Sticks and Stones

I don't believe it's really true, the old saying about "sticks and stones...."  Let's suppose for a moment that we had a way to literally weigh the damage done  in the history of our species that can be attributed indirectly to verbal provocation plus the damage caused directly by words that destroy reputations, undermine relationships, and generally stir the pot of discord. Then suppose we could compare that to the weight of the damage done by physical violence unprovoked by verbal assaults. I believe the damage attributable to the former would be a great deal heavier than the damage attributable to the latter.

I used to think that people who were upset by the use of curse words and so-called vulgar expressions just needed to grow up. I think differently now. Words in themselves are not evil or good, it's true. But the fact is they can be used for either. "A soft answer turns away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger." (Proverbs, 15:1) Those words were written over 2000 years ago. Some things, indeed, do not change.

The Buddhist meditation group I led in New Orleans for over 17 years started every service with a recitation of the Five Buddhist Precepts. The fourth (as we recited it in Blue Iris Sangha) went like this: "Being mindful of suffering caused by careless or malicious speech, we are determined to use words to heal the wounds of misunderstanding, anger, hate, and fear." 

The other precepts had to do with killing, stealing, sexual infidelity, and intoxication (of mind and body). My guess is that a violation of the Fourth Precept was more often than not involved in a violation of any of the others. This is because our world is not ultimately one of sticks and stones, that is, of atoms and molecules, of material substances. Ultimately this is a world of thoughts and emotions -- a world of feelings.  In fact if you think about it, what do we know of sticks and stones? Nothing but what we can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. In other words, what we call sticks and stones (and what we call everything else that we believe is something material that exists outside our minds) is only known to us through our sense experience. And sense experience is something that happens in our minds!

Of course we can argue that there has to be something objective that exists separately from our consciousness of it. But we have no evidence of this. In fact, if you see something unusual -- let's say a UFO -- what is the first question everyone asks? Are you the only one who saw it? Right? Reality, you see, is a matter of majority opinion. So what we call objective reality is more accurately called inter-subjective reality. All reality is subjective. Some of it is simply subjective (including such things as hallucinations and dreams) and some of it is inter-subjective -- that is, a part of everyone's subjective experience, at least, everyone who has similarly-functioning sense organs.

A few years ago, I published a novella (The Dreamers of Ourdh, Great Way Publishing, 2013) in which the two lead characters -- Arenh and Mikah -- live in a human colony on an alien world named Ourdh. This world is also inhabited by a mysterious species of telepathic beings called the "Dreamers". When Arenh and Mikah eventually meet one of the Dreamers (which we discover is the same as meeting all the Dreamers), they ask her who the Dreamers are. She replied, "The Dreamers are what you are. We are all dreamers, and all these worlds are our dreams."  Later Mikah and Arenh were talking about what she meant, and Arenh said, "If I understood the Dreamers, Mikah, nothing exists outside our heads, and that includes our heads!  'All these worlds are our dreams'." Mikah said, "Do you think they were denying the reality of the external world?" To which Arenh replied, "No, I think they were denying the externality of the real world." Mikah said, "Hold that thought! I don't want it to get loose and start running around in my mind."

It is a challenging thought. It means we are -- together with all other conscious beings -- responsible for this world that we experience together. That doesn't mean one of us can magically make everything different. The mind is like an ocean, and each of is like a tiny wave -- or even a tiny part of a wave -- on its surface. But it does mean that if we all could somehow reach consensus that the world will be different, so it would be.

Coming to such a consensus to change the world in some way would, of course, be miraculous. You may not believe in miracles, but there is an ideal that has been growing for centuries that, if it continues to grow, could become such a miracle. In The Dreamers of Ourdh, I refer to it (speaking in the character of the Dreamers) as "the Great Dream, the Dream of the Holy Mountain." The allusion is to a saying from The Prophecy of Isaiah that appears twice  (Isaiah 11: 9 and 65:25): "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my Holy Mountain." 

I think of this Great Dream as the Will of God. When I pray the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6) -- especially the line that reads, "Thy Kingdom come, thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven" -- it's this Dream I mean. I believe if it were to become the heartfelt desire of every conscious being in the world, it would become reality. But I think it's unlikely to happen so long as most of us believe that this is a world of sticks and stones.

What we believe makes a difference because it influences what we feel. And what we feel makes all the difference in the world.