Haven’t we all had the urge to give ourselves a present after a noteworthy achievement or surviving something difficult? I don’t mean after something as frightening as being attacked or an achievement as deep as graduating college or getting married. Those events warrant something public and memorable. But surviving a medical procedure, maybe, or just living through a tough day at work or writing a great song or article, some celebration is warranted.
Some people might bake a sweet or buy a new shirt, or go out to the movies. My favorite thing, especially before the pandemic, is to go out to eat, or to the library, or even better, a bookstore. Finding a good book to read is so refreshing for me. Not just due to the anticipation of entering a new world or going on an adventure, but expanding the world that I perceive and thus live.
So, this weekend, after a tough week, I bought a book of essays by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli called There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important than Kindness: And Other Thoughts on Physics, Philosophy, and the World. This felt like a present filled with sweetness.
In the book, Rovelli includes an essay on yet another book, one by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna who lived around 150-250 CE. The translation of the book’s title is “The Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way.” It is one of the most important works of the Buddhist and Eastern philosophical traditions. Nagarjuna’s essential point is that nothing exists by itself, but only through dependence on something else or in relation to other things, beings, or perspectives.
Of course, we have cultural conventions, languages, ways of perceiving and thinking which create for us the impression that individual things exist on their own. But this is all just the surface layer of things, an illusion, maybe a necessary one but still an illusion.
Culture itself, says Rovelli speaking as Nagarjuna, is an endless dialogue feeding on our experiences and exchanges, relationships. We are all, continuously, being enriched, hurt, or fed by others.
And the illusion culture creates helps us live in the culture. It provides processes and rules, helps us identify the limits of our body so we can put food in our mouths, or walk through a crowd without crashing into others. But without air and the earth to stand on, without food and water to ingest, without parents to give us birth or teachers to instruct; without friends and family to model how to speak, relate, and hopefully how to love, we don’t exist.
And at the center is the ultimate reality, nothing but a vast, interdependent set of relations. To borrow from ancient philosophers like the Greek Empedocles who said, “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere,” each of us, each thing and being, is a center extending everywhere ⎼ that is dependent on the universe we are never separate from ⎼ and whose borders are both here and nowhere. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh used to say we all inter-are.
We’re a vast web of interconnections, not isolated, not deficient, unless we believe in what our culture sometimes tells or inflicts on us. We’re very much who we relate to, the memories we hold, and how we respond to the world. We’re constantly changing along with everything else, not stuck in any place. And understanding this creates a deeply comforting and ethical attitude that can free us from much pain and suffering. It elucidates the place of others in our lives and our place in the lives of others.
The essay on Nagarjuna is followed by one on a book opposite in viewpoint and intent, Mein Kampf. Rovelli expected that this book would be a diatribe about the racial and cultural superiority of the German people and a contempt for the “weak.” What he realized from his reading was that a main source of the emotional power of the Nazis, as well as the far-right today, is not a sense of strength but a fear of being weak. He found a sense of inferiority and of being surrounded by danger, combined with a belief that the only way to avoid being dominated by others is to attempt to dominate all others.
Here we see Nagarjuna’s insight confirmed. Culture, history, our mental and emotional attitude ⎼ all of us are interdependently creating this world we live in. The Fascists then, and the ones we suffer with now, refuse to collaborate and compromise because, says Rovelli, they fear so strongly. Their violence and hate, the sense of grievance, is due to the fear they hold close to their heart, which is largely a fear of the strength that others might have and they have been denied. Instead of seeing a world of fellow human beings wherever they look, they see inhuman enemies everywhere.
They’ve built a wall of lies around themselves, their gang or volk, because they can’t stand to look beyond the wall to see what the truth might reveal about what they’re doing with their lives.
But by understanding this web of interconnections, maybe we can find a way to act that dissipates fear and gives to those who hate a different model ⎼ of humanity maybe, and compassion. One which shows us, all of us humans, that fear can be faced; that kindness not only builds strength but can heal; and taking action to promote equity helps everyone.
And my desire for a present, which I at first misinterpreted as a desire for a material gift, was really about something else, something I think I got without knowing I was getting it; something buried in my yearning. It is here at the center of what I am writing now.
The insight provided by Rovelli and Nagarjuna is that reading itself is the gift. Opening myself to hear and feel, being present with the thinking of others ⎼ this is the gift. Rovelli’s book, like everything else, has the whole universe in it. So, to sit with the book and feel my way into the author’s words is to feel my way into everything.
—
This Post is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: Unsplash
Well said, thank you