7-17-20--PARADIGMATIC LOVE
Eventually it is love that I return to
in my thinking. It is a vexing subject and one that recurs enough for
me to notice and work with it. Considerations of love emerged in my
coincidental readings into the works of Thomas Merton and William
James. It is in the spirit of pragmatism that William James described
in his many writings that I turn and face this powerful emotion that
shadows me. In the recent past I have avoided using the word love as
being too complex to be used as a single word. It is loaded with so
much baggage for each of us, yet we know what nuance we intend when
we talk about it or use it. Yet, the nuances are so complex and
varied and we don't have enough words to delineate all of them. So,
we are left with using one word for what we intend. Recent reading
has put love front and center in my thinking. Reading Thomas Merton
puts a different emphasis on love compared to reading William James
or some of his pragmatist colleagues (Josiah Royce, Charles Sanders
Peirce, Ernest Hocking, for instance). It isn't a word now commonly
used in everyday parlance. It doesn't seem to be expressed in our
present crises of pandemic, economic collapse, social activism, or
perverted politics. There is a harshness and coarseness to public
conversation that doesn't admit love as a descriptor for what
motivates us in times of trauma or difficulties. We are more often
caught and held by a more primitive set of emotions and reactions.
But, in the spirit of pragmatism, I
begin with the bedeviling conditions of our common life in these
times and work with what brings them forth just now, the strains of
their genesis from history, how they are transforming how we think
about human behavior and what they are telling us to do in a society
rife with problems. It has always been that we have had societal
problems but perhaps it is the layering of many of them just now that
has brought us to a situation of reckoning, a forced need to look at
them more closely. Looking and thoroughly and thoughtfully witnessing
them opens us to an examination of their parts and their
interconnections. The competing demands of each of the interest
groups, the ways in which they are depicted in the media, the ways in
which they are used and manipulated, make discernment of the truth of
them difficult. And we are confronted with the granularity of life in
so many ways if we look closely enough. But we must consider the
graininess of most days if we are to venture out into the world.
The challenges for individuals are
many, not the least of which is to know what we trust. It is a
practice of daily reflection and to recollect the basis of “right
view” and “right idea” in the spirit of the Buddha. The
reminder is about what lies at the foundation of a compassionate view
and idea. For me, that foundation does, in fact, return me to love.
The power of love is too great to ignore. Love is not easy. Love is
not always visible. It is for this insight that reading Merton and
James makes sense. Love is ephemeral and elusive from the human
perspective. Merton states this in many of his writings. He writes
about “darkness” and its role in our relationship with the
transcendent, with what he calls God. Light does not eliminate
darkness but sometimes makes it more intensely what it is. The
contrast between what humans expect and what is made available by the
transcendent spirit is forced by our expectations for enlightenment.
Yet, he assures us that we must continue to trust that God's love for
us will never, never, never be withdrawn. It is to this notion and
assurance of divine support that I turn in these times of tension and
turmoil—and at all times. It is to love that I turn. And it is in a
relationship that love has its most intense and true meaning and life
and power.
The juxtaposition and interplay of
light and darkness figure prominently in Merton's New Seeds of
Contemplation (1961) and
probably in one form or another in the works of most philosophers
where light designates truth and darkness the shadows where humans
stumble about seeking the light. The darkness is a reality for many
and especially in what we incorporate into our consciousness from
childhood where the dark was inhabited by frightening spirits made
real. In adulthood we are “in the dark” in our confusion and
traumas, even when we go about the daily tasks of living. The dark is
an existential space in which we attempt to sort out conflicting
emotions and ideas. Merton lends a richness and depth to the darkness
when he says: “He Who is infinite light is so tremendous in His
evidence that our minds only see Him as darkness.” We who are
caught up in our conceptualizations and dualities fail to see that
darkness is enveloped by the light, that there is a universal
wholeness to the sacred, however one imagines it. Darkness is mystery
for Merton, as it is for most human beings. Mystery is a vitalizing
force that brings us to sensory experience where we shudder and
crouch and surrender to what is inevitable. There is an inevitability
to the darkness every day/night cycle. We emerge into the light when
darkness recedes and it is this trek we reproduce every day of our
lives on earth. Merton says: “The more perfect faith is, the darker
if becomes.” Mystery deepens the more we are immersed in its
exploration.
The idea of sacred
darkness is what the mystery of love is all about. Love is a darkness
into which we peer obliquely. Working with the confusing nuances and
ambiguities of both love and darkness draw them together in my mind
all the time. Losing one's way in one is like losing one's way in the
other. And it is possible to view the darkness of love as a space
surrounded by the universal light that Merton describes in his own
faith. As we become more conscious of the darkness in which we find
ourselves, we are awake to what makes the darkness possible and real.
Merton says God is in the light and in the darkness. He is in the
mystery and what is beyond and surrounding the darkness. Of course,
this is a very Christian version of what humans have experienced in
all of their history. However, there seems to be a version of the
mystery in darkness in all traditions and cultures.
The
love we have for one another is love transcendent and a part of the
holistic love that pervades the universal light Merton sensed in his
contemplative life. We are only dimly aware of such transcendent love
in our daily lives, as much of our experience is enmeshed in habits
and routines and pressured by events that come to us as fragments of
perception. We do not realize that we are living within the darkness
of the mystery that propels us forward. It is interesting that this
search for the light transcendent often comes at the end of life for
many, as it did for James. His Varieties of Religious
Experience (1902) was an
exploration of what was for many people part of their reality. Here
he is in a letter to his wife:
“The moon rose
and hung above the scene before midnight, leaving only a few of the
larger stars visible and I entered into a state of spiritual
alertness of the most vital description. The influences of Nature,
the wholesomeness of the people around me, especially the good
Pauline [Pauline Goldmark, a much younger acolyte], the thought of
you and the children ….the problem of the Edinburgh lectures, all
fermented within me till it became a regular Walpurgis Nacht [a
reference to “Witches Night”, a gathering of spirits to celebrate
the onset of springtime].”
Context and relationship, two states we
humans can understand from both an emotional and rational point of
view. These states pull us into what is “right” about them in Zen
Buddhist terms. What is right about a loving relationship with
another human being? With someone outside our world of color and
belief? With a contentious world? With a God of love? Don't those who
seek a deeper knowledge of human life eventually fall onto a path and
a search for God's love? And isn't there a reward in this search, if
only to feel that the search itself has deep value and some ultimate
meaning? This search seems to have had more reality for Merton than
it did for James, even though James was fascinated by those whose
lives were inhabited by the reality of God, the transcendent. He
documented this in The Varieties of Religious Experience
and other writings later in his life. This was also true for his
fellow philosophers, some of whom began the search earlier in their
careers, as with Ernest Hocking in his The Meaning of God
in Human Experience (1912). John
Kaag, in his book American Philosophy: A Love Story
(2016), connects the philosophical search for God in American culture
with the stories of love relationships in the lives of the
philosophers themselves. And he includes his own story of the pursuit
of love and the discovery of its power in his own life. In almost
every instance the power of love was to give meaning to existence in
the lives of the philosophers. It was the development of the
pragmatism school of thought in philosophy that prepared the
groundwork for insights into the eventual transcendent power of love.
It was a long and hard trek to love, as it is for so many humans.
These times of muddled interests, intentions, and tensions are a
perfect workplace for love's search. It is out of this darkness we
are experiencing that love's power can be more deliberately
manifested. We cannot know the power of love unless we open ourselves
to the possibility of love's energy. We cannot be shaped by that
energy if we do not acknowledge the vastness of love's expressions.
We cannot be effective in love's dispersion if we cannot open our
hearts and minds to the necessity of change and the acceptance of
others' points of view. In a way, we cannot begin to understand
love's power if we do not begin the search for it within the dark
structures and contexts of our lives lived every day. We know those
dark structures the best. We can tell what ails us in the moment and
it is from this “platform” of suffering that we can begin the
hard work of loving. Aren't we hollowed out, emptied of the day's
belongings, and visited by the spirits in the dark? And aren't we
then refilled, refreshed, renewed by the dawn's light as we become
more wholly ourselves once more?
Where does love
come from? Is it an instinctual default the way anger and lust are?
Is it a capacity unrealized until we are psychologically attuned to
its need? These are questions that are of some importance, especially
when observing that love's absence is so acute in these troubled
times. It seems that anger and frustration leading to violence are
the emotions that force themselves into the behaviors we are
witnessing now. Perhaps love is that fundamental, elemental emotion
that does not manifest until more dominant ones abate. Or, perhaps,
it is an emotion that is only manifest when it is consciously tapped
from a transcendent source (God?). In any case, it seems that love is
hard to have and to hold, even in its most basic expression, that of
its role in reproduction. The nuances of love are even more difficult
to account for when we humans resort to our defensiveness and fears.
What is the meaning
of love? By this I am wondering about what the purposes of love might
be, given the above impression that it is a dormant powerhouse.
Beyond the reproductive urge that we assign the term love, what makes
love worthwhile? If, in fact, it is energy consciously gleaned from a
transcendent source, how do we intend to use it? Is possessing it
enough or does it have some constructive, creative uses? Is it a
higher functioning of our human psychology that we are in the process
of losing? Is this a withdrawal of a vital force from our spiritual
lives? If this is so, then are we at risk of becoming more grounded
in behavior patterns that reinforce divisiveness and selfishness? If
we do not look to the heavens for some connection with spiritual
sources, then the contexts of our lives are thinned out and we inch
closer to our primitive state of survival.
William James
developed a new way of viewing human behavior, of describing from
experiences he observed what motivates individuals. He provided us
with categories and patterns that have been used since his time to
explain why humans act the way they do. It wasn't until later in his
life that he entertained the idea that spiritual experiences might
also be a way to describe the spiritual element in human psychology.
Grounded as he was in experimental science (as we are ever more so
today), he had to loosen the grip of the scientific method to
accommodate a vital force that he, and we today, surmised was outside
the analytical and measurable parameters of science.
Thomas
Merton, on the other hand, recognized early in his adulthood that
there was this realm of experience that escapes the technologies and
experiments of science. Thomas Kuhn, in his The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions (1962),
writes about “paradigm shifts” in scientific thinking in which a
new idea springs up without obvious tethering to the slower and more
gradual processes of experimental science. These shifts produce a new
way of viewing the discipline and provide a new plateau from which to
progress. Merton and wisdom sages over the centuries exhibited just
this same sort of dramatic shift into a spiritual life that can't be
accounted for by any process of evolution or accretion, as in the
processes of science. Zen Buddhists write about this experience of
sudden enlightenment (satori)
and it seems to conform to the paradigm shifts of science. I believe
even Merton was aware of the transient nature of such shifts in
perception because he refers many times to the usual experience of
peering into the “darkness” and being in a dialogue with God,
even when it is not possible to know that God is even present. Yet,
devotion and faith are the elements of the substrate (a scientific
term applied to the spiritual realm) that form our spiritual lives
and it is this substrate that gives meaning to our lives over and
above what science and technology may offer.
It seems the
meaning of love is nuanced and includes constancy, trust,
vulnerability, devotion, the notion of emptying of the self's
perceived needs and wants in favor of those of another, and the
willingness to experience the darkness of not-knowing (another Zen
obligation). It is to hold mystery ahead of certainty and control and
to hope for clarity and light, even when they are not obviously
available. In these times, we are somehow satisfied to possess the
risks and dangers of anger and hate without questioning their
efficacy and meaning. We do not look beyond the primitive reactions
that define our only basic human character. We do not look up to the
heavens. We do not admit that we are often without answers to the
great questions posed by the cosmos about our own survival and
inevitable demise. We are selfish with our emotions and claim them in
the face of universally shared suffering, pushing away from what is
uncomfortable for us to notice and acknowledge. We act on our
individual needs and wants and do not see that they often compromise
what we can only obtain from making a paradigm shift into higher
psychological/spiritual ground.
Shouldn't we seek
this space, this unbounded realm, to accompany us on our journey
through life's vicissitudes and travails and vast triumphs and joys?
This is the leap of faith, a paradigmatic love, a love that is not
easy and that asks of us the hard work of finding it and keeping it.
Merton and James illustrate how an individual life may be the ground
upon which love may be husbanded. Both writers offer us different
ways of how to think about a meaningful life that begins with the
laundry and ends with a gaze into an infinite and loving cosmos,
every day. And, as we gaze, we surrender individual wants and our
leaping faith makes our lives whole in the presence of a universal
community.