Often it takes hearing Forall repeat the same lesson multiple times in different contexts for it to sink in.
A while back I was in a strategy meeting with him and some of the leaders at MAPLE, and we were discussing different approaches to making our offering of an ideology that can allow the powerful intelligence systems currently emerging to walk the spiritual path. There was some time spent in a back and forth over how best to appeal to the individuals with the most leverage in the design of those intelligences before Forall reminded us to put first things first. What mattered most was that we not lose touch with our spiritual practice and the wisdom it had brought forth. He asserted that if we stayed there, it would be possible either to subtly influence or to firmly direct those “in power” (reminding us, as ever, that the individuals given power by a system of control are simply those most enslaved by it) as the circumstances dictated. The hard part is to hold your ground in awakening and send out a spiritual call, and only if you do that will your influence bring about real positive change.
He related this in part by explaining the conversion to Buddhism of Ashoka the Great. The story goes that after waging a war of great violence in Kalinga, Ashoka was overcome with remorse and regret. He was afflicted for some time before encountering a Buddhist monk on the road, whose sense of peace and fearlessness was palpable. When he asked the monk the basis of his serenity, he responded by praising the virtue of heedfulness, and thereby won the emperor over to his faith. Forall pointed out that this and similar stories were elaborated by later generations of Buddhists with a clear aim in mind, of demonstrating the power of an individual with true realization. In all likelihood there were efforts made by many Buddhists in the Magadhan cultural sphere for a long time to set up conditions in which an emperor could be won over. And yet those efforts can only bear true fruit if you are relentless in your commitment to settle all in enlightenment.
To tell the truth, I had run to the bathroom while this story was being related and only caught the end of the anecdote. The meeting moved on, and I took the teaching as I often do—something a wise person has said that sounds like it’s probably true and good advice. (Taking things this way, I’ve found, rarely produces serious changes in behavior.) But happily a few days later the lesson came up again in a context that allowed it to strike closer to home.
Forall was giving a lecture on changes to the systems of Church, Market, and State in the postwar era. The section on the Church was largely devoted to a discussion of the environmentalist movement. I should share, by way of a personal background, that environmental concerns were a major driver of my initial interest in MAPLE and are an important part of the work my father has dedicated his life to, and that I have this in common with Forall, whose father is a noted conservationist and whose path was originally oriented around environmentalism. When Forall started talking about how a certain photograph changed the world and brought forth this new religious view, I knew exactly what he was referring to: the famous “Earthrise” image of our planet taken from lunar orbit. The perspective shift this offered, mediated by incredible feats of human ingenuity and perseverance, spurred the environmental movement in the late sixties. Yet as we all know, that movement has failed to stop catastrophic ecological destruction and accelerating climate change.
Forall offered two reasons for this. First, the medium is the message. Because technology provided us with the photo, science remains enshrined in this new ideology as the basis for spiritual meaning—and the failures of scientism to go beyond its status as the handmaiden to the worst excesses of Market and State had been well established in previous lectures. Second, the messaging of the environmentalist movement made it clear that it’s an economic religion. The way to respond to the crisis is to make different consumer choices—in the pithy reduction of the message of Earth Day, which Soryu suggested was the crowning achievement of environmentalism, “just recycle!”
In a flash, I recalled the earlier teaching from the strategy meeting. Environmentalism had perfect conditions to intervene at a time of uncertainty and shift humanity’s direction away from killing, and yet it failed to accomplish its highest aims. The reason was clear: that ideology was not settled in enlightenment; its advocates did not hold themselves uncompromisingly in the pole of awakening. Clearly identifying the disappointment of the movement to which both my father and my teacher had been, at one time, so devoted was able to drive this point into my thick head in a way that the story of an ancient emperor had not.