Parallel Reading 1

I've started a project to read in parallel
     Christopher Hitchen's God is Not Great
     Peter Hitchen's The Rage Against God
Since the two brothers are both very well educated and accomplished, yet reach very different conclusions about God and Religion, it should be interesting to let them comment on each other.

My impressions of Christopher's first chapter:

     "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means."

     The buzzwords are "scientific" and "rational."  Scientific here does NOT mean using the scientific method.  It does not mean running experiments in your own life and carefully collecting the data.  Those kind of activities are reserved for scientists.  What it does mean is reading books that popularize science for the layman (Dawkins, Darwin, Hawking and Crick are mentioned specifically) and being informed and inspired by them.  Rational here doesn't mean a mathematically rigorous use of logic (either inductive or deductive).  There are no Syllogisms, no recognition of Axiomatic foundations or Well-formed Propositions.  Rational just means "free-inquiry, open mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake."  It is as much a shared cultural attitude about what things are right-thinking and what things are not, as it is anything else. 
     He explicitly counters a frequent charge that atheism is a kind of faith - "And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers, our belief is not a belief.  Our principles are not a Faith."  He then very quickly makes some very non-scientific assertions that sound awfully, well, "faithy."

"no statistic will ever be found that...we commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful...In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way." 

"We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion."

Oddly enough he reminds me a great deal of a writer whom he finds "dreary and absurd" - C. S. Lewis.  Like Lewis, what we have is not so much a closely reasoned argument - say a philosophic paper whose conclusions had darn well better be warrantable under close peer review.  What we have is rhetoric.  A chatty, lively sharing of ideas and attitudes he hopes we find persuasive.  The difference between Christopher and Jack (as Lewis's friends knew him) is that Jack knew exactly what he was doing, and Christopher does not.  Jack knew he was trying to communicate a point of view from inside himself in hopes that another might find it resonating or at least understandable.  Christopher is under the illusion that he is proving something.

Even more than Lewis, he reminds me of Freud (whose Interpretation of Dreams I'm about a third of the way through now) - The cocky certainty, the assuming of the mantle of science and rationality without its rigors; the charming style; an unmistakable undertone of narcissism.  I really don't think he would have been too disappointed during his lifetime to have been classed with Marx and Freud, who (in Christopher's own words) "were not doctors or exact scientists.  It is better to think of them as great and fallible imaginative essayists."

Grace seen from two perspectives

1) A Catholic priest involved in the "Men's Movement" in the 90's.

"Most myths include belief either in a benevolent universe, a hostile universe, or one that is indifferent.  Until we accept that ours is a radically benevolent universe, we are not Christians.

...if we are lucky, we will finally meet what we call grace, the notion that someone is for me more than I am for myself....I feel an aura of synchronicity and providence; things seem to work.  It is radically OK."

Richard Rohr
Quest for the Grail

2) A Tibetan Buddhist (founder of the Naropa Institute in Colorado).

"As human beings, we are basically awake and we can understand reality.  We are not enslaved by our lives; we are free.  Being free, in this case, means simply that we have a body and a mind, and we can uplift ourselves in order to work with reality in a dignified and humorous way.  If we begin to perk up, we will find that the whole universe - including the seasons, the snowfall, the ice and the mud - is also powerfully working with us.  Life is a humorous situation, but it is not mocking us."

Chogyam Trungpa
Shambhala

The Best Horse in the Race?

Shunryu Suzuki
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

"...almost all of us want to be the best horse.  If it is impossible to be the best one, we want to be the second best one....When you are determined to practice zazen with the great mind of Buddha, you will find the worst horse is the most valuable one.  In your very imperfections you will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind."

The Book of Mormon implies that it is very difficult (perhaps impossible?) to come unto Christ without first confronting the reality of the natural man in ourselves that we might truly understand our need for the atonement.  Only one who realizes is not on the way, can have a "firm, way-seeking mind."

Suzuki also refers to a Japanese proverb that I find interesting in a similar context:

"We say, 'A good father is not a good father."  Do you understand?  One who thinks he is a good father is not a good father.  One who thinks he is a good husband is not a good husband.  One who thinks he is one of the worst husbands may be a good one if he is always trying to be a good husband with a single-hearted effort."

Utopian Limits

Chogyam Trungpa
Shambhala

"While everyone has a responsibility to help the world, we can create additional chaos if we try to impose our ideas or our help upon others.  Many people have theories about what the world needs.  Some people think that the world needs communism; some people think that the world needs democracy; some people think that technology will save the world; some people think that technology will destroy the world.  The Shambhala teachings are not based on converting people to another theory."

Maturity

"The mature person is like a good archer:
when he misses the bull's-eye,
he turns around and seeks
the reason for his failure in himself."


Chuang Tzu
in Stephen Mitchell's
The Second Book of the Tao

Taoism and the martial arts

Chi Hsing-Tzu was training a gamecock for the king.  After ten days, the king asked if the bird was ready for combat.  "No, Your Majesty," said Chi, "He's arrogant, always ready to pick a fight.  He's still relying on his own strength."

Another ten days passed, and the king asked again.  Chi said, "No, Sire, not yet.  He still becomes excited when a rival bird appears."

Ten more days.  The king asked again.  "Not yet," Chi said.  "He still gets an angry glint in his eye."

Another ten days, another question.  Chi said, "Now, Sire, he's almost ready.  When a rival crows, he doesn't react.  He stands motionless like a block of wood.  His focus is inside.  Other birds will take one look at him and run."

Chuang Tzu from
Stephen Mitchell's
The Second Book of the Tao

Beyond the limits of yourself

You can't talk about the ocean
with a frog who lives in a well:
he is bounded by the space he inhabits.

You can't talk about ice
with an insect who was born in June:
he is bounded by a single season.

You can't talk about the Tao
with a person who thinks he knows something:
he is bounded by his own beliefs.

The Tao is vast and fathomless.
You can understand only by stepping
beyond the limits of yourself.

The Second Book of Tao
Stephen Mitchell

Shambhala as a millennial vision

Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Chogyam Trungpa

(Trungpa is the founder of the Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado, the most visible Tibetan Buddhist institution in North America)

"While it is easy enough to dismiss the kingdom of Shambhala as pure fiction, it is also possible to see in this legend the expression of a deeply rooted and very real human desire for a good and fulfilling life.  In fact, among many Tibetan Buddhist teachers, there has long been a tradition that regards the kingdom of Shambhala, not as an external place, but as the ground or root of wakefulness and sanity that exists as a potential within every human being.  From that point of view, it is not important to determine whether the kingdom of Shambhala is fact or fiction.  Instead, we should appreciate and emulate the ideal of an enlightened society that it represents."

Trungpa emphasizes that what he is teaching about Shambhala is "secular," by which he means "not religious" or "non-sectarian."  He's not saying that it isn't spiritual, just that what he is getting at is designed to be accessible to every one whether they are Buddhist or not, whether they are a believer of any kind or not.

"...although the Shambhala tradition is founded on the sanity and gentleness of the Buddhist tradition, at the same time, it has its own independent basis, which is directly cultivating who and what we are as human beings.  With the great problems now facing human society, it seems increasingly important to find simple and nonsectarian ways to work with ourselves and to share our understanding with others.  The Shambhala teachings or 'Shambhala vision' as this approach is more broadly called, is one such attempt to encourage a wholesome existence for ourselves and others....."

"....The Shambhala teachings are founded on the  premise that there is basic human wisdom that can help solve the world's problems.  This wisdom does not belong to any one culture or religion, nor does it come only from the West or the East.  Rather, it is a tradition...that has existed in many cultures at many times through history."

The Logic of Empire

Been at Thucydides Peloponnesian War for a few months - just a few pages at night before bed (most nights, anyway).  In some ways, the long, slow train wreck of the war is made even more harrowing by going through it as I am at a retarded pace.


Last night I was struck by the bald honesty of Cleon's advocacy of the wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants of Mitylene.  In plain terms he lays out the chilling logic of empire-


"I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire, and never more so than by your present change of mind in the matter of Mitylene....You entirely forget that your empire is a despotism and your subjects disaffected conspirators, whose obedience is insured not by your suicidal concessions, but by the superiority given you by your own strength and not their loyalty....I therefore now as before persist against your reversing your first decision, or giving way to the three failings most fatal to empire-pity, sentiment and indulgence....If they were right in rebelling, you must be wrong in ruling.  However, if, right or wrong, you determine to rule, you must carry out your principle and punish the Mitylenians as your interest requires, or else you must give up your empire and cultivate honesty without danger."

Freud - Dream Material

Again, the analysis is ingenious and creative.  But such a creation as a Freudian dream analysis, though a brilliant work of art, is hardly science.  The reasons given are rhetorically persuasive, but not logically "proven" in any rigorous sense of the word.

"I am prepared to find this explanation attacked as either arbitrary or artificial."  And he does not really answer his anticipated criticism so much as he deflects it, explaining how if very well might work.  Then as usual, Freud goes on as if the foundation he describes a possible, is in fact now built and in place.  "We may therefore expect that dream analysis will constantly show us..."

Meditation

I've been listening to a book on CD in the car to and from work lately.  It's  Hurry Up and Meditate by David Michie.  His background is Buddhist, but he approaches meditation from a scientific and practical point of view - very little emphasis on spirituality and a great deal on the mental/physical health benefits of a mindfulness practice. 

He's got me intrigued...

Library Books and Walking Books

Gros echoes Nietzsche's distrust of books that "smell of the library," as opposed, of course, to books, like Nietzsche's that were born of long walks in the open air.  As one who loves both books that smell of the library AND those that bring with them an outdoor breeze I don't really have a dog in this fight.  What is interesting to me is that a book titled "The Philosophy of Walking" contains (so far) little logical discourse and a great deal of subjective impression and reaction.  It's not a criticism.  I've gotten far more insight in my lifetime from aphorism and conviction than I have from closely argued structures.

I am, however, reminded of a classic joke from the early 20th century -

A Frenchman, an Englishman, and a German each undertook a study of the camel.

 

The Frenchman went to the zoo, spent half an hour there, questioned the staff, threw bread to the camel, poked it with the front of his umbrella, and, upon returning home, wrote an essay for the papers, full of sharp and witty observations.

 

The Englishman, taking his tea basket and a good deal of camping equipment, went to set up camp in the Orient, returning after a sojourn of two or three years with a fat volume full of raw, disorganized, and inconclusive facts which nevertheless had real documentary value.

 

As for the German, he was filled with disdain for the Frenchman’s frivolity and the Englishman’s lack of metaphysical ideas, and so he locked himself in his room, and there he drafted a multi-volume work entitled: The Idea of the Camel Derived from the Concept of the Ego.

 

http://www.celebritytypes.com/blog/2011/04/french-german-and-english-philosophy-in-mbti-terms/ 

Freud - The Dream as Wish Fulfillment

The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud

The chapter "Distortion in Dreams" seems tenuously argued-

• "Probably this is precisely its function"
• "This discovery may prove to be generally valid..."  followed almost immediately by the bald assertion-
• "Wherever a wish fulfillment is unrecognizable and disguised there must be present a tendency to defend oneself against this wish, and in consequence of this defense the wish is unable to express itself save in a distorted form."  There follows a clever and suggestive analogy to political life in Austria and then-
• "The detailed correspondence between the phenomena of censorship and phenomena of dream distortion justifies us in presupposing similar conditions for both."  Does the cleverness and completeness of an analogy really constitute proof of an idea?
• "It is not a farfetched assumption..."
• "It may be shown that psychopathology simply cannot dispense with these fundamental assumptions."
• "We may now begin to suspect..."
• "We now see that this is possible..."
• "Proof" is then constructed by his analysis of some dreams (using a method that presupposes that every dream is a wish fulfillment).  We are pretty deep into some circular reasoning here.
• "You know that the stimulus of a dream always lies among the experiences of the preceding day."  Do I?  Where is the proof of this assertion?"
• "Now the meaning of the dream is clear."  The interpretation is ingenious and seems plausible, but is it proven in any degree of rigor?

 "Dream Analysis" seems not too far from Literary Criticism.  The analysis may be ingenious, creative, even plausible, but what method would serve to offer conclusive proof of an interpretation?

The most striking image from the entire chapter is Freud's conviction that many dreams offered as counter example's to his theory that all dreams are wish fulfillment simply arose from the WISH of his detractors to prove him wrong.  Whatever his other faults, I do not get the sense that Sigmund suffered from an unhealthy ego.

Becoming as a child

"The disciple groaned...
Just tell me the first elements
I will be satisfied...

Lao Tzu replied....
Can you be like an infant
That cries all day
Without getting a sore throat
Or clenches his fist all day
Without getting a sore hand
Or gazes all day
Without getting eyestrain?
You want the first elements?
The infant has them
Free from care, unaware of self,
He acts without reflection,
Stays where he is put, does not know why,
Does not figure things out,
Just goes along with them,
Is part of the current.
These are the first elements!

The disciple asked:
Is this perfection?

Lao replied: Not at all.
It is only the beginning.
This melts the ice.
This enables you
To unlearn.
So that you can be led by Tao,
Be the child of Tao."

Thomas Merton
The Way of Chuang Tzu

Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 11-40

Below is my attempt at "translating" (see notes from earlier on Thomas Merton) Hesiod's Greek (using Perseus) for the second major chunk of his text - lines 11 through 41.


Is there but one kind of strife upon the earth?
No, there are two.  A man who came to know the first
would applaud.  The second he would blame. They are
two souls.  One fosters evil war and ceaseless fights.
Her no mortal loves, but under force, and through
will of deathless gods, men honor deadly strife.
But indeed, the other one dark Night birthed first.
Heaven dwelling Zeus, who sits on high, placed her
in the roots of earth.  Much better to man is she:
rousing work in all alike - the lazy too;
for a man craves work who sees another rich -
of a truth it urges him to plow for crops,
building well his home.  Neighbor with neighbor strives,
goading on to wealth - this strife is good for men.
Potter to potter, carpenter to carpenter
grudges, beggar envies beggar, and poets too resent.


Perses, O put these things within your heart.
Don't let evil strife restrain your heart from work,
watching raptly, hearing quarrels in the court.
For there's little care for arguments and courts
save abundant store has been laid safely down
in due time - Demeter's grain which earth brings forth.
When enough's heaped up, then bring dispute about
someone else's stuff (though you will only once
get that kind of chance).  But here, let us sort out
our fight by justice, godly and most excellent.
For indeed, when we divided inheritance
by large gifts you carried off the greater part,
bribing gold-greedy lords who love to judge such suits.
Fools!  Who cannot discern the half of a thing from the whole,
nor the greatness of mallow or the profit in asphodel.

T. H. White on Education

"The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk.  He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him like a baby, but the ones that just went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned.  He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas."

...................

"Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance"

T. H. White
The Sword in the Stone

Chuang Tzu on Winning

When an archer is shooting for nothing
He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind.
Or sees two targets-
he is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed.  But the prize
Divides him.  He cares.
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting-
And the need to win
Drains him of power.

Thomas Merton
The Way of Chuang Tzu

Every Stranger You Meet

"Our purpose in life is spiritual transformation, and every encounter with a stranger is an opportunity to draw closer to that purpose.  Every human being is a universe, and, like all universes, every person is still in the process of creation.  When we come into someone's life, we enter an alternate world, and by entering it we change it....When you cross paths with a stranger, a new dimension comes into being, one in which both of you reside.  Every interaction with a new person is an opportunity to transform both your life and theirs.  This is an immense opportunity, if only we choose to recognize and take advantage of it.  Every encounter with a stranger is a chance to start over."

Rav P. S. Berg
The Essential Zohar

The Philosophy of Walking

The Philosophy of Walking
by Frederic Gros

Gross states that walking brings us three levels of freedom.

Even a short stroll brings "suspensive freedom" - "throwing off the burden of cares, forgetting business for a time."  You are "alienated from speed."  This is a temporary release, we return to our initial condition.

The second freedom is more "aggressive and rebellious."  It's the freedom of an extended road trip.  Kerouac and Snyder "on the road," reassessing civilization and its contents to some degree from the outside.

The third level is the freedom of renunciation.  This is the freedom of permanent drop out, the tramp, the wandering monk.  As Gros is a publishing academic from some French University, I assume he is talking about level three from a theoretical distance.

:)

I'm just sayin'....

Schiller on Creativity

Freud quotes the poet Schiller writing to a friend who complained of a lack of "creative power."

"The reason for your complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination.  Here I will make an observation, and illustrate it by allegory.  Apparently it is not good-and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind-if the intellect examines too closely the ideas already pouring in, as it were, at the gates.  Regarded in isolation, and idea might be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it; perhaps, in a certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link.  The intellect cannot judge all these ideas unless it can retain them until it has considered them in connection with these other ideas.  In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude.  You...are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer.  Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely."

The Interpretation of Dreams

Doing by not Doing

One is never sure he understands aright the mystical experiences of another.  Especially those of a religion not his own.  Over more than a decade of engaging with Taoism I'm still not sure I understand.  The following paraphrase of Chuang Tzu from a fellow Christian (Thomas Merton) I find helpful in approaching the Taoist concept of "doing by not doing."

"The non-action of the wise man is not inaction.
It is not studied.  It is not shaken by anything.
The sage is quiet because he is not moved,
not because he wills to be quiet."

.....

"From emptiness comes the unconditioned.
From this, the conditioned, the individual things.
So from the sage's emptiness, stillness arises:
From stillness, action.  From action, attainment.
From their stillness comes their non-action, which is also action.
And is, therefore, their attainment.
For stillness is joy.  Joy is freedom from care
Fruitful in the long years.
Joy does all things without concern;
For emptiness, stillness, tranquility, tastelessness,
Silence and non-action
Are the root of all things."

The passage brings to mind my experience with Peck's community building exercises.  The quotes and concepts that follow are from The Different Drum.  In Peck's community model a group passes through four stages

• Psuedocommunity
• Chaos
• Emptiness
• Community

 "Chaos always centers around well-intentioned but misguided efforts to heal and convert."

"There are only two ways out of chaos....One is into organization-but organization is never community.  The only other way is into and through emptiness."

For Peck, emptiness in a group setting involves letting go of

• Expectations and Preconceptions
• Prejudices
• Ideology, Theology and Solutions
• The Need to Heal, Convert, Fix and Solve
• The Need to Control

"As a group moves into emptiness, a few of its members begin to share their own brokenness-their defeats, failures, doubts, fears, inadequacies and sins."

At the point when the group is struggling to understand what emptiness means here, the facilitators would offer a few hints or suggestions.  One of them is something to the effect of asking us to consider what it means to be silent until one is moved upon to speak.

"In this final stage a soft quietness descends.  It is a kind of peace.  The room is bathed in peace.  Then, quietly, a member begins to talk about herself.  She is being very vulnerable.  She is speaking of the deepest part of herself.  The group hangs on every word.  No one realized she was capable of such eloquence.
    When she is finished there is a hush.  It goes on a long time.  but it does not seem long.  There is no uneasiness in this silence.  Slowly, out of the silence, another member begins to talk.  He too is speaking very deeply, very personally, about himself."

From my perspective emptiness seems allied with Book of Mormon uses of the terms "humble," "humility," and "nothingness"  in the process of coming unto Christ.  Several intimate descriptions of how the quorum of the twelve operate seem eerily parallel to Peck's community.