I have three observation to make that relate to my up coming talk on ‘Spirituality of Tolerance’. The first is that being human is our destiny as humans, secondly the sacred is for us to discover in all its expressed variety and thirdly - from this morning - that tolerance requires acknowledgement of my own faults and maliciousness. These three require some elaboration, but I want to put them down, before these ideas and insights retreat into my unconscious for lack of attentive conscious energy.
1. Human destiny:
This means placing the human experience front and centre in our existence as humans in this, the realm of humanity. Every experience is valid experience and must be acknowledged as such, in that such an experience is possible and has occurred. This does not imply approval of any kind, but only the acknowledgement of its occurence. This acknowledgement is a precondition to the examination and understanding of the experience situation and its content.
Such a process can be quite painful at times, but is required of us as humans since we are conscious and capable of this suffering, just as we are capable of experiencing joy and pleasure. This is the essence of being conscious as humans.
To omit examining the painful parts distorts our human experience and leads to greater harm in the end. It is in the nature of the folk wisdom: ‘You only touch a hot plate once!’; but you do touch it and need to, in order to have this ‘valid experience’!
So, we have painful, but necessary experiences. An other example is the case of insulting a person. You learn to avoid doing that, because of the adverse and unproductive reactions you trigger that way, unless it was done intentionally.
An insult in our society may not be counted as an insult in an other setting, however what we feel should be tolerated as free speech, may not be so interpreted by someone else. Hence we need standards and conventions, which differ from one society to an other.
It is here that acknowledgement of harm done forms the basis for understanding, negotiation and modification of behaviour (shaping). Pretending that such hurts, conflicts and differences do not exist, leads to distorted views of the world, wrong decisions and unavoidable hurtful consequences, such as armed conflicts.
2. Discovering the Sacred:
Humans are conscious of the environment through the five senses, but in addition humans have acquired self awareness as well. This means that in addition to reacting to and within the sensed environment, we also interpret and order it. For example, we live with the cadence of the diurnal cycle every twenty four hours, but would be much upset when we were to experience an unannounced solar eclipse.
This example illustrates that we live in a modeled world that we have constructed over time and in which we can explain most events. This model, which we call reality, keeps at bay the mystery of existence in which we have our human experience.
This reality model has become very sophisticated with time in our modern western case, but that is not the case for everybody with held models of reality differing the world over.
The point of this little exposition is to convey the notion that conscious awareness has a counter point in the mystery that is not a part of this consciousness. Consciousness exists vis-à-vis a mystery, knowable mystery as we have discovered, but a remaining one all the same.
This mystery can be and has been experienced by many mystics over time and across many differing traditions. The descriptions that those mystics report are similar in nature, conveying essential aspects of human existence, be this as being at one with the mystery or as a being in total isolation.
This relatable mystical experience tells us that all that exists is entangled, but can be discovered as being interconnected through our human effort of what I call ‘conscious making’. Looking back over the sixty millennia of our human heritage we marvel at all we have been able to discover, yet knowing at the same time that the universe and existence hold many deep mysteries still and always will.
I suggest, that by accepting both our conscious abilities and the confronting mystery, we can experience the sacredness of being connected with the mystery in a conscious way. And in addition, that this connectedness is present every where and continuously, being itself inherent of and a precondition to existence, which I have called ‘Existence Divine’.
<break from 10:45am to 6:37pm>
The idea of ‘Existence Divine’ includes what we humans consider ‘the good and the bad’. Our conscious awareness operates on the basis of making distinctions and classifications. This is how we order and interpret our world of experience. However, that world of phenomenae does not of itself make such a distinction, it is us humans who impose these.
Therefore, each experience must be accepted as valid, which I already mentioned earlier. This means that the sacred or the divine is also present and can be discerned in those experiences that we humans tend to reject or disapprove of.
Preference for certain experiences leads to a bias in our experience world and to conflicts in the long run. It is incumbent on us humans to explore all the experiences in the human realm and examine them before we exercise our judgement. This implies that we need to develop coping mechanisms for dealing with the undesirable, the ugly and the despicable. That we human do, do such things is a lesson about our own nature that needs to be understood. Avoiding to do so, leads to dead end developments.
We need to deal with all experience as we encounter that in the human realm and more than that, we must accept that the sacred/ divine is present in all of it, without exception.
So, we need to deal with all experience as we encounter that in the human realm and more than that, we must accept that the sacred/ divine is present in all of it, without exception.
3. Tolerance requires admission of the dark side:
Existence Divine reveals in all human religious and cultural expressions and activities, but in differing ways. This because each revealed tradition is adapted to place, time, people and circumstance, which results in the observed differences and practices of the handed down traditions.
This variety reflects the richness and vastness that is Existence Divine, encompassing all that exists. Since humans differ much from one another and Existence Divine is a mystery revealed in part, variety in revelation expresses the unboundedness of existence in all its mystery aspects.
This inherent variety must be accepted as inevitable by us humans in our way of existing and we must learn to adapt to it, enhance it and celebrate it. We must explore all its possibilities!
From the discussion under point 2, it follows that we need to first accept from others that which may cross us, offend us or even hurt us. This will be the case with others as well. To learn to accept such difficult behaviours and understand them, we need first look at our own shortcomings and own up to them, rather then seeking to project them onto the other party.
For example if we notice corruption in an Asian society, I remind myself of the corrupt behaviour in the financial world that was exposed in the 2008 market debacle. Another example can be found in the Bangladesh garment industry’s lacks standards, but I still recall the West Ray N.S. (1993?) coal mine explosion due to loose safety standards.
We need to accept that we are different yes, but not better than the other and once we do that, learning to be more tolerant becomes possible.
Summary:
We humans need to explore all the possibilities that the human realm holds for us, keeping in mind that all experience is valid experience and all of existence is Existence Divine, with the sacred present inherently. On this basis we can learn that variety is the essence of existence, which we can bring this to conscious expression by practising tolerance for its inherent variations.
<8:00pm~
