Embracing Ritual
What I read: How to set yourself free with ritual by Alan Jay Levinovitz. Edited by Nigel Warburton. Published June 8, 2022.
Ritual sometimes strikes me as the exalting of habits. It seems adulation of habits has reached peak mainstream zeitgeist based on the number of contemporary articles, videos, and books on the subject. I balk at the notion. While we all have habits that helps us reduce decision-making friction throughout our day, I consider a life chock full of cultivated habits potentially boring.
I know. That flies in the face of contemporary wisdom. Habits are cool. Habits are in. But as someone who has functioned my entire life trying to remain unconstrained by habitual patterns, I consider an overemphasis on habit building to be problematic. Maybe I’m wrong. Who knows. Thus, why I was willing to give this article a chance despite it raising my habit-cautious hackles.
The article by Alan Jay Levinovitz is founded upon an understanding of teachings formulated by Confucius about 2500 years ago in China.
Contrary to Levinovitz’s initial reaction to Confucius’s guidance regarding ritual, he decides it’s not ritual as stale traditionalism. Levinovitz credits his change of heart to a close reading of the foundational collection of Confucius’s teachings known as the Analects. The ritual to which Confucius alluded to is an adherence to something central to his teachings, li, usually translated as ‘ritual.’ As it turns out, li isn’t about “fastidiously obeying fusty old rules.” Rather, it was about transforming things we do every day into sacred activities.
Ritual is – or can be – part of all human activity. It governs greetings and conservations. It’s how you harmonise your life with the rhythms of the world. And if you take ritual seriously, submit to it and practise it, then transforming your life for the better will go from difficult to effortless.
Levinovitz uses how most of us interact with our smartphone as an example of fostering reverence for the proper use of ritual. While we might repeatedly check our phones in certain situations, in other scenarios we do not. Why? Because the ritual of the specific situation negates the wisdom or politeness of doing so. Pulling out our phone in certain instances is ritually inappropriate.
This is one of my shortcomings, pulling out my phone repeatedly when at a dinner table, when having coffee with a friend, or throughout my workday when I do it more to break up hours of work than to do anything truly useful. Embracing Confucian ritual is about treating all of these contexts as sacred spaces, allowing them their own unique rhythms and patterns.
Driving a car is not a time to check my phone. Likewise for talking with my daughter and for hiking. As soon as I began treating those contexts with the reverence they deserved – as soon as I submitted to ritual – resisting the pull of my phone became effortless.
Confucius wants his teachings to be practically applied. Levinovitz ran a test applying li to his own life and per his assessment it worked. Levinovitz believes the universal principles Confucius espoused two millennia ago to still apply today. Levinovitz suggests that we try embracing ritual to see if it works for us.
While the Analects describe some specifically laid out rituals for certain of life’s important moments, other passages within the text offer a more expansive version of ritual.
The gist of the article’s contention is that the rhythms and patterns of ritual are everywhere and respecting them leads us to a better life and better outcomes. An example is offered in which I see myself. I have the awful habit of jumping into conversations before another person has finished speaking. It’s an ongoing struggle to avoid doing this. I’m getting better
‘To speak when it is not yet time to speak – this is called being rash. To not speak when it is time to speak – this is called being secretive.’ Sometimes you rush to say something instead of waiting for your friend to finish. You haven’t treated the rhythm of the conversation as sacred. You violated Confucian ritual. And what happens? Your friend gets pissed off because you interrupted them.
In perhaps the more articulate argument for embracing rituals I’ve ever read, Levinovitz uses music as an explanatory analogy.
Like skilful musicians improvising harmoniously with each other, we can play along with the world. There is room for freedom in this play. There are infinite ways to have a good conversation, infinite features of nature to focus on while hiking. But, as any musician will tell you, creating beautiful music also requires submitting to constraints. Harmony is cooperative, and cooperation means respecting your partners, the pattern of their desires and contributions.
Well, that sure makes sense when you read it. Sometimes it takes just the right analogy or metaphor to succinctly explain something. This one sure worked for me. Perhaps there was something to this ritual stuff after all.
Then I reached the part of the article the melted away my initial reaction to ritual as nothing more than a different take on habit.
Continuing the use of the music analogy, the difference between ritual and habit is better explained.
In this sense, ritual is more like improvised music or athletic performance. Jazz soloists do not play according to rigid habits. They adjust to their bandmates, the mood of the evening. The same is true of good athletes, who adjust to different opponents and conditions. Playing exactly the same way according to habit would be the equivalent of greeting every person you meet, from strangers to your spouse, in exactly the same way.
Bingo! Suddenly I got it. In a few short paragraphs the writer won me over to his contention that ritual is a superb way to navigate through life versus what I see as the rigidity of habit.
The allure and context of ritual brings about proper actions through more effortless means. Rather than cultivating or sticking to a habit, instead we acknowledge the ritual of the context in which we find ourselves and act accordingly. We don’t need to outsource our will to habit, which is how the constant drone of worshiping habits always felt like to me. Rather, we can better understand the ritual importance of doing something in a certain situation which fosters good actions even if a habit might nudge us to do otherwise.
This repositioning of my actions to align with contextual ritual versus constantly attempting to muster my will to solidify a habit is liberating for me. Viscerally it resonated as a better way for me to navigate life. One can even use this reverence for ritual to break bad habits.
Not every situation reveals itself as having a ritual context though. Sometimes the rhythms and patterns aren’t quite so clear. Turns out Confucius addresses that too. Confucius suggests we study. Ongoing, throughout life.
In this case, study doesn’t necessarily mean reading the classics or other traditional wisdom sources. Rather, Confucius acknowledges that not everyone needs to or should learn from the classics. That said, the classics contain time-tested knowledge and wisdom that most of us mere mortals would be wise to read and study.
…if you have never studied the classics, you’ll have more difficulty understanding the dynamics that govern everything from language to basic social interactions. Sacred texts, folk tales and fairy tales, nursery rhymes and proverbs – these are woven into the fabric of our lives and the organisation of our communities. How can you expect to live harmoniously if you do not understand the reasons why you and those around you act as you do, why institutions are structured as they are?
Confucius isn’t a stickler for rigid adherence to what’s suggested in the classics. To stick to a specific ritual rigidly isn’t really adhering to ritual at all. It’s habit. Yet again my initial impulses to avoid reading the article were thwarted by what I perceive as Confucius not being the fan of cultivated habits as I had first suspected.
But proper alignment with ritual requires ongoing study. Few of us emerge from the womb with the necessary wisdom to walk through life in perfect harmony and peace. Most of us need to study, always, forever, to ensure that we best understand the various cultures, contexts, and situations in which we might find ourselves and what rituals to practice.
The more rigid nature of habits doesn’t always allow for us to question their validity or usefulness. Rituals allow for a more questioning atmosphere. Since philosophy itself is the constant asking of questions to better understand ourselves and the world, this syncs best with how I’d prefer to live anyway.
Levinovitz then touches upon Confucius’s directive to cultivate virtue. Virtues such as sincerity and kindness take precedence over book learning. This sure plays out in my own experience. I’ve encountered many a formally educated “learned” person who lacks any redeemable virtues. And I’ve encountered many barely educated people who are kind, loving, and worthy of respect.
When I read the next part of the article it rankled me a bit. Levinovitz suggests that Confucius wasn’t a fan of the “fake it until you make it” adage. I’ve used that adage many times in my life. I’ve been in professional and social situations where I absolutely faked it until I made it, at least that’s how I see it. But then I read that what Confucius was saying was that the rightness of an action can’t be separated from the person’s character. That made sense.
A ritual is not a ritual if it is performed insincerely. Pretending to love another human being won’t work, because ‘loving’ entails doing it for real. There is no such thing as a ‘loving action’ independent of sincerity. The same is true for living in accordance with Confucian ritual. You must sincerely believe the world is a sacred place, and you must be genuine in your desire to harmonise with it.
I’ll conclude with how the article concludes because it sums up the entire piece nicely.
Modern suspicion of ritual is bound up with broader concerns about freedom and resistance to change. Submission to ritual can feel like giving up on the possibility of changing bad rituals.
But that’s not what Confucius wanted. Throughout the Analects, there are examples of his departing from tradition. ‘In education, there are no differences in kind,’ he asserts, a striking departure from prevalent class-based education norms.
We can learn from Confucius but also reject the specifics of what he gets wrong. Doing so, like asking questions, is part of ritual. As he says himself: ‘When it comes to being Good, defer to no one, not even your teacher.’ Ultimately, Confucian ritual isn’t a set of practices, but rather a call to harmonise one’s actions with the patterns of the world. The ideal remains constant, even if the actions themselves must change depending on the context.
Now I have to figure out how to best apply this to my life. How do I experiment with honoring ritual while not falling prey to the onslaught of advice to instead develop habits? I have a feeling I’m going to be writing a lot about this in my personal journal. I’ve got a lot of thinking and exploration to do. Maybe you’d like to experiment too. Read the entire article for yourself and see if the concept of ritual better suits your needs over the mindless and often repetitive cultivation of habits.
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