“We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.“ – Thich Nhat Hanh

Life often unfolds with a great deal of irony. One such irony is that the great gift of Buddhism, and its powerful message of peace, compassion, and wisdom transmitted into the West, can be seen as the result of war – the least peaceful, compassionate, and wise of human practices.  Thich Nhat Hanh, the brilliant Vietnamese Buddhist monk whose message of mindful compassion and peace has inspired millions in the West, was exiled from his homeland in 1966 at the height of the Vietnam civil war for advocating peace when both sides wanted war.  The Dalai Lama was exiled from his homeland Tibet by the Chinese invasion and annexation of his country, bringing his beautiful teachings to the West.  The end of the Second World War saw U.S. G.I.s, while occupying Japan, through their interest in Japanese martial arts, discovering the martial aspect was guided by higher levels of consciousness through its foundation in Zen spirituality. This interest created demand, leading to Zen Masters such as Shunryu Suzuki and Dainin Katagiri immigrating to the United States to open Zen centers.  Life is surely everything, and as we move through trying and challenging times, a wise Zen saying concerning just about anything tells us: “Who can tell what this means?”

America is going through very unsettling and turbulent times, democracy threatened as never before by the rising authoritarian inclinations of its president and the party that enables him, accompanied by their assaults on institutions of reason, fact, and science. Universities, the free press, medicine, the legal profession, and climate science are being undermined, while the principle of separation of church and state is threatened. The American heritage of cultural diversity, the “melting pot” of American society, foundational to its cultural richness and intellectual strength, is under attack by those same political and cultural figures who would limit defining “American” to only those who are of their own type and narrowness of mind. The economics of the society are decidedly moving in an un-egalitarian direction as the wealthy have become blind in their greed and callousness to the economic hardship that this concentration of the nation’s resources towards themselves imposes on the majority of Americans while being catastrophic for the poor. The greatest threat we and all the nations of the world face, dramatic destabilization of the climate by insatiable human demands for energy and resources, is called a “hoax” by those obsessed with wealth as a good unto itself and have captured leadership of our economy and government, forcing this dark threat upon us all. The times are looking very ominous; yet is something else, wholesome and wise, brewing beneath the surface?

The human mind is capable of both insanity and wisdom, ignorance and brilliance, cruelty and great compassion, sinful greed and selfishness and overflowing generosity, immoral degradation and spiritual uplift.  Human history is the story of these capacities in never-ending competition for the shaping of human societies, and there seems to be a kind of alternation of ascendancy for the light and the shadow of human character to dominate. That humanity has elevated itself out of hereditary ruling aristocracies and slavery and continues to confront the wrongs of poverty and the many forms of prejudice is proof that the general direction is toward the good. It is a kind of ascending sinewave where the heights and the troughs of the wave continue generally upward toward what can be called enlightenment. This is cause for faith in the long vision and direction of human society.

Enlightenment is a challenging human intention to define, but the word itself may give us the best sense.  It is to bring into the light, the light of truth, the challenge of being human. It is counter to the indulgences of the shadow aspects of the human character, of egoic self-involvement and our darkest tendencies. An enlightened individual is one who can be seen to embody the positive characteristics of the species – wisdom, compassion, generosity, courage, open intellectual curiosity, honesty, spiritual connection and faith, realizing we are all children of the Universe, here to wonder at and strive for understanding of its mystery.  Authoritarian dogmatism is humanity’s shadow, expressing exactly the opposite.

The religions of the world, in their beginning, can generally be seen as agents calling us toward enlightenment, while though the ages, unfortunately, their implementation has too often pulled us in the opposite direction, into bigotry and ignorance. Buddhism, for the most part, seems to have escaped this spiritual degradation.  It may be because Buddhism specifically warns against the shadow side of the human ego, and is not dogmatic, rather encouraging personal discovery and exploration of the inherent light, the spiritual side of what it is to be human, as an individual journey supported by the “Sangha,” the community throughout time which has sought the deepest understanding of the “Way” of the Universe.  Buddhism, even in its name, is a call to enlightenment; translated from its original language to mean the study and practice of “waking” up – waking out of the hold of the shadow side, the egoic and selfish side, of the human character.

Interestingly, perhaps the greatest of our scientists, Albert Einstein, an immigrant by consequence of the shadow emergence in 1930’s German society, had this to say about human character and destiny, and about Buddhism:  “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”  And “The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.”

Enlightenment is about being a wise and compassionate human being who fosters happiness and health for all beings, and interestingly, Buddhism is very specific in instructing that the way to be happy is to care more for others than for oneself, while taking good care to develop oneself as a stable, virtuous, insightful, compassionate and responsible person. Jesus said much the same.  The point of all this is to say that enlightenment, wise and compassionate social order, is the path needed now as we face the destabilization of our society through this rise of the shadow aspect of human character, bringing threat to this nation’s Constitutional order, democratic tradition, and environmental stability.

It seems that all religions have as a foundational symbol and inspiration, the image of light overcoming darkness, and human history is testament that repeatedly, out of periods of darkness, the light returns.  This happens because the darkness brings destabilization and misery while the light brings harmony and happiness.  We can have faith that this will be true because it always has been so, but it only happens because of the courage and determination of enlightened people who bring that light forward as the foundation of a healthy society.  This nation was founded by people who, for their time, were remarkably enlightened and were determined to bring “more perfect union” into existence through the radical concepts of democracy, freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition, through rule of law, and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as the right of every person.  They were “awake.” Einstein also famously said, “problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created the problem.”  Our problems have all been caused by the ascendency of the shadow sides of human character – greed, prejudice, ignorance, and violence to each other and nature. Our solutions require a different level of consciousness.  Let us call it “enlightenment,” and strive for it in ourselves and in our society. As darkness creates misery, it is a powerful impetus to turn to the light, and we are in such times.  As Thich Nhat Hanh, also an immigrant by the shadow of his society, said, “We need to awaken ourselves…we need to practice mindfulness… if we want to save ourselves and the planet.“  Mindfulness is the application of deep, wise and compassionate presence in everything we do.  It is what Buddhism teaches and what Einstein noted as what is needed to advance humanity into the future safely. That time is at hand. As we are in the season which celebrates the light of spiritual hope and realization, the turning from increasing darkness towards light, let us each strive to be an example of the light that can bring humanity into an age of universal material sufficiency and security for all beings living in harmony and respect with each other and nature.  This is the vision of an enlightened society we need if we are to advance the founders’ intention of “more perfect union” and move humanity forward to the fulfillment of peace and security for all.