COURTESY - The importance of courtesy, hospitality, and other small details

In “Downton Abbey”, set in Yorkshire, England in 1914, people from different backgrounds are able to work together with dignity, pride, and cooperation – even in the midst of stress & tight quarters – in PART, because of a culture of respect that they create & maintain..

Although this may be obvious to many, I realized today that – especially in troubled times – basic human qualities like courtesy & hospitality are important if we want to get along with our neighbors, solve our collective problems, and live inspired lives.

1. Why courtesy

So what does it mean to show courtesy for someone, and why should we bother?

The Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa (1939-1987) and his wife, Lady Diana Mukpo (née Pybus). Trungpa Rinpoche taught his Western students to appreciate themselves and appreciate their own Western cultural traditions. (Photographer: unknown)

CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA: For the warrior, 1 gentleness is not just politeness. Gentleness is consideration: showing concern for others, all the time. A Shambhala gentlewoman or gentleman is a decent person, a genuine person.

We may think that if we have good manners, we are such good girls or good boys; we know how to behave properly; and aren’t we smart? That is not the point. The point is to communicate our respect for others….

We tend to think that the threats to our society or to ourselves are outside us. We fear that some enemy will destroy us. But a society is destroyed from the inside, not from attack by outsiders…. If we have too much arrogance, we will destroy our gentleness. And if we destroy gentleness, then we destroy the possibility of being awake, and then we cannot use our intuitive openness to extend ourselves in situations properly….

When you are fully gentle, without arrogance and without aggression, you see the brilliance of the universe. 2

In the television show “Downton Abbey”, Lady Grantham and her mother-in-law – although they have many values in common – find each other’s company irritating. They have trouble getting on and don’t particularly trust one another. (Actually, all the characters in the show experience this with everyone else at various times – imagine!)

characters in the show experience this with everyone else at various times – imagine!)

Pouring hot water into the teapot. (Image from Downton Abbey)

However, because they engage certainrituals together – like taking tea, and taking pains to make sure everyone feels welcome – and certain disciplines – like avoiding cruel words, and not asking prying personal questions that make a person feel uncomfortably “on the spot” – they are able to recognize their common ground, forgive hurts, and work together for their common benefit.

A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger. 3
- Proverbs 15:1

They don’t seem to engage these rituals as empty performances, or as ways of manipulating one another (as in a modern “business lunch” wherein you see someone as your “enemy” and try to take advantage of them when they let their guard down), but as earnest practices that give them strength and a feeling of commonality, and help them see things from the other person’s point of view.

A few guests join Lord & Lady Grantham, their three daughters and mother-in-law for dinner. This image reminds me of how my teacher once encouraged a few dozen of us living at a retreat center to take turns waiting on each other at mealtime, and even to listen tolive classical music while we dined. This felt weird to us at first because some of us were used to approaching meals with a casual, rushed, hippy-like orientation.

Formality – like form itself – is “conservative” because it contains energy…. Formality is important to ritual, ceremony, and celebrations… Formality is decorum, manners, and proper procedure.

Formality focuses energy and prevents it from dissipating. Anglo-American cultural bias against form and formality is due largely to the loss of rituals and customs that channeled natural and spiritual energies into our lives.

Excessive formality lacks heart… Ideally, formality and feeling support each other. Form and energy work as one. 4
- Helen Berliner

If you are concerned about the financial disparities shown in Downton Abbey, I certainly understand. That’s not the source of my interest in the show. Rather, I thought the show (however realistic it may or may not be in portraying the traits of British aristocracy) often depicts a culture of respect wherein “everyone is serving, and everyone is served”.5

2. More examples of courtesy, hospitality and respect

It’s not just pretty – Japanese flower arranging attempts to express, on a miniature scale, universal ideas of harmonic proportion and order. Such art could then serve as a template for one’s life. Flower arrangements were often used to welcome guests (see “tokonoma” below). Image is (cc) guylaine_lheureux.

Speaking about essential social qualities, the Confucian scholar Mencius said,Benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, and truthfulness, with unwearied joy in goodness – these constitute the nobility of Heaven. 6 Confucius remarked, The life of the moral man is an exemplification of the universal moral order. 7

Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), a Hindu teacher whose health was weak in his later years, is shown being served by his students. (Photographer: unknown)

Here is an interesting remark, given allegedly to a man from LA by his teacher, that touches on our ability to show courtesy for others:

You take yourself too seriously.  You are too damn important in your own mind…. As long as you feel that you are the most important thing in the world you cannot really appreciate the world around you. 8
- Carlos Castaneda

Image is (cc) Faraz.

I was thinking about my father today (shown at left as a boy in the late 1920′s), even though he passed away several years ago. It’s Father’s Day here in the U.S. as I write this.

My father tried to teach me about manners and courtesy when I was young.

Morning dewdrops. Image is (cc) Evan Leeson.

Manners are the happy way of doing things… They form a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.

If they are superficial, so are the dewdrops which give such depth to the morning meadows. 9
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. The modern anti-culture of no respect

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
- Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) 10

The image shown at right is just a fun, harmless and liberated image, some might say.

The gesture the young man is making symbolizes what could be an act of love & pleasure in a private, intimate setting. But displayed in a public setting with a defiant look, it doesn’t inspire a feeling of love, pleasure or intimacy for me. Nor does it feel particularly “liberating”, either for myself or for the young man.

This movie poster was apparently banned in Toronto – which some people said was silly. Banning things probably is silly, I suppose. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t want my children to be forced to look at angry or loveless portrayals of sexuality all the time, from birth until adulthood – if I had children.  I would want my children to feel that sex is something pleasurable that takes place in a relaxed, private, loving setting. For that matter, forget about children – I want to feel that way about sexuality myself.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
- Oscar Wilde

I’ve noticed that many religious people are unhappy with the degraded presentation of sexuality in popular culture. I used to think such an attitude was “uncool” but now I wonder.

4. Some roots of modern anti-culture:  World War I

The First World War affects all the characters in “Downton Abbey” dramatically. Virtually every family loses someone to the war – some parents lose all their sons – and it brings with it sweeping cultural changes.

Interestingly enough, the showDownton Abbey opens in early 1914, right before the start of World War I, and shows the societal changes that took place in the years following as a result of the war. For instance: changes in clothing, expectation, culture, etiquette, and so on. The second season also shows a small taste of the absolute horror that was the war.

A female spiritual teacher called “The Mother” said, in attempting to describe what was going on metaphysically “behind the scenes”:

The First World War was the result of a tremendous descent of the (hostile) forces11 of the vital world into the material world. Even those who were conscious of this descent and consequently armed to defend themselves against it, suffered its consequences… they could not prevent certain effects from being produced in the earth atmosphere.

Naturally, men do not know what happened to them; all that they have said is that everything had become worse since the war. That was all that they could affirm. For example, the moral level went down very much. It was simply the result of a formidable descent of the vital world: forces of disorder, forces of corruption, forces of deterioration, forces of destruction, forces of violence, forces of cruelty. 12
- The Mother (1878-1973)

She goes on to say that whenever there is a potential for great positive transformation in the world, these “hostile forces” – which can be thought of as forces of humankind’s collective egoity, though if you’re Christian it’s okay with me if you think of them as “satanic” forces – try to prevent this by causing as much destruction, misery, and degeneration as possible.

As an example of how horrible this war was, the book The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century says,

World War I marked the first use of chemical weapons, the first mass bombardment of civilians from the sky, and the century’s first genocide… 13

Women have gained a tremendous amount since 1914, such as the right to vote, but perhaps they have lost something too. “Playboy millionaire Hugh Hefner has said he would love to have 15-year-old Miley Cyrus pose for his sexy magazine.” (source: ninemsn) I don’t even know who Miley is, but apparently she has vast numbers of pre-teen fans who – in the absence of other available role models – imitate her so they can feel socially accepted.

This book also describes the sweeping cultural changes that the war brought. As suggested in Downton Abbey, huge numbers of young widowed mothers were required to set down their child or infant and put on work clothes so they could go to work in factories. Mere survival seemed to become the purpose of life, rather than nurturing and protecting something that was sacred to people.

After the Armistice, many spoke of a ‘lost generation’. Some took it as a measure of the human costs of the war, the vast loss of life, and the sense that the surviving generation was reduced not only numerically but qualitatively too. Others used the phrase to describe a group of writers on both sides of the Atlantic who sensed that in the shadow of the war they had lost their way, their moral bearings, and never fully found them again.…

Many served in the war and never put their lives together after it. This was due not to physical wounds, but to some sense of disintegration, of fragmentation. 14

5. Sacred domain and secular domain

At Downton Abbey, guests would pass through the front gate, be greeted at the front door, and then welcomed into the drawing room for polite conversation. (This may sound stuffy or high-falutin’, but perhaps there is a logic to this architecture?) The bedrooms were located further to the rear of the house, where more intimate matters took place.

When some people think of practicing courtesies or formalities, they may feel this would be too stuffy & too controlled, and would resent such an expectation.

Perhaps a different type of person, as we saw above, objects to having their town blanketed with posters suggestive of angry sexuality.

So there seem to be two factors at war with each other – the need to express oneself freely, without limit, and the need to be respectful of other people and what they want. How can these two conflicting needs ever be reconciled? Daily conflicts based around this seem to be tearing society apart.

Yesterday on Facebook I even saw a friend of mine promoting the idea that nobody should be allowed to identify themselves as a Christian or a Buddhist – he seemed to feel that outlawing such things would help everyone get along and feel united.

Well. I’d like to share with you a wonderful paradigm I’ve come across – that our world can be thought of as having two components:

1. a sacred, or intimate domain, and
2. a secular, or public domain, which supports and protects the sacred domain.

Sexual love, intimacy and ecstasy (as well as true religion 15) can happen in the sacred domain, while courtesy, politeness, and being respectful of others can take place in the secular domain. The two sets of human needs – for private ecstasy, and for public order – need not be at war with each other.

In Japanese homes, visitors would traditionally remove their shoes and walk past a tokonoma – a display that might be as simple as a quote and a flower arrangement – to symbolize stepping out of the public, or secular domain, and into the sacred domain of their home. Photo is (cc) aaron bihari.

Traditional cultures accommodate both aspects (sacred and secular) of the human requirement, but the world-culture of this “late-time” (or “dark” epoch) is largely impulsed to suppress the urge to profundity upon which the sacred domain is founded.

Human beings must understand that the transcending of mortality is what they are purposed for, what they are living for. Human beings are not alive on earth merely to be cogs in the machine of hoped-for progress toward utopia – merely to sing their “cricket song”, make a baby or two, and then drop dead. No. There is also the impulse based on the knowledge that this human birth is a mortal condition. It is the urge to find What Is Greater, and to be included in That.…

Everything in the sacred domain is about ecstasy. 16 Everything in the social (or secular) domain is about control of ecstasy and using the human faculties for other business in the moment…. Within the context of the secular social domain, such self-control is appropriate, and even necessary, for the purposes of conducting ordinary human business.…

Gateway in a Japanese garden, which apparently separates a more private from a more public area. Photo by Rosa Say.

There needs to be a clear division between these two domains. Both domains must exist.…

The reason so much of human existence is out of control in this “late-time” (or “dark” epoch) is that the sacred (and, therefore, truly cooperative) forms of life have been almost destroyed. The dimensions of human existence that rightly belong in the sacred domain have been forced into the secular (or public) domain, where they cannot rightly flourish. When people no longer have a true anchor in the free, sacred domain, then they become aberrated in the common sphere of secular restraints.…

Therefore, the restoration of the sacred domain is the means for creating human balance in the world again. Only sacred culture gives people the means to live a truly sane existence. 17
- Adi Da

Source : http://botstudent.org