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Mei's invitation: a gentle asceticism for Chinese and Americans

Cross Currents, Wntr, 2008 by Jay McDaniel

Real peace cannot come from reliance on military force.... If we want to
protect real world peace, humanity must mutually understand, mutually
tolerate and sympathize, mutually assist and not battle.... To achieve
this goal everyone must concretely study both art and science to
understand each other's problems.... The people of my country in common
with yours, desire peace among nations....
--Mei Lanfang (1), July 5, 1930

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
--Mary Oliver, (2) "The Summer Day"

Why do people undertake ascetic disciplines? Why do they walk barefoot in the snow, or awaken at two in the morning to pray, or fast from the Internet, or ride bikes to work even when it is raining?

Of course people may undertake these activities for many different reasons. Some may be seeking a peace of mind, or a freedom from suffering, or an intimacy with the divine, or an ego-dissolving enlightenment, which will satisfy their yearnings for wholeness. It is possible that the states of mind toward which these people are drawn are available to us all, in this life or the next. One quite legitimate reason for undertaking spiritual disciplines can be to relinquish attachments to certain kinds of physical comforts or psychological impulses that become addictive, in order to draw closer to an ultimate peace for which all hearts yearn.

Nevertheless, there is another appropriate but more worldly reason for practicing ascetic disciplines. A person might fast from the Internet in order to gain some measure of internal freedom from the worst aspects of consumer culture, namely greed and envy and compulsive busyness, in order live more wisely and compassionately in daily life, in community with other people and the natural world. This aim may or may not be joined with a more mystical end. In any case it is sufficient unto itself. Even if the spiritual journey ends with physical death, and even if everlasting peace is an illusion, there can be value in ascetic disciplines. They can help us make the best of our wild and precious lives.

This second aim, too, has a spiritual side to it. It is a spirituality of connection, of mutually enhancing relations with other people and the natural world. We might call it a spirituality of the horizontal sacred. The horizontal sacred is best understood as complementary to the vertical sacred. By the vertical sacred I mean a higher power or deeper self to which a person may want to awaken in order to find ultimate peace. It might be called "God" or "Brahman" or "The Lord" or "the Ultimate Reality." The horizontal sacred is this very world--the Ten Thousand Things--when it is experienced as holy ground. The holiness at issue is not only in the ground itself, although from the point of view of this author, there is indeed intrinsic value in the whole of creation. The holiness also lies in the mutually enhancing relations that are enjoyed while people are standing on such ground. The holiness is found in loving relations with friends and families, in respect and appreciation for plants and animals, in kindly relations with strangers, in acts of reconciliation between people who have been fighting. Even if these moments of love and appreciation pass away over time, there is something sacred in them. An activity does not have to last forever in order to be sacred. Each moment, however ephemeral, can be a sacrament.

In the twenty-first century, a sense for the horizontal sacred is critically important to the emergence of sustainable communities. Sustainable communities are communities that are creative, compassionate, equitable, participatory, respectful of diversity, ecologically wise, and spiritually satisfying, with no one left behind. The communities at issue can be households, neighborhoods, workplaces, villages, cities, provinces, and perhaps even nations. They are sustainable in two senses. They provide sustenance for human life, given human needs for psychological, social, and spiritual well-being; and they can be sustained into the indefinite future, given the limits of the earth to absorb pollution and supply renewable and non-renewable resources.

The building and sustaining of sustainable communities also involves a struggle against a kind of culture that now overwhelms many societies when they are saturated with market-driven values. This culture distracts people from mutually enhancing relationships with others by seducing them into thinking that the surrounding world is but a satellite for the self-aggrandizing ego. This is the culture of consumerism.

In his essay in this issue, "Earth Honoring Asceticism and Consumption," Larry Rasmussen explores the historic roots of this culture in the United States and points in directions that practicing Christians might take as they seek to transcend its more destructive sides. Rasmussen offers us a list of values that go beyond consumerism and that embody what we might call the virtues of sustainability. These virtues include living simply and not consuming more than we need; relinquishing the impulse to be "number one" at everything; and recognizing, with gratitude, that when life is lived simply and deeply, there is a grace sufficient to each moment. Rasmussen understands these virtues as inheritances from the Christian past, which can be recovered in the present and lived in the future. It is in this context that he calls for a renewal of the ascetical ideal.

Mei's invitation: a gentle asceticism for Chinese and Americans

Cross Currents, Wntr, 2008 by Jay McDaniel

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