For the Benefit of All Beings

Neoplatonism as a Bedrock for Eclectic Pluralism

All know I’m ambivalent about Jonathan Pageau. He’s a brilliant thinker about the function of symbolism, and a carver of marvelously beautiful icons. He’s also a closet sexist and, while not quite a bigot, his over-privileging of Christianity as something like “the Greatest or Final Story” gives him an air of snarky condescension that is only agitated by his affable demeanor. It is genuinely his opinion that Christianity is the best and most obviously cogent faith tradition (Pageau finds its symbolism to fit perfectly with what he [mistakenly?] perceives as the nature of reality). So it’s understandable why he’s baffled that others don’t see it as he does, but it is deplorable that from that vantage he then chooses to think that they must be the ones in the wrong.

All know equally that I’m a legitimate devotee of John Vervaeke, and I’ve been proving it by following along with the lectures and exercises in his new series After Socrates. Vervaeke often talks with Pageau, and for good reason.

Vervaeke thinks of Neo-Platonism as “the intellectual silk road,” historically offering a “deep, reciprocal reconstruction with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism” et al. (I happen to think he may well be correct, especially given the anecdotal experiences I’ve had in the mere month during which I’ve been practicing in accordance with his series. More to come.)

Despite my lack of reverence for him, I am more than willing to accept when Pageau says something insightful or helpful. And indeed, in this discussion with Vervaeke, he says something rather very much so.

In a section from the conversation below, during which Dr. Vervaeke is discussing how he would like his ecology of practices to avoid being overly individualistic, and to make things “dialogic rather than monologic,” Pageau makes a very complimentary comment about Neo-Platonism that manages to state his concerns while happily reserving his biases.

I see you honing in on this new platonic strain and it also has the advantage of being something that already has a coherence to it. It already is a kind of coherent body. On the one hand you can reinterpret, and you can say “let's say play with it in ways to emphasize certain things” and what not, but I think for people coming to it, it’ll present more as a coherent path. Here is a path that has existed for thousands of years. It’s part of the Western path for sure. There’s no way to avoid it — this has been something that has followed through from before Christianity. It influenced Judaism and then it went into Christianity. So even if Christians sometimes criticize it and say “no, we need the Christian version,” it’s at the very least a robust position to hold. It’s a place to stand where you can really engage in the discussion, and you have a foundation to pull on.

Dr. Vervaeke, like myself, is a(n eclectic) pluralist. Pageau, most assuredly, is not. And, for as much as I find myself wanting to resist him, Pageau has a legitimate point.

In a lot of the new spirituality, people pull in from everywhere. Which I understand, because in some ways that's what happens when you're kind of lost. [. . .] So, you’ll go to a conference, and there will be a western person standing in front of you who probably grew up as a Christian, and they're citing Buddhist texts, and Indian texts, and native perspectives and everything. And it's like, “well okay, I get it, but now what? Like, what do I do? The Platonic tradition has that core. It has that place to stand.

What’s ironic about that “place to stand” is that it’s not fixed. Socrates, in his dialogues, took his conversants into a place of “aporia” — a place where both parties provoke one another to touch the limits of their knowledge, and lean into a realm just beyond their ability to understand. This is all done in the pursuit of Wisdom, which we can love, but which we cannot possess. (Philo - Sophia.)

Dr. Vervaeke talks more about this than he does Eudaimonia, the state of psychic well-being which the Stoics valued. He does, however, illustrate the importance of Virtue. (Which can be thought of as the practice of attempting to simply be a better person, a practice which is bound to increase the abundance of that slippery thing we call “Happiness.”)

As I said, I’m in the process of going through Dr. Vervaeke’s Socrates series. Saying that, I simply wish to indicate that I know precious little about Platonism of any kind. I do, however, know about virtue ethics. And, contra Pageau, my eclecticism does have a central foundation. It all boils down to something I learned in a meditation class at the Milarepa center.

The teacher said, “When I was younger, I was very eager to enter into deeper meditative states. I went to my teacher and said “Rinpoche, I’d like to enhance my meditation practice. What can I do to achieve more powerful results.”

The Rinpoche looked closely at his face, intensely studying his features and expression, and asked him “Why do you want to increase the power of your meditation practice?”

The teacher told us, “I smiled, because I knew exactly the answer that the Rinpoche wanted to hear:

’For the benefit of all beings.’”