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DO NO HARM-THE INVITATION TO A MIDDLE PATH SPIRITUALITY CALLED COMPASSIONby Dick Rauscher
INTRODUCTION: This article was written in response to a request in 1998 from the United Methodist Church asking if the Stony Hill Spiritual Retreat Center would be willing to participate in a clergy training workshop on the importance of establishing appropriate behavioral boundaries with parishioners. Boundaries minimize liability risk but these protective boundaries are increasingly isolating us from human contact physically and emotionally….an isolation that leaves us lonely and disconnected from one another. Paradoxically, the title of the training workshop was called Do No Harm. This article explores the possibility of reversing the need for protective boundaries by learning to embrace a middle path spirituality that is based on compassion.1 A middle path spirituality would make the social and religious caste categories that define who has power and who doesn’t meaningless. It would effectively eliminate the caste categories that so comfortably define those who are considered invisible and powerless. In a compassionate society, the need for protective boundaries would no longer be needed. Jesus, Buddha, and all the great spiritual teachers of history invited us to do no harm by embracing a middle path spirituality that eliminates the social caste categories of "otherness". Categories that painfully define who is included and who is excluded. They referred to these arbitrary social and religious categories as illusions2 and taught that all reality is simply a part of the Unity we call God. If these arbitrary categories we use to socially define ourselves are indeed nothing but illusions and could therefore be eliminated from our thinking, then we could truly learn to embrace a compassionate middle path spirituality that these spiritual teachers have been teaching. Middle path spirituality is defined simply as the ability to live life non-reactively in the gray of paradox, ambiguity, uncertainty, and not knowing. A psychological place of emptiness where the love and compassion of the great spiritual teachers of history are encountered. Middle Path spirituality reflects the integration of knowledge and insights from the field of psychotherapy with the spirituality and the spiritual disciplines of both current and ancient religious traditions. It is a creative spirituality that manifests an obvious and simple truth. All of the conflict and violence we see around the world is created by the rigid beliefs and certainties of black and white thinking.3 If we truly intend to live a life that does no harm to others, then we cannot let anything that does cause harm to others enter into the way we think or live our life… …regardless of our contemporary cultural values, our various religious theologies, or our own ego’s opinions, beliefs, or certainties. In our Western culture, and especially in the Christian Church, we have learned to blame conflict, violence, and suffering on the devil. This practice of blaming the devil for evil and suffering effectively eliminates virtually all responsibility for our own actions and therefore any possibility of world transformation. Until we are willing to acknowledge that violence and evil is created in the crucible of rigid certainties and black and white beliefs embedded in the hearts of each of us , compassion will continue to be destroyed by a powerful enemy. I find no conflict, suffering, evil, or violence in the world that does not have it’s roots deeply embedded in the rich soil of black and white thinking. Can we begin to see this truth in our own lives? Learning to walk the middle path of compassion requires revisiting the original teachings of people like Jesus and Buddha. For Christians especially, it means returning to a time before the emerging theology of the early Christian church turned the soft compassionate teachings of Jesus into the granite certainties, absolutes, and beliefs of the "faithful". Sadly, these rigid black and white theological beliefs have once again defined who is included and who is excluded….this time from the Kingdom of God and eternal life. The suffering these rigid theological certainties have caused over the last 2000 years is incalculable. THE NEED FOR CHANGE Recent federal legislation defined what constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace. Because of the liability issues created by this legislation, boundary training workshops are currently being offered by virtually every governmental, religious, corporate, educational, and voluntary institution. Unfortunately, these boundary training workshops are not being offered based on cultural values. Instead, they are an institutional / corporate response to the potential legal and financial liabilities that could be incurred if they do not offer such training and implement appropriate corporate sexual behavioral guidelines. It’s good to see that we are beginning to address such issues, but how is it that we have come to a place where social values have to be legislated in a court of law? The legislated rights of the handicapped, the dying, the mentally ill, children, minorities, women, homosexuals, single working parents, the elderly, the poor, and the recent push for hate crime laws are all examples of these legislated moral values. I believe this kind of legislation is needed and very important. Changing social belief systems is not easily accomplished, and legislated moral values can indeed change peoples behaviors. A legally mandated change in a culture’s social behavior will, over time, lead to a change in the social beliefs of that culture. For example, civil rights legislation enacted in the 1960’s and 1970’s to force changes in the rights of black minorities is slowly beginning to change racist attitudes in our society. Racial attitudes, especially of our youth, are beginning to reflect a significant shift toward the reality of pluralism, multi-culturalism, and diversity. Why have we fallen so far short of what is possible? How is it that our various religious institutions have never been successful in effectively teaching compassionate social values to any Eastern or Western culture in over two thousand years? The only exception in modern times might be the monastic Buddhist influence in Tibet. Unfortunately, Tibet’s neighbor China has not yet learned to embrace moral values based on compassion. The suffering and virtual elimination of the Tibetan social and monastic culture is a tragic example of the need for a more compassionate global culture based on a middle path spirituality. What can we do to accelerate change in the rigid beliefs that cause categories of "otherness"…..the source of judgement, suffering, conflict, and violence in the world? How can we more effectively teach our children the skills required to develop a compassionate global culture? These are vitally important questions for our religious and social institutions as we move into the third millennium. As the contemporary mystic and spiritual teacher Sam Keen defines it, finding an answer to these questions is the heroic task of our generation. MIDDLE PATH: THE WAY OF COMPASSION Insanity or mental illness is doing the same thing today that we did yesterday and somehow expecting a different outcome. As the level of conflict and suffering in the world continues to climb, it is clear that something has to change in the way we teach the children of the world that compassion is an important social and spiritual value. If we are serious about becoming a culture that "does no harm", then we must be willing to embrace fundamental changes in the way we think. The way we teach love and compassion in our churches and in our class rooms is not effective. We are clearly not accomplishing what is possible or needed. It has to be obvious to anyone seriously concerned with increasing the capacity for compassion in the world, that teaching more religious theology, dogma, doctrines, and individual salvation is not the answer. In fact, throughout history, religious theology has clearly been a major contributor to the problem of global violence and suffering. Our news papers are filled with reports of death and suffering caused by the increasing terrorist activities of radical political and conservative religious groups in Ireland, Bosnia, India, Pakistan, Mexico, Israel, Palestine, and Albania…to name only a few. Paradoxically, in every society, the expression of spiritual hunger is rapidly becoming endemic. Never before in recorded history or modern times has the interest in spirituality or the global conscious awareness of the need for compassionate spiritual values ever been greater. Perhaps we have been so focused on "theologically based faith" that we have ignored the spiritual needs and hunger in all humans. Or perhaps this hunger for spirituality is proof that religious teachings have indeed been effective. Whether it has or not is not the issue. The important issue facing most of our religious institutions today is simply the fact that we are not effectively addressing the world’s current hunger for spirituality. At a time when the growing global consciousness is rapidly moving toward new age values of multiculturalism, pluralism and diversity, most of our religious institutions are retreating in fear to conservative mythologies and theological interpretations of faith born in the Middle Ages. They are defensively protecting their pre-modern rigid theologies, rituals, dogmas, icons, and doctrines and ignoring modern archaeological and biblical research. These primitive conservative theological beliefs that create harmful black and white categories of "otherness" are simply not making sense to a growing number of people around the world. To avoid intellectual suicide, the "churched" and "unchurched" are turning away from "religion" and searching for a spirituality that brings a deeper meaning into their lives. A spirituality that effectively connects them with the infinite diversity of creation and the Creator. Their spiritual hunger is not for more conservative theology, it is a hunger for a first hand relationship with the Creator or Unity of the Universe. For example, the feminist Pagan Wiccan religion worships the Goddess, and embraces inclusiveness, pluralism, and diversity. This rapidly growing Pagan religious movement reconnects it’s members with the earth’s never-ending cycles of birth and death, and teaches that all creation is sacred. Pluralism and diversity means that individuals and cultures often travel on different spiritual and religious paths in their search for ultimate meaning. They will use different names for the Creator. Christianity has it’s myths, icons, rituals, doctrines, theologies but it is only one of the many paths that journey up the mountain toward God. It is not "the" path. Spiritual teachers like Jesus and Buddha taught that it is the relationship with this Reality we call God that is important, not the correct name, the specific path that leads toward the Ultimate, or the particular myths, rituals, and doctrines embraced on the journey. Futurist Barbara Hubbard believes that we are literally on the brink of a global evolutionary leap into a compassionate Universal Human species. A conscious, fully awakened human species capable of working in a co-creative way with the creative Consciousness of the universe that some refer to as God. She calls this quantum evolutionary spiritual step that humanity is about to take the "awakening of humanity".4 She cautions however that the path our global culture will take has not yet been decided. The potential for self destruction or an evolutionary path toward compassion and a conscious co-creative relationship with the Creator of the Universe has not yet been finally decided. At this moment in history, both are equally possible. But just as more conservative theology is not the answer, it is also becoming clear that hunger and poverty cannot be eliminated by simply offering more social welfare programs. There is steadily growing concern over the effectiveness of these social programs and the cost of maintaining them is quickly exceeding our society’s ability to finance them. These programs are reflecting clearly the global reality that hunger, poverty, and oppression of the powerless is increasing as the gap widens between those who are defined as acceptable and those who are not. Social programs will not eliminate the caste categories of poor, uneducated, ill, elderly, or the racial and sexual "isms" that cause so much of the suffering. When the money runs out, the sources of the suffering will still be with us. Nobel prize winner and Buddhist peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, once told an audience that if you want to eliminate the tree of pain and suffering in the world, you have to chop out the roots, not trim the branches. Like social boundaries and religious theologies, these social welfare programs are important and needed, but they do not attack the root of the problem. They only trim the branches. CHANGING OUR BELIEFS WILL CHANGE OUR BEHAVIORS From the field of psychology we know that the behaviors of a society or an individual will always reflect the conscious and unconscious beliefs of that society or individual. If we want to see what we believe, all we have to do is watch our behaviors. Our individual egos and our collective cultural ego will always act in a way so as to be consistent with our conscious and unconscious beliefs. Our individual or social behaviors cannot be changed by force of will. The moment we forget that we are attempting to change, we will unconsciously revert back to the behaviors that are consistent with our beliefs. The only way we can change our behaviors is to change the powerful conscious and unconscious beliefs that drive them. When we change the way we think and believe, we can begin to chop out the roots of suffering and violence that do so much harm to others and the earth we live on. Earl Nightingale gave us the most powerful secret ever discovered by humankind when he taught that "we become what we think about. The practical reality of this simple wisdom says that if we want to do no harm to others or the earth we live on, we cannot let anything that is not loving or not caring come into the way we live…or think…..regardless of our culture’s current secular beliefs; our own personal opinions, beliefs, or certainties; or our religious theologies. So if we become what we think about, and we want to teach our children how to build a globally based compassionate society, what needs to change? As I will show below, the primary enemy of compassion and the source of virtually all of the suffering and conflict in the world, both historically and currently, is the simplistic, primitive, and immature black and white thinking process used by children to manage anxiety that is unconsciously carried over into adulthood. The social caste categories of our human society are created by this primitive thinking process. It divides the world into all or nothing categories of "otherness"……those who are included and those who are excluded, who is right, who is wrong, who is good, who is bad, who is doing what they should be doing, and who isn’t. The battle for white, right, and good is inevitable. No one wants to be excluded, wrong, bad or criticized. So when these categories or distinctions, based on the simplistic and immature black and white, either/or, good/bad, right/wrong/ all or nothing thinking of childhood are used to define our religious or social relationships; conflict, violence, and suffering are inevitable.. This is illustrated in figure 1 below. In mature adult thinking, the simplistic black and white categories of childhood are gradually replaced by more sophisticated middle path gray categories. As the adult matures and develops the ability to live non-reactively to the anxiety of ambiguity, uncertainty, and not knowing; conflict and violence is gradually replaced by a more mature non-reactive middle path compassion born in the emptiness. Changing the simplistic belief systems of childhood into the more complex middle path belief systems of adulthood is a very difficult journey of transformation that very few people are able to fully accomplish. If we are to find ways to challenge the need for protective boundaries and legislated moral values and work on the development of a new and more compassionate global society, we will need to revisit the teachings of our great spiritual mystics such as Buddha, Jesus, Moses, St. Francis, Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, Lao-tzu, and Mohammed, to name only a few. Without exception, they all urged us to embrace a life of compassion that ignores the simplistic caste categories created by the ego. They all spoke about the importance of a first hand relationship with the Reality we refer to as God. Marcus Borg reminds us in his book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time that Jesus was a spirit person, a teacher of wisdom, a social prophet, and a movement founder, but his self-understanding did not include messianic or eschatological. In other words, he did not speak of himself as God. His message was theocentric. It was focused on God. Borg writes……
Jesus of Nazareth taught that God is compassion. To make God manifest, we need only to become compassion. The historical Jesus was a simple spirit person with a radically subversive / alternative social / religious message of compassion that directly challenged the simplistic purity code caste categories of the ancient Israelite culture. The Israelites had carefuly divided people into various castes based on black and white, either /or categories of purity and impurity in their attempt to obey the Old Testament injunction "You shall be holy (pure) for I the Lord your God am holy (pure)". To illustrate the religious and social caste categories refer to figures #2 and #3. It is clear that in the social and religious culture of ancient Israel, it would have been important to be male, rich, heterosexual, a member of the priestly class, healthy, born in Israel, a devote native born Jew, have married parents, and have no physical deformities. In other words, you would have had power and authority the more you could locate yourself on the top line of the prevailing social and religious caste system categories. It is significant to note how Jesus repeatedly ignored purity code laws and refused to acknowledge the religious and social caste categories that made those on the bottom of the power structure invisible, untouchable, outcasts, powerless, vulnerable, and less than human. He touched these people, he healed them, he broke bread with them, and considered them his friends. It is important to remember that the religious /economic system of ancient Israel, that made the priestly class wealthy and thus powerful, was based on tithing and careful observance of these purity codes. The combination of the popularity of Jesus’ "compassion movement" with the people, and his amazing personal charisma as a spiritual person, soon made him a serious threat to the power structure of the religious ruling class of the Israelite culture. The compassion movement could no longer be ignored. Jesus’ death was inevitable, but after his crucifixion his message of compassion as the core value of community was a movement that grew quickly and became the early Christian church. In other words, compassion is not a Christian concept, it is the fundamental founding principle of Christianity. Walking the middle path in figure #1 is not a concept to be embraced by Christians, it is "the" fundamental spiritual practice of Christianity. When Paul states in Gal 3:28 that "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female", he was not stating an abstract ideal of the emerging Christian church. He was reflecting the new social reality of the Jesus movement itself. Paul’s message to the new Christian church was simply the spiritual teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Referring again to the social and religious categories of modern times in figures #2 and #3, it is clear we have progressed very little in 2000 years. Our modern social and religious caste categories still continue to divide people into those who are included and those who are excluded. Today the caste categories tend to be based on "success". Conformance to what is considered successful determines a persons place in the caste system of our society. If a person is to be visible, have good self esteem, power, and authority in our modern world, it is important for them to be on the top line of the lower box in figures #2 and #3. In other words, one would want to be Caucasian, male, adult, educated, wealthy a conservative believer of Christian theology, heterosexual, a member of the clergy class, healthy, American, married, physically whole (not handicapped), and not dying. We continue to ignore or misunderstand the wisdom of our greatest spiritual teachers. The violence created by the battle for right, white, and good continues to cause poverty, hunger, and suffering. Our contemporary social caste system still divides, fragments, excludes, and continues to create simplistic either /or religious and social categories that result in unequal relationships in our global culture. To put it another way, our contemporary caste system continues to weave conflict, violence and suffering into the very fabric of our global culture by clinging to the belief that we have to determine who we are by comparing ourselves with others. We continue to insist in blaming our feelings on others, to cling to the idea that we can get our personal power only by taking it away from others, and continue to use the simplistic thinking process’ of childhood. The source of conflict and violence is not out there in the world, it is in our own hearts. Can we see that? If our intention is to teach peace, love and compassion as the core value of our global society, then we must each learn to let go of the certainties and knowing of our primitive and immature egos. We must then learn to embrace the more "empty" not-knowing of a mature adult ego. Said simply, to discover the truth of anything, we must first move onto the middle path and suspend all beliefs, certainties, and knowing. Only when we embrace emptiness, and open our hearts and minds to the reality of what is, will we recognize truth. The core value of community is compassion……. a radically alternative middle path wisdom that Jesus died attempting to teach us. SUMMARY Psychology teaches that our behaviors will always reflect our conscious and unconscious beliefs…..both primitive and mature. Our ego’s simply cannot act in any other way. Even if we attempt to change ourselves by force of will, the moment we forget we are trying to change, our ego will return our behavior back to that which is consistent with our inner beliefs. If we wish to become compassion and do no harm to others, we must be willing to dig out the roots of violence and suffering that harden our own hearts. We must learn to eliminate the categories of otherness each of us create in our own primitive black and white thinking. Conflict, violence, and suffering will continue to dominate our global culture until each of us as individuals can mature our thinking process and grow spiritually into the empty silence of compassion. When we increase our own ability to become compassion, we increase the compassion of the universe itself. When we make compassion visible, we make the Creator visible. The middle path is simply an internal journey into emptiness, not knowing, silence, simplicity, living in the moment, and accepting reality for what it is. The middle path is a journey that each of us must take for ourselves, no one can do it for us. It requires the painful letting go of the cherished ego beliefs, certainties and opinions of simplistic thinking…..the emptying and quieting of our black and white childhood ego’s that "know" so much. Can we learn to do this for ourselves? On the middle path, there is no "otherness" …..only Unity and a Oneness with the Creator of the Universe. Can we recognize for ourselves that separateness and individualism are nothing but illusions created by our own egos? Like all of the great spiritual teachers of history, Jesus and Buddha invited us to "see" the world in a new way. They knew that how we "see" would determine the paths we would walk and the way that we would live our lives. Until we as adults learn how to eliminate the artificial categories and caste distinctions created by our black and white thinking, we will be unable to teach our children the insights and wisdom taught by these spiritual teachers. Until we learn to dig out the roots of violence that live within our own hearts, we will continue to have inquisitions, witch hunts, crusades, holy wars, cold wars, world wars, Tibet’s, Israel’s, Palestine’s, Ireland’s, Albania’s, and Bosnia’s. Only open, vulnerable hearts can build a compassionate global community. We can be vulnerable only when we feel safe with one another. Compassionate communities will evolve only when we have learned how to live on the middle path where the categories of "otherness", and the violence and suffering they create, no longer exist. We will know we are on the middle path when we no longer define who we are by comparing ourselves with others, when we no longer blame our feelings on others, when we learn to empower ourselves from inside and free ourselves of the belief that our personal power comes only by taking it away from others, and most importantly, when we learn to embrace a mature thinking process that can replace the primitive black and white thinking process’ of childhood. When we learn to walk the middle path, we will be chopping out the roots of violence, not just trimming the branches with more legislated moral values, work shops that teach us to establish boundaries to protect us from one another, and social programs designed to help the powerless and disadvantaged. Jesus, Buddha, and all of the great spiritual teachers and mystics of history, have spoken to us of the same truth………. that compassion has nothing to do with good deeds or believing in a certain way theologically. It is the result of a first hand encounter with the compassionate Creator of the Universe forged in the silence and emptiness of the middle path. When we have the courage to undertake this journey of transformation and spiritual growth that leads to the development of a middle path spirituality, only then we will stop doing self-righteous acts "of" compassion, and learn to "become" compassion. A compassion that knows no categories of otherness. A compassion born in silence and listening, not knowing, emptiness, and humility. A compassion we call God.
1. See article called COMPASSION: THE MIDDLE PATH at www.stonyhill.com website for a briefer treatment of this material. Back to text. 2. See figures #2 & #3 for detailed charts of some ancient and current cultural categories / caste distinctions referred to as illusions by Jesus, Buddha, and other spiritual teachers throughout history. Back to text. 3. See figure #1 for a visual diagram of black and white categories vs middlepath. Back to text. 4. See Conscious Evolution by Barbara Marx Hubbard for a well presented discussion on the need for a new co-creative pro-active meme or social vision. These visions or memes will shape our future as a species. Our survival as a species will be determined by the choices we make in the next few decades. Back to text. 5. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & The Heart of Contemporary Faith, Marcus J. Borg, Harper Collins, 1995. Back to text.
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