What is a meaningful life? How does one discover— and live—what is truly important? How do we manage to spend the time of our lives in a way that will finally seem worthwhile?

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Chapter Seven

Fingers Pointing at the Moon
Revised February 2008

Whether conscious of it or not, each of us is dependent upon one or more of the world’s value and belief systems to create the underlying reference points we use in making our life decisions. This is true whether we “believe in” any of these systems or not. (Many Chinese living in China today might not profess to “believe in” the value system promulgated by Confucius and his followers, but from an outside perspective, it is easy to see how the Confucian value system provides much of the underlying structure to current Chinese life and society.)

Throughout history, these value and belief systems have arisen to give us guidance in answering the most basic questions: What are the most important things in life? Is there any reason to tell the truth? Can I kill someone if I don’t like them? If I want something, can I just take it? Are there differences in the way men and women are supposed to act? Is it OK to have sex with anyone I want anytime I want? Can I use force if the person I desire doesn’t co-operate?

Each one of us was given basic answers to these questions as we were growing up – and these answers form a core around which we move. We might shift and change over time in relation to them, but they form the very building blocks we work with as we think about ourselves, our lives, and how we will interact with others. And if we change our views very much from how we were enculturated, we almost inevitably find another group to join that supports our new worldview.

All of these systems, the one we were raised in, the new one we join, the one followed by our “enemy” half-way round the world – all arose from founders who attributed their vision to an Unseen Order. Most cultures – and all religions – have looked to this “Unseen” to provide guidance and direction for living, and they have attributed the origin of their rules, values, morals, and central life goals to this dimension.

Approaching this issue in a somewhat different way, we explored in the previous chapter the difficulty of knowing what is really “out there” in the world given to us by our senses. It is therefore little wonder that things in the non-material realm are even harder to know and understand. Yet these non-material aspects of life – such as Love, Justice, Honor, Wisdom, Courage, Compassion, to name but a few – are considered by many to be the most important things in life. We humans have venerated them and made them the center of our values, our meanings, and our longings for thousands of years. Yet they remain mysterious to us – we do not really understand them, and we all certainly do not agree about them: how to define them, how to live them, or how they relate to each other. But this lack of agreement does not take away from their significance in human history. It does, however, make it very difficult to know how to live in the right relationship to them – for those who wish to try.

Yet once again it is the world’s value and meaning systems that have given us guidance as to how to find the “right relationship” to these crucial issues of life – value and meaning systems whose founders have attributed the source of their vision to an Unseen Order.

Where Did Our Values, Meanings, and Belief Systems Come From?

Since the ultimate questions are hard to answer, and the “Unseen” is ineffable (is very difficult to talk about or convey to another), how did we acquire the belief systems, values, and the meanings that we have used to guide us through the centuries?

In most cases, it happened like this:
An individual had a profound spiritual experience, or a series of experiences, and then came back to the tribe, or the community with a message. The message or the teaching would be something like this: I have seen the truth; or, This is how we should live; or, This is what is really important; or, This is how to find peace, joy, and happiness; or, This is what God requires of us. And the source of these experiences was always something that would fit into James’ definition of the Unseen Order. How they understood and described this “Unseen” varied enormously, but all attributed the values and beliefs they taught to a source greater than their individual selves, to a sacred or divine or eternal dimension transcending the individual egoic self.*

*(In some systems, the name of the person is unknown, as in the Hindu tradition. In some, the original figure is completely shrouded in mystery, so that legends are all we have – with no clearly discernable historical trace. But in all cases, the basic outline of the story is the same – someone had a profound experience of the “numinous realm,” and came back to the tribe or community and proclaimed their message.)

Did any or all of these teachings truly come from a sacred dimension beyond the individual self? Were any of them inspired by an Unseen Order, or reflect its wisdom in any way? We cannot know, except through an act of faith. Equally, an act of faith is required to disbelieve any or all of the teachings of the great wisdom figures of history. How can we really know what happened in those mysterious moments when, for instance, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, or Lao Tzu came to their insights and understandings?* Was each touched by the Divine? Was one of them in touch with something Transcendent and the others not? Did some of them only understand the truth partially, while others understood it completely? Or were they all deluded? To a great extent, our answers to these questions depend upon how we were enculturated. If we “believe in” one religious system, we will tend to accept our system as “the truth,” and question the validity of the others.

*(There are of course many more wisdom figures than the ones mentioned above. But all of them share this common theme – that the source that gave rise to the values and beliefs they enunciated lies in a realm transcendent to the their individual egoic selves.)

On the other hand, if we look for objective evidence as to the source of these foundational teachings, what we encounter are mysterious and legendary stories that are not subject to proof. From an objective point of view, how can we possibly know what really happened, when these stories are wrapped in the legends that developed through the centuries to perpetuate the teachings? Yet even though these events are shrouded in mystery, we cannot avoid or ignore them. Having been raised in societies, and currently living in cultures that are molded and shaped by them, these teachings form the very structure within which we think – and provide the framework for how we interact daily with others, and they with us.**

But whether we make an act of faith to believe or disbelieve any of these foundational stories, one thing we can clearly note is that each of the wisdom figures that created them attributed their guidance to a source greater than their individual ideas and beliefs – to something Unseen by our normal eyes. And perhaps this commonality, rather than the differences between them, is the most important thing to hold in our thoughts as we go forward.

From Spiritual Awakening to Societal Governance

After the founding of these systems, however, we can begin to trace their historical development – we can begin to observe with some degree of accuracy what happened to the teachings as they moved through historical time. (This is true in large part because these belief systems had a strong interest in telling their developmental stories, and at the same time, those who opposed them began to leave historical traces of their different and often conflicting points of view. Therefore much of the development, outside of the mystical moments, of humanity’s value and belief systems can be studied in the historical record.)

The pattern of development that emerges from such a study goes something like this:

In the beginning, a teacher announces a vision, and gradually a few followers gather around. A loose organization begins to emerge to perpetuate the teaching, but the early organization is small, involving a modest band of committed followers – most of whom have a personal relationship with the teacher. Often the group is in peril, and at odds with the society around them – sometimes causing great hardship. The kind of organization, values, and beliefs that arise are therefore molded in response to these dynamics.

Over time, a few followers gain a certain level of understanding of the original vision. But when the founding teacher dies, and then the close followers pass away, the message is left in the hands of those who have had no personal experience of the original teacher. If the teaching is growing in popularity, however, the growing organization which supports it must adapt and change without the personal guidance of the founder or his immediate followers.

Inevitably, the situation and needs of this expanding organization are quite different from the situation faced by the culture-changing charismatic founder. The founder was breaking out of, or at least shifting, the belief and value structure in which he or she was raised. Often the new teaching arose precisely because of problems in the political and religious structure of that person’s time – and as a corrective to the problems and abuses in it. However, what might have worked as a rebellion against an established order is quite different from what will work in building an ongoing organization or structuring a society involving large numbers of people. Further changes are made.

Gradually, a few of these new belief systems are successful enough that they become dominant in a tribe or in a geographic region. But when this happens, more changes, sometimes quite dramatic, are necessary – for the role of justifier and defender of a dominant social order is very, very different from the situation the original founder faced. More changes are made. And although this process of change and adaptation of the original teaching is unavoidable, problems do arise.

For instance, as the centuries pass, some of the leaders of the new and now powerful religion will have motivations quite different from those of the original founder. Even if the founder was primarily pursuing a spiritual vision, some of the later leaders of a successful movement will inevitably be touched by a desire for worldly power, or wealth, or fame. (The original founder and the early followers often faced hardship and even rejection by their society, while a system that has become successful, and especially one that is dominant in a culture, becomes the very place people tend to go when they want to acquire power, wealth, and fame.)

These new leaders, having little understanding of, or sometimes even interest in, the original message, begin to use their religious positions as a way to achieve their own personal goals and ambitions. (This is by no means true of all those who become leaders in culturally dominant religious movements – but human nature is such that it is inevitably true of a certain number.) And crucially, as this process continues through the centuries, the teaching is at times modified to fit the personal agendas of those in power – even if they have little interest in or commitment to the beliefs taught by the founder. (The story of Henry the Eight in England is a wonderful example of this process. Sir Thomas More, trying to uphold the spiritual position as he saw it, was beheaded for opposing Henry’s personal agenda, and the religious doctrines were rewritten to meet Henry’s demands.)

This process of change is one reason there are so many different interpretations of doctrine within each religious tradition throughout history – leaders come along who shape the teachings to fit their own personal agendas, and when they die, new leaders come along and make further changes to fit their own views and beliefs. As this process continues, many of those who are teaching the values and beliefs of the tradition at any given moment simply accept on faith that they are following the guidance of the original founder. (They have been enculturated to believe just this). Yet somewhere back in the chain, someone adapted the teaching for very worldly reasons. (Of course, some of the changes through the years in each tradition might have been inspired by the Unseen in the same way that the original founder was inspired. This is quite likely the case. But there are many changes in every religion that seem very, very likely, from the historical record, to have been shaped by the very human process being described above.)

A light-hearted illustration:
A young kitten wondered into a Buddhist monastery. The monks of the monastery started feeding the kitten, and gradually became very fond of it.  However, when the monks were meditating, the kitten became quite a nuisance, always trying to get them to play. After a while, the respected leader of the monastery ordered the cat to be tied to a post outside the hall until meditation was over. This worked so well that it was subsequently tied to the pole every day during meditation. The years went by, and the leader of the monastery died, and then the cat died.  Because the monks liked having a cat around, they found a new kitten (as well as a new leader).  But in keeping with the tradition, during meditation the new cat was always tied to the poll – which by this time had become quite ornate. Eventually, after many generations of leaders and cats, learned expositions were being written about the “important religious significance” of tying a cat to the “sacred poll” during each and every meditation.

The crucial issue is this: even if there is an Unseen Order to which we can refer for guidance, how do we separate out what truly arose in that domain from all the teachings that have been added for more mundane reasons? Just because the current leaders of a religious tradition believe that their rules and beliefs came from God does not necessarily make it so. There are written texts, but how do we know which, if any, of these texts truly came from a transcendent or divine realm? Or which version – since most sacred texts have many different versions and widely differing interpretations.*** How then can we know which, if any, of those who assert “I know the truth” really know what they are talking about?  There has never been a shortage of those who claim to speak directly for God.  They might even believe it themselves, as Jimmy Jones and David Koresh seemed to believe – as they led their followers to death. But just because someone believes they speak for the sacred does not make it so.

On the other hand, taking the stance of rejecting all such belief systems ignores the fact that one or more of these systems is embedded in each of us, and further, that each of us must have reference to one or more of these value systems in order to make the decisions we have to make in living, and in interacting with other people.

Human Motivations Attributed to the Unseen

Human societies must have rules and laws and shared beliefs in order to function. And as discussed above, the societal systems that have survived and flourished have always attributed the origin of their beliefs to an Unseen Order. A practical reason for this is that people are considerably more likely to follow laws they believe came from God, rather than having been arbitrarily created by their fellow human beings. Rules and laws and beliefs that, in peoples’ eyes, have not been divinely sanctioned can be changed on the whim of the next person in power – a recipe for tyranny and instability. Under such an assumption, there would be no internal reason for a person to follow the rules and laws of their culture. They might obey them, at times, out of fear of punishment, but each person would feel free to break any law they thought they could get away with breaking. Again, an unstable state – a recipe for either chaos or a heavy-handed police state – or both.

In this context, it is easy to see why the leaders of every society have looked to the religious traditions in their midst to help establish and maintain the social order. But this function does not necessarily have much to do with the original teachings of the spiritual founders of the traditions. As mentioned above, some of the greatest spiritual founders were at odds with the societies in which they lived, and were proposing ideas that conflicted with the culture in which they were raised. Their ideas might have been a good corrective to the problems of the time, but what they proposed was not necessarily a complete system upon which a society could be organized.

On the contrary, some of the great spiritual founders, such as Jesus and Buddha, were primarily concerned with the individual’s experience of the spiritual dimension, rather than with creating a system of societal governance. Yet centuries later – when their teachings had become the dominant religious tradition in a culture – their ideas were expected to give divine sanction to a complete set of rules and laws for a whole society. Much adaptation was necessary. (This problem led Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard to assert that when a religion becomes the dominant religion in a culture, it loses much of its ability to fulfill its spiritual purpose.)

Looking back through history, we can therefore find many examples in which a rule or a law that a political and/or religious leader thought was needed to manage or improve a society was alleged to be a part of the teaching of a religious founder – but which had nothing to do with what the founder actually taught. (To emphasize again, perhaps some leaders down through the chain had directly experienced the Unseen for themselves – and perhaps some of their pronouncements did come directly from that dimension. But it seems clear that some of them did not.) For instance, Spanish churchmen helped to justify the slaughter of the Indian population in the conquest of South America – in the name of the Jesus, who himself taught nothing of the kind. And Islamic radicals have justified terrorist acts against innocent civilians in the name of Islam – which clearly teaches that such actions are forbidden by God.

It is especially easy to find examples of this tendency in the past, or in cultures other than one’s own. A few examples: 1) The Aztecs became convinced that thousands of human victims had to be sacrificed in their religious ceremonies to appease the God Quetzocotal, but earlier teachings associated with this God seem to have had nothing to do with human sacrifice; 2) in the 1800’s in the American South, religious leaders developed numerous arguments as to why Christianity supported the practice of slavery, but these arguments being attributed to the religion of Jesus – who seemed always to seek out and support the outcast and the poor – seem fairly ridiculous today; and 3) several religious systems have given elaborate arguments as to why it was right to treat women no better than property – but most observers today have concluded that the motive force behind these beliefs was not Divine sanction, but rather a desire by male leaders for dominance over the women around them.

Since this pattern is prevalent in almost every culture one cares to examine, it is likely that the same holds true for the belief system in which you and I are now embedded. But it is hard for us to see and acknowledge, for we have been enculturated not to see it – our consciousness molded to accept the rationalizations our culture has given to justify its views and beliefs.

Yet all of this does not argue against the existence of an Unseen Order, nor does it in any way suggest that some values and meanings and beliefs did not originate in that dimension. But it forcefully suggests the great difficulty of separating the meanings, values, and beliefs that truly came from the Unseen (if any actually did), from the rules, values, meanings, and beliefs that were created by people with very human, very worldly motivations – then attributed by them to God. To repeat, even if some of the sacred teachings of the world did come from the Unseen Order, how do we know which ones – how do we separate the wheat from the chaff? This difficulty of sorting is one of the main reasons that, if there is a deeper truth, it is so often “Unseen.” Whatever real truth there is lies hidden behind a veil of human creation, human ideas trying to “borrow” the authority of the Divine to fulfill very human goals and desires.

In India a story is told:
Once upon a time Mara, the evil one, and a disciple were looking down on earth.  As they looked, they saw a seeker after wisdom catch a glimpse of the deepest truth. 

Mara's disciple said “Master, aren't you concerned? What if that person starts telling everyone what they have just seen? What if they help everyone see the truth?"

Mara laughed and said: “Don’t be concerned. Wait just a minute, and someone will make a belief out of it, and then we won’t have anything to worry about.”

Behind the Veil

The argument is often made that the whole world of the sacred can be dismissed because so many examples can be found of human ideas masquerading as God’s ideas. However, the human tendency to invoke the Divine as a source of authority in no way suggests the absence of the Divine. On the contrary, a very common strategy in human discourse is to attempt to gain legitimacy by identifying one’s arguments with something which has true significance, justifying one’s own beliefs by invoking that which has greater legitimacy. Thus the fact that we have tried to use the Unseen to justify our human views provides a much stronger argument for its existence than for its non-existence.

When a religious or cultural leader feels that a certain way of acting is necessary for the culture (or sometimes simply because it fits his or her personal agenda) that leader asserts that the idea came from God – in order to get everyone to pay attention. This is often a successful strategy for the very reason that most humans have always felt that some values and beliefs do come from the Sacred Domain. The rule-maker is not likely to attribute the new belief to a visiting pink elephant, or to a personal whim – for the very reason that these explanations would not lend it credibility. Most people in the culture would not feel that a belief justified in this way was grounded in anything valid, so they would just ignore it.

This intuitive sense that most people through history have held – that some things do come from the Sacred – of course does not prove anything. But this sense is a product of our collective wisdom, and to dismiss it too quickly does not seem wise – especially when there is no evidence for such a dismissal. Perhaps it would be wiser to direct our minds and hearts toward discerning which values and beliefs seem mostly to be human creations, and which might possibly arise from a deeper source.

The strongest conclusion we can draw then, is that, although the tendency in human history to attribute beliefs, values, rules, and laws to the Unseen does not prove its existence – it does demonstrate that we have a powerful inclination to believe there is “something” of great importance in that dimension to which we should pay attention.

It is as if we humans have a natural mechanism in us that tends to recognize the significance and importance of the Sacred.  We might have trouble discerning which messages truly come from that domain, versus those created by our fellow humans. But we seem to be wired to believe that at least some beliefs, values, and meanings do come from an Unseen Order. Could this be wishful thinking on our parts? It could be.  But such a universal and persistent trait is at least as likely to arise from a ground that carries some truth. People don’t tend to organize for long periods of time around things that do not have any legitimacy. It isn’t functional or effective.

An analogy might be the way endorphins were discovered in the human body. For centuries it was known that opium could reduce pain and increase feelings of pleasure. In the nineteenth century the active ingredient of opium, morphine, was synthesized in a laboratory. Then its chemical structure was discovered, and later its chemical architecture.  As scientists became more and more adept at deciphering the functioning of the brain, they discovered “opiate receptors” there – receptor molecules that seemed to be specifically designed to fit the molecules of opium. These opium molecules (and the more powerful derivatives of opium – morphine and heroin) fit perfectly into the opiate receptors in the brain, causing feelings of pleasure and the diminishment of pain as they snuggled into their seemingly natural place.

But what on earth were these opiate receptors doing in the brain in the first place?  Had the brain developed them in anticipation of a time that opium would be discovered? Not likely – how would the brain have known to do this? A much better explanation, therefore, was that there was an as-yet-unknown chemical in our own systems which these receptors were designed to receive.

This possibility led to the search for an unknown, natural chemical in the brain, a chemical that would fit the opiate receptors – and thus explain why the receptors were there in the first place. The knowledge of the chemical architecture of morphine guided the search, and eventually endorphins were discovered. It was not an accident that our bodies were affected by opium – we were wired to respond to something that it resembled. In just this way, the overwhelming human tendency to look to the Unseen Order as the source of values and beliefs strongly suggests that “something” exists for which we can legitimately search, and to which we can legitimately respond.

Perhaps a Zen master captured the deepest truth when he said that all the rules and beliefs and techniques of religion are simply fingers pointing at the moon. They are not the moon, so we must guard against the mistake of thinking that the pointing finger is what we are looking for. Yet the fact that there have been so many fingers pointing in the same general direction throughout human history does suggest that there just might be something worth looking for in that direction – if we can lift our gaze.