National Pride or World Pride?

As I watch the Olympics, I hear a lot of praise for the Chinese for being so proud of their country and of the successes of their athletes. And I admit to being proud of my country and its athletic successes at the Olympics, with the phenomenal Michael Phelps and our men's basketball team coming foremost to mind. But I aspire to the highest wisdom, and I wonder if it's wiser to love one's country and to be proud of its achievements, or to love the whole world and to be proud of the achievements of all humankind, no matter which flag they fly.

I guess it's possible to do both. I'm proud of my country and the performance of its athletes in the Olympics, but I'm also happy for and even proud of the human achievements of athletes from other countries, including China, and I'm trying to be even more so. When I try to do this and the more successful I am at it, the less I feel like waving the American flag when an American wins a gold medal. and the less impressed I am with the Chinese waving their flags in the streets and stadia of Beijing.

Love vs. Wisdom

If true love is partly empathy,
And true wisdom is partly equanimity,
And someone we truly love is very upset,
How can we be both loving and wise at the same time?
Or can we?

Is It Not Better?

"Is it not better to see yourself as you truly are than to care about how others see you?"
--Master Kan to Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu

I have spent most of my life being far too concerned with how others perceive me. I have wanted them to see me as bright and capable to make up for my seeing myself as dumb and inept. But if I was truly dumb and inept, the only way I could hide this from others was to hide from them as much as possible and to avoid placing myself in public situations that revealed my stupidity and ineptitude to the world. The result is a man who has confined himself for decades to a prison of his own making and is now being forced to leave that prison and make his way in a world for which he feels ill-prepared by both ability and experience.

It seems to me that the only hope he has of succeeding is to take fully to heart Master Kan's advice, see himself as he truly is, and strive to be himself at his best without the paralyzing concern that others will not see him as more or better than he is.

Paradoxical as it may seem, the only way I can be and do better than I have been and done is to stop trying to make others think that I am and can do better than that now even as I try my best to be my best.

The Kosmos in a Single Sentence

Once upon a time, one of my philosophy professors asked the class if we could think of one sentence that did a good job of summarizing the essence of any great philosopher's philosophy. The one that came to my mind immediately was Spinoza's, "The better we understand particular things, the better we understand God." I was too shy to say this in class. But I ended up writing a paper that purported to show how the essence of Spinoza's metaphysics, ethics, theology, and politics could all be inferred from this one little quote. I say my paper "purported to show" this, because, in retrospect, I'm sure it was comically crude and didn't come even close to accomplishing its lofty task.

Yet, I think tremendous wisdom is nevertheless distilled in that pithy quote. So when I recently encountered, by way of Bill Harryman's blog, a blog article that asked its readers to post a single sentence that captures the essential knowledge or wisdom they have gained from their field of expertise or interest, I thought of Spinoza's quote and a couple of others and fused them into one compound sentence: "All is One and One is All; the better we understand particular things, the better we understand God; and in this life, we cannot do great things, we can only do small things with great love."

Actually, I posted the first two parts of this sentence in the comments section of Bill's and the other blog and have subsequently added the third part, courtesy of Mother Teresa, here to distill my essential metaphysics, ethics, theology, and politics. That is, I believe that we would do well to understand, not only with our intellects but also with our hearts, that "God" is the unified totality of existence in which every particular part of It exists and functions only in relation to the Whole, that the person who understands this deeply is overflowing with love for the divine Oneness and Its ostensive parts and conducts his or her life accordingly, and that the best political system is one that benevolently and effectively fosters this understanding, feeling, and conduct.