Love and wisdom are not banished from the Solomonic world because they are slightly soiled. And justice doesn't always triumph, but it sometimes does. There's no faultless compassion that is entirely selfless and beneficial either, but there is sometimes compassion and it is often beneficial. And wisdom, though it is flawed, still brings insight, healing and invention. And societies, though they do not progress to perfection, can make improvements over time. There is no karmic law of direct cause and effect in the doings of humanity. Causality is much more complex, and in my view even our best intentions are swimming upstream against a vast tide of cosmic intentionlessness that preserves diversity.
Solomon well describes the field in which we act. It is a much modified and limited world of love and wisdom, a world flawed by dukkha. To live meaningfully in the flawed world we must accept that there is no radical solution for dukkha. In the cracked but still functional human universe we have a reasonably good chance of muddling along in our own lives, (and on the larger scale surviving as a species,) but it is our task to place the ourselves, through action, in the field of the needs of the whole world -- to see how well we can navigate with the power of love and wisdom through the intense creative potential of our own turning points.
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Copyright 1998 - Ira Rosenberg
Last Updated 09/19/98 (rge)