As advances in information technology facilitate instantaneous communications across continents, and as the impact of globalization is felt on all fronts throughout the populated areas of our planet Earth, on the one hand we feel a heightened sense of interdependence and interconnectedness throughout our world. Yet on the other hand, ironically, and lamentably, our global society is beleaguered by recurrent incidents of violence and conflict, manifesting deepseated divisions across different levels of our being as humans navigating our way through this life on Earth.

With racial, ethnic, national, political, social, economic, religious, and other factors in play, we human beings construct identities associated with a need for belonging to specific groups set off from others outside of that group. This is a frame of mind called “tribalism,” an “us vs. them” mentality that informs attitudes and behavior, based on adherence and devotion to an in-group that by definition demarcates itself from those outside.¹ An extreme form of this is one that harbors hostility, and desires or even actively works toward the elimination of those considered outside the group. This tribalistic mindset is arguably at the roots of the major problems faced by our global society today.²

As of this writing, the global pandemic COVID-19 continues to ravage societies throughout the world, cutting across national, social and other boundaries, exposing us human beings to a common vulnerability as humans to the virus. Thus, on the one hand, the pandemic provides an occasion for the global human community to transcend our tribalistic attitudes and find solidarity in our common plight against this pervasive threat to our human lives, urging us to go beyond our self-imposed boundaries in seeking to care for one another. However, on the other hand, regrettably, the pandemic has in effect, served to heighten the inequities among us and further bolster the demarcations that already set us apart, based on economic, social, racial, and other factors. It puts sectors of our global community at greater odds with one another vis-à-vis
strategies to contain the virus, even as it wreaks havoc on the lives and causes the death of multitudes of the more economically disadvantaged sectors of our human community.

Surveying our contemporary world, one cannot help but lament a highly dysfunctional and violence-prone global society marked by deep-seated divisions and animosities among different sectors, heading toward a disastrous future. An earnest cry wells up from the depths, echoing the words of Rodney King, an African American construction worker whose beating by LAPD police sparked riots in the Los Angeles area in 1992: “Can’t we all get along?”

In his analytical look at the human condition, the Buddha describes the fundamental human problematic as dukkha, a term often translated as “suffering,” but more appropriately rendered as “dis-ease, dissatisfaction, dislocation, dysfunction.” The term refers to a wheel that is not correctly centered and consequently is malfunctioning. With this as starting point, the Awakened One presents a therapeutic approach to our human problematic in the well-known Four Noble Truths, based on a fourfold set of principles for healing deriving from the Āyur Vedic tradition. This entails 1) laying out the symptoms of the disease, that is, bringing to light the manifestations of dis-ease and dissatisfaction; 2) determining root causes, thus pinpointing to craving, which plays out in the three poisons of greed, ill-will, and delusion; 3) envisioning a healed state of well-being that comes to the fore with the eradication of the causes of the disease, and 4) prescribing the path toward healing, i.e. the eightfold path beginning with Right View and culminating with the practice of meditative concentration.

David Loy, Buddhist philosopher and Zen teacher, takes these Four Noble Truths and transposes them from the individual, personal level to the societal and institutional levels of our being.³ Taking cue from this transposition, we can describe our contemporary world situation as one of global dukkha. Loy traces the causes of this global dis-ease to the three poisons in institutionalized form, i.e., in the institutionalized greed of a globalized economic system propelled by our consumeristic attitudes and values; the institutionalized ill-will harbored by tribalistic mindsets against the perceived “other” regarded as a threat to their existence, which spawns a lucrative military industrial complex that feeds on the insecurities of the populace; and the collective delusion brought about by the corporate interests that control the mass media, highlighting the titillating and sensational items that capture the headlines, sidetracking our gaze and shifting our attention from the more urgent issues we face as a global community.

In a another work, Loy reframes the second Noble Truth as a sense of lack we humans feel within ourselves, springing from the delusion of a false, constructed self.⁴ This deluded self is propped up by a false sense of security as it finds belonging in a constructed tribal group identity set up in opposition to those who are outside of that group. The animosity engendered towards “those others” who do not belong to “my group” is what escalates into the violence that we see in so many forms in our world today.

Christianity attributes the woes of humanity to “sin,” understood as a state of separation and alienation from our divine source. We human beings are originally created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27), but through an act of willful disobedience, came to be exiled from our original home (the Garden of Eden), and thereby also came to be alienated from our neighbor, that is, our fellow human beings, and from the Earth our natural habitat. This state of separation on three levels is at the roots of the dysfunctional state in which we now see ourselves, adversely affecting the personal, social, and global dimensions of our being.⁵ This acute sense of inner
dislocation is what drives us to crave for a sense of belonging with some tangible entity larger than ourselves, and thus feeds the tribalistic mentality and its accompanying patterns of destructive behavior.

With their respective diagnoses of the ailing human condition, Buddhist and Christian traditions also offer their respective prescriptions towards healing. The overcoming of our diseased and dysfunctional human condition (dukkha) begins with the due acknowledgement of this condition, and proceeds to the identification of its root causes. In identifying this delusive, egoic self as the cause of this dysfunction, we are enabled to forge a path toward liberation, which lies in the cessation of this delusion. This liberation is actually an awakening to our “true self that is no-self,” understood as the realization of our intimate interconnectedness with each and everything in this universe. Mindfulness and meditative concentration, in diverse forms as taught in various schools of Buddhism, is the prescribed form of spiritual practice that allows for this overcoming of the delusion of a separate self, that is, awakening to and realizing our intimate interconnectedness with everything and everyone in the world. To awaken to my true self is in fact to recognize and see everything and everyone as kin to myself: there is literally nothing, and no one, who is alien, or “other” to me. I behold everyone and everything around me and realize my deep kinship with all: I am that.

In Christianity, the overcoming of our state of separation from our divine source, from our fellow humans, and from the world of nature, that is, the overcoming of being in a state of sin, begins with the acknowledgement and confession of that sin. The Good News is a call to reconciliation, which entails a metanoia, literally a change of heart and mind. This is no less than a total transformation of our entire way of being, from an alienated, insecure, self-preoccupied life, to one that has now been reconciled with God and has reclaimed its divine image, reconciled with our neighbor, and with the entire Creation. In theological terms, this is “dying to our old self with Christ on the cross and being reborn in the newness of life in the Risen One.” This is “putting on the mind of Christ,” which effects a transformation from a self-centered, alienated state of being, to a mode of being and way of life that is now reconciled with our divine source, reconciled with our neighbor, and with the entirety of creation.⁶ This reconciliation opens our hearts to embrace everyone and everything “in Christ,” as members of the same extended, all-inclusive family, together basking in unconditional Divine Love. This reconciliation empowers us to actively work together toward everyone’s collective well-being grounded in that love.

In a multi-volume series exploring the spiritual teachings of living religions of the world (under the common subtitle World Spirituality), with renowned international scholars contributing essays on Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Indigenous, Secular, and other forms of spirituality, the common preface to all the volumes offers a working definition of the key term “spiritual” that is notable. The spiritual core is the deepest center of the person. It is here that the person is open to the transcendent; it is here that the person experiences ultimate reality.⁷ I venture to suggest that this spiritual core, where the person is open to the transcendent, in whatever way this may be named, is also where a person experiences an intimate connectedness with everyone and everything that exists in the universe, that is, where one realizes a deep kinship with all.

In this regard, Buddhists and Christians need only turn to their own respective spiritual teachings and practices and “walk their talk,” thereby becoming agents that will bring about a new world order based on the understanding and realization of this kinship of all. Adherents of other religious traditions are also called to find a way to go beyond their own religious-based tribalistic mindset and reexamine their own core message to humanity. In this light they are called to join hands with all peoples of goodwill to work toward shared goals of a harmonious, equitable, just, and compassionate world order, empowered by their own religious vision. And for those who regard themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” taking on a form of spiritual practice that enables them to return to their home in the deepest center of their being, whether it be through Zen, Buddhist insight meditation, Hindu, Jewish, Sufi, Christian contemplation, or some form of “non-religious” mindfulness practice, may open them to an experiential realization of that intimate interconnectedness with all, and bring about a transformation in the way they see themselves and the way they live their lives.

Spiritual practice that puts us in touch with this innermost core of our being, thereby opening our hearts to our intimate connectedness with each and everyone in the universe, enables us to overcome a self-preoccupied, tribalistic mindset, and instead live in the light of the vision of the kinship of us all.⁸ The heart and mind of one so awakened is conveyed by a well-known line from the early Buddhist treatise On Lovingkindness (Mettā Sutta): As a mother would give her life to protect her child, her only child, have this boundless heart in you toward all beings.

The realization of this all-inclusive and intimate kinship in a truly experiential way will inevitably unfold in the personal, social, political, economic, ecological, and all levels of our being, and bring about a palpable and effective transformation of our global society.

Footnotes

¹ The Macmillan dictionary (2018) defines this term “tribalism” as “a way of thinking or behaving in which people are loyal to their social group above all else,” and can entail a type of “discrimination or animosity based on those group differences” (Merriam-Webster, 2018). The term as used in current intellectual discourse is not intended to be derogatory or demeaning to indigenous communities which are also referred to as “tribes.” See Bruce Rozenblit, Us Against Them:-How Tribalism Affects the Way We Think (Kansas City, Missouri: Transcendent Publications, 2008).
² See Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017), 18ff. See also Wright’s lecture series, Beyond Tribalism: How Meditation Can
Save the World, available online at https://learn.tricycle.org/courses/tribalism
³ David Loy, The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1997).
⁴ David Loy, Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2018).
⁵ Ruben L.F. Habito, Healing Breath: Zen for Christians and Buddhists in a Wounded World (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2006).
⁶ See James Marion, Putting On the Mind of Christ: The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality (Hampton Roads Publishing, 2011).
⁷ This common preface is authored by Ewert Cousins. See Arthur Green, et. al., Editors, World Spirituality: An Encyclopaedic History of the Religious Quest (New York: Crossroads, 1989ff).
⁸ For an inspiring and empowering description of such a scenario, see Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. Sacred Activism Series (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2013).

*From Deep Understanding for Divisive Times, ed. by Lucinda Mosher, et. al., Paraclete Press, 2020.