Shimon Peres, former prime minister of Israel and one of the
Nobel Peace Prize winners in 1994, views the 21st century as
"an invitation to a new era." While the major part
of the 20th century was laden with wars and saturated with blood,
toward the end of the century "history started its ascent
to new horizons," writes Peres. He attributes this to the
advance of science and technology, which have changed the way
we live. In New Perspectives Quarterly (Spring 2000),
he has this to say:
It is amply clear by now that once the world moved from an
economy of the land to an economy of the mind, armies became
obsolete. Wisdom, after all, is not attired in uniforms and technology
is not spread by the sound of cannon fire….
Of course, no one can guarantee that there will be no more
wars. But it can be said with utmost certainty that wars are
no longer necessary. The benefits anticipated from scientific
peace exceed by far the profits expected to be gained from costly
armies. This is not to speak of the damages of war, which include
moral and material damage to the aggressor, not only to the victim.
Historically speaking, there are no win-win wars and there is
no lose-lose peace….
There is an invitation by history to people that comes not
from the side that is lacking, but from the side that is promising;
not from the reserves of revolt, but from the potential of growth,
from the belief that the day has arrived when it is possible
to hope rather than to rebel, to enjoy new expanses, rather than
become entrenched in narrow and tortuous paths strewn with setbacks
and mines.
We have parted from a century of sorrow, but we part from
it without sorrow. Thank goodness it has ended. We have an invitation
to a new era.
The coming centuries might restore a little of the taste of
the Garden of Eden. This time, we should remain wary of the snake,
but still eat, yes, eat, from the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Can knowledge alone lead humanity's ascent to new horizons?
Mere head-learning, with no Soul-wisdom to illuminate and guide
it, is worse than ignorance. Nor is there any hope for humanity
until it changes its direction from unbrotherliness, the "insanity
of the age," to brotherly co-operation. True ideas are the
crying need if this new century is going to prove any better
than the previous one. In this Kali Yuga, men and women
no longer follow their spiritual intuitions. Instead of acting
from within, they ever follow impulses from without-those produced
by their physical senses and gross selfish body. H.P.B., who
could perceive where this would lead man and what future was
in store for him, also gave the means to ameliorate it, if it
were not possible entirely to avert it:
….the only palliative to the evils of life is union and
harmony - a Brotherhood IN ACTU, and altruism not simply
in mane. The suppression of one single bad cause will
suppress not one, but a variety of bad effects. And if a Brotherhood
or even a number of Brotherhoods may not be able to prevent nations
from occasionally cutting each other's throats - still unity
in thought and action, and philosophical research into the mysteries
of being, will always prevent some, while trying to comprehend
that which has hitherto remained to them a riddle, from creating
additional causes in a world already so full of woe and evil.
(The Secret Doctrine, I, 644)
As in the realm of science, so in the sphere of religion,
adherents of different faiths are turning their thoughts toward
the new century and what it holds in store for us. In the Buddhist
Publication Society's Newsletter (No. 44), Bhikkhu Bodhi
ponders the question of what Buddhism can offer the world in
the years ahead:
From one angle it could be said that what Buddhism can offer
humanity today is exactly what it has been holding out for the
past twenty-five centuries: an acute diagnosis of the human condition
and a clear path to final liberation from suffering. But while
this statement is correct as far as it goes, it is not yet sufficient;
for it does not take account of the fact that in any age the
aspects of the Dhamma to be emphasized, and the way they are
to be expressed, must address the particular problems faced by
the people living in that age….If what the Buddha taught
is "only suffering and the cessation of suffering,"
then the starting point for any convincing presentation of the
way to suffering's end must be the specific forms of suffering
characteristic of our time.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, two manifestations
of suffering have become so prevalent that they seem almost the
defining characteristics of the modern era. One is an invidious
sense of meaninglessness, feeling of alienation from life, now
becoming almost as common in the more modernized quarters of
Asia as in the West. The other, most marked in the Third World,
is collective violence. The first problem has its locus in the
individual consciousness, the second in the relationships among
communities at different levels of social order. If the Dhamma
is to benefit humanity in the coming years and decades, it must
show us a way out of the abyss of meaninglessness and offer guidelines
for reducing the frequency and severity of collective violence.
The sense of meaninglessness as a widespread social phenomenon
set in with the rise of modern industrial civilization….Our
existence did not embody any higher purpose than the brute struggle
to survive. The loss of meaning was further aggravated by the
breakup of traditional forms of social order under the impact
of industrial capitalism. Altruism and restraint were eclipsed
by the new creed of self-indulgence, which gave precedence to
wealth, power and conspicuous consumption as the supreme goals
of life. Today the sense of meaninglessness has reached a truly
global scale….
For those adrift in the sea of meaninglessness, the Buddha's
teaching offers a sense of meaning stemming from a profound spiritual
tradition that combines metaphysical depth with psychological
astuteness and the highest ethical standards. Without calling
for blind faith in dogmatic creeds or speculative postulates,
the Buddha points directly to the invariable universal laws that
underlie happiness and suffering. He insists that we can discover
these laws for ourselves, simply by clear reflection on our own
immediate experience, and he offers us methods of practice by
which we can gradually dig up the buried roots of suffering and
cultivate the causes culminating in the highest happiness….
The second type of suffering that has become so pervasive
in our time is social violence, which still wreaks so much misery
across the globe…. What is necessary for true peace and
harmony to prevail among human beings is not the hammering out
of a comprehensive treaty by which the various parties to a conflict
compromise their hard and volatile demands. What is truly required
is a new mode of perception, the ascent to a universal consciousness
that transcends the narrow standpoint of ego-centric or ethnocentric
self-interest. This is a consciousness that regards others as
not essentially different from oneself, which detaches itself
from the insistent voice of self-interest and rises up to a universal
perspective from which the welfare of all appears as important
as one's own good.
Some researchers believe that body language, or communication
through gestures, dates back to a time in humanity's distant
past before spoken language came to be used. Even today people
use gestures to get a message across, or use them unwittingly
as they speak. Recent studies suggest that there might be "a
deep evolutionary link between speech and gesture" (New
Scientist, April 8). Laura Spinney writes about the growing
interest in how early humans communicated:
To Michael Corballis from the University of Auckland in New
Zealand, our gestures are not only an adjunct to speech. They
may have been our earliest method of communication. Early humans
communicated using their whole bodies in a form of mime. Speech
evolved out of this ancient body language, and gesture is all
that remains of it today, he says. Gesture and speech have co-evolved,
and the connection is so close that we can't do one without the
other….
Corballis doesn't see mime and speech as separate channels,
more as a progression of forms….Gesture one carried the
whole linguistic burden. Nothing else, he believes, can explain
the huge amount of information that can be conveyed by gesture
alone….
Gesture may perform many functions. But if Corballis is right
it could help resolve a long-running debate about whether language
emerged gradually or all at once, in a "big bang."
Some linguists have argued that grammar is not something that
could have evolved slowly-you either have it or you don't-and
that therefore it must have exploded onto the hominid scene at
some point in our history, perhaps with the emergence of Homo
sapiens.
The earliest races, before the development of Manas
or mind which turned man into a thinking being, were indeed "dumb,"
yet could communicate as there is more to communication than
words, and many different ways to get message across, as we notice
even among animals and birds. One of the Masters wrote:
Long ages of silence were required, for the evolution and
mutual comprehension of speech, from the moans and mutterings
of the first remove of man above the highest anthropoid (a race
now extinct since "nature shuts the door behind her"
as she advances, in more than one sense)-up to the first monosyllable
uttering man….
Intellect has an enormous development in this [the 4th] round.
The dumb races will acquire our human speech, on our
globe, on which from the 4th race language is perfected and knowledge
in physical things increases.
The Secret Doctrine (II, 198-201) traces the evolution
of speech, which developed only after the manasic element
dormant in primitive man was fructified and awoke to life.
Some psychologists promote the idea that giving vent to one's
feelings can prove useful. Thus, if one is angry, he should "let
it out" by punching a pillow or slamming a door. But this
advice is more harmful than helpful, according to other psychologists.
"Expressing anger actually increases aggression, "says
Dr. Brad Bushman, Iowa State University psychologist. Psychology
Today reports the experiments carried out by him and his
colleagues. The subjects who were allowed to give vent to their
anger became even more aggressive-"and that's most worrisome,"
says Bushman.
Instead of trying to simmer down, he suggests, just turn off
the heat altogether. "Count to 10-or 100, if need be-and
the anger will pass."
Mr. Judge offers sound advice when he says:
Your going into the street and seeing a street brawl creates
an impression. Your having a quarrel last week and denouncing
a man, or with a woman and getting very angry, creates an impression
in you, that impression is as much subject to cyclic law as the
moon, and the stars, and the world, and is far more important
in respect to your development-your personal development or evolution-
than all these other great things, for they affect you in the
mass, whereas these little ones affect you in detail. ("Cyclic
Impression and Return and Our Evolution": U.L.T. Pamphlet
No. 24 )
Mr. Judge goes on to speak of a friend who was suffering from
depression, and the advice he have him is equally applicable
to those prone to anger or other harmful emotions: "Do what
the old theosophists taught us; that is, we can only have good
results by producing opposite impressions to bad ones."
Thus, when a person notices anger arising in him, he should at
once implant in himself the opposite impression-that of self-restraint,
amiability, charity, love, forbearance, leniency, gentleness,
patience. This is the best remedy for changing one's mood and
preventing its recurrence.
A problem that is beginning to grow insidiously and alarmingly
in India is teenage alcoholism. Society is changing, old taboos
are fading, and drinking is no longer regarded as an evil. Doctors
and psychologists are now reporting an alarming spiral in the
falling age of alcoholics. "True, this is a new age,"
writes Robin Abreu, Principal Correspondent of India Today
(April 10), "but when teen drinking increases dropout rates,
even crime, and affects family life, it means things are out
of control."
"Alcoholism is becoming a lifestyle for teenagers,"
says Delhi psychologist Dr. Achal Bhagat. At Chennai's Apollo
Hospitals, Dr. Gopalakrishnan warns that it would be folly to
pass it off as mere youthful indiscretion. The problem is much
more serious: "alcohol routinely destroys brain cells,"
and can even kill.
The malaise [writes Abreu] is rooted in the societal acceptance
of alcohol and society's indulgent view towards teenagers knocking
down the odd peg….According to studies done by the De-Addiction
Centre at AIIMS in Delhi, every fifth teenager in the 15-19 age
group in the capital drinks regularly and around three lakh are
addicted. Another one lakh, it is estimated, need medical attention
for alcohol-related disorders….
To alter established mind-sets, to convince a generation that
the buzz that comes with a beer has dangerous implications, requires
a mammoth effort. Counsellors stress that parents must start
communicating with their children and identify reasons for their
stress….Also, a society that merely smirks at underage kids
trying to find some machismo in a beer mug needs to understand
there's nothing amusing in it. The journey from recreation to
addiction, or to death, is not a long one.
Perhaps the best way to control the problem is to educate
both youngsters and their parents. Alcoholism, like some other
evils, is part of a larger social problem. Mr. Judge suggests
"healthy and interesting occupation" as cure for such
a habit. Youngsters, as also adults, need recreation centers.
Recreation in a wider sense includes a taste for literature,
art, music and other healthful creative pursuits which will keep
youngsters away in a normal and natural manner from the curse
of alcohol.
For alcohol is indeed a curse. Theosophy asserts that apart
from its physiological consequences, drinking is still more prejudicial
to the moral and spiritual growth of man, "for alcohol in
all its forms has a direct, marked, and very deleterious influence
on man's psychic condition. Wine and spirit drinking is only
less destructive to the development of the inner powers than
the habitual use of hashish, opium and similar drugs." (The
key to Theosophy)
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