“What the world needs now…”
Sometimes I wonder if what the world needs now is spiritual unification. Not another reformation, not an attempt to purify an ideology “gone bad”. And something more than bringing in a prophet who promises something new and amazing. The type of unification I think about would do a deep dive into all the various human spiritual beliefs, determine the commonalities, and use that as a basis for helping people realize their own spirituality.
There is a Buddhist analogy of spirituality that is applicable to my line of thought. Whether one calls it God, the Holy Spirit, the Way, Tao, no-self, Self, Buddha-nature, Gaia, Life Force, The Force, or by some other name, most humans recognize that there is an aspect of life that is undefinable. It can be experienced, but every human being finds a different way to do so.
The analogy of this experience is often described as a stream or river: a flow of water that has no beginning. Humans, particularly human egos, are like eddies in the stream. What we identify as our “self” is actually nothing more than the water itself, temporarily shaped by inside and outside influences into the eddy.
When I refer to outside influences, I mean all of the things that are outside of our bodies, such as family members, the weather, our living arrangements and work, etc. These things are like the stream bed, roots, rocks, pebbles – anything that perturbs the water and causes it to swirl in a different direction around our eddy. Inside influences are like the water that flows through the eddy itself: thoughts that drift through our mind, seemingly starting and going nowhere. They, too, shape this aggregate we call a self, like the force of the little streams in the eddy as they meet the outside influences and the stream itself.
Buddhists believe that the natural order of things is for humans to reunite with the stream. Our eddies are illusions, and if we recognize that we are actually the stream itself we can be in a happier state. Other religions hold similar beliefs: that the ultimate purpose of human life is to become united with the spiritual force of life. Is this a solid basis for developing a global spiritual unification?
After contemplating this for some time, I can’t decide. This analogy recognizes and accepts our ignorance of the beginning of the stream. The beginning is meaningless because it already exists and nothing we do can change that. But what happens at the end of the stream?
I think there are two answers that people choose from, and this might be what ultimately is so divisive in human spirituality. Natural selection has evolved humans into thinking creatures that yearn for purpose. The ultimate existential questions that we ask ourselves are “What is my purpose for living? Why am I here?”
I think most religions answer that question in one of two ways. But both answers prove the meaninglessness of the question.
The first answer is “Human life — my life — exists as a conduit for the stream to reach a destination.” Using the analogy, this destination would be an ocean where all of the stream, and all of the eddies, are mixed and united. Some might call this Heaven, some call it Nirvana, some call it Brahman, etc. But do you see the problem with this answer? It causes another question. What is the purpose of reaching this unity? Humans who choose this answer find faith is the best approach: life has a way.
The second answer is “Human life — my life — exists as a conduit for the stream to know itself.” Think of it this way: if there is nothing but a stream of water, with no stream bed, no rocks, or anything to influence it to change, it just flows. It has nothing to bounce off or cause it to divert. This is just like if you are in a room of nothing but white, you do not know it is white. Without something to compare itself to, life can’t know it exists. This is a difficult idea for humans to accept. Yet, this too requires faith: the belief that life doesn’t require a purpose.
So perhaps spiritual unification can’t begin with agreement about the stream, its source, or its destination. Maybe it begins with releasing the assumption that we are capable of knowing the answer at all. We are thinking creatures, and because thinking has helped us build bridges, cure diseases, write symphonies, and occasionally assemble flat-pack furniture without causing a family crisis, we assume thought must be able to solve everything.
But perhaps the ultimate nature of existence is not a puzzle scaled for the human mind. Perhaps we are more like ants at the base of a skyscraper, determined to reason out steel, glass, elevators, zoning laws, and architectural vanity from the view between two blades of grass. The failure is not stupidity. The failure is scale. Maybe wisdom is not finding the final answer, but recognizing when the question has exceeded the instrument asking it.
originally posted at annettezimmerman.com
