The Spiritual Guide

Four Steps on the Path of Enlightenment

White

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498294843
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Many people ask, "How can I live a more spiritual life, a life that can ultimately lead to enlightenment?" And by way of an answer this book describes four of the most important steps that we can take along the spiritual path--staying open to suffering, living a generous life, cultivating mindfulness and wonder, and accepting death but affirming joy. The Spiritual Guide offers a clear discussion of basic spiritual themes. It does not assume the truth of any given standpoint, and it has something to say to all people, regardless of their religious affiliation or lack of it. Most of us are profoundly concerned with meaning-of-life issues, but academic philosophy is remote while "new age" spirituality can be impossibly vague. This book uses parables, philosophical ideas, and stories from a variety of religious and philosophical traditions to illuminate what it means to live in a spiritual way. The Spiritual Guide is both practical and theoretical, and it speaks directly to readers as students of life.

1

Spirituality

When I was a student, I fell in love with philosophy. Philosophy can help you to think more critically and more thoughtfully about the world; but more than anything else, philosophy seems to ask all the big questions: What is the meaning of life? What does it mean to live a good life? Does God exist? And how can I be true to myself? Philosophy is literally the love of wisdom, and the true philosopher is a lover of wisdom. Not a guru figure who claims to have all the answers but a seeker who longs to discover the truth about things, like the lover who yearns for the one that he loves.

Now I am a professional philosopher, but in recent years I have become more involved in the field of spirituality, which is, I think, the very heart of wisdom itself. I have studied classical texts as well as New Age writings. I have become more familiar with spiritual practices, and I teach classes in “World Philosophy” and “The Philosophy of Spiritual Life,” which looks at important spiritual themes such as compassion, forgiveness, reverence, and the sacred. I am not surprised that my students are anxious to talk about spiritual questions and matters of ultimate concern. In today’s world, there is so much pressure to compete for a career or just to get a job, while the most important issues that everyone has to deal with are neglected or viewed as irrelevant. But the fact is, before you are a nurse or a teacher or a computer programmer, you are a human being; and as a human being you must set out on your own path to think about ultimate meaning, values, and truth, all of which are key to living a spiritual life. This is not always an easy path, and it is very easy to get distracted; but as Socrates famously said: “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

For the most part, philosophers use reason and argument to get to the truth of things. And philosophy can be a very critical enterprise that calls established truths into question, not just for the sake of being skeptical or perverse, but to see which of our ideas can be justified, and which are based on something like “faith” alone. Spirituality on the other hand is much more intuitive and it uses basic insights about human life to describe how we are meant to live and fulfill the most serious part of ourselves. Of course, spirituality is not the same thing as religion. Some people believe in God, but their lives seem to be largely unaffected by this belief, which is just an intellectual commitment. Other people, including some atheists and agnostics, are drawn to living the most spiritual and meaningful lives possible but they cannot make a faith commitment or accept the idea of personal immortality. At this point, even after some years of practice and philosophical study, I don’t have a simple, straightforward definition of what “spirituality” is; but as a useful way to begin this book, I will argue that spirituality can be thought about in at least three different ways—and this brings me now to the core of my own ideas about this subject.

The Nature of Spirituality

First of all, I think that a spiritual life is the opposite of what we would call a materialistic life, which is devoted to the pursuit of wealth, prestige, or power over others. The selfish and unspiritual life is self-involved and unconcerned with matters of ultimate significance. At the same time, however, a spiritual life is not just a life that is focused on “otherworldly” matters. More than anything else, living a spiritual life means recognizing the true meaning and value of this life, trying to live authentically in the world, and keeping more selfish concerns in their proper perspective. In many spiritual traditions, the ultimate goal is to overcome the ordinary and petty concerns of the ego and to embrace the deeper reality where everything is connected and one. In Christianity, for example, the goal is to identify one’s own will with the will of God, and to lose oneself by surrendering to God’s will. In Hindu Vedanta philosophy, we are told to reject the standpoint of the separate individual—which is an illusion—and to embrace the ultimate undivided reality of “Brahman,” for “That art thou!”1 In Buddhism, the cultivation of compassion inspires a sense of interconnectedness—which includes the value of all sentient life—and this is held to be the deepest wisdom of all. From this kind of perspective, individuality is an illusion, or at least a very limited point of view, which is fostered by selfish concerns. And it typically leads to alienation as we sense our separation from nature, from other people, and the community we belong to. So the spiritual remedy for this is to overcome “materialism” and the false perspective of the individual self. In this respect, we can think of spirituality as a movement away from materialism and the ordinary values of commercial society that we usually find so powerful and absorbing.

Second, this means that a spiritual life must involve a quest or a journey in search of ultimate truth. It is a life lived in terms of questions: How should I live? What should I believe? What is the purpose of my life? And such a life is absolutely committed to making progress in becoming a better person, or one who is more fulfilled and well-adjusted to existence itself. Many people experience alienation in the sense of not feeling at home in the world or with others. But I think a truly spiritual person can achieve a sense of belonging, which means that he or she must be prepared to trust in life; and in spite of the problems, and even the tragedies that life throws out to most of us, he or she will remain committed to the idea that life is basically a good thing. Over the course of history, many important spiritual paths have been established, including Christianity, Platonism, Buddhism, Stoicism, Confucianism, and others. Some people seek union with God; others search for nirvana or the Absolute or the Dao, which is “the way.” In ancient Vedanta philosophy, the three paths of karma yoga, bhakti yoga, and jnani yoga correspond to the way of work, the way of religious devotion, and the way of study and meditation respectively.

Today, we live in a global society where all of these different paths can be studied, while at the same time we are not always so bound to the traditions and ideas that we have inherited from the past. This means that spiritual life is likely to involve more active discernment on the part of each individual seeker, where the point is to dialogue with different spiritual perspectives in order to find the truth that is most inspiring in one’s own life. And this is important, even as a way of understanding the spiritual tradition that we grew up with, by looking at it with new eyes and from a more global point of view. Today, different spiritual traditions are available to spiritual seekers through the Internet, workshops, books, and classes. This does not mean that spirituality has been diluted, but it is much easier than ever before to come to grips with different paths to determine how they speak to us. One thing that hasn’t changed is that the spiritual life is a quest or a journey towards the highest truth.

The third point is that spirituality involves becoming aware of the deepest level of life, or what we could also call ultimate reality and meaning. This is not to be discovered in e-mails, texts, or idle conversations, for all these things distract us from more important concerns. I am referring to the deeper truth of human existence that we are sometimes able to glimpse in exceptional experiences. When we come close to death, for example, or experience the wonders of nature, or love, we sometimes feel as if all of our ordinary, everyday concerns have been pushed aside, and we can experience the world as it really is. Then we know that we have touched the deepest truth and we have somehow grasped the meaning of life. Of course, we cannot abandon our reason in this spiritual journey, for then we would only believe what we wanted to believe, and our spiritual life would be nothing but wish fulfillment. Philosophy and critical thinking are important because our spiritual ideas and practices must make sense. But the spiritual pursuit is basically a matter of experience rather than rational thinking: We recognize and honor spiritual truth as the truth that can be lived; it is the set of values that enhances life instead of diminishing it; and it is the basic standpoint that informs an authentic life.

Four Steps on the Path of Enlightenment

I have written this book on the basis of my teaching, my scholarly work, and my own life experience, and I think that I have something to offer as a fellow-seeker. I have been able to devote myself to fundamental questions of human life, and I have helped others to think about matters of ultimate concern and meaning. I have written about some of these ideas in different scholarly books and essays, but in recent years I have become concerned that academia (and especially academic philosophy) is a closed community. It certainly does not speak to all intelligent readers, many of whom lack philosophical training only because they have chosen to devote their lives to other things. I have written elsewhere about the arguments of the philosophers, but in this book I am more interested in the wisdom of individuals like Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus. In each case, these teachers sought to inspire people, not just by giving the best arguments—for any argument can be disputed—but by revealing profound truths about the human condition that we can usually recognize for ourselves once they have been pointed out to us. The goal of this short book is to clarify the four most important steps to a spiritually fulfilled life—or the way to enlightenment—which can be meditated on and returned to over and over again. For in this way, such important ideas can be taken down and integrated at a deeper level in one’s life. Sometimes, as the saying goes, “less is more,” and in this book I hope to offer a clear, succinct outline of spirituality that can serve as a framework for future understanding and spiritual growth.

So what are the four steps to enlightenment, or the most important points of spirituality as I understand it here? First, I believe that spiritual life begins with suffering. As long as things are going well for us, we really don’t think about the big questions—How should I live? Why am I here?—but when something goes wrong and we experience personal disappointment, pain, despair, or even the death of a loved one, we try to make sense of our lives. We are full of anguish because we have been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Or we suffer the nightmares associated with post-traumatic stress. We hate ourselves for something we did years ago. In many ways, suffering is the bottom line of human experience. But what is the right response to suffering, whether this is our own suffering or somebody else’s? Some people say we should be strong and just try to tough it out. In many cultures, including our own, “softness” and sadness are sometimes considered to be signs of weakness because they mean letting our emotions rule us instead of rational principles. In the ancient world, the Stoic philosophers said we should cultivate indifference to whatever happens so that we can never be affected by the ups and downs of fortune. And even today, many people believe that whatever happens must be good because God would not allow bad things to happen to good people. So suffering is supposed to be a “test,” or a blessing in disguise, and whatever heartbreak or physical and mental anguish people experience is ultimately justified. I have called this chapter “Staying Open to Suffering,” because I want to show how all of these responses are ways of avoiding suffering and not dealing with it properly. On the other hand, compassion is the best response to suffering—by which I mean it is the most spiritual response—because it opens up the world to us, instead of shutting us down. And this includes both compassion for the suffering of others and compassion for ourselves, without which we would remain spiritually isolated and in despair.

The second step takes us from compassion to giving and forgiving, which are fundamental forms of generosity. In my view, generosity reflects the exuberance of life itself. As everyone knows, generosity is a moral virtue, for we should share what we have with others and try to avoid being miserly or mean. But in addition to this, we can affirm generosity as a spiritual virtue that mirrors the absolute generosity of life. Generosity is always exceptional, for there is no moral requirement or duty to be generous; and when we act generously we always go beyond whatever is expected of us. We can give our money and our property to whoever needs these things. But we also act with a generous spirit whenever we give other people our time and our attention, or stay available for whenever they need us. Some people are willing to sacrifice their lives for other people—like Harriet Tubman, who escaped from slavery and risked her own life many times over to help other slaves escape, even though she didn’t know them; or like Martin Luther King Jr., who understood that he probably would be killed for demanding civil rights. For many of us, however, the most obvious example of spiritual generosity is forgiveness: We have been unfairly or unjustly treated by someone else, but instead of seeking revenge or restitution, we decide to renounce all of our claims upon the offender. We forgive him—and this act of spiritual generosity allows both of us to get on with our lives. Living a generous life reflects the generosity of life, ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Spirituality
• Chapter 2: Staying Open to Suffering
• Chapter 3: Living a Generous Life
• Chapter 4: Cultivating Mindfulness and Wonder
• Chapter 5: Accepting Death and Returning to Joy
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Bibliography