Open-Heartedness

Scott Bradley

There is no virtue for which I have made advocacy here that is not an expression of a perceived lack in myself. This should not surprise anyone who has a modicum of insight into the nature of our shared egoic existence, especially since it is always easier to detect projection in others than to see it in ourselves. Nor is it any great leap of self-knowledge to realize it in ourselves; it's right here just under the surface. So let me just reiterate that all that I write here is about me and my perceived needs. If my advocacy sometimes seems to be 'teaching', it is really just me trying to teach myself.

Open-heartedness is a quality which recommends itself to me when I find myself being closed- or hard-hearted, something not all that infrequent. I hear on the radio someone say they are unable to feed their children and I think, But you can afford your smokes. My knee-jerk reaction may very well reflect the facts of the case, but that is beside the point, because open-heartedness is not about facts. Openheartedness is unconditional; it is an active state of mind, not an interpretive and judgmental reaction to the external world.

Spinoza made a distinction between active, self-expressive emotions and passive, reactive and externally produced emotions. The former are grounded in and issue from our own being; the latter from allowing the external to control us. This is, I believe, yet another way of describing the Zhuangzian vision of non-dependence. We do not allow the external to enter our "Numinous Reservoir", our most inner selves, and disturb its pool of calm. Nothing can touch or harm us because we are identified with all that is.

No doubt this conjures up a vision of a serene and disengaged sage, a moral and emotional zero. But this is far from the truth. I have previously quoted from the Zhuangzi in this regard: "Anger comes forth from him without himself being angry, so his anger is an expression of his non-anger." (Chap. 23; Ziporyn) All the emotions can be in play, only they are rooted in an inner repose which is unthreatened by things external.

Spinoza also makes the point that reactive ('passive') emotions are harmful to others and to oneself. There is great irony here. Though we may in fact wish to harm another with our anger, we are its first, and possibly most negatively impacted, victim. When I first discover hard-heartedness in myself, I am immediately aware of the pain it causes me. In the example given above, listening to the radio, there is no one else affected. Hard-heartedness hurts. Open-heartedness feels good.

Hard-heartedness is rooted in fear of loss. It is self-protective. However remote and removed the object of my negative judgment, its roots are in my own issues. As I have previously said, most of my anger at injustices in the world is rooted in my sense of injustices committed against me. My anger comes forth because I am angry. There is no true solution here, just more anger, given and received. “Fight fire with fire, and surely you shall burn.” (Chen Jen)

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

Spinoza: Knowing Thyself

Scott Bradley

Among those philosophies which have as their primary goal an understanding of reality which answers the question 'How best to live?' the dictum "Know thyself" seems always to emerge. Spinoza's was no exception.

Summing up something of Spinoza's moral philosophy, Hampshire (Spinoza) writes: "We cannot be other than what we are, and our whole duty and wisdom is to understand fully our own position in Nature and the causes of our imperfections [limitations], and, having understood, to acquiesce; man's greatest happiness and peace of mind comes only from this full philosophical understanding of himself."

As previously mentioned, as a rationalist who believed that the Universe is entirely intelligible given a magnitude of intelligence sufficient to encompass it (which is to say Nature [God] itself), Spinoza' philosophy would seem to be the antithesis of Daoist thought. Yet his conclusions are startlingly similar.

Though "acquiescence" is not my choice of words for the act of open-hearted surrender into our fundamental limitations which Daoism sees as a way of liberation, it essentially means just that. Knowing that we do not know, we open ourselves to what cannot be known. Limitations are our gateways to the unlimited.

Spinoza's epistemology led him to the conclusion that to know oneself is to know the causes of one's actions. To know these, one must know Nature. This provides one with a larger view which dissolves one’s petty subjectivity with its loves and hates of the particular, and which in turn leads to the love of all things equally.

Freedom from external causes is perhaps the most essential attribute of the "free and wise man". Spinoza recognized that nothing external to oneself is the true cause of one's disquiet. Though I may be wronged by another, any consequent disquiet is my responsibility. To know oneself is thus to know whether things external to oneself affect one's peace, and if so, why. And the answer to this always points to a failure to have surrendered into the larger view where the subjective particularities of preference dissolve. This is really little different than Zhuangzi's non-dependence where one goes beyond even Song Rongzi, who taught freedom from the opinion of others, to depending on nothing at all. It also reflects Zhuangzi's emphasis on disallowing the external to enter one's "Numinous Reservoir" and thus maintaining a pool of quiet within.

To understand one's motivations is to gain the lever whereby one can move beyond them.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Spinoza: The Hideous Hypothesis

Scott Bradley

When one reads about Eastern philosophy with reference to Western philosophy the name of Baruch Spinoza (1634-1677) inevitably comes up in a very favorable light. His philosophy, however it might have arrived there, reflects a mystical understanding and experience of the Universe surprisingly similar to that of Daoism, Neo-Confucianism and (perhaps) Buddhism.

Knowing better than to think I could actually understand him from his own writings, I have been reading Stuart Hampshire's Spinoza, an overview of his thought. Yet even this sometimes inspires me to 'mysticism'.

Needless to say, as a free thinker, Spinoza faced the inevitable censure of his religious (or religiously inclined) contemporaries. Indeed, his conclusions were scornfully dubbed a "hideous hypothesis" and the elders of the Jewish community of which he was ostensibly a member brought down upon him the most chilling God-curses imaginable.

This "hideous hypothesis" is the belief that Reality is One. It is one which strict theism cannot endure, the understanding that if there is God, it is not other than all that is. There is no Creator with its requisite dualism. Spinoza was a "monist" and a "pantheist".

Spinoza was also an extreme rationalist; and the means by which he came to his non-dual position would seem to be completely antithetical to the approach of Daoism. No matter. Having arrived there, he admitted that all his logic rested on an intuitive knowledge, an intuitive trust in the ability of the mind to affirm the truth. "Truth is its own standard."

Spinoza was a man of incredible intellectual genius, but more importantly, he was a man of intense moral conviction. Using these words I feel as if I am negotiating a road of briars and nettles. Yet his morality was one that subscribed to no code of ethics, but rather one which recognized, as every monism must, the relative nature of our definitions of right and wrong. His morality essentially consisted in the realization, as much as humanly possible, of the harmony which is Nature, and this implied harmony with and among all other things.

It is a great irony that those who espouse the strictest categories of right and wrong are those who are most likely to do the most harm to others. These moralists decry the supposed lawlessness of the relativists, but it is they that oppress and kill in the name of truth. The reason for this is clear enough when one understands that to stake a territorial claim, whether actual or moral, is to exclude and defend against all other claims. To 'have' anything requires its defense. And when "God" gets involved, even defense is not enough; others need to be set right whether by law, or war, or condemnation, or the rack.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Naturistic God

Trey Smith

All things within Nature -- that is, everything -- are invariably and necessarily determined by Nature. There is nothing that escapes Nature's laws; there are no exceptions to its ways. Whatever is, follows with an absolute necessity from Nature's necessary universal principles (God's attributes). There are those no purposes for Nature or within Nature. Nothing happens for any ultimate reason or to serve any goal or overarching plan. Whatever takes place does so only because it is brought about by the ordinary causal order of Nature.
~ from A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age by Steven Nadler ~

So much of what happens to each of us in our lives appears unexplainable. A seemingly robust and healthy person drops dead, while a sickly person lives to be 105. Good fortune drops into our lives by complete happenstance and yet others, who work tirelessly for success, seem to be hampered by one train wreck after another.

Why do good things happen to bad people? Why do bad things happen to the best of us? In a plane crash or a fire at a movie theater, why does everyone in row six die, except the person in seat 6C?

These are the types of questions that have perplexed and bedeviled humans since the beginning of time. Since most people don't like to entertain the notion that life is random, at best, we create myths, legends, stories and religions to provide that sense of cause and reason that evades us. We develop mechanisms that seek to hold at bay the problem of the limitations of the human mind.

And so, some people hold onto the idea that a supernatural entity has "a plan" for their life. Of course, when their best laid plans go awry, about all they can come up with is, "God moves in mysterious ways!"

To my way of thinking, this is nothing more than a dressed up way of saying that shit happens!

God...ish Nature

Trey Smith

Spinoza begins the Ethics by arguing that at the most basic ontological level, the universe is a single, unique, infinite, eternal, necessary existing substance. This is what is most real, and he calls it "God or Nature". Spinoza's God is not some transcendent, supernatural being. He -- or rather, It -- is not endowed with the psychological or moral characteristics traditionally attributed to God by many western religions. Spinoza's God does not command, judge, or make covenants. Understanding, will, goodness, wisdom, and justice form no part of God's essence. In Spinoza's philosophy, in other words, God is not the providential, awe-inspiring deity of Abraham. Rather, God just is the fundamental, eternal, infinite substance of reality and the first cause of all things.
~ from A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age by Steven Nadler ~

One of the advantages I have over readers of this blog is that I get to read Scott's writings long before you do! In three posts than begin on May 1, Scott muses about the congruencies between philosophical Taoism and Spinoza's formulations. He mentions a particular book on the topic and, since I share an interest in the thought of Spinoza, I decided to see if this book is available from my local library system.

As it turns out, the book Scott references is not available, but the book I quoted from above is and, needless to say, that's the one I checked out. ;-)

From a personal standpoint, I do not use the word "God" in any of my writings simply because of its connotation with religion, particularly Christianity and Judaism. It would lead to confusion to utilize such a common word when I mean it in such an uncommon sense. It is far easier to reference Tao/Dao because most westerners do not have preconceived notions of it. That said, I certainly agree with Spinoza's use of the word, except that I wouldn't go as far as Nadler's description of this first cause as an "it."

In the end, I don't think it matters that much how we choose to designate this underlying first cause or essence. God works just as well as Tao and both work just as well as another word Spinoza utilizes interchangeably, Nature.

On Porpoise

As I slowly make my way through section one in The Ethics, I've been struck by Spinoza's need to define and understand purpose. What is God's (i.e., nature) purpose? What is the purpose of our species and what is the purpose of each person? Of course, Spinoza is not alone in this regard. The search for purpose -- why we exist and all of the ramifications which spring from this -- has been the driving force in the fields of philosophy and the social sciences.

It's also the centerpiece of religion. When all the hubris and hyperbole that clothes religion is stripped away layer by layer, what we get down to is varying attempts to define humankind's purpose for existence. For Christians, the answer to the nagging question of one's purpose is to serve the almighty. Supposedly, this will allow a person to live a purposeful life and it will also provide peace of mind.

There's only one problem with this supposed solution -- It doesn't work! Christians (as well as adherents to almost any other religion) are just as screwed up as the rest of us! Christians suffer from the same depression, personality disorders, phobias, anxieties and neuroses as any other group of people. Our prisons are filled with just as many Christian murderers, rapists, pedophiles, forgers, embezzlers, and wife beaters as there are atheists or adherents of other belief systems.

So, if Christianity's aim is to provide purpose in the lives of its adherents, why doesn't it work?

The most obvious reason is that no one can be absolutely sure that the purpose underlying the Christian institution (and again, that of ANY religion) represents the real deal. While adherents may say they believe in the tenets of their belief system with every fiber of their being, there is always a stray neuron or two that isn't positively convinced. What if I'm walking down the wrong road?

A second reason is that, even if a person could be 100% sure of their specific purpose, it doesn't necessarily follow that this will bring any level of certainty, happiness or contentment to their lives. A soldier who knows the purpose of a particular mission is to claim a certain hill doesn't lose their fear of dying just because they understand the purpose. Heck, knowing the purpose can have the precise opposite effect -- intensifying one's feelings of uncertainty and fear!

As I drifted off to sleep last night, I was thinking about the notion that the search for purpose is pointless. What does a person gain by trying to answer this singular question?

I know that some people will say that a person without purpose will not be motivated to do anything with their life and, in fact, will not value the sanctity of his or her life. I'm simply not convinced this belief is grounded in fact.

If we each awakened tomorrow morning and, magically, the knowledge of all religions had been wiped from the collective consciousness of the world, would this mean that millions upon millions of people would rush to kill themselves, at worst, or wander aimlessly about, at best? If you think the answer would be a resounding YES, then why aren't atheists, agnostics and Taoists killing themselves in droves and wandering aimlessly right now?

In the end, I've come to believe that this endless striving for a sense of purpose is a waste of time. Who cares WHY we're here? We are. And, since we are, we might as well embrace the moment in the here and now, rather than gaze off into the unknown future looking for something that we already know (in our heart of hearts) we can't really find anyway.

Tackling Spinoza

I think I'm ready to take a run at this. As I mentioned about two weeks ago, I've discovered that Spinoza's writing style is not one of my favorites. In fact, I dare say it gives me a headache! That said, I'm determined to wade through it slowly, probably in fits and starts. I've found through other people's analyses of his work that many of his overall conceptualizations are in line with many of my own formulations. So, come hell or high water, I'm going to wend my way through The Ethics.

I'm going to change the way I discuss his seminal work. Originally, I had planned to go chapter by chapter or section by section utilizing large quoted tracts -- sort of follow the trajectory of the book itself. Now, however, I've decided that I'm going to employ a more avant-garde style. Basically, I will use some of his key concepts as springboards into the thoughts and questions swirling around in my own pea-sized brain.

The first of these is cause-and-effect or, stated another way, causality.

Most people accept the notion that the movement of life is the result of a myriad of causes and effects. If I spit in your face and you respond by punching me in the nose, then we can say the cause of my injury was my initial action toward you and my bloodied nose is the effect!

Science is all about studying causality and explaining it so that people can make more informed choices. Religion too follows this same tact in relation to what pleases or displeases the deity. And most of us try to understand the concept in our everyday lives.

It doesn't seem to matter from what philosophical, religious or spiritual framework a person comes from. Almost everyone I know accepts the idea of causality. In fact, I dare say it's universal...except in one case.

Folks of a religious ilk -- and I will focus on Christianity simply because it's the religious system I understand the best -- will say that cause-and-effect reigns supreme in every aspect of life, except for God. The almighty is above and beyond causality. He created it, but it is no factor in his existence.

I have a problem with this formulation. If God imbues everything and he supposedly created the framework of cause and effect, it should cause effects on him too! How can any entity stand above the laws of nature itself and be part of that nature? Further, how can it be said that we humans were formed as an image of God, if God is not part of the nature of all we know?

Taoists don't encounter this problem because we don't view God as an entity at all. For us, Tao is the process itself. Put in other ways, Tao IS cause and effect or Tao is the nature of causality.

Like Reading the Tax Code

A few weeks back, I mentioned I was getting ready to read "The Ethics" by Spinoza. While I DO hope to make my way through it eventually, the writing style is not one that is very comfortable for me. It's kind of like reading the US Tax Code -- I've read parts of that before -- or any other highly legalized document.

Spinoza constantly refers back to other paragraphs, pages or chapters. It goes something like this: Here's an idea or concept that refers back to page 16, paragraph 3, sentence 2. So, I have to go back to that place which then has its own references to still more backtracking.

I think it's the kind of a book that a lawyer would thoroughly relate to and, maybe, even enjoy. My problem is that I'm not a lawyer!

Very Superstitious

And how different from the rational worship of religion are the superstitious ways of carrying on, the pleading and groveling, that pass in most superstitions as worshiping God. Men worship as if it is an arbitrary and exceedingly vain tyrant whom they must placate and flatter, each religion declaring itself more worthy of His favor. This is how the religions all distinguish themselves from one another...Like children fighting for their parent's attention, they never realize that everyone's true happiness and blessedness consists solely in the enjoyment of good, not priding himself that he alone is enjoying the good to the exclusion of others.
~ Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein, pp. 238-9 ~

When you believe in things that you don't understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition aint the way!
~ Superstition by Stevie Wonder ~

Two different ways of explaining the same concept!

If you have a quote on this topic, leave it in the comments section. In a few days, I will append it to this entry (with an attribution to you) and remove this paragraph.

The Blessed One

Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza is a name that will be popping up here more and more. I've almost finished one book about him and I eagerly await arrival of his seminal work, The Ethics. While many of you may be familiar with his life and philosophy, I realize that there's probably a good number of you who know little, if anything, about the man. So, this post is dedicated to remedying that.

Unlike many of my classmates, I always enjoyed book reports and research papers. That said, in this day and age of information at our fingertips via the internet, I'm simply going to cut-and-paste some info I've found. Enjoy.

Baruch Spinoza was born to Portuguese Jews living in exile in Holland, but his life among the Marranos there was often unsettled. Despite an early rabbinical education, he was expelled from the synagogue at Amsterdam for defending heretical opinions in 1656. While engaging privately in serious study of medieval Jewish thought, Cartesian philosophy, and the new science at Rijnburg and the Hague, Spinoza supported himself by grinding optical lenses, an occupation that probably contributed to the consumption that killed him.
~ Philosophy Pages ~

Benedict de Spinoza was among the most important of the post-Cartesian philosophers who flourished in the second half of the 17th century. He made significant contributions in virtually every area of philosophy, and his writings reveal the influence of such divergent sources as Stoicism, Jewish Rationalism, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, and a variety of heterodox religious thinkers of his day. For this reason he is difficult to categorize, though he is usually counted, along with Descartes and Leibniz, as one of the three major Rationalists. Given Spinoza’s devaluation of sense perception as a means of acquiring knowledge, his description of a purely intellectual form of cognition, and his idealization of geometry as a model for philosophy, this categorization is fair. But it should not blind us to the eclecticism of his pursuits, nor to the striking originality of his thought.
~ The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy ~

As a pantheistic monist, Spinoza was of the belief that there is no dualism between God and the world; we need not go beyond the immediate present experience to seek for a being outside of it. God moves and lives in nature; the whole of it, the entire universe is God. Nature, or God is Its own cause and is self-sufficient. (Because of his view of God, Spinoza, during his lifetime and for a century after his death, was known as a man of appalling wickedness.) Man, in his egotistical way has imagined God to be like him; to be anthropomorphic in character; and, further, man imagines that this God (created in the imagine of man) has a special interest in, and concern for man. The Spinozistic God does not love nor hate. The totality of existence, Nature, God, is far above us, and is indifferent to our desires and aspirations, - gone is the notion of a personal God. As for the notions of good and evil, they exist, but only to the extent that they fit our own personal inclinations. "Such things as please us, we denominate good, those which displease us, evil."
~ Biographies ~

The Ethics is an ambitious and multifaceted work. It is also bold to the point of audacity, as one would expect of a systematic and unforgiving critique of the traditional philosophical conceptions of God, the human being and the universe, and, above all, of the religions and the theological and moral beliefs grounded thereupon. What Spinoza intends to demonstrate (in the strongest sense of that word) is the truth about God, nature and especially ourselves; and the highest principles of society, religion and the good life. Despite the great deal of metaphysics, physics, anthropology and psychology that take up Parts One through Three, Spinoza took the crucial message of the work to be ethical in nature. It consists in showing that our happiness and well-being lie not in a life enslaved to the passions and to the transitory goods we ordinarily pursue; nor in the related unreflective attachment to the superstitions that pass as religion, but rather in the life of reason. To clarify and support these broadly ethical conclusions, however, Spinoza must first demystify the universe and show it for what it really is.
~ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ~

All By Myself

As I continue to read of the life and works of Baruch Spinoza, the one thing that jumps out at me again and again is this man's inner courage and fortitude. In an age in which religious identity was paramount, he freely eschewed all of them! I can see why many consider him the first modern philosopher.

He grew up a Jew, but was excommunicated for life in his early 20s. Excommunication in those days was a lot more severe than it is now. Not only was a person thrown out of the "church family", but no one -- including the individual's own family -- from your religion was allowed to talk nor contact the person in any way, shape or form. It was like being exiled to a remote island, yet staying in the same geographical space.

Try wrapping your head around that. How would you feel if, one day, it was decreed that you could no longer interact with your immediate and extended family? All your friends -- even your best friend -- turned a cold shoulder your way. Neighbors and acquaintances crossed to the other side of the street when they saw you approaching.

Most of us would become unglued! We wouldn't know what to do with ourselves. Many would return to the authorities to beg for forgiveness, including mouthing whatever words or sentiments the authorities wished to hear.

Back in Spinoza's day, this was what usually happened. Excommunication was used as a tool to force the sheep back into the flock! Most individuals were excommunicated for a set period of time in the hope that total community shunning would convince them of the evil of their ways.

How did Spinoza react to this severe punishment for asking probing questions? He embraced it! He declared that excommunication had set him free to pursue an authentic life in the pursuit of knowledge. It allowed him the opportunity -- one he took full advantage of -- to bring a wondrous philosophy to the world.

An Interesting Tidbit

I've discovered that, for Spinoza, "God" is not a being per se but logic itself. This is congruent with the Taoist view that Tao is a process or, put another way, Tao is. I've ordered The Ethics and, once I start reading it, The Rambling Taoist may become The Rambling Spinozaist for awhile. :D)

Surviving Death

Immortality, for Spinoza, is impersonal; I survive my necessary death to the extent that I have ceased identifying with that mere thing that I am, and identify with the whole intricate web I have assimilated in the knowing. The first-person point of view that I am is relinquished for the View from Nowhere, which is the same for all of us.
~ from Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein, p.69 ~

Sounds very Taoist to me! I think it just goes to show that many of the underlying themes in Taoism aren't strictly far eastern. The currents can be found in the thought of westerners too.

We each struggle to comprehend what we can't possibly comprehend.

I think I'm going to like reading Spinoza!

Philosophical Gaps

I came to an amazing realization tonight. For a philosophical person such as I am, I can't remember EVER taking a strictly philosophy course in ANY level of schooling. The ONLY philosophy instruction I took came in the specific form of political philosophy, the emphasis area for my M.S. in Social Sciences.

Thinking back to junior and senior high school, the electives I chose were predominantly in the topics of sociology, psychology and English. In undergraduate school, most of my electives were in sociology and anthropology. Nowhere in my schooling was philosophy a mandatory course needed for graduation.

I wonder if this is universal or something peculiar to the specific schools (or area of the country) I attended. My suspicion is that it's the former.

If so, then that's really too bad. It means there are a lot of former American students out there in the world who have never been exposed to the works and ideas of Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, etc. It means there are a lot of Americans whose ideas of the world of being and knowledge is very limited.

Fortunately, I escaped this limitation of thought in graduate school. While I didn't study any of the classical philosophers and those who delve into metaphysics, I had a strong helping of the political philosophies of Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Machiavelli, JS Mill, Feurbach, Hegel and, of course, Karl Marx (my favorite!).

Now in my early 50s, I've decided to go back and learn some of the stuff I was not exposed to previously. To this end, I've started reading "Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity" by Rebecca Goldstein. I've already discovered -- to my great interest -- that some of Spinoza's philosophy dovetails nicely with Taoism.

As I move deeper into this book, don't be surprised when I start discussing some of Spinoza's theorems. Who knows? Maybe I'll become a self-proclaimed Spinozan Taoist! :)