Say "Yes to Life"!

Eastern Thoughts — Western Thoughts: Chapter 11

St. Francis of Assisi lay on his deathbed. He was singing. Brother Elias, a pompous but prominent member of the Franciscan Order, with a strong sense of their Order’s world mission, slipped quietly into the room. He had a delicate task to perform. “Father,” he began, coughing discreetly, “there are people standing in the street outside your window. I’m afraid nothing we might do could prevent them from hearing you singing. This lack of restraint at so grave an hour might embarrass the Order, Father. It might lower the esteem in which you yourself are so justly held. Perhaps in your extremity you have—momentarily, of course—lost sight of your obligation to the many who have come to regard you as a saint. Would it not be more edifying for them if you were to, er, die with more Christian dignity?”

“Please excuse me, Brother,” St. Francis replied, “but I feel so much joy in my heart that I really can’t help myself. I must sing!” To his last breath he sang joyously to God for the wonders of His creation. To be joyous even at the time of leaving this world! To be able to say “Yes” even to death—what greater affirmation of life? What greater evidence of a spirit triumphant? As St. Francis de Sales said: “A sad saint is a sad saint indeed!”

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There is an old (and, thank God, apocryphal) tradition to the effect that Jesus Christ never smiled. This, unfortunately, is the image of him that has survived. But can you imagine crowds of people flocking eagerly around a teacher who never looked at them except to weep for their sins? Who greeted every pleasantry with a pained sigh of reproof? And what do you suppose the disciples were singing on Palm Sunday: dirges?

Joy is the true lord of this world. People are ruled by what they most desire. And what do all men want, truly? Joy! Even when they think it is money or fame or good health, joy is always their “ulterior motive.”
Jesus was a man of supreme joy. He had to be, for people to flock around him by the thousands as they did. He had to be, because every man or woman who ever was close to God was full of joy—not the bubbly good spirits of a comedian, but a joy calm and deep, a joy that washed away as if effortlessly the sorrows of everyone who came into contact with it. The man of divine joy is a true king among men.

This is why, in India, saints are often called, “Maharaj” (Great King). Their kingdom is the territory of human hearts. Jesus has been variously depicted as though he were a wooden-faced oracle of doom; a long-suffering Sunday School teacher in a roomful of rowdy children; the untimely Voice of Conscience at a perfectly innocent picnic; or something of a rowdy himself, a firebrand rebel angrily denouncing a system rotten to the core. Why not try reading the New Testament with the thought in mind, instead, that he was a man of radiant joy? I think his life will affect you wonderfully.

Take that passage in John 10:32, when Jesus replied to the Jews who wanted to stone him: “I’ve done many good things for you, by my Father’s power. For which of these do you mean to stone me?” I can think of only two attitudes that might reasonably have prompted such a reply: one, a cringing self-pity, belied by his entire life; and the other, a joyous, indomitable courage that could face even death with a pleasantry.

His was a powerful joy, one that sometimes cauterized ignorance. It was a joy rooted in absolute love and compassion. But it was a joy that said “Yes!” to life. The entire New Testament becomes a message of joy when one reads it in this light. Even the Crucifixion, tragic as it was, had its climax not in death, but in the Resurrection.

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Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their dead” (Matt. 8:22). I don’t suppose anyone has ever imagined that he meant for corpses to be left to be buried by other corpses. What he was referring to were those people, apparently living, who walk around with no life in their hearts, no enthusiasm, no inner happiness. Then was he proposing a bizarre kind of social reform—to get only such dullards to act as undertakers? Somehow I suspect not.

What he can only have meant was that death is a reality only to people who have no inner joy. Such people feed on thoughts of death, even as joyful people feed on thoughts of life. Jesus was saying to his disciple, “You can do more for your departed father by remaining here with me, absorbing my joy, and sending him your vibrations of joy, than you could by leaving me to go bury his dead body.” Joy is not the companion of smugness or a heartless smile. Its very root is compassion. Joy in the soul is the surest sign of the inner smile of divine grace.

* * * * *

To be able to go out into the countryside and see something besides one’s own feet as one walks! to be able—to have the developed capacity to feel the symphony of life coursing through the veins of the trees, singing and laughing with the children as they play, and scudding with the clouds through the sky: This is life! True happiness has nothing to do with whether one has all the things money can buy. Happiness can be ours only to the extent that we have life within.

* * * * *

Jean-Paul Sartre has written, “In this world that bleeds, all joy is obscene.” What kind of nonsense is that? Do we say that, in a hospital full of suffering people, the presence of doctors and nurses is obscene? Pure joy is a cure for misery, not something that happens only if one is lucky enough to have escaped suffering. Sartre cannot ever have tasted true joy in his life, or he would not equate joy with the self-satisfaction of a callous, rich man. Indeed Sartre obviously has not understood what life is all about. He equates life with death. And he has devoted his whole life to burying the dead.

* * * * *

Immanuel Kant, like probably a million other Western moralists, taught that one should seek happiness for others, not for oneself. It sounds good until you pace it out. But then: Can you visualize it? “I hope you appreciate all I’ve done for you, Son. I’ve had a perfectly miserable life, saving all these years so that you might go to college, and get a good job, and find a happiness that I’ve always been denied.” Grimly, the father adds, “I only hope you won’t be selfish toward your children, Son. Live always for their happiness not your own.” Probably the son won’t need this admonishment. The burden of guilt will be one that he’ll be only too glad to pass on to his children.

Who will ever find true happiness, if the only person who accepts it is one with no sense of shame? The wise men of India would say that Kant had put the cart before the horse. One must find happiness oneself before he can give it to others. Money can’t be given away if one doesn’t have it to give. Of course, one’s supply of money may grow if one is generous with it. What Kant should have said is: “Be happy first, then expand your happiness by sharing it with others; don’t keep it selfishly for yourself lest it slowly wither and die.” For, truly, in sharing our happiness grows.

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We hear much talk in this country about “the abundant life.” Stress in placed, of course, on that adjective, “abundant.” Life itself is simply assumed, equated as it is with mere existence. But how can the simple fact of existence be made abundant? One either exists, or one doesn’t! When we speak of an abundant life, we think of life itself, and not abundance only, as a quality of existence. If a person is considered to be “really living” when he is having a good time, then “the abundant life” will mean having lots of good times. If living, as distinct from mere existence means having more of the so-called “better things of life,” then abundance refers to a veritable surfeit of these “better things.”

But an abundance of these superficial kinds of living is inevitably self-defeating. Too many good times, too many things and what is the result? High living of this sort leaves people in the end yawning at everything. They go to work reluctantly; they smile reluctantly. Moods knead them repeatedly into a state of emotional helplessness. Instead of living abundantly, there seems abundant evidence that they are slowly dying. Life, then, is the key word to fulfillment, and not abundance as so many worldly people imagine. The only kind of life that is worth seeking is a life of deep, inner joy. Only after we’ve caught glimpses of that ought we even to think in terms of abundance. Abundance then will come to mean intensity, not quantity—energy, not mass. Until one finds this joy, one would be wiser to simplify his existence, and not to go cluttering it up with shallow thoughts of a perfectly useless worldly abundance.

* * * * *

The worldly person lives constantly in the hope of some happiness just around the corner He lives in his anticipations. Life to such a person is hardly more than a rumor! But true happiness must be lived. It cannot ever be found if it is sought.

* * * * *

Laughter is usually accepted as the sign of a happy heart. But how many different kinds of laughter there are, and how many of them like dull echoes in the tunnel of an empty heart! Go to the average cocktail party. Listen there to people trying desperately to have a gay time. Their merriment, like their cocktails, seems a kind of drug intended only to help them forget. Hear their laughter: How frequently it echoes an inner frenzy, emptiness, boredom, broken dreams. It is not always easy to tell such laughter from the anguish of tears.

True laughter is of the soul. It is not a self-advertisement put out to impress others (or perhaps, hopefully, oneself!). It is not the kind of hysteria that must be forever primed, like a pump, with jokes and witticisms. Here is one of the numerous paradoxes of the spiritual life: True laughter can rise only in a heart that need never laugh at all to know that it lives continuously in a state of joy.

* * * * *

To live happily, live in, but not for, the moment. To live for the moment means to become identified with a situation that must change. It is to expose oneself to future suffering, should the change, when it comes, prove drastic. But to live in the moment means to live in the Eternal Now—in a state of inner joy which nothing temporary can affect.

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I’ve read that George Bernard Shaw once at a party was sitting alone at the edge of the room. His hostess came over to him and inquired solicitously: “Aren’t you enjoying yourself?” Shaw replied: “That’s all I am enjoying!” Whether only to be witty, or with deeper insight he was hitting on a great truth. One’s Self is all anyone can enjoy. Sense enjoyments only reflect an inner capacity for enjoyment. Without this capacity, the most beautiful scene in the world will leave one unmoved. (A turtle looking at a Van Gogh painting would probably confine its sense of “wonder” to wondering whether pigments were good enough to eat.) Unlike Shaw, you may think you actually are enjoying a party. But like Shaw’s enjoyment, yours even then will be in yourself; you will only be projecting it outward onto the surrounding company.

* * * * *

Jesus said that he had come into this world that we might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). By “life” he meant, of course, that inner vitality and dynamic awareness of which outward good spirits are only manifestations. the point is, good times and pleasant circumstances are not in themselves responsible for those good spirits, though they may help to evoke them. The source of our vitality lies at the center of our being, not at its periphery. That is why, the closer to God a person is, the more he is always full of joy; and why also, the more worldly a person is, the more dull-eyed and heavy-hearted he becomes. The saints I have met were none of them the long-suffering dyspeptics of popular fancy. Joy was their chief characteristic. Welling up from vast depths of inner calmness, one sensed that it expressed their entire being. When they laughed, we who heard them felt like hugging the very air with delight!

* * * * *

In Big Sur a few years ago I met a man who was holding forth, somewhat drunkenly and with massive self-importance, on his version of how the universe ought to be run. I forget how it came about, but I happened to mention that I thought I had met perhaps six people in my life who knew God. (Actually, later reflection increased that number, but that’s beside the point.) My companion held out a huge, hairy paw. “Shake,” he cried hoarsely, “ya just met the seventh!” Well, my meeting with this exalted soul didn’t exactly revolutionize my life, but perhaps my amusement was untimely, and stood in the way of a golden opportunity. I was thinking, if he had truly known God it would not have been necessary for him to say so at all. God’s presence ever declares itself in silences.

* * * * *

This world is like a symphony, and God is a great conductor bringing music out of all things. In us He is walking, thinking, talking. In the trees he trembles and dreams. In the wind He is blowing. In the sun He is shining and warming everything. In the birds He is singing. In the dogs He is playing. In all things God has assumed different roles. Through the sunlight He is saying, “I am strong! I am free!” Through man He is saying, “I am wise. I feel deeply.” Through the dogs He is saying, “How playful I am! How wonderful it is to play!” And through the birds He is singing, “Oh, what melody there is in my heart!”

The only kind of life that is worth seeking is a life of deep, inner joy.
Only after we’ve caught glimpses of that ought we even to think in terms of abundance.