Out of Weakness by Andrew Schmookler

Author:Andrew Schmookler [Schmookler, Andrew Bard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78554-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

Beyond Possessiveness

The spiritual importance of relinquishing possession is an ancient insight. The monastic life embodies the belief that the path to God is best traversed unencumbered by possessions. “Sell what thou hast and give to the poor if thou wouldst follow me.” The monks in the desert, reducing life to its essentials, seek the way of harmony. It is not without significance that the foremost man of peace in our times, Gandhi, practiced such material simplicity.

As with material possession, so with sexual. In part, the celibacy of Christian (and some other) monks is evidence of a failure of their spiritual path to achieve peace with the body, an inability to incorporate the whole human being within the compass of spiritual harmony. But in part also the practice of celibacy expresses the spiritual understanding that it is important to learn not to hold on. The spiritually enlightened person relinquishes possessiveness of all kinds. Where the warrior builds a personal empire of material and familial property, the monk eschews both.

The example of the monk helps signal the spiritual necessity of overcoming possessiveness, but there are limits to the usefulness of the monk’s solution to the problem. The monk escapes from the problem of possessiveness by renouncing the relationships in which he might be possessive. The problem, however, resides not in the objects of possession, but in the spirit of possessiveness with which one clings to the objects. The renunciation of connection with the world is one way to avoid the pathologies of our way of connecting, but it is an extreme solution. It is perhaps a still greater challenge, and a higher level of spiritual achievement, to find a way to remain in full relationship with the world without infusing that relationship with the spirit of possessiveness. Instead of letting go of the world, let go of the part of oneself that needs to incorporate the world into an empire of the self.

The problems of our world are not going to be solved by our abandonment of the world. The way of the monk, it seems to me, emerges as a reaction against the tendency of the man of war, and as the one is extreme in one way, the other goes to the opposite extreme. The monk rejects this world, which is corrupted by the warrior’s spirit, saying that our true life is in another realm altogether. But I believe that it is to this world we are born, and in relation to this world that our true fulfillment and true calling are to be found. The warrior is insufficiently cognizant of the problem: What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul? But the monk does not meet the challenge: how does it profit the world if men, to keep pure their souls, abandon the world to the ravages of wolves? A spiritual leader tells us to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to render unto God what is God’s. But the problem is, when Caesar stakes out his claim he seizes part of the realm of God.

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