REFLECTIONS ON
NATURAL LAW:
Traditional Holism Revisited
Are we irresponsible? Does our work too often reflect the Faustian hubris of our times and constitute intellectualistic humbuggery that obfuscates our subject matter? Who do we respect? As Sapir (1928:41) asked concerning our denial of traditional wisdom and our "fragmentary and experimental analysis", are we not "throwing away a greater wealth for the sake of a lesser and more dazzling one?" This article discusses a part of this old wealth, "traditional holism", and the perspective it gives on the problems of existence and being together.
How do we live and die well?
This is the concern of the study of Natural Law:
how do we relate to the exigencies of our total
environment? It is a long study that is reflected
throughout human history and might be described as
"traditional holism" (By the way, is it just me or
should't this be 'wholism'?). The great works and
movements of the human tradition are expressions
of this universal and obvious concern. Some high
statements of the character of natural law are to
be found in The Bible, The Koran,
The Mahabharata,1 The Book of
History (1942), and the works of Homer, Plato,
Ibn Khaldun (1967), Juvaini (1958), Confucius and
Chu Hsi (1963).
A particularly clear exposition of the perspective
of traditional holism comes from the
Neo-Confucianist, Chu Hsi:
The cultivation of the essential and the examination of the difference between the Principle of Nature (T'ien-li, Principle of Heaven) and human selfish desires are things that must not be interrupted for a single moment in the course of our daily activities and movement and rest. If one understands this point clearly, he will naturally not get to the point where he will drift into the popular ways of success and profit and expedient schemes. . . When one does not even know where to anchor his body and mind, he talks about. . . the task of putting the world in order as if it were a trick. Is that not mistaken?
Traditional holism is concerned with the broader
issues of Nature, God, death and civilization and
its fundamental unit is not the individual but the
community. It seeks to see our proper place in our
total environment. This article will consider
community in this sense and discuss the nature of
civilization as well.
Communities are natural events. They reflect and
record a people's success in finding accord with
their natural circumstances. The success of a
community is documented by their contentment and
happiness in being together. An absolute standard
and continuum are inherent in this that gives
value to groups that are content in being together
and sees unhappy groups as unsuccessful and
misdirected in their articulation with their total
environment. Some of the things that need clear
expression if a community is to be content are
respect, justice, love and intimacy. The more
alienated a people are from one another and their
natural setting, the farther they are separated
from their mutual interests and in their angered
relationships, they are less able to know
themselves in the mirror of the people that
surround them.Unhappy people are the key to social
problems and challenge the fundamental existence
of the community they are a part of.
The satisfaction that any people find in their way
of life reflects how well they fit in with their
natural context. This natural context includes
their neighbors in the small sense of those who
live close to them and the larger sense of the
bigger groups that they are a part of and other
communities they have relations and mutual
concerns with. Thus, Nature includes all that
humanity is and has done and is the setting of our
united problem as well as being the substance of
community. Our expressions of love and hate for
one another are the stuff that hold us together or
pull us apart from our natural conditions and each
other.
How do we make good decisions?
Community is founded on decisions. The better the
decisions that are made by the members of a group,
the more successfully they can respond to the
demands of their situation. The broader the
perspective, the more complete the knowledge, the
clearer and calmer the context of a decision, the
more apt it is to reflect an accurate appreciation
of circumstances. We affect one another's ability
to make decisions in a way we treat each other and
this in turn influences the tone of our community
that is a kind of united event. Civilizations are
gatherings of communities that have found a way to
live and work together effectively, treat one
another well and provide each other with a good
context for making good decisions.
The concerns and issues that a community considers
important reflect how well its members know one
another and how close they are to natural harmony
in their way of life. The better a community fits
in with its environment, the more open and quietly
integrated its concern with the basic problems of
existence. Death provides a good example of this.
In the West, death is an event shrouded in fear,
confusion and avoidance. This contrasts sharply
with groups in greater harmony where death has a
very important role in they way one conducts one's
life. A Javanese statement of this orientation
holds that one should "Seek provisions for death
during life"2 (Golek sanguning pati
sajeruning urip). You must live with a
constant awareness of your death and you prepare
for it by living a life that does not cloud this
awareness and acceptance in confusion and fear.
When death comes you enter it with calm and grace
such that your trip home (perjalanan) to
the essence of your being be as smooth and as
quick as possible.
The tone that a community shares in its
interaction is connected with both the way people
treat one another and the amount of natural accord
that their way of life has attained. The united
aspect of a group is reflected both subtly in
daily events and more obviously in the societal
entertainments it practices. For example, the tone
of a football or soccer game can be contrasted
with the tone of a sacramental community
commemoration like the general sleep fast that
marks the coming of the Javanese New Year in Solo,
Java. During the fast the members of the
community, often making a pilgrimage of many
kilometers from their homes in the old kingdom
surrounding the city, quietly gather and walk the
streets all night long to celebrate their common
sense by politely greeting and saluting one
another.
The character of a group's entertainments reflects
their natural harmony in the amount of emphasis
given to escapist expressions of emotional
contagion. Another reflection of the presence of a
group is the distance between religious practice
and secular interaction. Since being calm and open
are a large part of the accurate reception of
reality, the distortion inherent in escapist
emotionality is obvious. Big things become small
and small things are blown out of proportion. The
value given to selfish behavior and attitudes is
also connected to the tone of a group in how close
they can afford and bear to be to one another.
The manners of a group are connected to its tone
too and contribute to it as expressed in every
interaction. People who treat one another well can
know and appreciate each other more deeply and
calmly than those who anticipate abuse in each
encounter. The more respect and acceptance a
people experience in their relations with those
around them and have in their expectations of one
another, the calmer and more accurate their
reception of the situation can be and the better
their decisions in relating to it are apt to be.
The community and environmentally destructive
decisions of escapist materialism can be seen in
this light. Many poor, short-sighted decisions
have been founded on the excited criteria of
personal profit and selfish gain. The long term
consequences of such behavior have become so
obvious with the probable extinction of the
species as a result that there is little need to
note it further.
A good example of the broader concerns that inform
a tighter community is the Muslim appreciation of
knowledge expressed in Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah
(1967). The Muqaddimah argues the
importance of openness to Allah and community and
examines the potential spiritual and community
divisive dangers of various subjects, together
with the importance of having them studied. The
tone and intent of his work are given in Khaldun's
concluding remark:
It is our intention (now) to stop with this First Book which is concerned with the nature of civilization and the accidents that go with it. . . . A person who creates a new discipline does not have the task of enumerating (all) the (individual) problems connected with it. His task is to specify the subject of the discipline and its various branches and the discussions connected with it. His successors, then, may gradually add more problems, until the (discipline) is completely (presented). "God knows, and you do not know." (1967:III,481)
A mature community is not simply interested in small parts of its members' lives but with every aspect of their existence such that they be able to live with satisfaction and die in peace.
What is Natural Law (Purbâ Wisesâ)?
The basic character of Natural Law is simply not
to cause disturbances in any part of one's total
environment for the obvious reason that by doing
so you are fouling your own nest. Whether
disturbances be individual, social or ecological
in nature, they invariably return to disturb the
disturber in the form of social relations based on
distrust or ecological protest against the
offending agent. The Javanese statement of the
Golden Rule, "measure it on your own body first" (tepa
slira), stresses personally knowing how you
are influencing others rather than focusing on
intentions, in as much as you will have to live
with the real consequences, not your imaginings.
What traditional holism seeks is to find harmony
with nature, the source and realm of our
experience. The absolute character of this problem
is stated by the early Confucianist, Tzu-ssu
(Tsesze), as follows:
What Heaven (Tien, Nature) imparts to us is called human nature. To follow our nature is called the Way (Tao). Cultivating the Way is called education. The Way cannot be separated from us for a moment. What can be separated from us is not the Way. (1963:98)
True power,
i.e., the power to be who, what and where we are
and to see and be seen clearly, and a way of life
that does not destroy itself arise from harmony
with our natural condition.
Normative Western psychology rarely contemplates
spiritual maturation. The high statements of
Natural Law invariably do. For example, the
paradigm of Javanese psychology is a state called
tentrem ing manah which is a condition of
inner peace that is based on open receptivity (rasa
murni) and the joining of inward and outward
acceptance. The Javanese concern with maturation
in attaining this state of being is reflected in
their depiction of "the levels of understanding."3
The first level of understanding is understanding
in thought (ngerti), a superficial
appreciation limited to cognition and not united
with any breadth of perspective or deeper
receptivity. It is understanding that pulls you
away from the actual context and is beset with
argument and narrow self-definition. The next
understanding is a level that encompasses the ego
(ngakoni), reflecting a deeper appreciation
that sees with more breadth and acceptance in a
context where you are not seeing yourself as
coming first. The next level of understanding (ngrumangsani)
reflects greater acceptance and the attainment of
calm in contemplating your small part in the whole
and greater receptivity of the actual state. It is
no longer linked to thought but rests in the
reception and acceptance of the concern in its
natural context. The final level of understanding
(nglengganani) is one that is not in any
way separated from the full acceptance of the
total environment and rests in open receptivity (rasa
murni). At this level thought sometimes arises
but it is not previous or intermediary or
important to the experience itself. As the
Javanese describe this phenomenon by talking of
"thought arising from the Mind of God." However,
the general character of the higher levels of
understanding is silent, unconstrued, spontaneous,
open receptivity and the acceptance this implies.
The process of maturation is not at all escapist
or euphoric in character: it involves getting your
feet on the ground so that you can recognize your
responsibilities more clearly and make better
decisions as a result. Throughout the process the
emphasis is on tenang, which might be
translated as "openness," "attentiveness,"
"sobriety" or "neutrality." Similarly, among the
Confucianists, the process of maturation
emphasizes ching, which Wing-tsit Chan
translates as "seriousness" or "reverence." Chu
Hsi comments on this process as follows:
To be serious does not mean to sit still like a blockhead, with the ear hearing nothing, the eye seeing nothing, and the mind thinking nothing, and only then can it be called seriousness. It is merely to be apprehensive and careful and dare not give free rein to oneself. In this way both the body and mind will be collected and concentrate as if one is apprehensive of something. If one can always be like this, his dispositions will naturally be changed. (1963:607)
As Chu Hsi
notes, the attainment of this accepting, open
state is a long practice that must be involved in
your way of living.
This perspective is similarly presented by the
Greeks as in the sayings that Zimmern (1931:127)
cites, "It is hard to be good," and "Call no man
happy till his life be ended." Plato brings out
this same appreciation of the value of openness in
his scolding letter to Dionysius, the tyrant of
Syracuse:
To Dionysius, Joy Is it the best form of salutation to wish you "joy" as I have, or would it be better if I were to follow my usual custom and bid you "Do well"? That is the salutation I use when I write to my friends. You of course descended to flattery and addressed even the god at Delphi in these very terms -- such is the report of those who were in attendance at the time -- and wrote, they say, "Joy to you. Keep ever the pleasant life of a tyrant." I, though, would not even bid a human being, much less a god, to enjoy himself. Any such injunction to a god would run counter to nature, for the divine dwells afar from the sphere of pleasure and pain. I would avoid such a greeting to a human being, moreover, because in most cases pleasure and pain work harm and produce in the soul dullness and forgetfulness and folly and lawlessness. So much in regard to the salutation. When you read this, take it any way you like. (1971:1570)
The problem of maturation is also taken up the Confucianists. They emphasize the difficulty of arriving at natural accord:
"To find the central clue to our moral being which unites us to the universal order, that indeed is the highest human attainment" (Tsesze (Tzu-ssu) 1938:105).
The character of this attainment is described much as is tentrem ing manah, an all-embracing peace of the spirit:
"The true man has no worries; the wise man has no perplexities; and the brave man has no fear" (Confucius 1938:162).
The issue of life's relation to death is also considered by the Confucianists:
Confucius was very ill. Tzu-lu asked that prayer be offered. Confucius said, "Is there such a thing?" Tzu-lu replied, "There is. A eulogy says, 'Pray to the spiritual beings above and below.'" Confucius said, "My prayer has been for a long time (that is, what counts is the life that one leads)." (Confucius 1963:33)
Where do mature beings fit into the community?
We all relate to one another in a plethora of ways
with the most superficial level being that of
thought and opinion. An individual is a community
of relationships with existence in and of himself.
The fundamental level of exchange that unites us
all rests in awareness of our common plight and
mutual interests: we cohabit the present together
and the tone and content of our existence largely
depends on the participating behavior and
experience of others.
The less open a community is to this obvious fact
of living, the less it is attended to and the more
attention is given to narrow tactics of experience
manipulation. When we cannot trust in the openness
of those around us, the deep levels of common
purpose, respect and love become clogged with
painful memories of violations of trust.
All relationships reflect and express this. The
openness and trust of deep love express clarity of
contact between one being and another. The
accepting nature of such love also points out the
vulnerability inherent in such open relationships.
The calm, dedicated, open, respectful faith of
clear union is the basic character of natural
harmony as you are together with the other without
the walls of self-centered discrimination or petty
distinctions. The clearer and more accepting the
love is, the more concerned it becomes with the
basic problems of existence like death, living a
good life and what comes after. The clouded love
of superficial contacts avoids or ignores these
issues and focuses on materialistic concerns,
self-gratification and the coercive control of
others.
A love that sees another clearly in his/her real
setting has other concerns for their welfare than
one that sees less acutely. The expressions and
interpretations of purposes possible in a
community in natural harmony are not the same as
those in an unhappy, closed, confused group. The
problem of maturation reflects this as beings work
to earn openness and trust in their relationships
with others and to see and be seen clearly. As a
result, the natural consequences of violating such
trust become evident in the disturbance of mutual
peace, the sense shared within the community.
Humanity is deeply and quietly joined in the
universal problem of existence. But above this
union lie loud and emotional outcries of protest
and unsettled levels of interaction.The problem of
maturation and seeing clearly is rather like the
problem of attending to counsel. One who attends
only to narrow, emotional, flattering counsel is
taking the easy path of following that which is
pleasant and easy to listen to. This behavior
remains in violation of the quieter, calmer
counsel that rests and is accessible only through
humility and receptivity. One who attends to loud,
excited counsel remains within the sphere of his
own group's pretended superiority. The more this
illusory superiority is challenged by the exposure
of its deficiencies through expanded contacts with
other groups and ways of living, the louder, more
ethnocentric and egotistical the counsel is apt to
become.
All communities are united by the common problem
of existence and their common humanity but the
deep exchanges and growth of mutual trust and love
that yield concordant experience and cooperation
are violated by transgression and narrow
distinctions founded in self-importance and
prejudice -- opinion and crude emotion. These
opinions and prejudices are mechanisms of
avoidance and experience manipulation that limit
and define relationships to protect your own sense
of worth. The walls that exist between groups
reflect conflicting and unreconciled points of
view: while the experiences are united in the
common experience of being and reality at their
base, they are likely to be mutually repulsive in
actual expression.
The mature being transcends the narrow vision of
his/her own group and seeks to express natural
harmony in their way of life. This can be a
difficult path to follow and extrude the mature
being of the "normal" sense pretended in their
group. In other cases, as in Java, the
self-centered individual is the exception and the
mature, open-directed being the rule. A visit to
Hong Kong in the morning, with the multitudes
slowly going through their t'ai ch'i ch'uan
exercises and preparing their bodies and spirits
for the day, provides another example of this
cultural emphasis on being present and approaching
existence accurately.
What kind of place is this?
The myths, legends, stories and art in general of
tradition express deeply felt relationships both
with a group and with its surroundings. In
describing the sense of these relationships, such
tales are apt to be more profound and truer than
more "scientific" and "analytic" depictions can
be. However, when groups interact these precious
markers of the nature of existence suffer
contradiction and challenge and the profundity
they express is lost or becomes foreign to current
experience and static -- locked in its own milieu
-- as the tone of the group changes and nno longer
supports their active creation.
During a period of transition, this process
continues until the depth that these old markers
reflected is expressed in the new order and finds
new expression in the expanded vocabulary of the
times. The problem is akin to finding the greatest
common denominator, uniting the variant
perspectives around it, reducing them to the new
language and expressing them in a common, unified
form. This is an unpleasant task for all concerned
in that confusion arises about which is the baby
and which the bath water.
Communities in expressive opposition, that is,
groups that do not know each other well, are
exposed to turmoil by contact in developing into a
larger, united group. The web of experiential
interdependence suffers rents and tears in being
more closely associated with the contradictions
and deficiencies exposed in our way of being by
those of other groups. A dramatic example of the
nature of this problem is the Panará, a Stone Age
Brazilian Indian tribe first encountered in the
middle of this century that was virtually wiped
out by disease and despair after contact. In a
period of less than ten years their population
dwindled from over five hundred to under seventy.
Getting to know others and yourself more deeply
through contact and comparison involves
challenging and re-writing the traditions that had
informed our experiences. This process continues
until a new accord is arrived at through knowing
one another well and the world in a new fashion as
a result.
The role of the mature being in this process comes
in establishing levels of exchange, of counsel and
relationships of loving trust with other groups in
his/her broader perspective based on an awareness
of their common problem of being together. Those
in this process are often annoyances to their own
community (e.g., Socrates, Zoroaster, Muhammed,
Jesus, Chu Hsi) as they pierce and expose the
obvious inappropriateness of the walls that
traditionally defined and limited exchange between
their own group and the other peoples united more
clearly in their vision than in the narrower
perspective of those around them.
Such mature beings act both in seeing clearly and
accurately and reporting on the nature of the
world thus seen. Getting to know others with a
conflicting perspective on existence is an
unpleasant process that excites the mechanisms of
experiential manipulation that denies others the
right to exist as they do: the process involves
seeing others as better or worse than yourself
rather than seeing them clearly. These mechanisms
try to protect what is most dearly loved in your
own tradition but is either not seen or challenged
in some way by the other's.
In addition, the transition from smaller to larger
community or civilization also involves a change
in social organization and infrastructure as well
as mentality. As Juvaini, a Persian who lived
during the years of the Mongol's Great Khan Mengu,
observed soberly:
Whatever of good or evil, of weal or woe, appeareth in this world of growth and decay is dependent upon the decree of a powerful Sage and hingeth upon the will of an absolute Potentate. (1958:I,12)
Civilizations arising out of this process reflect
a united regard and the ability to live and
function together with a common perspective on our
part in the whole that is mutually satisfying.
However, getting there is not easy and staying
there difficult as well.
In the present era a world of groups is getting to
know one another more closely than ever before and
the many levels of contact and exchange thus
generated tend to degrade the experience of all
concerned. All is challenged that superficial
attachment and parochial perspective stand between
communities and that deny the mutual interests and
the common problem of existence that unite them.
It is easier to admire (or despise) a group from
afar. Arriving at a united modus vivendi leading
to a tighter expression of common community and
the appreciation of common responsibilities is a
disturbing task. It is of benefit to a group to
see its place in reality clearly but it does not
seem so when precious traditional values are being
violated and the traditional community that is the
source of their treasured way of life is torn and
despised. One comfort is that such unsettled
periods of confusion and conflict are historically
frequent and often previous to high expressions of
the human spirit. If we survive the process of
getting to know one another, perhaps we will do
better.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Benedict R. O'G.
1965 Mythology and the Tolerance of the Javanese. Ithaca: Monograph series for the Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University.
Book of History
1942 "The Book of History: Documents of Chinese Democracy" (Shu Ching). James Legge, transl. In The Wisdom of China and India. Lin Yutang, ed. pp. 695-742. New York: Modern Library.
Chu Hsi
1963 "The Great Synthesis in Chu Hsi." In A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Wing-tsit Chan, trans. and comp. pp. 588-653. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Confucius
1938
Aphorisms of Confucius (The Analects). In The
Wisdom of Confucius. Lin Yutang, transl. and
ed. pp. 153-204. New York: Modern Library.
1963
"The Humanism of Confucius." In A Source Book
in Chinese Philosophy. Wing-tsit Chan,
trans. and comp. pp. 588-653. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Howe, David Gordon
1980 Sumarah: A Study of the Art of Living. Ph.D. thesis, University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Ibn Khaldun, Wali-ad-Din 'Abd-ar-Rahman
1967 The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. 3 vols. Franz Rosenthal, transl. Princeton: Bollingen Foundation.
Juvaini, 'Ala-ad-Din 'Ata Malik
1958 The History of the World Conqueror. 2 vols. John Andrew Boyle, transl. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Plato
1971 Letters. L.A. Post, transl. In The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including the Letters. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds. pp. 1560-1606. Princeton: Bollingen Foundation.
Sapir, Edward
1928 "The Unconscious Patterning of Behavior in Society." In The Unconscious, A Symposium. Ethel S. Drummer, intro. New York: Knopf.
Tsesze (Tzu-ssu)
1938
"Central Harmony (Chungyung: originally Liki,
Ch. XXXI)." In The Wisdom of Confucius.
Lin Yutang, transl. and ed. pp. 101-134. New
York: Modern Library.
1963
"Spiritual Dimensions: The Doctrine of the
Mean." In A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy.
Wing-tsit Chan, trans. and comp. pp. 95-114.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Zimmern, Alfred
1931 The Greek Commonwealth. New York: Modern Library.
NOTES
1. For a
discussion of the role of The Mahabharata
in Indic civilization see Anderson (1965).
2. For a
more thorough depiction of Javanese thought, see
Howe (1980:42-66).
3. For a
more extensive discussion of the nature of
maturation psychology in Javanese thought and
practice, see Howe (1980:120-146).