There's Just Us

I think the media is obsessed with terrorism. It certainly was when I started working as a reporter at The Age newspaper in 2003. Nearly every day at that time one or more journalists were being assigned to stories about terrorists; 9/11 was still fresh in people’s minds, the Bali bombings had happened and politicians and the state security apparatus were trying to keep it at the forefront of public consciousness.

There was a kind of fever in the newsroom, the way that the media can descend into a whirlpool largely of its own making. Only the most tenuous links to terrorism were needed: my first front-page story was an interview with some sheikh in Melbourne’s north whose name had been mentioned in court documents for someone being tried for something in Spain. I had no idea about this man’s background or circumstances, but there I was in what looked like a former warehouse in Brunswick asking him whether he was a member of Al-Qaeda. The day the story appeared a media pack laid siege to his house.

The tendency of news media is towards sensation and maximising polarity – presenting in endless iterations the situations and people that are good and those that are bad. When the media sniffs out a stark polarity of some kind it goes to work. Whether a public existential threat is real or substantial is not so important because the “strong story” is primary.

The black-and-white, “good versus bad” formulations in the media aren’t helpful when it comes to tackling the world’s issues. It’s not that there are no clear problems that need to be addressed – like climate change and security – and people doing good and bad things in a variety of ways, but that the complexity of the world and interconnectedness of everyone and everything calls for a nuanced vision.

In the globalised world of the 21st century there is a strong overarching movement towards unification, the breaking down of boundaries and divisions. With it has come an exposure and meeting of the great variety of cultures and ideas that belong to the whole human family. Such globalised change inevitably produces tensions and brings to the fore aspects of the old order in reaction. When people like Tony Abbott, Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch beat the “us-and-them” drum in relation to Muslims, they are giving voice to the old circumstances of established power and related boundaries and identities. They are trying to reassert a status quo that is changing fast around them and in doing so convey the sense of fear and threat that comes from an old order giving way to the new.

The global age carries a challenging package of unity and diversity that have to be held and nurtured simultaneously. We are one world – ecological reality tells us so – and yet diversity in all its shapes and forms is vital for human and non-human wellbeing. It will be fascinating to see the kinds of global structures that emerge in future to tackle problems like climate change which are properly addressed not by a gaggle of nation states with competing interests but by a body deciding for the welfare of all and the whole.

In the meantime, the dull roar of the purveyors of “us and them” on all sides is likely to get louder, conflicts intensify and suffering increase as we humans blunder our way towards more enlightened ways of being with each other and the planet. There really is no “us and them”. There’s just us.

Available to the metaphor

Recognise what is before your eyes, and what is hidden will be revealed to you.

- Gospel of Thomas

On the train the other evening heading home from work I watched an army of zombies being mercilessly dispatched. The carnage was happening on a man’s computer in the row of seats in front of me. From around his shoulder I could see the creatures being shot or stabbed in the tawdry action flick that was rolling on the screen.

The film seemed to follow the usual depiction of zombies as slow, witless and bloodied creatures who rise en masse from the ground and who must be killed – with plenty of splattering gore – as part of the heroic action of the plot. It made me think about why they appear in films, what their purpose is, what they mean.

Through the lens of depth psychology we could say that the “un-dead” represent unconscious forces in the psyche that rise up to confront the individual or community. Their heavy slowness signifies the weight or gravity with which they are attached to the living. They are bloodied and deformed, a testament to suffering and wrong relationship, to life gone astray. They are ghosts in earthy, visceral and terrifying form. To respond a person must understand what zombies mean in the context of their life and why they have appeared, and take action that either transforms them towards life-affirmation or causes them to sink back down as benign forces of the earth.

Of course in movies such as the one I was peeking at, zombies are usually just monster curiosities that are splatter fodder for the hero’s weapons. They are treated literally and superficially, as “baddies” that must be destroyed.

There is a lot to be said for a more metaphoric viewing of reality, in all circumstances. Seeing into and beyond the literal not only adds depth and meaning to life, it reveals ever more levels of the universe to human consciousness, opening possibilities for inner growth and evolution.

There are two elements to the development of a deeper understanding of life: asking continually the vital question “Why?”, and the quality of attention or awareness one carries in the world.

“Why?” is sometimes a vexed question, a difficult question, and one that is often not asked in relation to many things. I think of the mainstream media in this regard – how much of what is presented as “news” for mass consumption lacks nuance, fails to look at causes or treats them in only the crudest way. When life is experienced superficially, with little depth or meaning, we are constantly surprised by events; we lack the tools to make sense of reality and are dependent on others to shape understanding for us. A commitment to questioning, to the light that “Why?” shines in dark corners, develops an ability in a person to see patterns beneath the surface of reality. These patterns then act as a guide of truth by which we are able to live a good life.

Necessarily a critical consciousness, if honest, faces that which is difficult in the self and human relations; it reveals all that we prefer to hide or don’t want to face. Difficult and daunting, it is nevertheless the process by which humanity’s consciousness evolves; without looking into the shadows we remain tied to ignorance and suffering.

A questioning life does not mean a miserable one beset by doubt or confined to ascetic introspection. It is simply one lived with an open mind and heart willing to accept gratefully whatever comes as a result.

The quality of attention or awareness we give to anything is of utmost importance. Buddhism emphasises attention in the moment as crucial to enlightenment, being fully awake to all that is right here, right now. To be fully awake, we have to work hard to purify and discipline the mind and body so as to be available to everything in the present moment. The attention produced is akin to what Hindus call “buddhi”, a type of consciousness that perceives beyond the surface of things; that has its tap root in the psyche, in the soul that pervades everything.

When more of our life and our world open in this fashion we move towards what might be called “soul embodiment”, where the subtle music of the universe is continuously playing to our senses. Metaphor comes naturally in this state – it’s not that the meaning of things is immediately revealed to us all the time, but that we live in constant perception of beauty, of the dialogue and play of opposites, of the shades and depths of the inner condition, of the holiness of all creation. Most of us connect with soul from time to time, but only for the very few is it a fundamental lived reality.

For all this, metaphor is close at hand. In some sense it is simply about amplifying what is already playing inside us and the world – our dreams and imagination supply us with a rich stream of symbolic content – or being more available to it, giving it greater regard. Soul is a cornerstone of the universe; it’s our birthright and what we move towards in fulfillment of our nature.

Are the gods real?

The following is an imaginary conversation overheard between two men, Lambros and Aristageles, in the agora in Athens sometime in the 4th century BCE.

Lambros: Tell me, Aristageles, are the gods real?

Aristageles: Who says they are not?

Lambros: Well, I have been thinking for some time about this and re-reading some of the great philosophical works. Dangerous though it may be to say so, it seems to me a fair conclusion to deny the existence of all gods.

Aristageles: Ah, friend, you rarely turn away from a controversial line of thought. It is a good thing. By what paths of reasoning have you come to this one, Lambros?

Lambros: Xenophanes pointed out that in different countries gods were represented differently – Thracians see their deities as being like themselves, Negroes picture them with black skin. Xenophanes said that if cows and horses could paint their gods, they would look like cows or horses. It follows that what we call divine beings are simply mental pictures of ourselves, creations of our own mind, particularly when you consider that in stories they display all the human attributes: greed, envy, lust, jealousy, love, fairness, justice and all the others. What conclusion can there be other than they are fictions of the mind?

Aristageles: Yes, but Xenophanes did not throw out divinity. Instead, he put forward a universal intelligence that moved everything. Does this not satisfy you?

Lambros: I must say no. Whether it is one great god or many, it remains that they are products of human thought. Take them all away and the world is no different – there would still be storms and bolts of lightning without Zeus, the sea would not change without Poseidon or the crops cease to grow in the absence of Demeter. It seems to me that fear and ignorance hold people to these fictions, which disappear like flimsy threads under the torch of reason.

Aristageles: So you say reason is the only way to truth?

Lambros: I do. It is clear that reason banishes the gods.

Aristageles: Friend, I think you are mistaken. Reason banishes falsehood, but the gods are neither false nor true.

Lambros: How so?

Aristageles: Well you are right that the gods cannot withstand a purely logical line of thought, but not everything is subject to logos. There are some things that simply are, in and of themselves; and it would be entirely wrong to speak about them any other way. I think the gods are in this category. Let me explain.

What we call Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter, Apollo, Athena are representations of the kinds of power in the universe. There is the power that manifests in the sky, the power of the sea, the generative power of the earth, the power of wisdom and foresight. It is true that we fix certain human-like images to these aspects of power in order to relate to them, and Xenophanes was right to point out that different nations have different images, nevertheless underneath them a real presence of power remains. What can we really say about this power, other than it simply is? When did it come to be and when will it end? It made us and we are its vessels to venerate and honour. Or do you say that reason can explain this and everything?

Lambros: It is possible. Democritus said that the universe was made of atoms, invisible objects that are the building blocks of everything and that are constantly moving. Why should we not hold to this, rather than that Zeus created all?

Aristageles: Democritus may be right, but the gods are not extinguished as a result, for they are the metaphysical mirror to physical reality. Deny them and you reject something essential about the world – the response of the heart and soul. My friend, if you split reason away from soul you are heading towards a kind of tyranny of logos.

Lambros: Logos frees the mind from fairytales and other nonsense. The stories tell us that our Zeus, whom we venerate so much, is a serial adulterer, rapist and liar. All the gods have flaws, and some are said to have done such beastly things that you and I for shame would never contemplate. If these higher beings are in charge of the world, no wonder there is such chaos! Why don’t we just sack the lot of them and find others to worship that are truly virtuous and wise?

Aristageles: You would sack a god? Ha ha! I think you miss the point of our pantheon. Power, in its purest sense, is neither good nor bad but just what it is. It is nature. One day it is kind to humans, the next it is totally destructive. You have been to sea, haven’t you? It can be breathtakingly beautiful on a fair day with Zephyros blowing in the sails, but then a storm appears and suddenly the sea is a seething monster tossing your boat like a toy and threatening doom for everybody. The gods are not to be trifled with.

There is something else revealed in what you describe as the flaws of the gods about which we can say a few words. Power has a dark, corruptive side. Are you well-acquainted with The Bacchae, the drama by Euripides?

Lambros: Yes, but I haven’t seen it for years. I used to have nightmares after every performance.

Aristageles: I can understand. How would you describe Dionysus in the play?

Lambros: Pitiless, vengeful, savage.

Aristageles: Indeed, Euripides does not hold back. Dionysus could simply have taught Pentheus a lesson and let him live. Instead, Pentheus is torn apart by his own crazed mother and even in death utterly humiliated.

Lambros: Just as I said, the gods are a frightfully awful lot.

Aristageles: But look at the truth here: power is corruptible. All power as it manifests in this world has the potential to go astray, to run amok. We humans are the best exemplars of this and war is our chief tool. Countless tyrants have waged war to satisfy their depraved power hunger, murdering and enslaving whole nations in the process. Even our own fair democratic Athens did not rest in the glory of its achievements but had to build an empire and subjugate other Greeks. We must always be on our guard for the ways that power can subvert the human soul.

Lambros: Yes, I see, but my earlier argument about the gods remains – if we stopped praying to Dionysus or Zeus or whoever, how would anything be different?

Aristageles: Well, perhaps immediately afterwards and on the surface of things, not much would change. But you see prayer and sacrifice and every other ritual of worship are about the kinds of relationship we humans have to the divine. If we no longer give thanks and speak to the mysterious power in the world and in us, the power does not disappear. It will continue to move us, to create and destroy and spin the almighty web that is the universe. Whether we embrace it or not, we are still its subjects, so the real question is: What happens to us if we reject the gods? Will we not attempt to usurp their power? What will check our power lust and hubris?

Lambros: You paint a bleak picture of humanity, Aristageles. There will still be love and laughter even after all the fantasies and phantasms are gone.

Aristageles: Maybe so, but the fantasies and phantasms are richly woven into our culture and have been for countless centuries. What do you propose to replace them with, nothing? Take them away and something essential is lost – nay, not lost outright but in us. If we no longer ask Demeter for guidance, will we treat the earth with respect? If we take the goddesses out of the springs and rivers, what will stop us from fouling their waters? Can you imagine the woods without nymphs and muses, Cithaeron without satyrs, Olympus without the gods? Can you imagine what that would be like?

Lambros: I confess at this point I cannot, but maybe one day ...

Aristageles: It will be a sad day indeed, my friend.

A Dialogue on Wisdom

Two men, Aristageles and Caro, meet late one afternoon in the marketplace or agora in Athens, sometime in the 4th century BCE. The following is their conversation. The reader will find that the themes in this mock-Socratic dialogue have a somewhat timeless flavour.

Aristageles: My good man, Caro, it pains me to see you like this. What in Zeus’ name is the matter?

Caro: I wish I knew.

Aristageles: But why such a perplexed look?

Caro: I have just spent a fair time of the day at the home of my friend Philon, and with his companions discussing the nature of wisdom. Having heard many fine arguments I feel little more than a fool.

Aristageles: Why so?

Caro: Many things were said, but of them I can make no difference to say “this is better than that” or “the evidence presented conclusively proves this argument”. I’m afraid that I am completely unwise about wisdom.

Aristageles: Well, what did they say about this most weighty subject?

Caro: Philippus said wisdom was something that could only be acquired by a select few, and only with great learning. The masses had no understanding of what it meant to be wise – only philosophers had this capacity. According to Philippus wisdom is a pure quality of mind, like the finest thread woven after all else is discarded.

Aristageles: Is that so?

Caro: Atharcus set wisdom with knowledge. The more we know, the wiser we are. One who is a blacksmith is wise about metals – their properties, how to handle and shape them. Or one who knows how to please his lovers is wise about love. The more we understand – about anything and everything – the wiser we become. Atharcus believes that wisdom does not exist purely in itself, but only as a higher register of knowledge.

Aristageles: Hmmm. He is a clever fellow.

Caro: Pellius said wisdom was vested in authority and tradition. By following the laws that have come down over the centuries, we take up the accumulated learning of our forebears. Consider the greatness of Athens, he said. Is that not a mark of the fruits of wisdom? All that remains is to obey authority with a respectful and cordial attitude.

Aristageles: I hope Pellius was respectful and cordial when pouring the wine amongst his comrades. Were there others who spoke?

Caro: Agistemon shouted in the middle of Pellius’ speech, his belly full of drink, that we were wasting our time discussing wisdom. He said it belonged to the past when there was war, people were hungry and you needed your wits to survive. Now all that’s required is skill to continue the plentiful supply of food, horses and slaves.

Aristageles: Was that all?

Caro: Yes, more or less. Maurus, Philon and I sat quietly and took it all in without offering an opinion.

Aristageles: And you say out of all that you cannot sort the good grain from the chaff, or tell which line of reasoning most worthy?

Caro: I confess I cannot.

Aristageles: Well, good fellow, will you permit me to entertain you with my thoughts? I hope I will not add to your confusion or plunge your mind into greater darkness.

Caro: Not at all, Aristageles. Your considered opinion is always welcome.

Aristageles: Well, then, let’s first define wisdom and then address the arguments one by one.

I would say there are two types of wisdom: one of the gods and the other of men. Do you see that sparrow over there pecking at crumbs on the ground? Is it not a wise little beast?

Caro: I should say not. It is simply doing what is in its nature – looking for food and eating it.

Aristageles: Come, Caro, you have little faith. The sparrow’s wisdom is of the gods. It is endowed with an instinct for hunting and gathering what is most beneficial to it. When you and I were born, did we not cry out fiercely when taken from our mothers’ wombs? Every newborn cries so that its helpless purple skin is swaddled to keep it warm, so that its mother and everyone else around pay it proper attention to keep it safe and well. How did we know to do this if not granted by the gods? Wisdom consists in knowing the paths of the good, and the gods are supreme in knowledge.

Now, there is a wisdom that belongs properly to men and it also is about recognising the paths of the good. Tell me, would a goatherd take out his animals when he sees a storm brewing in the sky, or a farmer plant seeds on stony ground? I should think not. They know that it would be of no benefit to do so because the conditions are not right. It is wisdom to see the paths of the good and to act accordingly.

Caro: I am with you in your argument thus far, Aristageles, but you are surely debasing wisdom to say that any goatherd or farmer is wise because they act according to plain reason. It has to be more than that.

Aristageles: You are right, it is more; but only by degree. Socrates was the wisest of men because he followed the paths of the good considerably further than the average Athenian. He tracked the good into the mind and pursued it all the way into the refined air of Ideas, that pure realm where the mind touches the gods. Few of us have the brilliance of a Socrates, but all of us can attune ourselves to the good in many different ways. We can be respectful and kind to other people; we can be moderate in our ways and means; we can speak up for what is right in the Assembly so that justice and fairness are the cornerstones of the life of our polis; we can honour and give thanks to the gods with a pure heart. All of these are the basis for wisdom and all are available to the highest and lowest in the land; as much to slaves as to aristocrats, and equally to those with little intellect as to the most learned.

Caro: Your reasoning seems sound, but is it not true that men have different notions of the good? The Persians, for instance, thought it good to conquer Greek cities, whereas we resisted. A man who treats his wife badly can say that he is doing the right thing, or someone who is greedy believe that ownership of houses and jewels leads to happiness.

Aristageles: Yes, fair point, Caro. I would say that the good is that which preserves and benefits life. Let me explain. When the Persians thought it good to attack Greek cities they were thinking of themselves and not the benefit of life in the broadest possible terms. They were hungry for power and wealth and showed remarkable hubris. Eventually they were defeated and in turn conquered and ruined. Had the Persians approached us more humbly, not as invaders but as fellow men wishing to learn from us and trade in goods and ideas, do you think we would have refused them? Such an approach would have been far more in accordance with the good and with true wisdom. It does not benefit life to spread enmity, war and conquest; only peace and mutual interest preserve wellbeing.

So also to one who mistreats his wife or his slaves, or has any other kind of vice and thinks he is doing the right thing – he must ask himself some appropriate questions. Is what I am doing or thinking respectful and kind? Does it benefit wellbeing for all? If he is honest, the answers will reveal the truth. If he cannot work it out, he need speak to others and perhaps together come to a satisfactory conclusion. Sometimes the good is not arrived at easily or won with a minimum of effort, but the rewards are always great.

Caro: It is well reasoned, Aristageles.

Aristageles: Now, what of the arguments of your fellows? It was Philippus, I think you said, who stated that only philosophers and the learned few could be wise. I hope you will not be offended when I say that I have spent many hours at symposia with philosophers and thought afterwards I could have learnt more from watching a sparrow. Bombast, word plays, tortuous arguments that meander with no consequence are too often the shoddy tools of those who think they have something important to say. Dear Caro, to have read much and talked much is no guarantee of wisdom.

Caro: Ha! Then you must have met some of my comrades.

Aristageles: I confess I have not, but the point is that wisdom, like the air we breathe, is pure and is available to everyone regardless of whether they have studied philosophy or even know how to read the word.

Now, Atharcus it was who said that wisdom was knowledge. Would we really think that a blacksmith who is a master in his craft is wise simply because he knows all there is to know about iron and bronze? What if he used his skill to make weapons for the invading Persians? If he does not make use of his talents and knowledge for the good then no wisdom can come from him. It is the good that is the final authority and not cleverness or technical mastery; otherwise we would have no need for laws or justice. But I’m afraid that men are often seduced by knowledge, and fluffing themselves up like cocks because they have mastery in this way or that they behave shamefully to others and displease the gods. Do you remember Arachne, the young Lydian woman whose skill in weaving was so great that she had the temerity to challenge Athena to a contest? Athena changed her into a spider so that her weaving was of true benefit. Knowledge is nothing if it is without humility and aimed at the good.

Caro: Fine, Aristageles. But what about the argument of Pellius, who said that wisdom belonged to authority and tradition? Of all, this one to me has most merit. When I think of Thales, Heraclitus, Pythagoras and all the great philosophers, I see how much I and all Greeks have benefited from their thought. I look at the public buildings of Athens, our grand festivals, our system of democratic government that is envied by so many, our naval fleet, and reflect that no other city remotely rivals this one. Is all this not the product of wisdom, accrued over the ages, for the benefit of all; and should we not acknowledge and celebrate it?

Aristageles: By Zeus, we should! And yet, at the same time, I am troubled. Our fine city put to death Socrates, the greatest mind of his generation, not by a travesty of justice but by the fair working of the celebrated laws of this land. Our fine city sent thousands of good men to their deaths for the folly of supremacy over the Aegean, only to be thwarted and punished. How many mothers, wives, children howled with grief over the barren graves of their loved ones in all those years that we warred with Sparta? Yes, here in Athens there is wisdom in good measure; but also power hunger, greed and ignorance. It is up to young people like you, Caro, to weave the strands of inherited wisdom into a new garment that will sit much more comfortably on the shoulders of all men and women.

Caro: I will reflect on your words, Aristageles. And what of Agistemon, who said we had no need of wisdom anymore?

Aristageles: He profanes the gods. Can we do without the light of the sun or without water to drink? In good times or bad, wisdom is sunlight shining in our soul, pure spring water quenching our thirst for life.

Caro: It is well said.

Aristageles: Thank you, dear friend.

Hope

Do you remember those vivid, stylised posters of Barack Obama emblazoned with the word “HOPE” that appeared just before he was elected president of the United States in 2008?

What happened to the euphoria of hope that swelled like a huge wave at that time, millions of people attending his inauguration and seeing his speech around the world?

As the curtain begins to close on his presidency, Obama has critics on all sides and his popularity is only average. Though he made important steps towards a federal healthcare system, signing cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and speaking out on gun control, some are less than satisfied. They point to his support for Wall Street after the global financial crisis against the calls for radical reform, his tepid response to police shootings of young African Americans, and the escalation of drone attacks in the Middle East which have killed an unknown number of civilians in recent years.

The hope rising with the election of the first black president in American history, a milestone in many respects, evaporated probably as early as his first term in office. Why?

Hope is a powerful emotion that lifts the human spirit; arguably no individual can adequately carry it for millions of people. A president cannot simply do whatever they want, but must work within the system. At the top of the pecking order, they are at the same time a servant of the reality they inherit.

When an exuberance of hope appears like it did in the US around Obama, I think it speaks more about general conditions of despair and entrenched problems than the brilliance of the individual to whom it is attached. Not to diminish the man’s talents or his capacity to ignite feelings with inspiring words, the test of hope is rather its everyday existence in people’s lives and society as a whole, and not simply in the rolling bandwagon of a political campaign.

Investing hope in people and circumstances is fine but we ought to let go the attachment as easily as it was applied in the first place, to not hold too tightly to outcomes; not because of fear that things will not turn out the way we want but in acknowledgement that hope is far more than any single person, idea or institution. The boundless, free experience and expression of hope is what really counts.

The importance of someone like Obama lies more in their capacity to act as a catalyst for positive change broadly than in what they as an individual are able to achieve. Such a person becomes a symbol and a lightning rod for mass unfulfilled desires, but we have to reckon the crescendo of energy that arises for all that comes from it, for the changes and actions large and small that it inspires in millions of people. My sense is that many people are drawn to do good in many different ways in a collective surge of hope, but if our vision is simply on the one who acts as catalyst we miss the vitality of what is being worked and downplay our own empowerment in the process. Holding too tightly to the individual and not what their symbol activates in us, we can become disappointed and cynical or conversely starry-eyed and idolising.

There are parallels here to other people in history who became cult figures – like one of the most significant of them all, Jesus Christ. For many Christians, Jesus is real and extant in a literal way – people pray to him and believe he intervenes beneficially in their life. What occurs, more likely, is a projection of the devotee’s inner hopes and desires onto a symbolic figure, when the real value is the symbol’s ability to inspire and unlock the powers of the believer to improve their life and that of others.

When the focus of hope is turned away from an attachment to an individual or thing and experienced purely in itself, we find its presence more widespread and common than previously imagined. In this regard I look outside where I live in central Victoria. Photos taken of the area in the 19th century show barely a tree for miles – the local box-ironbark forests were decimated during the gold mining boom. Now, decades after mining and intensive agriculture stopped, the forests have reappeared and there is a general respect and valuing of the bush. I find great hope in this as an example of people moving to a much better relationship with nature, which we desperately need at this time of global ecological crisis.

Hope is, in fact, everywhere if we choose to see it: the birth of any living being is an expression of hope; our waking into the beautiful promise of each new day is a sign of hope; having nourishing food to eat and clean water to drink is evidence of hope; as is the ability to smile in the face of good times and bad. Hope is really the goodwill that exists as the cornerstone of all life.

Luck and Mystery

The impact was sudden. It came from nowhere. Thud! Then a stifled scream from the front seat, shudders, and the car came to a stop. “It’s gone under the car! We’ve hit a roo, we’ve hit a roo. It just jumped out – there was no time to do anything.”

I was in the back and talking to another person when it happened. The five of us quickly got out, shaking from shock, and inspected the scene. The car had hit a male kangaroo, a young adult, and it was still alive though prone on the road with blood trickling from its head. As people fumbled with their phones to ring Help for Wildlife, the animal’s breathing became shallower until, after a minute or two, it passed from this world. We dragged the body away from the road and stared at it in mute silence for a few moments, then got back in the car and drove off to our destination.

Had I and the others decided on a different route to take us to the start of our bushwalk that early autumn morning the young kangaroo, its fur still new and clean, would have been alive. Had we been on that road a few seconds earlier or later it would have bounded across the bitumen and into the bush on the other side. We consoled the driver by saying it was luck, pure luck. All of us had driven along roads in the area hundreds of times and not struck an animal once.

We humans have always sought to understand and explain our world. In the early millennia of our history there was no such thing as a random event because all phenomena were thought to be evidence of some sort of design or intent. In the magical world-view of an early culture, an explanation for the incident with the kangaroo could run something like: the animal was an omen sent by a god to warn us of bad things to come; or the animal possessed a spirit that had done wrong and its violent death was recompense. Rational Western society has abandoned thinking of this kind; as the supernatural has been taken away from this world, randomness or chance has appeared to fill much of the void of the unexplained. According to this view, there are no ulterior motives or meanings to certain events other than the natural variables that lead, for instance, to a kangaroo being on a particular road at a particular time and a car heading towards it.

The one key problem with randomness is that it is impossible to say with certainty what is random and what is not. Meanings of some kind are always, teasingly, under the surface. For instance, we could look at the kangaroo’s death in light of the speed at which the car was going or the distractedness of the driver in a car full of people not being sufficiently attentive to the possibility of animals in the early morning. Scientific inquiry itself only proceeds by asking questions about the unknown, and in the process of gaining more insight revealing other areas of mystery. The uncertainty about what is truly random invites an extension of awareness that can encompass many perspectives for the most holistic understanding possible.

Holistic understanding builds an intimate relationship with mystery. At the same time as it seeks meaning out of the unknown, it leaves ample room for more mystery at every turn, seeing it not as a bad thing that must be overcome but as a teacher and guide.

What we call luck is actually the intersection of mystery and the physical world; and it serves as a reminder of the unknown at work in our lives. Looking closer, we see it everywhere and in everything. All life, indeed the existence of the universe, depends ultimately on luck – not randomness or chance, but the meeting of mystery with a creative spark that produces material reality. What was it other than luck that created you or me? Any number of factors could have conspired to prevent two particular people coming together, for their sexual union not to be fertile, for their coupling to produce not you but some other human being. The same applies to all other aspects of life. Natural and human systems that support life in a myriad of ways do so always holding the hand of mystery and are always beholden to grace, the union of dark and light that set them in train in the first place.

How, then, do we reconcile luck with meaning and purpose? As we enquire with openness into the nature of things, so meaning is gradually revealed to us; meaning that is necessarily conditioned by the culture and time in which we live. The further we progress in this way, the more is there a deep sense of things as they are, as they need to be, an awareness of solidity amid constant flux. The task is then to serve this core or essence behind the appearance of things, to experience and know it more. Serving it is intrinsically about acting in ways that affirm life, that build love and connection, nurturing the multiplicity and variety of forms in the created world.

There is a saying that “you make your own luck”; that is, as you act in the world, so mystery responds by reinforcing and furthering your intentions. That’s right to a degree, but I think there is a more humble position that is closer to the general truth, one of “you make of what luck gives you”. The life we are given, including its slings and arrows of misfortune, is a gift to be nourished and to be given back a thousand times in good acts to all. The Roman statesman and Stoic philosopher Seneca said, “The Fates lead him who will; him who won’t they drag.” Him who won’t disregards the creative life essence as it manifests in himself and others, and as a consequence is “dragged” through a seemingly random world. Him who will responds to inner nature and is therefore led in a purposeful way, in turn furthering its designs and the multifarious beauty that is constantly unfolding all around.

On the Good

When I reflect on what it means to be good my mind takes me to two people in a powerful book I read years ago when trying to learn more about my birthplace, the Ukrainian city of Kiev.

Alexandra and Mikolai appear in Babi Yar, a firsthand account of life under the Nazi occupation of Kiev during World War II by Anatoli Kuznetsov. Alexandra was the young Kuznetsov’s godmother and Mikolai her blind, wispy-haired husband.

The couple is mentioned only sparingly in the book, but always in a light of contrast to some tragedy or horror that the author is describing. Kuznetsov says, “They were such good and inoffensive old folk, probably the most kind-hearted people I had ever met in my life.”

Alexandra worked as a cleaner at the local children’s handicraft centre where she would take her husband each morning and together they would spend hours sweeping the large yard. “When they had finished it looked really tidy and you could see the marks left by the rake, like freshly sown vegetable gardens in spring.”

Towards the end of the book, with the Germans retreating in pandemonium before the advancing Soviet forces and Kuznetsov and his mother left in the practically deserted city with full-scale war around them, Alexandra and Mikolai suddenly appear like strange apparitions.

“The old lady was carefully leading the blind man, keeping him away from the pot-holes and paving stones and talking to him very earnestly ... When they found we were at home they both broke into tears. They had simply been trying to find some human beings.”

The pair had been sheltering in a basement and not eaten for two days. After gratefully accepting some food, they decide to go back to look after what was left of their home. Kuznetsov suggests to Alexandra that she look around the abandoned yards and cellars in the neighbourhood for anything valuable.

“The old lady threw up her hands. ‘In other people’s cellars? To go and steal? The Lord forgive you, my child!’”

He watches them go, fearful they might be shot: “They were very unusual people, really ‘not of this world’. They went off across the square, destruction all around them, arm in arm, chatting quietly to each other.”

For me, Alexandra and Mikolai capture something essential about the nature of goodness: though it exists in life-generative and sustaining acts, in everyday deeds of kindness and generosity, it is ultimately “not of this world”. That is, it’s a quality of being.

While worldly laws and customs are important in defining what is right and appropriate, in the end it is the intangible spirit of the law that matters, the grace that is summoned to affirm life. Some laws are flouted with the consent of the whole society – I think of the way Christian nations nominally living by the commandment “thou shalt not steal” blatantly stole the land of Indigenous people in places like Australia – while other laws become redundant over time and no longer serve the good but for whatever reason remain, and there are many instances of the letter of the law followed to bad ends. Without a healthy link to the spirit of the good, to the quality of being, all attempts at practical goodness go awry. In the way the good is applied in the material world, its spiritual foundations have to be strong.

We all need guidance at times in our life, particularly in our early years, but goodness is not something that can be imposed from outside; we either locate it within and draw from it or we reside in the darkness. A truly good person does not have to work hard at it – it’s simply something that emanates from the centre of their self and reflects their true nature.

There is a lot of uncertainty about what it “means” to be good thanks to the complex systems of thought and institutions that have developed in human society. In our time all of us are enmeshed in social and economic systems designed for exploitation of the Earth, its resources and people. What does it mean to be good when we light our homes with electricity from polluting coal-fired power stations or buy shirts made in China where workers endure horrendous conditions and are paid $1 a day? How do we know the good when we are lost in the mazes of academic hyperbole or religious dogma or following the various types of glamour of mass culture and the media?

Ultimately it’s about what we value and where we direct our attention and energy. If we choose the simple path of life affirmation, our actions will reflect that choice and we will be impelled to act for the good in a multitude of ways because every person and every thing shares that basic essence of goodness and all are one. It doesn’t mean that our choices or actions will always be right or that we won’t be touched by the complexity of the world, but as long as we keep drinking from the well of goodness within we provide it with opportunities for expression in the world.

Why is it, then, that we slip from the good so often in our lives? Why do we follow the crooked ways that lead to disconnection and harm? Buddhism identifies ignorance, fear and greed as the motivations for all that’s wrong, pointing to the darker side of human nature. And just as goodness goes forward and reproduces itself in the world, so evil does also. Carl Jung, reflecting on the appeal of Nazism in his post-war essay After the Catastrophe, said: “The wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.” Fear, ignorance and greed become embedded in the norms of thinking and institutions of society, as aspects of the good can be as well.

An important observation here is that human nature is not fixed. Like everything else, it changes. And though good and evil will likely always exist as a condition of life in the temporal world, we can choose how much one or the other influences us. An individual can become more psychologically mature and integrated over time in a process in which their darker side gradually holds less sway. So too collectively – as more people become more whole, reaching for and holding the light of goodness, human nature evolves to embrace the good more fully. As a result, society inevitably changes to reflect this and draws closer to the shining, ineluctable quality of being that is the heart of the good.

Body and Mind

My soul, will you ever be good, simple, individual, bare, brighter than the body that covers you?
- Marcus Aurelius.

On days when I am able to pull myself sufficiently together to accomplish it, when the will is there and the mind quiet enough, I do some simple exercises in the beauty of the outdoors that is my back yard.

I stretch and perform some simple tai chi, some chi gong, and a smattering of kata or karate forms I learnt when I trained in martial arts many years ago.

Sometimes the busyness of life intrudes too much even on this activity, and the brain chatters right through the half an hour or so I spend scuffing up the ground with my moves.

At other times a peace breaks in the flow of the movements. Everything becomes quiet with a graceful simplicity and all seems entirely in its right place, as it should always be. The body is a curtain that reveals a hidden world of wholeness. In Western society, there’s an uneasy relationship between the mind and body. We place highest value on mental activity, many of us spending our working lives in offices in front of computers. Outside the office we tune onto the screen of our smart phone, at home the screen of the home computer or TV. The brain and its associated nervous system are constantly engaged and the rest of the body left aside as if almost invisible. When we do reconnect with the body, it is to the body separated from the mind – in gyms and fitness workouts, aerobics, swimming and the like.

The mind/body duality in Western society can be traced back about 3000 years to the development of the rational mind. As civilisation was becoming more sophisticated, the cruder and more barbaric aspects of human behaviour came increasingly to be questioned. The body’s simple and potentially all-consuming appetites began to be associated with the lowest of human nature – with lust, greed, gluttony, jealousy, power hunger, vengeance and murder. The mind had to rule over the body, just as in the patriarchal culture of the time men ruled over women, who were connected with the body.

So even in ancient Greece, with its celebration of the physical in the games at Olympia, its love of beauty and aesthetic refinement, Socratic philosophy had carved out a distinct hierarchy between the "soul" (the unseen essence of a person) and the body. In Plato’s dialogue, Phaedo, Socrates says that the philosopher’s search for truth is the quest of the mind purified from the needs of the body:

"For the body provides us with a million distractions because of the need to supply it with food; if it gets diseased, that further impedes our hunt for reality. It fills us full of lusts, desires, fears, fantasies of all kinds – in short, a whole collection of nonsense, the result of which is that really and truly, as the saying goes, we never get a moment to ourselves, thanks to the body, even to think about anything."

The philosophical negative attitude to the body, based on objection to human enslavement to animal desire and the need for a higher, better way of being, was amplified in the Christian era that followed the collapse of Greco-Roman civilisation. The body was subjected to greater scorn and denial, covered up and disavowed. Monasteries sprang up as a means of retreat from earthly pleasures so as to be closer to God. The physical world was equated with sin and could only be redeemed by cultivating the soul in Christ and waiting for the afterlife to be lifted up into God’s eternal paradise. Women continued to be marginalised and devalued.

Underpinning it all was a dualistic, either/or paradigm which, ironically, the rational mind would help to undermine over a long stretch of time. The process of reason examining both the internal and external dimensions of reality over two millennia, and turning increasingly to the external through Aristotle, the Scholastics of the medieval period and on to the dawn of science in the 17th century and the Enlightenment, has brought us to where we are now.

The mind/body duality in our contemporary world is a hangover from the past even as for some time there has been a maturing of tendencies towards unity and a resurgence of value in the body. The rise of the feminine in our time – seen not just in the feminist movement and the empowerment of women, but in the prominence of environmentalism and concern with nature, the widespread desire to reconnect with the body, emotions and the life of the whole psyche, the social concern for equality, pluralism and the global human community – represents a powerful unifying shift in Western culture.

With great shifts, however, come great challenges as old contradictions and tensions become clearer and demand resolution. When in Plato and Socrates’ time the body and its passions needed critique to find a more refined way of being, so in our time we have to look closely and critically at the mind. For more than 2000 years Western society has overinvested in the mind, overbalanced in the mental domain to compensate for its unease with the body. The result can be seen in the modern techno-industrial civilisation, with its many achievements, to be sure, but also with a profound disconnection from nature, from the bodily ground of the Earth.

Whereas Socrates criticised the distractions of the body in the philosopher’s quest for enlightenment, it is now the mind that is the chief source of distraction. The advertising industry, using the insights of psychology, long ago discovered that the route to profit was not through the simple cravings of the body for food, drink, sex or whatever, but the virtually endless ways that a mind can be stimulated for imaginary needs and desires. The global "information age" in which we live is a vast enterprise of the mind, mobilising industries across the world in inter-related webs of data primarily in service of economic gain. Now and again we are reminded of the "body" of this information age, such as that the rare metals for our mobile phones and computers come from the bloody war zones of the Congo in East Africa; or of the millions of marginalised people who risk everything crossing borders illegally for a share of the benefits of the modern world.

The distracted mind has to be rebalanced with full reintegration into the body. It’s not that the mind or the body is to be primary, but that each finds itself in the other. In work of the mind we have to stay connected to the body, and vice versa. When we find that we have been outside one aspect of ourselves for any length of time, we must return as soon as possible to a state of balance. I think of the practises of meditation and yoga as powerful tools in maintaining mind-body awareness. Ultimately, the challenge for the human spirit is not that of growth, knowledge and achievement but of balance. That is, finding the stable core of our individual and collective being and allowing that to be our guide in action in the world.

Soft Hands

I miss Bill Lawry. Growing up in the 1980s, Lawry and his fellow Australian TV cricket commentators on Channel Nine were as much part of my summer as the heat and long, aimless days. Now, inevitably, age has wearied him to the point he appears only for the Boxing Day test match once a year in his native Melbourne.

Lawry’s excitable manner was a foil for the more emotionally reserved commentators like Ian Chappell and Richie Benaud. Whenever something important happened on the field, like the fall of a wicket, he’d snap out a simple but ebullient response: “Gone! Out! Yes, he’s gone!" An umpiring mistake would elicit, “Dear oh dear, umpire! Dear oh dear!”

One of Lawry’s compliments for a player who had taken a good catch was to declare they had “soft hands”. Of all his commentary, looking back on it, I find it the most interesting. He would say this particularly about a catch taken close to the bat, like in “the slips” when the ball would dart into a nest of waiting fielders.

Soft hands were a prerequisite to field well in cricket – a player had to make sure their hands were not tense or rigid but supple and yielding. You also had to let the ball come to you and not snatch at it, not move too early or too late with your hands but just let the ball fall into them. Someone whose hands were not prepared to receive the ball would likely drop it, which could ultimately mean the difference between their team winning and losing.

Positioning is the other crucial factor on a cricket field. To catch the ball you either have to be in the right position if standing near the batter or be able to move to the right spot once the ball is in the air if you are in the out-field. In the slips, if you stand too close to another fielder you can spoil each other, too far apart and the ball flies between the two of you; stand too far away from the bat and the ball falls in front of you, too close to the bat and the ball is impossible to catch. Being in the right position is critical.

There’s a lot to be said for the wisdom of cricket. We tend to think that our lives need to be forged heroically out of the turbulent mess of existence for us to be successful; that we have to struggle in spite of external conditions to get what we want, elbowing our way in competition with nameless others. I think that’s the wrong notion. The essence of a good life is to be in the right position to receive it and to take it with soft hands.

To be sure, the right position does require work and knowledge. In life, the work is a journey of self-discovery in which the aim is to reach the centre of one’s being. This centre is the source of meaning and goodness in an individual, the inexhaustible fountain from which their life springs. From it all else comes: a purposeful career, relationships, friendships, indeed a whole life’s work. Most of us have to go looking, gaining it through the rigours and knocks of everyday living, through therapy or some kind of internal practice, through self-examination and understanding. We come to know more about our personality and how it can serve this centre. Of course, many of us don’t take the path let alone come close to the goal.

The paradox in the process, as wisdom traditions tell us, is that you arrive where you started – that is, with the personal and universal gifts you had all along. The importance of the journey is actually in the development and refinement of the vehicle that serves the centre, the body and mind that is capable of using the inner gold for its full benefit. To those of us within its radiance for any length of time, being there seems effortless, the grace of the universe natural and boundless. Yet spiritual or ultimate reality cannot be realised in the temporal world without some process of translation; the right position requires no work and yet it needs the effort of Hercules to get there.

Having soft hands is being able to receive the nourishing grace that is the endowment of all created beings. Religious traditions have always had their eye on grace, always sought to build a relationship with the divine light that is the succour of life. We can open to grace through prayer and religious ritual but equally it can be recognised and appreciated in the many ordinary-special moments of each day: in the red-flecked purple clouds of the sky at sunrise, in the smile and joy of a child, in the satisfaction of work done well, in the kindness of strangers. What’s needed is an openness of heart, eyes attentive to the beauty of the world, soft hands.

The Three Phases of Being

It’s kind of obvious, but you notice nature more when you live in the country. That’s been my experience since I moved to central Victoria last year.

Being in the bush, walking or just looking out the window to the grey box-covered hills, you sense nature’s moving through the revolutions of each day and the seasons; the vitality of birds and other animals in the early morning and before sunset; how settled everything is at noon and in the afternoon; how the night brings a new armada of life into the open.

In summer the hills are brown and baked dry – it’s the peak time of insects and lizards but much else has retreated or hunkered down to avoid the heat. Autumn marks the return of green to the land, the respite of moisture and cool air. In winter the rain brings growth, verdant moss and the flourishing of all that is adapted to cold and frost. Spring is the season of abundance, the crowning time of flowers, the period of animal courtship, birth and rearing of young. And onwards again to summer...

In the grand cyclical drama of this little patch of the world, as in life in general, there are three distinct phases. They are: birth, growth and fulfilment.

Birth is the entry of form into the world from the great mystery of nothingness; arrival propelled by a life impulse that is both universal and unique to a particular being. Carried into the world is the history of its species, its predecessors’ physical, energetic and subtle characteristics. As well, each being has its own life and purpose, influenced by the various material circumstances and relationships in which it finds itself. The specific purpose is most easily seen in humans – different people can live vastly different lives according to personality, interests, drives and aspirations – but it is also true in other species. Every blade of grass, every dragonfly and grey box tree is unique, and though most act like others of their species most of the time, subtle differences are important. Evolution requires innovation: a single dragonfly one day flapping its wings differently could eventually have ramifications for its entire species and others in its web of relationships.

Growth is the expansion of form driven by the life impulse. There are different and distinct stages in the growth phase and nothing is required but that the impulse is free to create what it will. Change is constant and at some point the opportunity arises for the intelligence within the form, whatever consciousness is there, to interact with its own vivifying principle. Human will is a prime example of this: at a certain early age we discover our own ego, saying yes to “this” and no to “that”. Over time we make choices and preferences in our lives, directing the energy within us. This also applies more broadly in the universe. We see intelligence in animals and plants as they channel the life impulse within them to adapt and evolve with the conditions around them. And it’s possible to see this in so-called “inanimate” nature. In such things as rivers, rocks, mountains and stars there are discernible stages of birth, growth, middle and old age and numerous ways in which they influence the webs of life of which they are a part. The quality of their life and intelligence may be very different to our own, but we should never be hung up on the human, never see ourselves as the sole template of being. That would be far too narrow.

Fulfilment is the point at which a form has reached its peak and the conclusion of a particular cycle of being. It applies to physical bodies as well as to the more subtle forms of the psyche. Generally speaking, humans reach their physical apex in their late 20s, after which there is gradual decline and ultimately death. But even as the body deteriorates over the years past its physical prime, there may be multiple peaks internally in subtle form; multiple internal births, periods of growth and fulfilment inside one person. The cyclical drama of being occurs within and without. The height of a form is its ultimate power and capability but also the point at which it begins to anticipate its own transcendence, presaging the birth of new form. For example, a person may have reached a deeply fulfilling place in their professional career, or have discovered the joy of bringing up children. These “sweet spot” positions are rarely inhabited long before there is an internal shift towards another place, for transcendence or renewal in some way. There may be little or no external sign of change, yet form is always dynamic, always moving. How a person responds is, of course, up to them. Collective structures and systems follow this pattern too: empires rise and reach their peak, then are faced with renewal or inevitable decline; so too governments, institutions, religions, ideas, modes of thought and action. Whatever is creative and dynamic in a form will find its apogee then dissolve unless new forms are created to hold it. In this process what is most important is the life within the form and not the form itself.

What happens, then, in a situation of stasis or when growth is hobbled or inhibited? The complexity of being is such that when the flow of life is dammed in one place, it appears stronger in another. Bats living in dark caves become blind but evolve extraordinary powers of hearing. A person without the use of their legs develops powerful functioning in their arms. At any blockage life energy is being diverted elsewhere, whether we are aware of this happening or not. Sometimes the blockage is unavoidable or unforeseen, like when restrictions are forced upon us by sudden illness or disability, and what remains is to discover the new directions in which life is flowing and to commit fully to them. In other circumstances the reason for stasis has to be met head-on and its knots undone, otherwise corruption and deadening set in. The dammed energy has to be liberated so that life can go forth fully.

What can be said, then, about decay? There is a natural attrition and also a type of decay which is harmful to the overall spirit of life. The first is the expression of non-being working upon being, the negating principle of the universe acting to dissipate form in order to create new form. The second, the “unnatural”, is the result of human action against the dynamic flow of life. There are many institutions in our time that reek of decline. One could point to the Catholic Church, a monolith with falling authority and power stuck in the values of past centuries. Then there’s the democratic political system, in some places in the world energised and hoped for, in many others foundering on apathy and instability. Perhaps the biggest and most important example in our time of harmful decay is the very relationship that we humans have to our planet. In ages past our self interest of carving a human niche amid the wild fitted because our lives were shorter and we took from the land largely only what we needed. Now, as a result of overpopulation, unchecked industry and technology, we are profoundly changing all life on Earth. We need a new, more evolved consciousness centred on the interrelatedness and interdependence of all things.

With proper attention, decay can be a prompt for action in service of life. Here in central Victoria, as indeed anywhere else, when you inquire with an open mind and heart into nature, a simple truth is revealed over and over again. Through the turning of seasons, the comings and goings of birds, bugs, trees and people, there is an irresistible, inescapable flow that is the essence of all. At times it is breathtaking, at other times – like in the middle of a powerful thunder storm – downright scary, but always new, always fresh and alive. We act appropriately when we return to this life, sensing its movement and helping it on its way.

In memory of Doug Ralph

Doug Ralph passed away suddenly at his home in Castlemaine, central Victoria, yesterday. I had heard about Doug's good work as an environmentalist and mentor for a while but only known him for about a year. What struck me most was his kindness and profound connection with the bush. I was privileged to interview him for the Spring 2014 issue of Earthsong Journal, the interview republished below.

A warrior for the earth and gentle soul is welcomed back. Rest in peace, Doug.

Box-ironbark country, in the foothills north of the Great Dividing Range, stretches in a belt across central Victoria and into the north-east of the state. Doug Ralph was born in this country at Castlemaine and has lived there nearly all of his 66 years. His descendants came to the area in 1851 during the gold rush. He stood for the Greens in the seat of Bendigo in the 1996 federal election and was a founding member of the Friends of the Box Ironbark Forests in 1997. Passionate about the environment and local history, he leads bushwalks and is something of an elder and mentor to young artists and environmentalists. He spoke with Sasha Shtargot.

Doug, there seems to be a flowering of environmental awareness and alternative lifestyles at the moment in the Castlemaine area. How do you explain it?

Well, there’s been a huge change in attitude towards the forests around here, mainly in the last 20 years. People used to be far more interested in the (gold mining) heritage of the area than the natural environment. We started the Friends of Box Ironbark Forests to gain recognition for the forests – we thought they needed a political voice. One of our victories was in the early 2000s when a section of the Calder Freeway was planned through a beautiful forest at Malmsbury. We campaigned against that and the authorities ended up changing the route of the freeway. They put a bend in the freeway away from the forest, put wildlife underpasses for animals, made changes to the designs of the freeway. I’m proud to say that I helped save a forest.

Something special is happening in central Victoria. There are now 2000 people in environment and Landcare groups in the Mount Alexander Shire, which is probably more than any other comparable area anywhere in Australia. There’s a spiritual element to it in that people are feeling a strong connection to place, a sense of belonging, and like-minded people are being attracted here. Really great people are coming all the time and I love being around them.

What do you think is special about the land here?

There’s something about the light here. I don’t know how to describe it – you just have to experience it. Once people learn to see it, the light has a big influence on them. You notice it especially when it’s wet, in the morning until about 10 or 11, and before it gets dark. In winter there’s a kind of horizontal light as the sun is going down and you get amazing light shows – the whole landscape sparkles with light.

I was deeply moved by a book about the Yarra River written by Maya Ward (The Comfort of Water, Transit Lounge 2012). In that she mentioned a story of some monks at a monastery who drew their water from one river all the time. They experienced the river, in a way they became the river. If you are drinking water from a particular area you are that water, you are the food of the area. Aboriginal people understand that – you just become part of the land.

I go for walks in the bush. It’s my way of meditating and sometimes afterwards I don’t know where I’ve been, I just blend with the landscape. One day I was walking in this way in a trance and all of a sudden I stopped – three wallabies were sitting nearby, eating calmly. Normally wallabies run away when a human is near, but these just sat there. I stopped and looked at them and they looked at me. It was a special moment.

Doug, the land in central Victoria was deeply scarred by mining and logging. Then cattle and sheep farms had their impacts. How has the land regenerated after all that?

In the last few decades, farming became unviable around here. Once the farming stopped, the trees started to come back. It’s been like a resurrection – something that was dead coming back to life. Historically, the early white settlers described the land as “park-like” – the forests had big trees with space in between. That’s what (British explorer) Major Mitchell described when he came through this area. But they cut down the big trees and when you do that you get a denser, coppiced, multi-stemmed growth. After all those years the forest is opening out again.

There’s a lot of regeneration going on and you are getting trees coming up in some places that haven’t been seen since the days of the gold rush. Once grazing stops, life comes back from nowhere. Where I live there were cattle for over 100 years, but the land is repairing itself. Even where you’ve had the worst impacts of mining, like where the land has been sluiced, it’s regenerating. You can strip the land bare but a seed will still germinate, a blade of grass will still come up.

People talk about active “revegetation” of the land, for instance planting trees to mitigate climate change, but you’re not really a supporter of that, are you?

The Government has this idea of a “green army” of people planting trees, but they need to get their head around changing the way the land is managed. We don’t have to plant 20 million trees – if we leave the land alone and let it regenerate we’ll get 100 million trees coming back. Bob Brown said that if you want to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, take all the cattle out of central Australia. If you did that, all the regrowth would be a huge carbon sink.

In America where they have stopped farming, they’ve seen the land go back to forest, and in Europe people are talking about “re-wilding”. Regeneration is happening in a big way all over Australia, especially in the southern states. After all the rain that we had (in 2010-2011) there’s been massive growth and that has been huge for storing carbon. Changing the way you manage the land is about changing your attitude to it. It comes down to respecting the land – the earth is capable of repairing itself.

The Meaning of Nothing

I eavesdropped on a fascinating conversation the other day. Four people – an older couple and a younger one – sat down not far from my table while I was having lunch at a cafe and began discussing the meaning of non-being. It went like this:

“It’s amazing to think where you were before you were born,” the older man said. “Where was I? I was nothing.

“All these things were happening – all these events, world events – and where was I?”

“I find that really disturbing,” the older woman said. “I don’t know why. It just makes me shiver that I was nothing and that there’s nothing out there – that we go back to nothing.”

“I don’t think we go to nothing when we die,” the younger man chimed in. “I think there’s something there.”

“What do you mean?” the younger woman asked. “Are you saying that we go somewhere, to heaven?”

“I’m not religious. I just think that when we die we go to a place of love, of deep love and light.”

I enjoyed their discussion, a parley on subjects so immediate yet so deep. It gladdened me to hear people talk about such things and my own mind was stimulated to contemplate that “nothing” about which they spoke and the existence, or otherwise, of life after death.

There’s a classic Zen koan, or instructive riddle, that asks: “What was your original face before you were born?” The student of Zen meditates on the koan until its essence seeps into their soul. Its aim is to guide a person past the material layers of existence, past the rational everyday mind, and into a whole experience where being and non-being (my face when I was born, my face before I was born) are one. That experience of “just is”, beyond human delineations and conceptions, is said to be the heart of reality.

Accepting that, I wonder if non-being deserves more credit than it gets. As the cafe discussion progressed I began thinking that nothingness was more than some great cosmic pit out of which we emerged and into which we vanished at death. Paradoxically, it is an active presence or principle. Non-being and being are inseparable – to be, something has to come into existence, and if it does it must eventually die. These are the very basic rules of temporal reality. So in essence non-being is highly productive and deeply interwoven with being. It is the rich compost that gives birth to form and that receives form back to be remade, continuously to the end of time.

The idea that death is necessary for life has been understood since the early millennia of human thought. Hunter-gatherers and later crop and animal farmers lived close to nature, the cycles of life and death experienced intimately and everywhere to be seen. Various communities around the world made ritual sacrifices of crops, animals, and even sometimes people to ensure the proper cycles continued. Death was to be propitiated, non-being given appropriate reverence so that the fertile compost would keep producing new forms. Only recently in history, with the advent of modern Western culture, has a disconnection appeared in the human mind between being and non-being. Urbanised, industrialised humanity has lost the balance of the two, focusing almost exclusively on material existence, and denying the vital, essential role of non-being.

More than an empty abyss that bookends our life, non-being is a fundamental and constant part of everyday living. If we look closely, we can see its three variants or phases. Firstly, it is potential; it is the darkness that holds the ground from which everything is born and in which all is latent. When forms appear, potential is with them as they grow and change, continuously carrying possibilities for what they may be. Secondly, it is the decay that works upon all forms and their eventual death. And finally it is regeneration, the transformation of all in the great turning of the cycles of life. Here’s one simple example of the working of the three phases of non-being: A single fly emerges from potential into life. It lives and breeds, carrying its potential forward in its offspring and decaying as it nears the end of its life. One day it is caught in the web of a spider. Choking in the web, it is eaten by the spider. The fly in death is transformed into food and regeneration for the spider, into energy that becomes a part of the spider itself which in turn propels its life and eventual death.

The interplay of being and non-being is the basis of temporal reality and its product is change, constant change. When we meditate on this process, it can be immensely healing and comforting. There is a wild beauty in the processes of life and no part is out of place, nothing that is isolated or alone but everything has a reason and purpose. Seen in this way we cease to be angst-ridden by existence, but are active participants in a dynamic and creative Whole. The only danger is in thinking and acting as if somehow disconnected from this, as if the reality of life, its intimacy and integrity, doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, there is much of that presently in our world.

I think the young man in the cafe was right – we do go to a place of love and light when we die. But then we are in this place when we are alive too, even under the heaviest weight of suffering. We just have to open our eyes and look.

The Underclass

I’m thankful for much in my former career as a journalist, especially the exposure to people and events I would never have encountered otherwise. It all helped to build life experience and a certain degree of knowledge about the world, easing me out of my relatively protected existence and challenging preconceived ideas and prejudices.

I was thinking recently about my first experience of court as a reporter. It was in 2001 and I was still a novice on a local newspaper covering a patch in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. I don’t remember the story, probably something minor, but I found myself at Preston Magistrates Court on a warm summer’s day.

I remember walking into the old courthouse and being met by a whirl of activity. There was a narrow waiting lobby with a long row of seating down the middle and courtrooms on either side. I had arrived quite early for the hearing in which I was interested, so squeezed myself into a seat among the waiting throng.

It would be fair to say I was instantly out of my comfort zone. Many of the people around me seemed well-acquainted with the wrong side of the law, some rough in appearance, others quite edgy and volatile, many probably with experiences of drugs of various kinds. There weren’t just single men there, but whole families with children waiting for one thing or another, forming a miserable and disjointed picture of humanity.

It was the first time I seriously considered the idea of an underclass. It’s not a new concept – Karl Marx had discussed what he called the lumpenproletariat in the 19th century – but that day in Preston the existence of a dysfunctional underbelly of society seemed very real to me. I imagined it to be a class of people on the margins marked by poverty, addictions, abuse and crime, as well as social neglect, exclusion and shame.

I wonder if the notion of an underbelly or shadow would be helpful in understanding and addressing what is seen as the threat of Islamism to the West. Such an explanation would see the extremism not as an external menace or enemy to society, but as inherently belonging to it. Just as an underclass belongs to and is a product of the society as a whole – created by legal, social, historical and political dynamics as well as all the consequences of the choices of individuals – so the danger of Islamism could be seen as one of the outcomes of a globalised community and its tensions. Realising that we are part of a world community could allow us to tackle problems more holistically, drawing every person and every thing within our concern. With appropriate consciousness, no-one need be an “other” to whom we would have no responsibility or care.

What troubles me about the response to the Islamist violence in Paris and other places is the tendency to partiality: to see “us” and “our cause” as just and right, while decrying “their” evil and barbarism. We see ourselves as committed to values, while the “terrorists” are hell-bent on destruction. The reality is, of course, far more complex: even as we praise ourselves for tolerance and freedom, our security forces are operating in a shadowy world of state-sanctioned violence. Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, there has been significant curtailment of civil liberties and enormous growth in a largely secret security apparatus. Could the West’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, with thousands of people dead and ongoing chaos, be attributed to our decency and good values? Or what about our continuing alignment with Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most repressive regimes that has funded and armed the very Islamist groups we are now afraid of?

Behind the tragedy of lives lost is the spectre of power: who has it, who is challenging it, who wants more of it. “We” want to maintain and extend our power while denying it to those outside our circle. Islamism is but one response to global power dynamics, feeding on patterns of injustice. It is not a movement for liberation, for the enrichment of the human community, but a life-denying mirror-image to the worst aspects of Western power.

In the new globalised world our challenge is to move to a consciousness of unity and welfare for all because all of us are citizens of this planet. Liberty, fraternity, equality are not just ideals for me and my group but for everybody and every thing that lives under the great blue canopy of the Earth. We will only produce more wars, more suffering and strife if we continue along the old road of self-interest, grabbing what resources we can for ourselves, dominating because we have the money and power to do so. The underclass, the underbelly will always be in our midst, calling us to face the whole truth and to accept the whole of humanity as one.

Personality and Spirit

I’ve been enjoying the wonderful work of Bede Griffiths, particularly his autobiography The Golden String. Griffiths was an English Benedictine monk with a great interest in Eastern spirituality who travelled to India and was the central figure of the Shantivanam ashram from the 1960s until his death in 1993. The ashram follows a universalist faith where Hindu, Buddhist and Christian scriptures are read and where the rituals and iconography have an intriguing east-west blend.

Griffiths believed in the “perennial philosophy”, the idea that at their heart all religions point to the one Truth, the mystery of Love and its manifestation in the world. As an interpreter of Western and Eastern religious traditions, I have found none better than him; he writes earnestly and directly in the style of a wholehearted spiritual seeker and has a loving concern for the welfare of the world.

I joyfully discovered a few days ago that a documentary had been made about him – by an Australian film crew only a few months before he died. I picked up some ear phones and walked to my library to watch it on a computer.

That which intrigued me most and sparked my imagination occurred towards the end of the film. For most of it I followed the narrator’s description of Griffiths’ life story and interviews with him and members of his Indian community with a mixture of interest and delight. One person described him as a “prophet”, and his spiritual wisdom was, indeed, very deep. Then we saw him before a stream about to perform a ceremony with attendants by his side and a group of devotees behind him. One of the assistants said something to him and Griffiths, suddenly confused and cross, grumbled audibly “Tell me what I should do!” His face soured for a few seconds and the attendant smiled in embarrassment, then Griffiths’ demeanour changed as he bent over and splashed water in the different directions and towards the crowd.

In the context of the whole documentary, little should be made of this scene. However, it did send a shock through me. The prophet was also a man with a man’s foibles and limitations. For most of the film my mind had cruised in the wake of the spiritual beauty that it revealed, but now I was reminded of the concrete personality and the everyday material dimension of life.

I can’t comment on Bede Griffiths the man because I didn’t know him, and he was quite frail at the time the documentary was made, but I would like to make some general observations about personality and the spiritual journey and the way they inter-relate. By personality I mean ego, the constellation of forces and influences that make up an individual and the variety of ways an individual presents to the world and to him/herself.

The first observation is that a personality has to be reasonably robust to be able to meet spirit in a functional way. Usually that means some level of discipline has to be attained that allows a person to act as a container or conduit for spirit. Discipline comes over time through various ways like meditation, prayer or yoga, which strengthen the personality’s ability to meet spirit and create pathways for their relationship. The process is helped by life experience – the rough and tumble of the everyday world that doesn’t overly scar a personality but leaves it generally healthy. Spirit is inherently powerful and potentially dangerous and needs a sufficiently tempered ego for its vehicle. Sometimes, particularly in childhood, a spiritual experience can simply slip past us because we lack the development to properly assimilate it, while at other times it can be outright harmful – I think of the ways that intense types of meditation or drugs like LSD can bring on visions that psychologically damage people who are unprepared. The rule is that, exceptional people aside, personality and spirit need time to grow together.

The second observation, obvious thought important, is that a person has to will a connection with spirit. That is, they must actively seek it out. Random soulful experiences – like a holiday by the ocean, listening to music that is deeply moving or reading a powerful book – are good things but on their own don’t lead to the spiritual path. What does is the desire of the personality towards spirit and the exercise of will in that direction. The twist is that will can be exercised unconsciously, particularly in the early stages of personality-spirit development, so that for years we may be moving towards spirit without our rational, everyday self being able to name it as such. When there is a conscious link between personality and spirit, when the ego realises it is moving towards the divine, the spiritual path is strengthened and quickened as an individual organises their life in relation to spirit. The process is never smooth and at different times and in different ways the personality is usually still resistant to the demands of spirit, nevertheless the way is laid out. Once the conscious connection is made, the holiday by the ocean or the soulful music or book are no longer discreet experiences but build on one another in a chain of development that is the personality’s choosing.

Thirdly, the development of the personality can run separately to its meeting with spirit, and it does not necessarily follow that a spiritually developed person is also someone whose personality is highly mature. Once the ego is capable of holding a certain amount of divine energy, it is faced with a choice of progressively surrendering itself to spirit or maintaining a status quo. If the latter, spiritual power can distort the ego over time and create all kinds of shadow and chaotic effects; or the ego may try to harness spirit for its own ends, again producing shadow and chaos. Some Indian gurus are examples of this, milking spiritually hungry and naive Westerners for money and their own ends.

Personality-spirit relationship requires the ego to gradually surrender its autonomy to the divine, but in the process the ego is transformed (or purified) through many stages of development. All religious traditions emphasise morality and right conduct not just for good inter-personal or communal relations, but to shape the ego in relation to the divine; temporal human form has to be perfected enough to ascend to the level of divine union. However, even for those who are well-advanced on the path, faults and limitations that are subject to being human remain. I see the scene of Griffiths’ petulance by the river in this light – the eternal is perfect and we are perfect, but we are also human. The perfect can only be recognised as such when there is also imperfection, which is the condition of everything that exists in time and space.

Lastly, the personality has to embrace mystery. This is perhaps its greatest challenge as it progresses down the path of union with spirit. Mystery is the great nothingness that cloaks and thoroughly penetrates the material universe. From this nothingness we and everything else emerge and to it at death return. It is inescapable and ultimately ineffable – there is no way to describe or comprehend it. A relationship with it, however, can be built if we approach with an open heart and fashion an awareness attuned to the subtle behind the appearance of things, the language of symbols and the power of ritual.

Mystery surrounds the very choice that is made for a life of wholeness – why some people take the path and others don’t – and what becomes clear is that it is not us who choose spirit, but spirit who chooses us.

In the course of spiritual development, when the ego eventually stands at the precipice of its own extinguishment in union with the divine, the great terror of mystery, the fear of the abyss, must be faced. Wisdom traditions tell us that what lies beyond is Love, pure and simply Love. It is not a sentimental love, such as we are used to in popular Western culture, but something that is the bedrock of all existence, the spark and fulfilment of all creation. It is what Buddhists call Nirvana, the ultimate reality, and what in the Judeo-Christian tradition may be described as the experience of God or the Godhead, when a personality is simultaneously null and void and completely full, at its absolute centre in the universe. Griffiths concludes The Golden String with a reflection on Love, quoting from The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, the words of the prior of a monastery in which the brothers met:

“Brothers, have no fear of men’s sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of divine love, and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf and every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”