Pointing at the Moon

There's a lot of ideological fervor flying around in the news these days. I say "ideological" because it isn't just the issue of religion as some people think; while religion has long been a major catalyst for conflict, and is mainly what I'll talk about today, the same sort of fundamentalist zeal ordinarily associated with religious fanaticism is commonplace in the arena of earthly politics as well.

There's an old analogy from the Buddhist tradition regarding religion, although it can be taken to refer to belief in general. In the story, a man is travelling and encounters a wide and rushing river, deep beyond easy reckoning and impossibly dangerous to ford or swim. The man is fairly resourceful, and soon constructs a raft from trees along the river's bank, using the raft to cross in relative safety. Having reached the opposite bank, the man considers his raft and is grateful for it, and then continues his journey, leaving the raft on the bank behind him.

One moral of the story is that, along your path through life, you will occasionally come across significant obstacles that escape your current ability to handle. In your human resourcefulness, you will cast about for a tool or vehicle, find one, and with its assistance overcome the obstacle. I think that in itself is pretty soothing to remember.

A crucial part of the story, however, is that the man leaves the raft behind. He needed it, he built it, and he abandoned it when its purpose was complete. Religions and belief systems work a lot like this; they are healthy things to practice, and fantastic for self-improvement and ethical decision-making and so on, but they are not to be clung to if they become extraneous. You are grateful for your raft, and you do not turn from it with spite, but neither do you break your back carrying over miles of open land out of fear that another identical river may appear.

There's another metaphor, which I think is less old but no less Buddhist (but I'm not sure). The most famous person to have said this is Bruce Lee, in Enter the Dragon. The exercise is this: go out at night and point at the moon with one finger. We're all pointing up at the same moon, but we have lots of different fingers that can come to distract us. I won't belabor the point, because Bruce Lee summed it up nicely: "Don't concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all that heavenly glory."

It is my contention that almost all people involved in politics have gotten caught up in their fingers.

Any ideology or belief system is, ultimately, an instrument, created by and saturated with human data. They are informed by the sociological context at the moment of their creation. Does this invalidate them? Certainly not. The faiths and ideologies have valid advice and guidance for the living of an ethical life, but it is essential to remember that the transcendent is just that. The divine is, to describe it, indescribable. Any religious doctrine is written, and therefore mediated by its human author, even if it does originate in the divine realm. I'll talk about that in a later post, but there's the point.

All the world religions are pointing at the same gorgeous, indescribable moon of divinity. All the political camps are also pointing to the same end, the human good, although that one is indescribable in the sense of being too complicated to describe. No matter how starkly you seem to disagree with someone, there's a very good chance you two have at least some sort of common ground to stand on, and I think that's at least a little reassuring.

TL;DR Don't get zesty about dogma.