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.