L E C T U R E

'Faith After September 11: The New Spiritual Revolution'
by Alice R. O'Grady
Staff Writer

Karen Armstrong began her Friday morning Amphitheater lecture, "Faith after Sept. 11: The New Spiritual Revolution," with a quotation from Thomas More, as depicted in the film "A Man for All Seasons." "There is a time in every person's life when he holds himself in the palm of his hands, and if he lets his hands fall, and his self slip away, he will never get himself back again."

We are at such a moment in our history, Armstrong said, "and if we don't hold ourselves clearly and firmly and in compassion and charity, we will never get ourselves back again."

She said there is a need for a religious reformation. This is because the events of Sept. 11 and since have been due to a misuse of religion for hatred, division and killing, in almost every major tradition, she said.

"Religion was hijacked as well as those doomed aircraft and passengers."

We need religion, Armstrong said, because we are beings that fall into despair, fear and hatred, and these feelings can paralyze us.
How do we get through this and make it into a transforming experience? she asked.

Faith defined
"Faith is not belief," she said. "Faith is a trust that there is some ultimate meaning and value in life." The word "belief" comes from a word meaning to love. Through faith, we commit to transformation, and religion is about transformation.

In our religious life, she said, we have created paradigms of how a human should be.

For example, Abraham, who had trust, but few certainties.

Nevertheless, he went forward in the darkness, Armstrong said. "He is a model for us." Christians look to Jesus as a model.

In the Greek Orthodox belief, Jesus didn't die for our sins, Armstrong said. The important moment in Jesus' life, they say, is when Jesus was on Mount Tabor, and was transfigured and infused with divine energy. What he was, say the Greek Orthodox, we can be.

Mohammed said struggle transforms us. Mohammed is the perfect model of how a human should comport himself in the presence of the divine.

"The important thing," Armstrong said, "is that all these people transformed their societies."

We need people like this today, Armstrong said. We need a saint, a Gandhi, a Mandela.

She said each of us has the responsibility to transform ourselves and become that kind of person. "The buck stops here."
How do we do this? she asked.

We see troubles and suffering everywhere. "That is precisely the moment when we can make a breakthrough."

Axial Age
Armstrong said she is working on a history of the Axial Age, 800-200 B.C.E. "In this period, all the great world religions came into being."

She named Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, monotheism and Greek rationalism, all originating during the Axial Age.

All these religions have a core of agreement in the insight that goes to the heart of the human search for transfiguration and transformation.

During that period, China, India, and Israel were in turmoil. This is the time when transformation is appropriate and important, Armstrong said.

"Buddha made it clear that the starting point of the religious life is suffering," Armstrong said. If one is denied suffering, it is easy to deny it exists.

With the suffering brought by the events of Sept. 11, she said, we in the first world can now see and understand suffering in others.

Transformation of Israel
In Israel during the Axial Age, optimists were considered false prophets. A rule of Axial Age spirituality was that things must be seen as they are.

A great catastrophe befell Israel in the sixth century. But the exiled Israelis in Babylon created a new type of religion, and transformed their religious life, and later that of Christians and Muslims.

"We are most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away." Armstrong said this was what the Axial sages told us.

In Philippians, Paul said Jesus emptied himself and took on the position of a servant. He became an expanded human being on the cross. This empying oneself is important, she said.

Armstrong said she was not talking about the negative type of spirituality, "bringing people down and making them feel guilty, making them feel that they are miserable worms, and performing all kinds of weird and wonderful penances and acts of self-abnegation to bring about this condition."

A former nun, Armstrong said, "I spent years of my youth doing this kind of stuff, and it was a complete waste of time."

This is because you get stuck in the ego you're trying to transcend.

She said she was, rather, talking about going beyond self, achieving ecstasy - which means to stand outside the self. The greedy ego makes us suffer and makes us hate, judge and despise.
If we can get beyond this, she said, "we achieve a liberation and grandiosity of spirit that is a transformative power in the world."
Herschel said when put the self at the opposite pole of ego, we will be in place where god is.

Poetic contemplations
Armstrong told several myths, or poetic contemplations, of God. Isaac Luria gave a Kabalistic mystical response to catastrophe: "Don't deny your suffering."

A new creation myth said that instead of an orderly progression, the creation story had false starts, accidents, and starting again. It seemed to the Jews to be a more accurate version of the way things are, Armstrong said.

God was everywhere, a myth says, but he wanted to bring the world into being, so god receded a bit, to make room. This is a myth about how to be creative.

In the Trinity, there was a similar self-emptying. "God poured himself into the word," Armstrong said, "and after that he had nothing more to say, as it were."

In order to be comprehensible, the Greek Orthodox say that God achieved an ecstasis, whereby he left himself and came to earth.
"We desperately need now to be creative," Armstrong said. To do so, we must withdraw a little from ourselves.

The key is not self-abnegation but compassion. This is the root of the great religions of the axial age.

If you hesitate to say something hurtful and think how you would like that done to you, that is ecstasis.

Peter Abelard said Jesus didn't die to save us from our sins, but to awaken compassion and sorrow. "That is what saves us," Armstrong said.

We are deluged with icons of suffering each night on television. "We should let our hearts break," she said.

The otherness of strangers can give us intimations of the otherness of God. "This is a chance for us all, now." From our positions of privilege, Armstrong said, to reach out. "This should be the religion of the future."

Buddha, she said, invited people to a meditation he called "Immeasurables," to sit and emit waves of benevolence toward all creatures, and wish them well and happy.

A prayer attributed to the Buddha that goes with this, she said, can be said by anyone, including atheists. "If said daily, and put into practice daily," Armstrong said, "this would transform us," and eventually the rest of the world.

Let all beings be happy! Weak or strong, of high, middle or low estate.

Small or great, visible or invisible, near or far away.

Alive or still to be born - may they all be entirely happy!

Let nobody lie to anybody or despise any single being anywhere.
May nobody wish harm to any single creature, out of anger or hatred!

Let us cherish all creatures, as a mother her only child!
May our loving thoughts fill the whole world, above, below,
Across - without limit; a boundless goodwill toward the whole world, Unrestricted, free of hatred and enmity!

Q & A > Karen Armstrong

Q: Don't we have to go through the stages of grief as a result of 9/11? Doesn't that include denial and anger and then arrival at the transforming place that you speak of? Can we skip any steps?

A: It's no good denying that you feel anger. Feel it - the suffering - allow it to break you open, to break your heart. That can include denial. It includes feeling this fully, not going into some kind of Pollyanna mode. I know this is not popular in the United States, but I really have a distrust of positive thinking, which always immediately looks to the bright side. We can't skip any of the stages, but we must always have the end of the meditation - which is joy and compassion and liberation from this - as the goal. We can't do it overnight, either - this is a long process. We're in a culture that is instant. We have instant food, instant communication, and we expect instant transformation. This is a long and painful process, and hard work. It's not going to happen without a huge effort. No, we can't skip stages. If we feel rage, and we want to deny that it's happened, that's important too - this is part of the process. But, we must remember that if we get stuck there, then the terrorists have won, because they will have destroyed the American spirit. And they can't destroy the American spirit. They can't. You are too, I would say, religious a people for that, with too great an appreciation for what is really important. We have a long journey ahead, all of us together. Keep the end goal - the joy, the love, the compassion - in view. You can start by being good to the people around you.

Q: How do we resolve the seeming conflict between your call to step outside the self and our economic system that's built on theories of self-interest?

A: This is a tough one, and it's roughly what I was talking about yesterday in my talk about Islam - how difficult it is to reconcile these facts: the wonderful high ideals of our religion with the grim reality of life on the ground, and the market economy. I think, however, that we've got to create an attitude toward the money, because money isn't going to save us. This is what the Quran is always saying: the Arabs just got newly rich, and they though that money could save them. They were beginning to get self-sufficient and self-confident and they weren't looking after the poorer people in their community as they should have been. The Quran says, on the last day, your wealth won't help you and you will be judged: did you help others; did you share your wealth fairly with others? What we saw on 9/11 was a revelation - it was a dark epiphany. A revelation means an unveiling - a veil is stripped away from a reality that was there all the time but we didn't see it clearly enough. We had imagined that our great economic might, as well as our military strength would protect us forever from that kind of suffering. But, it didn't. They went straight for those two symbols - the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. That sight of those towers crumbling is terrible, and I'll never forget for a moment the horror of the people - people of all creeds, all nations - who died in that terrible attack. But, it is also a terrible reminder that, as the Quran says, our money won't save us. And, with the stocks tumbling as they are now, we can't build up false security with money. We've got to find for ourselves other interior means of strength. I think if we build up into ourselves habits of generosity, giving to others, helping others, as Abraham, give whatever you have to the other, to the stranger, even if it's small. It's very often the people who have least of all who give the most. If we could build into our system, because we, in our rich countries, live lives of such privilege that we must now remember the rest of the world. We can develop a spirituality now - a spirituality of tumbling stocks - which reminds us against self-sufficiency, which holds us back from the divine, and remember the importance of giving, and giving cheerfully. The Lord loves a cheerful giver.

Q: If you had a word for those who think it's okay to drop bombs and drop innocent Afghans to avenge 9/11, what would it be?

A: I don't think that violence works. I can understand America's huge desire to do something after that, but the trouble is, as I see it: violence breeds more violence. And, I also feel that this is a new phase of warfare, this is something different. People in Britain, for example, don't seem to realize that something new has come into the world. They say, surely the Americans are over it by now - we've had terrorism here for years and we've gotten used to it. But, it's not like that, something new has happened. We've got to be prepared for this. This is not a clash of civilizations; it's a clash within civilizations as groups within these countries fight one another. This is one world. As we turn our backs on the world, the world will come to us in terrible form. What we need now is new ways of thinking. This is not the Cold War anymore. This is something different. From henceforth, small groups are increasingly going to have powers of destruction that were formally the preserve only of the nation-states. And, that demands creativity in our thinking. Not going out there with all guns firing, but, perhaps making ourselves a little smaller and thinking for something fresh. A new initiative is needed for this drastically changed world. And that doesn't come immediately, but it involves hard work, preparation, and sharing. The stories of the religions all make this point that violence breeds more violence. That's why they turn to the compassionate ethos, because that breaks the pattern.