Varieties Of Liberation Theology
Liberation Theology is normally associated with Latin American Catholicism. However, it can be understood as a radical tendency existing within all the major world religions, which each contain currents emphasising the following themes:
* working with the poor
* challenging authority
* seeking liberation in this life as well as the next
* favouring activism over contemplation
CHRISTIANITY
Liberation theology focuses on the needs of the poor and, in their interest, is prepared to challenge political and ecclesiastical hierarchies. In Latin America, the prototype was Bartolomé De Las Casas (1484 – 1566), a Dominican priest who became Bishop of Chiapas (the area which in recent times gave birth to the Zapatista movement). Against the grain of Spanish colonialism, De Las Casas envisioned a just society where indigenous people would co-exist peacefully and freely with the colonists instead of as slaves.
In the 20th Century, an important figure was Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, assasinated in 1980. Previously a conservative, Romero inclined to liberation theology after a Jesuit colleague was killed for creating self-reliant groups among poor peasants. When the government refused to investigate, Romero spoke out against poverty, social injustice, assasinations and torture, until the death squads killed him too.
HINDUISM
Within Hinduism, Gandhi pioneered liberation theology. He successfully challenged the colonial power, and he also challenged the orthodox Hindu authorities, particularly with regard to untouchability, which led to his assasination by a Hindu extremist in 1948. Gandhi practiced karma yoga, the path to liberation through work, which in his case meant social and political activism. Gandhi combined the traditional Indian ideal of non-violence (ahimsa) with the Christian ideal of active love, to produce satyagraha, the theory and practice of non-violent direct action. Later, satyagraha was successfully adopted by Martin Luther King, another major figure in the history of liberation theology.
ISLAM
Sheikh Amadou Bamba of Senegal (1853 – 1927) offers a great example of liberation theology in an Islamic context. Founder of the Mouride Sufi movement, Bamba led a non-violent struggle against French colonialism. The French exiled and tortured him, which only strengthened his movement. Notably, Bamba emphasised work as a spiritual practice, and his followers are renowned for their industriousness, being involved in many economic enterprises throughout Senegal, such as groundnut cultivation.
BUDDHISM
In Sri Lanka the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement uses traditional Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths and the Wheel of Life to improve worldly conditions such as sanitation and food cultivation.
Understanding God’s Oneness
The key insight of monotheism is God’s Oneness and unique fitness to be worshipped. In Islam, the understanding of God’s Oneness or Unity is known as Tawhid. Statements of God’s Oneness typically emphasise transcendence – the fact that God cannot be compared to anything within creation. For example, Sura Al-Ikhlas (chapter 112 of the Qur’an) says:
Say, He is God, the One,
God the Eternal,
He neither begets nor is begotten
And there is none like him.
From the point of view of Tawhid it is not advisable to represent God in ways that associate or mix him with created entities. Monotheists object to the visual depiction or representation of God because any picture or statue of God necessarily contradicts God’s Oneness, as many divine characteristics are necessarily excluded from any picture or statue. Also, any picture or statue necessarily associates or mixes God with created entities such as human or animal forms, or even subtle objects like light. On the other hand, verbal descriptions (i.e. names such as ‘Merciful’. ‘Powerful’, ‘Just’, ‘Wrathful’ etc.) do not necessarily exclude other divine characteristics and therefore do not contradict God’s Oneness, nor do they necessarily associate God with created entities. In the Torah the commandment against idolatry (arabic: shirk) reads:
“You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (Exodus 20:4).
The key words here are ‘make’ and ‘form’, meaning that the commandment relates to pictures and statues, because words are not ‘made forms’, unless we really stretch this phrase. However, the dangers of idolatry do not entirely disappear simply by prohibiting the making of forms of God. When we use words to describe God’s qualities there is the danger that we may overemphasise some at the expense of others, to the point where we even fragment God in our own minds. Perhaps this disease can affect those who greatly overemphasise God’s Wrath because, as a hadith qudsi tells us, the inscription on God’s throne reads: “My Mercy precedes My Wrath”. To deny God’s Mercy is a serious misunderstanding, warped and partial.
Although many names for God are valid, it is preferable not to use names that might associate God with created things. Moreover, certain names belong to God and must be not be used for any other being or entity, for example “Possessing Supreme Power” or “The Lord Who Looks Down In Mercy”. It is not appropriate to use these names to describe or worship any other being. My own spiritual path has led me from a form of polytheistic worship in which I used to mistakenly associate other beings with those names, to a position (Islam) in which I now believe these names just apply to God. However, I believe that I received some blessings even in the earlier stage, because these names always belong to God and, even if we think we are worshipping other beings through these names, we are really worshipping God. Ascribing these names to other beings than God is a form of idolatry and is seriously not recommended, though God in His Mercy may choose to accept the prayers of someone who uses these names in ignorance. However, once this person realises that God is One, and that these names belong to God, he or she must certainly stop worshipping any other being through them.
Some Hindus and Buddhists practise a mystical form of monotheism because they realise that all the apparent manifestations of God are in fact illusions, and that there is only one God. Annemarie Schimmel describes mystical monotheism as
“the secondary monotheism in which, starting from polytheistic tendencies, at last theological speculation comes to understand that one single reality underlies all the varied manifestations which are called deities, and reaches the conclusion to explain the manifold gods and goddesses only as functions of the One Divine Being; this type of monotheism may also result from mystic experiences in which the seeker finds himself united with the profoundest depths of the Divine, and regards, thus, the deities only as emanations from the Most high indivisible Essence; or in prayer man chooses one out of the great number of gods and turns towards him in faith and trust as if only he be effective; or different deities become united for purposes of cult and rite or as a result of the political unification of two peoples with different objects of worship. But this kind of monotheism which is characteristic of the ancient religions of Egypt, Babylon, India, etc., is always deductive; it does not make a clear cut between the One and the many, and admits the existence of deities besides the Highest Being.” Gabriel’s Wing, p87
Schimmel contrasts this mystical, deductive monotheism with prophetic monotheism:
“It was prophetical experience in Israel (plus Christianity) and in Islam which realized the overwhelming uniqueness of God besides whom all those whom man might have adored until then were nothings and which cannot tolerate the worship of any other than that God who reveals Himself in the individual life and in history. Mystic monotheism may include all forms of reality because there is nothing existent but God and everything is a part of His life; but prophetic monotheism is always exclusive . . . . that is why the negation in the beginning of the Muslim creed la ilaha illa Allah—there is no god but God.” (ibid)
The key characteristic of prophetic monotheism is that it negates deities: “there is no deity but the Deity”. Mystical monotheism proposes a unification of deities but does not negate deities, because they are still regarded as valid objects of worship. For this reason many adherents of prophetic monotheism believe that mystical monotheism is an inadequate understanding of the Deity, whose very existence negates deities.
Tawhid is the profession of the Absolute Oneness of the Deity, the establishment of the Deity as the Absolute who negates deities. One way of understanding the negating function of the Absolute is by studying dialectic reasoning. In dialectics, a thesis gives rise to its reaction, its antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two is resolved by means of a third position, the synthesis. The synthesis, however, it not merely a combination of the thesis and antithesis, rather it is a completely new entity which may be utterly different from both thesis and antithesis, but which nevertheless resolves their tensions, so that it utterly negates both thesis and antithesis.
Imagine two religious teachers, both of whom are polytheists, but who disagree about a particular deity in the pantheon: one teacher claims the deity is supremely good; the other believes the deity is supremely evil. How to resolve the tension between them? Sweep away the whole pantheon and realise that there is no god but God. In a sense, God is the inevitable conclusion or ‘synthesis’ arising from the thesis and antithesis set up by the polytheists – but God is not deduced from their premises or their deities, nor does God unite their deities, instead God negates their deities through Absolute Unity.
God is One in a similar way that the universe is one. The universe is the totality of all physical phenomena; God is the Totality, the Whole. God’s Wholeness is the source of all holiness and well-being. God is the Absolute in whom all opposites and contradictions are resolved. God is One because there is no other. God is One because no truth contradicts any other truth – they are all aspects of the Truth. By the same token, no goodness or virtue contradicts any other aspect of goodness or virtue, they are all aspects of the greatest Good. God is the Unity to whom the apparent multiplicity points. Sufis seek the signs of God within multiplicity: everything has a side facing toward God; everything points to the One God, and we delight in that recognition. God is Love.
The goal of Sufism is to know God in this life. All Muslims believe that we will meet God in our future life, especially on the Day of Judgement. However Sufis believe that it is possible to meet and know God in this life. My Sufi friend Abdullah advised me to “make friends with God before you die”. The Sufi saints (awliya) are the friends of God, who have achieved intimacy with God in this life.
Reflections On Satyagraha
Activating our soul isn’t easy, and finding a way to change the world through soul-power (God we need it) can be even harder. This is the meaning of Satyagraha, the term first introduced by Mahatma Gandhi to describe his campaign in South Africa, now made into an opera by Philip Glass. Satyagraha the opera places Gandhi’s life in a mythological context, showing how Gandhi was first inspired by the Bhagavad Gita and the figures of Tagore and Tolstoy, and how he in turn came to be an inspiration to others, notably Martin Luther King.
At the start of the opera we see Gandhi inhabiting the mythical battlefield between the Pandava and Kaurava clans, together with the hero Arjuna and the god Krishna. Just as Arjuna is caught between the competing claims of the two clans, towards both of whom he feels loyalty, so Gandhi is caught between the rival claims of the British empire and the Indian people, towards both of who he feels loyalty. Just as Arjuna’s soul (Atman) is activated by Krishna’s wise counsel that he must have the courage to do his duty in the face of life’s conflicts, so too is Gandhi’s. The scene ends with the solemn vow of Brahmacarya, as Gandhi / Arjuna promises to dedicate his life to courageous service.
Mobilising the soul as an active force in human politics and the affairs of the world is no easy task, and Gandhi draws hostility, ridicule and even violence upon himself as he adopts the dress and lifestyle of a renunciate. Yet the ways of the spirit are subtle, and profoundly affect the human sphere through what appear, on the surface, to be simple acts, but which are imbued with great symbolism and resonance. We see this played out as Gandhi and his followers burn their identity cards (‘passes’) to protest against the racist laws of the time. This simple act is incredibly liberating, both spiritually and politically, and lifts them to a new plane of existence.
Satyagraha is ‘the surgery of the soul’, because it is a method for bringing about a profound change of heart in ourselves and others which leads to political and social change. The Satyagrahi must be courageous and willing to sacrifice his or her own well-being in order to demonstrate truth. It is only the courageous demonstration of truth that can touch the soul of the oppressor, and cause him to change or at least relent. This, finally, is the meaning of Satyagraha – that profound, long-lasting change, whether personal or political, must originate from within, and the only method that ultimately works is one based on understanding and harnessing the soul.
The Sufi Path of Service
How can we distinguish between fatal and liberating choices? That was the question posed this week by Sheikh Aly N’Daw, head of the International Sufi School. He was speaking at his book launch in Westminster, which was hosted by Ian Stewart MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Friends of Islam group. Aly N’Daw is from the Mouride school of Sufism founded by the Senegalese saint Amadou Bamba (1850-1927) who emphasised service to others as the path to God. Sheikh Aly encourages his students to study the lives of great men and women who have bridged the gap between politics and spirituality, and have demonstrated how peace within leads to peace in the world.
Sheikh Aly asked us to consider the choice that Martin Luther King made when he decided not to opt for a comfortable lifestyle in Chicago, but to take his ministry to the South and confront the spectre of racial discrimination. On the surface, it appears that Dr. King made a fatal choice, because his ministry ended with his assasination. However, in reality he made a liberating choice, because he could have suffered spiritual death by taking the easy option of remaining in Chicago, and his sacrifice contributed to the political and social liberation of millions of African-Americans.
Next we were asked to consider Muhammad Yunus, pioneer of micro-credit and founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. A professor of economics, he became disillusioned with academic life and went to live with a group of peasants. Many people would consider this a fatal choice, at least professionally, but for Muhammad Yunus it was liberating because it showed him how small sums of money loaned on trust could yield massive results if targetted at the right people, particularly women. By 2008 the Grameen Bank had loaned US$7.8 billion to the poor.
Ian Stewart MP talked about his own difficult choice, to vote for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He explained that his motivation had been to help the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs, but now that hundreds of thousands of people had died as a result of the war, he could not be sure if he had been right. He described the whirl of conventional political life and how politicians, caught in the maelstrom, are on auto-pilot, without time or space to connect with the spiritual dimension of life. As he is not standing in the forthcoming general election, he expressed the hope that he would now have time to learn more about what Sufism describes as the spiritual heart.
The first two books in Sheikh Aly N’Daw’s series are ‘The Initiatory Way To Peace’ and ‘Liberation Therapy’. If you would like to buy a copy, please email: contact_uk@international-sufi-school.org . The International Sufi School’s next event is a conference in Edinburgh in May entitled ‘Nonviolence Within: Peace For All’ (http://www.nonviolence-edinburgh.com/)
Sustainability & Autonomy
In order for any system to be sustainable (i.e. viable over a long period) all of its components must have a high degree of autonomy. The reason why natural ecosystems are sustainable (if humans don’t destroy them) is because their components such as plants and animals are autonomous. Plants, for example, autonomously photosynthesize and extend their roots to draw nutrients from the soil. Meanwhile, herbivores autonomously nourish themselves by eating plants, and carnivores by eating herbivores etc.
All systems face two principal types of threat: internal and external. External threats are many and varied: depending on the system they include strikes by meteorites, flu epidemics, bank failures and so on. A typical internal threat to a system is when one of its sub-systems predominates at the expense of the others, annexing a disproportionate share of the system’s resources and threatening the very survival of the whole, including the dominant sub-system itself.
Every viable system has a sub-system responsible for preserving the whole, and for maintaining the system’s essential organizing characteristics over time. The Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana called this sub-system ‘autopoietic’, meaning ‘self-making’ in Greek. The British cybernetician Stafford Beer coined the phrase ‘pathological autopoiesis’ to describe a situation where this sub-system malfunctions, and attempts to preserve itself at the expense of the whole. It starts to construe ‘self’ too narrowly, mistaking the welfare of the sub-system for the welfare of the whole system.
Our modern political sphere is full-to-overflowing with examples of pathological autopoiesis, where elements of government or public life which are supposed to benefit the whole merely seek to preserve or enrich themselves. Banks and MPs are two obvious examples. Typically these pathological sub-systems protest that they are acting in the interest of the whole when they are clearly not. How many times have we heard ‘the national interest’ invoked to justify the crazy wars in Iraq and Afganistan, even after we explained that they are “not in our name”?
Fortunately, because all of its components have a degree of autonomy, it is possible for the system to survive even when some of its sub-systems are establishing a pathological hegemony. In the political sphere this autonomy is known as ‘democracy’, and it is a prerequisite for the long-term viability and sustainability of the human race. Democracy offers us the chance to wrest power and resources from pathological sub-systems before they destroy us, and ironically themselves too.
Synthesis & Analysis
“We are the inheritors of categorized knowledge; therefore we inherit also a world view that consists of parts strung together, rather than of wholes regarded through different sets of filters. Historically, synthesis seems to have been too much for the human mind — where practical affairs were concerned. The descent of the synthetic method from Plato through Augustine took men’s perception into literature, art and mysticism. The modern world of science and technology is bred from Aristotle and Aquinas by analysis. The categorization that took hold of medieval scholasticism has really lasted it out. We may see with hindsight that the historic revolts against the scholastics did not shake free from the shackles of their reductionism. “
Stafford Beer, preface to Autopoiesis and cognition: the realization of the living by Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela (p63)
Photograph: Chandeliers in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France.
© BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons
The Whole Thing
“All societary regulatory systems begin inside the individual, at leasy cytologically and neurophysiologically and endocrynologically, then psychologically, and in my own understanding mystically too; and they extend according to cybernetic principles of regulatory processes through many recursions and many dimensions of embedment. Those we know how to examine and measure, which is to say that today define the scope of science, do not stop short of the global economy; the mystical ones not even then.”
Stafford Beer, Think Before You Think (p203)
Purification Through Patience – part 1
The following is my adaptation of a teaching I received in 2006
Because we are so concerned with avoiding or overcoming any physical or mental discomfort or pain and achieving physical and mental comfort and pleasure, we spend a lot of our time trying to identify the causes and conditions of things happening in our life. We want to know what will give rise to pain and pleasure, and what we can do either to stop such causes and conditions assembling, or to help them assemble. We do this all day long: trying to manage things, adjusting, moving around, pushing, pulling, trying to keep control. It’s so important for us. We need to know what are the causes and conditions leading to certain effects that are taking place in our life, we need to know so that we can maintain some control over our life, so that we don’t have to experience so much suffering, so that things don’t go wrong.
Sometimes it doesn’t work: we’re eating really really healthily, we have a good diet, we exercise, and yet we get sick. Maybe there is something in our diet, we change that and still we get sick. Or I take medicine because the doctor says this medicine works, other people have taken it and say that it works, so I take the medicine . . . and it doesn’t work for me. I want to accomplish a particular result and everything is perfectly in place but the result doesn’t occur, something goes wrong – that doesn’t make sense! There’s some frustration in our mind: “that’s not supposed to happen”. We’ve checked, and it’s still not happening. Why? We don’t know what to do. It’s like when you’ve lit a firework and you leave it and nothing is happening and it doesn’t make sense . . . it’s got the guarantee on the box . . . and you’re afraid to go there . . . is it going to work or is it not? It’s not making sense. What am I going to do?
When we experience suffering or misfortune we look outside for the cause. We may suffer from bad headaches, and we conclude they are caused by eating sugar. We’ve done that haven’t we? “I must cut down on the sugar, I must cut down on the chocolate, I must cut down on the coffee” But if eating sugar was the main cause of headaches, everyone who eats sugar would suffer from headaches, but they don’t. Why is it that some people suffer from headaches if they eat a little bit of sugar when other people don’t even though they have three teaspoons of sugar in their tea every day? Headache arises from the potential for headache. Where is this potential? Is it in the sugar?
When we are experiencing suffering, either physical or mental, when we are experiencing difficulties, when things are going wrong, the first thing we must do is ask ourselves “why?”. Normally when we experience suffering, when things are going wrong we respond or react so quickly, in order to make some changes so that the suffering ceases, so that what is going wrong changes into what is right. Instead, rather than go straight in and sort it all out like we normally do, we wait a minute . . . wait . . . wait. Why is this happening? Where is this suffering coming from, where is this situation coming from? “Now is the time to purify my mind, to purify my soul, now. I accept this suffering, I accept what is happening right now with a grateful mind.” This patient acceptance itself is so purifying, and we can take this practice a little bit further by not just patiently accepting suffering, not just happily accepting things going wrong, but by even allowing these things to take place.
We need to think about the difference and the relationship between acceptance and allowance. It’s easy to fool ourselves into believing that we are practicing patient acceptance when in fact we are not. Imagine something happens that we don’t particularly like so we are quite patient, we experience some suffering, but still we make some changes. There may be some patience in our attitude, but not much. We make changes because we know we can make them. This is typically what we do. We are managing, and we are managing very well; we’re controlling, and we are controlling very well. This indicates that we haven’t given up on the idea that things should be different than they are. In our heart we not only feel they should be different, we believe we should make them different. All I have to do is say something or do something, and things will be different. I’m still working with causes and conditions: removing some, adding some and, hey presto, I’ve got what I wanted, sometimes without having to practice any patience at all. It looks like we have some patience . . . maybe. We know in our own heart if there is patience or not. If there is some difficulty we can change it straight away, so there’s no problem! Patient?
If a fly lands on my head I can just ‘patiently’ flick it away. So you tell me, if I was to do that, would you think that I was patient? I look like I am patient, I can just carry on talking, patiently, as the fly lands on my head, and I just flick it away ‘patiently’. “That fly shouldn’t be on my head”. I’m not accepting it. I know that if I act then the change takes place: where once there was a fly on my head, now there is none. How much do we really allow to take place in our life? Not very much. One way of dividing patience is into accepting that which we can do nothing about and accepting that which we can do something about. We would not say “I’m allowing it to rain”, but you can allow that fly to remain on your head. I would say that patient acceptance in general is very purifying, but allowing things to happen when we could actually do something about them if we wanted to is immensely purifying. We feel so often there is something we can do about what’s happening. What I’m suggesting here is that we don’t do anything, rather we allow whatever is taking place to take place, having given up the idea that things should be different from how they are. I’m allowing something to happen when I could, if I wanted, prevent it from happening or stop it from happening. It’s an acceptance, but I think it’s a very powerful kind of acceptance, allowing something to happen. It is both purifying and difficult.
For example, in respect to mental discomfort, mental suffering, don’t be in such a rush to free yourself from it. If someone is criticising us and there is a bad feeling in our mind, it actually feels quite painful. What we would we normally do is stop that person from criticising us, as if the person criticising us is the main cause of our mental suffering. (Where is that suffering really coming from?) Instead, with a deep breath we just accept that suffering. We allow that painful feeling to remain, and eventually it will go. Normally, because we cannot bear that feeling, we have to do something, we have to say something to that person, we don’t allow them to continue. In fact we should accept that suffering, allowing it to remain in our mind and allowing that person to continue. It’s so purifying. Normally our need to escape from unpleasant feelings is so urgent that we do not give ourselves the time to discover where these feelings actually come from. When painful feelings arise in our mind there is no need to panic. We can patiently accept them, experience them – and we can only do that if we allow them to remain in our mind – we experience them and investigate their nature and where they come from.
So when things go wrong I’m going to allow them to go wrong. Why don’t we want things to go wrong? What does ‘wrong’ mean anyway? Things are going wrong, and I’m just not allowing that. What does that mean, “something is wrong”? Why is it wrong, what makes it wrong, and why are we in such a rush to put things ‘right’? If you think about it, we’re doing this all the time because mostly things are not right, and things are never perfect, and we want things to be perfect. So we will keep doing something to make things better in the hope that actually they’ll be perfect. We don’t stop. “It’s wrong that the fly lands on my head.” What’s wrong with that? Let’s ask the fly: “Do you think what you’re doing is wrong?” “No I think what I’m doing is right”! Why is it wrong for me, why do I have to do something?
It’s not very often that we just accept or allow things as they are, because we think that we can make them better. We’re given a meal, great! We taste it, “where’s the salt?” We put a bit of salt on. “That’s better.” Because it’s not quite right, it’s not perfect. “That’s better, but still not perfect, a bit of pepper.” And so it goes on and on and on. All day long we’re doing it: an itch. “that’s unacceptable, I’m not allowing that”. It’s gone. The itch has gone now. “That’s better”. We don’t stop do we?
So now you’re thinking: “You’d end up doing nothing”. It’s impossible. You’re always doing something, you can’t stop, but it is what we’re doing and why we are doing it. So please think about just allowing things to happen. We’ve got to be sensible, we don’t need to go to any extreme, of course. If allowing something to happen is going to be harmful in any way then of course we don’t allow it to happen. Our foremost concern should be that neither ourselves or others are harmed either directly or indirectly if we allow something to happen. We have to think carefully about this: if it’s clear that either ourselves or others will be harmed in some way then of course we shouldn’t just allow that thing to happen, instead we should make some changes with a good motivation and a patient mind.
part 2 will follow soon
Indicting The Self
The story of the Indian Buddhist master Atisha and his insulting cook sheds light on the practice of indicting the self. When Venerable Atisha took Buddhism from India to Tibet he also took a rude cook with him who was in the habit of insulting Atisha. The Tibetans, who held Atisha in high esteem, were astonished at the cook’s behaviour and offered to find a replacement but Atisha told them that he needed this man. Everyone else was so polite and respectful to Atisha that this rude, contemptuous cook was a precious resource.
Atisha was a practitioner of training the mind, a special branch of Buddhist practice that subsequently became known in Tibet as lojong. Practitioners of training the mind are very skillful at transforming adverse conditions into the spiritual path – at making positives out of negatives. The heart of this practice is indicting the self. This is what Geshe Chekhawa means when he says “gather all blame into one” in Seven Verses of Mind Training. Atisha and his followers, known as the Kadampa Geshes, recognised that all of our problems, suffering and unhappiness are caused by our false sense of self-importance. Therefore it is appropriate to indict or blame this false sense of self.
Atisha’s cook was a valuable resource because he reminded Atisha of the negative aspect of himself while everybody else was busy venerating and respecting him. Because Atisha was a humble spiritual practitioner he would not have lightly dismissed the cook’s insults, thinking “I will accept these insults patiently but really I know that they are false.” Instead, Atisha would have considered the insults carefully, examining his own self for faults. If the cook accused Atisha of arrogance, heartlessness, or fakery then Atisha would have scrutinised himself, suspecting that the cook may be right. This is why the cook was such a precious resource. Atisha advised us not to think about our own good qualities but instead to think about the good qualities of others, and not to think of the faults of others but instead consider our own faults and purge them as if they are bad blood.
If we do not indict our false sense of self-importance it will inflict misery on ourselves and others. The Koran calls the self (Arabic: nafs) in its raw state “the self that commands to evil” (Sura 12:53). The next state is the “self-accusing self” (Sura 75:2). This corresponds to the Kadampa practice of gathering all blame into one. The self-accusing self is our conscience, which is able to objectively see our own faults. Objectivity is key, because it is important not to turn the practice of indicting our self into a process of beating ourselves up, causing low self-esteem. We should identify and analyse our own faults, skillfully turning negative situations into opportunities for personal growth, but we shouldn’t invent faults that aren’t there. Atisha would have taken his cook’s insults seriously, and checked to see whether he really had the faults he was being accused of. However, if he concluded that the fault wasn’t present then he wouldn’t have engaged in caustic over-analysis or self-berating.
By gathering all blame into one through indicting the false sense of self, we reach the stage the Koran calls the self “at peace” (Sura 89:27). We achieve a happy and peaceful mind and are no longer subject to misery and fear, because we have eliminated its root cause, our false sense of self-importance.
