Why was Jesus such a problem for the Pharisees? It is quite easy really, he showed them up as a polarising influence in society which was already under pressure, tending to produce themselves and condemn others, instead of promoting unity and solidarity. This is in fact the danger of religion or even pseudo-religion, indeed any attempt to moralise, and the result is always hypocrisy. It isn’t that we are “bad” for being hypocrites, which would be another example of polarisation; it is just a trap that morality leads us into and the trap that all do-gooders can fall – especially if their focus isn’t on just doing what they feel they have to do but also on trying to be “an example” for others.
Having gone through an evangelical youth movement this comes as a surprise, especially since it was to be an example that so many activities we done. We went out onto the street and protested or we evangelised and much of this was invoking opinions in people that we had. In fact, I became very distressed after becoming very effective and finding that the older members of the parish wouldn’t back our efforts up by visiting elderly people who had said they would like to be visited. This was a major part of Christianity back then – and I was quite good at it.
All the more is it a surprise to suddenly become aware that this was a bone of contention between Jesus and the Pharisees. They too went out on the streets, doing all they could to influence people towards what they saw as a kind of moral surge which would be blessed and rewarded. The only problem was, then and now, is that we overlook the trap we fall into by polarising society – and most important, that we are predestined to become Pharisees. The greatest charge that Jesus made was that there was no love in what they did. It was religious zeal, not love, which burdened the people with more than they could carry and didn’t help.
It is often a moral calculation, rather than the spontaneous assistance of the Good Samaritan, behind the question posed to him, “Who is my neighbour?” Who is worthy of my help? What can I expect in return? Many helpers have told me that one reward is the gratitude of people they have helped, but what if they are not grateful? What if we only have grumpy old men with a big chip on their shoulder, who have boozed away much of their mind and scowl at the world, who need help? What about those younger people who can’t feel gratitude and will not change their ways? What about enemies?
If we are not aware of the dangers of such polarity, and do not realise that it is our dual mind that sets the trap, we will become Pharisees – whether we are religious or not. Hypocrisy is bound to happen if we do not overcome this basic problem, and it is particularly a problem in any religious movement. However, the Atheists and Agnostics shouldn’t smirk smugly; it is a danger with any kind of moralising.
The only danger is piling up a bunch of behavior that has nothing to do with morality and calling it moral. If we stick to the simple, and only, moral code (honoring the equal rights of all to their life, liberty and property), polarization evaporates. It’s really hard to polarize people arguing against murder, slavery and theft. The 10% who would disagree are mostly gonna polarize themselves into prison anyway.
If we want to preach self-actualized virtue, we must acknowledge that it is voluntary and is separate from morality.
Thanks. That notion of ending back where you begun to know the place for the first time does really hit me in a most profound way. Eliot truly was a great one. So is Richard Wilbur. Check out this poem called “Mind.” The last line affects me profoundly as well.
Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.
It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.
And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.
About Ten Years ago, I got myself a copy of some of Richard Wilbur’s work from an out of the way pre-loved book shop.
But I never read it or even picked it up after that.
I must dig it out of one of my boxes and read it (I am tactile and so have little interest in reading him off the internet).
I am a particular fan of William Blake.
“He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sun rise.”
I think I am a fan of Blake as he was a very visual poet/artist.
I am very visual and often think in pictures rather than in words (but I am not a poet).
Remove the struggle of man’s agreement with man and you remove the human from human beings.
Stop the push and stop the pull, and the dance is dead.
If the dance is dead, then the life of the music in motion is dead.
If the life of the music in motion is dead, then frozen minds are all that hear the sound intended to be alive in motion.
Nice choice of words… I think “the struggle” is the key.
My questions then become:
What happens when we cease to struggle?
Why are there wars, murders, rape, killings, hatred, etc?
Are these an indication of a struggle or a cessation of the struggling?
I am personally not sure which it is.
It is a question that just arose from your post and I have not really thought about it.
I would not disagree with you there TS, but I am not the person who is being shot at, murdered, raped or tortured.
I work with others who have been in this situation (refugees of war) and what they have told me is difficult for me to grasp.
My own parents fled their own country and what they experienced is difficult for me to grasp.
“Everything is” is good for people who are not struggling or for those with some insights - but what of the other 6 billion people on the planet?
Do we watch our friends get abused and tell them “everything is”?
What is more important - our own welfare or the welfare of others?
Is indifference the answer?
I think Bobs OP raised some interesting questions - which I do not have the answers to.
Meditation:
Regardless of whether a person is of small distraught or large distraught is of no concern for whether the struggle exists.
It is a gradient of tension and many tensions are so small they may as well be dust falling on the string.
The struggle is literal in the meaning.
Push; pull; return.
This is man internally. This is man outwardly.
This is man using bullets to kill a child with all the malice from imaginings of hell.
This is man sacrificing his life to save another.
This is man simply smiling.
This is man thinking.
Push; pull; return.
Struggle.
Just because one fall splits a man’s head open and obliterates his face unrecognizably and yet another fall merely produces a bruise does not mean they are not both falls.
Monk;
The struggle I am speaking of surpasses overcoming conflicting struggle within the self.
It is purely the struggle passively and aggressively in all forms; I call this a struggle, but it is merely motion.
But because of will, innocent in my meaning, it is then a struggle as a motion.
Dancing on the motion, to me, is fulfillment; not removing it.
Removing it, to me, is death.
What is virtuous comes unbidden from our capacity of empathy. I am not a virtuous or moral person, and yet, once in awhile, a rare while, I act from the heart. It may even surprise me. What is virtuous is not the act, but the sensitivity and awareness that brings the act. Those that we would call virtuous or moral have no need of the labels, nor do they speak of what is virtuous or moral. They simply ARE virtue and morality.
I too am a fan of T.S. Eliot, as you can see, but I haven’t yet grasped what you are pointing to.
He is saying for me that we explore life in circles, continually moving further outwards but always returning with more recognition of where we stand to the place where we started from. It is not the far off places that we come to know as much the place we went out from, and to where we always return – ourself. Perhaps the confrontation with those far off places is the “feedback” you mean.
I can understand that, but does it address the dangers of polarity and hypocrisy? I can see that the knowledge that T.S.E is pointing to is self-reflective and perhaps in being so it is capable of overcoming the dual mind and becoming less moralising. What do you think?
I think you are right that virtue in the sense of the OP is something that comes “unbidden”, spontaneously and without qualms about the consequences. It comes “from the heart”, as you say, but we seem to be blocking this permanently through apprehensions and uneasy feelings, so that one attribute of a virtue is being seldom.
How do we overcome the apprehension and the labels and just [u]be[/u] virtuous?
Another T. S. Eliot quote (from “Murder in the Cathedral”):
“The greatest treason/ is to do the right thing for the wrong reason.” But, I assume the culpabilty would be contingent on knowing the difference.
I like the idea that Jesus was much more exasperated by the “respected” religious leaders than by the so-called “sinners”.
Did you know Wilbur can be fun too? He transformed the art of the riddle into poetry. I got so much enjoyment from solving all the riddles, whether successful or not. It’s just an amazing experience, back into the Latin and forward into the modern. His other poems are great gems as well.
So am I. What a wonderful quote there. I am thinking of joy now as a beautiful butterfly. Thanks.
Here’s another one:
“For every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life; // Because the soul of sweet delight can never be defil’d. // Fires inwrap the earthly globe, yet man is not consumd” –
I’m reminded of Jim Casy quoting Blake in Grapes of Wrath, only he said: “All that lives is holy,” which is a close approximation to the actual words of the poem but not an exact rendering. I love the idea of holy in the sense of holism, that what is holy and sacred is whole and connected.