Pride as Virtue

How did it happen that pride, once known as one of the seven least favored qualities present in human beings, became a virtue?

It was once thought that pride was at the root of the other six least favored qualities which -for the record-were envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth; in our time somehow this sorry bit of human mischief now holds a hallowed place in conventional thinking. Coaches, mentors, teachers, parents, and others revered for wisdom, express pride in those that they cherish, as if it was a developmental boon! From a cultural perspective it almost seems like bait and switch; how is this night-into-day transformation to be accounted for?

Somewhere conventionality got off track, confusion arose over something very basic to our existence. For those who have studied and know about these things it's often said that there are two kinds of truth, relative and Absolute. On the relative side of the street, the side of manifestation, where all phenomena are located, truth is relative, because seemingly all manifestation is a result of the play of the opposites; up down, right left, hot cold, night day, yin yang, good and bad, etc. On the other side of the street all opposites are subsumed and contained in the Absolute that is beyond limit.

With the advent of modernity, what hitherto had been considered to be a unity was differentiated into three main value spheres; where the good, the beautiful, and the true, were allowed to pursue their own ends without much regard for or mutual interference from the other. The true was taken to be only that which could be seen or measured, it not only limited itself to surfaces, but actually came to deny that interiors exist at all. Mind itself was denied in favor of the brain and its chemistry. A part was treated as a whole, rather than a fragment, when in fact it was only a single color instead of a spectrum.

Reason was extolled, and faith pooh-poohed; the evidence of contemplatives and mystics of all traditions were devalued and seen as nothing but the flotsam and jetsam of a bygone primitive age. There is hardly a clearer example of this than in the work of Ayn Rand, whose appeal was only to reason and whose bitterest scorn was heaped upon mystics and mysticism; completely ignoring the possibility that there is a science of the mind. The chief disciple and intellectual heir of Ayn Rand was Nathaniel Branden, who was one of the popularizers of the notion of self esteem. At this point the hook of bait and switch was swallowed by popular culture.

Now here is where we must be very clear, keeping in mind that on the Absolute side of the street the value of each human is equal to that of every other human, irrespective of their behaviors, nefarious or virtuous; this truth was conflated with the values systems on the relative side of the street where ranking is an every moment occurrence, if not a necessity.

Conventional wisdom in the form of a cultural narcissus looked at his/her own reflection and decided it was good and worthy of a high ranking without reference to any interior norms; the very idea of which had long since been discarded; and the cultural and personal liability known as pride was elevated to a status opposite its prior position and: pride became a virtue.

Three Score and Ten

Too young for the army draft to Korea and too old for Vietnam, we were blessed by accident of birth and avoided war.

After a hiatus of over 50 years a group of former high-school classmates meet for a breakfast reunion; all now in their 70’s, and all somewhat surprised that our lives have come this far.

Each one of these gents operating from a basic perspective as has been shaped by the choices made or refused in response to ever changing life conditions –whether they are aware of doing so or not. In every case with each man a certain sense of camaraderie, if not affection, bubbles just below the surface and serves to both define and sustain the group.

Three score and ten is a biblical number and its use harkens back to my earliest years which were spent in a web of Biblical fundamentalism spun by Mother, which in turn was based on her own limited perspective. Sad to say it appears to have been one based on fear.

And now at 70 it seems wise to take the occasion not to look back so much as to look forward. As a long time advocate of the notion that my outer life is but a reflection of my inner life and that if there is to be any change in the former it must take place in the latter. There is a ton of evidence that points to the idea that our inner life evolves or grows in stages; where a stage is a marked by more or less permanent acquisition -once you learn how read, for example, not only do you not forget how to do so but it's typically accessible at will.

For a good number of years my own inner/outer life often operates from a viewpoint that's usually called the Witness. It was a little startling when it first began to happen but gradually i got used to the experience. It's a little tricky to describe, but it is as if my consciousness is slightly behind and above my head and all phenomenon appear to be passing in front of me, sort of like images on a movie screen. As nearly as i can tell as marvelous as this witness perspective it's it also appears to be a barrier between the current and the next stage of development. Yikes! This next stage is even more difficult to describe; that's because it's said to transcend (but include) the subject-object phenomena. This means it's not enough to just transcend the play of the opposites; but to include them as well. Typically this is called the non-dual, meaning not just two, but not one also.

For a long time i've been operating under the notion that i could be content with things the way they are –simply witnessing, more or less at will. But last week a memory came back to me. It seemed so simple and ordinary and yet extraordinary that i never really thought too much about it until now. Here is what happened. I was a young married man working six days a week trying to support a wife and two small children, when one day i was taken sick, and did something rare; i went to see a doctor.

He had a very busy practice, one of those places with 4 or 5 examining rooms with some poor soul waiting in each. So there i sat, with my feet dangling off the end of an examining table scantily clad in one of those paper robes. Just a few feet away and directly in my line of vision was a sturdy wooden door that separated my little cubicle from the rest of the medical office. Well it turns out i've long been a wood lover and had crafted, since early adolescence, many objects from that wonderful substance. The door in front of me had a marvelous grain, intricate, subtle, unique, stoic, and surprisingly somehow permeable. Because just sitting there with my back more or less erect and no distractions at all i fell into what could be called a meditative state; but it was one in which, now as i look back on it, there was no subject or object rather my experience of it was it was if i inside the grain of the wood itself. It's not enough to say that the wood and i were one, which was true but just partially so, because i was also aware of a presence in it, a presence somehow associated with what is known as me.

So now at this three-score-and-ten juncture and armed with the memory of this experience i have now decided to set aside a time each day for a formal meditation practice. It’s kind of funny that it would take me so long to come to this point; but this is because for a long time i’ve clung to the notion that meditation is something that happens to you –rather than something that you do. But the way to get around this notion is not to think of it as meditation at all, but just sitting.

But changing the habit of a lifetime i think might not be quite so easy; so i was faced with the question of how do i get myself to just sit every day for a given period of time. I decided to use the same device that i use to get myself to do Tai Chi Chaun every day. It's a simple ploy really, i just make a rule that i'm not allow to do a fun (read self-indulgent) thing until i fulfill the obligations that i've set for myself. In other words i set up a system of rewards to condition my behaviors.

Some months ago i got busy and made a simple bench with a piece of exotic wood called padauk. It’s probably from Burma (Myanmar) and is used in a meditation pose developed by the monks of that country sometime ago. The Japanese call it seiza. One simply kneels to use it, avoiding the often awkward and sometimes painful folded-legs position of the lotus posture.

And to facilitate the this new procedure i also got online today and bought myself two related birthday presents. First is a thick hooded robe that i can sit in like a tent to keep me warm in the cold months ahead, and second is a simple little computer program that can be set to ring a chime at whatever interval i choose to end a given meditation session.

Who would have thought it would come to this!