A New Turn to Being
Three millennia ago, a series of natural calamities, wars and mass migrations led to the dissolution of established civilizations and empires in ancient Greece, India, the Middle East and China. This disintegration caused a loss of trust in religions and other institutions and practices of society.
In response to the calamities, these Axial Age societies developed new beliefs and practices based on a surprisingly similar quest: the search for an underlying reality that did not change amidst the treacherous impermanence that described the surfaces of their lives. This reality they termed “Being” because it was common to all living beings.
These new beliefs in turn gave rise to the great religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Jainism, and they deeply influenced the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The revolutionary beliefs led to the creation of new institutions of law, statecraft, philosophical inquiry and commerce that helped societies in the first millennium BCE to successfully navigate the disruptions set off by the previous millennium.
This disruption and loss of societal trust is similar to the global changes sweeping us today. Systems and institutions that have endured for centuries – capitalism, liberal democracy, religion, even scientific institutions – are losing their credibility. The response of these Axial Age civilizations can similarly guide us to successfully deal with our times.
Being and The Axial Age
The Upanishads and other Axial Age philosophies provide a revolutionary answer to the question of how to cope with changes in life, the world and the suffering that comes with living. The answer they give is that there is a core essence to us, and every other being, that never dies. This permanence can bring us comfort when everything else slips and falls away around us, such as the loss of loved ones, because every being, and even this world itself, is a manifestation of an eternal Being. If we truly believe that our core identity is part of or identical to this eternal Being, we can live in a state beyond impermanence, space and time.
Definition of Beingfulness
I call this way of life “beingful,” a way that seeks to find purpose and meaning by fully engaging with this impermanent world while anchoring in our Being. Beingfulness is the quality of living that guides such a beingful life. Specifically, I define it as the quality of experience associated with a way of life that is anchored in our imperishable higher self or Being while fully engaged with the transient world of the lower self.
Such a way of life is not easily cultivated, so Beingfulness highlights the difficult quest for a meaningful life. Despite the challenge, all that is needed to begin the journey toward Beingfulness is the belief in a “being” that underlies all living beings and existence (“to be”) itself. This is a secular belief - no God or traditional religion is evoked here.
Because Being is our very essence, the ways of living in Beingfulness should be readily accessible to us. But in practice, we often lack either the steady awareness of our core identity or the will to follow through on this awareness. When both awareness and will are present, and Beingfulness becomes our normal way of being, then a beingful life truly leads to a life of meaning. We can fully and passionately engage in this world, transforming those institutions that are failing and becoming agents of positive change.
Beingfulness can also help us cope with the minor and major tragedies of our personal life that cause stress and pain, whether they are relationships that break, jobs that are lost, declining health, or the loss of a special sense of our self that could sustain us through life’s many hardships.