As I noted in an earlier post, among the more perplexing aspects of writing about either religion or spirituality is the problem of finding open-ended and widely accessible ways to reflect on life’s profoundest concerns and how to deal with them. Most importantly, this challenge requires that we avoid overtly theological concepts and language, especially of the parochial and fundamentalist sort. Fortunately, beliefs about the nature of divinity — let alone about the existence or non-existence of God – are not essential to the exploration of life’s deepest existential questions.
The problem of finding or developing approaches for addressing these perennial human concerns is one scholars of comparative religion have been wrestling with for a long while. What lies at the core of the world’s many and diverse religious traditions? As I also noted in my earlier post, among the scholars seeking to answer this question is William Paden. In his book, Religious Worlds, Paden writes “what characterizes religious behavior is that the takes place with reference to things that are deemed sacred.” Though the sacred can have any content, Paden observes, to the adherent “it is always something of extraordinary power and reality.”
While my previous post focused on Rudolf Otto’s idea of “the numinous” — that combination of wonder and awe that grips us when the sacred manifests in our lives – his is not the only way to make experiential sense of our encounters with the sacred without the need for either theology or dogma. An equally compelling perspective on the sacred is the idea of “touchstones of reality,” an approach developed by Maurice Friedman. Friedman was a translator, biographer, and world-renowned authority on the work of Martin Buber, the 20th century existential philosopher, Jewish theologian, and religious scholar. Friedman’s approach to the religious dimension of life evolved, at least in part, from his interest in Buber’s idea of the sacred as encounter or meeting as articulated in Buber’s most popular and influential work I and Thou.
A philosopher and religious scholar in his own right, Friedman describes touchstones of reality as comprising the most significant moments or events in peoples’ lives, the experiences that indelibly stamped us and shaped our existence. In addition, this term refers to all the accumulated ideas, beliefs, principles, and values that both direct an individual’s engagement with the world and serve as a sort of existential standard for personally deciding what is good and true. Our collective touchstones represent an evolving spiritual and ethical framework that is both derived from experience and continuously tested through interaction with everything that we encounter in the course of living our lives.
Writing about the personal nature of our touchstones, Friedman says “to claim that each man has touchstones of reality, even when he is not aware of it, is not, of course, to claim that he has the same touchstones as others.” On the contrary, he continues, “the very meaning of touchstones necessitates each man’s touchstones are unique,” though this uniqueness “is something we can share and witness.” In this way, touchstones can form the foundation for meaningful dialogue, standing in place of any particular creed, belief, or teaching. Indeed, Friedman proposes a dialogue of touchstones as the only realistic approach to establishing true interfaith dialogue.
Friedman’s concept was inspired by the ancient mercantile practice of using touchstones as a method for testing the genuineness and quality of precious metals. A touchstone was a hard, highly polished flint-like stone against which a piece of gold or silver could be rubbed. If the metal truly contained gold or silver, it would leave a telltale streak across the touchstone, the color of which would indicate the relative purity of the alloy being tested. The metaphorical sense of something being a touchstone, therefore, suggests that which serves as a kind of standard or exemplar against which some other thing’s potential value can be tested and evaluated.
According to Friedman, a person’s touchstones must be tested through a process of encountering those of others. As a result, we do not evolve our touchstones primarily though adherence to an existing system of values, but rather though existential conflict with these values. This process of encounter must open us to continuously question the validity of our existing touchstones. Engaging new touchstones requires a process of contending with existing ones and new touchstones only come, Friedman cautions, “when we have fought our way through to where we are open to something really other than our accustomed set of values and our accustomed way of looking at the world.”
The memory of the experience of the meetings that shaped our touchstones simultaneously connects us with our past and anchors us in the present moment. “Touchstones have a history,” observes Friedman, “they live with us.” The ability of touchstones to link a person with the sacred encounters of her or her past is not the primary source of their meaningfulness, however, but their ability to engage and direct that person’s course of action in the present moment. Indeed, says Friedman, “we retain our touchstones only by ploughing them back into our lives.”
Touchstones of reality can be encountered in many ways. In considering some of the sources of his own touchstones, Friedman identifies “meetings with persons, with situations, with the characters of literature, the scriptures of religions, and the writers who have spoken to me through their thoughts.” For example, a major touchstone for Friedman was his challenging experience as a conscientious objector during the Second World War. His decision to become a pacifist was at least partly grounded in his study of Hindu mystical practices about the oneness of all living beings.
In thinking about my own touchstones, a foundational one grew out of a vision I had more than twenty years ago about the nature of human existence, a vision I describe in the introductory material for this website. That vision – combined with a mystical experience in which I heard the phrase “faith in the journey” – have shaped both my life and work since that time. Looking back both before that time and since then, I recognize many other encounters – encounters with people, dreams, books and films, teachings from a range of religious traditions, and a host of other experiences– which have presented me with my touchstones. Some of them have blended well with other touchstones, while others have forced me to deal with the often-paradoxical nature of wisdom. While some have grown in significance as others came to feel less essential, collectively they form an evolving web of meaning that ground both my understanding of myself and my perspective on life.