Havel - Mere Spirituality 4

"Orientation towards Being as a state of mind can also be understood as faith: a person oriented toward Being intrinsically believes in life, in the world, in morality, in the meaning of things and in himself.  His relationship to life is informed by hope, wonder, humility and a spontaneous respect for its mysteries.  He does not judge the meaning of his efforts merely by their manifest successes, but first of all by their 'worth in themselves' (i.e. by their worth against the background of the absolute horizon).  In this general sense, however, believers are all those who do not surrender to their existence-in-the-world, regardless of whether they acknowledge a God, a religion or an ideology, and even regardless of whether they admit or deny that there is a transcendental dimension to their way of existence-in-the-world.  The state of mind that has given into existence-in-the-world is, on the contrary, a state of  total resignation (regardless of how it disguises itself).  Somewhere in the depths of his spirit, man feels that nothing matters.  He is concerned for nothing but his purely 'worldly' interests, which are his sole responsibility, and he behaves morally only insofar as, and only when and where, it is expedient to do so, when his actions are visible, for instance."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Havel - Mere Spirituality 3

"The experience of Being is not merely an idea or an opinion: it is a state of the spirit and of the heart, the key to life and to one's orientation of life, to one's way of existence; it is not merely one experience among many: it is the experience of all experiences, their veiled starting point and their veiled end.  It is a genuinely human journey, arduous and beautiful for what it entails - all the way from the injunction to pay attention to the incorruptible voice that is everywhere calling us to responsibility...to that highest delight, as we experience it fully and completely in those fleeting moments when the meaning of Being is brought home to us, when we find ourselves on the very 'edge of finitude' - face-to-face with the miracle of the world and the miracle of our own 'I.'"

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Restraint

I fear a Man of frugal speech -
I fear a Silent Man -
Haranguer - I can overtake -
Or Babbler - entertain -

But He who weigheth - while the Rest -
Expend their furthest pound -
Of this Man - I am wary -
I fear that He is Grand -



 Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 663

Havel - Mere Spirituality 2

"Perhaps it is sufficiently clear that the experience of Being, as I mean it here, is not just a philosophical thesis that can be accepted or rejected with no further existential implications....By this experience I mean something essentially different and more profound: an intrinsic longing to arouse, through the conduct of one's existence in the world, one's own hidden, slumbering, forgotten and betrayed being and through this being - which is anchored in the integrity of 'absolute Being' and separated from the 'I' that is constituted from it, and to which that 'I' is intrinsically oriented - to touch once again that fullness and integrity of Being, at a distance, perhaps, but fully aware this time; through that "counterpoint" of one's own being and that of the world, to reach toward the principle unity of Being; to accept this unity and this 'uniqueness' as a binding system of order and the final vanishing point of all of its existence in the world, and to relate to it as the absolute horizon of all one's horizons."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Havel - Mere Spirituality 1

Some attempt by Havel to put his mystical experience into words -

"But what is, this rather cryptic 'Being'?  I've been using the term for too long now not to feel that the time has come to throw a little light on it....First of all, then: my only truly certain and indisputable experience is the experience of Being in the simplest sense of the word, that is, the experience that something is….The first layer...includes all my direct experience of the world and myself as they manifest themselves to me on various levels of perception.  The second layer - far less direct and vivid, yet incomparably more profound and essential - is the experience of "Being" in the sense that I am using it here....Essentially it is an assumption (or a feeling? a conviction? a certainty? a faith?) that everything I experience on the first level is not, somehow, exhausted by itself, is not 'just that' with 'nothing more to it,' but rather is...expressions of something infinitely more consistent, absolute and absolutely self-defining.  There is here an undeniable intimation not only that 'there is something behind it all,' but also that somewhere in the fathomless depths...of everything that exists there is something beyond which there are no more 'beyonds'...."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Much Madness is Divinest Sense

Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
'Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you're straightway dangerous -
and handled with a Chain


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 620

Science and the Spirit

"The first step down from Phaedrus' statement that 'Quality is the Buddha' is the statement that such a statement, if true, provides a rational basis for a unification of three areas of human experience which are now disunified.  These three areas are Religion, Art and Science....

"The relationship of Quality to the area of Art has been shown rather exhaustively...Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man....

"In the area of Religion, the rational relationship of Quality to the Godhead needs to be more thoroughly established....For the time being one can meditate on the fact that the old English roots for the Buddha and Quality, God and good, appear to be identical.

"It is in the area of Science that I want to focus attention in the immediate future, for this is the area that most badly needs the relationship established.  The dictum that Science and its offspring, technology, are 'value free,' that is, 'quality free,' has got to go.  It's that 'value freedom' that underlies the death-force effectto which attention was brought early in the Chatauqua."

Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

An explanation of why we left the Pre-existence for mortality.

Havel teetered on the brink between Theism and Deism.  Uncomfortable with the term "God," he used Heidegger's "Being" to describe the divine instead.  It's also important to note that his "Pre-I" was as much an invocation of the Freudian idea of the baby's consciousness in the womb as it was an intuition of the pre-existence.  His prison letters were so heavily censored that he had to resort to an almost tortured abstract philosophical tone to get out anything to his wife and friends.  Given all of these limitation, however, his time alone in prison was such an intense time of soul searching and introspection that I find it fascinating to read as an example of a man with little or no theological belief or underpinning wresting openly with his experiences with the divine. 

For example the following paragraph strikes me a useful mini-essay on why we had to leave the Father's presence for a mortal life:

"...by virtue of our 'pre-I,' we still have one foot, as it were, in the original fullness of Being and our mind has not yet emerged with sufficient clarity to make us aware of our state of separation and present to us the necessity of existence-in-the-world, and, of course, the temptation locked within it - if, then, we are not yet capable of reflecting the 'voice of Being' on that level, then only later - in the forge of living trials and through them, as we mature into ourselves - do we find ourselves in a genuinely 'alert' confrontation with that voice, in that never-ending 'dialogue' with it at the crossroads where Being and existence-in-the-world part ways, and only then do we have the real freedom to decide, over and over again, what we will pursue and what we will turn away from.  In other words: we really only discover and begin to understand, accept and fulfill our genuine responsibility 'toward' - through alert 'existential praxis,' through the trials and tribulations we undergo, and the tasks that arise - and of course through our own failures as well."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Old Books

A precious - mouldering pleasure - 'tis -
To meet an Antique Book -
It's just the dress his century wore -
A privilege -  I think -

His venerable Hand to take -
And warming in our own -
A passage back - or two - to make -
To Times when he - was young -

His quaint opinions - to inspect -
His thought to ascertain
On Themes concern our mutual mind
The Literature of Man -

What interested Scholars - most -
What Competitions ran -
When Plato - was a Certainty -
And Sophocles - a Man -

When Sappho - was a living Girl -
And Beatrice wore
The Gown that Dante - deified -
Facts centuries before

He traverses - familiar -
As One should come to Town -
And tell you all your Dreams - were true -
He lived - when Dreams were born -

His presence is enchantment -
You beg him not to go -
Old Volumes shake their Vellum Heads
And tantalize - just so -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 565

A Life's Work

"...I have not considered myself unworthy to make Alexander's exploits known to mankind.  That much I have discerned about myself, whoever I may be.  I need not set down my name, for it is not unknown to men, nor is my country, nor my family nor the offices, if any there were, I have held in my own land.  But this I do put on record: that these chronicles are my country and my family and my offices, and have been from my youth."

Arrian
Anabasis

Inner Resources

Reverse cannot befall
That fine Prosperity
Whose Sources are interior -
As soon - Adversity

A Diamond - overtake
In far - Bolivian Ground -
Misfortune hath no implement
Could mar it - if it found.


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 565

Spiritual Mountains

"The allegory of the physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make.  Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships."

Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Trust in the Unexpected

Trust in the Unexpected -
By this - was William Kidd
Persuaded of the Buried Gold -
As One had testified -

Through this - the old Philosopher -
His talismanic stone
Discerned - still witholden
to effort undivine -

'Twas this - allured Columbus -
When Genoa - withdrew
Before an Apparition
Baptized America -

The Same - afflicted Thomas -
When Deity assured
'Twas better - the perceiving not -
Provided it believed -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 563

Craftsmanship and Peace of Mind

"...the art of the work is just as dependent upon your own mind and spirit as it is upon the material of the machine.  That's why you need the peace of mind."
     "Actually, this idea isn't so strange," I continue.  "Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you'll see the difference.  The craftsman isn't ever following a single line of instruction.  He's making decisions as he goes along.  For that reason he'll be absorbed and attentive to what he's doing even though he doesn't deliberately contrive this.  His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony.  He isn't following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand.  The material and his thoughts are changing together in a progression of changes until his mind's at rest at the same time the material's right."
     "Sounds like art," the instructor says.
     "Well, it is art," I say.  "This divorce of art from technology is completely unnatural."


Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Why dramatic spiritual experiences are rare...

Did Our Best Moment last -
'Twould supersede the Heaven -
A few - and they by Risk - procure -
So this Sort - are not given -

Except as stimulants -
Cases of Despair -
Or Stupor - The Reserve -
These Heavenly moments are -

A Grant of the Divine -
That certain as it Comes -
Withdraws - and leaves the dazzled Soul -
In her unfurnished Rooms -



Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 560

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

     "What I wanted to say..is that I've a set of instructions at home which open up great realms for the improvement of technical writing.  They begin, 'Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.' "
     This produces more laughter, but Sylvia and Gennie and the sculptor give sharp looks of recognition.
     "That's a good instruction," the sculptor says.  Gennie nods too.
     "That's kind of why I saved it," I say, "At first I laughed because of memories of bicycles I'd put together, and of course, the unintended slur on Japanese manufacture.  But there's a lot of wisdom in that statement...
     "Peace of mind isn't at all superficial, really," I expound.  "It's the whole thing.  That which produces it is good maintenance;  that which disturbs it is poor maintenance.  What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind.  The ultimate test's always your own serenity.  If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working on you're likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself."

…………..……………………………………………………………………………………………….

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself."

…………..…………..............................................................................................................................

"The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.  Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind.  The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon."


Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Heaven

"Heaven" has different Signs - to me -
Sometimes, I think that Noon -
Is but a symbol of the Place -
And when again, at Dawn,

A mighty look runs round the World
And settles in the Hills -
An Awe if it should be like that
Opon the Ignorance steals -

The Orchard, when the Sun is on -
The Triumph of the Birds
When they together Victory make -
Some Carnivals of Clouds -

The Rapture of a finished Day
Returning to the West -
All of these - remind us of the place
That Men call "Paradise" -

Itself be fairer - we suppose -
But how Ourself, shall be
Adorned, for a Superior Grace -
Not yet our eyes can see -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 536

The Best Students

A portion of the middle of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a meditation on education.  The following scene stands out in a way that encapsulates Phaedrus' educational journey:

"...every teacher tends to grade up students who resemble him the most....Well there's something wacky here,"  Phaedrus had said, "because the students I like the most, the ones I really feel a sense of identity with, are all failing!"
    DeWeese had completely broken up with laughter at this and left Phaedrus feeling miffed.  He had seen it as a kind of scientific phenomenon that might offer clues to new understanding, and DeWeese had just laughed.
     At first he thought DeWeese was just laughing at his unintended insult to himself.  But that didn't fit because DeWeese wasn't a derogatory person at all.  Later he saw it was a kind of supertruth laugh.  The best students always are flunking.  Every good teacher knows that.  It was a kind of laughter that destroys tensions produced by impossible situations....


Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Time and Eternity

Some - Work for Immortality -
The Chiefer part, for Time -
He - Compensates - immediately -
The former - Checks - on Fame -

Slow Gold - but Everlasting -
The Boullion of Today -
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality -

A Beggar - Here and There -
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight -
One's - Money - One's - the Mine -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 536

The Spirit enlighteneth every man through the world

I've often speculated that the word "through" in D&C 84:46 might not just mean that the spirit enlightens men throughout the world, but also that the spirit uses our experiences in the world to enlighten us if we will allow it.  Vaclav Havel has something similar to say -

"And here we encounter, in a new form, the profoundly paradoxical nature of human existence: the "I" can only approach the kind of Being it longs for (i.e., in the fullness of being) through its own existence-in-the-world, and the manner of that existence.  It can neither skip over that existence, nor get around, nor avoid it nor ignore it."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Some Sayings of the Buddha

• "Few among men are they who cross to the further shore.  The others merely run up and down the bank on this side."
• "He whose senses are mastered like horses well under the charioteers control, he who is purged of pride, free from passions, such a one even the gods envy (hold dear)."
• "He who holds back arisen anger as one checks a whirling chariot, him I call a charioteer, the rest just hold the reins."
• "Conquer anger by love, evil by good; conquer the miser with liberality, and the liar with truth."

I chose these sayings from Rahula's selections from the Dhammapada because of their resonance with scriptural truths I have found to be important.  The first and fourth evoke some sayings of the Savior.  The middle two bring my mind to Alma's exhortation to his son to "bridle his passions."

Books!!!

Unto my books - so good to turn -
Far ends of tired Days -
It half endears the Abstinence -
And Pain - is missed - in Praise -

As Flavors - cheer Retarded Guests
With Banquettings to be -
So Spices - stimulate the time -
Till my small Library -

It may be Wilderness - without -
Far feet of failing Men -
But Holiday - excludes the night -
And it is Bells - within -

I thank these Kinsmen of the Shelf -
Their Countenances Kid -
Enamour - in Prospective -
And satisfy - obtained -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 512

I do find my books, my own "small library" augmented temporarily by borrowings from the four library systems that I have access to, indeed brings solace to "far ends of tired days."  Sometimes the very sight of a book's countenance (whether leather or not) can "enamour in prospective" of future reading pleasures.  This blog is a small glimpse into the satisfactions of that reading.

Turn the Other Cheek

Quotes from the Buddha in the Dhammapada:

"Never by hatred is hatred appeased, but it is appeased by kindness.  This is an eternal truth."

"One should win anger through kindness, wickedness through goodness, selfishness through charity, and falsehood through truthfulness."

"He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me,  he robbed me: the hatred of those who harbor such thoughts is not assuaged."

"One should not pry into the faults of others, into things done and left undone by others.  One should rather consider what by oneself is done and left undone."


Quoted from
Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught 

Some of the Buddha's sayings in the Dhammapada are reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount.

Presentiment

Presentiment - is the long shadow - on the Lawn -
Indicative that Suns go down -

The notice to the startled Grass
That Darkness - is about to pass -



Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 487

What can mindfulness accomplish?

"Say you are really angry, overpowered by anger, ill-will, hatred.  It is curious and paradoxical, that the man who is in anger is not really aware, not mindful that he is angry.  The moment he becomes aware and mindful of that state of his mind, the moment he sees his anger, it becomes, as if it were, shy and ashamed, and begins to subside."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

The Key Logical Flaw in the Worship of Science

"Phaedrus' break occurred when, as a result of laboratory experience he became interested in hypotheses as entities in themselves.  He noticed again and again in his lab work that what might seem to be the hardest part of scientific work, thinking up the hypotheses, was invariably the easiest.  The act of formally writing everything down precisely and clearly seemed to suggest them.  As he was testing hypothesis number one by experimental method a flood of other hypotheses would come to mind, and as he was testing these, some more came to mind, and as he was testing these, still more came to mind until it became painfully evident that as he continued testing hypotheses and eliminating or confirming them their number did not decrease.  It actually increased as he went along.

"....It pleased him never to run out of hypotheses....It was only months after...that he began to have some doubts....

"If the purpose of the scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested.  If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive anPd the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge."

Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Phaedrus then begins to study the history of science and confronts the ever shortening 'half life' of scientific truth and he is profoundly shaken - enough so that a promising career as a biochemist came to a crashing halt.  The chapter as a whole is worth reading by anyone who has a serious interest in the philosophy of science. 

MIndfulness vs. Self Consciousness

"All great work - artistic, poetic, intellectual or spiritual - is produced at those moments when its creators are lost completely in their actions, when they forget themselves altogether, and are free from self-consciousness."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

Albert Einstein on the Scientific Method

"The supreme task...is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction.  There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them..."

Quote (and editing) is from:
Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Pirsig's comment on the quote:

"Intuition? Sympathy? Strange words for the origin of scientific knowledge."

Strange words indeed.

Living in the Moment

"Real life is the present moment - not the memories of the past which is dead and gone, nor the dreams of the future which is not yet born.  One who lives in the present moment lives the real life, and he is the happiest."

"This does not mean that you should not think of the past or future at all.  On the contrary, you think of them in relation to the present moment, the present action, when and where it is relevant."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught


I can see the benefits of mindfulness and attention to the present moment, but how empty is a life without the pleasant memories of the past and the excitement of future plans.  I'm certainly not built to be a Buddhist ascetic.

Possibility

I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of eye -
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky -

Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 466

A Spiritual Experience

"Again, I call to mind that distant moment in Hermanice when on a hot, cloudless summer day, I sat on a pile of rusty iron and gazed into the crown of an enormous tree that stretched with dignified repose, up and over all fences, wires, bars, and watchtowers that separated me from it.  As I watched the imperceptible trembling of its leaves against an endless sky, I was overcome with a sensation that its difficult to describe: all at once, I seemed to rise above all the coordinates of my momentary existence in the world into a kind of state outside time in which all the beautiful things I had ever seen and experienced existed in a total 'co-present'; I felt a sense of reconciliation, indeed of an almost gentle consent to the inevitable course of things as revealed to me now, and this combined with a carefree determination to face what had to be faced.  A profound amazement at the sovereignty of Being became a dizzying sensation of tumbling endlessly into the abyss of its mystery; an unbounded joy at being alive, at having been given the chance to live through all I had lived through, and at the fact that everything has a deep and obvious meaning - this joy formed a strange alliance in me with a vague horror at the inapprehensibility and unattainability of everything I was so close to in that moment, standing at the very 'edge of the finite'; I was flooded with a sense of ultimate happiness and harmony with the world and myself, with that moment, with all the moments I could call up, and with everything invisible that lies behind it and which has meaning.  I would even say that I was somehow 'struck by love,' though I don't know precisely for whom or what."

Vaclav Havel
Letters From Olga

Hermanice was the second of three prisons in which Havel served out his sentence in communist Czechoslovakia for "subverting the republic."

Anapanasati

"One of the simplest and easiest of practices," this is the concentration on breathing.  My wife and I have been practicing a form of this as part of her therapy for anxiety.  You simply sit up straight and concentrate on your breathing, being aware of each breath in and each breath out, for five or ten minutes, once in the morning, once at night.

"At the beginning you will find it extremely difficult to bring your mind to concentrate on your breathing...After a certain period, you will experience just that split second when your mind is fully concentrated on your breathing, when you will not even hear sounds nearby, when no external world exists for you.  This slight moment is such a tremendous experience for you, full of joy, happiness and tranquility....if you go on practicing you may repeat the experience again and again for longer and longer periods."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

Meditation

"It aims at cleansing the mind of impurities and disturbances, such as lustful desires, hatred, ill-will, indolence, worries and restlessness, skeptical doubts and cultivating such qualities as concentration, awareness, intelligence, will, energy, the analytical faculty, confidence, joy, tranquility, leading finally to the attainment of highest wisdom which sees the nature of things as they are..."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

Half Hidden

A Charm invests a face
Imperfectly beheld -
The Lady dare not lift her Vail
For fear it be dispelled.

But peers beyond her mesh -
And wishes - and denies -
Lest interview - annul a want
That image - satisfies -

Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 430

The Buddha as a Teacher

"He was a practical teacher, full of compassion and wisdom.  He did not answer questions to show his knowledge and intelligence, but to help the questioner on his way realization.  He always spoke to people bearing in mind their standard of development, their tendencies, their mental make-up, their character, their capacity to understand a particular question."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

The Refiner's Fire

Dare you see a Soul at the "White Heat"?
Then crouch within the door -
Red - is the Fire's common tint -
But when the vivid ore

Has vanquished Flame's conditions -
It quivers from the Forge
Without a color, but the Light
Of unannointed Blaze -

Least Village, boasts it's Blacksmith -
Whose Anvil's even ring
Stands symbol for the finer Forge
That soundless tugs - within -

Refining these impatient Ores
With Hammer and with Blaze
Until the designated Light
Repudiate the Forge -

Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 401

Nirvana

I find I'm less interested in religious "concepts" than I am in concrete realities.  Nirvana as a philosophical concept leaves me cold, but this description of what Nirvana is supposed to produce in a practicing Buddhist who has attained it is fascinating and suggestive:


"He who has realized the Truth, Nirvana, is the happiest being in the world.  He is free from all 'complexes' and obsessions, the worries and troubles that torment others.  His mental health is perfect.  He does not repent the past, nor does he brood over the future.  He lives fully in the present.  Therefore he appreciates and enjoys things in the purest sense without self-projections.  He is joyful, exultant, enjoying the pure life, his faculties pleased, free from anxiety, serene and peaceful.  As he is free from selfish desire, hatred, ignorance, conceit, pride and all such 'defilements', he is pure and gentle, full of universal love, compassion, kindness, sympathy, understanding and tolerance.  His service to others is of the purest, For he has not thought of self."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

Transcendence

The World is not conclusion.
A Species stands beyond -
Invisible, as Music -
But positive, as Sound -
It beckons and it baffles -
Philosophy, don't know -
And through a Riddle, at the last -
Sagacity, must go -
To guess it, puzzles scholars -
To gain it, men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown -
Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies -
Blushes, if any see -
Plucks at a twig of Evidence -
And asks a Vane, the way -
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit -
Strong Hallelujahs roll -
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul.

Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 373

The Audacity of Human Conclusions

Rahula quotes the Buddha as saying:

"Within this fathom-long sentient body itself, I postulate the world, the arising of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

For me it brings to mind a Quote from Charles Darwin:

"But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

The Experience of Pain and Shock

After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious,  like Tombs -
The stiff Heart questions, 'was it He, that bore,'
And 'Yesterday or Centuries before'?

The Feet, mechanical, go round -
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone -

This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
First Chill - then Stupor - then letting go -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 372

The Value of Outside Input

"The principle involved is similar to what in go is called 'the advantage is to the onlooker.'  One speaks of 'learning one's faults through contemplation,' but this too is best done by talking with others.  The reason is that when one learns by listening to what others have to say and by reading books, one transcends the limitations of one's own powers of discernment and follows the teachings of the ancients."

Jocho Yamamoto in
Yukio Mishima
The Way of the Samurai

To some degree, this is the raison d'etre of this blog

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“Cliches and stereotypes such as ‘beatniks’ and ‘hippie’ have been invented for the antitechnologists, the antisystem people, and will continue to be.  But one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term.”

Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Reality and Selection

“We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.”

Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Clashes of Faith

"When you're talking birth control, what blocks it and freezes it out is that it's not a matter of more or fewer babies being argued.  That's just on the surface.  What's underneath is a conflict of faith, of faith in empirical social planning versus faith in the authority of God as revealed by the teachings of the Catholic Church."

Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

People who live along the side roads - small town and country life

"The whole pace of life and personality of the people who live along them are different.  They're not going anywhere.  They're not too busy to be courteous.  The hereness and the nowness of things is something they know all about.  It's the others, the ones who moved to the cities years ago and their lost offspring, who have all but forgotten it."

Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Simplicity

It's thoughts - and just One Heart -
And Old Sunshine - about -
Make frugal - Ones - content
And two or three - for Company -
Opon a Holiday -
Crowded - as Sacrament -

Books - when the Unit -
Spare the Tenant - long eno' -
A Picture - if it Care -
Itself - a Gallery too rare -
For needing more -

Flowers - to keep the eyes - from going awkward -
When it snows -
A Bird - if they - prefer -
Though winter fire - sing clear as power -
To our - ear -

A Landscape - not so great
To suffocate the eye -
A Hill - perhaps -
Perhaps - the profile of a Mill
Turned by the wind -
Tho' such - are luxuries -

It's thoughts - and just two Heart -
And Heaven - about -
At least - a Counterfeit -
We would not have Correct -
And Immortality - can be almost -
Not quite - Content -



Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 362

Surprised by Grace

Like Flowers, that heard the news of Dews,
But never deemed the dripping prize
Awaited their - low brows -

Or Bees - that thought the Summer's name
Some rumor of Delirium,
No Summer - could - for Them -

Or Arctic Creatures, dimly stirred -
By Tropic Hint - some Traveled Bird
Imported to the Wood -

Or Wind's bright signal to the Ear -
Making that homely and severe,
Contented, known, before -

The Heaven - unexpected come,
To lives that thought the Worshipping
A too pretentious Psalm.


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 361

Tending the Springs

"Look within.  Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig."

Marcus Aurelius
Meditations

Mortality III - operating under the veil

"Thus is man alienated from Being, but precisely because of this he is seared by longing for its integrity (which he understands as meaningfulness), by a desire to merge with it and thus to transcend himself totally.  As such, however, he is also alienated from the world in which he finds himself, a world that captivates and imprisons him.  He is an alien in the world because he is still somehow bound up in Being, and he is alienated from Being because he has been thrown into the world.  His drama unfolds in the rupture between his orientation 'upward' and 'backward' and a constant falling 'downward' and into 'now.'  He is surrounded by the horizon of the world. from which there is no escape, and at the same time, consumed by a longing to break through this horizon and step beyond it.

"The absurdity of being at the intersection of this dual state of 'throwness,' or rather this dual expulsion, can understandably give a person a reason (or rather an excuse) for giving up.  He may also, however, accept it as a unique challenge enjoined upon his freedom, a challenge to set out - by virtue of all his thrownesses - on a multisignificational journey between Being and the world (and thus, at the same time, to establish the outlines of his identity); to undertake it, aware that his goal lies beyond his field of vision, but also that precisely and only that fact can reveal the journey, make it possible and ultimately give it meaning; to fulfill uniquely the enigmatic mission of humanity in the history of Being by submitting to his destiny in an authentic, thoughtful way, a way that is faithful to everything originally good and therefore effective, and to make this entirely lucid acceptance of his entirely obscure task a source of sage delight to him."

Vaclav Havel
Letters From Olga

Mortality - II

"This inner echo of a home or a paradise forever lost to us - as a constitutive part of our "I" - defines the extent of what we are destined to lack and what we therefore cannot help but reach toward: for does not the hunger for meaning, for an answer to the question of what - in the process of becoming ourselves - we have become, derive from the recollection of a separated being for its state of primordial being in Being?  From the other side, the alien world into which we are thrown beckons to us and tempts us.  On the one hand we are constantly exposed to the temptation to stop asking questions and to adapt ourselves to the world as it presents itself to us, to sink into it, to forget ourselves in it, to lie our way out of ourselves and our 'otherness' and thus to simplify our existence-in-the-world.  At the same time we are persuaded over and over again that we can only reach toward meaning within the dimensions of this world, as it lies before us, by being open to the opening out of meaning within the world."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Havel's sentence on temptation brings to my mind a passage from Emerson that has been haunting me of late.  The passage is from his essay, History -

"...near and proper to us is also that old fable of the Sphinx, who was said to sit in the road-side and put riddles to every passenger. If the man could not answer, she swallowed him alive. If he could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. What is our life but an endless flight of winged facts or events! In splendid variety these changes come, all putting questions to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer by a superior wisdom these facts or questions of time, serve them. Facts encumber them, tyrannize over them, and make the men of routine the men of sense, in whom a literal obedience to facts has extinguished every spark of that light by which man is truly man. But if the man is true to his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as one that comes of a higher race, remains fast by the soul and sees the principle, then the facts fall aptly and supple into their places; they know their master, and the meanest of them glorifies him."

The Conditions of Mortaility

"Birth from the maternal womb - as the moment one sets out on one's journey through life - presents a telling image of the initial condition of humanity: a state of separation....The miracle of the subject is born.  The secret of the 'I.'  The awareness of self.  The awareness of the world.  The mystery of freedom and responsibility.  Man as a being that has fallen out of Being and therefore continually reaches towards it, as the only entity by which and to which Being has revealed itself as a question, as a secret and as meaning.
     It seems to me that the notion of separation as humanity's starting point helps us establish our bearings when we explore the stage on which human existence is constituted and its drama unfolded.
     Separation creates a deeply contradictory situation: mans is not what he has set out into, or rather, he is not his experience of what he has set out into.  To him, this terrain - the world - is an alien land.  Every step of the way, he comes up against his own "otherness" in the world and his otherness vis-à-vis himself.  This terrain is essentially unintelligible to man.  He feels unsettled and threatened by it.  We experience the world as something not our own, something from which meaning must first be wrested and which, on the contrary, is constantly taking meaning away from us....it is in fact a part of what we have been thrown into or what we have fallen into and what drives us - in the alienness of the world - into situations we do not fully understand, which we suffer but cannot avoid."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Attention

"In discourse thou must attend to what is said, and in every movement thou must observe what is doing.  And in the one thou shouldst see immediately to what end it refers, but in the other watch carefully what is the thing signified."

Marcus Aurelius
Meditations

How to Listen

"Accustom thyself to attend carefully to what is said by another, and as much as it is possible, be in the speaker's mind."

Marcus Aurelius
Meditations

Small Things

It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it’s the little things that smooths people’s roads the most, down here below;

Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

With all your heart, might, mind and strength....

"Whatever name you give it - will, steady purpose, or one-pointedness of the mind - you come back to earnestness, sincerity, honesty.  When you are in dead earnest, you bend every incident, every second of your life to your purpose.  You do not waste time and energy on other things.  You are totally dedicated, call it will, love or plain honesty.  We are complex beings, at war within and without.  We contradict ourselves all the time, undoing today the work of yesterday.  No wonder we are stuck.  A little integrity would make a lot of difference."

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That

Later he sums up the point he is trying to make -

"Desire determines destiny."

D&C 137:9

9 For I, the Lord, will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts.

Theories and Experiments

I'm about a third of the way into Nisargadatta Maharaj's I Am That, and he is finally beginning to get interesting in and of himself.

"Theories are neither right nor wrong.  They are attempts at explaining the inexplicable.  It is not the theory that matters, but the way it is being tested.  It is the testing of the theory that makes it fruitful.  Experiment with any theory you like--if you are truly earnest and honest, the attainment of reality will be yours.  As a living being you are caught in an untenable and painful situation and you are seeking a way out.  You are being offered several plans of your prison, none quite true.  But they are of some value, only if you are in dead earnest."

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That

Fallen from Grace

If I'm lost - now
That I was found
Shall still my transport be -
That once - on me - those Jasper Gates
Blazed open - suddenly -

That on my awkward - gazing - face -
The angels  - softly peered -
And touched me with their fleeces,
Almost as if they cared -

I'm banished - now - you know it -
How foreign that can be -
You'll know - sir - when the Savior's face
Turns so - away from you.


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 316

Attention

"Look within.  Let neither the peculiar quality of anything or its value escape thee."

Marcus Aurelius
Meditiations

We bid Farewell to D. T. Suzuki's "Zen Buddhism" with a Tea Ceremony

I've finished the book.  Overall, I can see much in Zen Buddhism that can improve an individual's lifr.  I've already voiced several things I feel it seems to miss, but perhaps the final lack is pointed out by Suzuki himself when he focuses on Japanese Zen's sense of "eternal loneliness" (Sabi or Wabi or Shibumi).  Thomas Merton once remarked that Buddhist monasticism struck him as Christianity without Christ.  I find that one lack to make all the difference.  Back to my earlier discussion of Hinduism, this quality is why I've always found Ramanuja so much more congenial than Shankara.  The incarnation is God's bridging of that lonely existential gap. 

As a farewell, though, I'd like to dwell not on a lack, but on a beauty.  The book ends with a tea ceremony with powerful evocations of some of what we seek in temple worship --



"Where a series of flagstones irregularly arranged comes to a stop, there stands a most insignificant-looking straw-thatched hut, low and unpretentious to the last degree.  The entrance is not by a door but a sort of aperture; to enter through it a visitor has to be shorn of all his encumbrances, that is to say, to take off both his swords, long and short, which in feudal days a samurai used to carry all the time.  The inside is a small semi-lighted room about ten feet square; the ceiling is low and of uneven height and structure.  The posts are not smoothly planed, they are mostly of natural wood.  After a little while, however, the room grows gradually lighter as our eyes begin to adjust themselves to the new situation.  We notice an ancient looking kakemono in the alcove with some handwriting or a picture of sumiye type.  An incense burner emits a fragrance which has the effect of soothing one's nerves.  The flower vase contains no more than a single stem of flowers, neither gorgeous nor ostentatious; but like a little white lily blooming under a rock surrounded by in no way somber pines, the humble flower is enhanced in beauty and attracts the attention of the gathering of four or five visitors especially invited to sip a cup of tea in order to forget the worldly cares that may be oppressing them."

"Now we listen to the sound of boiling water in the kettle as it rests on a tripod frame over a fire in the square hole cut in the floor.  The sound is not that of actually boiling water but comes from the heavy iron kettle, and it is most appropriately likened by the connoisseur to a breeze that passes through the pine grove.  It greatly adds to the serenity of the room, for a man here feels as if he were sitting alone in a mountain-hut where a white cloud and the pine music are his only consoling companions."

"To take a cup of tea with friends in this environment, talking probably about the sumiye sketch in the alcove or some art topic suggested by the tea-utensils in the room, wonderfully lifts the mind above the perplexities of life.  The warrior is saved from his daily occupation of fighting, and the business man from his ever-present idea of money-making.  Is it not something, indeed, to find in this world of struggles and vanities a corner, however humble, where one can rise above the limits of relativity and even have a glimpse of eternity."

Hope

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
and never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird -
That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chilliest land -
And on the strangest sea -
Yet - never - in extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.



Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 314

Zen and Culture - Our Penultimate Farewell to D. T. Suzuki

Suzuki chooses four things to illustrate Zen's impact on Japanese civilization.  The first three are: Sumiye, a rapid improvisational sketch made with ink and brush; Haiku, a short poem, often explosively written as a result of a sudden aesthetic experience or insight; and Kendo, Japan's art of the sword with it's lightning swift attacks and responses.  In all of them there is a certain rapport between the 'unconscious' and the conscious mind with expresses it.  Conciseness, rapidity, artlessness, lack of deliberation and smoothly 'catching spirit as it moves' are valued in all of them.  "You do not have to compose a grand poem of many hundred lines to give vent to the feeling thus awakened by looking into the abyss,"  He tells us.  Here are no oil paintings with their with wiping and overlaying and realism, neither "deliberately designed plans" nor "grandeur of conception."  Here is no "well thought out system of philosophy, each thread of whose logic is closely knitted."  Here is no "grand cathedral, whose walls, pillars and foundations are composed of solid blocks of stone."

In each of the arts enumerated the foes to be conquered are

• lingering
• deliberation, thinking, cogitation
• erasing
• repetition
• retouching
• remodeling
• doctoring
• building up
• logic, reason
• reflection
• deliberate design and correction
• delay, interruption
• hesitation, faltering, wavering, being troubled
• too full expression
• self consciousness

I love sumiye, haiku and martial arts.   I can glimpse how a zen-like effortlessness would have its utility in these and certain other endeavors.  However, I also love cathedrals, epic poems, realistic oil paintings, novels and philosophical structures.   As a goal, zen-like states of consciousness seem to not include the fullness of what makes us human.  I doubt that Suzuki's own essays here were the result of only lightning strikes

The Beam in Our Eye

"Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot?  I know no speck so troublesome as self."

George Eliot
Middlemarch

Charity

"The Love a life can show Below,
Is but a filament, I know
Of that diviner thing....

'Tis this - invites - appalls - endows -
Flits - glimmers - proves - dissolves -
Returns - suggests - convicts - enchants -
Then - flings in paradise."


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 285


A fragment of a larger poem, but the beginning and end together say something to me quite directly that is lessened by including the carefully wrought fancies of the poem's middle.

Zen for Human Beings

"We cannot remain forever in a state of undifferentiation; we are so mad as to give expression to every experience we go through, and by thus expressing ourselves we realize that the experience grows deeper and clearer.  A dumb experience is no experience at al; it is human to express, that is to appeal to differentiation and analysis; and so, we can say that animals have no experience whatever.  Tathata cannot remain expressionless and undifferentiated; it has to that extent to be conceptualized.  While to utter, "Oh the Morning Glory!" is to come out of the identification, and hence to be no more of tathata, this coming out of itself, this negating itself in order to be itself, is the way in which we are all constituted.  And this conceptualization inevitably leads to contradictions which can only be dissolved in the synthesis of prajna-intuition."

D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism


Tathata "is variously translated as "thusness" or "suchness"." (Wikipedia)
"the ultimate inexpressible nature of all things."  (Google)

Prajna according to Wikipeidia is "often translated as "wisdom", but is closer in meaning to "insight", "discriminating knowledge", or "intuitive apprehension".


Located near the end of the book (after endless Zen stories emphasizing the ineffable nature of all Zen insights), this is the first paragraph where I can begin catch a glimpse of what life might be like for a practitioner of Zen - what it might be like to BE a Zen Buddhist.

Joseph Campbell's picture of the modern task

Finished The Hero With A Thousand Faces.  Found the early chapters, focused on the universal journey of the soul, fascinating, found the second half of the book less so, though as a historian, I find it interesting as a part of the picture of the attitudes of the late forties of the Twentieth Century. Campbell's wide ranging finding of patterns in common from hundreds of myths, legends, folktales and psychiatric writings is in tune with the work of many other scholars of his time. the works of Mircea Eliade, Arnold Toynbee, James Frazer, and our own Hugh Nibley were influenced by the same intellectual climate.  Campbell's optimistic acceptance of Jung and Freud as harbingers of a new dawn of psychic progress is also a product of his particular time and place.

Campbell's last section, The Hero Today, is his summary of what he expects us to take away from the journey through world mythology he has lead us on.  He sees our civilization as founded on a modern myth ("the hero-cycle of the Modern Age") of the emergence of Modernity from the darkness of the past  --

"The spell of the past, the bondage of tradition, were shattered with sure and mighty strokes.  The dream web of myth fell away; the mind opened to full waking consciousness; and modern man emerged from ancient ignorance, like a butterfly from its cocoon, or like the sun at dawn from the womb of mother night." 

For those who (like the New Atheists) have adopted this myth this "wonder-story of mankind's coming to maturity," Science, Technology and the individual self determination of the new democratic man has swept away the old world of religion, something Campbell doesn't necessarily see as bad.  His worry is that the society that religion once created has been swept away as well, and the old symbolic methods of guiding and nurturing human development have gone.  The triumph of economics and politics has left religion in a secondary position in a church goer's life, a "religious pantomime...hardly more...than a sanctimonious exercise for Sunday morning, whereas business ethics and patriotism stand for the remainder of the week."

Man, Campbell believed, needed to turn back to the unconscious and find the symbols that would surface to "render the modern world spiritually significant" and to allow "men and women to come to full human maturity,"  and society to become something more than "an economic political organization...in hard unremitting competition for supremacy and material resources."

Although he found the psychological models of his time easy to integrate into his own model of the mythic unity within our psyche, here at the end of the book he does not even hold them up as the way forward for man's spiritual progress.  Indeed, he finds no more hope in the conscious ideologies of his day than he does in the remnants of the great world religions.  He is waiting for something truly universal and global --

"The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of the presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice and sanctified misunderstanding....It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse."

It's been sixty years since the book was published, and the triumph of economics and politics, on both left and right, over spirituality and religion has become more pronounced not less.  The great world religions have stubbornly refused to fade away, however, and still offer the strongest shelters available to those who prioritize spiritual goals over materialistic concerns.

In the quiet heart is hidden Sorrow that the eye can't see

Her smile was shaped like other smiles -
The dimples ran along -
Still it hurt you, as some Bird
Did hoist herself to sing,
Then recollect a Ball, she got -
And hold opon the twig -
Convulsive, while the music broke -
Like Beads - among the bog -

A happy lip - breaks sudden -
It doesn't state you how
It contemplated - smiling-
Just consummated - now -
But this one wears its merriment
So patient - like a pain -
Fresh gilded - to elude the eyes
Unqualified, to scan -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 335

Pre-existence

"All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there."

Rumi
The Essential Rumi
Translated by Coleman Banks

Twain muses on Provicence

"Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect’s need? and has it another important object to accomplish ten thousand years to come?"

Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Fruit of our Labors

"...a small heap of glittering fragments, whence the mystery of beauty had fled forever.  And as for Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and which was not yet ruin.  He had caught a far other butterfly than this.  When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to moral senses became of little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality."

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Artist of the Beautiful
The Portable Hawthorne

Bright Conceptions and Toil

"Sweet, doubtless, were those days, and congenial to the artist's soul.  They were full of bright conceptions, which gleamed through his intellectual world as the butterflies gleamed through the outward atmosphere, and were real to him, for the instant, without the toil, and perplexity, and many disappointments of attempting to make them visible to the sensual eye."

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Artist of the Beautiful
The Portable Hawthorne

Ah, that gap between what we conceive and what we achieve.  I've always been moved by a song from the Country Western band Blackhawk, Just About Right:

My old friend,
Lives up in the mountains
He flew up there to paint the world
He says, "Even though interpretation's what I count on, this little picture to me seems blurred"
"Hard lines and the shadows come easy
I see them all just as clear as a bell
I just can't seem to set my easel to please me;
I paint my Heaven, but it looks like Hell"

 

Your blue might be gray, your less might be more
Your window to the world might be your own front door
Your shiniest day might come in the middle of the night
That's just about right

 

He says, "Man, I ain't comin' down 'til my picture is perfect
And all the wonder has gone from my eyes"
Down through my hands and onto the canvas,
Still like my vision but still a surprise"
"Real life",…

He says, "Man, I ain't comin' down 'til my picture is perfect
And all the wonder has gone from my eyes"
Down through my hands and onto the canvas,
Still like my vision but still a surprise"
"Real life", he says, "is the hardest impression
It's always movin' so I let it come through"
"And that", I say, "is the glory of true independence" "Just do what you do what you just gotta do"

 

Your blue might be gray, your less might be more
Your window to the world might be your own front door
Your shiniest day might come in the middle of the night
That's just about right

What was I born to do?

     "You are my evil spirit," answered Owen, much excited--"you and the hard, coarse world!  The leaden thoughts and the despondency that you fling upon me are my clogs, else I should long ago have achieved the task I was created for."
     Peter Hovenden shook his head, with the mixture of contempt and indignation which mankind, of whom he was partly a representative, deem themselves entitled to feel towards all simpletons who seek other prizes than the dusty one along the highway.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Artist of the Beautiful
The Portable Hawthorne

Logic and Spiritual Experience

"To say that the five skandhas are by nature empty and their combination an illusion is not  enough for those who have not actually experienced this fact.  They want to see the problem solved according to...logic....The teaching of anatman is the expression of an experience, and not at all a logical conclusion.  However much they try to reach it by their logical subtleties they fail, or their reasoning lacks the force of a final conviction.
     Since the Buddha, many are the masters of the Abhidharma who have exhausted their power of ratiocination to establish logically the theory of anatman, but how many Buddhists or outsiders are there who are really intellectually convinced of the theory?  If they have a conviction about this teaching it comes from their experience and not from theorizing.  With the Buddha, an actual personal conviction came first; then came a logical construction to back up the conviction.  It did not matter very much indeed whether or not this construction was satisfactorily completed, for the conviction, that is the experience itself, was a fait accompli."

D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism

Havel - the experience of meaning as a mystical relationship

Havel was no simple theist.  His spiritual experiences have a strong personal tinge to them though -

"man, whose quest is always - whether he admits it or not - an aspiration toward the 'absolute meaning of Being,' is suddenly confronted with a set of phenomena that reveal themselves as expressions of an integral Being and with Being that reveals itself to have meaning.  And thus, in fact, an encounter takes place: the existential longing for meaning encounters a powerful 'metaphysical-physical' signal of meaning and its 'obvious' manifestation.  And just as a human being who longs for meaning is open to the world, ready to hear its promptings, decode its signals, draw from it its deepest connections and its references to the order of Being - and thus infuse it with meaning - suddenly, the world too is, as it were, ready to infuse that existence with meaning: it intensifies its signals, it behaves in an 'obvious' manner.  We are then overcome by a feeling of joyous meaningfulness because we suddenly feel that the thing we have been constantly reaching out for is almost physically within our grasp, because it is not just we who are greedily open to it; our counterpart, too, has opened itself to us.  It is not just we who long for contact with the meaning of Being, but the meaning of Being itself, if it can be put that way, reaches out to us.  I feel like saying that a kind of mystic cooperation occurs; our need to discover our own meaning by touching 'absolute meaning' entices this meaning out of what surrounds us, and what surrounds us, on the contrary, entices from the deepest regions of our being our own veiled certitude that meaning exists, which is, the certitude of life itself."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

One danger of aging

"Many People give advice, but those who receive it gratefully are few.  Still rarer are those who follow such advice.  Once a man passes the age of thirty, there is no one to advise him.  When advice ceases to reach him, he becomes willful and selfish.  For the rest of his life he adds impropriety to foolishness until he is beyond redemption."

JochoYamamoto
Hagakure

quoted in
Yukio Mishima
The Way of the Samurai

Unto the least...

Perhaps you think Me stooping
I'm not ashamed of that
Christ - stooped until he touched the Grave -
Do those at Sacrament

Commemorate Dishonor
Or love annealed of love
Until it bend as low as Death
Redignified, above?

Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 273



Wikipedia:
"Annealing, in metallurgy and materials science, is a heat treatment that alters the physical and sometimes chemical properties of a material to increase its ductility and reduce its hardness, making it more workable."

Like the peal of a great bell, the theological echoes of this poem reverberate for a long time.

Procrastination

I held a Jewel in my fingers -
And went to sleep -
The day was warm, and winds were prosy -
I said "Twill keep" -

I woke - and chid my honest fingers,
The Gem was gone -
And now, an Amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.

Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 261



I too have learned to my sorrow that creatively it is best to strike while the iron is hot.

Zanshin

Bennett's examination of Bushido is very pragmatic.  His Philosophical explanations center on real life experiences in martial arts dojo's in Japan.  The first section of the book focuses on the concept of Zanshin, a term that connotes awareness and focus, with a dash of never letting your guard down and more than hint of compassion, respect and empathy, even for, perhaps, especially for, your opponent.

In an interesting section called "Zanshin Outside the Dojo," Bennett examines taking the attitude out of combat (or ritual combat).  Taking care of one's health, avoiding careless mistakes, treating others with courtesy and respect, carefully getting all of one's belongings out of a taxi and carefully saving the receipt are examples of Zanshin in action.  Losing keys or a wallet, forgetting to flush a toilet, and getting irresponsibly drunk (drunk enough to lose self control) are examples of lack of Zanshin.

"No Zanshin in the context of daily life is born of a failure to create a little buffer of space, stepping back and taking a minute to refocus, pay attention and get back in the moment."

Theologically, the constant Book of Mormon exhortation to "remember" serves as a kind of spiritual Zanshin in daily life.

I for one could use a lot more of both types of Zanshin.

reinhabitation

The Robin's my Criterion for Tune -
Because I grew - where Robins do -
But, were I cuckoo born -
I'd swear by him -
The ode familiar - rules the Noon -
The Buttercup's, my whim for Bloom -
Because, we're Orchard sprung -
But, were I Britain born,
I'd Daises spurn -

None but the Nut - October fit -
Because - through dropping it,
The seasons flit - I'm taught -
Without the Snow's Tableau
Winter were lie - to me -
Because I see - New Englandly -
The Queen, discerns like me -
Provincially -


The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 256

Public Relations

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!


The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin). 260

Satori and the Unconscious

Suzuki's longest (and for me the hardest) section is on Zen and the Unconscious.

He spends a great deal of time on theological debates amongst late first millenium Chinese Buddhists fraught with technical terms and attempts to relate them to the psychological/spiritual experience of Satori.  He finds the unconscious mind of the late 20th century West (fraught with Jungian understandings) a useful tool for trying to describe what is admitedly undescribable. 

While not presented as a religious experience, Alexander Bennett describes a moment of Zen like concentration in a Kendo meet that may have parallels with what Suzuki is trying to explain -



"My opponent was a formidable fencer, but I was resolved to give it my all and let the result take care of itself.  Not far into the bout, I managed to score a strike to the head - a decisive hit.  I felt no particular elation, no desire or excitement after taking the lead.  I was in the zone.  Then before I knew it, I had scored a second point to his head."

Alexander Bennett
Bushido and the Art of Living


"in the zone"
"let the result take care of itself"
"no particular elation, no desire or excitement"

These terms of non-attachment Bennett calls mushin 'no-mind' - term very important to Suzuki's decription as well.

Why is what we choose to believe so important?

An interesting perspective from a dissident imprisoned in the days of communist rule in Czechoslovakia -

"In recent years I've met several intelligent and decent people who were very clearly and to my mind, very tragically, marked by their fate: they became bitter, misanthropic world haters who lost faith in everything.  Quite separately, they managed to persuade themselves that people are selfish, evil and untrustworthy, that it makes no sense to help anyone, to try to achieve anything or to rectify anything, that all moral principles, higher aims and suprapersonal ideals are naively utopian and that one must accept the world 'as it is' - which is to say unalterably bad - and behave accordingly.  And that means looking out for no one but oneself and living the rest of one's life as quietly and inconspicuously as possible.

"....Resignation, like faith, can be deliberate or unpremeditated.  If it is deliberate, then the tinge of bad conscience that customarily clings to it requires it to be justified and defended extensively (before whom? why?) by referring to the evil of the world and the incorrigibility of that evil.  The important thing to note here, of course, is that it was not the evil of the world that ultimately led the person to give up, but rather his own resignation that led him to the theory about the evil of the world.  However 'unbelievers' may deny it, the existential choice always comes first, and only then is followed by the dead-end, pessimistic picture of the world that is meant to justify that choice.... To put it even less charitably: 'unbelievers' insist on the incorrigible evil of the world so obstinately chiefly to justify committing some of those evils themselves.  (Notice that whenever someone starts carrying on about how corrupt everything around him is, it is usually a clear signal that he is preparing to do something rather nasty himself.)"

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Touched by Strange Fire

A life long interest in the spiritual experiences of the race - not just those bound within the borders of my creed and communion, but the race entire! - has been a little difficult at times to explain, even to myself.



I've heard an Organ talk, sometimes -
In a Cathedral Aisle,
And understood no word it said -
Yet held my breath, the while -

And risen up - and gone away,
A more Bernardine Girl -
Yet - knew not what was done to me
In that old Chapel Aisle.

Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickenson, (Franklin), 211

Summerholics Anonymous

I taste a liquor never brewed -
From Tankards scooped in Pearl -
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air - am I -
And Debauchee of Dew -
Reeling - thro' endless summer days -
From inns of molten Blue -

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door -
When Butterflies - renounce their "drams" -
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their Snowy Hats -
And Saints - to windows run -
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the - Sun!


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 207

Crepuscular Transitions

I'll tell you how the Sun rose -
A Ribbon at a time -
The Steeples swam in Amethyst -
The news, like Squirrels, ran -
The Hills untied their Bonnets -
The Bobolinks - began -
Then I said softly to myself -
"That must have been the sun!"
But how he set - I know not -
There seemed a purple stile
That Yellow boys and girls
were climbing all the while -
Till when they reached the other side -
A Dominie in in Gray -
Put gently up the evening Bars -
And led the flock away -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin),
204

Havel - Truth and Information

"...The meaning of life is not, as some people often think, just an item of unfamiliar information that can be communicated by someone who knows it to someone who doesn't, somewhat the way an astronomer would tell us how many planets the solar system has, or a statistician how many of us are alcoholics.  The mystery of Being and the meaning of life are not 'data' and people cannot be separated into two groups, those who know the data and those who don't....Safarik correctly distinguishes between truth and information: information is portable and transmissible, whereas it is by no means as simple with truth."

"....Anything meaningful that has ever been said in this matter (including every religious gospel), is...remarkable for its dramatic openness, its incompleteness.  It is not a confirmation so much as a challenge or an appeal; something that is, in the highest sense, 'taking place,' living, something that overwhelms us or speaks to us, obliges or excites us, something that is in concord with our innermost experience and which may even change our entire life from the ground up but which never, of course, attempts to answer, unambiguously, the unanswerable question of meaning (answer in the sense of 'settling the matter' or 'sweeping it off the table").  It always tends rather to suggest a certain way of living with the question."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga


An interesting perspective on meaning/truth and information/data.  A little overstated perhaps, but still  a useful counterbalance to our tendency as Mormons to OVER value the INFORMATION that God has given (as well as to overestimate our understanding of that information) and to UNDER value our encounter with the truth and meaning given by our personal connection to God and the Savior.  For example, I find attempts to reconstruct the history of the earth from the data given in Genesis far less useful than the truth and meanings that the passage conveys - that God is a careful creator, that his creations are marvels that deserve reverence, that they have a purpose, that we are created in his image and likeness. 

Blooming Where You Are Planted

"Each time you visit, you tell me about more friends who have left the country.  I understand them, particularly the young people who want to know the world, study, see something, and who don't feel bound to this place by a sense of responsibility to work already begun or by a feeling that there are some things a man does not walk away from.  And yet when I think about it, it seems to me that a decision to leave is always appropriate when...someone conceives of study chiefly as the gathering of information.  If one is after truth, however, on had better look for it in oneself and the world fate has thrown one into.  If you don't make the effort here, you'll scarcely find it elsewhere.  Aren't some of these departures an escape from truth instead of a journey in search of it?"

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga



It's not that I don't believe that the spirit can move one, like Abraham, to "lekh l'kha," - "get thee out...and go to a land that I will shew thee" (Genesis 12:1).  But one should also be open to the fact that at times the spirit calls one, as it did to Havel, to sit tight, to stay put, even in a difficult place.

Questioning God

Hildegard of Bingen has some interesting things to say about questions of faith -

"In these struggles, the question arises: Is there a God or not.  The answer of this question comes to people from the Holy Spirit, namely that there is a God who created you and who also redeemed you.  As long as the question and the answer is in the person, the virtue of God will not be out of the person because repentance clings to this question and answer.  However when the question is not in a person, then neither is the answer of the Holy Spirit because such a person drives the gift of God out from himself or herself."

My experience is similar.  It's not the questions of faith that are caustic.  The only damage that is done to the soul is in the leap of faith one makes to conclude there is no God.  For thus one loses also, as Hildegard observes, the "question of repentance" as well, and puts oneself on a spiritual path that leads downward.

Little Things

"One must pay attention to the little theories that govern our daily life waking and sleeping, the minor beliefs."

Yukio Mishima
The Way of the Samurai

Holmes the Believer

"Your life is not your own," he said. "Keep your hands off it."
"What use is it to anyone?"
"How can you tell? The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world."

Arthur Conan Doyle
"The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger"
The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

Poem

As if some little Arctic flower
Opon the polar hem -
Went wandering down the Latitudes
Until it puzzled came
To continents of summer -
To firmaments of sun -
To strange, bright crowds of flowers -
And birds of foreign tongue!

Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickenson (Franklin, ed.)
177



It's only a part of the full poem, but the words and images stir me strangely.

Another Samurai Insight on Leadership

"...the proverb says, 'fish do not live in clean water,'  It is the seaweed that provides fish with a hiding place in which to grow safely to maturity.  It is because one sometimes overlooks details and does not lend an ear to minor complaints that those in one's service are able to live in peace.  An understanding of this point is essential when considering the character and deportment of others."

Jocho Yamamoto
Hagakure

quoted by
Yukio Mishima
The Way of the Samurai

“I charged the Saints not to follow the example of the adversary in accusing the brethren, and said, “If you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you.... If you will not accuse me, I will not accuse you. If you will throw a cloak of charity over my sins, I will over yours—for charity covereth a multitude of sins.”

                                                       Joseph Smith

Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit - Life!


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickenson (Franklin, ed.)
156

A deep little poem applicable to a million human situations.  Right now, for me, I think of it in terms of my oh so well-intentioned attempts to help/fix others.

One way of looking at mortality

If pain for peace prepares
Lo, what "Augustan" years
Our feet await!

If springs from winter rise,
Can the Anemones
Be reckoned up?

If night stands first - then noon
To gird us for the sun
What gaze!

When from a thousand skies
On our developed eyes
Noons blaze!


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickenson (Franklin, ed.)
155

A Zen perspective on Dhyana

Dhyana is usually translated as meditation.  Prajna as insight.  The terms are much wider in meaning, more fraught with implication, and accompanied by a nimbus of religious experience in Buddhism's various branches than we non-Buddhists are aware of.  D. T. Suzuki's chapter Zen and the Unconscious is partly about how Chan Buddhism in 1st millennium China understood these terms as opposed to how they were used in other strands of Chinese Buddhism.

Again, I am struck with a contrast to what I find unappealing in Nisargadatta -

"Dhyana is not quietism, nor is it tranquilization; it is rather acting, moving, performing deeds, seeing, hearing, thinking, remembering; Dhyana is attained where there is, so to speek, no Dhyana practiced;  Dhyana is Prajna, and Prajna is Dhyana, for they are one."

Havel muses on the structure of the experience of meaning - II

"Most people's lives, it seems to me, are fragmented into individual pleasures (both mundane and exalted, wretched and admirable, but most often a rich mixture of everything imaginable), and it is precisely these individual pleasure that give people the elementary and essentially spontaneous feeling that life has meaning.  To put it another way, such pleasures ensure that the question of what life actually means never comes up....this all-important question, only arises, I believe, when one first suffers or experiences, existentially, the 'gap,' the abyss that separates the pleasures in life from one another.  That, at least, is how I feel it....all kinds of things, from serving good dinners to working for a 'suprapersonal' cause....I have always experienced them as mere 'islands of meaningfulness' floating in an ocean of nothingness....It may well be that this warning thought comes through most clearly at the climax of a particular joy, not only tainting it, but intensifying it as well.  Even if one is standing firmly on solid ground, then, one can never forget that the ground is just an island, or lose sight, of the 'sea horizon,' surrounding it.

"....One usually begins to pose the question of the meaning of life and reflect on it in a fundamental way when one is suddenly ambushed and overpowered by a painful question: 'and what next?  A question essentially the same as the question, 'so what?' ....In other words, what is the meaning of that which gives our lives meaning, or, what is the 'meta-meaning' of the meaningful?  It is only when all those thousands of things that impart meaning (spontaneously) to our lives - that seem to make life worth living, or for which we have simply lived - are thus challenged, that the stage is set for us to pose, in all seriousness, the question about what our lives mean.

"Posing it then means, among other things, asking whether those 'islands' are really so isolated, so randomly adrift on the ocean as they appear in moments of despair, or are they in fact merely the visible peaks of some coherent undersea mountain range."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Self Awareness

"well-meaning women both, knowing very little of their own motives."

George Eliot
Middlemarch

Self awareness in some senses of the word is a spiritual gift.  Lack of it buffers the soul to some degree from being fully condemned for one's actions, but it also blocks any real spiritual growth.

"If men come unto me I show unto them their weakness...

"Because thou hast seen thy weakness, thou shalt be made strong..."

Ether 12

Havel muses on the structure of the experience of meaning - I

"I'm sitting on a bench...doing what I like best, that is thinking about what I will do once I am free again....When I think about it, all such daydreams have one thing in common: sooner or later, a disturbing question always arises: what then? what next?  For the time must come, after all, when - figuratively speaking - I will have swum enough, preened myself enough, eaten enough, slept enough; when I will no longer want to indulge in those delights any more, yet my life will clearly be far from over, and it will be high time - especially after all that - to breathe some meaning and substance into it....

"....When I mentioned a sauna and a good dinner, I deliberately chose the most trivial example...a truly ephemeral pleasure...(though to be truthful, such pleasure is all there is to the meaning of life for many).  But the same applies to all the other more substantial joys in life.  For example, if I imagine that rare and wonderful moment when I get an idea for a play, and idea so fine and gratifying that it practically knocks me off my chair, and if, in a kind of joyful trance, I imagine actually turning the idea into a play I'm happy with, then having it neatly typed out, reading it to some friends who like, and even finding theaters that express an interest in putting it on - imagining all that, I must also necessarily imagine the moment when it's all over and the awful question comes up again: "Well?"  "Is that all?"  "What next?"  I would even venture to say that the more "serious" and time-consuming the activity that lends meaning to life, the more terrifying the emptiness that follows it."

A Samurai commentary on D&C 121

"Reprimanding people and correcting their faults is important; it is actually an act of charity - the first requirement of samurai service.  One must take pains to do it in the proper way.  It is an easy matter to find strong points and shortcomings in another man's conduct; it is equally easy to criticize them.  Most people believe it a kindness to tell people things they do not want to hear, and if their criticism are not taken to heart, well, then nothing more can be done.  Such an approach is totally without merit.  It produced results no better than if one had set out willfully to insult and embarrass the man.  It is simply a way to get things off one's chest.  Criticism must begin after one has discerned whether or not the person will accept it, after one has become his friend, shared his interests, and behaved in such a way as to earn his complete trust so that he will put faith in whatever one says.  And then there is the matter of tact: One must devise the proper way to say it, and the proper moment - perhaps in a letter, perhaps on the way home fro a pleasant gathering.  One might start by describing one's own failures, and make him see what one is getting at without a word more than is necessary.  First one praises his strength, taking pains to encourage him and put him in the right mood, make his as receptive to one's words as a thirsty man is to water.  Then correct his faults.  To criticize well is extremely difficult"

Jocho Yamamoto
Hagakure

quoted by
Yukio Mishima
The Way of the Samurai

Zen - "Static Meditation"

A passage from D. T. Suzuki that resonates with my reaction to Nisargadatta -

"The dominant idea prevailing up to the time of Hui-neng was that the Buddha-nature with which all beings are endowed is thoroughly pure and undefiled as to its self-being.  The business of the Yogin is therefore to bring out this self-nature, which is the Buddha-nature, in its original purity.  But, as I said before, in practice this is apt to lead the Yogin to the conception of something separate which retains its purity behind all the confusing darkness enveloping his individual mind.  His meditation may end up in clearing up the mirror of consciousness in which he expects to see the image of his original pure self-being reflected.  This may be called static meditation.  But serenely reflecting on the purity of the Mind has a suicidal effect on life."

D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism

Holmes on meaning

"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever."

Arthur Conan Doyle
His Last Bow
"The Adventure of the Cardboard Box"

East vs. West? A Meditation on Nisargadatta

We Westerners have long loved to depict the East as fundamentally 'other.'  We have done it at times to give ourselves airs of superiority, and at times to find a hidden wisdom that gives us a stick to beat our least favorite things about  Western civilization with.  I've certainly been guilty of both at certain times in my life.  These days I don't think I really buy the whole 'Eastern' Label.  We select what we want to see and label it Eastern, failing to give due attention to the multitude of Asian counter examples. 

In 1977, Harvard theologian Harvey Cox,  drew attention to America's ongoing spiritual turn eastward.  As we combed through the vast amount of information available to us about Asian religion and philosophy, we selected what we felt was the core of Eastern-ness, and in some ways we selected those strands that fit most naturally with the spirit of out time and place - and transcendental meditation, martial arts and Zen Buddhism sent their tentacles through our consciousness.  The things we selected were indeed capable of being compared to European thought patterns in ways that pointed up significant differences.  But Asia isn't meditation, Satori and Bushido.  Asia is billions of people, living and dead, and thousands of individual cultures, religions and sects.

In my twenties, reading through the largely alien thought of Hinduism, I ran onto the split between Ramanuja and Shankara.  In Ramanuja's Dvaita Vedanta I found a place in Hinduism that so resonated with my own spirituality that it almost felt like coming home.  His dualistic approach to religion contained all that I had been taught to see as "Western" - the primacy of God's personal face over his immanent presence, the importance of relationship with the divine over mere identification with an impersonal "divineness."  It was my first wake up call to the fact that life doesn't have two basic flavors, East and West.  Human is human.  Culture shapes us yes, but the same capacities and potentialities exist in us all, for better and for worse.

As I read through Nisargadatta I find his monism (advaita) to be, to be completely honest, boring.  His guru taught him "you alone are" and he came to believe it.  he sees the world as an illusion, God as an illusion, birth and death as illusions, even salvation is an illusion: "Saved from what?"

"I really do not see myself related to anybody or anything.  Not even to a self, whatever that self may be.  I remain forever--undefined.  I am within and beyond--intimate and unapproachable."

Far more interesting is the faith of his Hindu challengers

"The world is; I am.  These are facts...."

"You say the world is no use to us--only a tribulation.  I feel it cannot be so.  God is not such a fool.  The world seems to me to be a big enterprise for bringing the potential into actual, matter into life, the unconscious into consciousness.  To realize the supreme we need the experience of the opposites.  Just as for building a temple we need stone and mortar, wood and iron, glass and tiles, so for making a man into a divine sage, a master of life and death, one needs the material of every experience.  As a woman goes to the market, buys provisions of every sort, comes home, cooks, bakes and feeds her lord, we bake ourselves nicely in the fire of life and feed our God....A child goes to school and learns many things which will be of no use to him later.  But in the course of learning he grows.  So do we pass through experiences without number and forget them all, but in the meantime we grow all the time.  And what is a jnani but a man with a genius for reality!  This world of mine cannot be an accident.  It makes sense.  There must be a plan behind it.  My God has a plan."

I Am That - Nisargadatta Maharaj

The more I read, the more I find myself drawn not to the austere, cold Maharaj, but to his ardent questioners.  Instead of a sterile, dry, self-satisfied I am, they live in a more interesting and plausible universe: a God exists, creates and causes, has mercy, loves and suffers with us, and respects freedom; persons exist, not universal consciousness in some disconnected semi-bliss, but "focalized, centered, and individualized in a person;" the world exists, and is not an illusion to be overcome, but a field for the "knowing, knower and known" --

"Consciousness implies a conscious being, an object of consciousness, and the fact of being conscious.  That which is conscious I call a person.  A person lives in the world, is a part of it, affects it, and is affected by it."

I'm fascinated by the book, not by the Hindu master, but by the people who talk with him and challenge him.

The Price

Who never lost, are unprepared
A Coronet to find!
Who never thirsted
Flagons and Cooling Tamarind!

Who never climbed the weary league -
Can such a foot explore
The purple territories
On Pizarro's shore?

How many Legions overcome -
the Emperor will say?
How many Colors taken
On Revolution day?

How many bullets bearest?
Hast thou the Royal scar?
Angels! Write "Promoted"
On this soldier's brow!


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson  (Franklin), 136

A Glimpse Beyond

Our lives are Swiss -
So still - so Cool -
Till some odd afternoon
The Alps neglect their Curtains
And we look further on!

Italy stands the other side!
While like a guard between -
The solemn Alps -
The siren Alps
Forever intervene!


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 129