Faithfully Reasonable

This is typical conventional wisdom these days: “Atheists tend more intelligent than religious people because they are able to rise above the natural instinct to believe in a god or gods, scientists have said.”

I once understood this to be true also. After all, there's much positive self-regard to being so intelligent in the secular world. Like most in this sophisticated tribe, I believed reason trumps unreasoning.

But during the western Enlightenment, reason became more limited than originally intended. Kant said we can't know the thing-in-itself, so he made reason all about epistemology in a narrow sense. Reason was no longer rooted in ontology, and anything beyond its boundaries were seen as speculative belief (or an unreasoned faith).

This view is quite contrary to John Henry Newman's quote that “Faith is a reasoning of a religious mind.”

The atheist would most likely retort: “that's the problem: the religious mind is less than adequate.”

And yet, Newman was pointing to a mind that was not dogmatic, but more integrated and whole. Behind all the tools and machinations we do with the mind, there is a pure, unencumbered intelligence (also known as nous) that is in accord with reason, and more than reason. Micheal Polanyi would also call it a tacit knowing.

We can be presented with all the facts about something, but at some point we need to make a choice about things that can't be supported purely by facts. And if we are really thinking and non-thinking for ourselves (as opposed to being indoctrinated), we will eventually intuit something more than pure reason can offer. This deeper unveiling that leads to a choice, is not opposed to reason, but a trusting response to its revelation. We found faith.

It doesn't necessarily mean faith will point us to the Truth, as it can be quite incomplete and distorted. Let's not forget that human psychology is rather complicated. As such, it ultimately depends how awake, coherent, and conforming we are to all the dimensions of the nous. For some, it is latent and for others not so much. While faith can influence our reasoning, reasoning alone will not give us authentic faith.

In a sort of irony, some recent reasoned research is confirming the limits to reason. I'm currently reading this great book by Jonathan Haidt, where he notes that French cognitive scientists reviewed the vast research literature on motivated reasoning. They concluded, “skilled arguers ... are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views.” Without the privilege of such research, just a few hundred years earlier Jonathan Swift said, “reasoning will never make a man correct of an ill opinion, which by reason he never acquired.”

The western Enlightenment's version of reason makes no room for the things we know more than we can say reasonably. Such influences also include our sentiments, observations, experience, traditions, imagination, and instincts. While reason can refine our views, we are often rooted in the leaps we make beyond (or below) it.

Either intelligence is in principle unlimited, or else it is arbitrary, relative, and illusory, incapable of saying anything with certitude. But the shallow contemporary thinker wants it both ways: the omnipotent ability to know where to place an absolute line between what is knowable and what is not. — Robert Godwin

Only the Lover Sings (Farewell Joe)

There is a mystery as to why and how some people deeply resonate with us. I've only had these connections a few times in my life. It's not idolatry by any means, but the meeting of tinctures that harmoniously complement each other. I recall how similarly these individuals, who were large-in-life and large-for-life, ennobled the human spirit with the grace and dignity of their time. This was no different with Joe.

It was a relationship of odd pairings with Joe and me. He was a nonagenarian; a gay man who had a 64-year relationship with his life partner; a former modern dancer who studied under Doris Humphrey; a teacher to conductors and theater actors; a student of TM; an authentic Reiki practitioner and master; a mystic; a writer; a cultural connoisseur of the high arts; and a rare Spirit. At times he could be blunt and impatient, and would challenge my rational disposition with his somatic and intuitive sensibility. I would in turn take on his idealism to gain some pragmatic perspective. My shortcomings and gifts would meet his, and together something beautiful would emerge as this friendship.

Our relationship grew slowly and organically. It was completely unexpected, and probably a teaching on to itself Joe would approve of. As he would say, “Be open to what's around the corner, Ted.” It was as if Joe found the mantra I needed. And I rarely experienced him not being open to taking that next turn. He always took an interest in those who would make themselves available to him, while generously giving himself in return. Many times I would go out with him, he would find an opportunity to make an opening quip to a stranger. He would jest, “I never know what is going to come out my mouth.” I knew what Joe meant by this is what came out was not always the point, but where it came from. Here I was with a 90-something year old man, who had remained positive with many age-related ailments, embracing the joys of life in a way that it would seemingly never end. He would explore the arts several times a week, stay on top of current events, write in an exalted state around some new teaching, meet attentively with students, host gatherings and salons at his home, reach out to international friends and travel to them, make dinner for company much younger than he, and always look out for his next creative endeavor. The edges in his corners were not always smooth, but he took them on as exemplary as you will find with anyone at his stage in life. I knew by knowing him, I had a good thing.

He always had these useful, yet nuanced aphorisms. When I inquired about how to go about a romantic interest I had with a woman, he would say, “Try going through the side door, instead of the front.” When I mentioned why he would be with his former spiritual teacher again: “There's always a deeper place to go... and to be.” And when we talked about the point to life: “It's always about love, and giving back.” And while we may mechanically toss that word around from time to time, with Joe you really sensed he was coming from that place. It's a resonance I can feel in this very moment.

“Only the lover can sing,” Augustine once said. I understand this more so now. There was always something musical about Joe. He had a melody that vibrated at a higher pitch and gave room for the spaces between the lines. His teachings sang his joy for life and the Eternal. He mostly lived them and delightfully made sure others were aware that he did. This included such gems as coming from a place of unknowingness in everyday experience, embodying a quality of seamless flow, and respecting his body as the envelope of past and present. 

He used stories in his own life as lessons, drawing on a rich and amazingly sharp memory. With that, he encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone, experience the fine arts more, embrace life with passion and ease, and to care for my body with the authentic Reiki practice he once taught me. There was a simplicity (and sometimes repetitiveness) in the way he taught, allowing for the words to gently seep into the residual crustiness around my heart. 

What I enjoyed the most about him is just his wholesome presence. You always felt like you were being seen with Joe. He allowed for the space to unfold and meet you. Simple as this seems, it is often in short supply these days. I would cherish the sweet times when we sat together, and allowed ourselves to improvise about life openly, playfully, and trustingly. There is a blessedness to these moments.

As he would often say: “Life is eternal spring.” (Note to Joe: Yes, and because you were in it.)

He loved life so much, he recently told me he never considered death all that much. Joe passed on Tuesday morning at the age of 97. 

I am a better version of myself for having known him. And I miss him dearly.

*          *          *

(I am grateful that my friend Jill Uchiyama has forever memorialized Joe in several Music of Life video teachings. In what I can't convey in words, comes through in these visual vignettes. I believe you'll see that my love for Joe and the quality of his essence is not hyperbole if you take the time to view these eight shorts: The Music of Life, The Conductor as Poet, The Quality of Seamlessness, Quest, Stillness, The Conductor as Architect, Clarity of Vision, and Life is Eternal Spring. There is also the Legacy documentary that spans his full and rich life.)

Fixing Death

It will happen to all of us that at some point you get tapped on the shoulder and told, not just that the party is over, but slightly worse: the party’s going on but you have to leave. And it’s going on without you. That’s the reflection I think that most upsets people about their demise. All right then let’s – because it might make us feel better – let’s pretend the opposite. Instead, you’ll get tapped on the shoulder and told: ‘Great news: this party’s going on forever, and you can’t leave. You’ve got to stay. The boss says so and he also insists that you have a good time.’ — Christopher Hitchens

Could it be I'm the type of person who would read a book about being Happy and write a blog post about death? I'm not so morbid. But oddly enough, much of Derren Brown's book is about just that: coming to terms with our finite life in a way that gives us contentment in this anxiety-driven world.

But my point is not about death itself. It doesn't excite me all that much. We all know Woody Allen's classic quip that he wouldn't want to be there when it happens. Me neither (of course, we can also take that from the Buddhist not-self perspective). It's more that we live in a culture that doesn't acknowledge death, and wants to put it off as long as possible. 50 is the new 29. Please.

Transhumanists believe there is no point to life, just more of it. Why not live forever, or as close as we can get to it, because there is no afterlife or God or purpose to the cosmos. It's all frisky bits and atoms, that at best case for the secularist, we will get subsumed as worm food so that pieces of our matter can go on playing in the dirt.

Brown, although a secular humanist himself, offers a tad more nuance. He brings in Irvin Yalom's notion of rippling: where our lives create ripples (or influences) on the surface of water that can go on beyond the span of our life. 

While poetically true, at some point we arrive at our true death: “that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.” It would seem all for naught from a deep time perspective, but not as much if we had an eternal perspective.

It's not that ultimate meaning needs to go beyond our life, it has to go beyond life itself. Otherwise, we are just kicking the can down the road. 

Brown doesn't take this leap. But he does offer some practical existential insights. He notes near death some of the top regrets are: 

• I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. 
• I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. 
• I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. 
• I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 
• I wish that I had let myself be happier.

To this, Brown says, “Is it not potentially just as disastrous to live one's life of dying happily and without regret, just to find that our regret is that we did not live for the moment while we could?” And that, “our ultimate aim is maybe not so much to be happy as to live fully and make sure we are moving forward.”

And while living in the moment fully and moving forward are good reminders, we still need our moments and trajectory to be contained by some context. Maybe it is better to say, that we need our to lives to be about one thing while flourishing in the moment fully. 

Lives get meaning by their finitude, and death by the Eternal.

We don't know for sure what happens after we die: float around the bardo until we find a new body to incarnate into, arrive in the subtle realms of spiritual bodies, return to ultimate Source, meet God at the gates, haunt the new tenants that just moved into our old apartment, or it's just beyond our comprehension.

But I suppose I'll want to be there.