New Culture Library

"Conclusion: Keep your eye on the ball."

"In the Buddhist tradition, there are four "divine states," four ways of being, described by the Buddha. The states are Loving-kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic joy - truly appreciating the joy of another - and equanimity, being at peace. The "divine states" are spiritual states - that is, they are "feeling" states, ways of being that involve the whole person in relation to the whole of reality - persons, creatures, and the earth. As in the meta sutra prayer, "let one cultivate an infinite good will toward the whole world." We begin to approach true maturity as we move toward these states, perhaps by engaging in some spiritual discipline or by having our natural inclinations nurtured by parents, teachers, mentors, or our religious community. If we aspire to what might be thought of as a ?spiritual? life, and if we want to be emotionally mature and healthy, we would want to be truly loving. We would want to be compassionate. We would want to be so content in our own living that we are able to truly share the joy of others. And we would want to be at peace, to experience acceptance in relation to life as it is. In the Buddhist teaching - and in many ways in the teaching of the Hebrew prophets, of Jesus of Nazareth and even of contemporary psychology - each of these spiritual, ideal states has a "Near Enemy." A "near enemy" to these spiritual, emotionally mature, and healthy states is a way of being that masquerades as that spiritual quality. It is an imitation of the spiritual state, but it is a way of being that actually separates us from our selves and others, rather than uniting us."

The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay, so far, have been a sort of willed oblivion, or visions of large profits to the manufacturers of such "biofuels" as ethanol from corn or switchgrass, or the familiar unscientific faith that "science will find an answer." The dominant response, in short, is a dogged belief that what we call the American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves.

"The restrictions on women's lives that prevailed in the early 1960s today seem draconian; removing them was an obvious extension of basic rights to half the population. But there was fierce opposition to such reforms, and their success was never guaranteed. Someday we may come to see paid family leave, reduced work hours, and public child care as part of our natural suite of rights. And with them, gender equality may not be as far behind as it looks today."

"Time to round up the research on living a happy life to see what we can use. "