12/11/18
MOTS Chapter 21: Agreement to Differ is the First Step to
Agreement
Endearment is one kind; this is dear to me;
your preference is for something else;
thus, many objects of endearment are differentiated and
confusion comes;
what is dear to you is dear to another also; this should be
known.
Free
translation:
This thing is dear to me. To another, something else is
dear. Thus there comes confusion in the appraisal of the correct value of the
objects of endearment. One should know that his experience of happiness is
essentially the same as another’s.
The
next five verses comprise a special section of Atmopadesa Satakam, the
foundational document to these Meditations on the Self, where Narayana Guru
addresses social ethics. Nitya’s title is an ideal summation of the concept
encapsulated in verse 21. So many of us are sure we are right, and back our
certitude up with religious or other supreme authority. We are also sure ours
is the only right way, which makes anyone who differs with us automatically
wrong. All around we see dogmatic religious traditions that are dead set
against allowing agreement with other faiths, adding the imprimatur of God to
seal the crypt.
A
yogi can easily spy the ego behind this game. The first step in growing out of
it is to accord the other person a right to their own perspective. If we can grasp
what motivates them we might even find the differences are less grievous than
they initially appear. The idea of universal human rights is a no-brainer,
legally supported everywhere, yet in practice there is tremendous opposition to
it. The immature human ego is as usual the culprit, and this is really a very
challenging area for it to work on.
Nitya
first lays down some of the basics of awareness in the Vedantic scheme for us:
Consciousness is experienced in
several ways: as knowledge of an inner state of feeling, the awareness of the
occurrence of an idea, the formation of a question, or the active or passive
witnessing of the state of mind.
These are inward-directed perceptions. From there the mind
turns outward, and the result is an admixture of subjective and objective
notions:
When the mind’s awareness is
focused on an external factor, it is experienced as an appraisal of the
properties of the object with which the mind is related. Most of our
experiences imply a dialectical interplay between our subjective notions and
their corresponding objective data.
We humans tend to forget the subjective aspect and assume
we’re perceiving “reality” as such, which also reinforces our sense of
unchallengeable rightness. It is most important to retain a suspicion that the
shape of our thoughts throws a constrictive (or constructive) framework over
whatever we are interacting with. This leaves room for others to fill in our
gaps, offer corrections, or open new doors for us.
In
any case, the ego responds to its perceptions in certain categorical ways,
variously listed by the rishis as the moods, or rasas. For some reason Nitya uses bhava here, perhaps because
they are all states of being, but
elsewhere you’ll see him using the more usual term rasa:
When both of these poles [inner
and outer, or subjective and objective] are related to the ‘I’ factor, the self
assumes a certain mood. It is described in Indian theatrical art in terms of
one or the other of nine moods (bhava), namely feeling pleased,
displeased, angered, pacified, embarrassed, awed, emboldened, compassionate or
erotic.
Nitya then lists some of the factors that color our
experience to produce those moods:
These moods depend on the total
picture structured in the mind of the perceptual factors outside and their
corresponding concepts inside, to which there are associated value fixations in
the mind derived from pleasant or unpleasant experiences of the past.
Hereditary factors, racial colorations, acquired archetypal symbols, social
placement, bilateral relations, adoptions or disadoptions, motivations, drives,
intensity of instinctual urges, aesthetic appreciations, ethical
considerations, and personality makeup are only some of the known factors that
contribute to the actualization of a certain mood at a certain time in a
certain person.
Adoptions and disadoptions are used in the Gurukula sense,
meaning the affiliation or rejection we have with a person or ideology.
Technically we would have to adopt a hypothesis before we could disadopt or
reject it. Nitya comments dryly on all the listed possibilities of
disagreement: “As the constituent factors are so very divergent, it should not
be surprising if two people do not always agree in their approval or
disapproval.” Nitya was also fond of an equally dry comment by Carl Sagan, in
his Dragons of Eden, some of you may
remember from That Alone verse 4:
The human brain contains about
ten billion nerve cells, or neurons. These neurons are connected by synapses,
across which chemicals diffuse, providing the means by which messages are
conducted from one cell to another. According to Carl Sagan, an average human
neuron has from 1000 to 10,000 synapses. He tells us that “the human brain is
characterized by some 1013 synapses” and that “the number of different states
of a human brain is 2 raised to this power—i.e. multiplied by itself ten
trillion times. This is an unimaginably large number, far greater, for example,
than the total number of elementary particles (electrons and protons) in the
entire universe....These enormous numbers may also explain something of the
unpredictability of human behavior.”
When you think in these terms, it’s amazing any of us can
agree at all. We are likely in accord not in any exact way, but only by making
assumptions and ignoring the differences, which can be an unsettling thought.
Happily and fortunately, in practice we can get along very well without exact
agreement.
So
why shouldn’t we expand our area of tolerance? It worked well for the gurus
we’re listening to.
Narayana
Guru generalized all human experience until he arrived at happiness as the most
general motivation of all. That means it is the operative principle of
everyone, even though we often don’t see it because precisely what makes us
happy is different from what makes someone else happy. Nitya first directs us
to recover our own core happiness, without imagining it resides outside as a
goal or promised land:
The experience of happiness is
not external. It is felt at the very core of consciousness where the identity
of the self with an existential factor is illumined as a dear value. In other
words, the experience of a value-identity is a unique moment in which the self
is one with itself.
Deb
opened our discussion citing the idea of the self at one with itself as the key
point here, and especially Nitya’s conclusion that “The more we are attuned to
the Self, the greater is the possibility of seeing everyone else’s dear values
as legitimate aspects of our own self.” She affirmed that in the experience of
happiness you aren’t looking at something outside that makes you happy, you
just are happy. She meant a calm, centered happiness, where you can look at the
unity of experience of every day from a steady state, content in your relation
to the world. She acknowledged the difficulty of going beyond theoretical
understanding to work together with someone of a significantly different
orientation.
I
added that this is not meant to make us put up with injustice, but only to
understand its motivations, which could give us a way to actually address it
effectively. Presuming the other is a lot like us is a successful opening
gambit, while condemning them as wrong or cursed of God or whatever is instantly
fatal to communication. Often a respectful approach invites a workable
relationship, if it’s possible at all. This doesn’t guarantee a fair payback,
unfortunately, but it’s still a good idea.
Bushra
talked about how we can see this universality more easily in friendly
gatherings. Recently she and Deb were at a board meeting of Open Hearts Open
Minds, the prison outreach program, just talking things over. She saw how
everyone present loved the program and the sessions in the prisons, but when
they go into it they all have different reasons. The feeling about it is the
same, but no two people express the feeling in the same way. Deb agreed that in
the experience of happiness there is a gratifying commonality.
Several
people talked about how we easily have sympathy for others: their crying makes
us cry without any reason, and laughter is famously contagious. Yet, as Paul
said, we like to draw a border around our belief systems and refuse reciprocity
to outsiders. We put more energy into defending our egos than working toward
compassion. Coming from a repressive religious background, he could see how
critical agreeing to disagree is to a harmonious life.
Susan
offered a nice analogy, of plants growing near each other in soil. They look
separate, but if you move the soil away it reveals how intertwined all the
roots are. You’ll find more on soil in Part II.
Scotty
told us about an example he observed in a supermarket lunchroom recently. There
was a young man and a policeman eating in there near him. Normally they are in
oppositional groups these days, “Feds and heads” but the man asked the cop
politely about a possible violation of his rights. To Scotty’s surprise the cop
was impartial and calm, and took the lad seriously. It turned out he was
homeless, and the officer gave him some advice on where he could get help, as
well as on his rights. Scotty kept getting urges to break in and interrupt
them, and he restrained himself, thinking “this isn’t my conversation.” Instead
he practiced letting go of the emotions the situation generated in him. It
sounded like everyone was benefitted in the encounter. Portland does do some
police training, which sadly is far from universal, but it’s the kind of thing
that can save a lot of grief.
Deb
talked about a recent interchange with an old friend who got her really upset
with a political and racist diatribe. Deb “went ballistic” as we used to say,
meaning exploded in anger. It took her a while to clam down, but the agitation
persisted a long time. Nancy characterized it as righteous indignation, which
is always something that should be respected. Deb felt the anger subverted her
ability to respond adequately, however.
Susan
had had a similar rough time with a very close friend over politics, and
realized she, Susan, was being overly negative in trying to argue her point.
Then she remembered the Kim Stafford poem Jean sent us (Part III, MOTS 19) Practicing the Complex Yes, and it spoke
to her perfectly about how to heal the rift, which she proceeded to do.
Interestingly, at their last session at the Two Rivers prison, Bushra and Deb
had had Kim along as the visiting Oregon poet laureate, and he had shared that
very poem with them. So it goes.
Scotty
is an adept at qigong, and talked about how one strand of it is to bounce back.
As soon as you feel some pull, some gravity, you invert it to give you a lift.
It’s just like saying yes instead of no. He’s found it’s amazing the
transcendence that happens all around you when you say yes. He also had an
example of talking with an old friend, who suddenly swerved into a political
diatribe picked up from the tele or other propaganda screen. Scotty was shocked
and was about to argue angrily, then he thought this guy is my old friend. Then
he made a few points from this gentler place, and the friend was not offended.
In Scotty’s words, the atmosphere went from acidic to neutral. It pretty much
all in the tone he maintained, not so much the content, and it made a big
difference. Maybe even taught the friend something of value.
Andy
mused how much it hurts to argue, how the other person is afflicted and their
feeling is as pained by the conflict as you are. If you have the patience to
really see how much in pain the combatants are, you can try and have some imaginative
insight about how the distortion happened that is causing the pain.
I
noted how often the combatants are not even aware of the pain that is their
motivation. Knowing pain was driving you would help reduce the anger, but
instead we feel like we’re just operating normally, so there is no effort at
restraint.
Jan
has been making good progress lately in coping with family stresses. She’s been
trying to address certain persistent conflicts by trying to hold to her
position and explain it a bit, in a neutral and non-emotional way. She has
endured a long history of misunderstanding and criticism, but she’s finding
standing up for herself is making a difference. She said you have to let people
know what’s important to you, your value identity, and then they can relate to it
even if they have different values. In the past Jan has simply ceded to others
in her family the right to decide things, but now she is putting her foot
down—gently of course—and earning new respect. As Deb said, it’s important to not
allow yourself to be taken over by other’s wishes, and Jan agreed, adding that
the more she stands up for what she believes in and what is fair to her in
situations, the more opportunities for harmony have come along. That’s
definitely in the spirit of this chapter.
I
reemphasized that standing up for ourselves is an integral part of fairness. So
much of our grief stems from abandoning the playing field to others, and
everyone benefits (whether they realize it or not) when you are a staunch
advocate for fairness. Jan agreed, adding that those who live dogmatically also
want to be themselves, so they may secretly admire others who can do it. Deb
added that sharing what’s important to you gives them a clear way to relate to
you, especially if you’re not feeding anger back into the relationship.
Paul
was a little envious of Jan’s success, as someone in his family is way more
dogmatic than her sibling, and he well knows how impenetrable the walls can be.
He burst out, “My mother’s way worse than your sister!” Funny, but ouch. He
knows ignorance can only exist in the absence of light, but some people are
more comfortable in the darkness, and they defend it ferociously. Paul does
admit he isn’t all-knowing, so he feels uncomfortable defending his position
sometimes, but after all there are some folks who you’ll never get anywhere
with. Sometimes they’re the closest people around.
Andy
suggested taking an expanded view of the situation, bringing in the past and
future, and seeing how they all interrelate. He is practicing this with our
current President, who had an abusive childhood that taught him meanness. Andy
thought he must be suffering from his upbringing still, which keeps him from
hating him as much as many people do. I put in that our history leaves us with
tender places that are easily aggravated, especially by family members who
intuitively know how to push our buttons.
“I
have more buttons to push than your piano!” was Paul’s rejoinder. He was in
rare form. I should have told him they are called keys, not buttons, and that
makes all the difference, but I was too busy laughing. Those buttons are really
keys to healing. What’s the point of healing where we aren’t injured? It’s the
sore points that need attention, so they are the keys. Narayana Guru’s “grown
up perspective” is a meaningful way to go about the necessary task of healing.
Bushra
wondered why she couldn’t avoid suffering when people push her buttons. She
sees how they are suffering in the same way. She also has a sibling in this
game. She said the problem with arguing is that you aren’t really listening,
you are preparing your next onslaught. On top of that, it becomes pleasurable
to “blow them out of the water,” though she knows it isn’t constructive.
Therapeutic maybe, but not constructive. She did get a laugh from several of us
who have also detonated torpedoes, though Nancy cautioned that when you blow
them out of the water there is always a little twinge that you hurt them. Not
always so little, either.
And
darned if Susan didn’t admit to a sibling challenge too. No wonder sannyasins
abandon their families—instant smooth sailing. Maybe. The rest of us have our
homemade challenges.
I
harked back to the value of listening. If you simply listen you will eventually
see any openings that come up. Sometimes it brings you into the conversation
smoothly enough so that your more radical ideas are tolerable. Deb added how
that includes giving up expectations—you step back, let go a little bit, and
then you can be more aware of exactly who they are, free of your assumptions.
You aren’t necessarily supporting their position, but by keeping your distance
you can be more tender with them.
Paul
nudged us toward a happy ending with something he learned in a movie, Little
Chaos, that a flower opens itself regardless of the severity of the season,
even in a storm. It’s an annual event that keeps happening. He feels like when
he defends himself he is fighting for a value, but a flower doesn’t fight for
value, it just displays its beauty.
Time
was up, so I didn’t get to say that standing up for a high value is eminently
defensible. The unwise sort of defense is when our ego is afraid to be
tarnished, so we dissemble to make it look perfect to all eyes present. Nitya’s
technique of admitting guilt to any and all accusations can help reduce the ego’s
need to show off its magnificence, but of course the ego is rather clever to
turn just about any technique into another proof of its glory. Anyway, don’t
stop defending high values! Living them is the best defense, too, because they
are admirable in their own right.
In
his wonderful conclusion Nitya implies a whole Jacob’s Ladder of hierarchical
values, where in the core we are united in one universal condition, and the
farther we withdraw from it the more specific and prone to conflict our
condition will be. This is not to say that conflict is always wrong or that we
shouldn’t be engaged with the world, but rather that keeping in touch with the
core is the basis for right conduct in all occasions:
The more externally oriented
one’s interest is, the greater the likelihood it will differ from others. The
more we are attuned to the Self, the greater is the possibility of seeing
everyone else’s dear values as legitimate aspects of our own self. Those who
know this secret will have no qualms in agreeing with another’s disagreement
and disapproval. A proper perspective on possible variances and differences is
the secret of effecting unitive understanding, advaita darsana.
As noted earlier, one of Nitya’s best techniques for an
argument was to immediately agree with any criticism leveled at him. His tactic
was “I am even worse than you think,” and it quickly took the wind out of many
an accuser’s sails. He knew it was only his ego that needed to be admired for
its perfection, so he had no qualms in admitting his weaknesses.
Nitya
was a superb debater, and he never lost an argument that I witnessed. If you
fight back when insulted, the game is on, but if you surrender immediately then
no battle is going to take place. Nitya also would speak to the person in their
own terms, providing a tacit agreement right off the bat. If you monolithically
stand by your own framing, it is bound to clash with the other person’s
favorite monolith. Nitya could bring his wisdom over into the other person’s
field and have his interchange with them there. He respected their position,
knew something of their background, or else enquired into it. Mostly the
discussions could then be done in a highly civilized fashion. His intensity was
ramped up only if it would serve to blunt an attack or enlighten a truth
seeker. Then the lightning flashed and the thunder roared!
We
closed with a reading from Guy Murchie about the living earth for our
meditation, copied in Part II. Despite the disastrous devastation of the planet
proceeding apace, you can sense it is a gigantic being that is persistently
alive. It may even be an egg about to break open and reveal… what? Grand as it
is, it too is our core. We connect with it internally, and incline toward it
externally.
Good
planets are hard to find. We are incredibly lucky to be on one. Let’s honor
her. Aum.
Part II
The
following wasn’t part of the class, but it’s germane, so it goes in Part II, as
a perfect example of the different endearments found in Indian and Western
perspectives.
Nitya
opens his chapter comparing the practical and skeptical attitude of a Western
friend with the then-typical worshipful mindset of an Indian associate, who
according to Moni was Madhavan:
My Indian friend, on the other
hand, has in mind the hoary figure of the archetypal Guru. To him a Guru is not
a man at all. He is a manifestation of the most sacred and worshipful, who
should be honored, revered, and implicitly obeyed. He should never be
questioned. No allegation should ever be made against him. However inscrutable,
there must be sufficient reason for a Guru to behave even in what may appear as
the strangest manner. According to this attitude, even when we don’t understand
a Guru, it’s not that he is funny or silly—it’s only our mind that is dark and
foolish. He believes we should wait until wisdom dawns upon us to see the
meaning of what the Guru says.
It’s interesting that the very day of the class I
encountered a vivid example of this schism. I worked diligently for several
years to prepare a long-awaited new edition of Nataraja Guru’s Integrated Science of the Absolute.
Since then, a team from the home Gurukula, having discovered the first draft of
the work, is going to substitute a careful reconstruction of that draft for my
scrupulously edited manuscript. In the words of one of the masterminds,
speaking of the draft:
After seeing the sheer labour
that was put into the manuscript we felt that this edition should
be an archival copy exactly as the Guru wrote it. Later editions in
future can be edited and changed, updated if necessary. At least we now
have a record of Nataraja Guru's original words and style which will serve
researchers and scholars.
Of course, there is never going to be another edition, but
setting that aside, this is an example of worshipping the Guru and fearing to
change anything he did, because his work must have been perfect on its face.
The result will be much more difficult to read than the edited copy I
submitted, but reading and understanding aren’t the point. The point is to accurately
imitate the exalted being that once walked among us.
Needless
to say, this was not Nitya’s attitude, though Nataraja Guru had some of it
himself, enough at least to ward off tinkering by mediocre helpmates. I suppose
there’s a whiff of karma here, because of that. But I do picture his spirit in
heaven jumping up and down in a fury that a readable version of his masterwork
almost happened, and then didn’t due to traditional mulishness. Often copies of
early drafts of important works are kept for archival purposes, as they should
be, but in a healthy environment, subsequent drafts are an improvement in a
number of ways, and are so honored. And read.
I
was never consulted on the decision, or even informed of it until I begged. In
any case, respecting other people’s ideas is only a beginning, the attitude
that makes community or family decision-making possible. Narayana Guru’s
philosophy was not intended to reinforce stagnation, but to foster creative
development. We might imagine how Trump came to be the miserable narcissist he
is, yet being sympathetic doesn’t mean we have to support his policies. This is
the point that is so often missed. Agreeing to differ—to be different—is just a
fair starting point for a debate. It does not have to mean you go your way and
I’ll go mine, and never the twain shall meet.
* *
*
Peter
M sent a fantastic Guardian news article about the new discovery of a vast
underground ocean of microorganisms:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/10/tread-softly-because-you-tread-on-23bn-tonnes-of-micro-organisms?CMP=share_btn_link
This links up nicely with the excerpt from Guy Murchie’s Seven Mysteries of Life,
from our
concurrent Brihadaranyaka Upanishad reading in the online class, which I read
out. The subject is vayu, air:
Another vital part of the soil is called humus, which comes
from rotting vegetable and animal matter and is the mucky protein that helps
hold the skeletal grains of quartz together, along with many other compounds of
carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, etc., that add up to the basic living
substance of Earth. And all these parts of soil, both organic and inorganic,
are mixed together none too evenly while, except in sandy places, they tend to
form crumbs up to about one eighth of an inch in diameter, which are each a
tiny sample of the local earth. These crumbs are familiar to anyone who gardens
or handles dirt, and seem to be tranquil little clods of inert, mellow tilth.
But their apparent quiescence is almost completely illusory, for they are not
only teeming with individual vegetable and animal life but are in a real sense
alive themselves. They actually inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, and
tests show that normally the air in soil down to about 5 inches deep is
completely renewed every hour. And for many feet below that the soil breathes,
though progressively more slowly as the moisture and carbon dioxide content of
the air increase with depth. If it seems incredible that hard clay could be
breathing, just remember that
crevices only on thousandth of an inch wide, much too small to see
without a microscope, are as much bigger than an oxygen molecule as a valley
120 miles wide is bigger than a man. (95)
* *
*
Deb found this cheerful report from the frontiers of
physics:
The Hippies Were
Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man!
A new theory of consciousness
by Tam Hunt
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-hippies-were-right-its-all-about-vibrations-man/
