Fear of Insecurity
by Wayne Teasdale.
 In
my growing appreciation for the homeless, I have come to believe that people
living on the street have a lot to offer us: profound insights gleaned as we
process our experiences with them. Although they are not intentionally our
teachers and most likely don't realize the insight into life they offer, they
can offer us deep understandings about life. Unwittingly, simply through their
difficult position, they perform a vital function. They may not intend to be our
teachers, but the poor grant us a unique perspective on life we cannot find
elsewhere.
What is it that they can teach us? They remind us of the impermanence of this
existence and how attached we are to what passes away. We have so much, and when
confronted with people who have nothing -- who are vulnerable, helpless, and
destitute -- we receive their help in overcoming fear and insecurity. The poor
hold this power -- the power of truth itself. When we respond in love instead of
fear, when we don't ignore them but instead see them and consider their
condition, are we not reminded of our own ultimate fragility and tentativeness
as beings in this world?
Of course, we fear the loss of basic security -- the condition the homeless
represent. It's a forced loss of attachment, a nonpossessiveness they have no
choice about, at least in the beginning. Each moment of a street person's life
is taken up with survival, and we become the key to that pursuit. Their
situation of being stripped of everything is too painful for most of us to look
at. We much prefer to hide in the shadows of a questionable happiness, in our
comfortable abundance. Whenever we see a street person, these insecurities and
fears surface, like spirits in the night.
The homeless, quite unconsciously, draw our attention to our grasping nature,
how we are always pursuing acquisition of more and more things, of power and
position, of property and money. If we can prevent ourselves from succumbing to
our natural weakness and fear by turning away, they force us to think of our
position. They also compel us to see society's gross inequity. More basically
still, they prove the truth of the Gospel, which tells us that people are more
important than money and property. They allow us to understand how foolishly we
pursue things that are useless if we fail in the ways of compassion, love,
kindness, and mercy. The poor, through their quiet presence in the streets and
elsewhere, continually call us to reflect on our priorities.
Their impoverishment ultimately reminds us of our own poverty of existence
and time, that this life is impermanent, regardless of how much we embellish it
with wealth. When we are separated from all the goods of this world, we are no
different from our homeless brothers and sisters. Even without economic, social,
and educational equality, there is an inescapable existential equality among us
all. In the late 1980s, India's tragically impoverished inspired me to reflect
on what was really essential in my life. These poor souls -- poor economically,
though rich culturally, spiritually, and humanly -- taught me a profound lesson,
one I've never forgotten. The homeless poor are everywhere on the subcontinent,
and I noticed in the vast majority of them that, though destitute and possessing
nothing, they were happy and serene beyond comprehension, a serenity connected
with their faith, not their poverty! They taught me that one needs very little
to be happy, that happiness is a spiritual quality that has absolutely nothing
to do with wealth and possessions. This critical lesson is, of course,
universally valid.
Simplicity and Sharing
The overwhelming poverty and homelessness around the globe demand of us all a
new direction, one founded on true economic, social, and political justice for
everyone. But this justice has a very personal reality for us, not just a
political or social one, which is based on two vital principles: simplicity and
sharing.
The principles of sharing and simplicity are inspired by loving compassion,
kindness, mercy, and a highly refined sensitivity that allows us to see their
necessity. This sensitivity is the gift, indeed the grace, of the spiritual
life. The more than six billion members of the human family now inhabiting the
earth, like all who have preceded us and all who will come after, are part of an
interdependent community of sentience and life. This reality cries out to our
sense of justice, inspiring us to oppose poverty and homelessness.
The Dalai Lama often observes that we human beings have a universal
responsibility for the earth and all its suffering. The truth of this insight I
realize more and more in the depths of my own conscience. We all have the task
of living a simpler lifestyle that allows resources to become available and
distributed more equitably. Simplicity means taking just what we need and
nothing more. It translates into living with far less, so that everyone will
have something. It requires a process of reducing desires and carefully
identifying legitimate needs.
If we change the way we live, if we actually simplify our existence in our
time and around the world, then it will be possible truly to share with one
another. Sensitive sharing leads us to discern the needs of others whenever we
encounter them. As higher sentient beings, we are meant to share with others.
Although we may recognize our root biological tendency to horde and fight for
our survival, that basic tendency is not what makes us human -- overcoming that
tendency is. Unfortunately, most people don't realize the truth simply because
of their social conditioning, which blocks them from the awareness of their
responsibility to act compassionately all the time, regardless of the situation.
By sharing and by simplifying our lives we can restore balance to the system we
inherited from our predecessors. We can replace our self-serving culture with a
compassionate one that takes into account the interdependent reality of which we
are all part.
Street people present us with both a problem and an opportunity: a problem in
terms of the immense dimensions of this tragedy, and an opportunity in terms of
the possibility of developing our innate loving kindness for them. As long as we
ignore the homeless or apply a Band-Aid solution to the symptoms of a much
larger disorder in our world, the problem will grow and finally get out of
control. The reality of homelessness alerts us to the need to transform the
whole global system, to build a new civilization in which this terrible agony of
so many no longer exists.
Toward A Permanent Solution
A genuine solution to this massive social ill will necessitate a new order of
civilization -- a civilization with a heart, a compassionate, kind, loving, and
merciful universal social order. In time capitalism will have to be transformed,
and this will happen as more and more people wake up to the deeper reality of
which we are all equal members. Corporate executives, employees, and
stockholders all have the capacity for such an awakening. It's only a matter of
time -- if we have the necessary leadership. Our leadership, particularly with
respect to the homeless problem, needs a special kind of guidance, that of our
spiritual communities themselves.
We must have a mobilized effort involving all churches, synagogues, mosques,
and temples -- all the communities of the world's great religions. Our spiritual
leaders are in a position to concentrate the minds of the masses on the great
tragedy of homelessness. Just as Martin Luther King Jr., with the help of the
churches, was able to coordinate the Civil Rights movement, our spiritual
leaders can bring the homeless situation to the forefront. Our spiritual leaders
are capable of bringing a new sense of conscience to the popular imagination
about the seriousness of this crisis, inspiring a change of direction for our
society. What was done in the 1960s and 1970s for civil rights can be done in
our time for homelessness and other forms of poverty.
As a monk, a mystic in the world, pursuing my spiritual practice each day, I
have awakened to the horrible inequity in the sufferings of the homeless persons
I have known for so long. I have realized it is no good depending on an often
uneven approach of providing shelters and soup kitchens. We must call on
something much more ambitious to transform this problem. We can create such a
world, but it demands will and determination; it won't just happen without the
insight, leadership, and the mobilization of a movement.
Contemplatives, mystics, and monastics are by nature countercultural. They
are in touch, through desire, vision, and experience, with something ultimate.
Their understanding of reality and value arises from the Source. Their
perceptions and estimation of society, of the world, always put them in conflict
with the world's illusions, or more precisely with the illusions most people
entertain about themselves, their desires, and hidden agendas.
A monk or mystic contemplative in the mainstream of society is an agent of
change, of reform. He or she has a vision of a human world animated by the best
qualities of which we are capable, a world where compassion is alive, where love
takes precedence over indifference, kindness over neglect, and mercy over
oppression. Mystics in the heart of society are a source of radical reform,
radical in the original meaning of the Latin root radex, which means going to
the root. The reform I have in mind is the most radical of all: the eventual
disappearance of cultural and economic selfishness, and their replacement with
sharing, compassionate concern, loving kindness, and merciful consideration of
all. In such a new world, street people will find a real home and the
opportunities to cultivate themselves and their God-given gifts, thus allowing
their innate preciousness to shine forth.
This
article is excerpted from:
 A Monk in the World
by Wayne Teasdale.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New World Library, Novato,
California. ©2002.
www.newworldlibrary.com
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About the Author
Brother
Wayne Teasdale was a lay monk who combined the traditions of Christianity and
Hinduism in the way of Christian sannyasa. An activist and teacher in building
common ground between religions, Teasdale served on the board of trustees of the
Parliament of the World's Religions. As a member of the Monastic Interreligious
Dialogue, he helped draft their Universal Declaration on Nonviolence. He wss an
adjunct professor at DePaul University, Columbia College, and the Catholic
Theological Union, and coordinator of the Bede Griffiths International Trust. He
is the author of
The Mystic Heart, and
A Monk in the World. He held
an M.A. in philosophy from St. Joseph College and a Ph.D. in theology from
Fordham University. Visit this website for more information on his life and teachings..
Other articles by this author.
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