Recounting My Inspirations

I’ll do my best here to pin down the roots of my personal evolution which brought me to this point of formulating ideas for a “Second Enlightenment.” Some of the ideas here, I initially began exploring in the last chapter of my book released in 2019 (Liberation Philosophy: From the Buddha to Omar Khayyam).

I grew up in Iran. After high school, I went to the West to study humanities, political sociology, and anthropology, and later in my life I studied medicine. Apart from the expansion of my intellectual horizons, my learning became personal as I internalized knowledge and life experiences that would deeply affect my personal growth. During the course of my intellectual and academic life, my affinities toward Persian poetry, Sufism, and Indian philosophies intensified. I began translating the Persian poetry of Hafiz, Rumi, Ansari and Khayyam into English, and over several years, my research and teaching led to publications on the topic of Buddhism, Sufism, Daoism, the Carvaka school and other Indian schools of thought. At the same time, I began to regularly spend time in Nepal, India and Afghanistan.

In my quest for human commonality, I made two around-the-world trips in 1990 and in 1994. I was gradually awakened to the relationships between the Orient and Occident, and through my travels and work abroad I realized there is always the same universal pursuit for peace, beauty, security and happiness. In other words, the interrelational aspects of nature, people, love of life, the joy and wellbeing of children, poetry, and many other layers of existence were gradually looming large and drawing together in my personal life.

On the surface, all the intellectual ideas seemed to be clear and straightforward in my head, but deep down I found it daunting because of the conflict between the wisdom I have been reading about, but then not seeing the outcome in people’s lives. It was daunting when witnessing the dire conditions of life for ordinary people living in slums in desperate circumstances without access to healthcare, food, clean water, and basic resources. In my personal journey, I came to experience first-hand substandard life conditions for unprivileged people when I spent over ten years working as a medical doctor while living in remote areas in certain Asian and African countries. The fabric of lives woven with diseases and poverty seemed to linger and was solely balanced out by dependence on some charity handouts by groups and individuals. These heart-wrenching situations made me feel like there are two planets: one where people are living in extreme poverty with little to hope for, and another where people have no idea what it’s like to live in such demoralizing circumstances.

I realized the sharp division in the human condition. Then there were those who were caught in between who would like to see social justice actually manifest restored, but felt powerless, like me. While working in various developing countries, I had become more and more disturbed by witnessing how corrupt government officials lived their lavish lifestyles with fancy cars and houses while surrounded by slums with sick and malnourished populations. Observing the semi-colonial workstyle of the international aid industry in the developing world worsened my sense of disparity and injustice. The realization that such inequities have been tolerated and even supported by paradoxes in the hypocritical Western economic and military approaches to human rights, not to mention the non-Western despotic rules made it even harsher. The powerlessness I felt became harder and harder to accept.

I was preoccupied with the feeling that we live in an insane world of contradictions in which no single person takes any responsibility for and yet everyone contributes to daily in different ways, including myself. This is where I had to make some adjustments in my own practices, behavior and decisions in my personal life.

Thus, my evolution of thought toward global justice took form when I recognized two sets of criteria to push for the premise of change: First, was a series of responsibilities that I as individual had to undertake. If one cannot influence and change this unjust world directly, I thought, at least I have the option of not letting the daily greed and injustices of the world compromise my principles or defeat me through my passive quietness. My submission to the status quo without putting up some sort of resistance or addressing it in some way would passively perpetuate the very same current nonsensical circumstances that I was complaining about. Conscientious thinking and defiance are powers I can still exercise. The first step I took was the decision to go to medical school, hoping to be able to serve others living in unfortunate circumstances.

And the second realization was the need for a series of reforms locally and globally. These idealistic reforms, for me, took a holistic structural change of a Second Enlightenment in order to have an equitable world. I believe that many of the flaws in our present world are the result of the incomplete, non-inclusive and localized original Enlightenment of the West. That Enlightenment brought with it competitiveness rather than collectivity; that is to say, the message that every country is on its own. A Second Enlightenment was needed to address this dysfunction and take the earth’s people to a higher level of existence – together.

Integrating my developing intellectual understanding into an interactive, dialogue-rich, three-dimensional world thus became my next task in life. I felt compelled to go forward with this effort, connecting intellectual themes of a poetical, mystical, and philosophical nature with practical themes of living life that acknowledge the factual realities of the world on the ground for the ordinary people.

I became my own laboratory, synthesizing my studies and travels with my interactions with people in Orient and Occident, so to speak, in search of a balanced sense of reasoning. I am not sure whether any of my personal approaches and the theories presented in the series of essays would work as solutions for other people. But I am confident that many of us around the world wish for dignified conditions of life for ourselves and other people.

However, the major challenge and complexity in proceeding with a Global Enlightenment in its fullness is that many non-Western regions are still deep in poverty, dictatorship and fundamentalism, while the Western economic and military pressures and domination of those parts of the world are still very powerful. Furthermore, the regressive and anti-Enlightenment forces such as greed, and the unending drive for wealth, racism, religious- and nationalist-fundamentalism are currently so strong in the world that I felt more compelled than any other time to submit the themes of a new Enlightenment within the limitations of this website.

In medical school in physiology class, I experienced a deep internal epiphany that would echo repeatedly through my life: the deep realization, beyond a normal intellectual understanding, that our physiology is universal and that there is no European, African, American or Asian physiology. In all human beings, all organs, hormones, neurotransmitters, and brain function, including pathologies, follow exactly the same rules and mechanisms. There is no exclusive physiology in the human family.

This fundamental quality of physiology symbolized justice and egalitarianism in our humanness. Nature is the master teacher that can mirror back to us uncensored equanimity. All cruel injustices and discriminations are the product of the exterior world, manufactured by our human frenzy. Skin color, languages, cultures, food, outfits, geographical borders – are all façades; inside it is all identical. The exteriority has fooled us so much that we have been distracted by the differences. In the end, I feel we all could instead, deep down, follow the same laws of similarity and equality which govern our interiority.

The Second Enlightenment, I believe, starts with self. This self at first needs to reject three inborn ‘masters,’ which continue to govern our life: ‘relentlessly wanting,’ ‘fear of loss,’ and ‘ignorance of the infinite cycle of life.’ The impermanency of life is a master teacher which teaches us to cultivate simplicity before we wither away from the face of existence. A personal decision to subdue the ego and anxiety can enhance our humility and empathy for other living beings while it is our turn to be in this world.

My feeling is that if some of us live a fortunate and healthy life, we are perhaps meant to be the conduit for creating opportunities for the unprivileged ones, and meanwhile standing up for those people who cannot defend and help themselves. I hope that this Second Enlightenment idea may be one means of creating opportunities for the people who have long been neglected.