Among the many hints dropped by His Holiness about how a spiritual organization should be run, one of the clearest is his analogy of the wrestlers. I'd like to quote it in full, but can't find my copy of 1965 at the moment - I think that's the source of it.
The essence is that in India, there are men who take part in wrestling matches. When they get to a certain age, they are too old for wrestling, so they retire from that and take up training others and organising the bouts. When they are too old for even that, they just enjoy watching the bouts.
How should this be applied to a School - as His Holiness intends us to do? It seems to speak in some way of the progress of an individual on the path. There are spiritual activities suited to the young; to the middle-aged; and to the old. All of them relate to the spiritual path, but they are different. (In the case of someone who is self-realised, presumably the rules don't apply, but since no-one in the School seems to come into that category, it's not an issue.)
In any organization, generational change can be positive or negative. If it is a wise organization, the change will be managed wisely, so that the vigour of the young is harnessed to the general good, the experience of the middle-aged is available, and the wisdom of the old is respected.
The present difficulties St James is suffering are a way of looking at this to see whether we have applied it in practice. There is a strong generational divide that exists between the complainants (now in their 20s and 30s) and the Governors and teachers. Had the Governors seen fit to involve people who were at school with the complainants, many of the problems would have been avoided altogether. Why? Because those people know what happened. No-one in a truly responsible position at St James attended the schools themselves.
So there we have it: the wrestling is still being done by the middle aged, and even the old, while the young sit and watch, increasingly unimpressed. Creaking bodies and shaky reasoning continue to be upheld as the ideal.
If you think about it, if the School's claims to strengthen reason and foster philosophy are true, then those that received its benefits from the beginning (and are now pushing 40) should now be running the organization. On the other hand, those that came to it at a more advanced age should be glad to hand over the responsbility. This has not happened. The old have hung on to their old parts, long after some of them ought to have retired.
That is not to say, of course, that all the younger people in the School have to be put in charge. No. What we need are traditional wrestling matches, in which reason is allowed to play. It may or may not be the young who turn out to be the wisest. But we will never know unless we try. At the moment, every formal School gathering is designed such that the person in the chair is the source of wisdom. It's as if we have turned our wrestling into theatre, with the outcome decided in advance. That, I would submit, is not traditional. It is not philosophical. It is not reasonable.
It's just WWF wrestling, without the tights and capes.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Wrasslin'
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6 comments:
Bella, welcome. It’s an honour.
Yes, of course we can change the rules; but as the Chinese skeptic Xunzi said, “Anyone can walk around the whole world, but nobody ever does.” What most people do (including in the School) is follow the practice of others. They do not think that there are “rules”, or if they do, do not think to question whether they are the right ones.
So the first step, I think, is to begin a reasonable conversation. There are no rules for such a conversation, once it has begun. It’s like when Gargee offers to teach the king Ajatashastru in the Brihadaranyaka. His knowledge turns out to be conventional and not founded on experience. Gargee, to his credit, then turns around and asks Ajatashastru to teach him. There are many stories like this in the tradition and in the Conversations, in which the supposedly wise realize their ignorance, and go to sit at the feet of the erstwhile student. But there are no stories like this in the School ...
This is not a call for revolution, but for the possibility of movement. We must have respect for the authority of wisdom, but not too much respect for authority alone.
Sorry, that should have been Gargya. Gargee is the female sage in the Brihadaranyaka.
From Ubuntu ...
It's the mark of a good rider & a well-trained horse that the reins are light. So it could be with the School. The rider points the direction but the horse finds the way.
'Now and then a daring man ...'. Let's be daring. 'Neither accept nor reject' has stood the test of years but it rarely lives beyond the 1st year. Why is this?
- Ubuntu
'Neither accept nor reject' is a difficult one because it restricts growth. For example, an instruction on making tea. Imagine you are making an 8 pint pot and you've been given printed instructions that say to use 2 tsp of tealeaves because the instruction is for making a small pot but has just been labelled 'How to make tea'. But even though you see that the tea will be gnat's pee you can't reject the instruction.
This is why 'Neither accept nor reject' doesn't live on, because it kills itself. You can't accept but you can't reject either but you KNOW it's wrong... Encounter that just the once and it shows itself for what it is - a nice, trite little saying that does more harm than good.
An rule has to work in all scenarios or it is a false god.
I don't really see that.
"Neither accept nor reject" always works. In that instance I would not accept the instruction because that would switch off my intelligence. Nor would I reject it because it is telling me something about something.
For example, it might be telling me that the person who wrote it should get out more. Or that it was a useful instruction if I had to make a small pot. If I were to accept or reject it I would not be able to appreciate the full richness of the situation, because I would no longer be alive to all the possibilities.
So "neither accept nor reject" is there to remind me not to close down a situation.
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