The Age of ‘Soft Power’

Let me offer an example to illustrate what I mean by self-motivation. In his Les provinciales (Provincial Letters), Blaise Pascal (1623–62) attacks the elaborate system of “precedents for the conscience” that were established by the Jesuits to facilitate missionary work. The nature of his attack sheds light on the fundamental difference between internally generated motivation and that which is imposed from without. The Jesuits had developed a highly elaborate system for thepropagation of their faith. When expedience demanded, they went so far as to permit Christians to worship non-Christian deities. As a Jansenist, Pascal emphasized the importance of the individual conscience. He denounced the use of Church authority to establish and impose predetermined standards and precepts for the conscience. Pascal describes the practice:

This plan they followed in the Indies and in China, where they permitted Christians to practice idolatry itself, with the aid of the following ingenious contrivance: they made their converts conceal under their clothes an image of Jesus Christ, to which they taught themselves to transfer mentally those adorations which they rendered ostensibly to the idol [of Shakyamuni or Confucius].^[1]

Pascal does not condemn the practice itself; he acknowledges that there might be times when it is necessary. The decision to do so, however, can only be reached through a process of contemplation, self-questioning, and soul-searching, which add up to the workings of the individual conscience. If a preestablished standard or precedent for such a decision is provided from without, this painful process of self-examination is avoided. Instead of developing, the conscience atrophies. For Pascal, what the Jesuits called “precedents for the conscience” were nothing more than a servile surrender to the desire for easy answers. For him, they represented the suicide of the conscience, one’s inner moral guidance. Pascal’s criticism reaches beyond its particular historical context to address the universal question of the nature of human conscience.

Nineteenth-century America, while perhaps not evincing the level of purity that would have satisfied Pascal, provides one of history’s rare cases when an emphasis on the inner workings of the soul set the tenor for an entire society. Visiting the United States a half-century after its founding, Alexis de Tocqueville was impressed above all by the simplicity of American religious practice and, at the same time, by its sincerity and depth of feeling. With analytical acuity, Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America that “it then became my object … to inquire how it happened that the real authority of religion was increased by the state of things which diminished its apparent force.”^[2]

The Catholic Church in France had visual and artistic impact, characterized by elaborate formality and complex ritual. Often, the effect was to fetter and restrain the spirit. Tocqueville had, therefore, assumed that any reduction in the church’s “apparent force,” its formalities and its rituals, would free people from its external control, resulting in weaker faith. In America he found that the opposite was true. To quote him again: “I have seen no country in which Christianity is clothed with fewer forms, figures, and observances than in the United States; or where it presents more distinct, more simple, or more general notions to the mind.”^[3] At first glance, it may appear that Alexis de Tocqueville is simply comparing the formalism of French Catholicism with the flourishing spirit of Puritanism in America. On a deeper level, however, I think that he is really praising the intensely personal religious nature that was generated from within and that, refined into its purest form, had become this country’s defining spiritual tone.

All religions that leave a lasting mark on human beings and society must operate on both personal and institutional levels. All great religions are based on an absolute entity or truth and transcend differences of race, class, or social standing. They teach respect for the individual. However, as religious convictions evolve into religious movements, organizational demands emerge. In my view, these institutional aspects of religion must constantly adapt to the changing conditions of society. Furthermore, they should support and give primary consideration to the personal, individual aspects of belief. The unfortunate truth, however, is that few religious movements have been able to avoid the pitfall of organizational ossification. The development of a religion’s institutional features ends up shackling and restraining the people whose interests it originally intended to serve. The external coercive powers of ecclesiastical institutions and associated ritual stifle the internal and spontaneous powers of faith, and the original purity of faith is lost. Because this is such a common occurrence, we tend to forget that it actually represents a reversal of the true function of religion.

Tocqueville considered it important that such abuses had been largely avoided by the Christian communities in America. He believed that the American people had preserved an essential purity of faith. This purity, and the degree to which religion was regarded as a matter of the inner life, is noted in remarks delivered by Ralph Waldo Emerson at Divinity College, Cambridge, in 1838: “That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen.”^[4]

In one viewpoint, the broad- minded, optimistic view of religion taken by Emerson and his contemporaries was only a momentary, happy respite in the spiritual affairs of modern times. Preceding it was an age of collusion between established religion and political authority; following it is an age of secularization that has reduced spiritual matters to private concerns, stripped of any larger implications. It is not justified, however, to place this special period and its fruits completely in the past. The traditions of an inwardly directed spirituality live on in the depths of the American historical experience and awareness.

Bushido and Self-Control

If we turn to modern Japan, it is not easy to find there meaningful examples of this type of spirituality. After opening the country to the rest of the world in the mid- nineteenth century, Japan plunged headlong into the task of catching up with and overtaking the industrial nations of the West. The great Japanese author Soseki Natsume (1867—1916) characterized that effort as an externally imposed process of civilization. He was right, in the sense that all of the goals and models for modernization came from outside. In their rush to catch up, the Japanese of that period did not feel that they had the time to work out the concepts associated with modernity for themselves.

Here, I would like to introduce an episode from the life of the Meiji-period educator and pioneer of Japanese-American friendship, Inazo Nitobe (1862–1933). Discussing religion with a Belgian acquaintance, Nitobe was asked whether the Japanese system provided for spiritual education. After careful consideration, Nitobe answered that, from the early seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, it was Bushido, or the way of the samurai, and not religion per se, that had shaped the spiritual development of the Japanese people. In 1899 Nitobe published an English book entitled Bushido, the Soul of Japan: An Exposition of Japanese Thought.

There are a number of points in common between the spirituality of Bushido and the philosophy of Protestantism and Puritanism. In part this accounts for the enthusiasm with which the writings of Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) were received in Meiji Japan. More important here, however, the spiritual development of the Japanese people, guided in part by the ideals of Bushido, was largely inwardly directed. Inner motivation implies self- control; one acts in a correct and responsible manner not because one is forced to but spontaneously and on one’s own volition. During the Edo period (1603–1867), the incidence of crime and corruption was relatively low; this may be evidence of the concrete influence of an inwardly directed spirituality on the workings of Japanese society. It is interesting to consider similar implications in Tocqueville’s observation that “in no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States.”^[5]

Because the Japanese people of that period were motivated from within, they were able to attain a high degree of self-control and self-mastery. These qualities are among the best expressions of humanity, insofar as they help to create smoother social relations and less anxiety in personal contacts. Self-control and inner motivation as social ideals gave birth to a culture of distinctive beauty in Japan. It was noticed by many, among them Edward S. Morse (1838–1925), a graduate of Harvard and pioneer in archaeology in Japan. He wrote prolifically about the surprising beauty he found in the life and ways of ordinary Japanese. Walt Whitman was likewise struck by the air of dignity he sensed in the Japanese emissaries he saw walking the avenues of Manhattan.

With the growth of Japan’s economic strength in recent years, contemporary Japanese-American relations, while still essentially friendly, have been strained by increasing disharmony. The stresses of the relationship were revealed at a deeper level in the Structural Impediments Initiative talks of 1990. Those discussions revealed frictions that were more cultural than economic. Cultures do not always respond amicably toward one another. Intercultural contacts that probe and question deeply rooted, daily-life practices can provoke aversion or hostility. The need for restraint and self-control is never so necessary as when people are confronted with the confusion and tensions brought about by a collision of cultures. True partnership cannot be attained unless the effort to create it is based on mutual self- control at this inner, spiritual level.

The necessary inwardly generated self-control has been conspicuously lacking in modern Japan. Without it, Japan has tended to swing widely between extremes of overconfidence and timidity. Sometimes the nation has seemed unnecessarily obsequious in its relations with other countries, in particular with the West. Now we see an oddly resurgent arrogance based on nothing more than the most recent gross national product statistics. The approaching fiftieth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is a painful reminder of the enormous horror and destruction that the absence of self-control can cause.

Incidentally, Nitobe’s Bushido played a very constructive role in the Portsmouth Conference at the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). Soon after hostilities began, the Japanese government dispatched Kentaro Kaneko, a member of the House of Peers, to the United States to enlist the good offices of President Theodore Roosevelt in negotiating a settlement. Kaneko had been a classmate of Roosevelt at Harvard, and the two had maintained and strengthened their contacts in the intervening years. When the president requested a book that would explain the driving force behind the Japanese character and spiritual education in Japan, Kaneko gave him a copy of Bushido. A few months later, Roosevelt thanked Kaneko; the book, he said, had given him a clearer understanding of the Japanese character. Armed with this knowledge, he willingly took up the task of mediating the peace negotiations. In the far-from-peaceful history of modern Japanese-American relations, this episode is a refreshing example of mutual understanding.

The task that confronts us now is to revive the innate sources of human energy in a world marked by a deepen-ing sense of spiritual desiccation. This task will not be an easy one, either for Japan or for the United States. Much depends on the attitudes we take. In that respect, the Bud-dhist doctrine of dependent origination, which shows how profoundly and inextricably our fates are interwoven, can make an important contribution.

Activating the Will to Harmony

One of the most important Buddhist concepts, dependent origination, holds that all beings and phenomena exist or occur in relation to other beings or phenomena. All things are linked in an intricate web of causation and connection, and nothing, whether in the realm of human affairs or natural phenomena, can exist or occur solely of its own accord. Greater emphasis is placed on the interdependent relationships between individuals than on the individual alone. However, as astute Western observers like Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead have noted, overemphasis on interdependence can submerge the individual and reduce one’s capacity for positive engagement in the world. Passivity, in fact, has been a pronounced historical tendency in Buddhist- influenced cultures. The deeper essence of Buddhism, however, goes beyond passivity to offer a level of interrelatedness that is uniquely dynamic, holistic, and generated from within.

We have noted that encounters between different cultures are not always amicable. The reality of opposing interests and even hostility must be acknowledged. What can be done to promote harmonious relationships? An episode from the life of Shakyamuni may help. A Brahman who had secretly held contempt for Shakyamuni once challenged the Buddha’s preaching of nonkilling or nonviolence (ahimsa) based on the idea that all people live by killing and eating other living beings. The Brahman asked the Buddha, “Which living beings may we kill and which living beings must we not kill?” To this simple expression of doubt, Shakyamuni replied, “It is enough to kill the will to kill.”^[6]

Shakyamuni’s response is neither evasion nor deception but is based on the concept of dependent origination. He is saying that, in seeking the kind of harmonious relationship expressed by respect for the sanctity of life, we must not limit ourselves to the phenomenal level where hostility and conflict (in this case, which living beings it is acceptable to kill and which not) undeniably exist. We must seek harmony on a deeper level where it is truly possible to “kill the will to kill.” More than objective awareness, we must achieve a state of compassion transcending distinctions between self and other. We need to feel the compassionate energy that beats within the depths of all people’s subjective lives, where the individual and the universal are merged. This is not the simplistic denial or abnegation of the individual self that Bergson and Whitehead criticize. It is the fusion of self and other. At the same time, it is an expansion of the limited, ego-shackled self toward a greater self whose scale is as limitless and unbounded as the universe.

The teachings of Nichiren Buddhism include the passage “Without the body, no shadow can exist, and without life, no environment.”^[7] In other words, Buddhism regards life and its environment as two integral aspects of the same entity. The subjective world of the self and the objective world of its environment are not in opposition, nor are they a duality. Instead, their relationship is characterized by inseparability and indivisibility. Neither is this unity a static one in which the two realms merge as they become objectified. The environment, which embraces all universal phenomena, cannot exist except in a dynamic relationship with the internally generated activity of life itself. In practical terms, the most important question for us as individuals is how to activate the inner sources of energy and wisdom existing within our lives.

Let me illustrate this idea in relation to the previous discussion of conscience. I am sometimes asked to advise couples who are considering divorce. Divorce is a private matter whose final resolution rests with the two people involved. I encourage unhappy couples to remember that, from the Buddhist perspective, it is impossible to build personal happiness on the suffering of others. Such situations sometimes require painful reflection and forbearance. But through that pain, one can strengthen and discipline the internal workings of the conscience—something Pascal understood very well. Ultimately, those concerned are able to minimize the destruction of human relationships that might otherwise result.

Our society today urgently needs the kind of inwardly directed spirituality to strengthen self-control and restraint. It is a quality that deepens our respect for the dignity of life. In a world where interpersonal relationships are becoming increasingly tenuous, greater self-control and discipline would also help restore and rejuvenate endangered feelings, including friendship, trust, and love, for without them there can be no rewarding and meaningful bonds between people.

It is my hope and my conviction that we will see a revival of philosophy in the broadest, Socratic meaning of the word. An age of soft power with its source in this kind of philosophy will bear true and rich fruit. In an age when national borders are breaking down, each of us will need the integrity of an internalized philosophy to qualify us for world citizenship. In that sense, those great standard-bearers of American thought, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, were all citizens of the world.

In closing, let me share with you this passage from Emerson’s poem “Friendship,” which was a particular favorite of mine in my youth.

O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red,
All things through thee take nobler form
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.^[8]