I’ve followed with a great deal of interest the discussion begun by Cardinal Ratzinger over allowing Catholic clergy to use Eastern corporeal techniques as an aid to meditation and religious discipline. Certainly, leaving aside the breathing techniques practiced by Hesychasts in early Christian times, the prayers of modern-day devotees take account of the role bodily rhythms and postures play in setting the mind to meditation. The techniques of Eastern meditation tend, however, to use the body to bring about a sort of annulment of sensibility and of will, in which the body, and with it the pain and miseries of our material nature, are forgotten. In this respect they come close to that search for suppression of anxiety and pain that characterized classical and pagan ataraxia.
On this point one can agree with Cardinal Ratzinger. Christianity is based on the idea of a son of God who, as son of man, points the way to redemption from evil through the cross. For Christianity, pain cannot be forgotten; indeed, it is a fundamental instrument of spiritual growth.
I don’t wish to be misunderstood: what I am referring to here has nothing to do with a recent controversy that has erupted at a high level over whether or not Christians should be reducing pain in the world. From reading just a few pages of the Gospels it is clear that Christians have a duty to alleviate the pain of others. But they must know how to deal with their own pain. Christians must make sacrifices so others do not suffer, and must do what is possible to reduce the pain that afflicts the world. So they must also reduce their own pain, if this can be done without harming others. Medicine is therefore welcome if it alleviates our sufferings; suicide and masochism are sinful. But since some degree of pain, through original sin or through the imperfections of this sublunary world, is impossible to eliminate, Christians must draw the maximum moral and ascetic benefit from the pain that awaits them.
Ideally no one should suffer, to the extent that it depends on you. But since even with the best of intentions you cannot eliminate the evil in the world, you have to know how to accept and make good use of that portion of pain that life will bring. I am thinking of the magnificent recent book Filosofia della libertà (Philosophy of Freedom) by Luigi Pareyson. After several pages of high metaphysical tension on the terrible question of whether evil paradoxically lurks in the same sphere as the divine, Pareyson celebrates pain, freely accepted and not ignored, as the means of overcoming evil.
It’s not essential to be a practicing Christian to accept this point of view: it permeates Western thought, and the finest writings of poets and philosophers who are nonbelievers, above all Giacomo Leopardi, originate from this ethos. Many Eastern doctrines are wholly extraneous to such an ethos. I would not agree with Cardinal Ratzinger if, based on such assumptions, he wanted to prevent laypeople or non-Christians from practicing whatever forms of religious discipline they choose. Likewise, I wouldn’t wish to comment on the assurances of the Catholic clergy who remind the cardinal that sitting in the lotus position doesn’t mean forgetting the mystery of the cross. These are internal Church matters. But the debate involves us all to the extent that, as Benedetto Croce said, we cannot not call ourselves Christians.
Recently a philosopher declared on a TV chat show that to resolve the crisis in the Western world we have to rediscover Islamic spirituality, using the unfortunate metaphor “sword of Islam,” once used by Mussolini. I don’t rule out the possibility that some might find the solution to their problems in the totemic rituals of Native American tribes. But, being what we are, our philosophy included, we have been brought up in a Judeo-Christian culture. It may be helpful for repentant terrorists to shed their skin, but philosophers decide their own conversion by looking inside the skin in which they are born.
2005