Categoria: Ecologia

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Satisfying Fundamental Human Needs

Leonardo Boff4 Comentários

The human being is, by nature, a creature of many needs. Humans require great determination to satisfy them sufficiently to be able to live, not miserably, but with a quality life. Behind each need lies hidden a fear and a desire: a desire to satisfy the needs in the best way possible and the fear of not being able to do so, and, consequently, to suffer. Those who have, fear its loss: those who have nothing, want to have. Such is the dialectic of human existence.

Teachers from very different traditions of humanity and from the sciences of the human being, more or less converge on the following fundamental needs:

We have biological needs: in a word, we need to eat, to drink, to be clothed and to have security. A large part of our time is devoted to satisfying those needs. The great majority of humanity can barely satisfy them, either for lack of work, or because solidarity and compassion are scarce. The first petition to Our Father is for our daily bread, because hunger cannot wait.

But we do not ask God to make miracles every day, so as to avoid having to make the bread ourselves. We ask for favorable weather and fertile soil, and for cooperation in producing and distributing the food. Only then do we exorcise fear and take care of our basic desire.

Furthermore, we have a need for security: we could get sick and succumb to dangers that extinguish our lives. Those dangers can come from nature, tempests, the suns’ rays, prolonged droughts, landslides, and all forms of accidents. They can come, principally, from humans themselves, who carry within not only the instinct for life but also the instinct for death; a human can lose self control and eliminate the other. All this produces fear in us. And we hope to escape it. The fact of having lived in caves and then in houses shows our search for security.

The reality is that we can never control all the factors. We can always be innocent victims, or the guilty ones. And then we call out to God, not for God to remove us from the edge of the abyss, but for God to give us the courage to avoid it and to survive.

We have, in the third place, the need to belong: we are social beings. We belong to a family, to an ethnic group, to a place, a country, to the planet Earth. What makes suffering painful is loneliness, not having a friendly shoulder to lean on, not having a helping hand. As we are the fruit of the care of our mothers, who carried us in their arms, we want to die holding the hand of someone near us or of the one who loves us.

In the depth of the existential abyss we call out for our mother or for God. And we know that God listens to us because God is sensitive to the voices of his sons and daughters, and feels the trembling of our terrified hearts. To be reduced to loneliness is to be condemned to an existential hell and to the absence of any communion. This is why it is important to satisfy the feeling of belonging, otherwise we feel like abandoned dogs wandering through the world.

In the fourth place, we have a need for self esteem. To exist is not enough. We need for our existence to be welcome, for someone by words and deeds tells us: «welcome among us, you can count on us». Rejection forces us, even though we are alive, to sense the experience of death. Thus, we need to be recognized as persons, with our differences and peculiarities. Otherwise, we are like a plant without nourishment that withers until it dies. How important it is when someone calls us by name and embraces us. Our negated humanity is restored, and we can forge ahead with hope and without fear.

Finally, we have the need for self-realization. This is the longing and challenge of the human being: to be able to realize itself and to become human. What makes the human being human? We do not exactly know, because even the inhumane is part of the human. We are a mystery to ourselves. It is not that we know nothing about humans. To the contrary, the more we know, the more the dimensions of what we do not know are magnified. We yearn for the stars, whence we came.

But we know enough to discover that we are beings who are open to the other, to the world, and to the Whole. We are beings of unlimited desire. No matter how we search for something to placate our desire, we do not find it among the beings around us. We desire the essential Being and we only bump into accidental beings. How then, can we accomplish self-realization, if we perceive ourselves as an infinite project?

In this regard it makes sense to speak of God as the essential Being and the obscure object of our infinite desire. Only God fills the characteristic of the Infinite, adequate to our infinite project. Consequently, self-realization implies becoming involved with God. To become involved with God is to awaken the spirituality in us, the capacity for feeling the powerful and loving Energy that passes through all reality. It is to be able to see in the wave, the sea and in the drop of water, the immensity of the Amazon River. Spirituality is to feel the hunger and the thirst for a final refuge, to feel secure in the arms of a trusted one, where, in the end, all our needs will be satisfied, where all our fears die and where we could rest.

As long as we do not develop that Center in ourselves, we will always feel that we are in our own prehistory; whole beings, but unfinished, and in the end, frustrated.

When we enter into communion with the essential Being, through silent and unconditional surrender, through prayer and meditation, we open an incomparable and irreplaceable fountain of energies. The effect is pure joy, a levity of life, a possible blessedness for the wayfarers.

Translation: Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Quali sono i bisogni fondamentali?

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

L’essere umano è per sua natura un essere carente sotto molti aspetti. Ha bisogno di un grande impegno per sodisfarle e poter vivere, non una vita miserabile ma una vita di qualità.

Dietro ogni bisogno, si nasconde un desiderio e un timore: desiderio di poter soddisfarlo nella forma più conveniente possibile e il timore di non riuscirci e quindi dover soffrire. Chi possiede, teme di perdere: chi non ha, desidera avere. Questa è la dialettica dell’esistenza.

Maestri delle più grandi tradizioni dell’umanità e delle scienze dell’umano. convengono più o meno sui seguenti bisogni fondamentali: abbiamo bisogni biologici: in una parola dobbiamo mangiare, bere, abitare, vestirci e avere sicurezza. Gran parte del tempo è impegnato nel soddisfare tali bisogni. Le grandi maggioranze dell’umanità li soddisfano in forma precaria o per mancanza di lavoro o perché la solidarietà e la compassione sono beni scarsi.

La prima petizione del Padre Nostro, è per il pane quotidiano perché la fame non può aspettare. Ma noi non chiediamo a Dio che ogni giorno faccia miracoli e così ci lasci liberi di produrre il pane. Chiediamo che il clima e la fertilità dei suoli siano favorevoli.

Oltre a questo abbiamo bisogno di sicurezza. Possiamo ammalarci e soccombere a rischi che ci privano della vita. Possono provenire dalla natura, dalle tempeste, dai fulmini, da secche prolungate, dasmottamenti di terreno, da qualsiasi tipo di incidente. Possono provenire soprattutto dall’essere umano, che ha dentro di sé non solo l’istinto della vita, ma anche quello della morte. Può perdere l’autocontentamento e eliminare l’altro. Tutto questo genera in noi paura. E nutriamo la speranza di neutralizzarlo. Il fatto che siamo vissuti in caverne e poi in case dimostra la nostra ricerca di sicurezza.

Il fatto è che mai controlliamo tutti i fattori. Sempre possiamo essere vittime innocenti o colpevoli. E’ a questo punto che gridiamo invocando Dio, non perché ci allontani dall’abisso, ma perché dia il coraggio di evitarlo e così continuare a vivere.

In terzo luogo abbiamo bisogno di appartenenza: siamo esseri societari, apparteniamo a uma famiglia, a una etnia, a un determinato luogo, a un paese, al Pianeta Terra. Quello che rende penosa la sofferenza è la solitudine, il non poter contare con una spalla amica e una mano accogliente, dato che siamo il frutto delle attenzioni delle nostre mamme, che ci hanno tenuti in braccio, vogliamo moriré stringendo la mano di qualche vicino o di chi ci ama.

In fondo all’abisso esistenziale invochiamo gridando la mamma o Dio e sappiamo che lui ti dà retta, perché lui è sensibile alla voce dei suoi figli e delle sue figlie, e sente il batticuore del nostro cuore spaventato.

Per questo bisogna garantire il sentimento di appartenenza, caso contrario noi ci sentiamo come cani sperduti e abbandonati.

In quarto luogo abbiamo bisogno di autostima. Esistere non basta. Noi abbiamo bisogno che qualcuno ci dica: “Sii benvenuto in mezzo a noi, tu sei importante per noi. Il rifiuto ci fa provare ancora da vivi l’esperienza della morte. Abbiamo quindi bisogno di essere riconosciuti come persone con le nostre differenze e individualità. Caso contrario siamo come una pianta senza nutrienti che va peggiorando fino a morire. E come è importante quando qualcuno ci chiama per nome e ci abbraccia. La nostra umanità negata ci viene resa e possiamo continuare il cammino con speranza e senza paura.

Infine abbiamo necessità di autorealizzazione. Questo è il grande miraggio, la grande e sfida dell’essere umano: di poter realizzarsi e diventare umano. Siamo un mistero per noi stessi. Non è che non sappiamo niente dell’essere umano. Al contrario, quanto più sappiamo, tanto più si allargano le dimensioni di quello che non sappiamo. Abbiamo nostalgia delle stelle da cui siamo venuti.

Ma sappiamo quanto basta per poterci definire esseri di apertura all’altro, al Tutto. Per quanto andiamo alla ricerca dell’oggetto che sazi il nostro desiderio, non lo troviamo tra gli esseri che ci stanno intorno, ma sappiamo quanto basta per poterci definire esseri di apertura all’altro. Siamo esseri dal desiderio illimitato. Desideriamo l’essere essenziale e troviamo solo esseri accidentali. Come riusciremo dunque la nostra autorealizzazione, se ci percipiamo come progetto infinito?

E’ in questo cammino affannoso há um senso parlare di Dio come essere essenziale e oscuro oggetto del nostro desiderio infinito. Autorealizzarsi pertanto implica un coinvolgersi con Dio. Coinvolgersi con Dio è risvegliare in noi la spiritualità, quella capacità di sentire un’energia poderosa e amorosa, che sorpassa tutta la realtà. È poter vedere il mare in un’onda e in una goccia d’acqua l’immensità dell’Amazzonia.

Spiritualità è avere sete e fame di un estremo abbraccio riposante, dove finalmente tutte le nostre necessità saranno soddisfatte, dove spariscono tutti i timori e ci riposeremo. Fino a quando non elaboriamo questo centro, ci sentiamo nella preistoria di noi stessi, esseri interi ma non rifiniti e letteralmente frustrati. Entrando in comunione con l’essere essenziale, per abbandonarci a lui, silenziosamente e senza condizioni, con l’orazione e la meditazione, apriamo una fonte di energie incomparabile e irresistibile. Effetto: gioia pura, leggerezza di vita, beatitudine come consentita a viandanti.

Traduzione; Romano Baraglia
romanobaraglia@gmail.com

Satisfaccón de las necesidades fundamentales?

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

El ser humano es, por naturaleza, un ser de muchas carencias. Necesita un gran empeño para atenderlas y así poder vivir, no miserablemente, sino una vida de calidad. Tras cada necesidad se esconde un temor y un deseo: el deseo de poder satisfacerla de la forma más satisfactoria posible y el temor de no conseguirlo y entonces sufrir. Quien tiene, teme perder: quien no tiene, desea tener. Así es la dialéctica de la existencia.

Maestros de las más diferentes tradiciones de la humanidad y de las ciencias de lo humano convergen más o menos en las siguientes necesidades fundamentales:

Tenemos necesidades biológicas: en una palabra, necesitamos comer, beber, vestirnos y tener seguridad. Gran parte del tiempo lo empeñamos en atender tales necesidades. Las grandes mayorías de la humanidad las satisfacen de forma precaria, o por falta de trabajo o porque la solidaridad y la compasión son bienes escasos. La primera petición del Padrenuestro es el pan de cada día, porque el hambre no puede esperar.

Pero no pedimos a Dios que haga milagros cada día y así nos evite producir el pan. Pedimos que los climas y la fertilidad de los suelos sean favorables y que haya cooperación en la producción y en la distribución de los alimentos. Sólo entonces exorcizamos el miedo y atendemos a nuestro deseo básico.

Además, tenemos necesidad de seguridad: podemos enfermar y sucumbir a peligros que nos quitan la vida. Pueden provenir de la naturaleza, de las tempestades, de los rayos, de las sequías prolongadas, de los deslizamientos de tierra, de todo tipo de accidentes. Pueden provenir, principalmente, del propio ser humano que no sólo tiene dentro de sí el instinto de vida sino también el instinto de muerte; puede perder el autocontrol y eliminar al otro. Todo esto nos produce miedo. Y tenemos la esperanza de sortearlo. El hecho de haber vivido en las cavernas y después en casas muestra nuestra búsqueda de seguridad.

La realidad es que nunca controlamos todos los factores. Siempre podemos ser víctimas inocentes o culpadas. Y entonces clamamos a Dios, no para que nos saque del borde del abismo, sino para que nos dé coraje para evitarlo y sobrevivir.

Tenemos, en tercer lugar, necesidad de pertenencia: somos seres societarios. Pertenecemos a una familia, a una etnia, a un determinado lugar, a un país, al planeta Tierra. Lo que hace penoso el sufrimiento es la soledad, el no poder contar con un hombro amigo y una mano acogedora. Como somos frutos del cuidado de nuestras madres que nos llevaron en sus brazos, queremos morir dando la mano a alguien próximo o a quien nos ama.

En el fondo del abismo existencial clamamos por la madre o por Dios. Y sabemos que Él nos atiende porque es sensible a la voz de sus hijos e hijas y siente el latir de nuestro corazón atemorizado. Ser reducido a la soledad es ser condenado al infierno existencial y a la ausencia de cualquier comunión. Por eso es importante satisfacer el sentimiento de pertenencia, de lo contrario nos sentimos cual perros abandonados vagando por el mundo.

En cuarto lugar, tenemos necesidad de autoestima. No basta existir. Necesitamos que nuestra existencia sea acogida, que alguien con sus palabras y actos nos diga: «sé bienvenido a nuestro medio, tú cuentas para nosotros». El rechazo nos hace tener, aun vivos, la experiencia de muerte. Necesitamos, pues, ser reconocidos como personas, con nuestras diferencias y particularidades. De lo contrario, somos como una planta sin nutrientes que se va mustiando hasta morir. Qué importante es cuando alguien nos llama por nuestro nombre y nos abraza. Nos devuelve nuestra humanidad negada y podemos seguir adelante con esperanza y sin miedo.

Finalmente, tenemos necesidad de autorrealización. Este es el gran anhelo y desafío del ser humano: poder realizarse a sí mismo y volverse humano. ¿Qué es lo humano del ser humano? No lo sabemos exactamente porque hasta lo inhumano pertenece a lo humano. Somos un misterio para nosotros mismos. No es que no sepamos nada de lo humano. Al contrario, cuanto más sabemos, más se amplían las dimensiones de aquello que no sabemos. Tenemos saudades de las estrellas de donde venimos.

Pero sabemos lo suficiente para descubrirnos como seres de apertura, al otro, al mundo y al Todo. Somos seres de deseo ilimitado. Por más que busquemos un objeto que sacie nuestro deseo, no lo encontramos entre los seres de nuestro alrededor. Deseamos al Ser esencial y nos topamos solo con entes accidentales. ¿Cómo, entonces, vamos a conseguir autorrealizarnos si nos percibimos como un proyecto infinito?

En este afán gana sentido hablar de Dios como el Ser esencial y el oscuro objeto de nuestro deseo infinito. Sólo Él llena las características del Infinito, adecuadas a nuestro proyecto infinito. Autorrealizarse, por lo tanto, implica envolverse con Dios. Envolverse con Dios es despertar la espiritualidad en nosotros, aquella capacidad de sentir una Energía poderosa y amorosa que atraviesa toda la realidad. Es poder ver en la ola, el mar y en la gota de agua, la inmensidad del Amazonas. Espiritualidad es sentir el hambre y la sed de un último refugio, un sentirse seguro en los brazos de alguien en quien se confía, donde, por fin, todas nuestras necesidades serán satisfechas, donde mueren todos los temores y podremos descansar.

Mientras no elaboremos en nosotros ese Centro, nos sentiremos siempre en la prehistoria de nosotros mismos; seres enteros pero inacabados y en último término, frustrados.

Cuando entramos en comunión con el Ser esencial por la entrega silenciosa e incondicional, por la oración y por la meditación, abrimos un manantial de energías incomparable e insustituible. El efecto es la pura alegría, la levedad de la vida, la bienaventuranza posible a los caminantes.

Traducción de María Gavito Milano

The Ethical and Humanitarian Communism of Oscar Niemeyer

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

I did not have many encounters with Oscar Niemeyer, but those I had were long and intense. What would an architect and a theologian talk about, if not of God, religion, injustice against the poor, and the meaning of life?

In our conversations, I sensed someone with a profound saudade of God. He envied me because, even though he considered me an intelligent person, I still believed in God, something he could not do. But I would calm him down by saying: what is important is not to believe or not to believe in God, but to live ethically, with love, solidarity and compassion for those who suffer most. Because at the dusk of life, that is what counts. And in this respect he was very solid. His gaze would be lost in the distance, with a soft glow.

He was once very impressed when I told him this phrase from a medieval theologian: «If God exists as things exists, then God does not exist». And he asked: «what does that mean?» I replied: «God is not an object that can be found anywhere; if it were so, God would be part of the world and not God». But then he would ask: «and what is that God?» And almost in a whisper, I told him: «God is like a species of powerful and loving Energy that creates the conditions so that things may exist; God is more or less like the eye: that sees all but cannot see Itself; or like the thought: the strength through which the thought thinks, can not be thought». He remained thoughtful, but continued: «Christian theology says that?» And I replied: «Christian theology says that, but it is ashamed of saying it, because then it should be silent instead of talking; and it is always talking, especially the popes». But I comforted him with a line attributed to the great Argentinean, Jorge Luis Borges: «Theology is a curious science: in her all is true because all is invented». Niemeyer was amused by that. And he found very graceful the beautiful trouvaille of a sweeper of Rio de Janeiro, the famous Gari Sorriso: «God is the wind and the moon; the dynamic of growing, applause for the one who climbs up and help for the one who is descending». I suspect Oscar would have no difficulty accepting that God, who is so humane and so near us.

He smiled softly and I took the opportunity to say: «Is it not the same with your architecture? In architecture all is simple and beautiful, not because it is rational, but because all is invented and the fruit of the imagination». He agreed with that, adding that he found more inspiration for architecture by reading poetry, novels, and fiction, than by giving himself to intellectual elucidation. I said to him: «in religion it is more or less like that: the greatness of religion is fantasy, the utopic capacity of projecting kingdoms of justice and heavens of happiness. And great modern religious thinkers such as Bloch, Goldman, Durkheim, Rubem Alves and others do not say anything different: our error was to place religion within reason, when its natural niche is found in the imagination and the principle of hope. There religion reveals its truths and can inspire in us the meaning of life».

To me, the greatness of Oscar Niemeyer is not only his genius, which is recognized and praised around the world, but his conception of life and in the depth of his communism. To him, «life is a gust of wind», light and fleeting, but one to be lived with total integrity. Above all, life to him was not pure enjoyment, but creativity and work. He worked up to the end, like Picasso, producing more than 600 works. And, since he was a complete being, he cultivated the arts, literature and sciences. He had began to study cosmology and quantum physics late in life. He was filled with admiration and amazement at the immensity of the universe.

But above all, he cultivated friendship, solidarity and the esteem of everyone. «Architecture is not what is important» he repeated many times, «what is important is life». But not just any life; a life lived in search of the necessary transformation to overcome injustice against the poor, one that improves this perverse world, a life that translates into solidarity and friendship. In the Jornal do Brasil, 21/04/2007, he confessed: «The fundamental is to recognize that life is unjust, and that only by lending each other a hand, as brothers and sisters, can we live life better».

His communism is very close to the communism of the early Christians, as written about in The Acts of the Apostles, chapters 2 and 4. There is said that, “Christians put everything in common and there were no poor among them”. Consequently, it was not an ideologic communism, but ethical and humanitarian one: to share, to live with sobriety, as he always lived, to divest oneself of money, and help those who need it. Everything should be in common. To a journalist who asked him if he would take a pill to have eternal youth, he coherently replied: «I would accept it if it were for all the world; I do not want immortality only for myself».

A moment that stayed with me, occurred at the beginning of the 1980s. Oscar was in Petropolis, and invited me to have lunch with him. I had returned that day from Cuba, where, at the request of Fidel Castro, with Frei Betto, we had dialogued for several years with different echelons of government, (always watched over by the SNI) to see if we could extract them from their dogmatic and rigid conceptions of Soviet Marxism. Those were tranquil times in Cuba. With the support of the Soviet Union, it could carry out its splendid projects of health, education and culture. I shared with him the fact that, no matter where I had gone in Cuba, I never found favela-like shanty towns, but a dignified and industrious poverty. I told him a thousand things about Cuba that, according to Frei Betto, was at that time, «a Bahia that had flourished». His eyes would shine. He almost did not eat. He was filled with enthusiasm, at seeing that, somewhere in the world, his dream of communism could, at least in part, become embodied and be good for the majorities.

It was great my surprise when, two days later, an article by him appeared in the Folha de São Paulo, with a beautiful drawing of three mountains with a cross above. Above it, it said: «Coming down the highland of Petropolis to Rio, I, who am an atheist, prayed to the God of Brother Boff that the situation of the Cuban people may one day be a reality in Brazil». That was the warm, soft and radically human generosity of Oscar Niemeyer.

I have an everlasting remembrance from him. From Darcy Ribeiro, who was a friend-brother of Oscar, I acquired a small apartment in the Alto de Boa-Vista neighborhood, in the Enchanted Valley. From there, the entire Barra de Tijuca can be seen, up to the end of the Recreio de los Bandeirantes. Oscar remade that apartment for his friend, in such a way that, Darcy (who was small in stature) could always see the sea. He made a platform about 50 centimeters high, and, since it could not be otherwise, with a beautiful curve for a corner, as a sea wave on the body of a beloved woman. There I retire when I want to write or meditate a little, because a theologian also must take care to save his soul.

On two occasions, he offered to design a model of a small church for the place where I live, Araras in Petropolis. I declined because I considered it unjust to revalue my property with the work of such a genius as Niemeyer. After all, God is neither in heaven nor on Earth, but there where the doors are open.

Life is not destined to disappear with death, but to be transfigured alchemically through death. Oscar Niemeyer has only passed to the other side of life, to the invisible side. But the invisible forms part of the visible. Because of that, he is not absent, but present, if invisible. But always with the same sweetness, softness, friendship, solidarity and love that always characterized him. And wherever he is, he will be fantasizing, projecting and creating worlds that are beautiful, curved and filled with lightness.

Translation:
Melina Alfaro, volar@fibertel.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.