To Be And Just To Be

Dr. Rajesh Bhola

India

Sep 28, 2012

  

Having means wanting to own, to possess, to make things mine; in contrast to being - being alive, and being in authentic relatedness with society, nature and the whole world. The philosopher Erich Fromm forecast, in his classic ‘To Have or to Be’, a society obsessed with possessions. He believed that human beings had two basic orientations – having and being. The persons with the having orientation seek to acquire things and property – and to even possess people. The persons with the being orientation focus on the experience. They derive meaning from the exchanging, engaging and sharing with other people. Fromm predicted that a culture driven by commercialisation, by a ‘having’ orientation, leads to dissatisfaction and emptiness. But to some philosophers it is a matter of context. It so appears to them that since people in ancient times did not have cars, computers, phones and the like, it was easier to ‘Be’ then – than now.

The mode of relating to ‘being’ is completely opposite to that of ‘having’; and it is essential to our personal relationships, as well as to our living. When we approach the world with the attitude of ‘being’, that world appears as something we participate in. There are two poems, one by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, and the other by English rock star Radiohead – from their new album “The King of Limbs” (which was released very recently) – on the plucking of a flower. They bring forth vividly the distinction between ‘having’ and ‘being’.

Rabindranath says:

Pluck this little flower and take it,
  delay not! 

I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust.

Radiohead says, about a Lotus Flower:

‘Cause all I want is the moon upon a stick
   Just to see what if, Just to see what is.

On the other hand Fromm quotes two poems, one by Tennyson, and the other by Japanese poet Basho. The poems relate to the poets’ reactions to a flower that both see while on a walk.

Tennyson says:

Flower in the crannied wall…

What you are, root and

All and all in all

I should know what

God and man is.

Basho says:

When I look carefully

I see the nazuna blooming

By the hedge. 

Tennyson reacts to the flower by wanting to have it. He plucks root and all to gain insight into the nature of God and man. All Basho does is to ‘look carefully’ to see it. Tennyson needed to have it, to understand nature; Basho knows and understands.

We have many possessions; yet we long for more. We are always on the look out for something new, even if do not need the same. We are probably living in an illusion that we impress somebody in this way. We are all living in our subjective realities. The illusion soon disappears – in a few minutes or days. Then we repeat the process. We never value our existence. It is time to start enjoying the experience of living on this planet, no matter what we have – or not.  

The dilemma posed by Hamlet – ‘to be or not to be’ – is no more an existential poser. The modern dilemma is truly depicted by Goethe, through the dramatic description of the conflict between ‘being’ (represented by Dr. Faust) and ’having’ (represented by the evil Mephistopheles). Gabriel Marcel maintains that the attitude of ‘being’ demands two important prerequisites. One is belief in God; the other is love, as the essential ontological datum. The most dramatic enactment of the shift from ‘having’ to ‘being’ can be seen in Buddha’s renunciation. He simply gave up everything and adopted the homeless life. When we give up ‘having’, then we put ourselves in a position of having nothing to defend and so the basis for attachment to negative states of mind is cut away. Simply being is what all religions are about. When we simply are, then we find that we are not cut off from the existence of anything. The enlightenment experience is an experience of being with everything. 

Dr. Rajesh Bhola is President of Spastic Society of Gurgaon and is working for the cause of children with autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and multiple disabilities for more than 20 years.