Levinas and multicultural society

Happy is he who does good to others; miserable is he who expects good from others. Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

The spiritual person may be a teacher, a preacher, or a philanthropist. But in whatever form he may appear, the chief thing in his life is the service of mankind: doing good to another, bringing happiness to someone in some form. The joy that rises from this is high spiritual ecstasy, for every act of goodness and kindness has a particular joy which brings the air of Heaven. When a person is all the time occupied doing good to others, there is a constant joy arising; and that joy creates a heavenly atmosphere, creating within him that heaven which is his inner life. This world is so full of thorns, so full of troubles, pains and sorrows. In this same world he lives; but by the very fact of his trying to remove the thorns from the path of another, although they prick his own hands, he rises and this gives him that inner joy which is his spiritual realization.

Man's greatest enemy is his ego which manifests itself in selfishness. Even in his doing good, in his kind actions, selfishness is sometimes at work. When he does good with the thought that one day it may return to him and that he may share in the good, he sells his pearls for a price. A kind action, a thought of sympathy, of generosity, is too precious to trade with. One should give and, while giving, close the eyes. Man should remember to do every little action, every little kindness, every act of generosity with his whole heart, without the desire of getting anything in return making a trade out of it. The satisfaction must be in doing it and in nothing else.

Every step in evolution makes life more valuable. The more evolved you are, the more priceless is every moment; it becomes an opportunity for you to do good to others, to serve others, to give love to others, to be gentle to others, to give your sympathy to souls who are longing and hungering for it. Life is miserable when a person is absorbed in himself.

The Sufi therefore finds the only way out of the distress of life, the life which will always fail to prove true to one's ideal. He rises above it, taking all things as they come, patiently. He does not mind how he is treated. His principle is to do his best, and in that is his satisfaction. Instead of depending on another person to be kind to him, the Sufi thinks if he were kind to another person, that is sufficient. Every wise man in the long run through life will find in this principle the solution of happiness. For we cannot change the world, but we can change ourselves.

The principal teaching of Sufism is that the heart of man is the shrine of God, to recognize God in one's own heart, to feel His existence, presence, virtue, goodness, all manner of beauty. It must be remembered that the whole life around us is a life of falsehood. The more you see and experience the more you see how very false it is, how much disillusionment there is. The only way of getting over it is to light the lamp in the darkness of night, and all will be cleared. The secret of life is this, to produce beauty in ourselves. When beauty is produced in the heart, then all that breaks the heart vanishes and the whole universe becomes one single vision of the sublimity of God.

The Quran teaches about the love of man for man. The words in which the Quran has chosen to describe this relationship are mercy and kindness because the pinnacle of love is worship and so the word 'love' is appropriate for God alone. Hence, for human beings the words mercy and goodness are used instead of love because just as the perfection of love requires worship, the perfection of mercy requires kindness. (Even if the word 'love' has been used, in some places, to describe the relationship between men, the use of the word is to be interpreted in an allegorical sense. According to the Islamic teachings, real love is particular to God alone and all other loves are metaphorical and not real.)

In short, the holy word of God has used the word mercy for describing the relationships between mankind. For instance, God says that believers are those who "exhort one another to truth" (103:3) and "exhort one another to mercy" (90:17).
In another place, He says: "Surely Allah enjoins justice and the doing of good (to others) and the giving to the kindred."

Thus it is the command of God that men be just to others; of still greater virtue is that they do good to others; and an even greater virtue is that they show kindness to men like they would to someone near and dear to them. Can there be a better moral teaching in the whole world? The command to do good has not been confined to merely conferring favours on others, but has been taken to the next higher stage where the doing of good becomes an instinctive urge, described in the verse by the term 'giving to the kindred'. Although a person who does a good deed as a favour performs a virtuous act, there is some motivation of recompense and reward. Such a person may get annoyed if the favour is denied or not acknowledged, and sometimes, in the heat of emotions, he may remind others of favours conferred.
However, doing goodness out of an instinctive urge, which the Quran has compared to goodness done to the kindred, is the highest stage of performing virtuous acts, and there is no stage of virtue after it. Examples of this stage are the acts of goodness performed by a mother in caring for her child for which she seeks no recompense and gratitude.

# posted by Levinas and culture @ 1:07 PM 0 comments

God is my mate, my companion, he is the fellow traveler of man. God is with us, God supports us, we can trust him. We can be sure that he is there, always, he awaits us. God sends his Love to humans, to all humans, his infinite Love. We can feel his presence, he is close to us, he listens to our prayers, he cares for our suffering. God travels with us and supports us, he gives us strength and confidence so that we are no longer weak, afraid or uncertain. God leads us out of the darkness into the light, he leads us from exile to the promised land, as Moses did with God at his side. When Moses called God, God came to him and said that he didn’t need to fear, because God is with him. So God guided and supported Moses as a travel companion. In the same way God is still with us as our travel companion and anchor for support. God is especially close to people who suffer, to vulnerable people like the poor, the stranger, the widow and the orphan. People who are hungry, ill, homeless, refugees, asylum seekers, people who are oppressed, who have no rights, these are the people that God’s heart especially goes out to. All humans are equal, but vulnerable people should be the first to care for, both by God and by humans (by politicians, policymakers, by the church, and by normal citizens as well). Any society should in the first place take care of drop-outs, of people who threaten to fall out of the society. The people who have no safe ground to hold on to, people without a home, strangers, widows who lost their partner, people who have to fight all the time to survive and to find a place where they can be at home and at peace, those are the people that we should care for in the first place. The way the Dutch government locks up foreigners in the Schiphol detention center (where the fire broke out) is exactly the opposite. Instead of treating people with respect and carefulness, instead of searching together for a suitable solution (with which both the foreigner and the state can live), they are treated as criminals, though most of them never committed any crime. This kind of inhumane policies leads to a dead end (even literally).

It’s not only me and God, it’s us together, we should stand together as humans. An individual is nothing all by himself. From the moment we are born we need others around us who love us and support us. In he first place our parents, and then the rest of our family, friends and other people in our surroundings. Nobody can live completely alone. A human being is a social being. Martin Buber (Jewish philosopher) wrote a book called “Ich und Du”, but Rosenstock-Huessy (also a Jewish philosopher) argued that it shouldn’t start with “I”, he plead to turn it around into “You and I” (or “Thou and I”). The egoism of completely being locked up in ourselves doesn’t bring us any further. The only person who can liberate me is the other (as Levinas said, the third Jewish philosopher in this list). Through the face of the other God is revealed to us. God is a secret for humans and he will remain so for ever. But we can feel his presence, we can feel his Infinite Love and Goodness. God is Love, God is like a passionate lover who loves all humans. He can’t forget them, he thinks about them and cares for them all the time.

There is no need to fear God. When you try your best to be good, God will forgive all your mistakes an sins. God is not a violent merciless master who aggressively punishes humans all the time. God is Love, as a warm bath, as a big positive Light that conquers all darkness of evil, injustice and suffering. God’s light is stronger than death, his power is eternal, it cannot be conquered by death.

Through the other, through my fellow man, I can meet God. Do you know when the night turns into day? According to Judaism it happens when the face of my fellow man, the face of the Other, appears in front of me. We should try to stir up the fire / light of goodness in ourselves and others and we should try to come closer to God, to the Infinite Light of Goodness. We should spread his Light. Then we will be strong, we can face all problems, no matter how big they are. And the darkness hasn’t conquered the light yet.

# posted by Levinas and culture @ 4:32 PM 1 comments

And the father of Mash could live a secret life next to his public life by speaking in different languages. If he lives in two separate worlds, in every world a different language, he can pretend to be two persons. When it really feels like that, he will never confuse these worlds by accident and e.g. talk about his second wife to his first wife.

My personal experience with language is the same, i.e that certain languages are for me related to specific settings.
For instance I have a friend from Senegal who has been living in the Netherlands for more than 10 years. He speaks Dutch well enough, we could speak Dutch with each other. But we prefer to continue talking in English (or sometimes French), in the same way as we started that at the beginning of the friendship 6 years ago.
We don't like the Dutch language setting, it doesn't fit. We like a Senegalese setting (created when speaking in French with some small words in Wolof), or the setting of world citizens, with English as the international communication language.

# posted by Levinas and culture @ 2:22 PM 0 comments