A meaningful life

In the last census, 61 per cent of Australians ticked the ‘Christian’ box when asked about their religion. Yet only 15 per cent regularly attend church. This paradox fascinated Hugh Mackay and drove him to write Beyond Belief: how we find meaning without religion.

What he discovered, after extensive research and interviews, is that while many of us define ourselves as spiritual, we’re not necessarily tied to a traditional religion, or even to a traditional notion of God.

Mackay concludes that locating meaning – in a spiritual sense – in a ‘post belief’ world could look something like this: letting go of our ‘self-absorbed mind’, and instead developing our ‘moral’ and ‘compassionate’ minds.

The below is an edited extract

Faith makes us whole. Not religious faith, necessarily, and certainly not one particular variety of religious faith. But faith in something larger than ourselves is vital for our mental health, our wholeness.

Grow your moral mind

The moral life – the life committed to the pursuit of goodness – is a life lived for others.

The development of the moral mind depends on more than thinking noble thoughts about goodness. If the moral muscle is not to atrophy, we will need to act on our understanding of what constitutes goodness by developing the habit of behaving respectfully towards everyone we encounter (including strangers and people clearly unlike us), by becoming more responsive to the needs of the disadvantaged and marginalised, and by finding time to listen to people who need our undivided attention.

Hypothetical concern for other people’s wellbeing is a good start; finding practical ways of expressing that concern is the essential next step if we are to discharge our responsibility as social beings.

Grow your compassionate mind

In a letter written in 1950, five years before his death, Albert Einstein concluded that ‘our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty’.

Compassion, grounded in humility is the basis for the good life. In the same way the moral mind can protect us from the madness and overindulgence of the self-absorbed mind, so can the compassionate mind (whether arising from a Christian motivation or any other) offer us a radically different approach to the conduct of our lives, to the management of our relationships, and to the way we deal with the crises and traumas of life that might otherwise bring out the worst in us.

The test of whether you are engaging your compassionate mind is easy enough to apply. If you were the neighbour of a troublesome and rowdy family, you would commit yourself to managing the situation kindly, respectfully and patiently. If you were in the midst of a relationship breakdown, those same qualities would be the hallmarks of your negotiations.

You see evidence of the compassionate mind in people who listen to you attentively and with empathy and understanding. You see it in the person who doesn’t just give directions to a couple of disorientated tourists, but walks them to their destination.
You see it in a medical practitioner who is interested in hearing your personal story as in checking the results of your blood test or staring at data on a screen.

You also see evidence of the compassionate mind in people’s extraordinary capacity for forgiveness. Most of us have felt a surge of gratitude towards someone who has forgiven us – for rudeness, for carelessness or foolishness.

Kindness, compassion, generosity, charity… these are not the exclusive province of any religious or philosophical tradition; they are simply the qualities found in human beings at their noblest.

When people develop the habit of compassion, they report a significant shift in their world view. Many people describe the consequence of such a shift as a vivid sense of being connected with everything.

Whatever words are used, the common thread that runs through their responses is a feeling of greater openness to others and a more generous, less judgemental attitude… most of the time. (Let’s be realistic: all of us are capable of losing touch with the compassionate mind occasionally.)

Practice the faith of loving-kindness

Marcus Aurelius says: if you can find qualities in life better than justice, truth, self-control, and courage, or anything finer than your own mind’s contentment in harmonising your actions to the rule of Reason and satisfaction with your own destiny… turn to it with all your heart, and enjoy the miracle you have found.

Those who discover the transformative power of loving-kindness, through engagement with the compassionate mind, may well feel that Marcus Aurelius’s ‘miracle’ has been found.

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Beyond Belief (RRP $32.95) was published in May by Macmillan Australia.

Source: Mackay, H (2016). Beyond Belief. Pan Macmillan Australia: Sydney, NSW. Pp 240-258