Arthur Zajonc is a physicist and a contemplative. His long practice of those disciplines − his wide-ranging thinking, writing and teaching − have brought fascinating integrative presence to diverse realms of human endeavor. He is emeritus professor of physics at my alma mater, Amherst College, where he taught from 1978 to 2012, as well as former president of the Mind and Life Institute and former director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. His publications include Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love; The Dalai Lama at MIT; and with co-author Parker Palmer, The Heart of Higher Education: A Call for Renewal.
In addition to those resources, I want to highlight here two very accessible documents that provide readers and listeners with a fine introduction to his work.
The first of those is a recorded conversation with Krista Tipppett in 2013, called "Holding Life Consciously," available on Tippett's website, On Being.
The second is a short (3-page) essay titled "Love as Ethical Insight," available here.
Zajonc's own website, containing much additional information, is here.
To re-imagine love as ethical insight is not a self-evident phrase or practice. Consider its persuasiveness in two paragraphs drawn from Zajonc's brief essay noted above. The first is a quotation from Nelson Mandela's remarks at the trial that sent him to prison in South Africa for 20 years. The second paragraph contains the essence of Zajonc's understanding that love is embedded in our empathy for others.
This is Mandela at his trial: "During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
And here is Zajonc on love as moral insight and imagination:
"We are empathic beings. As such we are profoundly connected to other human beings, as well as to all of nature. We can feel the joy and suffering of others, and as innately moral beings, we seek to mitigate suffering and promote the flourishing of others, even at a cost to ourselves. True morality carries the marks of insight and imagination.... In my view this is the moment in which love takes on the character of knowing. Love allows us gently, respectfully, and intimately to slip into the life of another person or animal or even the Earth itself and to know it from the inside. In this way, love can become a way of moral knowing that is as reliable as scientific insight. Then our highest challenge and aspiration is to learn to love with such selflessness and purity that love becomes a way to true moral insight, one that transcends social construction and biological imperatives."
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