The Compassionate Universe: The Power of the Individual to Heal the Environment
185
The Compassionate Universe: The Power of the Individual to Heal the Environment
185Paperback(2nd ed.)
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Overview
Eknath Easwaran presents a penetrating analysis of the spiritual roots of our current predicament and offers a realistic and hopeful way forward. Each of us has a role to play in making wise choices, and each of us can genuinely make a difference. Drawing inspiration and insight from Mahatma Gandhi, Saint Francis, and his own experience of living in the East and the West, Easwaran shows the connections between individual thoughts and actions that move beyond consumerism to the unity of life.
Mahatma Gandhi formulated a series of diagnoses of our seemingly perpetual state of crisis, which he called “the seven social sins”: knowledge without character, science without humanity, wealth without work, commerce without morality, politics without principles, pleasure without conscience, and worship without self-sacrifice. Easwaran explores each of these diagnoses in turn and presents an alternative hypothesis of who we are and how we fit into the universe.
This is ecology as a great adventure, filled with the challenges and rewards of inner growth. Easwaran tells us that “once we open our eyes to cooperation, artistry, thrift, and compassion, we begin to see thousands of little things we can do to help restore the environment – and restore dignity and deeper fulfillment to our own lives.”
Eknath Easwaran is renowned as a teacher of meditation and for his translations of the Indian scriptures. His writings express timeless spiritual insights and are illustrated by stories from East and West. His books reflect two cultures: India, where he grew up in a self-supporting agrarian village, and the United States, where he taught and lectured for over thirty years. His early experiences of living in harmony with nature, his firsthand acquaintance with Gandhi’s India, and his long familiarity with an American audience have resulted in this book: a deeply thoughtful examination of our present situation, and a blueprint for living as trustees of a compassionate universe, in a world that we would want our children and grandchildren to inherit.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781586381486 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nilgiri Press |
| Publication date: | 01/04/2022 |
| Edition description: | 2nd ed. |
| Pages: | 185 |
| Sales rank: | 1,089,853 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Easwaran grew up in Kerala, India. As a young man he visited Mahatma Gandhi in his ashram and was deeply influenced by the way that Gandhi brought spiritual values into daily life.
He later became professor of English literature at a leading university, and was well known as a speaker and writer before coming to the United States in 1959 on the Fulbright exchange program.
A gifted teacher, Easwaran gave talks on meditation and spiritual living for 40 years. In 1961 he founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, a nonprofit organization that publishes his books, videos, and audio talks, and offers retreats and online programs. His meditation class at UC Berkeley in 1968 was the first accredited course on meditation at any major university.
Easwaran lived what he taught, giving him lasting appeal as a spiritual teacher and author of deep insight and warmth.
Read an Excerpt
Gandhi formulated a series of diagnoses of the twentieth century’s seemingly perpetual state of crisis, which he called “the seven social sins.” I prefer to think of them as seven social ailments, since the problems they address are not crimes calling for punishment but crippling diseases that are punishment enough in themselves. These seven diagnoses cover every area of modern life, and volumes could be writ-ten about each of them. Here, though, I will be paying particular attention to the way they affect our relationship with the environment.
Perhaps the most compassionate of all seven is the one I will treat first, knowledge without character, which traces all our difficulties to a simple lack of connection between what we know is good for us and our ability to act on that knowledge. Then there is science without humanity – referring to the experiment we are conducting on ourselves and our planet, based on the absurd hypothesis that production, consumption, and national boundaries are more important than people or the earth.
Wealth without work points out the greatest failing of our society: it offers our young people no ideal or goal worthy of their ambition. Without a focus for their tremendous energy and talent, more and more of our brightest, most promising young people are turning to drugs or a life of sterile moneymaking, just at the time when the world needs their idealism most. Then there is commerce without morality, the business equivalent of science without humanity: a frenzy of economic activity based not on human need or the needs of the environment, but on an unexamined addiction to profit.
The last three diagnoses thrust us directly into the most challenging problems of the coming decades. Politics without principles refers to politics, from the governmental to the personal level, based on an almost total lack of faith in human nature, while plea¬sure without conscience concerns the destructive life-style based on that lack of faith. Finally, worship without self-sacrifice suggests that we have overlooked our most precious evolutionary resources: our idealism, our sensitivity to the suffering of others, and our sense of unity with the life around us.
To me, Gandhi’s list is one of the best X-rays of contemporary society ever taken. In this book I will use these seven diagnoses as starting points for a practical discussion of how we can support the world’s transition into a healthy, peaceful postindustrial era – a transition already taking place in the lives of many thoughtful people around the world. What I am presenting is not a theory but simply the results of my own experience. I have become convinced that it is possible, while retaining all the beneficial contributions of the industrial era, gradually to replace competition and the profit motive with active, modern applications of the laws of a compassionate universe: cooperation, artistry, and thrift.
What may not be clear in Gandhi’s list, but what shines through to anyone who knows something of his life, is that this is no gloomy prediction of catastrophe; it is a positive statement of hope. A less bold physician might have pronounced the case too far gone: “Perhaps if you had come to me sooner . . .”
Gandhi says, “It’s not too late at all. You just don’t yet know what you are capable of.” Behind his list is the daring implication that the solution to our problems does not have to be invented. It is already here. People do not have to become something they are not; they need to learn who and what they really are.
It may be difficult to have faith in the vision of the human being and the hope for world peace and health these diagnoses are based on. At this point in history, it is sometimes difficult even to imagine politics based on honesty and cooperation, or world commerce based on mutual respect and care – let alone believe they are possible.
Indeed, many have regarded Gandhi as too idealistic. Yet I think he saw more clearly than most of us that the industrial world is a very rough place. Politics without principles, commerce without morality, pleasure without conscience – these are unsparing, incisive diagnoses. I would suggest that it is only be-cause Gandhi had an inexhaustible faith in human nature – based not on philosophy but on his own personal experience in leading a troubled nation of four hundred million people – that he could see human failings so clearly.
“I believe,” he once wrote, “that if one man gains spiritually the whole world gains with him.” Had these words appeared as part of a social theory or an essay in theology, perhaps we could dis-miss them as overly optimistic or moralizing. But they come from a man who, without firing a single shot, changed the face of modern Asia and the world – all by remaking himself. During the twenty years he spent in South Africa, Gandhi remade his entire character, transforming himself from a timid lawyer who could barely stammer out the facts of a case into one of the most courageous and effective leaders the world has seen. In situations in which other leaders would have alienated rivals or succumbed to animosity, Gandhi won over his opponents with perseverance, good humor, and love. However unlikely it seemed, Gandhi’s perspective worked. He had remade himself, and having done so, he offered the world a hope-filled alternative to war, pollution, and exploitation.