Episode 8: Beloved Community
In honor of MLK Day, I spent a few hours listening to some of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches. I have nothing new or original to say about him. He was, and still is, such an inspirational person and we’re lucky to have had his influence. We can find wisdom in his words to this day. Ultimately, he wanted nothing more than fairness and equality for all of mankind, and he used the language of the land, the Declaration of Independence, to point out where the words in that document were not being lived up to. Mainly that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness". In this way, he was a skilled orator and rhetorician, but beyond that he had a passion and clarity which, to my knowledge, has not been seen or heard since. Where is the MLK of today? Who is passionately traversing the world eloquently elaborating on the issues of our time?
I’m sure some would argue that we haven’t a need for a person like this any longer. After all, segregation has been solved, civil and voting rights have, in theory, been granted to all. I would counter and say that we are always in need of a moral leader, an impassioned orator, a mindful mentor, if you will.
As our information landscape has changed to exclude almost anything which can’t be read, heard, or watched within a few seconds, we are in desperate need of someone who can move-and-inspire people to love. Someone who can mindfully articulate the issues we face today with clarity and simplicity, but it takes time and attention to lay out such cases.
Due in part to the speed in which we now consume, this patience in us to listen and to contemplate complexities has been whittled down to almost nothing. We have a ravenous appetite for information, so long as it is simple and agrees with us. Yet we generally don’t spend enough time with any significant amount of information to get to know it well, we instead seem smart and satisfied with meaningless factoids and trivia. We try to sum everything up in a headline, which is never the reality. Or, out of ease, or group acceptance, we just choose a side and stay put. So the question is, do we have the time and energy to allow greatness to develop?
Is it our inability to pay attention long enough to anything worthwhile that is keeping greatness from emerging? Put another way, have we, because of our current inattentive habits, forced the great minds and rhetoricians to stuff their wisdom inside a fortune cookie or a tweet? Can we find within us the capacity for nuance? What can we do to expand our capacity for understanding?
This greater understanding leads to compassion and then to love. Which brings me back to the great MLK JR, who preached time and time again that love is all that is needed to overcome any difficulty. Love, compassion, and understanding all lead one to the other. When you understand an individual, you gain compassion and that compassion leads to love. This new love will then lead to another cycle of understanding, compassion, and love. His words contain a powerful truth and the Beatles echoed it, truly “love is all we need.”
This truth is nothing new, yet like any other system, we need calibration from time to time. We can’t just read the tweet “Love thy enemies.” it means nothing to us in that context. We need someone, who has taken the time and attention needed to understand any particular aspect of this truth, and who has put it into practice, to then share their insights with us who have found ourselves lost in busyness and the unending pursuit.
It’s important that we subject ourselves to teachings of this sort on a regular basis so that we don’t get lost in meaninglessness. This constant recalibration is necessary if we wish to find peace and happiness within. This is a lesson we can learn from certain religious traditions who’s congregants meet frequently to teach one another and to strengthen their commitment. In a way, this is one of the functions of meditation, a recommitment to a living mindful life.
While listening to MLK, I hear a person practicing mindfulness. I hear a mind which has been opened enough to see beyond the conventional views of the society and time in which he lived. He could see things that others could not. He then had the ability to articulate his dream in words which were ripe for understanding. Let us remember that he was not universally loved at the time of his life. He spoke a truth which was difficult for many to hear, perhaps even on both sides. This is not difficult to imagine. One grows up in a society and things are the way they are, there is nothing to contrast it against. One doesn’t merely get used to the way things are, it’s just the way it is and because of this it’s difficult to see another way. One can weigh options against one another only when options exist. This is one of the reasons why we need great leaders, to help us see another way of being and doing.
A great leader can help open our eyes, minds, and hearts. This is what great leaders do. Yet quite often, great leaders are not recognized as such in their time because the truths which they tell are indeed hard truths for many to hear as it may contradict most simply with the way things are. Not necessarily even with the way one thinks they should be, but just the interruption itself can be jarring. People are generally hesitant to change and will fight it mentally, if not physically. We see this with a large group of people in MLK’s time. Segregation was the norm in certain parts of the country, voting rights were limited, and unjust wars were being waged. All three, government sanctioned. Pointing out these problems riled people up against him, rather than against the injustice. I can only guess that the reasons any one individual might have to argue with his message is that they have fully embodied segregation and separation and/or that their lives are going relatively well and they don’t want to deal with the unknowns of adopting new ways of thinking and being in the world. A compartmentalization of sorts. One has a way of saying “I don’t see it” or “it doesn’t directly affect me so I’m not inclined to put any energy towards it”, thus wrongly strengthening our separateness. We know well through mindful awareness that we are all connected.
Something that stood out to me while listening to MLK recently was a passage about connection from his speech titled “The American Dream” which I’d like to read a portion of now.
“I would like to start on the world scale, so to speak, by saying if the American Dream is to be a reality we must develop a world perspective. It goes without saying that the world in which we live is geographically one, and now more than ever before we are challenged to make it one in terms of brotherhood. Now it is true that the geographical oneness of this age has come into being to a large extent through man’s scientific ingenuity. Man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. And our jet planes have compressed into minutes distances that once took weeks and even months.” “This is the kind of world in which we live… through our scientific genius we have made of this world a neighborhood, and now through our moral and ethical commitment, we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. This is the challenge of the hour. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone. Somehow we are interdependent.”
These words, true now as they were then, were written some 60 years ago yet the underlying message is an ancient one. Love thy neighbor. We have persisted through our ingenuity in slowly making connections with all of the places on earth first with our feet, then animals, trains, cars, and airplanes. Then recently much more quickly with the internet, we’re now connected to most people on the planet. This may explain some of the unease in society today, the shift was so swift and drastic that we’re having trouble adjusting. Like a child with a new toy, perhaps we’re still in a collective state of newness with our connectedness which is why it’s still commanding so much of our attention superfluously. Until the pointlessness of this connection is actually used for a greater purpose, that is; promoting love, understanding, and compassion, we will continue to feel empty each time we finally close the app or window. It has taken thousands and thousands of years, but we now have the technology and abundance to improve the lives of every living being. This is already being done on small scales to some degree or another, but the pace is not swift as it could be. We can build up this neighborhood quicker than we are. We can now instantly see that the family across the street, or ocean, is struggling, they are hungry. We have plenty of food, but may be struggling in other areas. We can come together and make up for one another’s weaknesses, this is the fabric of society. It’s just that the fabric now covers the entire globe. If we can see that we are truly dependent on one another, and accept this interdependence we will begin to create Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community.
It now brings me a bit of sadness to write about the man whom MLK nominated in 1967 for the Nobel Peace Prize, one of the greatest teachers we have known, Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed away Saturday, January 22, he was 95. He and Dr. King actually met in 1966 and I can’t help but imagine they influenced one another’s thinking. In fact Nhat Hanh told King he was a “Bodhisattva,” of the west, (an enlightened being who dedicates his life towards eliminating the suffering of all living beings). Along with King, Nhat Hanh is also a strong proponent of interconnectedness, brotherly love, and non-violence. He coined the term “interbeing” to better articulate that we are all being together. There is no other way to exist. His life’s accomplishments are many, his teachings and influence have spread across the entire globe, but for me, it’s the love in his voice and in his words and actions which inspire me. He, more than anyone else I’m familiar with, has the ability to pare hard to grasp concepts into easy, bite sized, made for our time and pallet, delicious morsels of wisdom. Which can be enjoyed over and over as the flavor seems to change with each passing.
If you’ve been listening to this podcast lately, you will no doubt understand how I’ve come to love this man. He would likely not call this his death, but his great continuation. He was quite forthright about this in the Art of Living, where he tells us that when his physical body dies, he will be continued in the spiritual practice of those he’s touched. As a monk, he does not have biological children or grandchildren, so he will not be continued in that way, but he’ll be with us as we breathe in and out with peace. Just like Dr. King and all the greats before them, his teachings will continue on and on because they are honest and true.
May we keep these examples in our hearts. Two people who put their lives on the line simply to help others live a better life. What could be more heroic? This is true love. In the famous words of Dr. King; “for me, I choose love. For hate is too great a burden to bear.” Next time on Another Finger.
Until then, Enjoy.