The Huston Smith Reader. Huston Smith
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religion, they sit on the floor, so we have to move all the desks against the walls.” Instant pandemonium—everybody pushing things and bumping into one another. So we got the floor cleared, and I said, “Okay, everybody on the floor. When Japanese sit religiously they sit in a special position.” I demonstrated the lotus position. “Can you sit that way?” A few show-offs could. “Also they sit in silence. Can you do that?” Heads nodded vigorously. “How long?” “Fifteen minutes,” a voice sang out. “Are you sure? Without making a sound?” “Five minutes.” We finally settled for two, and even that was too long for them. But we were off to a great start, and they gave me a bag of jelly beans as my honorarium—
KANE You should work with young children!
There is often a distinction made between learning by doing and learning through detachment. There are many Hasidic stories which end with the conclusion that one learns through doing. Was what you did simply a pedagogical device, or do you think that it might have illustrated that one can learn most about life's spiritual dimension by being engaged in some kind of activity, a practice?
SMITH Perhaps the latter was involved. I find it difficult to rank-order modes of learning, because when I think back over my own experiences of learning, they have been so different—all the way from the Zen monasteries to sitting spellbound before gifted teachers who just lectured. I find if difficult to prioritize learning situations.
KANE I guess part of me likes to say one thing is more important than another, but it's important to step back. I wonder if we might now move a bit to the question of moral values. Do you see religion, or aesthetics, or beauty, or any of the things we have discussed as having an impact on the moral development of children?
SMITH All of them. Certainly, if what we were saying was true about beauty having an elevating effect—but let me be concrete. I don't think I've ever spent three or four hours in a great museum without the world looking different in a way that somehow purifies my motives. So there is beauty. As far as religion, we have to distinguish in the history of religion between three periods. In the “pre-axial” period of religion, before the rise of the great prophets and sages, around the middle of the first millennium B.C.E., religion was occupied mostly with time—death and the perishing of existence—and ethics didn't much enter. People were living in tribes and got along pretty much the way normal families do. In the post-axial period, though, populations began to be citified, which meant that a good part of one's dealings were with people who were not in one's primary group. Ethics needed bolstering, and from the golden rule to the prophets, religion shouldered the job. The modern period adds social ethics to religion's agenda, for we now realize that social structures are not like laws of nature. They are human creations, so we are responsible for them. So to beauty we must add religion with its post-axial ethics and concern with social justice. So always, if we look back, concern for face-to-face morality and its modern emphasis on justice as well have historically evolved as religious issues.
KANE To pursue this central theme here, I wonder if you see moral ideas as human-made or as human replications, or human manifestations of a higher order of law? In other words, are they subjective, circumstantial developments, or are they reflective of something higher and more universal?
SMITH Something of both, but more replicas than constructions. Morality always aims at harmony or unity, and unity is a great idea, but not only an idea. It's great because it is a mirroring or reflection of what ultimately reality is. Reality is one. In an esoteric sense, the number “one” is beyond the entire numerical sequence, not just the first in an order of integers. It is qualitatively of a different order. If it had remained that, though, it would have been finite because it would have lacked multiplicity. And since the ultimate is also infinite, it must include the multiple in some way. It is not a relation of parity, because the one has a dignity beyond the many. Still, it requires the many for it to be infinite. Multiplicity poses a problem, because for things to exist they must have centers and boundaries.
Yet something is there that doesn't love a wall. Boundaries have their downside. We have this centripetal urge, but it can be narrow and confining, so we have to live with the tension to be ourselves and also identify with others. How can we, at the same time, be ourselves and embrace others? That is one way of defining life's project. As Aldous Huxley put it, “The problem of life is to overcome the basic human disability of egoism.” This is a roundabout answer to your question, of whether morals are human-made, but what I want to say is that to some extent they are—there can be silly, mistaken, and even pernicious judgments that individuals and even societies fall into. But it is also the case that this is a moral universe, and through lots of trial and error, history is trying to discover what its moral laws are.
KANE Would you say that there are certain universals that one would find through many of the world's religions?
SMITH Yes. Two levels need to be distinguished here. The one which is the more explicit is what we should do, but beyond that is the question of the kind of person we should try to become. Now, on the first level, what we should do, there are four problem areas in human life that have to be dealt with. These are violence, wealth, the spoken word, and sex. In lower forms of life these problem areas are monitored quite adequately by instinct. Man, though, is an animal without instincts, so these problem areas can get out of hand. Moral precepts are devised to secure appropriate, life-sustaining behavior in the four areas, and they are remarkably uniform across cultures: don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, don't commit adultery. These are the basic guidelines concerning human behavior.
As for the kind of person we should try to become, the virtues point the way. In the West these are commonly identified as humility, charity, and veracity. Humility has nothing to do with low self-esteem; it is to recognize oneself as one and fully one but not more than one, just as charity is to look upon your neighbor as fully one (with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto) just as you are one. Veracity begins with not being deceitful, but it ends in the sublime objectivity that sees things exactly as they are, undistorted by our subjective preferences. These are the virtues in the West. Asia, interestingly, has the same three but enters them by the back door, so to speak, by speaking of the three poisons—traits that keep the virtues from flourishing in us. The three are greed (the opposite of humility), hatred (the opposite of charity), and delusion (the opposite of veracity). To the extent that we expunge these three poisons, the virtues will flood our lives automatically. The convergence of East and West in these areas is remarkable.
KANE If you were to look at these in an educational context, what is the meaning of what you just said for someone who now steps into a classroom filled with children?
SMITH This is your turf, and it would be presumptuous for me to pontificate. So I'll content myself with a single point. The most powerful moral influence is example. There's a saying, “What you do speaks so loud that I can't hear what you say.” That's what makes it so difficult—we have to aspire to be models for our students. At the same time, what nobler goal could we set for ourselves?
5
Light
Light is a universal metaphor for God, and what science has discovered about physical light helps us to understand (more profoundly than even the spiritual giants of the past could do) why light is uniquely suited for that role. If Einstein could say at one point in his career that he wanted for the rest of his life to reflect on the nature of light, surely we can do so for a few minutes. Light is different. It is strangely different. And paradoxically different. All three of these assertions hold for God, as does a fourth. Light creates.
THE PHYSICS OF LIGHT