What is spirituality?
Think of what you are made of.
The New Mindscape #A1–2.
What are you?
You can answer this question in many ways.
In terms of chemical elements, you are 65% oxygen, 18.5% carbon, 9.5% hydrogen, 3.2% nitrogen, 1.5% calcium, 1.0% phosphorous, 0.5% potassium, 0.3% sulphur, 0.2% sodium, 0.2% chlorine, and 0.1% magnesium.
In terms of molecular type, you are 65% water, 20% protein, 12% lipids, and a few other things.
In terms of body tissues, you are muscle, fat, bone, nervous tissue, hormones, connective tissue, blood, lymph, urine, feces, intestinal gas, air, and epithelium.
These answers to the question “what are you” are all true, but can they help you to operate your life?
No.
I’m sure you’ll agree that you’re more than those things, even though they already add up to 100%.
Imagine organizing your life with the sole purpose of maintaining the quality of that 65% of water, 20% of protein and 12% of lipids.
Essential, to be sure, but you might as well be in a coma.
Here’s another way to answer the question.
You are body, mind and spirit.
What is spirituality?
Think about the difference between humans and animals.
Nowadays, most textbooks will tell you that humans are animals.
They are wrong.
Come on. Do you really want to go around and say, “Hi! I’m an animal!”
Well, OK. Humans are animals. But they are also more than animals.
After you graduate from HKU, you’ll introduce yourself as a University graduate.
Not as a kindergarten graduate.
Of course you’re a kindergarten graduate. But you’re more than that, aren’t you?
Take any animal and compare it to yourself.
Most people will say that humans are more intelligent than animals.
And then someone will always say,
“But wait! What about dolphins? What about chimpanzees? What about my pet poodle? They’re intelligent too!”
After the argument calms down, we’ll agree that humans have an intellect: the capacity to reason, to think in abstract categories, and so on. No matter how intelligent other animals are, none of them comes close to humans’ intellect.
You could say that it’s a matter of degree: humans are just very intelligent animals.
But there’s something else. Humans ask themselves these kinds of questions:
“What am I, actually?”
“Where did I come from?”
“What is the universe made of?”
“What should I do with my life?”
“What will happen after my death?”
“How can I become a better person?”
“Why is the world so unjust?”
“What can I do to make the world better?”
“How can I protect the dolphins?”
Dolphins, chimpanzees and poodles never ask themselves these questions.
“But we can never know. Maybe they do ask themselves, but we have no way of knowing.”
Well, humans not only ask themselves these questions, they do something about it.
They decide to chart their life, to reach their ideals.
They try to explore the mysteries of the universe.
They change their behavior to become better people.
They do things to improve the world.
They feel bad about humans killing the dolphins — and they try to do something about it.
It’s asking these kinds of questions, and doing something about it, that I call spirituality.
We can use our powerful intellect to enrich ourselves without asking ourselves these questions.
We can use our intellect to protect ourselves against danger, to provide for our material needs, to accumulate wealth, to develop technology, to acquire social status or political power.
In other words, we can use our intellect to enhance our animal powers.
But we can also use our intellect to enhance our capacity to ask the spiritual questions I just mentioned, to seek for answers to them, and to do something about them.
So, we have a body, just like animals. In that sense, we’re animals.
We have a mind — rational and intellectual capacities.
And we have a spirit — the desire and the capacity for self-reflection, self-transcendence, and oneness.
“Wait! Where’s the spirit? There is no proof of its existence.”
Where is your mind? Your mind can’t be seen either.
Where is the proof of the mind’s existence?
It’s enough for me to see the effects of the action of your mind — I can’t see what your mind is made of, but I can perceive the action of your mind: I perceive that you can reason with me, and I perceive your capacity to think with concepts. By observing your actual behaviour, I can literally see the effect of your mind (or if you’ve lost your mind!).
We give those capacities the name “mind”. “Mind” is the name for a set of intellectual capacities.
What exactly is the mind? Philosophers and neuroscientists haven’t yet agreed on an answer. That doesn’t stop me from using the word “mind” to name your intellectual capacities, because, although I can’t know what your mind is, I can perceive its action. And it doesn’t stop me from trying to understand how the mind works, to train it, to strengthen it, to improve its capacities.
Similarly, we can let philosophers, theologians and anthropologists debate about what, exactly, is the spirit. But it’s enough for us to see that humans have the capacity and the desire for self-reflection and self-transcendence.
These are some signs of your spirit:
- when you stand in wonder at the beauty of a natural scenery.
- when you are transported away by the beauty of a musical composition.
- when you feel a deep urge to know everything about something
- when you feel that the truth is more important than anything else
- when you feel compelled to help someone in need or suffering, even though they have no connection to you (or you feel guilty for not helping them).
- when you cannot bear injustice, corruption or the oppression of people, even though the victims of this injustice have no direct connection to you
- when you feel a deep bond with members of a broader community, even though you have no personal connection with them — and you are willing to make sacrifices for this greater community, or you feel guilty for not making such sacrifices
-when you feel a deep sense of love for all of humanity, or for our planet.
Let’s give those capacities the name “spirit”. It you don’t like that word, choose another name.
People have different understandings of the words “mind” and “spirit”. I explain the choice of terms and definitions [here]. In this course, to be clear and consistent, we will follow this conception of spirit.
There are other aspects of our mind, such as our emotions and will, that we’ll discuss later.
We have the body of an animal, so we have the qualities of animals: our animality.
We have an intellect: the qualities of our intellect are our rationality.
And we have a spirit: the qualities of our spirit are our spirituality.
No matter what we call it, we can try to understand how it works, how to train it, how to strengthen it, to improve its capacities.
Your animality, centred on your body, is driven by the survival instinct: it leads you to care only for yourself and, perhaps, those with whom you have close connections — your only concern is your own survival, not other people, and not things like beauty, truth, justice, or oneness.
The rationality of your mind can follow your animality to deploy all of your intellectual capacities to ensure your own survival and power, regardless of others.
Or, your mind can follow your spirit to devote your intellectual capacities to create beauty, search after the truth, reduce suffering in the world, fight for justice, serve your community, or contribute to the wellbeing of humanity.
Thus, your animality leads the powers of your mind in one direction, and your spirituality leads them in another direction.
So, as human beings, we have many powers, that seem to pull us in different directions.
But actually, body, mind and spirit are a single whole.
To be healthy, successful and happy in life is to find the dynamic harmony between the powers of our body, mind and spirit — between our animality, our rationality and our spirituality:
a healthy, vigorous body;
an intelligent, knowledgeable mind;
a spirit animated by attraction to beauty and the search for truth, in the service of a higher purpose.
“Wait — I definitely see human animality everywhere. I see human rationality a lot of the time, but I see a lot of irrationality too! But as for spirituality, I see it even less. Most people are selfish and only care for their narrow short-term benefit. Look! The world is doing far too little about climate change!”
It’s up to us. Do we want to be animals, or do we want to be more than animals? It’s our choice.
But the choice is hard because many people don’t even know they have the choice: they’ve been programmed from a young age to think that they’re nothing more than intelligent animals. And so, without thinking, they act that way. Their Operating System leads them to think and act that way.
Or, they’ve been taught that there is a deep conflict between the material and spiritual aspects of their lives — that they need to choose their animality and sacrifice their spirituality.
The Operating System of society programs us to give up half of who we are, or to live in a deep inner contradiction.
Society
When we talk about body, mind and spirit, it sounds like it’s something that each of us has individually.
I have my body, and you have your body.
I have my mind, and you have your mind.
I have my spirit, and you have yours.
Obvious?
Not so fast.
Body, mind and spirit are all social and interconnected.
Your body was born out of your mother’s body.
We live much of our lives in intimate bodily touch with our parents, our spouse, our children.
The way you walk, stand, sit, eat, run, swim, exercise, ride a bicycle:
you learned it from and with others.
Even when you’re alone, your body is mostly executing the programme it was trained with others.
When you walk down the street, you’re coordinating your movements with all the others walking there too.
When you sit at the table, you’re coordinating the location and the posture of your body with the others at and around the table.
Our bodies are always communicating and coordinating with other bodies, usually unconsciously.
The intellectual activity of our mind takes place through conversation.
We think by talking with others. We think by holding a conversation inside our minds.
In this inner conversation, we often imagine ourselves talking with others, or with oneself. When you have a conversation with yourself, you use the words you have learned from others — words that have meanings that come from others.
It’s impossible to think completely alone.
Our minds are the products of communication with other minds.
Much of the life of the spirit revolves around concern for others.
The spirit feels pain at the sight of another’s pain.
The spirit feels joy at the sight of another’s joy.
Our spirit is moved by others, and wants us to do something for others.
The spirit feels pain at what divides us, and yearns for unity and oneness.
So… your body, mind and spirit are all in constant communication with others, being influenced by others, and influencing others.
Society is making you and you are making society.
In a different type of society, people have different types of bodies, minds and spirits.
If you live by hunting in the forest, you have a different body than if you live sitting on a chair.
If you live by reading the signs of the winds and stars on a fishing boat, you have a different rationality than if you live by reading and writing texts.
If you live in a group taking care for each other, you have a different spirituality than if you live isolated and alone in a world of dog-eats-dog competition.
Your society directly shapes and programs your body, your mind and your spirit.
But you also change your society.
You can get off your chair, rediscover your body, live a healthy life and influence others to do so too.
You can take your eyes off your screen, turn off the inner conversation, listen to the birds, look at the moon, connect to your planet, and influence others to do so too.
You can take your mind off the numbers, listen to your spirit, learn to love and be loved, and influence others to do so too.
The New Mindscape series is a practical exploration of spirituality rooted in the critical perspectives of anthropology and sociology.
Click here to read the first essay in the series (#A1–1): Humanity Needs a New Operating System.
Click here to read the next essay in the series (#A1–3): Defining Spirituality.
Save this URL for the whole New Mindscape series, in the proper sequence.
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This essay and the New Mindscape Medium series are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong’s Common Core Curriculum Course CCHU9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change, with the support of the Asian Religious Connections research cluster of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
