FANATIC
Seeing the abominable way human beings treat each other, seeing the hell that our species inflicts on itself, one may justifiably look to examples of the antitheses of such behaviour in the great spiritual leaders and sages, including but not limited to the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Imam Hussain, Confucius.
In differing contexts, these masters taught and displayed ways of being that go against the flow of unrestrained greed, violence, hatred, inhumanity. This latter presents an irony; the state of humanity is most often observed in it’s transgression. Humanity – as we are more often than not presented with it – is remarkably inhumane.
Some would understandably suggest that these spiritual masters were fanatics and that fanaticism is part of the problem. I would humbly suggest that the term be looked at as having two connotations. For instance, a man in a position of great authority who puts his life at risk – and indeed loses his life in so brutal a manner – just to ensure thirsty children get water is fanatic in service of goodness and righteousness. That was Imam Hussain. Jesus suffered incredible pain rather than save his own life and abandon his teaching of love against force and oppression. In the Buddhist scriptures there is a description commending a practitioner who endures similarly horrific and deadly injury rather than abandon the teaching which would also enjoin them to be compassionate towards their afflictors.
These are not people who romanticise violence and suffering, which only enshrines – even deifies- what is bad. They do these things out of a necessity of conscience which is nevertheless dedicated to benevolence and against violence and oppression. If they can be called fanatical, then it is of a kind that is the best of humanity.
Those that oppose them (often including ourselves) on the other hand should also then be regarded as fanatics, only of a thoroughly negative sort. Those that would kill, harm, oppress simply because others have something they want, or behave in a way they don’t like, or are easy targets to victimise in the practice of currying favour with the powerful, or even the most usual sort where we harm others because it’s just the popular thing to do. Are we not also then fanatics? That we do what we would hate done to us or our loved ones for some pretty vapid ‘reason’?
Am I in any position to cast the first stone? Certainly not. I’m often as weak and wretched as a human can be. But I see the better type of fanatic and against the world, I hope to follow them and their teaching,