Two Kinds of Spiritual Leaders
I was listening to an interview with Bo Lozoff on CBC earlier. While living in an ashram, Lozoff went to visit a friend in prison, and realized that prison life is a lot like ashram life. This lead him to start the “Prison-Ashram Project”, the aim of which was to help convicts take advantage of their time “inside” and engage in some spiritual growth by teaching them yoga and meditation. He wrote a book on the subject called “We’re All Doing Time“.
He had a lot of interesting things to say about how to live in the world in a healthy and centered way. He quoted (I forget from who) the following mantra:
“Anything that can happen to a human being, may happen to me, and I accept this.”
The interesting thing is, although he’s clearly a man of faith, he didn’t spend much time talking about God. This made me realize something I think I’ve recognized implicitly for a while: the best spiritual leaders are the ones who don’t talk about God very often. My theory is that, in contrast this with the archetypal AM radio preacher whose every fourth word is “Jesus”, those spiritual leaders who have something useful to say on the topic of living talk about that instead.
You might accuse me of simply favoring those spiritual leaders most in-line with my own beliefs: I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about Jesus, and so I like the spiritual leaders who focus on other aspects of faith. Maybe so, but I really think that too much emphasis on gods, heaven, hell, and other-supernatural aspects of religion isn’t terribly useful for day-to-day life.
It’s similar to the criticism levelled by Nietzsche against nearly everyone: the Christians, the Buddhists, even my hero Socrates. He says all these people are guilty of life-denial in one form or another: the Christians of focusing too much on the world after this one; the Buddhists, in their doctrines of non-attachment to the world, of throwing the baby out with the bath-water; and Socrates of having his head in the clouds and missing the ground at his feet. I think the same thing applies to teachers of faith today: the ones who focus on what will happen to you after you die don’t have as much to offer as the ones who spend their time helping the downtrodden and the incarcerated make real improvements in their lives.
here is my thoughts on religious types (not necessarily leaders):
i guess in some ways it is the secular catholic heritige in me (if there are secular jews, gosh darn there are secular catholics). i don’t give a flying fish what you believe, i care what you do with it.
first – if you use your faith as a motivator to help some aspect of the world, good. more power to you, keep on truckin’ etc.
second – if you just are a missionary not doing anything but preaching, i personally consider it a waste of time. note, this does have a large secular equivalent… think of some sorts of lame college semi-activists/theater miscrents who just like to talk to show how smart they are… now, plenty of theatricals or colegates DO something, but some just yammer on… you can tell when you are around them.
third – if you use religion as a means of drawing difference between you and someone else, saying “im good because i am XYZ religion, and this other person isn’t XYZ religion so therefore they are bad” then you piss me off.
looking over what you wrote again ian, it makes me wonder about the interview (which i have not heard), and how much bo lozoff was or was not talking about what he believes in… maybe he wasn’t saying “god” or “jesus”, but he could have been talking the tennents of his faith non-stop… just that his sort of faith isn’t that deity-centric…
also kinda makes me want to see “amazing grace”… from what little i know about it, it is probably ten times as powerful an advocate for christianity as, say, passion of the christ (which some have lumped in with the disturbing new torture genre along with “the hills have eyes” and “saw” and such)
anyhow… i was wondering about something totally off topic: what was up with the samosa debacle at the farmer’s market in fredricton?
You don’t wait around for the ink to dry, do you? =)
Lozoff did mention God a few times, but he never ascribed any motives to or characteristics to God. He never said “god wants you to do X” or “You’ll be okay because god loves you.” I don’t know if that makes him “deity-centric” or not.
As to the samosas… I don’t make it to the farmer’s market very often (Who else but Farmers would schedule a major event on Saturday MORNING?), so I don’t really know much more than what has been in the (national!) news.
Apparently the people who run the farmer’s market decided to turf out the two most popular sellers because they were too popular or something. I don’t understand it. Last I heard there was talk of building a dedicated samosa building for the samosa sellers to ply their trade without disrupting the other stalls. Acceptable compromise or unfair samosa segregation? I don’t know.
The net result: the city has plunged into some kind of samosa frenzy, with all kinds of shops suddenly deciding to sell them, hoping to cash in on the craze.
i guess what i was getting at with regard to lozoff, and it may be a simple mistake on my part, but i was figuring that since he is big into ashrams, he is probably a follower of hinduism or some variety thereof. as a result, religious merit is to be gained by helping others toward understanding, etc. – basically that he is doing what is karmically good for him in his religion, much like christian missionaries are doing what they thing is going to bring eventual rewards. thus i would see the difference in what they feel called to do, rather than the underlying structure of motivations. note, this isn’t a criticism of lazoff, he seems to be doing good work.
back to what really matters: i just find it funny that samosas have caught on in other shops… i can just see it now:
-”um, i’d like to order a large pizza with X and Y, large garlic fingers with 3 donair sauces, and a half dozen samosas”
-”that will be 30 minutes. may we have your address?”
damn… i just realized that i miss garlic fingers… haven’t had them in like forever…