2022-07-02 - World As Lover, World As Self by Joanna Macy
=========================================================
Introduction
============
I am happy to have, in a collection that can be lifted with one hand,
so many pieces of my life that reflect the pursuits of my heart and
mind. These talks and writings stem from that portion of my life
that has been shaped by Buddhist thought and practice.
Given the nature of this assortment of pieces, it is not essential
that they be read in any particular order.
We need to train our minds to these understandings [of the power of
our interbeing in the web of life], for our society, relentlessly
conditioning us to assume that we are separate, isolated beings,
catches us up in competitive games fostered by dysfunctional notions
of hierarchical power.
Throughout, at each step, it is evident that action on behalf of life
transforms. Because the relationship between self and world is
reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightenment or
saved and THEN acting. As we care enough to take risks, we loosen
the grip of ego and begin to come home to our true nature. For, in
the co-arising nature of things, the world itself, if we are bold to
love it, acts through us. It does not ask us to be pure or perfect,
or wait until we are detached from all passions, but only to care, to
harness the sweet, pure intention of our deepest passions...
Chapter 1
=========
Our planet is in trouble. It is hard to go anywhere without being
confronted by the wounding of our world, the tearing of the very
fabric of life.
In the face of what is happening, how do we avoid feeling overwhelmed
and just giving up, turning to the many diversions and demands of our
consumer society?
It is essential that we develop our inner resources. We have to
learn to look at things as they are, painful and overwhelming as that
may be, for no healing can begin until we are fully present to our
world, until we learn to sustain the gaze.
Among the inner resources that we seek for sustaining our action and
our sanity are what the Germans call weltbild, the way we view our
world and our relation to it.
By "our world," I mean the place we find ourselves, the scene upon
which we play our lives.
It has always been assumed, as an integral part of human experience,
that the work of our hands and heads and hearts would live on through
those who came after us, walking the same earth beneath the same sky.
Plagues, wars, and personal death have always taken place within
that wider context, the assurance of continuity. Now we have lost
the certainty that we will have a future.
I would like to reflect on four particular ways that people on
spiritual paths look at the world. These are not specific to any
religion; you can find all of them in most spiritual traditions.
These four are:
* World as battlefield.
* World as trap.
* World as lover.
* World as self.
Many people view the world as a battlefield, where good and evil are
pitted against each other, and the forces of light battle the forces
of darkness. It can be persuasive, especially when you feel
threatened. Such a view is very good for arousing courage... anger,
aversion, militancy. It is very good, too, for giving a sense of
certainty.
A more innocuous version of the battlefield image of the world... is
the world as a classroom, a kind of moral gymnasium where you are put
through certain tests which would prove your mettle and teach you
certain lessons, so you can graduate to other arenas and rewards.
[With either image], the world is a proving ground, with little worth
other than that. Our... souls, which are being tested... count, and
the world doesn't. For the sake of your soul... you are ready to
destroy.
[Regarding the view of the world as trap:] Wanting to affirm a
transcendent reality distinct from a society that appears very
materialistic, we place it on a supra-phenomenal level removed from
confusion and suffering. The tranquility that spiritual practices
can provide, we imagine, belongs to a haven that is aloof from our
world and to which we can ascend and be safe and serene.
Spiritual bypass
<
gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Spiritual_bypass>
[Regarding the view of the world as lover:] For when you see the
world as lover, every being, every phenomenon, can become--if you
have a clever, appreciative eye--an expression of that ongoing,
erotic impulse. It takes form right now in each one of us and in
everyone and everything we encounter...
The way we define and delimit self is arbitrary.
Chapter 2, Despair Work
=======================
We are bombarded by signals of distress--ecological destruction,
societal breakdown, and uncontrolled nuclear proliferation. Not
surprisingly, we are feeling despair... What is surprising is the
extent to which we continue to hide this despair from ourselves and
each other. As a society we are caught between a sense of impending
apocalypse and an inability to acknowledge it.
Consensus bias
<
gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/False_consensus_effect>
The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurrent response,
produces a partial numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anger or
terror are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut.
The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll. ... this psychic numbing
impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The
energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more
creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for
fresh visions and strategies. Furthermore, the fear of despair can
erect an invisible screen, selectively filtering out
anxiety-provoking data. In a world where organisms require feedback
in order to adapt and survive, this is suicidal.
.. despair is the loss of the assumption that the species will
inevitably pull through.
[Losing this assumption would more accurately describe life on this
planet. "More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth,
amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died
out. A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of
its first appearance..."]
Extinction
<
gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Extinction>
Until we get in touch with [the true dimensions of our despair], our
powers of creative response to planetary crisis will be crippled.
To acknowledge our pain for the world and tap its energy, we need
symbols and images for its expression. Images, more than arguments,
tap the springs of consciousness, the creative powers by which we
make meaning of experience.
.. sharing concerns on an affective level... helped us cut
through... the temptations of academic one-upmanship, to the raw
nerve in us all...
Waiting does not mean inaction, but staying in touch with our pain
and confusion AS we act, not banishing them to grab for sedatives,
ideologies, or final solutions. In despair, if we digest it, is
authenticity and energy to fuel our dreams.
Despair work is not a solo adventure, no matter how alone one may
feel. It is a process undertaken within the context of community,
even if a community of like-minded others is not physically present.
Just knowing that one's feelings are shared gives a measure of
validation and support. [Perhaps this need for external validation
is Joanna Macy's license to speak on behalf of what other people are
feeling or ought to be feeling.]
Chapter 3, Faith, Power, and Ecology
====================================
Faith is an elusive and questionably commodity in these days of a
dying culture. Where do you find it? If you've lost a faith, can
you invent one? Which faith do you choose? ... But some of us find
it hard, even obscene, to believe in an abiding providence in a world
of such absurdity as ours where, in the face of unimaginable
suffering, most of our wealth and wits are devoted to preparing a
final holocaust. And we don't need nuclear bombs for our holocaust,
it is going on right now in the demolition of the great rainforests
and in the toxic contamination of our seas, soil, and air.
Faith, in a world like this? The very notion can appear distasteful,
especially when we frequently see faith used as an excuse for denial
and inaction. ... The radical uncertainties of our time breed
distortions of faith, where fundamentalist beliefs foster
self-righteousness and deep divisions, turning patriotism into
xenophobia, inciting fear and hatred of dissenters, and feeding the
engines of war. If we are allergic to faith, it is with some reason.
Another option opens, however, that can lead to a more profound and
authentic form of faith. We can turn from the search for personal
salvation or some metaphysical haven and look instead to our actual
experience. When we simply attend to what we see, feel, and know is
happening to our world, we find authenticity.
[IOW, if you come from a fundamentalist background, then you are part
of the problem. Your faith is less authentic than the author's
version of faith. How's that for breeding division and
self-righteousness?]
Chapter 4, Taking Heart: Spiritual Exercises for Social Activists
=================================================================
According to this apparently simple set of assertions, things do not
produce each other or make each other happen, as in linear causality,
they HELP each other happen by providing occasion or locus or
context, and in so doing, they in turn are affected. There is a
mutuality here, a reciprocal dynamic. Power inheres not in any
entity, but in the relationship between entities.
When his interlocutors could not share his direct perception... and
when they remained unpersuaded by his arguments, the Buddha sometimes
simply stated as a "bottom line" why he taught it. His reasons were
existential and ethical. He said that other views of causality did
not allow for novelty and meaningful change; and he had to oppose
them because they provided:
> neither desire to do, nor effort to do, nor necessity to do this
> deed or abstain from that deed. So then, the necessity for action
> or inaction [is] not found to exist in truth or verity.
After exploring this teaching in the early Buddhist scriptures, I
encountered it in general systems theory, in its explanations of the
interdependent, self-organizing nature of open systems.
Chapter 6, Knower and Known
===========================
> If Lake Erie is driven insane, its insanity is incorporated into
> the larger system of your thought and experience. --Gregory Bateson
Views arrived at and defended in terms of pure reason are suspect in
Buddhist views, because knowing is conditioned by habit and vested
interests.
Open systems, including cognitive systems like our minds, maintain
and organize themselves by virtue of feedback--that is, by monitoring
their interactions with their environment. "Monitoring" is a key
term in systems theory. All open systems self-monitor; it is like a
naturally occurring mindfulness. That is how our blood, for
example... regulate their levels of salinity. They watch what they
are doing and adjust. They do this by a process of
matching--matching the observed results of behavior with their inner
pre-established goals. Instant by instant, so constantly that it is
usually unconscious, we steer--which is the root meaning of
cybernetics.
We cannot count bats in an inkblot, Gregory Bateson said, because
there are none, "and yet a man--if he is 'bat-minded'--may, 'see'
several." In other words, we see by interpreting, and each of us
lives in our own assumed form-world.
The codes and constructs by which we interpret our world are
functional equivalents to the Buddhist notion of sankhara, volitional
formations or impulses.
And when we possess a powerful technology, this incarnational
capacity is fearsome. Our imaginations erect Pentagons and
Disneylands, and even the land itself mirrors back our fantasies, as,
gouged and paved over, it testifies to our search for mastery, and
our fear of what we cannot control. In the world we create, we
encounter ourselves.
Thus do living systems adapt, by transforming themselves, and thus
does learning happen. Real learning is not something added, it is a
reorganization of the system. New nets and assemblies occur, loops
form, alternate pathways develop. The viewed world is different, and
so is the viewer.
Seen in systems terms, the practice of vipassana, or insight
meditation, represents a short-circuiting of the codes and constructs
we impose on reality.
If knowing s interactive, it becomes difficult to claim and
impossible to prove an ultimate truth. For knowing is relative to
the perspective of the knower and conditioned by his [or her] past
experience.
The impossibility of arriving at ultimate formulations of reality
does not represent a defeat for the inquiring mind. It is only final
assertions that are suspect, not the process of knowing itself. For
we each have a valid and important perspective on what is. And to
the extent that we can acknowledge the partiality of this
perspective, what we say stays clear and true.
Chapter 7, Body and Mind
========================
The environmental crisis has deep attitudinal roots. To restore our
environment we need to heal our relationship with it, and that means
healing the split in the psyche the cuts us off from the material
world.
Chapter 8, Karma: The Co-Arising of Doer and Deed
=================================================
When I made statements like "I cannot sit still," or "I am... angry,"
she would immediately cut me short. "Stop!" she'd say. "Stop saying
'I' in that way, when talking about your experience." Such 'I'
statements work like cement, anchoring passing feelings into a kind
of permanence. Sister Palmo pointed out that it is more accurate and
helpful to say, "Anger is happening," or "Fears are arising."
[Interesting. Not assuming responsibility for one's feelings.]
For action, the word karma is used. Early on, in pre-Buddhist
literature, the word denoted ritual acts; then by extension it mean
religiously ordained social duties. In the Buddhist texts, it is
broadened to include all volitional behavior--bodily, verbal, and
mental. This is what we are.
Our present psycho-physical structure is not that of a continuing
self-identical entity, nor is it discontinuous from our past selves.
.. the Buddha said
> This body (kaya), brethren, is not your own, neither is it that
> of any others. It should be regarded as brought about by actions
> of the past, by plans, by volitions, by feelings.
The effect of our behavior is inescapable... our acts co-determine
what we become.
They do so by means of the sankharas, or "volitional formations."
These subconscious drives and tendencies condition the ways in which
we interpret and react to phenomena. The terms means "put together,"
"compounded," "organized." Sankharas accrue from previous volitional
acts and represent the reflexive or recoil effects of these
actions--the tendencies they create, the habits they form and
perpetuate. [Samskara]
Because the character of a person's experience is affected by these
formations, his [or her] identity is indistinct from what he [or she]
does and thinks, has done and thought.
Deterministic views were so strong in his day that the Buddha did not
leave this implicit. He repeatedly and specifically countered
fatalistic views with his own arguments. The effect of actions
cannot be traced in linear causal chains. Their interweavings, he
said, are too complex to be so easily comprehended. ... Among these
many factors, karma is just one. In other words, behavior is not the
sole determiner of experience; other events condition it also.
Because the open system is self-organizing, its behavior cannot be
dictated or directly modified from without. External pressures or
circumstances can only operate in interaction with the system's
internal organization.
Here then is the answer to our question, "does it matter what we do?"
It matters to the extent that WE matter. Indeed, our acts
matter--incarnate--in us, for they make us what we are.
Chapter 17, The Greening of the Self
====================================
Something important is happening in our world that you are not going
to read about in the newspapers. I consider it the most fascinating
and hopeful development of our time, and it is on of the reasons I am
so glad to be alive today. It has to do with that is occurring to
the notion of the SELF.
The self is the metaphoric construct of identity and agency, the
hypothetical piece of turn on which we construct our strategies for
survival, the notion around which we focus our instincts for
self-preservation, our needs for self-approval, and the boundaries of
our self-interest. Something is shifting there.
The conventional notion of the self with which we have been raised
and to which we have been conditioned by mainstream culture is being
undermined. ... It is being replaced by wider constructs of identity
and self-interest--by what you might call the ecological self or the
eco-self, co-extensive with other beings and the life of our planet.
It is what I will call "the greening of the self."
This is hardly new for our species. In the past poets and mystics
have been speaking and writing about these ideas, but not people of
the barricades agitating for social change. ... This expanded sense
of self serves to empower effective action.
I am convinced that this loss of certainty that there will be a
future is the pivotal psychological reality of our time. The fact
that it is not talked about very much makes it all the more pivotal,
because nothing is more preoccupying or energy-draining than that
which we repress.
From the systems perspective this interaction, creating larger wholes
and patterns, allows for and even requires diversity. You become
more yourself. Integration and differentiation go hand in hand.
One of the things I like best about the green self, the ecological
self that is arising in our time, is that it is making moral
exhortation irrelevant. Sermonizing is both boring and ineffective.
This ecological self, like any notion of selfhood, is a metaphoric
construct and a dynamic one. It involves choice; choices can be made
to identify at different moments, with different dimensions or
aspects of our systemically interrelated existence... In doing this
the extended self brings into play wider resources--courage,
endurance, ingenuity--like a nerve cell in a neural net opening to
the charge of other neurons.
author: Macy, Joanna, 1929-
detail: <
gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Joanna_Macy>
LOC: BQ4570.S6 M33
tags: book,spirit
title: World As Lover, World As Self
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