Nothing Special: Justice

"An appropriate and compassionate response does not come from the fight for justice..."  --Charlotte Joko Beck

Joko Beck in her book, Nothing Special, Living Zen, observes "When someone insists, 'I am never angry,' I am incredulous. Since anger, and its subsets, depression, anxiety, resentment, jealousy, gossip and backbiting and so on-- dominate our lives, we need to investigate the whole problem of anger with care... For the psychologically mature person, the ills and injustices of life are handled by counter-aggression, in which one makes an effort to eliminate the injustice and create justice. Often such efforts are dictatorial, full of anger and self-righteousness. In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice, but compassion... All anger is based upon judgements..."

The best answer to injustice is compassion, or love.  Joko Beck writes, "An appropriate and compassionate response does not come from the fight for justice, but from that radical dimension of practice that "passes all understanding," love.
As the Christ taught, "love your enemies," and Gandhi and Blessed Mother Teresea of Calcutta both knew, injustice is highlighted and resolved by means of love, of peaceful protest. It's not easy. We must go through the darkness, the pain and grief before coming to the lightness that will ultimately be our guide, and our justice.

"Let us not adopt some facile, narrowly psychological view of our lives. The radical dimension that I speak of demands everything that we are and have. Joy, not happiness, is its fruit."

Blunted Emotions and Spirituality

"When we refuse to accept things the way that they are, we make ourselves   (and often others) unhappy." --Ronald Pies, M.D.

Author and Psychiatrist Ron Pies writes in his newest book, The Three-Petalled Rose: How the Synthesis of Judaism, Buddhism, and Stoicism Can Create a Healthy, Fulfilled and Flourishing Life,  that the mind-heart connection in spiritual matters is very real and vital.
And while Dr. Pies has been a sometimes flash-point, many who read his book will take the positive from his discussion on stoicism.

Stoicism can be attributed within Western civilization all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, perhaps further back even than they. Its philosophy espouses an essential aim of traveling lifes' paths via the 'middle way' or as the bible reminds its reader, 'this too shall come to pass.'
While not limited to the West or to Christian thought, stoics may be seen in a more universal, spiritual light.
Those who can learn to see the world in just this moment, life as it really is; just now, the way that things are, can be well on his or her way to a centered and equitable life, a stoic.
 Many people believe that stoicism involves little or no feelings at all. However a study of the ancient thinker Marcus Aurelius, for example, proves otherwise. And he just may be the original cognitive therapist.

In the west, especially, and over the world generally, modern medicine has wrought great power into the realm of nature; we have, through scientific discovery, overcome many biological forces that previously were the bane of humanity. Diseases, such as polio, have been mostly eliminated. Small Pox is today a footnote in history books, and the dread of AIDS and Malaria brought under its scientific scope.
In the realm of the mind, there has been much improvement in treatment and human lives; there is however a reliance and increasing use of anti-depressant drugs, pharmacological medications given to more and more persons world-wide, now often from an early age, that may result in the  blunting" of the emotions or affect, as science refers to it.

 Developed as a wonder treatment against the scourges of mental illnesses, these very drugs intended to aid sufferers may now be the very same substances which prompt their feelings of indifference and coolness towards others.

There is concern. Are we to raise up the first generation known to mankind enveloped by these drugs? Many are pondering how a mother may then make an attachment to her infant, how a parent may properly care for their children; how any person will have the experience of attachment or simple affection for others, how the bonds of marriage will endure in an environment of an increasingly drug induced apathy? For some, it seems to be a matter of trade-offs, deals 'with the devil.' Are we blowing it and not looking towards the greatest causes?

 In the spiritual life, there is a need or desire to perceive what is not immediately, easily or clearly seen, the clouds which obscure the clear blue sky, if you will. The poets, musicians, the writers and the artists among us clamber to express their hearts, and very often speak for our own.
What is to become of them, what is to become of the most basic foundation in human life, to love and be loved without fully intact affection with which to perceive and appreciate? How will modern, stressed mankind survive now?

American researcher, medical doctor and critic Dr. Helen Fisher charges, "these drugs blunt emotions and reduce obsessive-compulsive thinking, but those are also two main characteristics of romantic love. 
Relationships may be torpedoed not because of the factors between individuals, but because-- it just may be the drug.
So many nowadays are taking anti-depressants when young; they wish to avoid stress or sadness, but by the same token they may be robbed of life's joys in equal measure.
"The writer May Sarton noted, "Pain is the great teacher...joy [and] happiness, are what we take and do not question...but pain forces us to think, and to make connections, to sort out what is what, to discover what has been happening to cause it.." And this is at the heart of the spiritual life, making sense of the world around us, and our place within it.

  For Pies, the answer of sorts, may lie in a form of Stoicism: We recognize that there exists in the world a way, a being that existed before our entrance into the world, and will  likely continue  long after our exit from this world.  Addressing the focus of his lifes' work, mental illness, Pies notes, "when we refuse to accept things the way that they are, we make ourselves (and often others) unhappy." And when we do accept things, we may find a certain peace, free to pursue other, more productive tasks.
This presents an eternal spiritual challenge of acceptance for the things that we cannot change and the wiseness to know that one from any other.

The Chaplaincy Institute, a California based inter-faith organization writer notes, "If we can learn to respect and value the spiritual wisdom of people diagnosed with mental health conditions, we will be respecting their very essence. Then perhaps all of us, as a society, will become more capable of loving this part of ourselves: the part that gets disoriented, that is prone to despair, that loses sight of hope, that falls prey to fear, that cannot feel love, that is constantly in motion, and that keeps us from experiencing that beautiful inner stillness where we rest peacefully in the arms of the Divine Presence.

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Joy, the Radical Dimension

"There is no peace without justice" --Pope John Paul II

Joko Beck in her book, Nothing Special, Living Zen, observes "When someone insists, 'I am never angry,' I am incredulous. Since anger, and its subsets, depression, anxiety, resentment, jealousy, gossip and backbiting and so on-- dominate our lives, we need to investigate the whole question of anger with care... For the psychologically mature person, the ills and injustices of life are handled by counter-aggression, in which one makes an effort to eliminate the injustice and create justice. Often such efforts are dictatorial, full of anger and self-righteousness. In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice, but compassion... All anger is based upon judgments..."

The best answer to injustice is compassion, or love. Joko Beck writes, "An appropriate and compassionate response does not come from the fight for justice, but from that radical dimension of practice that "passes all understanding;" some call it love. As Christ taught, "love your enemies," Gandhi and Blessed Mother Teresea of Calcutta both knew, injustice is highlighted and resolved by means of love, of peaceful protest. It's not easy. We must go through the darkness, the pain and grief before coming to the lightness that will ultimately be our guide, and our justice.
"Let us not adopt some facile, narrowly psychological view of our lives. The radical dimension that I speak of demands everything that we are and have. Joy, not happiness, is its fruit." Radical because it is not what the world expects; radical because we may consciously and actively choose it.

Inside the Grail Legend

“...if one is to find the Grail, [that] means not to fall prey to a mood.” The Holy Grail as interpreted by Robert Johnson


There are many, many truths to be gained from study of this most unique of legends, the Holy Grail. Following the lead of Carl and Emma Jung and Marie Louise von Franz, Robert Johnson writes in his book, He, that “what the Grail myth is telling us is that in his relationship to the interior feminine a man should relate to her, that interior feminine [self] on a feeling level and not on a mood level.” The author distinguishes the terms mood and feeling by explanation: he writes, a mood is the result of the interior self unconsciously in possession, the anima or interior feminine self of a man; a feeling is a value, the ability to value. “If a man has a good relationship with his anima, his feminine self, he is able to feel, to value, and thus find meaning in his life. If a man is not related to his anima... he has no capacity for valuation. So sharp collision between the two types of interior experience a man goes through."

In the Legend of the Grail, Percival is guided to his feeling senses, his anima. In discovering a bit of this sense, he is useful and creative; in doing so, he must not however seduce or be seduced by the interior feminine self. Granting himself seduction is destructive towards his goal of finding the Grail Castle. He is, in the legend, most thoroughly advised not to fall prey to a mood. “As soon as a man falls into a mood, he has no capacity for relationship, no power for feeling and therefore no capacity for valuation.” All moods, good or bad, are trouble.

While under the spell of a mood, the one who feels its effect is like a person bewitched. “He cannot think, he cannot function, he cannot relate; he may think he’s doing a great deal, but there is just so much churning inside. If something is not already wrong, a man in a mood will make it wrong.” And if they are not wise to it, a man’s loved ones may also fall victim to his moods. A man may, in fact, in that state of mind think that they are quite responsible for his moods!

Robbed of a sense of relatedness or meaning, a man in a mood we learn in the Grail legend, is a man who cannot find fulfillment. He is easily bored. Thus “if something is wrong with one’s ability to relate, the meaning in life is gone. So depression is another term for mood. One finds that most of the content of a psychosis for a man is anima. It’s a haunting, a possession.” A mood is a little madness then, which overtakes. Many times a person may be overtaken by a mood. There is then wild enthusiasm for this or for that, but the mood runs its course and then the thing is forgotten; much time and money is expended by those in a mood. While in this state he does not ‘run his own house’ and then is impossible to live with; he is terribly critical of exterior, in the flesh women at this time, soundly blaming them for any number of things to which they stand mystified!  A man must learn in his quest for the Grail to look for fulfillment but not good moods, lest he is again in possession by something destructive. It’s as if in the mood he declares, “You are going to make me happy--or else!”

The anecdote to this is to learn to live in time, moment to moment. One can learn to recognize the advent of a mood and refuse it. It is one's responsibility to know what is going on within himself so as to live consciously-- the point of this quest for the Holy Grail. “A man who has this kind of self-knowledge begins to develop ego strength,” writes Johnson. When truly enthusiastic, a man is filled with the Spirit of God. He is vibrant and creative. A great creativity flows, one which is stable and productive. It is not the petulance of a child.

The truest genius of a flesh and blood woman is that if she can be consciously aware of her innate feminine nature, not critical of others, and strong enough to stand up to this “spurious femininity” when a man’s mood presents such; he will likely come out of his mood and return to his senses. Many in this world are in the possession of a mental illness, a foul mood which befalls them either frequently or intermittently. They may say they’re having a bad day while in this state. And when comes its opposite, because balance is necessary, mania or depression appears. Chaos may also result owing to the lack of feeling or valuing. Careful reflection and conscious awareness is the point of Percival’s methodical search. The myth, if we follow it through, tells us that Percival triumphs.