12/9/21

This article, "Paul Tillich's Socialist Decision," popped up today on Facebook:

The German theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) is renowned today for his powerful synthesis of Christian theology and existentialism. He released an acclaimed series of short books written during the 1950s, including the evocative titles The Courage to Be and Dynamics of Faith. These texts laid out Tillich's dynamic theology with a rare combination of economy and mystery, memorably describing “faith as a state of being ultimately concerned” and declaring that “courage can show us what Being truly is.” Later, he authored an epic three-volume Systematic Theology, which dove deep into the murk of existentialist philosophy, famously arguing that God constitutes the ultimate “ground of Being” implied in humanity's search for self-transcendence.

While Tillich has become a veritable giant within contemporary theology, many are not familiar with his lifelong commitment to socialism, in both theory and practice. Tillich was active in Germany's religious socialism movement and became deeply conversant with Marxist theory and politics. Notably, he authored a lesser-known book, The Socialist Decision, which argued for the necessity of socialism in the 20th century — and which he deemed his best work.

Socialism was no mere academic matter for Tillich. He served as a chaplain during the First World War, an experience that brought him face-to-face with the catastrophes of capitalism and militarism, as well as the political anemia of the Christian churches. He returned home to his native Germany, which was quickly turned upside down by the 1918 November Revolution. Kaiser Wilhelm II’s empire gave way to the cultural rollercoaster of the Weimar Republic, and Tillich and his second wife, Hannah Werner-Gottschow, embraced its social liberalism and experimentalism. They lived in an open marriage and frequented the avant-garde venues and social circles of the time.

Soon after the war’s conclusion, Tillich began to participate in working groups and intellectual circles with other religious socialists. In an early pamphlet co-authored in 1919, he urged “representatives of Christianity and the church who stand on socialist soil to enter into the socialist movement in order to pave the way for a future union of Christianity and the socialist social order.”

Then in 1932 came his book The Socialist Decision, written as the Nazis transitioned from a threatening political movement to a lethal political dictatorship. Tillich’s politics had already made him a liability for the Nazi party, and the book was immediately censored. He was allegedly offered a prestigious academic position on the condition that he repudiate the book and its criticisms of the new regime. Tillich laughed and was swiftly exiled to the United States, where he and Hannah lived out the remainder of their days.


The Perils of Political Romanticism

Though nearly all initial copies of The Socialist Decision were destroyed by the Nazis and the fires of war, a few remained in circulation among Tillich’s confidantes. Nearly forty years later, it was translated into English. The Socialist Decision is an underappreciated and highly unique contribution to the tradition of religious socialism. In addition to its theological insight, it exhibits great imagination and political sensitivity in dealing with the perils and contradictions of Tillich’s time. As waves of right-wing populism and illiberal movements crash against the institutions of democracy in the 21st century, The Socialist Decision deserves to be revisited and applied to our political moment.

One of the main targets of Tillich’s book is political romanticism, which he defines as a nostalgic attachment to a “myth of origin [that] envisions the beginnings of humankind in elemental, superhuman figures of various kinds.” This myth of the origin is one of the great “roots of political thought” and is the basis for all “conservative and romantic thought in politics.” Tillich discerned three basic origin myths that animate romantic politics: soil, blood, and social group.

These myths of origin help to sanction the present in two primary ways. First, they idealize a paternalistic past in order to “hold consciousness fast, not allowing it to escape from their dominion.” Second, they resist the demands of justice by freezing historical time into a recurring cycle of rise and fall. As Tillich writes, “The origin embodies the law of cyclical motion: whatever proceeds from it must return to it. Wherever the origin is in control, nothing new can happen.”

Myths of origin take on a special role in the wake of capitalism and liberalism, forming a bulwark against modern ideas of individualism, egalitarianism and the rational improvement of society. Such myths imagine a transhistorical founding of the people or state — one beyond questions of legitimacy and justice — that establishes strict hierarchies and naturalizes the existence of social classes. This mythical order depends on an elite few with elevated status and powers of rule over the underclasses; when the dominated classes attempt to deviate from this order, inevitable chaos and ruin follows.

Though Tillich was concerned mainly with the rise of Nazism, his analysis is highly applicable to 21st century conservatism. Origin myths are highly adaptable to different political and social circumstances, and are easily wielded by both religious and secular interests. For instance, many conservative Christians interpret human history through a pseudo-Augustinian lens of endless decline and fall. In effect, “nothing new can happen”: it is our fate to endlessly repeat the Edenic fall from grace, as virtuous religious societies emerge, fall into sinful permissiveness and decadence, and collapse in ruin.

Tillich’s metaphors of soil and social group, which emphasize a primal rootedness and connection, are clearly deployed by nationalists to instill a sense of organic belonging and imagined community. The culturally and racially homogenous nation is contrasted with a decrepit one, polluted by unrestrained multiculturalism and the presence of foreign aliens — those who are not “native” to the soil and become parasites on national culture and institutions.

The most insidious myth of origin, according to Tillich, is the “animal form of origin” or “origin of blood.” This myth embraces violent hierarchy and racial superiority, imagining a clash with other “animal powers in a process of selection through struggle and breeding.” Rather than describing the long fall in terms of grace and sin, or vibrant national culture and decadent decay, it invokes the starkly racial crises of genetic pollution and demographic decline. Today, the right increasingly relies on these tropes: right-wing figures like Charles Murray and Andrew Sullivan have re-popularized notions of “race science,” while Tucker Carlson breathlessly warns 5 million viewers about the impending breathless alarm “great replacement” of white voters.


The Conservative Uses of Origin Myths

Despite the varied and sometimes contradictory uses of these myths by the contemporary right, they all serve to rationalize a nostalgic attachment to a gloriously idealized past. Because the bogeymen of “liberalism,” democracy,” and/or “social justice” have severed society from its primordial origin, the present can be recast as merely a hollow shell. The modern revolt against political and social hierarchies have handed illegitimate power to the unworthy, the immoral and the outsider—a power they cannot capably exercise. And so, paradoxically, the conservative must fight to bring the past into the present. As Corey Robin memorably notes, “Conservatism is about power besieged and power protected. It is an activist doctrine for an activist time.”

This point is very important, as liberals and leftists often mistakenly assume that conservatism is primarily about the defense of the past. But in moments like Tillich’s, when liberal institutions are vulnerable and social movements threaten to upset the status quo, the reactionary response must be equally activist. In pivotal political moments, the conservative cannot be a crotchety defender of the status quo, since it has become clear that cannot halt the underclasses’ forward movement. Instead, conservatives must continually develop creative new forms of power to halt the decay of modernity and democracy — often by more effectively wielding the technological power and innovation that exploded in the modern era. This paradoxical need to establish new forms of power by appealing to a romantic past easily leads to intense competition between conservative factions — both in Tillich’s time and ours. Tillich captures this conflict by distinguishing between “conservative” and “revolutionary” romanticism. Conservative romanticism “defend[s] the spiritual and social residues of the bond of origin against the autonomous system, and whenever possible [seeks] to restore past forms.” This kind of romanticism has animated much of modern conservatism, which usually tries to restore traditional forms of elite society by rolling back reforms, defending free markets, and neutralizing radical movements. In an American context, the “fusionist” project of combining traditionalist conservatism with laissez-faire economics is emblematic of this tendency.

But when liberalism threatens to be dragged to the left or traditional conservative elites, a more radical, “revolutionary” romanticism of the far right can emerge. Revolutionary romanticism “tries to gain a basis for new ties to the origin by a devastating attack on the rational system.” It brooks few compromises with political institutions and attacks traditional elites for their inability to order and purify the national community. Where revolutionary romanticism gains ground, it launches its devastating attack against representative democracy, first by strategically collaborating with traditional elites and then violently crushing them and all political opposition. This is precisely what happened in 1930s Germany, when the youthful Nazis entered into an alliance with traditional conservative nationalists — only to brush them aside once they’d served their purpose.


Liberalism and Socialism: Friend or Foe?

Tillich’s discussion of German liberalism and capitalism — both of which opened the door to Nazi reaction — is especially insightful for understanding our contemporary moment. Tillich was well aware that capitalism and liberalism arose as intertwined forces. Wielded by the capitalist class, liberalism was instrumental in severeing society from traditional religious and communal bonds and introduced the world to the horrors of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery.

But the fact that liberalism and capitalism developed together did not lead Tillich to a dismissive critique of liberalism. Unlike some contemporary Christian theologians whose “anti-capitalism” involves categorically rejecting liberal modernity or rehabilitating pre-liberal political ideas, Tillich insisted on the necessity of liberalism for the socialist project. He praised liberalism’s individualism, rationalism and moral egalitarianism as indispensable for authentic democracy and socialism. As he put it, “liberalism and democracy in fact belong very closely together. Each is at work within the other; and in spite of the sharpest tensions that may arise between them, they can never be separated.”

However, Tillich was highly critical of the bourgeois capture of liberalism, which granted liberty and self-determination to the capitalist class, and denied it to the masses. It was because the capitalist class had failed to “actualize the democratic demands of its own principle” that liberal political radicalism in the 18th and 19th century quickly gave way to abstract idealism. Tillich knew that liberalism could not be rolled back — this would be yet another romantic reaction. Instead, to truly realize the liberal promise, liberalism would have to be severed from the capitalist system that results in “total human objectification because of economic objectification.”

In our time, liberalism and capitalism have also come under intense scrutiny from both the right and the left. One notable criticism comes from a growing number of right-wing, largely Catholic intellectuals who have called for an end to liberalism. This cadre of “postliberals” contends that political liberalism has given rise to a tyranny of secularism, individual autonomy and transgressive identities. Because they believe that liberalism is inherently hostile toward traditional Christianity, postliberals have coalesced around a strong state (often aligning themselves with far-right politicians), fighting culture wars against "elites" and “wokeism” and rehabilitating a hegemonic “cultural Christianity.”

Unlike “fusionist” conservatives, postliberals regularly criticize free markets for their role in maintaining liberalism. However, it is not capitalism itself that unsettles them, but the pervasive market relations that threaten the “traditional” forms of social, sexual and religious life they wish to maintain. Inevitably, their softball criticisms of consumerism, markets, and Wall Street take a backseat to more pressing anxieties — for instance, who gets to use which bathroom, and the scandal of drag queen library hours. The free market is bad not because it subjects us to social and political unfreedom, but because it grants us too much freedom from our naturally “given” roles.

Though written nearly 100 years ago, Tillich presciently grasped how these social conservative revolts against market tyranny play a role in the reproduction of capitalism: “The apocalyptic pronouncements of doom which the intellectual groups of political romanticism direct at industrial society do not hinder the bearers of capitalistic power from using the new, supposedly anticapitalistic forms of social reconstruction to secure their own class dominance.”

Tillich also anticipated the political vision entailed in postliberalism: a combination of authoritarian capitalism and nationalism. Stark market inequalities will be maintained alongside a state that advances illiberal social policies and suppresses progressive movements — all in the name of preserving a unitary national identity. As Tillich put it, “the bourgeoise, with the help of the idea of the nation, succeeds in overcoming its political opponents at home, in enlisting in its service the pre-brougeois forces that are still bound to the origin.”

By contrast, Tillich offers a far more progressive account of Christianity that contains sharper anti-capitalist resources for the left. Unlike today’s postliberals, who want to suppress liberalism — and the marginalized subjects who have laid claim to liberalism’s promises — Tillich knew that Christians must protect and radicalize the liberal legacy by deciding for socialism. He described this as the primary “internal conflict of socialism” rooted in the “internal conflict of the proletariat situation.” For Tillich, the true realization of universal equality and freedom could only be attained in a courageous decision for a liberal, democratic socialism.

This would require a decisive break from myths of origin, and their pessimistic politics of grandiosity and dominance, as well as a commitment to a more human future beyond capitalism. As Tillich put it “the breaking of the myth of origin by the unconditional demand is the roots of liberal, democratic, and socialist thought in politics.” How this could be achieved in theory, let alone in practice, is the immense task that fell to socialists then — and now.


What Comes After a Failed Revolution?

One complicating issue for German socialism in the early 20th century was its understanding of Marxism. Tillich adopted a nuanced, balanced approach to Marx in The Socialist Decision, neither praising him as a Biblical seer nor dismissing him for his “materialism” or “economism,” as Christian theologians often do. Tillich found a great deal of moral value in the young Marx’s critique of capitalist alienation, and extolled Marx’s mature theory of historical materialism. But he was staunchly critical of “dogmatic” Marxists in Germany, who claimed to have discovered in Capital a lithomantic crystal that foretold an inevitable socialist future.

Tillich noted that belief in an inexorable socialist victory became a lethal hallucinogen to many movements, as they vested their hopes in calculating the moment of crisis and revolution. As these confident hopes failed to materialize, a morbid sense of disappointment set in.

The belief that history moved irresistibly toward socialism contributed to a tendency among German Marxists becoming detached from a materialist praxis bent on changing the world. Instead of waging a relentless struggle to obtain power and enact socialist reforms, too many radicals gave into theorizing evermore elaborate predictive models capitalism would collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. In a grim turn, heated Marxist debates about forming a united front with “reformist” social democrats against fascism resulted in a Nazi waltz to victory. Marxist theory had dictated that fascism was little more capitalism’s dying gasp; instead, the Nazis marched social democrats and communists into the concentration camps.

There is another contemporary lesson to be drawn from Tillich’s analysis of German Marxism. Since the vulgar Marxist belief in the inevitability of revolution sputtered and then died, the contemporary left has fractured, and now spends a great deal of time mincing minute differences between social democrats, radicals, left-liberals, communists, Marxists — often in a needlessly puritanical fashion

While conservatives happily seize on this (disproportionately online) phenomenon as proof of leftist intolerance, I hold a different view. As Ben Burgis and Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints have pointed out, much of this behavior is rooted in melancholia. Deflated by a sense of political impotence in the face of neoliberal, leftists increasingly turn to aesthetics, performance, and the cultivation of personal political brands.

Purity of spirit and staking out the most radical positions easily takes the place of the day-to-day work of engaging the masses and winning reforms that benefit working people. Small political achievements are deemed a distraction from revolutionary politics (both before and after they’re won). Fellow leftists who insist on more nuanced understandings of theory and practice are immediately told of the utter immutability of the systems of power and oppression we oppose. This dialectic of puritanical posturing and fatalistic resignation is one of the greatest obstacles to restoring hope among the left that “we have it in our power to begin the world again.” We should heed Tillich’s corrective to leftist melancholia, which invoked prophetic hope: “Socialism lifts up the symbol of expectation against the myth of origin and against the belief in harmony.”


A Prophetic Demand, a Socialist Future

Tillich insisted on making a “decision” for socialism, and developing the courage to work toward achieving it. As the forces of conservative and revolutionary romanticism bear down on the 21st century, Christians and socialists cannot assume that the arc of history will bend toward emancipation without costly struggle and reactionary backlash. But this is no reason to retreat to a vulgar revolutionary optimism or melancholic puritanism. As Tillich observed, the superiority of the socialist principle is rooted in a “propheticism” that makes an “unconditional demand” on the present, rooted in a promised future. Tillich concluded in The Socialist Decision, “Only through expectation is human existence raised to the level of true humanity.”

No one expressed this truly revolutionary expectation better than Tillich’s greatest pupil Martin Luther King, Jr., who deserves to be the final word on this point:

“[T]he question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”

Coincidentally, I just started reading the book in question, The Socialist Decision, yesterday after hearing it referenced on an episode of the Faith and Capitalism podcast; and I agree with much of the sentiment of this article so far re: Tillich's relatively unknown political theology and social philosophy. In addition, it seems like the perfect reading material for Advent seeing as the first week is associated with hope. And much of Tillich's book is concerned with precisely that, which is reflected in its conclusion that, "Only through expectation [hope] is human existence raised to the level of true humanity."

I'm glad this work is getting more attention. I'm really surprised that it's not more well-known seeing as it's pretty incredible and he's such an important figure in the fields of philosophy and theology.

12/5/21

The more I contemplate what it is I admire about the life of Jesus, the more I think it boils down to one thing: restoring community and repairing the brokenness we find in ourselves and the world. Almost every aspect of his example and message points to this singular goal. The idea of the universal Christ, the universal church, and the greater part of his words and actions all point to this idea of healing and restoration out of an inexhaustible source of compassion and love.

Loving others as ourselves (Mt 22:35-40). Forgiving seventy-seven times (Mt 18:21-35). Leveling inequality, both social (Mt 25:31-46) and economic (Mt 19:16-30). Bringing back into the community all those who were reviled or pushed to the margins of society, from marginalized ethnic groups (John 4:4-42), lepers (Mt 8:1-4), sex workers (Luke 7:36-50), and tax collectors (Luke 15:1-7) to sinners (Mark 2:13-17), the poor, and those living with disabilities (Luke 14:7-24). Throwing down rulers from their thrones and lifting up the lowly (Luke 1:46-55). The story of Jesus is a meditation on saving the world from itself and its contradictions, hypocrisies, and modes of oppression—a meditation that's supposed to inspire hope, reflection, and action. What we're asked to repent of is our unskillful actions, the harm that we cause or indirectly support with our complacency. And what we're encouraged to celebrate is our own potential for goodness and those who show us the way to fulfill that goodness, the prophets who light the way with their words and deeds, shepherds who guide us and lead the way forward as we work together to restore our community and repair our relationships with ourselves and one another.

12/4/21

On Twitter, Anand Giridharadas writes:

You are only as safe as the least cared-for human being on earth.

Read this important reporting by @snolen from South Africa on how immunocompromised people who don’t get the treatment they need risk becoming variant incubators.

Vaccines for all. Healthcare for all.

Brings to mind the parable of the sheeps and goats at Mt. 25:31-46 and a poem written by Oscar Romero:

No one can serve two lords.
There is only one God,
and that God will either be the true one,
who asks us to give things up when they become sin,
or it will be the god of money,
who makes us turn our back on the Christian God.

The heart of true religion isn't about politics of purity or judging others for their actions and choices. Rather, it's about interconnectedness, relationships, care and concern for others. How we treat others is our spiritual practice, and it's only in the present moment (not after death) that we choose God (love) or Mammon (greed).

It's obvious that we're being coerced to choose Mammon by the logic of our socio-economic system and those who profit from it the most, and the consequences reflect that. The question is, what will it take for that to change?

When will Mary's words in Luke 1:46-55 ring true? When will our love for others throw down the rulers from their thrones and lift up the lowly? When will our love allow the hungry to be filled with good things and the rich sent away empty?

10/10/21

I had the urge to visit Central Lutheran Church today. Left to my own devices, I find that I tend to become cynical, impatient, and mean of spirit. Over time, the difficulties of life work to harden my heart towards the world and to other people. I start to separate myself from everyone and sink into a state of indifference. Everything begins to feel pointless, and when that happens, it becomes that much easier to give myself over to the greed and anger and hatred and selfishness that every human heart is capable of experiencing. And one of the reasons I find myself so drawn towards religion and spirituality is that I often need to have my faith and hope in other people nurtured. I occasionally need inspiration to seek beauty in a world we much too often fill with ugliness, and encouragement not to let the hardness of my heart become something permanent.

Today's service and gospel reading reflected that in a lot of ways, both on an individual level and a societal one, because just as I often need spiritual encouragement to help me not give into the darker impulses buried within my heart, society needs material encouragement to do the same and not mirror the worst within us.

The gospel read was from Mark, chapter 10, verses 17-31:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."

Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."

On an individual level, this passage (as suggested in today's homily) is encouraging us to let go of the things that bind us and prevent us from repairing our broken relationships, with ourselves, with our neighbours, and with nature itself. Salvation isn't about following the right rules, but about the quality of our hearts and our relationships. On one side of the needle is us and all of the things that we carry with us and are unable to put down. And on the other side is our neighbour. The more we have, the more we tend to cling to what's "ours," the tighter our grasp to our possessions and privilege and sense of self. And we cannot pass through the eye of the needle unless we have the ability to put those things down and walk through unencumbered, to share our wealth and our love with others. I think that's why Jesus, when asked which of the commandments was the greatest, replied, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'" (Mark 22:34-40).

And while many Christians tend to view this as only applying to ourselves and a decidedly otherworldly goal, I think it has implications for the here and now as well. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is among us (Luke 17:20-21). He also said that one cannot serve both God and Mammon, i.e., Love and Money (Mt 6:24). And if that's the case, then the quality and shape of our material social relations and the various ways they condition our actions and morals and culture are just as important as the quality and shape of our hearts and minds. Unequal social relations will logically give rise to inequality; and a system that operates on the logic of things like property rights, maximization of profit, and growth for the sake of growth will logically give rise to an unequal system that prioritizes owners over labourers, profit over people, accumulation over equal distribution, etc. You can serve God or Mammon; and capitalism conditions allegiance to the latter. Equalizing social relations, on the other hand, would go a long way towards helping us get back to the spirit of Acts 4:32-35—hence in order to help repair our broken relationships, we must not only repair our hearts but the material foundation that our society is built upon.

Maybe it's a moral failing on my part that I need such inspiration and encouragement every now and then, but I don't think so. We all have our own coping mechanisms and support systems, some less skillful than others. And Marx wasn't being entirely derisive when he wrote, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people" (A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right). The material world we have created, along with the social relations dominating it, often feel heartless, soulless. And in the teachings and example of spiritual teachers like Jesus, the Buddha, etc., I see so much heart and soul and expressions of hope for making ourselves and our world better. They saw many truths about the human condition that we tend to forget or are coerced to ignore, and it's good to be reminded of them from time to time. I don't want to be like the man who grieves because of his craving and clinging and broken relationships; I want to be like the person who rejoices in love, compassion, and generosity.

9/26/21

I've found it difficult to put my spiritual/religious beliefs into words, often relying on the words of others to articulate them. Recently, for example, I've been delving into Spinoza's Ethics (especially through the Seekers of Unity series), and I find myself very drawn towards this work, as many others before me have been.

I'd definitely say that I'm a believer in panentheism, i.e., the idea that what we call God, the One, Truth, Nature, Substance, Universe, Dhamma, Brahman, etc. and the world are interrelated and ultimately of the same substance, yet not entirely identical as God transcends/is greater than the world. What we perceive to be distinctions between things like mind and body, for instance, are merely distinctions between modes, attributes, or appearances of phenomena that arise and cease through the complex causality that our individual minds conceptually perceive. We see the movement of the parts but not the stillness of the whole. But just as the individual waves of the ocean — due to things like the movements of winds and currents and the gravitational pull of the moon — appear to be unique and isolated phenomena distinct from each other and the world of the ocean they inhabit, they are in reality all of the same substance, i.e., they are in essence water, out of which they arise from, return to, and are but modes of being of. In much the same way, our individual selves appear to be unique and isolated phenomena distinct from each other and the world we inhabit. And while the water itself can be said to have inherent existence, needing nothing else to exist or be conceived from, the modes or properties of the waves cannot and need the substance of water to exist and be perceived.

From the perspective of the human mind, the world appears as one thing and we as another, and so too does 'God' or that which transcends it all. We are in the world, and ultimate reality lies outside even that. This ultimate reality or what we call God is something that seems alien to us and beyond our grasp. However, in truth, we are more like the waves of the ocean, passively unaware of our essence and the substance that makes our modes of being possible, an essence which is empty of inherent existence yet the same essence as the world as well as that which both lies beyond it and underlies it, or maybe better, contains it all. From the Buddhist POV, I think this idea is mirrored in Nagarjuna's line, "Samsara does not have the slightest distinction from Nirvana. Nirvana does not have the slightest distinction from Samsara" (Verses from the Center, 25:19). Samsara represents the world and nirvana represents that which transcends the world and lies outside of ordinary human experience. And while from our human POV there are noticeable distinctions between samsara and nirvana, conditioned and unconditioned, world and God, mind and body, us and others, or anything else we can differentiate, from the ultimate POV there's not the slightest distinction between them; the distinctions are illusory.

Interestingly enough, Buddhism also defines 'the world' or 'the all' in terms of our individual, sensory experience of it, i.e., "the eye and forms, ear and sounds, nose and aromas, tongue and flavors, body and tactile sensations, intellect and ideas" (SN 35.23). What we know is constrained in many ways by the nature of the human mind and where/how consciousness 'lands and grows' due to where "there is passion, delight, and craving for the nutriment of consciousness" (SN 12.64). But these sensory experiences locked into the apprehension of the modes of expression, being, or appearance of phenomena are illusory and comparable to a glob of foam floating down the Ganges, a bubble, a mirage, a hollow banana tree, a magic trick—i.e., empty and void (SN 22.95). It's as if our minds are conditioned to grasp the attributes of the waves, whose individual existence are inconstant, imperfect, unsatisfactory, empty and void because they do not exist from their own side, and not the substance they are an attribute or mode of. Nevertheless, understanding the causality of the conditioned world can act as a cause for the human mind's understanding of the reality of things as they are, abusing us of our notions of separateness and inherent selfness, thereby touching the deathless element through ceasing the mental processes of craving and clinging and 'I-making and my-making.' Clinging to our identity as an independent wave is ultimately unsatisfactory and stressful because it traps us within the causal modality of arising and ceasing, birth and death; letting go of that clinging 'unbinds' one and opens them up to experiencing the boundless waterness of the waves.

The true reality, on the other hand, is one that can be said to be unborn, unmade, unconditioned, existing from its own side, stable, eternal. Spinoza reasons that this reality is analogous to God or substance, "that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception" (Ethics, I, Def. III). In Buddhism, this is somewhat comparable to nirvana, the "unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated" (Ud 8:3). This reality or substance or whatever you want to call it is akin to the primordial water that's modified into all the various waves the we conceive of and that form the basis for our subject-object dualism and the illusion that we are one wave distinct from all the others and the ocean we all inhabit, when in fact everything that we see, hear, taste, touch, feel, and cognize is of the same substance or reality that comprises what sees, hears, tastes, touches, feels, and cognizes. Its true essence is eternal oneness, while its attributes or expressions are infinite.

The Buddha demonstrates that through the practice of virtue, concentration, and discernment, the human mind can cognize nirvana, the unconditioned, the deathless element, etc. making the mind into the mind of enlightenment characterized by 'consciousness without feature.' Spinoza, on the other hand, argues that "the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God; thus when we say, that the human mind perceives this or that, we make the assertion, that God has this or that idea, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he is displayed through the nature of the human mind, or in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind; and when we say that God has this or that idea, not only in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind, but also in so far as he, simultaneously with the human mind, has the further idea of another thing, we assert that the human mind perceives a thing in part or inadequately" (Ethics, II, Prop XI, Corollary) and that "the clear and distinct ideas of the mind are as necessarily true as the ideas of God" (Ethics, II, Prop. XLIII), suggesting a rational means of achieving the same type of knowledge: "The knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God which every idea involves is adequate and perfect. The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God" (Ethics, II, Prop. XLVI&XLVII).

I realize that the analogy of waves and water breaks down in the sense that the wind and gravity which represent the causal conditions that shape the waves aren't themselves water, as well as the fact that the element of water is comprised of atoms that in turn are further divided, while these laws of nature and all the particles within it are but part of nature itself, whose reality is said to be singular, self-contained, one infinite substance. But I think it conveys the general idea clearly enough, especially if we compare the wind in the analogy to the passions of the mind fuelled by ignorance and greed, hatred, and delusion churning the water of the ocean into waves, and which when stilled give rise to an experience of peace and an ending to the wave's rounds of rebirth.

That leads me to also say that I'm a perennialist in the sense that I strongly believe this reality — whether we call it God, the One, Truth, Nature, Substance, Universe, Dhamma, Brahman, etc. — is a unity that paradoxically contains or is capable of infinite modes of expression, being, or appearance. And I see in each spiritual tradition a sincere search for and genuine understanding of this unity through a combination of imagination, reason, and intuition, with the first two arising from our dualistic awareness, and the latter achieved through nondual consciousness. The human mind, as a dependently arisen product of causes and conditions, is the experience of samsara; the mind of God is the experience of nirvana (the deathless element often alluded to in Buddhism = Spinoza's one eternal substance). And they are one. We are ultimately one with all of the things we seek to know, understand, and love. The human mind, in so far as it is characterized by its particular mode of being, much like the temporal wave in the ocean, is finite and limited; and our ignorance of things as they are blocks the light of this understanding from illuminating our mind. But the human mind, in so far as it shares its substance with God, strives to understand itself and seek truth in its existence.

Our salvation or enlightenment is achieved through the process of overcoming our ignorance of reality by releasing our mind's grasping of the appearances and letting go of our self-identity view, thereby opening ourselves up to an intellectual understanding and/or love of God, the One, Truth, Nature, Substance, Universe, Dhamma, Brahman, etc. and realizing our own nature, or as Ruksana put it in The Circle, "real recognizing real." In Buddhism, one is encouraged to develop selflessness in regards to the aggregates of form, feeling, perception, mental fabrications, and sensory consciousness in order to achieve this realization. Judaism has a similar concept in Kabbalah called bittul, 'selflessness' or 'self-negation.' In Christianity and Islam, one is encouraged to die to yourself or 'die before you die.' Another method involves love, effectively doing the same thing. In Buddhism, for instance, metta or loving-kindness can also be salvific. And this method seems even more predominant in Christianity. Jesus says to love God and love others as ourselves (Mt 22:37-39). And we are all interconnected, so loving others as ourselves is also loving ourselves. And John goes even further, saying God is love (1 John 4:16), and it's that act of unconditional love which becomes the positive form of selflessness that equally removes the mental passions and clinging that cloud our vision and prevent us from truly seeing things as they are. So ultimately we're left with God loving God, which in reality is just the act of loving itself—a singular, loving or unbound state of consciousness free from misperceptions and passions and sense of self.

While I've spent a lot more time with Buddhism, I've also found myself drawn strongly towards Christianity in recent years. In Christianity, I see the inheritor of the Greek Mystery cults and Platonic philosophy that, in the ancient world, used both ecstatic and rational means to point practitioners towards God, the One, the Form of the Good, Logos. And in Jesus, I see a person who had such mystical experiences and intuitive realizations, seeing himself in God and God in himself, unifying his individual mode of being with the substance underlying it, reflecting and pointing towards this constant and eternal state of consciousness. And just as John states that God is love and whoever is without love doesn't know God (1 John 4:7-8), Spinoza states that, "The intellectual love of the mind towards God is that very love of God whereby God loves himself, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he can be explained through the essence of the human mind regarded under the form of eternity; in other words, the intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself" (Ethics, V, Prop XXXVI).

What I find eminently important in all of this, however, is how each of these traditions and ways of talking about experience and reality agree on the reality and power of interconnectedness. Whether in terms of causality (such as in the focus of actions and dependent co-arising in Buddhism) or the oneness of reality (such as in the relational nature of the trinity), each of these approaches make interconnectedness a centerpiece. As Clare Carlisle puts it in an article for the Guardian: "Spinoza's world view brings to the fore two features of life: dependence and connectedness. Each wave is dependent on the sea, and because it is part of the sea it is connected to every other wave. The movements of one wave will influence all the rest. Likewise, each being is dependent on God, and as a part of God it is connected to every other being. As we move about and act in the world, we affect others, and we are in turn affected by everything we come into contact with." And this understanding not only gives us insight into the nature of our world, but in how to live a life characterized by virtue, freedom, and happiness through our knowledge of causality and, ultimately, love of God. Because the more still we, as waves, can make ourselves, the closer we are able to come to experiencing our own waterness.

8/15/21

I take wisdom and inspiration from wherever I find it. I'm a Catholic Buddhist whose current spiritual home is an ELCA Lutheran church with a pastor who's just as comfortable using her love of DnD in her reflections as she is her passion for social justice and equality.

Today was the first in-person service they've had since the pandemic began, and it was nice to be back. Everyone who came was masked and socially distanced, and the theme perfectly fit the moment, both lamenting the suffering and hardships we've had to endure and celebrating the sense of hope and community that has helped keep us going.

One of the aspects of Christianity I find the most meaningful is the communalism underlying it. It's all about being united as one and caring for one another. And despite being an introverted person who enjoys being alone, we're still a social species and there's something powerful about the bonds we share. It just felt really good to be there today.

3/20/21

A rambling rebuttal of Martin Hagglund's intro to This Life.

To start, I don't think that the dichotomy Hagglund makes between the finite and the infinite is necessarily as solid as he affirms. God or Nature or the Infinite can be seen as a ground of being out of which a finite world arises and in which both existence and experience are possible (think of the Kabalistic conception of tsimtsum). In addition, that existence and experience is arguably all about relationships (this idea is embedded within the theology of social trinitarianism), and as such, our fragile life together in this place where the infinite is paradoxically transcendent and immanent is the stage on which these relationships are acted out and performed. The connection often made between art and the divine is made, I think, in relation to this creative activity, of striving to create and to connect with others or something greater. And it can be further argued that our ultimate purpose is fulfilled in and by these relationships.

Take Christianity, for instance. This idea of fulfillment through relationships is made explicitly in places like the New Testament, where Jesus compares what we do to one another to what we do to God, connecting not only the finite (secular) and infinite (religious) together, but making what we do within the context of our finite, shared lives together the centerpiece of religious life. To dismiss this is to dismiss the true heart of many, if not most, religions. In Christianity, once again, we have lines such as: "Love your neighbor as yourself." "Do to others whatever you would have them do to you." "What you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me." Etc.

In essence, instead of seeing the secular and religious, or finite and infinite, as two separate, antagonistic, and ultimately incapable categories, they should be seen as complementary, as two sides of the same coin. Buddhists might say things like samsara and nirvana are the same. Christians might say things like all are one under Christ. It's a nondual POV in which we find a synthesis between these two seemingly contradictory ideas or realities.

Another criticism Hagglund has with eternity or the infinite is the lack of motivation one would have once it was realized or immanent. But in a sense, the quest for eternity is never-ending, always unfolding, giving us an endless motivation, much like with the idea of progress. We are always striving towards this idealistic goal that may never be fully realized by us finite beings, nevertheless we strive on. And this motivation translates to the finite world precisely because that is the world in which we live and breathe and are stewards of. Because of the intimate connection between the finite (secular) and the infinite (religious), to disrespect the finite world and harm it or anything in it is to disrespect the divine and harm our connection to it. If God is love, and God is immanent in the world, then our love must extend to that world and each reflection of God contained therein, finite or otherwise. If the earth and all life on it is sacred, then even religious life (as opposed to secular life) can care about and be committed to the flourishing of finite life as we conventionally experience it as an end in itself. I'd even go so far as to say that, to live a truly religious life, you must learn to truly love others regardless of their finitude or eternal nature (assuming that's even a thing). Not out of fear or obedience or for some reward, but as an end in itself. "Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love." That is where I think both secular faith and religious faith meet. An immature understanding of religious faith is individualistic, transactional, and/or focused mainly on the infinite. A mature understanding of the religious, on the other hand, is communal, relational, and focused on interconnectedness.

Hagglund states that freedom requires finitude, and eternity equals unfreedom. But I think that's a false dichotomy in many ways. For one, as human beings, in terms of our bodies and personalities, we are finite, conditioned beings, and it's our surroundings and our own actions that condition and shape us. And I think religious faith is ultimately the same as Hagglund's secular faith in that the primary question of religious faith is the freedom and ability to ask what ought to be done with our time. The difference to me is that religious faith specifically asks a more pointed question, in my opinion, best articulated by the Buddha as exemplifying the beginnings of wisdom: What when I do it will be for my long-term welfare and happiness? In addition, eternity is better understood as lying outside of time. And while we are subject to time in these finite forms we call minds and bodies, regardless of whatever our innate nature may be, it is certainly not unintelligible to ask either question, particularly the latter. In fact, it is eminently intelligible to ask what will lead to long-term welfare and happiness and seek to do those things as religiously (i.e., consistently) as possible. Moreover, there's no guarantee of reaching the other shore of nirvana or union with God from our POV, only the possibility of achievement or realization of this independently existing reality or dimension, assuming such an experience itself is possible.

In the end, I look at this secular vs. religious dispute dialectically. The religious or philosophical 'musts' that Hagglund rails against are for the spiritually immature (children/synthesis), the 'oughts' that he champions are for the spiritually mature (adults/antithesis), and the experience of nondual consciousness is the domain of the awakened (wise elder/synthesis). And freedom also has its levels or dialectical relationships. The freedom of the undisciplined person, of a conditioned agent that lacks an ethical framework, is an immature kind of freedom. The freedom of a disciplined person, of a conditioned agent informed by an ethical framework, is a more mature kind of freedom. And the unconditioned transcends even the very idea of freedom or agency or time and space itself.

From the religious POV, it's not so much that eternity is absent; it's more so that our vision of it is obscured and we strive to no longer have to strive to glimpse it. And a large part of that striving is precisely what Hagglund argues we should do: use our freedom to ask what we ought to do, acknowledge our interconnectedness with those around us and embrace our shared vulnerability, and to act with love. Ultimately, however, either approach can be used skillfully or unskillfully. A secular approach can lead to nihilism and indifference as easily as a sense of responsibility. And a religious approach can lead to worldly indifference as easily as it can that same sense of responsibility born out of love.