The Lamp of the Body

"Your Eye is the lamp of your body; 

when your eye is sound, 

your whole body is full of light; 

but when it is not sound, 

your body is full of darkness.

Luke 11:34

We think the world would be saved if only 

we could generate larger quantities of goodwill and tolerance. 

That's false. 

What will save the world is not goodwill and tolerance 

but clear thinking. 

Of what use is it to be tolerant of others if you are convinced that 

you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong? 

That is not tolerance but condescension. 

That leads not to union of hearts but to division, because 

you are one up and the others one down. 

A position that can only lead to a sense of superiority on your part 

and resentment on your neighbor's, thereby breeding further intolerance.

True tolerance only arises from a keen awareness 

of the abysmal ignorance of everyone as far as truth is concerned. 

For truth is essentially mystery. 

The mind can sense but cannot grasp it, much less formulate it. 

Our beliefs can point to it but cannot put it into words. 

In spite of this, people talk glowingly about the value of dialogue 

which at worst is a camouflaged attempt to convince the other person 
of the rightness of your position and at best will prevent you from becoming 
a frog in the  well who thinks that his well is the only world there is.

What is clear thinking and how does one arrive at it? 

The first thing you must know is that it does not call for any great learning. 

It is so simple as to be within the reach of a ten-year-old child. 

What's needed is not learning but unlearning, 
not talent but courage. 

You'll understand this if you think of a little child 

in the arms of an old, disfigured housemaid. 

The child is too young to have picked up the prejudices of its elders. 

So when it snuggles in that woman's arms, it is responding 

not to labels in its head; labels like white woman, black woman, ugly, 

pretty, old, young, mother, servant maid, it is responding 

not to labels such as these but to reality. 

That woman meets the child's need for love and 
that is the reality the child responds to, not the woman's name
 and figure and religion and race and sect. 

Those are totally and absolutely irrelevant. 

The child has as yet no beliefs and no prejudices. 

This is the environment within which clear thinking can occur. 

And to achieve it one must drop everything one has learned 

and achieve the mind of the child that is innocent of past experiences and programming which so cloud our way of looking at reality.

What clear thinking calls for is not intelligence--

that is easily come by--

 but the courage that has successfully coped with fear and with desire, 

for the moment you desire something or fear something, 

your heart will consciously or unconsciously get in the way of your thinking.

This is a consideration for spiritual giants 
who have come to realize that in order to find truth, 

they need, not doctrinal formulations, 

but a heart that divests itself of its programming and its self-interest 

each time that thinking is in progress; 

a heart that has nothing to protect 

and owes nothing to ambition 

and therefore leaves the mind to roam 

unfettered, fearless and free, 

in search of truth; 

a heart that is ever ready to accept new evidence 

and to change its views. 

Such a heart then becomes a lamp that enlightens 

the darkness of the whole body of humanity. 

If all human beings were fitted with such hearts 

people would no longer think of themselves 

as communists 

or capitalists, 

as Christians 

or Muslims 

or Buddhists. 

The very clarity of their thinking would show them 
that all thinking, all concepts, all beliefs are lamps full of darkness, 
signs of their ignorance. 

And in that realization 

the walls of their separate wells would collapse 

and they would be invaded by 

the ocean that unites all people in the truth.

From The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello