In this latest member profile, Rich Flanagan talks to us about why he joined the society, what the Middle Way means to him and to what extent he applies it in his job as an operating department practitioner in the NHS and as a dad. We’ll discuss the importance for him of meditation, his interest in science. He’ll also talk about why he sees that for him there is no conflict in being an atheist and a practitioner of the Middle Way. We touch on religious ethics, navel gazing and one particular reservation he has about the society.
Paul Nash was born in London in 1889, two years later the family moved to Buckinghamshire, his father was a lawyer, his mother died of a mental illness, his nurse and neighbours cared for him, his brother John was a painter. Paul Nash attended St.Paul’s School and then went to the Slade School of Art in London to train, his first exhibition was in 1912.
He joined the army at the start of WW1, reluctantly gaving up his art career. Later during the war he was to write:-
“I am no longer a painter interested and curious, I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go for ever. Feeble, inarticulate, will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth, and may it burn their lousy souls.”
In France he fell into a trench breaking a rib so was sent back to England where he was commissioned to became a war painter for the Ministry of Information, enlisting in the Artists Rifles he was sent to the Western Front. Many of the sketches he did in the trenches were the basis for his war paintings. He became very unhappy working in France, hence the message he sent back to England. He was perhaps the most important painter of wars in both the first and second world wars.
In Wire he used chalk, ink and water colour on paper, he portrayed his horror of war with a scene of rain filled trenches, think of all that mud, a shattered tree and a dense web of barbed wire that we can imagine tears the skin, above we see a white sky with purple/red coloured clouds.
The painting is a symbol of the horror of war, with the barren earth and lifeless tree, the wire like a web entangles those who climb across it.
In the early 1920s he became prominent in the society of Wood Engravers and was a pioneer of modernism, he promoted avant -garde European styles of abstraction. Once WW1 ended he was free again to paint what inspired him including many landscapes. British landscapes inspired him most of all, he had a sense of their ancient history, he wished to show ‘the spirit of the place.’ Nash has been described as ‘the most evocative landscape painter of his generation.’ It can be argued that landscapes are the most popular art form, the Romantic painters liked to portray the grandeur and awe of mountain scenes, but the landscape in Wire tells a different story. Early influences were the work of painters like Samuel Palmer and William Blake, Nash saw himself working in the tradition of English mystical painters. Freud’s work on dreams also filtered into his work, he painted The Landscape from a Dream, between 1936-38, by then he was known as a surrealist painter.
In 1933 he,together with Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore formed a group called Unit One with Herbert Read, an art critic, their aim was to revitalise English art between the war years.
Nash married in 1914, the couple lived in Dorset, he died of heart failure in 1946.
The false dichotomy (also known as false dilemma, or restricting the options) is a recognised fallacy that also has an obvious and close relationship with the Middle Way. A false dichotomy assumes that a judgement that is incremental (shades of grey) is absolute (black and white). However, the issue it raises is that of how we can tell false dichotomies from true ones. Is anything black and white?
Here is an example of a false dichotomy from a US comedy:
The assumption that one is either a good or a bad father is obviously false, and is used here manipulatively. Other examples of false dichotomies include George Bush saying “Either you are with us or you’re with the terrorists”, and the demand made in an Ulster pub, “Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?” Both of these example ignore possible third options that might involve some degree of agreement or disagreement with either side of the dichotomy: I might disapprove both of terrorism and of George Bush’s ‘War on Terror’, and I might disagree with both Catholic and Protestant beliefs whilst sharing to some extent the culture of each.
I would argue that the only true dichotomies are abstract. These consist in a merely logical distinction between a quality and its absence. “Are you Canadian or not?” and “Is the answer 1.25 or not?” are both true dichotomies in theory, so long as we are only dealing with the concept of a Canadian or the number 1.25. However, as soon as you apply these terms to experience, any dichotomy you apply becomes false. Stephen Harper may define himself as 100% Canadian, but given that Canada wasn’t settled by people of European origin before the 16th Century, he doubtless has ancestors (as well as other influences) that make that Canadian-ness a matter of degree. The number 1.25 applied to an actual object will also be approximate, depending on measurement that can never be perfectly precise. Any actual object in experience will thus be more or less 1.25 (metres, tons, or whatever).
In experience, then, all dichotomies are ultimately false. However, there are many that we would do well to accept in practical terms. In practice, either you catch a train or not: you cannot half catch it and remain alive. Iceland is either part of Europe or it isn’t, though the answer may depend on your definition of Europe. Perhaps it’s better to save up our objections to false dichotomies for the ones that really matter. The sort of time when it most seems to matter are when people in a certain group assume that because you’re different in some way you must be “one of them”. For example, scientific naturalists sometimes assume that if you question the ‘truth’ of scientific results, then you must be a dogmatic peddler of the supernatural. This is where it seems most important to make an effort to get across the mere possibility of the Middle Way.
The basic technique to spot a false dichotomy in practice is to ask yourself whether the two opposed qualities you’re dealing with could be translated into one quality and its negation. “Either you’re British or you’re French” is an obvious false dichotomy, whilst “Either you’re British or you’re not” may or may not be a dichotomy in practical terms, depending on how “British” is being defined. If it means possessing a British passport, it is in practice a true dichotomy, but if it is a matter of ethnic, geographical or cultural purity then it isn’t.
Exercise
Are these false dichotomies, either in thorough-going terms or in immediate practical terms?
1. Cats and dogs
2. There is no viable alternative to the company’s current employment policies.
3. Numbers that are not 15 are either larger than 15 or smaller.
4. Photographs are either colour or monochrome.
5. This dog is either dead or it is alive.
6. “The deadline is 12 noon on 15th June. Either meet it or lose your job!”
Ill-will, or hatred, is not that different from sense-desire really. It’s just positive desire turned the other way round so as to reject someone or something. Just as there’s an incremental progression from sense-desire to love, there’s a similar progression from hatred to wisdom. You don’t have to be an obviously hate-filled person to come across ill-will as a hindrance in meditation, just have a critical tendency which leads you to dwell in a slightly obsessive or unbalanced way on what’s wrong and ought to be put right.
So, having distanced myself slightly from stereotypes of hatred, I’m now able to admit that ill-will is my biggest hindrance. In my case it consists almost entirely of sitting in meditation thinking of things I should have said, or might say, to people so as to show they’re not entirely correct about things. For a long time, my experience of trying to practise the Middle Way has often consisted of having subtle arguments with both sides representing the extremes instead of just one side – which is sometimes conducive to a bit of a siege mentality. Perhaps it’s only since the society started that I’m beginning to find it easier to think primarily of the Middle Way as offering something positive: but I’m aware that I still have a tendency to over-emphasise the negative.
One way of trying to manage ill-will is just to reflect that the object of your aversion has too much power over you. Your aversion itself doesn’t want that, so the energy it consists in may thereby be directed into less obsessive channels. After all, if you hate something, or someone, why are they worth so much attention? In fact, giving that b*****d so much emotional energy (whoever it is) is a lot more than he’s worth! That’s one reason why, if you hate God, strong agnosticism is a much more effective way of “getting your own back on him” than atheism or anti-theism. People who hate God tend to spend a lot of time thinking about him, and in the process give him a lot more reality. Aversion taken to a rational conclusion tends to lead you into wisdom, where you start criticising your beliefs about the hated object rather than just the object. Nevertheless, subtler forms of hatred may still hang around such an intellectualisation, and you tend to discover these when you meditate.
Another relatively effective approach to ill-will in my experience is merely to focus on one’s physical experience. Hatred (especially in the form of anger) has a very narrow mental focus, and just remembering that you have a breathing, feeling body can take you a long way out of it. That’s obviously why taking deep breaths is a popular way of controlling anger.
Alternatively, you can reflect on the object of your ill-will so as to give that object a wider meaning than the narrow one you are probably obsessed with. When we hate someone, we tend to think of them only in one sort of situation, having one sort of characteristic, or saying one sort of thing. We focus narrowly on a particular experience we may have had of that person, even though we may have experienced other aspects – or, if not, can at least imagine them. The Buddhist metta bhavana (cultivation of loving-kindness) works in this sort of way to get you to expand the meaning of your ‘enemy’. So, instead of thinking of your evil boss in the office being odious, you can imagine him on the beach throwing a ball back and forth to his children, or taking his dog for a walk on a spacious wind-blown hill. My own experience is that if I am wrapped up in ill-will I am unlikely to be able to focus on such visualisations, but they may work better for some other people.
Whatever approach you find works best, the underlying point seems to be that ill-will is just energy following habitual channels. For the moment, it’s your ill-will, in the sense that you need to do something about it rather than projecting it onto others. No, it’s not his or hers – they didn’t “make you angry” – it’s yours! There may be a genuine problem out there, but ill-will won’t help you to resolve it. However, in the longer term the ill-will is not even yours: it’s just the direction your energies have taken. You can take them somewhere else. If more direct approaches don’t work, use more indirect ones. Stop meditating and go for a walk. Keep walking until you actually start experiencing the trees and the bird-song instead of hatred.
Picture: Angry woman by Lara 604 (Wikimedia Commons)
