From Transformations in Consciousness by Franklin Wolfe

The new sacred content of consciousness radically affects the reality evaluation without altering the photographic image of the sensible world. The consequences that follow are enormously important, though they are of such a subtle nature that they do not readily lend themselves to description. For instance, one knows the universe to be the best possible world, and everything is as it should be, despite all the seeming disharmony and barbarism. It is Realized that the out-of-joint world is an effect of an incomplete consciousness – the kind of product one receives by the collaboration of conception and perception when the introceptive function is not awakened. The latter is like the reverse side of an embroidered cloth where the effect is chaotic and there are many loose threads. However, on the other side we have a perfectly orderly design. One one side it seems that mere chance accounts for the pattern and that humankind lives in a alien world that has no inner sympathy with our purposes and yearnings, while the other side reveals a perfect order in complete sympathetic rapport with the deepest human yearnings and aspirations. In the sacred world, one is at home and nothing feels strange. There is no need of melioration. There is no problem of making a better world, since that which is, already is the best that possible could be.

The practical moral problem is completely transformed. It is not oriented to meliorating conditions or improving the world, but to the awakening of a sleeping human consciousness.

Taoist Yan Chu

I would not sacrifice one single hair of my head to save the whole human race.

Anonymous Taoist (via The Tao is Silent)

Whichever the way the wind blows,
Whichever the way the world goes,
Is perfectly all right with me.

From Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss in Candide

(Gottfried Leibniz who theorized that everything in the world was determined by fate, also theorized that God, having the ability to pick from an infinite number of worlds, chose this world, and thus it was “the best of all possible worlds,” though unfortunately for mankind it was a world containing evil. Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, the optimistic tutor of the protagonist Candide, despite overwhelming personal experience to the contrary, never swerves from his naive assertion below. At the book’s end, manual labor in a happy endeavor quells this and other philosophical speculation.)

All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

All of the above leave me as a Western American Buddhist with my head confused. The notion that the world is screwed up and needs to be fixed is a deep seated belief in Western social activism. Indeed, in concert with Voltaire, those championing the belief that “the world is OK the way it is” usually demonstrate either marked panglossian blindness and naiveness or a selfish callousness toward the plight of others.

Perhaps at a very profound level everything is OK as it is. Just acknowledging the possibility of that viewpoint brings critical perspective that alleviates frustration as one works diligently and sometimes futilely to improve the lot of all beings; anxious effort to improve the world has only brought mankind untold misery. But the pernicious rationalization of selfishness and indifference toward others, particularly those others one is actively harming, as somehow the wonderful will of God seems close to the incarnation of evil itself. As an example, under the spell of this delusion, parents have refused available corrective medical attention for their children’s deformities because they were unwilling to interfere with the “wonderful will of God” expressed in their child’s disability and chronic suffering. And some naive Christians have judged both catastrophes like Katrina and the Iraqi civilians who have died because of our war on them to be the wonderful hand of God’s justice in play.

I have to reject that quietism. I cannot find any moral value in it. I only see the smug self-satisfaction of blind souls. Yet I also do not believe much more in either political activism or technology as coming saviors of the world. At the root of it, our major problems are neither political or technological. They are embedded deeply in our psyche. Political wars in the name of bettering mankind are as old as mankind itself. Every new technological remedy has carried with it a dark side to be employed in the destruction or enslavement of others. Our fate will be determined by whether or not we are able to use our intelligence to transcend the blind evolutionary psyche that is our heritage. Richard Dawkins draws a dark picture for those seeking to survive by evolutionary forces alone. Awakening the necessary inner intelligence to see and act beyond our biological self-centered instincts is probably the most important problem at hand.

Our history as mankind offers some limited hope. The potential for transcendence seems as deeply rooted as our destructive nature. Though evil persists, good has also never been vanquished. Perhaps it is the work of compassion to nurture this good, to plant it widely, not with hope of meliorating evil, but with the intent to ensure that here and there it will take root and grow, and thus never be lost from the earth.