I mentioned that in graduate school that one requirement for graduation was that I compose a essay addressing the foundational belief commitments that I held at the time.  A friend suggested that I post that statement.  so I retrieved an age-tinged copy composed on a typewriter in 1983.  I confess that I still hold many if not all of those elements of belief.  Expressing in words principles that one holds tacitly, unspoken, the substrate of one’s ordinary conversations and outlook is a challenging project.  I edited the original to bring the language into sync with today’s issues, and to condense the essay as well.

I’ll divide the piece up into three posts.

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It is hard to contend against passion,
For whatever it craves,
It buys with its life.

–Heraclitus of Ephesus

I believe humankind is the result of natural evolution. Humankind is ‘of nature’ and yet transcends the push and pull of cause and effect, by being endowed with reason and self-awareness.

I believe the essence of humankind is ascertainable on an individual basis. What it means to be human is to be a-conscious-center of awareness, situated in place and time challenged, interrogated by life. The question put to each of us: What do you want? My response, your response is won with difficulty by means of trial and error, analogous to the story of Sisyphus* who is both condemned and privileged to have an assigned task. The task of keeping the boulder in motion, the strength of his will pitted against the incline of the mountain, is involuntary. Sisyphus has the opportunity to invest his work with meaning or with despair. Optionally he may find interest, beauty and discovery in his allotted life. Or he may conclude that his fate is abject misery.  Others and God are to be blamed.

And so it is with everyone who has ever lived, presently living, or will live at a future time. Life interrogates my conscious center with the question: What do you seek? The involuntary, inescapable situation of our address, is the essence of the human condition. A response is rendered by our mode of being, the course of life which one takes over the term of our natural life. My answer, your answer is formulated upon a continuum ranging from dark obscenity, one more iteration of the tiresome story of hubris and cruelty, a petulant interjection of “no.” The “no” is a intransigent defense of the status quo, a refusal of change, of the widening possibilities within the constantly moving current. The alternative response is a “yes,” acceptance of uncertain possibilities, partially understood, that promise unanticipated modes of freedom and life. The response which must, which will be rendered, in the midst of the givens of individual and unique set of life circumstances – is what is meant by “the knowledge of good and of evil,” the felt risk of offering my answer to life’s inquiry.
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I believe that the history of religion and philosophy are chronicles of the approaches that have been taken. These fields of inquiry may also be seen as repositories of tools, tool chests of techniques, vocabularies and syntax from past cultural milieus which have proven to be useful. Here is an example.

Buddha’s quest for enlightenment, the repudiation of affluence, the realization that youth and fortunate circumstances are not the equivalent of fulfillment eliminate raw egoism as fruitful in the pursuit of fulfillment. In The Fire Sermon Buddha asserts that unequivocal pursuit of the senses, as well of the mind’s reason, — become an insatiable quest. Disenchantment follows sooner than I anticipate when I give full reign to my senses.  The eye and the palette are never truly satisfied no matter the excellence of sensory experience.  (The Fire Sermon is an apt name for the discourse).  I noted as well the discourse is publicized to the Buddha’s followers.   Never to be forgotten that humans are social beings. Therefore fulfillment involves the entire community of humanity. It is a journey with a long arc, and I cannot journey without you, nor you without me.

In a similar vein the teaching of Jesus is a directive to hold the other, one’s neighbor, with analogous solicitude that one extends to one’s self. We are familiar with this principle as The Golden Rule.  T. S. Eliot thought that The Fire Sermon is equivalent to the Sermon On The Mount attributed to Jesus.

The intersection between these two religious heritages at this point is obvious. In both cases the challenge to the individual comes. My habit of blithely going along, as the days, months and years click by, buoyed and/or tormented by the milieu, the practices of the time and circumstance in which I live is interrupted: What do you want? The demand comes to halt my uncritical slumber. Whether by Jesus, the Buddha, or by Socrates surrounded by a small circle of curious in the Agora of Athens the question comes, “What do you want — with your singular, unique life, with the days that are left to you?”
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