Barry Lenson's Transcendentalism Blog

Some Fundamentals

The Transcendentalism of Walph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and their circle is a spiritual practice based on direct personal encounters with the infinite. It holds that life's daily experiences – from loving, parenting, working, and simply being outdoors – also hold spiritual meaning that can be discovered and explored to enrich life.

Because Transcendentalism is a self-defined religious practice, there are no systems to study, no languages to learn, no organizations to join and no dues to pay. Transcendentalism is simplicity itself, and it can serve as a welcome alternative to the many complex religious systems that compete for our attention today.

Transcendental practice is . . .

Built on direct encounters with the infinite. As Emerson wrote in his essay, Nature:

 

"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile."

Free of dogma, systems and self-proclaimed authorities. Consider these words from Thoreau's Walden:

 

"No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself."

 

Self-defined. From Emerson's essay Self-Reliance:

"Whoso would be a man [or woman - ed.] must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the authority of your own mind."

Simple and modest. Again, from Walden . . .

"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."

Transcendentalism has not gone away. Americans still practice it, though they may not call it by its name. It is our sleeping spiritual giant. When it is called by its name and invited back into our lives, it has the potential to transform the way we think about our lives and our faith.

Higher and Higher (and wider and wider, and deeper and deeper, and taller and taller too . . . ) Resolutions for 2009

As 2009 started, I have been turning my attention to resolutions – new things I would like to do in the New Year. New ways of thinking.

Perhaps it is because I have finally gotten infected with the voices of Emerson and Thoreau, or perhaps it is because I am thinking in new ways. But whatever the cause, I am exploding with the possibility of the new.

I would never recommend that you do things that I am proposing or that you should think the way I do. After all, the point of Transcendental thinking is to define your own life and your own authorities. But let me just tell you what I intend to do in the coming year. People tell me that when you tell other people about your resolutions, those people will help you hold to them.

So here is what I intend to do . . .

I will expand the categories of my thinking. I will start out thinking like a Transcendentalist, because that is the baseline for me. But I will try to become a Transcendentalist who is also a Christian – who internalizes the moral teachings of Jesus. Then I will strive to become a Transcendentalist who is also a Shinto – who recognizes the divine presence in every single thing he finds through the day, from the smallest pebble to the biggest cloud. Then I will become a Transcendentalist who is also a Muslim – who seeks that daily, passionate relationship with the divine. Then I will become a Transcendentalist who is also a Jew – who renews a commitment to good acts and just living. Then I will become a Transcendentalist who is also an atheist – who subjects every belief to doubt and questioning, never blind acceptance. I will strive to become someone whose beliefs start out like a bubble of oil floating atop a glass of water, attracting other bubbles and merging with them. Bigger and bigger! Wider and wider! The bigger I can become, the more I can encompass, the greater my understanding will become. Beyond all categories! This is the way I hope to live my life. (I will also become a conservative, a liberal, a capitalist and a communist. I will devour everything that lies in my path and grow and grow and grow.)

I will set aside opinions – one day at a time. I will stop thinking in sentences that start with the words, "They should not . . ." because that is flawed thinking. Instead of thinking, "Those people should not hold that kind of faith" or, "Those people should not raise their children in that way" or, "Those people should not drive that kind of car or act in that way," I will turn my opinions inward on myself. I will say instead, "I should not," and see where that leads me. Opinions about others are false leaders that cut off both my growth and my true understanding of the world. It is childish thinking that I will teach myself to set aside. When I was a child I thought as a child . . . etcetera!

I will recommit myself to living a Transcendental life. As Emerson and Thoreau taught me, a higher spiritual life is always with me – when I wake in the morning, when I walk out the door and look at the sky, when I prepare meals, when I exercise, when I encounter other people. There is a spirit in everything, as near as my experience. And when I lose sight of that, I will try to turn myself back onto the right way.

Transcendental Lessons from the Presidency of George W. Bush

Raplh Waldo Emerson cationed us to be wary of authorities, which usually serve to delude us. With that warning in mind, I'd like to turn my attention to the question of authorities in the recent presidency of George W. Bush.

Authority One: Education. George W. Bush graduated from three of the most highly regarded educational institutions in America: Andover (high school); Yale (undergraduate degree); and Harvard (MBA). Yet he was nonetheless a simpleton who had a hard time stammering out a cogent sentence. The lesson: A man or woman must stand on his own intelligence; when we assume that someone is intelligent because of his or her credentials, we are allowing an authority to cloud the issue and delude us.

Authority Two: Breeding. George W. Bush came from an aristocratic family. And in many people’s belief, that means that he ought to have been a superior human being with superior qualities. But we live in an age where evidence is everywhere that refutes that kind of thinking. And the achievements of George W. Bush stand apart as the greatest refutation of that kind of thinking in our history. The lesson: Breeding has nothing to do with any person’s intelligence or ability. We need to see people in a bigger way than that.

Authority Three: Conservatism. George W. Bush was supposed to be a model fiscal conservative, capable of implementing the conservative agenda: small government, diminishing constraints on business, and reduction of taxes on business. Yet in the end, he was incapable of implementing any of those things. His lack of insight and implementation on those points led him to preside over the biggest governmental bail-outs of the last half century. The lesson: Voting for Bush because he appeared to be capable of implementing a conservative agenda was a serious mistake.

Authority Four: Militarism. George W. Bush positioned himself as pro-military and as a result, he won a lot of votes. Somehow, he made the sale on this point to many conservative Americans. Yet if those voters had taken a closer look, they would have seen that he was not a veteran. Furthermore, he surrounded himself with other politicians, including his vice president, who had never been in the military. Finally, despite his posturing as a militarist, he proved to be incapable of planning or managing a war - a war which has now lasted longer than World War II and which cannot be won. The lesson: When serious things must be done, more than posturing is required. Voters need to look for the real thing, not puffery and smoke. And we need to realize that a military past is not absolutely needed in a military leader. What is needed is an openness to sound military advice – and the intelligence to separate good military advice from bad.

Authority Five: Spirituality. Bush positioned himself as a deeply religious Christian. And perhaps he is. (Far be it from me to cast verdicts about the religious beliefs of other.) Yet the fact remains that he sanctioned torture, enforced the death penalty and incarcerated people without following due process of law. The lesson: Don't accept people's statements about their beliefs. Watch what they do.

Authority Six: Being a defender of the constitution. Bush wooed conservatives by saying that he was one of them - a strict defender of constitutional rights. Yet by throwing away constitutional protections against the accused, he did more to unravel our central document than any other president in history. The lesson: Don't fall victim to empty flag-waving. Watch what people do.

And what about the future?

Well, we are going to find out, aren't we? One hopeful sign is that Barack Obama has, so far, resolutely tried to avoid playing the authority cards - in fact, he has said that there is not a red America and a blue America, but just one America. Thereby, he has expressed a willingness to sidestep the delusional marketing ploys that have dominated the process of president-making in the past. But how well will Barack Obama stand up in the transcendental spotlight? There is no way to know just now. But for the moment, let us all give him the gift of optimism. Or has he has said in his own writings, the power of hope.

If you want to start your day with something big to chew on, this quote from Emerson’s monumental essay “Self-Reliance” should do the trick:

“The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.”

 

   

The Economy: We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us

Big banks failed, and the government bailed them out. Three big automakers are on a slippery slope, and it looks like the government is on the verge of bailing them out too.

In response to these events, everybody has been looking for someone to blame. During the campaign, both presidential candidates took pot shots at Wall Street CEOs, and at CEOs in general, for their purported greed. In recent weeks, everybody has been blaming the top executives of the car companies that are looking for a loan from the Feds.

"Look at those fat cats arriving in Washington in private planes," so many people have said. "Look at how out of touch they are with the people on Main Street USA."

Yet are they really out of touch? In the larger scheme of things, why play the blame game? Of course, any narrative goes better when there is a villain. But in this case, I think that I have met the enemy. And the enemy is us - the way we live, the way our businesses conduct themselves, our very economic system.

As I look back over the last 40 years, it becomes pretty clear to me that a lot of American business has been built on fluff. More specifically, American businesses have tried to invent products and to market them, even when there has been no demonstrated need for them. 

I have been part of the problem, in the publishing world. I have sat in meetings where new publications were invented, and plans to market them put into place, even when there was no real need for those publications to exist in the first place. It's been the old, "Let's just see if anybody buys this turkey" kind of game.

That kind of activity is pretty benign in publishing. If a new publication fails, it doesn't do much harm to anybody. But it is a far different story in, say, the investment world. When a bank or investment company decides to test a new kind of product to see if it "flies," it is often the customers who incur the damage when the product fails - be it a new jumbo mortgage or a mutual fund that is run up a flagpole just to see if someone will buy it, just to see if it flaps. And when that product doesn't flap - well, by then the executives who dreamed it up have already moved on to new jobs, because nobody sticks around anywhere for long these days.

When I was a kid growing up, my parents had their money in a savings account, where it earned steady, predictable interest. Over the next four decades, marketers introduced all kinds of new products that were supposed to be better than a simple savings account. And because of those "better" products, people have lost their homes, savings and retirement accounts.

So I offer up the Emersonian perspective, that we are all ultimately responsible for the things that we decide, and for the things that result from those decisions. I have met the villain and it is me - guilty as can be, because of my greed, desire to make money without really working hard for it, and lots of other undesirable truths. And today might be a good day to pick up and read my copy of Walden. I have a notion that old Henry David has something to say that will shed a lot of light on this very question.     

The Plump, Smug Little Men Who [Think They] Hold the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven

It’s been all over the news lately. A group of plump, smug Episcopal male elders, puffed with their own authority, want to create a second Episcopalean entity in the United States that will bar the ordination of gay and lesbian priests.  (Why, I might ask, are the people who think this way always men?)

What are they thinking? Apparently not all religious authorities have learned that progress cannot be made by following the path of hatred, bias and exclusion.  They want the comfort of sitting in services where people who are not like them are not welcome. I am not a Christian but as I understand it, Christ did not favor that kind of outlook as a path to spiritual wholeness.  If heaven is populated only by the straight – well, it won’t be a very interesting place, will it?

I might refer the bigoted authorities to an article, “Churchmen Demand Negro Separation,” that appeared in the New York Times way back on October 3, 1907. Back then, an Episcopal splinter group wanted to bar African-Americans from positions of authority in their church. Today, similar retro-thinkers want to bar gay people. At least this kind of bigotry is part of a tradition – even though it is the worst kind of tradition.

Gentlemen, keep the bigger picture. Look back over the last century and see what you are doing.  Has progress ever been made by bigotry? Has goodness ever resulted from hatred?

Emerson might have said that such small thinking is a natural result of the divisional structure of all religions – the “us vs. them” dichotomy that arises from the central conceit that members of one faith are entitled to enter the kingdom of heaven, while others are stopped at the door.

Emerson and Thoreau might also  say that hatred will continue to exist as long as all people do not learn to walk outside, look up at the sky, and see that God is equally available to all.

That is too much to hope for in calendar year 2008 – or in calendar year 2050, for that matter. But at least we can start on that path today, by not hating our fellow travelers on the roadway of life.

Another Utopia Falls

First utopian world communism fell. Now, the utopian vision of supply-side economics has fallen too. And fallen very hard, when the U.S. government rode in to save our financial institutions from failure. 

If you adopt a Transcendentalist point of view, you will see that the partial nationalization of our banks speaks volumes about all the problems that intrude when a government and influential individuals apply a "one-size-fits-all" dogma to a range of problems that exceeds the scope of what that dogma can logically contain.

There was never any logical reason to believe that simply allowing American business to self-limit and self-regulate would cure all problems, if given the time. But instead of monitoring lending activitity, the government failed to intrude, because doing so would violate the utopian belief that the market will always cure itself if left unregulated. And now we see the results. Faced with catastrophe, the government had to act, in a way that bordered on socialism, to save the system from itself. Instead of acting in countless small ways, case by case, every day, a vast remedial cure was needed in 72 hours.

What a government should do is to monitor lending and enforce regulations (which were already present in this case) to halt irresponsible lending. But instead, our government adhered to the promises of a false authority - non-intervention - and believed that that authority would work in every case. So what if banks were writing mortgage loans to individuals who had no hope of repaying them? The economic engine would self-correct and heal itself.

The only problem is, it didn't work.  

Emerson could have told us that such practices were distorted and ill-informed, counting as they did on a utopian belief system that lacked the specificity to address individual actions and practices.

As always, blind adherence to an authority blinded those in power. It happened to Lenin, Stalin and their successors. And how it has happened to us. In our case, a limited economic conceit convinced our elected officials that there was no need to act to save our financial system.

Now I realize tht this post is not the most sizzling or interesting. It reads like a lecture in a freshman course on utopian thinking. And I apologize for that. Yet the fact remains that blind belief in a questionable authority always results in bad outcomes. When people are losing their homes because the government allowed itself to be deluded by a far-reaching dogma, the words "bad outcomes" fall far, far short.  

 

Hallelujah! I'm a Bum

The very personal joys of going it alone

Okay, here's a post that is not going to make me many friends. 

I was talking a walk yesterday, on a beautiful Sunday morning. And my route happened to take me past a the side door of a church. I heard voices from inside, and the clanking of dishes and cutlery.  People were talking in loud, energized voices - the kind of voices that people speak in when they are with other people, engaged in a shared activity.

I walked by, alone. And I was overjoyed to be alone - to be out there by myself, having my walk, just by myself under the beautiful blue sky. Intead of being part of that group with their shared purpose and energetic activity.

I have the same feeling of joy, I am reluctant to admit, whenever I bypass any kind of religous rites. For years, I sang in professional quartets for the Jewish holidays. Now when those holidays arrive, I am overjoyed that I am not part of them. For years, I sang in professional church choruses at Christmas and Easter. And now when those holidays arrive, I am delighted to be excused from taking part.

In fact, I believe I get just as much joy from being on my own at those times as the people do who are taking part.

Now, I am not saying that the people who love those religions and their rituals are doing anything wrong. I am simply saying that I am doing what is right for me. From my earliest days, I could not wait to escape from any kind of church or temple. I was practically jumping out of my own flesh, I was so eager to get outside. So my decision to go it alone in spiritual matters was not a difficult one to make. I just did what came naturally to me.

And because I read Emerson, I understand that there is some precedent for feeling the way I do. As he wrote in his diary, 

"My life is a May game, I will live as I like. I defy your strait-laced, weary, social ways, and modes."

In other words, "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum." Thanks again, Ralph, as always, for showing me that I am empowered to define the authorities in my own life.

Robert Rauschenberg as the End Result of Authority

Robert Rauschenberg, the American artist, died on May 12.

For decades, experts have praised Rauschenberg and his work. Museum curators have worked hard to include his works in their collections. Gallery owners and "tastemakers" have cultivated a market for his work. Corporations have striven to add his works to their collections too. Nicely dressed men and women stand before his works in museums.

The only thing about Rauschenberg is, he couldn't paint. He could nail a mattress to a board and smear it with pigment. He could glue a dead bird to a panel. He follows in a long line of artists - Pollack, DeKooning, Rothko - who couldn't paint either. Their careers and repuations have been constructed by experts and authorities. There are copious writings about these artists - why their work is important, why it is emblematic of the human condition, how it is reflective of our troubled age. Somehow, art has gotten mixed up with psychoanalyis and we are supposed to stand in awe before the works of artists who work through thier neuroses before our eyes.

But today, I want to take the role of the little boy who cried out, "The emperor has no clothes."

Our society's adoration of artists who can't actually do anything but express themselves is the end result of placing too much trust in experts, tastemakers, and other "authorities."  Trust yourself. Trust your eyes. Nothing, as Emerson wrote, is reliable except the authority of your own mind. Perhaps if we trust that, we can find our way to some higher beauty.

 

From Palm Sunday to Memorial Day

I’ll be the first to admit that it has been a long time since I have posted here. But the good thing about being a small fish is, hardly anybody notices when I slither away for a while. (Have you noticed how a lot of bloggers behave as though there are millions of readers out there, hanging on their every word? At least I can’t be accused of that.)

But by way of self-justification, I have to say that I have been involved in a ton of thinking about transcendentalism over the past weeks and months. It all started when I was in Paris – my first trip there in more than 20 years.

On Palm Sunday morning, I went to Notre Dame with my family. We stood there and listened to a beautiful chanting of the Passion According to Saint Matthew. Then we flew back to the U.S. and only a few days later, I attended a wonderful performance of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion in New York. Those two rather deep spiritual experiences set the backdrop for some less reassuring spiritual experiences that came my way in the weeks that followed.

First, a friend of mine sent me a link to a propaganda film that attacks Muslims, purporting to document the fact that Islam is a religion of hate. It was a classic piece of deceptive propaganda, juxtaposing pieces of a religion’s scriptural text against depictions of the bad things that members of that religion have done. The same kind of propaganda could, and has, been created to smear Jews, Catholics and members of just about any other group. Why is it that people who would be the first to cry foul if they were attacked by such propaganda are the first to embrace it when it is directed against people who are not like them?

Second came the visit of the Pope to America, during which time His Holiness met with hundreds of people who have been abused by Catholic priests.

Third came the raids by Texas police in which children – ostensibly victims of abuse – were taken away from a polygamist compound.

Fourth came a number of political scandals, large and small, in which ridiculous statements made by clergymen (and I use that term advisedly, since none of the perpetrators were women) caused a lot of harm to presidential candidates.

Now, if I were thinking like a typical blogger, I would just come out swinging with a lot of infuriating opinions about all these happenings. But I have found that the more I think about all of the above, the more puzzled I become. I only end up with more questions, not more answers.

The biggest of these questions is, how can a religion (including Christianity, which encompasses the astonishing story that I heard in the words of Saint Matthew), or any religion for that matter, lead to such flawed, crazy, aberrant and hateful behavior?

Could it really be that Emerson was right – that the truest faith is the one that results from direct communication with nature, unfiltered by organized religious and other self-declared authorities? A spirituality achieved in solitude, not in groups?

I don’t know. The questions are a lot bigger than I can answer. But maybe that is a good thing. Asking tough questions, I think, is probably wiser than arriving at easy answers.