immanence

Teaching my course in comparative spiritual practices, I find there is a rationality underpinning each, but that some require lesser leaps of faith (for us twenty-first-century humans) than others.

Stoicism is one of the lesser-leap philosophies: it has a pretty systematic account of the nature of things, which resonates with modern science reasonably well, and it shows you how to confirm that nature empirically. Of its Greco-Roman-Hellenistic kin, Epicureanism has a lower confirmation bar, and Skepticism still lower; so for those who like some bar, Stoicism is a good bet.

Buddhism is similar — low on leaps of faith, high on applicability — but its claims require more “programmatic” work to confirm: i.e., you really have to undertake systematic meditation for quite some time, guided in a way that leads you to the insight of Pratītyasamutpāda — commonly translated as “emptiness,” but more accurately as “openness” — to confirm it for yourself empirically. Without that, its claims about non-self, etc., could ring hollow. (We “know” we have our lives until we die, and no Buddha tales will convince us otherwise — which I think is why the more popular East Asian strains of Buddhism are still the devotional rather than the cognitive-philosophical kinds. And why the trendy pop-Buddhism that’s been spreading in the West remains pretty superficial.)

By contrast, Christianity and Islam require much greater leaps of faith. (This Jewish fellow was the only son of the only God, with someone visiting his mom to stealthily impregnate her? And how exactly are these two books more impressive than the epic poems South Asians have been reciting for millennia, the visionary experiences people around the world have had for even longer, etc.? I’m not meaning to be offensive there, just echoing the kinds of things I’ve heard non-Abrahamic folks say.) People who grow up in these traditions may not have much trouble with them, but others do and will. (Which is why the fastest growing kind of Christianity worldwide, Pentecostalism, has little to do with theology and much more with getting your bodymind blown by the Spirit, and by the sense of community of those who support you in that. It’s hardly the same religion as theologically conservative Protestantism.)

At the other end of things, scientific humanism has a kind of value-free emptiness to it. (So that’s how things work, but why? To what end?) Buddhism’s emptiness, by contrast, is not at all value-free, especially in its Mahayana variant. (We’re all interconnected and that’s the way toward liberation from suffering, so let’s share it!)

Stoicism, in the end, fills the emptiness with the Logos, which is a loose and vague enough concept to be compatible with a lot of scientific thinking, with Indigenous and Asian philosophies (Confucianism and Daoism, for instance, with Stoicism being in some ways a kind of medium between the two), and even with the more open/metaphorical interpretations of Christianity and Islam. (Stoic thinking was of course a prominent influence on medieval Christianity, not to mention the Gospel of John.)

If we had to come to an agreeable 21st century global spirituality, it may as well be some form of “eco-Stoicism,” a mix of rational self-help philosophy, cosmopolitan humanism, scientific (and ecological) accounts of life and the universe, and openness to learning… (Which might explain why my students are finding Stoicism so attractive.)

I would want to throw in some Tantric-Advaita-Vedantic fireworks for excitement (which some of my students seem to be finding in psychedelics). It’s this sort of mix of practical guidance with experiential fireworks that’s pretty popular across the board these days — you find it in Pentecostal-flavored Evangelical Christianity, in Sufi-flavored Islam, in Kabbalistic/Hasidic Judaism, and in the Hinduism that maintains a solid allegiance in its one-sixth of humanity.

So there ya go.