Practice
I come back over and over again to thoughts of practice. Perhaps I am simply post-traumatic.
The earliest years of my education were spent among American Catholic clergy in the 1950's. Coming from a English-Russian-speaking home, since my grandmother who lived with us spoke Russian, I endured daily U.S. propaganda and Vatican propaganda about the evils of the Soviets, referred to as "the Russians". And, at home, I listened to stories about how my Russian-American uncle, an engineer, caused the family to be under constant Federal scrutiny because he worked for the Manhattan Project during WWII.
From my perspective, the U.S. bathes in its own hypocrisy culturally. I touts equality and is racist, sexist. It touts democracy and is a plutocracy. It touts morality and is hedonistic. It touts peace and is militaristic, belligerent, aggressive. It touts diversity and is exploitive of new immigrants. It touts mass prosperity and begrudges the people health care. It touts free markets and exploits nationalism.
So, how does this relate to humanist practice? Humanist practice, as I see it, is an antidote to hypocrisy. If I attempt daily to live with midfulness, honesty and compassion in all aspects of my life from moment to moment, I cannot be hypocritical in the moment. This is a key process to overcoming personal fear and insecurity. It is liberating. Liberation promotes internal peace. Human beings, freed of internal fear, are less likely to be materialistic, greedy, aggressive or defensive.
The first benefit of this practice is the practitioner's internal peace. As personal liberation takes hold, the humanist can be more open and understanding in each moment. Truly owning oneself in honesty and in peace leads to greater individual balance in the world. This is an ongoing and dynamic practice, requiring daily commitment and perserverance.
I think the words "humanism" and "practice" do not go well together.
ReplyDeleteNow of course "practice" is not necessarily spiritual or religious in nature -- it gets used for lots of things, including as a technical term in communist theory and in common language for doctors and therapists, but your usage has those connotations.
When you speak about internal peace and individual balance and freedom from materialism, you use language generally associated with spiritual and mystical modes of thought.
Humanism is not spiritual or mystical.
Humanism.. noun. A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth.
It appears impossible to me that a humanist could be a Buddhist or vice versa. Even the most austere and simple forms of Zen Buddhism acknowledge the core religious and spiritual principles of mainstream Mahayana.
I personally do not use practice to mean a "lot of things". If you read my posts on practice or humanist practice (see tag index on lower left of page), you will learn more about what I indeed mean when I speak of practice. If you wish to dismiss me as a non-humanist, because you think I am too something or another, I cannot keep you from it. I still appreciate your reading my blog and taking the time to respond to it.
ReplyDeleteI am not a Buddhist. I am not a humanist by anyone else's definition but my own. I am not an 'ist' generally. But, I am stuck with this language, if I wish to communicate my ideas.
Practice is not spiritual in my view at all. My practice is intentional and conscious behavior, adopted by a person who wishes to follow a path of eleviating anger, violence and needless suffering in his life experience and his environment to the best of his ability in each moment of each day. Hard work and a real challenge for me. I often do wonder why I bother, but I remind myself I feel whole, loved and loving when I do bother.
For some, practice, or its equivalent, means risking life and limb for just causes. For others, this means attending to parents with Alzheimer's with gentleness and dedication. For others, this means staying sober in order to be a more mindful, compassionate members of the human species. For others, it means writing blogs to encourage and reach out to others struggling with these issues.
In my use of the word, doing nothing to eleviate needless anger, suffering and/or violence is not practice. Attending to one's ego and material needs alone is not practice. Making money per se is not practice. Throwing money at non-profits for tax credits is not practice. Being habitually and needlessly adversarial, hostile, aggressive and/or violent is definitely not practice.
Religion has cornered the market on decadent prelates and Pharisees. Perhaps you would agree? Their greatest failing is knowing what they should be doing as practice and not doing it, in my opinion. Using technical and sophist arguments with themselves and others, based on the arguments of others who have felt the same way, is how they manage to live with themselves, I suppose. Some might call it "provenance". I would be greatly disappointed to see this become the status quo among those who call themselves humanists, as part of a trendy social movement. However, that would not keep me from my humanist practice, of which this blog is a part.
I hope you continue with whatever humanist practice you now do. If you don't have one, I hope you find one. In any case, you're always welcome to drop me a line.
Peace.