Monthly Archives: June 2008
Investing in Religion
There are two basic approaches to stock market investment: fundamental analysis and technical analysis. A fundamental analyst studies individual companies in detail, looking at the quality of their balance sheets, the calibre of their management, the competitiveness of their products etc. Technical analysis, on the other hand, focuses on the performance of companies’ or whole sectors’ share prices in relation to the rest of the market, searching for historical trends that will indicate a good moment to buy or sell.
Fundamental analysis lends itself to true investment, meaning long-term commitment to particular companies, whereas technical analysis can feed short-term speculation. Warren Buffett is one of the best known fundamental analysts, who has built up big, long term positions in companies such as Coca-Cola, Gillette and American Express. His investment vehicle, Berkshire Hathaway, performed poorly during the dotcom era because Mr Buffett does not understand IT, and therefore did not feel he could invest in technology companies based on fundamental analysis; nor would he relax his principles and invest based on technical analysis. However when the dotcom bubble burst Warren Buffett’s star ascended once more, as other investors piled into the traditional companies with proven track records in which Berkshire Hathaway already had large holdings – then seen as safe havens.
The problem with technical analysis as an investment approach is that it can lend itself to sheep-like behaviour. Technical analysis is based on specific principles, and any differences in approach can be subtle, meaning that, at any given time, most technical investors will be moving in the same direction, with slight variation. The sums of money at stake can be huge – measured in the billions – so even small variations can yield gains or losses of millions. Hedge funds try to distinguish themselves from each other through the subtlety of their mathematical algorithms that plot the market’s movements. Where algorithms are well designed, huge profits follow. Where they are badly designed hedge funds can come close to bringing the international finance system to its knees, as in the case of the 1998 crisis caused by the failure of LTCM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTCM). However, no algorithms are so well designed that they can withstand all eventualities, despite the pretensions of the ‘masters of the universe’.
Automated trading based on technical analysis is one of the main reasons for volatility in the world’s financial markets. Many trades are no longer discretionary – they are automated, dictated by an investment fund’s computer software (unless of course a rogue trader can bypass controls in the spectacular fashion of Jerome Kerviel at SocGen!). So when one fund starts off-loading shares because its software tells it to, the chances are there will be a dozen other funds whose software is telling them to do the same, leading to exaggerated effects.
“What”, you may be asking, “does all this have to do with religion”? Well, without wanting to stretch the analogy too far, I think there are some useful parallels that can be drawn between investment in stocks and investment in religion. Clearly there are many differences: the currency invested in stocks is money; the currency invested in religion is faith. Unwise investment in stocks can result in you losing your house; unwise investment in religion causes suffering to the soul.
Just as most individual investors in stocks are in no position to engage in a thorough fundamental analysis of the companies they might invest in, most seekers after spiritual truth are in no position to engage in a thorough fundamental analysis of the religions they might choose. Thorough fundamental analysis of a religion and its bearer organizations would require degrees in theology, sociology, and at least one ancient language! (I should point out, of course, that most people in the world do not choose their religion – they are born into it. Choosing your religion is predominantly a modern phenomenon, although not without precedent in the ancient civilizations of India and China amongst others.)
Those of us who find ourselves living in a society which has largely dispensed with its spiritual heritage, but who feel drawn to the spiritual path ourselves, can exercise choice over which spiritual path we follow. However, we work within limits. There is little point in my choosing to be a Zoroastrian while living in Derbyshire, as there are no groups to join, and precious little opportunity to receive teachings or attend ceremonies. And there’s the rub – no matter what fundamental analysis we engage in, and what conclusions we come to, we are constrained by ‘technical’ factors such as where other people in our society are headed. To give another example, I could choose Kum Nye as the form of physical exercise most conducive to my spiritual path, but it is much more sensible for me to choose Hatha Yoga as there are half a dozen classes in my small home town.
This leads onto a very important point about religion, that it is partly (if not largely) about communal experience. One of the great joys of involvement in religion is joining together with others, breaking down barriers, and experiencing the primacy of the group over the individual. If we have a spiritual practice that does not include this communal experience (communion?) we are missing out on a great deal.
What does this mean in practice? Well, it means partly that we should put down the finer tools of fundamental analysis, and look practically at what spiritual paths are available to us where we actually live. I do not mean that if we are strongly drawn to Islam we should become a Christian just because there is no mosque in our area, but I do mean that if we have a preference for Shia Islam we might decide to attend the Sunni mosque instead because the closest Shia one is 300 miles away. Regarding Buddhism, it would seem foolish not to attend a local meditation centre because it is from the ‘wrong’ tradition, if it is the only one available in our area. Conversely, even if we start to become disillusioned with our own tradition, there can still be benefit in continuing to attend its local meditation centre, just to commune for a while.
On a bigger scale, we should not allow ourselves to be pulled out of communion with the rest of our co-religionists because we find that the tradition we have joined is a ‘splinter group’. Even if the fundamental analysis of the splinter group were to be proved right (just as Warren Buffett’s fundamental analysis was proved right at the end of the dotcom era), there are still benefits with going along with the rest of the herd to an extent. Even though dotcom shares were fundamentally flawed they still made money for a few years – years in which Warren Buffett was missing out on profits. If other Buddhists are having a great time, we don’t want to cut ourselves off from them just because we disagree on some fine points of fundamental analysis!
The point of a religion is to be a valid basis in which to invest our faith. It does not need to be perfect, and in fact no religion is (by the mere fact that we are in samsara). We are always going to find faults if we look hard enough. This does not mean we should ignore obvious faults, but it does mean that we should cut some slack for ourselves and others and realize that the benefits of joining in can outweigh the demands of strict religious purity. And if we are happy in our tradition, we shouldn’t worry too much if others don’t like it.
The Labyrinth
The labyrinth is a symbol of conditioned existence, known in Buddhism and Hinduism as samsara. The labyrinth is the prison we build for ourselves when we become alienated from our own nature. Whether we have ever truly been in harmony with our own nature is a matter for debate, but the prospect of escape from the labyrinth has appealed to humanity throughout history.
The labyrinth has its locus classicus in the myth of the Minotaur. On the island of Crete, Prince Minos was competing against his brothers for the throne. Minos asserted that the gods favored him, and he prayed to Poseidon, the sea-god (symbol of the unconscious mind in modern psychological terms) to send as a sign a white bull, which Minos promised to immediately sacrifice back to the god.
“The bull had appeared, and Minos took the throne; but when he beheld the majesty of the beast that had been sent and thought what an advantage it would be to possess such a specimen, he determined to risk a merchant’s substitution – of which he supposed the god would take no great account. Offering on Poseidon’s altar the finest white bull that he owned, he added the other to his herd” (Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Fontana Press, pp13-14)
Originally Minos was in harmony with his nature and the gods favored him, but his deception causes him to become alienated from his own nature. The alienation manifests itself as external success – the Cretan empire flourishes under Minos – but at the price of a growing inner sickness. At home, Minos’ wife is infected by Poseidon with an ungovernable passion for the white bull, and she conceives a child, the Minotaur, half-man half-bull. Discovering the child, the king summons the master craftsman Daedalus, and orders him to construct a labyrinth where the abomination can be hidden and imprisoned, never to see the light of day.
“So deceptive was the invention, that Daedalus himself, when he had finished it, was scarcely able to find his way back to the entrance. Therein the Minotaur was settled: and he was fed, thereafter, on groups of living youths and maidens, carried as a tribute from the conquered nations within the Cretan domain.” (ibid, p14).
This illustrates that the unhealthy mind, in its state of alienation, is full of complexes which are essentially destructive, even though on the surface all may appear to be well.
Eventually the hero Theseus slays the Minotaur with the help of Minos’ daughter Ariadne and escapes with her to Greece. Minos, enraged at the loss of his daughter and the killing of his son the Minotaur, imprisons Daedalus and his son Icarus in the labyrinth. Daedalus and Icarus escape from the labyrinth and, to escape from Crete, Daedalus fashions wings out of feathers held together with wax. Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun as it will melt his wings, but Icarus is exhilarated by the thrill of flying and soars too high, whereupon the wax binding his wings melts and he falls to his death, drowned in the sea.
The story of Icarus epitomizes what Thomas Moore calls puer (boyish) spirituality:
“puer is the face of the soul that is boyish, spirited in a way that is perfectly depicted in the image of a male child or a young man. But the attitude of the puer is not limited to actual boys, to males, to any age group, or even to people . . . Because the puer attitude is so unattached to things worldly, it isn’t surprising to find it prevalent in religion and in the spiritual life. For example, there is the story of Icarus . . . One way to understand this story is to see it as the puer putting on the wings of spirit and becoming birdlike as a way of getting out of labyrinthine life. His escape is excessive, exceeding the range of the human realm, and so the sun sends him plummeting to his death. The story is an image of spirituality carried out in the puer mode. Anyone can turn to religion or spiritual practice as a way out of the twists and turns of everyday living. We feel the confinement, the humdrum of the everyday, and we hope for a way to transcend it all.” (Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul, pp247-8)
When I was twenty-one I became a Buddhist monk, and I was the epitome of puer spirituality. Seeking to escape from the labyrinth, and exhilarated by an idealistic spirituality, I flew too close to the sun and came crashing down to earth. Aged twenty-four I disrobed, and ended up living in my mother’s house, where my brother bought me a framed picture of The Lament for Icarus by Herbert Draper to hang on my bedroom wall!
Hand-in-hand with puer spirituality goes what the psychotherapist John Welwood calls spiritual bypassing:
“Starting in the 1970’s I began to perceive a disturbing tendency among many members of spiritual communities. Although many spiritual practitioners were doing good work on themselves, I noticed a widespread tendency to use spiritual practice to bypass or avoid dealing with certain personal or emotional ‘unfinished business’. This desire to find release from the earthly structures that seem to entrap us – the structures of karma, conditioning, body, form, matter, personality [in other words the labyrinth] – has been a central motive in the spiritual search for thousands of years. So there is often a tendency to use spiritual practice to try to rise above our emotional and personal issues – all those messy, unresolved matters that weigh us down. I call this tendency to avoid or prematurely transcend basic human needs, feelings, and developmental tasks spiritual bypassing.” (John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening, Shambala pp11-12).
The antidote to puer spirituality or spiritual bypassing is a grounded spiritual practice. A grounded spiritual practice enables us to recognize our habitual, distorted patterns of thought and behaviour (our labyrinth) as material to work with and eventually grow out of. If we prematurely attempt to transcend the labyrinth we will discover the hard way that our neurotic tendencies are still compulsively, unconsciously conditioning us. John Welwood recommends we adopt a psychological approach to complement our spiritual practice:
“the essential practice, common to both psychotherapy and meditation, is to bring our larger awareness to bear on our frozen karmic structures. Often this larger awareness is obscured – either buried beneath our problems, emotions, reactions, or else detached, dissociated, floating above them. So it is essential first to cultivate awareness and then to bring it to bear on the places where we are contracted and stuck. This allows us to taste the poisons of confused mind and transmute them.” (ibid, pp20-21).
Politics of Soul 