The Huston Smith Reader. Huston Smith
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self-image is the most impoverished human beings have ever devised. We do not think well of ourselves, Saul Bellow observes, and Marshall Salins, the anthropologist, fills in the picture: “We are the only people who think we derive from apes. Everybody else assumes that they are descended from the gods.”
If I can bring this discussion back to children, there's much talk today about the wounded child within. I won't say that's all bad, but it runs the danger of encouraging self-pity. How about the struggling adult within—more attention to that, and how the fragile adult might be strengthened? I hope it's clear how our over-reliance on the scientific method has been the (indirect and unwitting) cause of our impoverished self-image. It is as if the top of science's window stops at the bridge of our nose, so that in looking through it, we see only things that are beneath our full stature.
KANE As I listen to you, I am thinking that physics, which we often think of as the most complicated, most difficult of all sciences, is, indeed, the simplest in its own way because it deals with things that are essentially lifeless. The mineral world, the physical world of atoms, I don't know if I would call the cosmos dead, but the way we view it certainly is.
SMITH You're right. The hard sciences deal so effectively with their objects because those things have no, or negligible, freedom.
KANE Science seems to lose some of its power when it turns to animate objects. I am thinking now of the Chinese notion of chi, that there is a life force which we cannot explain in terms of physics or chemistry. More power is lost when it turns to the animal kingdom. And regarding the human self, little of importance admits to scientific proof.
SMITH I think that's exactly right. To pick up with the second level where microbiology enters, R. C. Lewontin has noted that “despite the fact that we can position every atom in a protein molecule in three-dimensional space, nobody has the slightest idea of the rule that will fold them into life.” Microbiologists appropriately seek that rule, but I wonder if it exists on a plane they can access.
KANE I have read of biologists who have synthesized protein compounds which, when given electrical charges, do begin to self-replicate, but then you still end up with the more primary question: Who is putting the electrical charge in to begin with? Where is it coming from? I think we're going to find in the ultimate that there are questions we ask that cannot be answered by modern science. I once found myself writing that we need to elevate our concept of science to meet the reality of the world, rather than to lower the world to meet the limitations of earth science.
SMITH I agree in principle but wonder how much the scientific method can be altered—elevated, expanded—without compromising its power. The power of science comes from its controlled experiments, and the nobler things in life can't be proved. We don't have to expect science to do everything.
KANE I know that there have been a great many people (I am thinking of Martin Heidegger, for example) who see a split between meditative thinking and calculative reason—reason being closer to science and thinking (as he uses the word) to meditation. But I can't help think that Goethe, through his understanding of art and aesthetic perception, might actually have a key to how they can both be combined. I'm not sure.
SMITH I'm not sure, either, but it is interesting. Wolfgang Goethe, Rudolf Steiner, and Emanuel Swedenborg—all three were visionaries who connected science to the human spirit in original ways. But I haven't studied them enough to say more.
KANE In another vein, can religion or ceremony bring us to the deeper dimensions of reality, or can they close us down to them?
SMITH Both, I think. Just as the world is religiously ambiguous in the sense that both theists and atheists see it as supporting their position, so too is religion itself an ambiguous enterprise. It is made up of people, and as we well know, people are a mixed bag. When they congregate in institutions, it is not surprising that we find both good and evil results. Religions do horrible things because they reinforce in-group-out-group feelings. At the same time, they nurture the transcendent urge that has compassion as its wake. In this mode it shatters existing social structures. The Book of Jonah shows the Jews expanding their theology to include even their enemies, the Ninevites. This was radical. We have to be sensitive to the two faces of religion: conservative and progressive. But that's true of almost anything. A while ago we were talking about art, but bad music, as well as good, has been written. The important thing is not to be cynical—realistic, yes, but not cynical. By functionalist criteria alone, religion would not have survived if it were not doing something right.
Connecting this to education, can religion contribute the empowering kind of knowing we have been talking about? I think it can. Why do I say that? First, because the noblest human beings that I personally have encountered have been shaped by religious traditions—His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa jump immediately to mind. Second, when I look at the sacred texts that inspired these people—and the commentaries that have been written on them by giants such as Shankara [Indian philosopher and theologian], Dögen [thirteenth-century Zen master], Nagarjuna [Indian founder of the Madhyamika school of Buddhism], Augustine, and Meister Eckhart (not excepting Plato and Plotinus, who write in the same vein)—I find no alternate texts that are far beyond the public schools that we have been talking about. All I am saying is that the wisdom is there to be drawn upon and calibrated to the minds teachers seek to nurture.
KANE Would you think that religious ceremonies have a place in educating children generally?
SMITH I do, though in this context I don't want to get into the complicated issue of church/state and the public school. Rituals help us celebrate, and at the other end of the spectrum they help us to connect deeply with people in times of sorrow. The repetition that ritual always involves sets the present moment in a larger context and infuses it with wider meaning. It's difficult to invent rituals. The Unitarians are trying, but for the most part rituals, like myths, emerge spontaneously.
KANE Then a myth must be what it is and cannot be made different?
SMITH It must grow out of a deep historical experience like the Exodus, or from deep, unconscious layers of the psyche.
KANE As I listen to you, I am wondering if ceremony doesn't provide a set moment in time for you to be silent and listen. Ceremony may be a way of blocking off the everyday—one must pay the water bill, and run to the store, and all that. Ceremony might just set apart moments of time in which you can get in touch with deep parts of one's self and the other dimensions of existence.
SMITH That is well put. You used the word silence. I wondered when you said that whether you mean literal silence or an inner silence even when there is chanting and litany.
KANE In this instance, I was using the word to mean there is no nonsense running around in your mind, in your head, you have no inner dialogue for a moment, you're actually quiet. You're receptive, rather than working daily things through.
SMITH Sounds right. What I am not sure I had thought of before is that this apartness can come even while you are chanting or singing, for because the material is memorized, your conscious mind doesn't have to be attending.
KANE Do you think that meditation in any of the great traditions, whether it be a Buddhist meditation, or Hasidic meditation, or Rosicrucian meditation, has any place in the education of children?
SMITH I don't really know. Questions of age would enter, and the kind of meditation. If we think of silent meditation, I find myself saying yes. It would probably be very good to encourage even small children to sit still and shift their minds into a different gear.
As I get into the subject, I once received an invitation from a third-grade class in a parochial school in the Boston area while I was teaching at MIT. It was so cute, I remember it verbatim: “Dear Prof. Smith: We are studying religion. We do not know much about religion. Will you please come and teach us about religion?” Signed, “The Third Grade.” So I went, but it turned out to be last period on a Friday afternoon, and you can imagine the blast of restless energy that met me as I stepped into the room. I heard a clear inner voice say, “Don't try to talk to these kids. Nothing you can say could possibly hold their attention. They've got to do something.” So I said, “You asked me to teach you about religion, so I am going to tell