop ourselves psychologically, morally, and spiritually.

 

Weiner depicts Socrates as a practitioner of what Buddhists call “crazy wisdom,” someone who casts aside social norms, risking everything to jolt others into new understandings. And he did risk everything. At the age of 71, he was imprisoned and forced to commit suicide by the authorities of his home city of Athens, supposedly for corrupting youth, but most likely because he provoked questions people found uncomfortable….

 

*Please share and go to the Good Men Project to read the whole post.