c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Les Kaye is the abbot of Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center in Mountain View, California and author of”Zen at Work.”He can be reached at medatwork(AT)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ The record of human history traces key events, individuals, and social forces that contour civilizations and create new forms of societies.

Yet, history is more than incidents and personalities; it chronicles the difficulties of being human, as it traces our struggles to find meaning in life against the odds of injustice and bad luck. It is a record of human suffering and mankind’s efforts – mostly unsuccessful – to end it.

Even the reluctant high school student has much to learn pondering the heroic deeds and follies of our predecessors.

However, history alone cannot tell us how to end suffering. We can only begin that process by understanding its true source, beginning by examining the stories of life, in fine detail, through the microscope of observation and thoughtfulness.

Watching carefully the moment by moment unfolding story of our own life is the usual emphasis of meditative spiritual practice. At the same time, we can be enlightened by exploring stories of lives other than our own, including the fiction of master storytellers.

In”The Adventures of Augie March,”his classic of early 20th century America, Nobel laureate Saul Bellow unfurls a modern Odyssey describing how people create suffering for themselves and others out of their own desperate search for survival and satisfaction.

Augie is a poor boy growing up in depression-era Chicago. His grandmother, imperator of the impoverished family, aspires to train him in the ways of getting by and doing well in the world, of rising above present circumstances. Her methods are harsh: she punishes, threatens, criticizes, and demeans. She never listens, nor shows outward affection or feelings, except disdain. To shape and strengthen him she admonishes Augie to withhold love, telling him:”Nobody asks you to love the whole world … the more you love people, the more they’ll mix you up. A child loves, a person respects. Respect is better than love.” Grandma’s advice reflects the popular wisdom, a safe, common sense philosophy for pursuing personal success, taken to be the natural state of human affairs.

But we shouldn’t believe it; we mustn’t fall for Grandma’s line, a view that comes from misunderstanding and denial. Misunderstanding because so many of us seem inherently unlovable. We can be selfish, arrogant, sloppy, foolish, and stubborn. As Grandma might say,”Who could care for such people?”And denial because, really, we don’t want to make the effort to understand the difficult ones. It is easier to express disdain, to write them off, to remain self-oriented.

Yet the truth is that love is our natural state. Not the popular notion of love _ attraction and devotion to one person, obsessive.

Natural love _ despite Grandma’s avowal and history’s apparent evidence _ is an inherent human quality, our finest. It is simply a concern for the well-being of others, a willingness to be honest, generous, patient, responsible, helpful, and forgiving.

It is characterized by equanimity, and acceptance, extending to everyone, independent of who they are, how they behave, or whether they meet some criteria of”lovable.” It is easy to fall into the trap, to believe like Augie’s Grandma. But Grandma is small-minded, incapable of seeing other people as lovable. As Augie describes her:”… her memory specialized in (other’s) misdemeanors and offenses, which were as ineradicable from her brain as the patrician wrinkle was between her eyes, and her dissatisfaction was an element and a part of nature.” How can we see people as lovable? Only by recognizing their _ and our _ inherent perfection and by understanding how a harsh life can make harsh people. Bellow speaks through Augie:”Before vice and shortcomings, admitted in the weariness of maturity … there are, or supposed to be, silken, unconscious nature-painted times, like the pastoral of Sicilian shepherd lovers … but when there is no shepherd-Sicily, no free-hand nature-painting, but deep city vexation instead, and you are forced into deep city aims … what can that lead to of the highest?” How do we escape the trap, see the natural state? Through selflessness _ the only freedom from the small-mind trap – accompanied by understanding. To cultivate one is to cultivate the other.

History records human efforts at cultivation.

In the form of spiritual practice, the cultivation of selflessness opens our understanding of how we foolishly, needlessly, create problems. Together they nurture a generous spirit in all relationships.

People who engage in, or even drift toward, spiritual practice do not accept the popular wisdom of Augie’s Grandma. They sense that universal love is natural; they want to feel it and express it in their lives. Perhaps that is what Bellow’s Augie means when he says early on,”I know I longed very much but I didn’t know for what.” DEA END KAYE