The majestic you versus the redemptive you (a story of two Adams)

Abreha_and_Atsbeha_Church_-_Adam_and_Eve_01For Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Adam is a very different and changed man between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. He explains this idea in an essay called The Lonely Man of Faith. I came across the concept in a David Brooks lecture.

Genesis 1’s Adam is majestic while Genesis 2’s Adam is covenantal. Adam 1 transforms the world, and is master of his domain, whereas Adam 2 is redemptive and sacrifices a rib to gain a companion in Eve.

“Adam I is the external Adam, it’s the resume Adam,” Brooks explained. “Adam I wants to build, create, use, start things. Adam II is the internal Adam. Adam II wants to embody certain moral qualities, to have a serene inner character, not only to do good but to be good. To live and be is to transcend the truth and have an inner coherence of soul. Adam I, the resume Adam, wants to conquer the world…. Adam II wants to obey a calling and serve the world. Adam I asks how things work, Adam II asks why things exist and what ultimately we’re here for.”

Within each of us are an Adam 1 and an Adam 2 fighting to control our personality, our decisions, our future.

Our Adam 1 wants more and greater, and our Adam 2 wishes to enjoy what we already possess.

Our Adam 1 wants to win, but Adam 2 doesn’t want life to be a competition.

Our Adam 1 wants to do things his way, no matter the cost. Our Adam 2 wishes to work in a team, to compromise and enjoy success together

“I think we mean that [Adam 2] is capable of experiencing large and sonorous emotions, they have a profound spiritual presence,” Brooks said. “In the realm of emotion they have a web of unconditional love. In the realm of intellect, they have a set, permanent philosophy about how life is. In the realm of action, they have commitments to projects that can’t be completed in a lifetime. In the realm of morality, they have a certain consistency and rigor that’s almost perfect.”

Thanks to Uri Friedman at The Atlantic for the above quotes.

Craving, desire, and attachment are the sources of suffering

buddha-under-tree

I’ve seen more dissatisfied 20 something’s in SoHo than their counterparts in rural Jodhpur. I know that there is real joy and meaning to be found outside the secular system of wealth, status and eternal youth. It’s not our fault; it’s our programming. But the answers can’t be found in accumulating more. You knew that already. – Chris Michel, The Puzzle

I read The Puzzle at least once a quarter. And I’ve saved quotes from it to my Personal Bible (an evolving ebook collection of my favorite writings and life advice).

From philosophers to grandparents, we’ve heard them countless times. But, hearing something isn’t quite the same as observing it. I won’t bore you with specifics. Suffice it to say, I think the Buddha had it right when he said craving, desire and attachment are the sources of suffering.

I don’t think you can fully remove craving, desire, and attachment from your life. I crave Ichiran ramen in Tokyo. I desire alone time to read books on my Kindle. And I’m attached to my iPhone and that glow of unread messages and new notifications.

We are animals, and animals have emotions. We can no more remove emotion than we can become computers. No one makes real life decisions purely, or even mostly, through logic.

But Buddha knows all this. Of course he does. I don’t think Buddha’s point is that we must eliminate craving, desire, and attachment. He knows it’s not possible. I think he just wants us to become aware of this truth. To treat it like a natural law, like gravity and the sun rising in the east. And, once we acknowledge this wisdom, there seem to be two paths which we can follow. On closer inspection, however, they both lead to the same destination:

Path one is to want less if we wish to suffer less. The fewer objects we crave, the fewer people we attach to, the less moments of pain we will endure. Similar to stoics & ascetics, monks & nuns, we slowly remove and eliminate and detach ourselves from the world. With time and patience and meditation, we stop feeling pain. We stop suffering.

Path two is more complicated. Maybe we’re ok with suffering. Maybe we want a lover or a dream job so bad that we’ll gladly take the pain. And for Buddha, that’s ok too. He just wants you to understand them, to understand yourself. Because as you recognize and unravel the nature of your cravings and desires, you will learn to let them go. You will see them for the temporary, silly flights that they are.

You will see that it’s not the world which causes you to suffer, but yourself.

And that is his ultimate point.

PS I’m writing a book I call The Soul Habit, about how anyone (everyone!) should study religion as a source of wisdom, self-help, life advice. More details here.

The world is becoming more religious, not less. And that’s a good thing

I wanted to share some conclusions from this Pew Research report on the world’s religions:

Islam is catching up to Christianity and, if present demographic trends persist (an important “if”), Muslims will become the world’s largest religious population before the 22nd century.

Among the major religions, Hinduism and Christianity will keep pace with population growth, while Buddhism and Judaism will decline.

The unaffiliated (including agnostics and atheists and the spiritual but not religious) will grow in America and Western Europe, but will actually decline as a percentage of the world’s population. It’s driven, in part, by two realities: we’re older, and we have fewer children. In the bubble that is my social and career circles we assume that the world is leaving religion, that atheism is winning, that to some degree people are ‘coming to their senses’. The numbers say otherwise. And I believe that’s a good thing. I’ll explain why in future posts.

This note was also interesting:

China’s 1.3 billion people (as of 2010) loom very large in global trends. At present, about 5% of China’s population is estimated to be Christian, and more than 50% is religiously unaffiliated. Because reliable figures on religious switching in China are not available, the projections do not contain any forecast for conversions in the world’s most populous country. But if Christianity expands in China in the decades to come – as some experts predict – then by 2050, the global numbers of Christians may be higher than projected, and the decline in the percentage of the world’s population that is religiously unaffiliated may be even sharper.

Full article here.

Have we lost confidence in our way of life?

The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American’s hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life. – Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

If you like to struggle with the big questions, if you want to understand how the world works, I can’t recommend a better book. It will challenge you and generate a lot more questions than it answers, which I think the best books do. Highly recommended. I wrote this book summary almost exactly one year ago, and it’s reminded me to reread the book. Going to do that now!

The 30-item checklist to know if you’ve had a mystical experience (the MEQ30)

Hopefully you nerd out as much to this stuff as I do!

The Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) is what researchers use to evaluate whether a participant has had a mystical experience, defined as “the experience of profound unity with all that exists, a felt sense of sacredness, a sense of the experience of truth and reality at a fundamental level (noetic quality), deeply felt positive mood, transcendence of time and space, and difficulty explaining the experience in words.”

The MEQ has been used for more than 50 years. Today’s generally accepted version is a 30-item checklist divided into the 4 categories below. Highlights are mine.

Factor 1: Mystical

  1. Freedom from the limitations of your personal self and feeling a unity or bond with what was felt to be greater than your personal self.
  2. Experience of pure being and pure awareness (beyond the world of sense impressions).
  3. Experience of oneness in relation to an “inner world” within.
  4. Experience of the fusion of your personal self into a larger whole.
  5. Experience of unity with ultimate reality.
  6. Feeling that you experienced eternity or infinity.
  7. Experience of oneness or unity with objects and/or persons perceived in your surroundings.
  8. Experience of the insight that “all is One”.
  9. Awareness of the life or living presence in all things.
  10. Gain of insightful knowledge experienced at an intuitive level.
  11. Certainty of encounter with ultimate reality (in the sense of being able to “know” and “see” what is really real at some point during your experience.
  12. You are convinced now, as you look back on your experience, that in it you encountered ultimate reality (i.e., that you “knew” and “saw” what was really real).
  13. Sense of being at a spiritual height.
  14. Sense of reverence.
  15. Feeling that you experienced something profoundly sacred and holy.

Factor 2: Positive Mood

  1. Experience of amazement.
  2. Feelings of tenderness and gentleness.
  3. Feelings of peace and tranquility.
  4. Experience of ecstasy.
  5. Sense of awe or awesomeness.
  6. Feelings of joy.

Factor 3: Transcendence of Time and Space

  1. Loss of your usual sense of time.
  2. Loss of your usual sense of space.
  3. Loss of usual awareness of where you were.
  4. Sense of being “outside of” time, beyond past and future.
  5. Being in a realm with no space boundaries.
  6. Experience of timelessness.

Factor 4: Ineffability

  1. Sense that the experience cannot be described adequately in words.
  2. Feeling that you could not do justice to your experience by describing it in words.
  3. Feeling that it would be difficult to communicate your own experience to others who have not had similar experiences.

Click here if you like these kinds of lists.