acceptance

[Guest guest]

I would like to respond to the exchange of emails about "accepting the

situation". I apologize that I can't find the emails, so that I can't give

credit to the authors and quote the exact text. In any case, it included the

quoted phrase or something close to it.

 

 

 

What is the "situation" to be accepted? I suggest it is the experiential

moment. There is nothing desirable about my accepting various "situations"

in the world - for example, war, poverty, suffering, or my own personal

ignorance about many subjects - if by accepting we mean satisfaction with

the status quo. But there is everything desirable about accepting the

experiential moment - that is, my conscious experience at this very moment.

For that moment is the only thing I have with which I can enjoy life and

work to enhance enjoyment in its many forms and to reduce suffering.

 

 

 

In that experiential moment, that present moment of conscious experience, I

may feel apathetic or angry or pleased about a particular "situation" of the

world. That attitude I accept, since it currently exists. However, it

inherently points me toward both past and future. It points me toward the

past to exploit what I've learned and it points me toward future action of

some sort, action which may to some extent increase or reduce suffering.

Accepting the present, then, accepts the fact that my experiential present

is a triad of present feeling mixed with thoughts about past and future. I

take that to be an ineradicable aspect of human consciousness. In

emphasizing the present, wisdom traditions don't intend us to jettison past

and future for some disembodied and inconceivable present. Rather, they are

concerned about our so focusing our attention on the past or future that we

lose contact with present feeling, which is the only reality we ever really

have.

 

 

 

At least that's how I understand wisdom traditions. I value this view

because I believe that it reconciles wisdom traditions, which emphasize

present satisfaction, with human technological progress, which learns from

the past to improve the future. Perhaps it's my own personal endarkenment,

but I don't believe that human scientific curiosity and technological

progress is a valueless illusion. Consequently, I don't find acceptable

those accounts of spiritual development that seem to make them so.

 

 

 

Gary Schouborg