The World on Fire
“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.” Confucius
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Reinhold Niebuhr
“One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words.” Goethe
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There is an old saying of the sages and saints that “too much bitterness leads to hell.”
There is a lot in this world that can and do frustrate us, irritate us and make us angry. Every day, we experience and come face to face with acts and events, with people and groups of people that enrage us without fail. To be angry most, if not all, of the time is actually the condition of the average person in these latter days of modernity. And to be angry in the virtual world is as if it is a requirement nowadays, a default setting of being present on the social media platforms: “I am angry, therefore I exist” to twist the dominant Cartesian logic of the times. In the hellish dungeons of the social media in particular everything and everyone gets blocked, canceled, enraged and, therefore, weaponized so easily these days. Aggression is now available and experienced in every form and template: gender-sexual, ethno-racial, ontic-epistemic, work-related, age-related and at both macro and micro levels of existence. Rage is all around us, in abundant supply.
Anger is of course a legitimate human emotion and it cannot be denied. There is even sacred rage, anger that is completely justified, just as there is the concept of a “just war” in many world religions or civilizations inspired by these world religions. But in an increasingly and thoroughly secular and God-less world when anger turns into bitterness, then the harm that is done to the agent of rage far exceeds that done to the object of rage: bitterness destroys the angry person more effectively than the object or target of rage. That madman of Europe, the “illuminated psychopath” Friedrich Nietzsche, once rightly said that, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” The abysses of our times, many as they are and everywhere as they are, not only gaze back into you but actually and quickly pull you in, if you are not on guard.
And what should one do to be on one’s guard in these dark times? Well, here’s another piece of wisdom from the past, and this one is from a Taoist (Chinese) sage which says that, “When the world is on fire, the sage tends to his garden.” This should not be seen as apathy, or as indifference towards the world and its problems, but understood as it has always been understood throughout history and across civilizations: as the profound wisdom that engagement with the world, especially by those of us who have not engaged, or who have failed to engage fully and sincerely with our own inner selves, with our own inner moral, intellectual and spiritual universes, does not always lead to the betterment of the world around us and often does more damage to both the worlds within and without. “Before we embark on the mission to rid the world of thorns and nails which are scattered all over the place, we need to put on our shoes” as an old African proverb informs us.
But in fact, on a much higher (or deeper) level, metaphysically speaking that is, the wisdom can be understood in the sense of our relationship with God and with His creation: vertically and horizontally. I have written about this earlier in another post. Whereas vertically we are required to be passive, we are now active; whereas horizontally we are required to be active, we are now passive. This may seem odd to the average reader, but it is exactly in our passivity viz-z-viz God that we can avoid our anger from turning into bitterness which can lead us straight into hell. And also, it is this vertical passivity which, because it informs and guides whatever activity we carry out in the world, makes our horizontal existence effective and meaningful, both for us and for everything and everyone around us. Think of the vertical providing the context, the needed proportion or balance (meezan) for the horizontal without which an activity (or activism in general) can quickly turn destructive.
We must, therefore, take heed and remember that quietude/quietism and careful and thoughtful disengagement with what goes on around us in the world where everything is now politicized and vulgarized (meaning disengagement in the true Taoist sense of Wu Wei, or “non-action” or “effortless action”) is sometimes more important than being active or actively engaged with the world. This detachment which is the result of compassion and acceptance of the inexplicable "Mystery" in the higher, transcendent scheme of things must not be confused with the modern indifference or unconcern about which Tennessee Williams once said that "Happiness is insensitivity". While the original Greek apatheia meant detachment from ego, or the lack or absence of base passions ( and therefore, attachment to virtues), the modern "apathy" means the exact opposite: enslavement to ego and detachment from, or forgetfulness of, what is above the ego.
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There is an old saying of the sages and saints that “too much bitterness leads to hell.”
There is a lot in this world that can and do frustrate us, irritate us and make us angry. Every day, we experience and come face to face with acts and events, with people and groups of people that enrage us without fail. To be angry most, if not all, of the time is actually the condition of the average person in these latter days of modernity. And to be angry in the virtual world is as if it is a requirement nowadays, a default setting of being present on the social media platforms: “I am angry, therefore I exist” to twist the dominant Cartesian logic of the times. In the hellish dungeons of the social media in particular everything and everyone gets blocked, canceled, enraged and, therefore, weaponized so easily these days. Aggression is now available and experienced in every form and template: gender-sexual, ethno-racial, ontic-epistemic, work-related, age-related and at both macro and micro levels of existence. Rage is all around us, in abundant supply.
Anger is of course a legitimate human emotion and it cannot be denied. There is even sacred rage, anger that is completely justified, just as there is the concept of a “just war” in many world religions or civilizations inspired by these world religions. But in an increasingly and thoroughly secular and God-less world when anger turns into bitterness, then the harm that is done to the agent of rage far exceeds that done to the object of rage: bitterness destroys the angry person more effectively than the object or target of rage. That madman of Europe, the “illuminated psychopath” Friedrich Nietzsche, once rightly said that, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” The abysses of our times, many as they are and everywhere as they are, not only gaze back into you but actually and quickly pull you in, if you are not on guard.
And what should one do to be on one’s guard in these dark times? Well, here’s another piece of wisdom from the past, and this one is from a Taoist (Chinese) sage which says that, “When the world is on fire, the sage tends to his garden.” This should not be seen as apathy, or as indifference towards the world and its problems, but understood as it has always been understood throughout history and across civilizations: as the profound wisdom that engagement with the world, especially by those of us who have not engaged, or who have failed to engage fully and sincerely with our own inner selves, with our own inner moral, intellectual and spiritual universes, does not always lead to the betterment of the world around us and often does more damage to both the worlds within and without. “Before we embark on the mission to rid the world of thorns and nails which are scattered all over the place, we need to put on our shoes” as an old African proverb informs us.
But in fact, on a much higher (or deeper) level, metaphysically speaking that is, the wisdom can be understood in the sense of our relationship with God and with His creation: vertically and horizontally. I have written about this earlier in another post. Whereas vertically we are required to be passive, we are now active; whereas horizontally we are required to be active, we are now passive. This may seem odd to the average reader, but it is exactly in our passivity viz-z-viz God that we can avoid our anger from turning into bitterness which can lead us straight into hell. And also, it is this vertical passivity which, because it informs and guides whatever activity we carry out in the world, makes our horizontal existence effective and meaningful, both for us and for everything and everyone around us. Think of the vertical providing the context, the needed proportion or balance (meezan) for the horizontal without which an activity (or activism in general) can quickly turn destructive.
We must, therefore, take heed and remember that quietude/quietism and careful and thoughtful disengagement with what goes on around us in the world where everything is now politicized and vulgarized (meaning disengagement in the true Taoist sense of Wu Wei, or “non-action” or “effortless action”) is sometimes more important than being active or actively engaged with the world. This detachment which is the result of compassion and acceptance of the inexplicable "Mystery" in the higher, transcendent scheme of things must not be confused with the modern indifference or unconcern about which Tennessee Williams once said that "Happiness is insensitivity". While the original Greek apatheia meant detachment from ego, or the lack or absence of base passions ( and therefore, attachment to virtues), the modern "apathy" means the exact opposite: enslavement to ego and detachment from, or forgetfulness of, what is above the ego.
Once again, to quote the Trappist monk Thomas Merton: "Let us not forget the redemptive power of the hermit, the monk, the recluse, the bodhisattva, the nun, the sannyasi who out of pity for the universe, out of loyalty to mankind, and without a spirit of bitterness or resentment, withdraw into the healing silence of the wilderness, or of poverty, or of obscurity, not in order to preach to others but to heal in themselves the wounds of the whole world." The great metaphysician Isa Nur al Din (Frithjof Schuon) has similarly said, ‘The world need hermits as much as preachers. In Islam, it is said that the equilibrium of the world depends largely on the existence—sometimes hidden—of the saints, or also on the Invocation of God’s Name. If man is not holy, nonetheless, the Name is holy, and man is made holy by the invocation.’ (F. Schuon, in a letter to a Hans Kury, 1951).
Never underestimate this redemptive power of silence and disengagement.
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