Would we consider it moral to tell everyone that they not only should play basketball, but should be an NBA player? How about telling everyone they should get a Nobel Prize, and if they don't they must not be trying hard enough? Everyone can learn a little quantum mechanics, as my colleague Terry Rudolph has shown in his new book Q is for Quantum, where he uses only arithmetic to explain the radical change in thinking we call "quantum logic." But not everyone will publish a famous physics paper that changes how we think.
In the consciousness movement, we hear that everyone should strive to be conscious all the time. We are told that this state of constant awareness is an achievable state for everyone. It is presented as some kind of enlightenment -- basically human potential at max overdrive. But is that mental state really accessible to everyone? Or is it more like being an NBA player -- a few people will make it? Is consciousness some kind of sainthood? Is it really easily accessible to all of us?
It seems people work very hard for many years to "become conscious." On the other hand, Suzuki, one of the key translators of Zen into a context we Westerners can grasp and appreciate, writes that we should be unaware. This rather seems the opposite of consciousness.
So, is the consciousness movement actually unethical? Are we setting people up to fail? Is this something only achievable by a few? It is even the best state to aim for? Or is it like the American Dream, where we tell everyone they can achieve whatever they like, at the same time as we automate them out of a job, impoverish them with debt, and offer them limited education?
Herd instincts in Homo distort everything related to "consciousness movement" (which is better characterized as "awareness movement"). There is no imperative to be found in its postulates that make it a goal for everyone to strive for. In the traditional schools like Theravada Buddhism there is no proselytizing of the (a?) path or even of the knowledge that such path exists. There is no "should" or "ought" in the "awareness movement".
ReplyDeleteReminds me of breathing into somatic sensations..... yin yoga and or pain management or following emotion. You focus without goal or agenda and bring awareness to what follows next. Does your position slightly shift, does the pain move from back to hip, does sorrow shift to anger etc. Noticing continuous movement with gentle eyes. "There is no 'should' or 'ought' in the "awareness movement". Thanks for that Dmitri.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is a modernist notion that "all" need to participate in waking up in order for culture to shift. Perhaps it is enough that those who feel called to contemplation, practices of kindness, or engagement in self- and culture-reckoning do that. Perhaps our individual and collective (but not universal) practicing would evoke kindness in turn, creating waves of gratitude and wakefulness. Contrastingly, maybe we give up "striving" entirely -- we stop trying to be good, or awake, or conscious -- and instead enter into a deep, abiding, and pervasive acceptance of what is. What might happen then? Maybe this is what is meant by doing and non-doing.
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