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The Art of Peace is about how to achieve mutual benefit with others. There's a throwaway line in there:
Having first made peace within oneself, one may make peace within one's group.
The Art of Serenity is about peace within yourself.
It's an extended metaphor, in which the soul is a boat (imagine a small sailing dinghy), the will is the sailor who controls the boat, and the wind, which powers the boat and acts as its context, is the circumstances which exist around the soul.
The underlying idea of the Art of Serenity, then, is that the wind - the circumstances of life - is not an illusion, and it is not your enemy - but you don't have to go where it takes you.
Be serene.
1. You can use the wind to take you where the wind isn't going.
2. Against the wind is slowest, but across the wind is fastest.
3. Turning away from the wind is the most dangerous moment.
B. The Principles of Serenity in Movement
4. Serenity is found now, at the moving moment.
5. A constantly shifting balance is needed for serenity in movement.
6. Serenity in movement must be established and preserved through decision.
7. There is a time to decide and a time to hold to a decision.
8. Many, often apparently contradictory, decisions may be necessary to move against the wind.
9. Decisions are based on direction.
D. The Principles of Direction
10. Directly towards a goal is not necessarily the best way.
11. The average direction is the most important.
12. The actual direction at any moment is the next most important.
The wind is the circumstances of life. You cannot control how hard it blows or in which direction. But you can control how you respond to it.
One of the first things you learn about sailing a boat is that the direction of the wind is important. Not because it forces you to sail in a certain direction, but because it affects how you go about sailing in the direction you choose.
For example, the wind that blows where I am is a materialist wind. People who have skills which are much in demand can ask a lot of money for their skills, because money is held to be an indicator of value. They not only can, but do ask for a lot of money, because they want to have a great many material things.
If someone who wants to live a simple life is in this wind, it is possible to save a great deal of money. Structures and institutions exist within the context of materialism which can mean that saved money eventually frees you from the need to participate in materialism. You can do what you consider worthwhile, rather than what will bring you a lot of money, because you don't need a lot of money. In only a few years, you have gained enough.
Again, when learning to sail, one quickly learns that although it is possible to sail in any direction, the wind does affect how quickly you can sail in any given direction. Sailing against the wind involves tacking back and forth, heading not directly into the wind but indirectly towards where it is coming from. This is a slow, indirect process. So is going against the circumstances of your life.
Surprisingly, heading directly away from the wind is not the fastest way. More power is generated when you head across the wind, going not in the easiest direction, nor in the hardest direction, but in a different direction altogether.
I read of a stock trader who was a 'contrary man'. When everyone was selling at the end of the day, wanting to realise their gains of the day so that they could invest the money elsewhere, he was the one who bought. When they came the next morning wanting to buy stocks again, he was the one who had them to sell. He worked on a principle given to him by his Chinese grandfather: The contrary man always wins.
This man was working, not against the wind (even though he was a 'contrary man'), nor with the wind, but across the wind. He wasn't opposing what others were doing or imitating what others were doing. He was doing something different, which gained its power from what others were doing.
My great-grandfather and his brother made a great deal of money at the goldfields in Western Australia. They didn't make it by digging gold (with the wind); they certainly didn't make it by attempting to set up another industry in competition to gold-digging (against the wind). They sailed across the wind. They sold water to the miners.
A good sailing instructor will warn students against the 'jibe', when you have been running with the wind behind and decide to change direction. If you turn away from the wind, your sail will swing suddenly across and may hit you in the face. The safe way is to turn gradually towards the wind.
Rebellion, of nations or individuals, tends to be a turning away, a rejection, without anything very new or different to put in place of what is rejected. One of my favourite authors, Terry Pratchett, parodies a form of this idea in a scene where his characters are running away from danger:
"Where are we running to?"
"From. The important word is from."
As Edward de Bono has pointed out, most revolutions are against something. He calls for a "positive revolution" which is for something. This is the way to turn from being driven by the wind: not to turn against it but to turn into it, so that its power is not against you but helping you to get where you are going. You cannot fight the whole world. But you can change from doing what the whole world is doing to doing something different that uses what the world is doing to give it power.
Nothing interrupts serenity more surely than a slap in the face with a wet sail.
Most people think of serenity as passive and static. For instance, the ideal serenity of the Hindu sadhu, or holy man, is in detachment from the world, stillness, not eating or drinking, hardly breathing. This is the serenity of death.
The serenity of life is found not in being still but in being at peace. Peace is not lack of conflict. Peace is good relationships which can deal with conflict.
If the world is good, we can have serenity within it. But if it is imperfect, that serenity will have to be in the midst of movement. It need not be the less for that.
In the city of Calcutta are many "holy men" who seek stillness by detachment from life. And there is one holy woman, Mother Theresa, who finds her serenity in the midst of life's worst.
This is serenity in movement.
Serenity comes when we both engage and disengage. We engage with the thing itself, with the present moment, in all its fulness - which must include what it has been and what it is becoming. We disengage from our own past and our own future, entrusting them to God, and project ourselves utterly into the thing itself in the present moment.
Of course, part of what we are is in the past, and part in the future. We learn wisdom from the past, and plan for the future. But we live in the present.
Think of time as a string. The present is a ring, perhaps a curtain ring or even a finger ring, threaded on this string. Another string, attached to it, pulls it along the first string from left to right.
Without the string on the left, it could not be where it is. Without the string on the right, it has nowhere to go. But without the string it is attached to, it does not move. This string is eternity. As C.S. Lewis says, the present is most like eternity. It is immediate, it is real; "there," he says, "and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge and all pleasure dwell." Our real needs are in the present, and our real influence. The past is fixed and done, the future unreal.
Although your past has brought you to where you are now, it is in your present that you must deal with it. Your past choices are finished and you cannot take them back. Your present choices are still real, still within your power. If you live in the past you will keep bumping into the furniture, because you can only move it in the present.
Although your future is important, you do not know much of it even with a reasonable degree of certainty. You can plan for it, but your plans are worthless if they are not prepared for, decided for, now. If you live in the future, you will be constantly disappointed as it arrives and becomes the present - and you will never do anything in the present to change this.
The present is the point of shifting balance between the past and the future. This is what makes it a key to the point of shifting balance which is at the heart of serenity in movement.
A sailing boat must be balanced within. I cannot sail fast boats, because I am not heavy enough to balance the power of the wind on a large sail which would then tip the boat over. I would spend all my time in the water if I tried to sail these boats - not because the wind is trying to tip them over, but because it is the nature of boats in the wind to tip over unless balance is maintained within them. The same power which can move the boat if it is balanced can capsize the boat if it is not balanced.
A light will cannot sail a great soul. And a will which does not bring about balance within the soul will not be able to prevent circumstances overthrowing the soul. There is movement, but no serenity.
But balance is not everything. If I am sheltered from the wind, so that my boat is in perfect balance all the time and I do not need to do anything, I have serenity, but no movement.
I heard a man argue once that it is necessary to be out of balance sometimes in order to make progress - that when we are walking, every time we take a step, we are out of balance. This is not true.
Every time we take a step, we are shifting our balance. If we were out of balance, we would fall over, and indeed individuals, and groups, who think that being out of balance is good and necessary frequently fall over. A drunk is out of balance.
But individuals and groups who think that there must only be balance make no progress. If our balance never shifts, we stand in one spot until we grow tired. Then we fall over.
It is the sailor - the will, in our metaphor - who preserves the balance of the boat.
A boat skilfully sailed is a point of shifting balance. The balance is within the boat, the movement is in the wind which moves the boat along. As the wind shifts and changes the balance within the boat must shift and change. As the direction of the boat changes, the balance within must shift and change. But there is always balance. If you are out of balance, your boat will fall over.
It is as we decide that our will moves, shifting the balance within our souls. It does not move arbitrarily, but in response to the conditions and to our ultimate goals.
If we refuse to make a decision, to move the tiller so that the sail engages with the wind, we will drift.
Do not ask me for sympathy when I see you drifting downwind with your hand off the tiller, loudly bewailing the direction of the wind.
To decide is to change the direction of the soul. But a decision, once made, must be maintained through shifting circumstances. If I swing my tiller to point my boat at a headland, well and good. But I will not reach the headland if I do not continue to hold the tiller, and alter my course as the conditions push me away from the headland.
In any truly important matter, which remains important over a long period, I will not need to decide only once. If I decide to go to university, I must, each day, decide to go to lectures - to each lecture. I must decide to read textbooks - each textbook. I must decide to submit each assignment and to sit each exam. Without these later decisions in support of the first decision, the first decision is worthless. If I decide to marry someone (itself the result of many decisions over a long period), it is not enough to decide once and think that that is enough. Every time I am frustrated, every time I am tempted, every time I am presented with a decision, I must decide to continue with the course I have chosen - or to take a different course.
The story is told of a Scot who came in one day and found his wife in tears.
"What's the matter, woman?" he asked gruffly.
"You never tell me you love me," sobbed his wife.
"Och, woman," said the irritated Scot, "I told you that when we were married. If I'd changed my mind, I would have let you know."
We can see that the man was a fool. But we can no more decide we love our spouse once, and assume that our decision needs no more work, than we can say "I love you" once, and assume that it need never be affirmed again.
If the headland I am aiming for is directly towards the wind, I must not make only one decision - to go in that direction. I must repeatedly make decisions which advance my ultimate goal, even if they do not head me directly towards it.
It is often observed that there is a "pendulum" effect in human affairs. In fashion, or in various kinds of public policy, for instance, there are often repeated swings between opposite positions. When the extreme of one position is reached and causes sufficiently evident problems, enough outcry is generated to move the policy back in the other direction. However, it will keep heading in this direction until it has, once again, gone too far, and then it will once more be reversed. To take only one obvious example, the discipline of children is, as I write, at a ridiculous extreme of laxness, and causing evident problems. No doubt there will be a reaction - an over-reaction - and the next generation of children will be overdisciplined.
This pattern arises partly out of a lack of a sense of history, and partly out of a lack of a sense of proportion. But it is also an exaggeration of a good and natural process, which works well if it is more sensibly used (not allowing things to reach foolish extremes before they are moved back in the other direction).
Consider a spacecraft moving between planets. Because the initial calculations only need to be a little out at the beginning for the heading of the spacecraft to be dramatically wrong by the end of the journey, the spacecraft controllers allow for "mid-course corrections". This means that the spacecraft fires its rockets on one side - the left, say - to give it a nudge back in the direction of the ideal path. If something goes wrong, and the rocket fires too hard, it will now be off course in the other direction, and the rockets on the right must be fired to correct it. Continual overcorrection will have the craft swinging more and more wildly until it goes completely out of control or runs out of fuel. But correction is necessary.
Or consider a child's wagon racing down a hill. The child constantly steers to keep on the ideal line, or the wagon will go out of control and swerve to one side. Sometimes steering to the left will be what is needed, sometimes steering to the right.
In a boat sailing against the wind, the question is more obvious. It is not just inaccuracies in the original heading which must be corrected. It is necessary to steer first to the left, then to the right of the ideal line in order to make any progress at all, because the ideal line itself cannot be used. At the same time, it is important not to go too far off the line in either direction, or progress will be slowed.
The way of the world, left to itself, is usually to get worse. If you want to make improvements, you often cannot go directly against this tendency. You may find yourself making progress in one direction - perhaps organising - not in order to organise, but in order to bring about improvements. Then you find that if you organise any more you will be working more on organising than you are on improving, so you make another decision and head in the direction of spontaneity. Eventually, you decide that you have so neglected structure that there is nowhere for spontaneity to happen, and you must organise again . . .
In two consecutive years I made, not New Year's resolutions, but New Year decisions of a theme for the year. The first year I designated Be Nice to Mike Year. I wouldn't beat myself up or put myself down. I'd go easier on myself.
That year was such a success that I decided the next year was Build a Better Mike Year. I wouldn't let myself be so slack. I'd do more to improve myself. I'd achieve more.
Both years were necessary to take me closer to my goals. And this is the basis of decisions, as the next principle states.
I do not usually sail in order to go somewhere. If I want to go somewhere, there are faster ways than sailing. But I must pick somewhere to go, all the same. There is no enjoyment in sailing my boat nowhere. How will I know when I've done it?
In the same way, the journey of the soul is important in itself (though the destination is very important). But without a destination, there is no journey. I must point my soul somewhere, or the wind will just carry me along until I wash up on the beach with the other aimless flotsam. I must decide, and each decision I make is based on one question: where do I want to go?
We have already seen that when the wind is against you, you cannot go directly to your goal.
If you have a goal against the flow, heading directly against the flow will not work. What is your source of power? There is great power opposing you and no power assisting you. You will get nowhere, and in fact will be pushed back.
All successful revolutions use features of the system they are in revolution against. But most true revolutionaries are ashamed of this and try to hide it.
There is no need. When you see your circumstances as the wind which provides your soul with power to move serenely, circumstances are not the enemy to be despised. They are not a friend, either; they are just what is, which you must deal with, factor into your plans. Sometimes the circumstances are more favourable to your plans than other times, but by planning with appropriate attention to the circumstances, deciding based on both your circumstances and your goal, seeing the circumstances for what they are and treating them as such, you gain the ability to use their power rather than fight their power.
When I am making for my headland, sometimes I am aiming to the right of it. Sometimes I am aiming to the left. Overall, however, I am going towards it.
When assessing the role of the Christian church in history, people often say, "What about the Crusades?" or "What about the Inquisition?" These are valid questions. But what about the overall direction? Did Europe, overall, become more gentle, more civilised, with more respect for women, better treatment for children, the abolition of slavery, torture and harsh punishments for minor crimes, provision for the poor and sick and needy, during its centuries of Christian history? I think it did. This is not to excuse the barbarities and the evils, often practiced in the name of the Church. But it is to say: when the core beliefs actually set the direction, was it a good direction? And was there real movement in that direction?
In the same way, I must look at my life, and say, "What is the average direction? Am I a better person than I was ten years ago?" Not: "Have I, at every point in the last ten years, been a better person than at every previous point?" This would be a ridiculous demand. But what is my characteristic direction? If you asked people who knew me, what would they say?
Joubert said, "The mind's direction is more important than its progress." I do not entirely disagree.
If you cannot head directly for a goal, at least do not head directly away from it, or in another direction entirely.
What about the Crusades? What about the Inquisition? Indeed, what. What about when you . . . ? or when you . . . ?
There is a bumper sticker: "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." I hesitate to generalise, but I have usually found that people who display this sticker not only aren't perfect, but aren't improving noticeably either - in fact, may be getting worse.
Just because a painting covers an entire wall, doesn't mean that an error in one corner is not important. Just because a book has six hundred pages, doesn't mean that a lie in the middle of it is not important. It may not make the painting, or the book (or the life) worthless, but it is important and we should not pretend it isn't.
Serenity is not neglect. Being free from the past does not mean we do not learn from the past or improve on it. Having hope for the future doesn't mean that we don't need to plan for it. Being free in the present doesn't mean that we can do what we like; as C.S. Lewis said, real freedom is not being able to do what we want but being able to do what we ought. And the greatest freedom of all, and the greatest serenity, is doing what we ought because we want to, because we recognise it as the best and most worthy thing that we can be doing, and that we are able to have the joy and privelege of doing it.
Be serene.
Let me risk alienating my readers by telling you where I'm coming from - first saying that I have often found that the insights of people I disagree with, even profoundly, can still be useful. I hope that if you disagree with me, even profoundly, you can still find things in this book to benefit from.
I believe that the most important peace we can have, because it is most foundational, is not peace with other people or peace within ourselves, but peace with God. Peace, as I use the term, is more than an absence of conflict; it's a presence of a good relationship.
I also believe that the natural state of humanity is not peace with God. I do not see God as something we are all part of, but as the creator of all things, ourselves included. And I believe that the peace of that creation has been shattered, by us, individually and collectively.
More disturbingly for many people, I believe that that peace has been restored potentially, and can only be restored actually, by God's intervention, in the form of Jesus. Only in this way can we truly attain peace.
You may disagree with me profoundly. But I hope that what I have to say makes more sense as a result of what I have just said. Although the Art of Serenity owes something to Zen (or at least to Westernised versions of it), the heart of my ideas lies in another ancient tradition: the Christian 'Positive Way'. Because Christians believe in a good Creator who created a good world, even though this world is damaged and no longer perfect, this meditative tradition affirms this world and sees it as a stepping stone to the more perfect world of the eternal creator. (Though much of Christian contemplative tradition is life-denying, as are Eastern religions at their most philosophical, this owes more to ancient Greek philosophy than it does to ancient Hebrew theology.)
This is why the Art of Serenity is as it is.
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This material is copyright 1997 to Mike McMillan. Use for profit is reserved to the author unless otherwise arranged.