Sangha of Auspicious Companions

[Listen to Audio!]

Many people believe that truth conveys power. Unfortunately, this is just a comforting myth. In fact, truth and power have a far more complicated relationship, because in human society, power means two very different things.

On the one hand, power means having the ability to manipulate objective realities: to hunt animals, to construct bridges, to cure diseases, to build atom bombs. This kind of power is closely tied to truth. If you believe a false physical theory, you won’t be able to build an atom bomb. On the other hand, power also means having the ability to manipulate human beliefs, thereby getting lots of people to cooperate effectively. Building atom bombs requires not just a good understanding of physics, but also the coordinated labor of millions of humans. Planet Earth was conquered by Homo sapiens rather than by chimpanzees or elephants, because we are the only mammals that can cooperate in very large numbers. And large-scale cooperation depends on believing common stories. But these stories need not be true. You can unite millions of people by making them believe in completely fictional stories about God, about race or about economics.

When it comes to uniting people around a common story, fiction actually enjoys three inherent advantages over the truth. First, whereas the truth is universal, fictions tend to be local. Consequently if we want to distinguish our tribe from foreigners, a fictional story will serve as a far better identity marker than a true story. The second huge advantage of fiction over truth has to do with the handicap principle, which says that reliable signals must be costly to the signaler. Otherwise, they can easily be faked by cheaters. If political loyalty is signaled by believing a true story, anyone can fake it. But believing ridiculous and outlandish stories exacts greater cost, and is therefore a better signal of loyalty. If you believe your leader only when he or she tells the truth, what does that prove? In contrast, if you believe your leader even when he or she builds castles in the air, that’s loyalty! Third, and most important, the truth is often painful and disturbing. Hence if you stick to unalloyed reality, few people will follow you. An American presidential candidate who tells the American public the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about American history has a 100 percent guarantee of losing the elections. The same goes for candidates in all other countries. How many Israelis, Italians or Indians can stomach the unblemished truth about their nations? An uncompromising adherence to the truth is an admirable spiritual practice, but it is not a winning political strategy.

[…]

For me, maybe the most important question, both as a scientist and as a person, is how to distinguish between fiction and reality. I’m not suggesting that everything is fiction, but that it’s just very difficult for human beings to tell the difference between fiction and reality. It has become more and more difficult as history progressed because the fictions that we have created — nations and gods and money and corporations — now control the world. Even just to think, "Oh, these are all just fictional entities," feels quite difficult.

Yet, there are several tests to tell the difference between fiction and reality. The simplest one is the test of suffering. If it can suffer, it’s real. If it can’t suffer, it’s not real. A nation cannot suffer. That’s very, very clear. Even if a nation loses a war, we say, "Germany suffered a defeat in the First World War," it’s a metaphor. Germany cannot suffer. Germany has no mind. Germany has no consciousness. Germans can suffer, yes, but Germany cannot. Similarly, when a bank goes bust, the bank cannot suffer. When the dollar loses its value, the dollar doesn’t suffer. People can suffer. Animals can suffer. This is real.

If one really wants to see reality, I would go through the door of suffering. If we can really understand what suffering is, we will receive the key to understand what reality is.

About the Author: Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, meditator, and author of multiple best-selling books including Sapiens and Home Deus. Excerpt above is edited based on various sources, including his Ted Dialogue.

Share the Wisdom:

Latest Community Insights

If It Can Suffer, It’s Real What comes up for you when applying the reality test: ‘if it can suffer, it’s real’ to any ideology? Can you share a personal story of a time you were able to apply this test when making an important decision? What helps you avoid getting impervious to the suffering of others?

xiaoshan pan wrote: That rock does not suffer, therefor it’s not real. My door does not suffer, therefore it’s not real. Sky does not suffer, therefore it’s not real. Hum? It is not a test to see if somethin…

Jagdish P Dave wrote: I believe in telling the truth and living the truth. I believe truth liberates us from the prison of manipulations. But it is not easy to tell the truth and live by the truth. It causes pain and suffe…

David Doane wrote: In my experience, truth does foster personal power. Truth isn’t necessary to manipulate anything. I believe earth was conquered by homo sapiens because we are foolish, not because we can cooperate…

Share/Read Your Reflections

Some Good News

Video of the Week

Kindness Stories

Global call with Barbara McAfee!
Join us for a conference call this Saturday, with a global group of ServiceSpace friends and our insightful guest speaker. Join the Forest Call >>

About
Back in 1997, one person started sending this simple “meditation reminder” to a few friends. Soon after, “Wednesdays” started, ServiceSpace blossomed, and the humble experiments of service took a life of its own. If you’d like to start an Awakin gathering in your area, we’d be happy to help you get started.

On our website, you can view 17+ year archive of these readings. For broader context, visit our umbrella organization: ServiceSpace.org.

[Listen to Audio!]

Youth is peppered with conspicuous firsts. And unless we’re really trying, life’s lasts can tend to sneak past, unnoticed. Your last cigarette may have warranted some ceremony. But what about the last swing you’ll ever sit on? The last pear you’ll eat? The last time you’ll watch [your favorite movie] with any real enthusiasm? […] What about the last time you read your favorite book? How lovingly will you peel your last carrot?

We often take a hierarchical approach to love and meaning – from the inner to the outer circles of the heart, allocating significance to our experiences accordingly. Yet when I imagine seeing the man who repairs my boots for the very last time, what pathos the occasion takes on. I might feed a horse, pat her velvety nose and wander off – but what if I knew she was the last horse I’d ever see? There’s something in my eye, just imagining it. Perhaps proximity to ‘lasts’ affords us an important glimpse of how unsettlingly marvelous it is to be doing or seeing anything at all. Conscious completion allows us to look back across the finite set of moments and realize that each was as significant as the other – that is to say, absolutely, fundamentally significant. “These are the days of our lives”, a very clever man once said. Boy did he really, really know what he was telling us.

We adaptively goal-oriented humans aren’t typically in the business of noticing life, while it’s happening. It is simultaneously our superpower and the greatest tragedy of our existence.

When I was little, my Dad worked in forests, and I often spent my school holidays playing in them. I particularly remember a fantastic house I once made out of sticks. I was so absorbed in construction that by the time it was perfect, it was also time to get in the car and go home. I never even sat in it. I would like to say that back then I was simply in flow and in nature, enjoying the journey with no thought for the destination. But I suspect that even by age 8 I had acquired precisely the opposite habit – becoming so lost in a plan for the future that I forgot to crawl into the beautiful, imperfect present and make the most of it.

Periodically you will read a blog written by or about a young stranger who is dying or dead, urging you to learn from their experience and live life to the fullest, holding your darlings close and appreciating every last cup of tea for the exquisite mystery that it really is. The piece will be viral and you will be among millions to read it, feel momentarily inspired, and then [forget about it]. If you are lucky enough to survive a deadly illness, your own path may yield similar insights. In my experience, these likewise will fade all too quickly. If you live long enough, people you love – perhaps people who are too young to die – will die. When this happens, the intense preciousness of mundane, normal old life will become so painfully clear that you know you will never forget again.

And you might not.
But actually, you still might.

Seeing something isn’t the same as learning it. Anything we want to learn, we are obliged to practice. Contemplative traditions are very clear on this. The insight we gain through peak life experiences doesn’t sustain itself. That’s why the practical purpose of meditation isn’t to hang out permanently in bliss but to willfully rehearse the insights you gained when you were in that altered emotional or cognitive state. Fortunately, we don’t have to sit with our eyes closed in order to practice our love of life (or intentionally recall the occasions when we were thunderstruck by the weirdness of being a conscious entity, pottering around on a planet and cutting our creepy toenails […] as if it was no big deal.) We are free to take note of the giant miracle we’re living in as often as we want. The more we do so, the closer we weave the fabric of an enchantment that is our most precious inheritance. Through practice alone, the road less traveled becomes the way we meet the world, and then life is sacred, even when you are emptying the dishwasher, or the cat has been sick on the rug.

Every last is a small death, and death itself little more than the last last of all. The more vividly we are able to honor both, the better our chances of really knowing life as it is happening. One day all too soon we will say goodbye to each other and to life for the very last time. But hopefully it won’t be the first time we have really noticed how suspiciously magical it was to be here together, ever, at all.

About the Author: Rosie Bell went from being an opera singer to copywriter to mindfulness teacher. Along the way, she’s "taken time out from assorted careers to survive cancer a few times." Excerpted above from ‘Death and Sprinting.’

Share the Wisdom:

Latest Community Insights

Conscious Completion What does conscious completion mean to you? Can you share a personal story of coming in touch with life through a conscious completion? What helps you remember to take note of the giant miracle you are living in?

Jagdish P Dave wrote: To live fully in the present moment without dwelling in the past or worry about the future is a wise way of living. Be here and now is the enlightened way of living. Going with the flow of life and no…

David Doane wrote: It’s seldom that you know that you’re having an experience for the last time. I’m aware that all of life consists of firsts since no two experiences are exactly the same and every experien…

Share/Read Your Reflections

Some Good News

Video of the Week

Kindness Stories

Global call with Gunther Weil!
Join us for a conference call this Saturday, with a global group of ServiceSpace friends and our insightful guest speaker. Join the Forest Call >>

About
Back in 1997, one person started sending this simple “meditation reminder” to a few friends. Soon after, “Wednesdays” started, ServiceSpace blossomed, and the humble experiments of service took a life of its own. If you’d like to start an Awakin gathering in your area, we’d be happy to help you get started.

On our website, you can view 17+ year archive of these readings. For broader context, visit our umbrella organization: ServiceSpace.org.