Spiritual Imperative by Satish Kumar - on Spirituality as the Foundation of a Life-Sustaining Civilization Design

“Life exists only through the gift of other lives: all life is interdependent. Whether we are rich or poor, black or white, young or old, humans or animals, fish or fowl, trees or rocks, everything is sustained by the same air, the same sunshine, the same water, the same soil.” (Satish Kumar)

“If we called a tree ‘my lungs’ or a river ‘my circulatory system’ or the atmosphere ‘my breath’, then we would be much less likely to destroy them. We have to stop seeing the environment as ‘out there’, and see it as an intrinsic part of us; that which connects us all.” (Deepak Chopra)

 

Spirit and Matter

The notion of spiritless existence can be described as materialism. In this mode of existence, all is considered as matter; land, forests, food, water, labour, literature and art are commodities to be bought and sold in the marketplace - the world market, the stockmarket, the so-called free market. This is a market of competitive advantage, a cut-throat market, a market where survival of the fittest is the greatest imperative: the strong competing with the weak and winning the biggest share of the market for themselves.

This is the world where spirit has been driven out. Business without spirit, trade without compassion, industry without ecology, finance without fairness, economics without equity can only bring the breakdown of society and destruction of the natural world.

Just as materialism rules economics it also rules politics. Instead of seeing nations, regions and cultures of the world as one human community, the world is seen as a battlefield of nations competing with each other for power, influence and control over minds, markets and natural resources. One nation’s interest is seen in opposition to the national interest of another.

What can we expect from such politics other than rivalry, strife, the arms race, terrorism and wars? Politicians speak of democracy and freedom but they pursue the path of hegemony and self-interest. How can a particular view of democracy and freedom suit the whole world? There can be no democracy and freedom without compassion, reverence and respect for diversity, difference and pluralism. Compassion, reverence and respect are spiritual qualities - but politics founded on materialism considers the values of the spirit to be woolly, flaky, utopian, idealistic, unrealistic and irrational.

Maybe this is because, sometimes, the words spirituality and religion are confused, but spirituality and religion are not the same thing. Politics should be free from the constraints of religion but should not be free of spiritual values.

The rivalry among religions would cease if they realised that religious faiths are like rivers flowing into the same great ocean of spirituality. Even though the various rivers with their different names give nourishment to different regions and different peoples, they all provide the same quality of refreshment. There is no conflict among the rivers. Why then should there be conflict among the religions? Their theology or belief system may differ but the spirituality is the same. It is this spirituality which is paramount. Respect for a diversity of beliefs is a spiritual imperative.

Religious groups and traditions have an important role to play. They initiate us into a discipline of thought and practice; they provide us with a framework; they offer us a sense of community, of solidarity, of support. A tender seedling needs a pot and a stick to support it in the early stages of its development, or even the enclosure of a nursery to protect it from frost and cold winds. But when it is strong enough it needs to be planted out in the open so that it is able to develop its own roots and become a fully mature tree. Likewise religious orders act as nurseries for seeking souls. But in the end we each have to establish our own roots and find divinity in our own way.

 

Spirituality as the Foundation of a Life-Sustaining Civilization

Those who profit from endless economic activities put enormous effort into persuading us that by having more material goods we shall be happy. But happiness does not come from material things alone; we also have social and spiritual needs: the need for community, for love, for friendship, for beauty, for art and music. We need to use our imagination and our creativity. We need the opportunity to make things with our own hands. We need time to be still and contemplate; we need spaces to appreciate and enjoy.

We need to invent a lifestyle of elegant simplicity where Earth’s gifts are shared among all human beings fairly, without compromising the needs of the more than human world as well as of future generations. Such elegant simplicity is the way to discover spirituality. We embrace simplicity not only because the consumerist lifestyle is unfair, unjust and unsustainable but also because it is the cause of discontent, dissatisfaction, disharmony, depression, disease and division. Even if there were no problem of global warming, of resource shortage, of pollution and waste we would still need to choose a more simple lifestyle which is conducive to and congruent with spirituality, because a simple lifestyle, a lifestyle uncluttered with the burden of unnecessary possessions, is the lifestyle which can offer the opportunity to explore the universe of the imagination and to find boundless joy in that universe.

Any society discarding spiritual values and fighting for material goods, going to war to control oil, producing nuclear weapons to maintain its political power cannot be called a civilisation. The modern, consumerist culture built on unfair, unjust and unsustainable economic institutions cannot be considered to be civilised.

The true mark of civilisation is to maintain a balance between material progress and spiritual integrity. How can we consider ourselves to be civilised when we don’t know how to live with each other in harmony and how to live on the Earth without destroying it? We have developed technologies to reach the moon but not the wisdom to live with our neighbours, nor mechanisms to share food and water with our fellow human beings. A civilisation without a spiritual foundation is no civilisation at all.

We must bring spirituality into all parts of our lives: into politics, into business, into agriculture and into education. And we must do so with a scientific approach.

The basis of all campaigning is reverence for life, and this is a spiritual basis. Love of nature and the intrinsic value of all life, human as well as other than human, is the essential ground in which environmental and social justice movements need to be rooted. There is no contradiction between pragmatic campaigning and a spiritual overview.

The marriage of matter and spirit, of business and spirit, of politics and spirit, of religion and spirit and of activism and spirit is the greatest union required in our time.

~This entry is excerpted and slightly edited from “Spiritual Imperative” by Satish Kumar at Resurgence Magazine

Keywords: materialism, spirit and matter, spirituality, ecosocial crisis, man-nature partnership, biophilia, reverence for life, life-sustaining civilization design.

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Published::
7.30.07 / 2pm
Category:
Change in Change, Learning for Life, Life's Necessities, Man, Means, Paths, Ends, Spirituality, Unity in Diversity
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