The Paradoxical Business of Spiritual Growth

Scott Marley is troubled by what he describes as the whole messy paradoxical business of spiritual growth:

Is it wise to cut ourselves off more from the world and seek enlightenment on our own? How can it be, when the whole point is that all humanity is in reality one great indivisible being, and the divisions and separations and distinctions between one person and another are only illusions? Isn't there something self-contradictory about the idea of pursuing enlightenment in isolation from other people?

And yet of course the world is a very noisy place with a great many distractions and not well suited for the pursuit of enlightenment, a lot of which has to do with quieting your mind and your desires enough that you can begin to perceive what is divine inside yourself.

Does the person of spirit withdraw from the world, or engage with it? This is one of the big questions.

I have been either blessed or burdened with a world-class education in materialism and rationalism, and this posed a substantial obstacle to my own spiritual development. I come down pretty solidly on the side of engagement of the world, perhaps because of my materialist bias. And it is through engagement with the world that have come the experiences that have been the seeds of my own spiritual growth.

I have occasionally tested the waters of various religions. When I looked at Buddhism, I found myself dissatisfied with something that seemed to me essential to Buddhist metaphysics: a sense that enlightenment consists of turning inward, away from the world. My own spirituality is inspired by the world and the wonders in it; to turn away from this feels to me like betraying something important.

At the same time, modern everyday civilized experience seems itself to function as insulation between oneself and the actual world. The experience of my computer monitor and keyboard; or of radio and television; cars, buses, and trains; living rooms and bedrooms; and the artificialities of modern life are a far cry from the wind, the rain, ocean surf, the dirt beneath my feet, green, growing things, and the starry night sky. To find the real real world involves a certain kind of turning away from immediate distractions.

I can't accept that the wind, sea, or stars are Maya — illusion that distracts from matters of importance — but CNN, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Electrolite are. And at the same time, they, too, are aspects of reality, important in their own ways.

In the end, I think there are times to turn away from society and focus on the real world, and there there are times to turn away from the world and look within oneself. But there are also times to reengage with the world, and with society, and with the Blogoverse and television and the newspapers. One needs the quiet and stillness to find that inner spark of divinity, but having found it perhaps one should kindle and feed it so that it burns brighter and stronger, and share its warmth and light with others, perhaps even to help them kindle their own. The traffic along Hollis Street during morning rush hour carries the same divine essence ("Buddha-nature" perhaps) as a sunrise or a perfect rose.

And yet (always "and yet"!), Scott continues, the pursuit of enlightenment itself is only vanity. What arrogance to think that our individual efforts matter! Humanity as a great galumphing whole will take its own sweet time getting to enlightenment at whatever laggardly pace suits it, and there's not a whole lot any of us can do to speed up the process. ...

To respond, I can only quote Rabbi Tarfon: "You are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it." (Pirkei Avot 2:21) (I am in no way a Talmudic scholar; but I'm pretty good with Google.) Rabbi Tarfon spoke of study of the Torah, but his words are also frequently applied to tikkun olam, the healing of the world.

This is a huge task, far beyond any one person. The best anybody can do to improve some of the parts of the world that are closest to them.

In the Buddhist viewpoint, also, "completing" the task in one lifetime is irrelevant. All one needs to do is leave the path of life just a little bit cleaner than one found it, and over many lifetimes the improvements add up.