Labels and the Beauty of Difference

The idea of "labels", their uses, abuses and limits, seems to me to point to the fundamental uses of language and the limit of words. 

Labels have there uses

Is the word the thing? Let's mention something like sexuality, just to catch everyone's attention! In a very real sense there is in nature an unbroken line of continuity between the world's most macho male and the world's most effeminate female, physically, psychologically. Each of us finds ourself somewhere on that line, each of us unique, valueable, irreplaceable. Yet our minds love to label and classify. We create fences, lines and divisions. Judgement follows. Often we even seem to like labeling ourselves and take great pride in doing so. And so our "becoming" and our possibilities can grind to a stop and we congeal.

When we look at and meet another, and we have heard they are "gay", or "Christian" - or whatever - we can easily see only our own experience and understanding of such words. Possibly our label meets theirs! We can miss the actual person altogether, including ourselves! All chance of genuine empathy and mutual understanding can just wither and die.

Don't mistake the finger that points for the moon itself

It seems to me that "reality" lies beyond words. Words have their uses, but also their limits.

 

Expanding on this a bit, it seems to me that "labels" always have their own context, and when the context is lost then things get out of focus. Our minds act like a microscope. Looking at Christianity, for instance, there is Catholocism, the Eastern Orthodox, the various Protestant varieties; adjusting the microscope, within Catholocism, "liberals" and "moderns" and "traditionalists"; Cistercians, Benedictines, Trappists; and mystics, ancient and modern. Then onto the individual hearts and minds experiencing the reality of their faith according to their own lives as lived and experienced themselves, as it has unfolded uniquely for them. It just seems that if we lose the context our minds can get out of focus, and we throw words and labels over something or somebody, losing empathy and communion with them, divided by assumed judgements.

And I would like to repeat that we can miss the actual person altogether, including ourselves. Giving a label to ourselves can create false parameters that eventually stifle all potential for empathy.

There is a relevant passage from the Journals of Thomas Merton regarding "labels" and whatnot. Merton tells of how he was visited by a good friend, Mark Van Doren, and they were watching the flight and activities of some birds together. Mark Van Doren remarked:- "The birds don't know they have names." Merton went on to write in his journal:-

.....no name and no word to identify the beauty and reality of those birds today is a gift of God to me in letting me see them. And that name - God - is not a name! It is like a letter X or Y. Yahweh is a better name - it finally means Nameless One.

Do the birds  know they have names?

All this involves for me what has been called the "beauty of difference". Often it seems that a different haircut, a lifestyle that varies from our own, a different type of clothing, leads not to rejoicing in the sheer diversity of our humanity, but instead can make us close up in a defensive ball, even a knot of fear. Which seems sad, and worse than sad when the fear evolves into persecution - and on a larger scale, wars, killing and Inquisitions.

The beauty of difference

For me, reality is non-dual; truth is One. This One is "The Hidden Ground of Love" that can have no explanation, that cannot be possessed, defined, but can only be shared in communion with others. As has been said in the east:- The Tao can be shared but not divided.

My own Pure Land path has its own symbolism, that of gold for the undifferentiated nature of ultimate reality, and the lotus flower for the individuality of each and every one of us, in fact of each and every "thing". So in depictions of the Pure Land there are fields of golden lotus flowers dancing in the breeze.

Difference need not divide

Thank you

The Harlequinade

In a previous blog I mentioned Wei Wu Wei, AKA Terence Gray. One of my favourite pieces of his writings is "The Harlequinade" which I have also posted on various discussion forums. 

Open at your peril

The Harlequinade is the opening chapter of the little book I have also mentioned before, "Ask the Awakened", a book I often dipped into with various levels of bemusement. 

The wizened sage Wei Wu Wei masquerading as Terence Gray

Here is the full chapter........

Perhaps our most serious handicap is that we start on the wrong foot. In the end this is likely to be fatal, and, I fear, generally is. We have a basic conditioning, probably in some form of Christian religion, of which little remains today but its ethical content, or in one of the modern psychologies, that of Freud, Adler, or Jung, or in some scientific discipline, all of which are fundamentally and implacably dualist. Then the urge manifests, and we start reading.


Every time we happen on a statement or sentiment that fits in with our conditioned notions we adopt it, perhaps with enthusiasm, at the same time ignoring, as though they did not exist, the statements or sentiments which either we did not like or did not understand. And every time we re-read the Masters or the sutras we seize upon further chosen morsels, as our own jig-saw puzzle builds up within us, until we have a personal patchwork that corresponds with nothing on Earth that could matter in the least. Not in a thousand million kalpas could such a process produce the essential understanding that the urge is obliging us to seek. 

We are required to do exactly the opposite of all that. We are required to 'lay down' absolutely everything that is 'ours', and which is known as 'ignorance' - even though we regard it as knowledge. It is like stripping off clothes that have become personal. Then naked, but in a nakedness that does not recognise itself as such, we should go to the Masters, who will clothe us in the garments of the knowledge or understanding that we really need. It is their jig-saw we must complete, not 'ours', for their 'doctrine', what they have to reveal to us, is one whole and indivisible, and the statements and sentiments that we do not at once understand, rather than those that we think we do, are the ones that matter. One by one as we re-read, and finally all at once, their meaning will become manifest, and we shall at last understand what the Masters have to tell us. Then, and only then, can we acquire their understanding, which is the fulfilment of the urge. 

As busy little bees, gathering honey here and there, and adding it to their stock in their hive, we are wasting our time, and worse, for we are building up that very persona whose illusory existence stands between our phenomenal selves and the truth of what we are, and which is what the urge in us is seeking. That 'laying down' of everything that is 'ours' has always been insisted upon by the Masters, but we affect to ignore it, precisely because that very notion of 'self' which is the centre of what we have to 'lay down' seeks to take charge of the operation, and generally succeeds in doing so, thereby frustrating from the start any hope of fulfilling the urge. Is there any wonder that we so rarely get anywhere at all? 

It is interesting to note that in the recently discovered collection of sayings of Jesus there is one in which he formally adjured His disciples to divest themselves of all their 'garments'. It is understandable that such a statement should have been omitted by those later compilers who had no idea what such a requirement could mean. But to us it should be a commonplace. As far back as Chuang-tse we find the story of the old monk who, in despair of knowing enlightenment before he died, went to see Lao-tse. On arrival Lao-tse came out to meet him, welcomed him, but told him to leave his followers and his baggage outside the gate, for otherwise he would not be admitted. The old man had no followers, and no baggage, but he understood, went in and found his fulfilment.

A Harlequinade

Anyway, my posting of this on one Forum drew a condemnation from a Christian, who took exception to the reference to "divesting themselves of their garments" and its context. Maybe he took it far too literally? I'm not sure, but literalism, the interpretation of words in there literal sense, is often a fault of us all.

In posting this I am not particularly advocating any "going to the masters". My own Pure Land path is very egalitarian and has little time for "masters" and in fact seeks to find lessons at all times; in all places, from all people, young, old or inbetween. Nevertheless, I find the chapter interesting from various perspectives. Maybe others have no such "urge" as spoken of here but fear not, it is not a fundamental requirement of developing simple human empathy and having a compassionate and loving heart.

Related Quotes:- "When I speak of my stupidity, I do not refer to something that is innate, but rather to the false impressions that I have cleverly stockpiled, layer upon layer, in my imagination" (Soko Morinaga, from the Introduction to "The Ceasing of Notions")

Passing Over and Further Ramblings

There was a Christian theologian called John Dunne who wrote a book called "The Way of All the Earth". It concerned what Mr Dunne called "passing over", passing over from one world view to another, then coming back again and seeing your own "view" with new eyes. I suppose it has a close relationship with the "don't judge another until you have walked a mile in their shoes" advice.

John Dunne - still over? Or back again?

 Anyway, I passed over at one point (passed over, not passed out) Maybe a bit of autobiographical information is appropriate here. I had always had the yearning to travel and it was the exotic that attracted me. Palm trees, deserts, pagodas and the like. After my overland trip back from Australia my heart and mind was soaked with the "exotic". A few months after getting back to England I found myself on my local railway station, a dull rainy day looking out over the skyline. Oh dear, I thought, I'm well and truly home. Then a very simple thought struck me, but struck deep. What in fact is the "exotic"? A palm tree or an oak tree, sand or grass, a pagoda or a church spire? I won't labour the point.

Later, reading a book involving a Buddhist worldview, I just found that the old accepted landmarks had disappeared. From my viewpoint that took it for granted that the "western" worldview was a given, set in stone, the "way things actually were" and that the "eastern" ways were exotic and to a degree outside of actual reality, it became apparent that in fact one way of knowing and seeing was not necessarily more real than any other. Once this is seen there can be no going back. This is not to claim that one view is correct - but it is to see the possible relativity of all views, where one is not more "exotic" than any other. Nothing is quite the same again. 

Christian Cosmology

Buddhist Cosmology

A "plain" Cosmology - or is it?

Well, enough of that. But having said that, if we reflect at all we must consider exactly what constitutes "reality", beyond the immediate one of the kitchen sink, bills and babies crying. Here is a rather long passage from a book by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. I will not apologise for quoting it in full as for me, even as a non-theist, it has always given much welcome food for thought, reflection and even contemplation. Merton is perhaps addressing his very own "cosmology":-

.......the deeper question is the nature of reality itself.


Inexorable consistency. Is reality the same as consistency?


The "reality" of the world of many is of consistency, but the reality of the real world is not consistent.


The world of consistency is the world of justice, but justice is not the final word.


There is, above the consistent and logical world of justice, an inconsistent illogical world where nothing "hangs together," where justice no longer damns each to their own darkness. This inconsistent world is the realm of mercy.


The world can only be "consistent" without God.


His freedom will always threaten it with inconsistency - with unexpected gifts.


A god who is fitted into our world scheme in order to make it serious and consistent is not God.


Such a world is not to be taken seriously, such a god is not to be taken seriously. If such a god is "absent" then doubtless the absence is a blessing.


To take him seriously is to submit to obsession, to doubt, to magic, and then to escape these, or try to escape them, by willfulness, by the determination to stake all on an arbitrary selection of "things to be taken seriously" because they "save," because they are "his affairs."


(Note that even atheism takes seriously this god of consistency)


But mercy breaks into the world of magic and justice and overturns its apparent consistency. Mercy is inconsistent. It is therefore comic. It liberates us from the tragic seriousness of the obsessive world which we have "made up" for ourselves by yielding to our obsessions. Only mercy can liberate us from the madness of our determination to be consistent - from the awful pattern of lusts, greeds, angers and hatreds which mix us up altogether like a mass of dough and thrusts us all together into the oven.


Mercy cannot be contained in the web of obsessions.


Nor is it something one determines to think about - that one resolves to "take seriously," in the sense of becoming obsessed with it.


You cannot become obsessed with mercy!


This is the inner secret of mercy. It is totally incompatible with obsession, with compulsion. It liberates from all the rigid and deterministic structures which magic strives to impose on reality (or which science, the child of magic, tries to impose)


Mercy is not to be purchased by a set way of acting, by a formal determination to be consistent.


Law is consistent. Grace is "inconsistent."


The Cross is the sign of contradiction - destroying the seriousness of the Law, of the Empire, of the armies, of blood sacrifice, and of obsession.


But the magicians keep turning the Cross to their own purpose. Yes, it is for them too a sign of contradiction: the awful blasphemy of the religious magician who makes the Cross contradict mercy. This of course is the ultimate temptation of Christianity. To say that Christ has locked all doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved - while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.

Well, I love this. The inconsistency of grace........and that mercy is alone to be taken seriously. But many still insist upon "justice".

Buddhist Snapshots

 Much like Christianity, Buddhism is not one monolithic teaching that has remained constant for over 2000 years, but a rich variety of paths and expressions. Rather than present "The Four Noble Truths" or the steps of the "Noble Eight Fold Path",  I think it better to offer various word images and snapshops, words that have informed me on my own journey through the Buddhist world.

Many of those born in the West have come to love some of the varieties of the Dharma. One such was Thomas Merton, who on his Asian "pilgrimage" visited the Sri Lankan site of Polonnaruwa which contains many statues of the Buddha and his disciples. In his Journal, Merton spoke of his experience......

The vicar general, shying away from "paganism," hangs back and sits under a tree reading the guidebook. I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of Madhyamika, of sunyata, that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything - without refutation - without establishing some other argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening. I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity of the figures.................looking (at them) I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The queer evidence of the reclining figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded.....The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no "mystery". All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya.....everything is emptiness and everything is compassion.

Polonnaruwa

Well, a few words there possibly requiring further explanation - not least to myself - but the gist of it, at least for me, is the rejection of the "mind that needs well-established positions". Once I posted the above account on a Discussion Forum and an ardent Fundamentalist Christian sought to remind me that Thomas Merton was actually describing a rock and implied that he was guilty of idolatry. Well, that's one way of seeing it. "The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone" as the old hymn goes.

The English poet and mystic William Blake once wrote:- "We are led to believe a lie when we see with not through the eye". For me, Merton was seeing through the eye.  As an ancient Hindu text says, "Thou art formless; your only form is our knowledge of You." Bowing down to wood and stone indeed!

There is an idolatry of words. No image need be involved.

You are not able to wander for long on any Buddhist Forum without being accosted with the following quote from the Kalama Sutta, part of the Theravada Canon of Scripture. It is often quoted with approval as some sort of "free thinkers" charter - as opposed to the "dogmatism" perceived to be found in some other Religions - yet the words "commended by the wise" actually sets some sort of parameter to just how "free" our thought should be! (Again, it seems to me that it is not a "religion" as such that is dogmatic, more individual adherents) But anyway, here we are:-

Do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in scriptures or with conjecture or with logical inference or with weighing the evidence or with liking for a view after pondering over it or with someone else's ability or with the thought "The monk is our teacher." When you know in yourselves: "These things are wholesome, blameless, commended by the wise, and being adopted and put into effect they lead to welfare and happiness," then you should practice and abide in them....

The Buddha chats to the Kalamas

So, who are the "wise"? Well, I've already had one rambling and possibly incoherent blog on this so perhaps best to just leave the question in the air. Nevertheless, I will give again a little zen proverb that has lived with me for many years now:- "A clearly enlightened person falls into a well. How is this so?", a proverb which often pops into my mind at random moments. One thing that this suggests is that wisdom, or in this case, "enlightenment", is maybe not what we suppose it to be, or anticipate it to be. Much like the zen guy sitting in the lotus position and saying:- "I have thought about it so much beforehand that now I'm actually enlightened I'm just a little bit disappointed", a joke I told on a Buddhist Forum and received a rap over the knuckles for mocking the whole idea of enlightenment. 

Perhaps a little bit disappointed?

My side of the story is that someone was lacking a sense of humour, or maybe lacked wisdom.

 

Here is a third "snapshot" of Buddhism, a small excerpt that gives the flavour of the Theravada texts. It is from the Majjhima Nikaya, or "The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha" Chapter 63. The Buddha is recorded as speaking to a would be disciple, Malunkyaputta, a man desperate to have "answers" to some apparently fundamental questions:-

Suppose, Malunkyaputta, a man were wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and companions brought a surgeon to treat him. The man would say: "I will not let the surgeon pull out the arrow until I know the name and clan of the man who wounded me; whether the bow that wounded me was a long bow or a crossbow; whether the arrow that wounded me was hoof-tipped or curved or barbed.

All this would not be known to that man and meanwhile he would die. So too, Malunkyaputta, if anyone should say: "I will not lead the noble life under the Buddha until the Buddha declares to me whether the world is eternal or not eternal, finite or infinite; whether or not an awakened one continues or ceases to exist after death" that would still remain undeclared by the Buddha and meanwhile that person would die.

No, don't pull the arrow out. Just tell me how it got there!

Here are the words of Stephen Batchelor, a modern Western Buddhist, as he reflects upon this passage:-

Dharma practice requires the courage to confront what it means to be human. All the pictures we entertain of heaven and hell or cycles of rebirth serve to replace the unknown with an image of what is already known. To cling to the idea of rebirth can deaden questioning.

Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a non-dogmatic and non-evasive stance on such crucial existential matters can blur our ethical vision. If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of hope and fear.

Stephen Batchelor comes in for a lot of stick from some doctrinaire Buddhists for challenging supposedly key teachings. Yet often, at least to me, his take on things seems more authentic, not least with this "ethics of empathy", examples of which are all around us, found in the most unlikely of places.

All Religions seem to love spreading themselves and therefore encourage a bit of missionary activity. Here is the Buddhist exhortation to spread the Dharma, drawn from the Theravada Scriptures:-

Go forth, O monks, to bless the many, to bring happiness to the many, out of compassion for the world; go forth for the welfare, the blessing, the happiness of all beings.........Go forth and spread the teaching that is beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle and beautiful in the end.

I ask myself exactly what is it to spread "the Dharma", or indeed anything else worth spreading. It seems to me that love is worth spreading, or compassion, empathy and other such human traits (and not so human at times, given the nature of dogs) Sadly, many in the past, and even now, associate the spread of such things not with "walking the talk" themselves, but more with repeating doctrines and creeds - and insisting upon the need to "believe" them.

Here again we have Stephen Batchelor, speaking in the above context of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism:- ".....the crucial distinction that each truth requires being acted upon in its own particular way (understanding anguish, letting go of its origins, realizing its cessation, and cultivating the path) has been relegated to the margins of specialist doctrinal knowledge. Yet in failing to make this distinction, four enobling truths to be acted upon are neatly turned into four propositions of fact to be believed. The first truth becomes: "Life is Suffering", the second: "The Cause of Suffering is Craving" - and so on. At precisely this juncture, Buddhism becomes a religion. A Buddhist is someone who believes these four propositions and are thus distinguished from Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, who believe different sets of propositions."

Meeting together

To my mind this distinction exists within all faiths in various forms and ways. It also seems to me that if people of faith acted upon such distinctions, seeking the true heart of their faith, all perhaps could meet at the centre, instead of arguing on the perimeter of the circle! Well, easier said than done.

To be continued.

Pure Land Buddhism - and Amida Looking Back

To just use the term "Pure Land" is a simplification, as there are many expressions, and Pure Land itself is just one of various expressions of Mahayana Buddhism, which is itself just one of the various expressions of Buddhism itself. And "Buddhism" itself is really just a "western" term stuck onto the Buddhadharma (The way of the Buddha). The West loves its "isms" and "ologies", even its "ainities"......

The Pure Land, which is "out to the West"

Anyway, to explain just why this particular "ism" appeals to this particular Westerner would require a full auto-biography but I will not attempt that (sighs of deep relief all around) Enough to say that each of us is a unique individual, and possibly what would draw one towards a particular expression of the Universal would repel another - as Jung has said "there is absolutely no truth that does not spell salvation to one person and damnation to another. All universalisms get stuck in this terrible dilemma." 

Jung, who seemed to know a thing or two

As I see it, and as I have experienced it, all change comes - paradoxically - from pure acceptance, of ourselves and others, rather than from contorted attempts to change. Even when the latter appears to have worked it can often then lead to judgement of others - others who have not made the "effort" as we have done. 

 I will indulge myself here with a rather long quote from a book by Alfred Bloom where he explains the thought of one of the Pure Land "fathers" (Shinran, 12/13th century Japan):-

Shinran, who could be a bit of a sourpuss at times, but had his lighter moments

According to Shinran, salvation is entirely a matter of pure Grace. It does not hang on events and conditions of time and space, or the imposition of man and society. Salvation cannot rest on chance factors. Shinran makes it clear that the reality of Grace requires nothing from the side of man, including the act of faith, as the causal basis for birth in the Pure Land. Otherwise the emphasis on Grace would be devoid of meaning and significance. Our residual karmic bondage may influence the point in our experience when we become aware of Amida's compassion, but it is not a factor in determining whether or not we actually receive that compassion.

We are suggesting that from the standpoint of Grace all are equally saved even now, despite the presence or absence of the experience of faith itself. The reason for this is that salvation depends on Grace and not on any finite condition.

Someone may ask then what is the point of being religious, if we are saved in any case? This is an important question. However, it reflects the virtually universal notion that religion is a means to an end. We get the benefit of salvation from being religious. For Shinran, however, religion becomes the way to express gratitude for the compassion that supports all our life. It is not a tool for ego advancement or gaining benefits.

The point of being religious for Shinran is that when we come to have faith in Grace and live in its light, we truly become free to live a full and meaningful existence in this life.


Shinran's perspective permits a person to see deeply into their life to detect the springs of compassion which sustains it; it allows them to participate and associate with all types of people despite their unattractiveness or difficulty because they understand the potentiality that works in their very being. In perceiving the compassion that embraces all life, the person of faith can themselves become an expression of that compassion touching the lives of others.

For me, Grace is more things just being the way they are, Reality-as-is, pure acceptance, which perhaps logically should result in a passive irresponsibility. But then, when did "logic" have anything to do with reality? 

And just to illuminate the words further, the following, this direct from the pen of Shinran, from "Hymns of the Pure Land Masters", verse 95:-

My eyes being hindered by blind passions,
I cannot perceive the light that grasps me;
Yet the great compassion, without tiring,
Illumines me always.

And for those who approach and know Grace from the Christian perspective, this from Mother Julian of Norwich on the same theme:-

If there be anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.

Mother Julian of Norwich, who taught that eventually "all shall be well".

There is a painting by Rembrandt, the "Return of the Prodigal", one of the great parables from the Gospels. The most significant figure in the picture - rather than the prodigal son himself - could be seen to be the son who stayed at home and "fulfilled all righteousness". 

"The Return of the Prodigal" by Rembrandt

He looks on upon the reconciliation between the father and the prodigal with a certain degree of incomprehension. It just seems to me that sometimes we can consider ourselves "moral" and "upright" (as opposed to all those others!), a consideration which often leads to far worse that incomprehension.

Anyway, moving on, there is a statue of Amida that stands outside one of the Pure Land (Shin) temples in Japan. It is called "Amida Looking Back." The statue shows Amida with her/his hands in the mudra's (hand positions) of "teaching" and "fear not". In other words, the call is to come and hear the teachings, and cease to fear. Yet Amida is shown turning her head, for her first thought is for those who do not, or cannot come, for whatever reason. The ones who will not "make it" without special favour and grace.

That is very much the heart of Pure Land Buddhism. And perhaps much more.

Amida Looking Back

Just to add that in the excerpt above from Alfred Bloom, I actually took the liberty of changing the Pure Land term "Vow" to "Grace". Leaving the word Vow would have involved detailed explanations without, to my mind, adding anything. Which implies the universal nature of "revelation". Certainly, as I see it, to posit the idea that the Divine - however conceived - has "written" just one book as a prime means of communication, with just one intended meaning, is ultimately incoherent and indefensible. 

I will continue to believe (and even continue to observe) that, for those who have the faith that ultimately the Cosmos we live in is benign and means us no harm, for such, the truth of this can be found in all places, at all times; if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

All this relates to what another called a "beautiful paradox" drawn from the words of Thomas Merton. It comes from a letter written to E.D.Andrews, an expert on the life and beliefs of the Shakers (or the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing). Andrews had sent Merton a copy of his book, Shaker Furniture, and Merton was responding to the gift. Merton wrote:-

This wordless simplicity, in which the works of quiet and holy people speak humbly for themselves. How important that is in our day, when we are flooded with a tidal wave of meaningless words: and worse still when in the void of those words the sinister power of hatred and destruction is at work. The Shakers remain as witnesses to the fact that only humility keeps us in communion with truth, and first of all with our own inner truth. This one must know without knowing it, as they did. For as soon as we become aware of "our truth" we let go of it and embrace an illusion.

The Sleepwalkers

"The Sleepwalkers" is the name of a book by Arthur Koestler. 

Arthur Koestler

It is sub-titled "A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe" and does indeed trace this; from a walled-in flat earth, mutable, snug within an immutable heavenly sphere, to our own infinite Cosmos.

Into infinity

Koestler also seeks to debunk the idea that the progress of science has been gradual and linear, and that the various men who led the way were giants amid pygmies, rational thinkers amid a sea of superstition. Everyone, according to Koestler's history, seems to have been a pygmy in one way or another; each sharing various ideas of their own time and of the past, often stumbling in the dark towards their ideas, discoveries, conclusions and revelations. Hence "sleepwalkers". Maybe, in that sense, we are all sleepwalkers.

Zeroing in, the book centres upon the lives of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo and also covers the gradual transition in human thought from Theology to Biology, from the Soul to Mind and - what was said above - from flat earth to infinite universe. Again, Koestler refers to the Great Chain of Being (see below), which was the background to much ancient - and not so ancient - thinking; from such a "Chain" to the discordance and disorientation some perhaps experience today as we seek for a new synthesis.

Upon finishing the book it was the image below, of our Earth taken from space, that came to mind..........

Possibly such an image can now be thought bland and unexceptionable, but I would love to go back and show it to those such as Kepler, who surely would have looked at it with wonder and even awe. Realising that such would be so renews my own wonder. This is our home. All human beings now living can be found on this fragile earth.

Digressing slightly ( but these are "ramblings" ) there is an argument that "religious" violence can be found to originate in scarce resources; in the scarcity of sacred space/places of pilgrimage, of a particular revelation, of a privileged group/chosen people, even of salvation itself. The argument develops that such things are scarce purely and only in dogma and doctrine. Which are outmoded, much like the Great Chain of Being.

Whatever the merits of such an argument, we certainly need not share such dogma and doctrine. All space can be "sacred", all Reality seen as revelation, all human beings, indeed all sentient beings, can be valued as being "chosen". Universalism Rules OK! Which has relevance to our need for a new synthesis, or at least I think so.

While we seek such a synthesis ( and whether any at all will even be final ) I will ramble on........

Late, I love but quietness:
things of this world are no more my concern.
Looking back, I've known no better plan
than this; returning to the grove.

Pine breezes loosen my robe.
Mountain moonbeams play my lute.
What, you ask, is Final Truth?
The fisherman's song strikes deep into the bank.

(Wang Wei)

Fish (and perhaps a song) rather than "final truth". 

What price "Final Truth"? Maybe some things, amid all the change, never change.

 Chiao Jan (730-799)......

Spring's songs already quieting,
the ancient source still bubbles forth.

It's a mistake, my modern friends,
to wound the heart to try
to cross that stream.

​​Well, whatever, and back to the "Sleepwalkers". Actually the second time I have read the book. The first time was long ago and reading it gave me a lifetime interest in Cosmology. Really fascinating just how others have seen the heavens above us and the world around us.

The Age of Nothing

A few months ago I finished reading "The Age of Nothing" by Peter Watson, sub-titled "How we have sought to live since the death of God". I read much of this when surrounded by grandchildren. They often sought to play "horsey" on Grandad's knee, always insisting upon a "high fence" so that poor old grandad had to lift them high at full gallop as they whooped for joy. 

The book proved a good escape at times. Anyway, the death referred to in the sub-title was announced by Nietzsche, via Zarathustra, in the nineteenth century and though the death seems to have passed unnoticed by the various Fundamentalists of our Theistic Faiths, it has been taken on board by many since.

American version of the same book

I have read bits and pieces on and by Nietzsche and think he has come in for some unwarranted criticism. Here, in this book, it seems to be implied/assumed that he was an ardent nationalist and even anti-semitic, this simply because he is often seen as some sort of precursor to the advent of the Third Reich - the Nazis and Hitler. The whole thing is muddied by the sister of Nietzsche, who apparently was both those things and who played around with her brother's writings after his death for her own purposes and according to her own limited intelligence and understanding. Whatever the truth, my own reading has told me that Nietzsche would have been dismayed and shocked by Hitler and all he stood for. But I drift from my theme, the "death" of God.

Nietzsche, who announced that God is dead (but not the moustache - as is evident here)

G K Chesterton has said that if we do not believe in God we will believe in anything, which seems to imply that "non-believers" will always be flippant and perhaps lacking in any genuine commitment to anything. This book, the "Age of Nothing", gives the lie to any such implication. A better title for the book would be "Life After God", which would have none of the unnecessary overtones of its actual title, which seems to suggest at least a whiff of nihilism. Nothing could be further from the truth. The life that has been found, I have to say, seems to me to be often profound, deep and life affirming in ways that that "old time religion", with God in His heaven, more often than not fell short of. This is all in keeping with Meister Eckhart, who prayed to God to free him from God, and of the spirituality suggested by certain passages of the NT, that he has died that we might live; from God conceived as a being to the divine as the ground of being.

G K Chesterton, who also observed that "greater things are seen from the valleys than from the mountain tops"

The life found by so many referenced in Peter Watson's book, poets, authors, philosophers and more, makes for interesting, even inspiring reading. The potential of poetry to be a means of true communion between people is finely addressed. In fact the capacity for those who would seek true life amid the small things of existence runs throughout. More "down to earth" and not looking up to the heavens for inspiration. Rather looking across at those we share the earth with. Christians might well say "incarnational", those on the zen side "chop wood, carry water".

Chop wood, carry water

Getting back to the book and it's title, whether as "The Age of Nothing" or the "Age of Athiests" (USA version) for me the book is mis-titled. Whether "atheists" or "nothing", such titles point to - or at least imply - some sort of negativity, perhaps desperation, as people whose ability (or even wish) to believe in God has gone, reach out for virtually anything to fill the gap. The simple idea, articulated here in diverse people, is that the gap is felt more as a welcome release from a transcendent purpose imposed upon us from above, this now leaving us free to find our own meaning in the world around us. And I would emphasise "find" , with all its implications. "Find", not "imagine", "find", not "enter each to their own subjective world" where hope of communion with others is a hopeless fantasy. Peter Watson's book gave many examples of those who had found and articulated such meanings and in doing so have bridged the gap between self and other. I found that inspiring. For me, in Christian terms, it is incarnational. Our relationships can be between others and ourselves, between ourselves and this world, here and now, not between our private selves and "God". The latter is what can be alienating, often pointing us towards a future world and "reward" and inevitably creating conflict between all the various idols of the mind projected onto heaven.

 

Just to finish, here we have the Old Man in the Sky image of God....

(Regarding the above image, William Blake once addressed God in a little epigram in his notebook:- 

If you have formed a circle to go into,

Go into it yourself and see how you would do.)

And here, as the Ground of Being......

And getting back to zen and all things eastern, western or all points in between......

Holistic Thinking

I realised recently that I tend to think holistically, which would suggest that I am giving myself airs and graces. But no, no judgement is involved, and further, along with it came the thought that it is in fact the default way we all live and breathe and have our being.

Here is a dictionary definition of the word "holistic":-

characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

Yes indeed. Surely that is the way it is? The trouble seems to be that when we start trying to think and figure it out we slip into a "one thing at a time" mode that really does not correspond to reality. The conclusion would seem to be that life can be lived, but not "thought", at least as far as explanations are concerned. 

Every so often I dip into "Four Quartets" by T S Eliot. Often it acts like a sedative; then again, sometimes it just bemuses me, but always I just love the flow of the words, understood or not. Near the end of the fourth quartet, "Little Gidding", are some words that I often muse upon.......

We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Little Gidding

Why? And what is the result of my musing? Well, I'm not too sure, but I read recently of the musing of another who suggested the lines are about "the end of the conditioned self and the beginning of existence", which would mean for me that true existence is nowhere - because unable to be thought - and once we arrive there we are ready to move forward, actually living. 

There are another few lines of verse, written by W H Auden, that I always associate with those of T S Eliot quoted above. Close companions, as they speak of the "exploration", the thinking mode and of how we need to arrive beyond all beliefs and explanations, into Reality itself. The lines come from "For the Time Being", a poem concerned with "how love can conquer eternity".......

For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it until you have looked everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert.

Another quote from Auden

Philosophically, digging deeper, all this has much to do with what are termed "Internal Relations" - rather than "External Relations"; i.e. if A and B are related, in external relations they both exist independently and any relationship between them becomes a third factor, C. By contrast, in internal relations, the necessary third factor is that which overlaps, or interlinks, in fact the shared part of A and B. This obviously has implications for the relationship between "knower" and "known", subject and object. In external relations, such a relationship becomes "knowledge", and then theories arise as to what would make the "knowledge" true. Within internal relations, knowledge becomes that which overlaps, is interdependent. Therefore "we are that which we understand", which is exactly what the zen thinker Dogen has said. There would be no obstruction between mindfulness and reality and further suggests it is how we live in the world, how engaged we are, that is more important than what we may or may not think about it.

The two modes of knowing also implies that the passing on of knowledge, rather than something objective being transmitted systematically to another via words, is better known and understood as the relationship between human beings - knowledge as "love", "compassion", "empathy", all known in action. We learn by being loved, by loving others, within the heart of life itself.

Perhaps all this is a bit heavy but no one seems to be reading this anyway......

Related Quotes:- 

A work of art is not a piece of fruit lifted from a tree branch: it is a ripening collaboration of artist, receiver, and world.

 (Jane Hirshfield, from "Ten Windows.")