No Success Like Failure

One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs is "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" which has the great verse about "success" (or lack of it):-

In the dime stores and bus stations

People talk of situations

Read books, repeat quotations

Draw conclusions on the wall

Some speak of the future

My love, she speaks softly

She knows there's no success like failure

And that failure's no success at all

Where many talk.......

........of situations (conclusions optional)

I have always found it quite interesting to try to figure out various lyrics, especially if they appear enigmatic. Like a zen koan, they tease me out of my habitual thoughts. In my quest for some degree of understanding I have also reflected upon some words of another mentor of mine, Thomas Merton, who was once asked to contribute to a book on the subject of "success". His (unused!) contribution was as follows:-

If I have a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success.......If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget how to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.

(From "Love and Living")

I once quoted the above on a discussion forum and someone there said that his view of Merton was somewhat diminished by his (Merton's) opinion on the pursuit of success. Well, each to their own, but in my eyes this poster was missing the fundamental nature of all life, it's paradoxical heart and thus missing the point that for all intents and purposes, Merton was indeed a success!

As I see it, all we need we already have; gift, grace. The "task" is fundamentally realisation and not a progressive attainment. Therefore, in as much as we "have to become that which we already are", if we instead seek to achieve - or become - something we think ourselves not to be already, that which we pursue becomes an object beyond ourselves. Success, happiness, wisdom - whatever. They are always, always, just out of reach; and will always remain so.

Divided from ourselves, not yet in possession of that which we seek, we enter the never never land of futility; and often worse, perhaps we enter the hapless world of the pharisee who, believing themselves to have "achieved" righteousness, looks down with disdain upon those "others" who have made no such effort.

From success to happiness......

"My greatest happiness" says Chuang Tzu, "consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness." This is the way of the Tao, the way of effortlessness ( wu wei ), analogous, as Merton says, to the Christian "life of faith". "It is more a matter of believing the good than of seeing it as the fruit of one's efforts." In my own Pure Land way, which is no way at all, it is the path of non-calculation where things are made to become so of themselves.(In the more austere world of Theravada Buddhism, it is to know that all things are a by-product of wisdom; wisdom here defined as "the mind/heart, thirsting for emancipation, seeing direct into the heart of reality.") But in the less austere world of the Pure Land, it is called faith. Faith in the infinite compassion, the infinite wisdom and the infinite potential of Reality-as-is. 

The search is on

Moving on, and wandering on to another aspect, exactly what can be done on earth to produce happiness? Chuang Tzu seeks to tell us that the answer to such a question is that it has no fixed or predetermined answer to suit every case. But if we are in harmony with the Tao then "the answer will make itself clear when the time comes to act", acting not in a self-conscious mode of deliberation but in accordance with the Source of all Good. 

Alas, often, taking pride in ourselves and having a rich stock of answers built up over the years as part of our precious "self", we pour those "answers" over each and every moment, thus never actually seeing the moment at all - meeting only ourselves, our unending ambitions.

Therefore the "east" speaks of emptiness and suchness, often variously misunderstood in the "west" as nihilism and "the relativity of all morality" (as opposed to what is seen as the fullness of "being" and the absolute good - this always in opposition to an absolute evil) 

Appropriate somewhere in all this waffle

Before drawing to a close (deep sighs of relief all around) I see much of this as having to do with the thorny subject of theodicy, the problem of suffering and evil and of how to know it and see it in all its horror and yet to rest, knowing "all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well". I will leave that with anyone who has read this far. I would only say that to act in the face of suffering is perhaps, for us, the only answer worth having.  And to add further:-  a human being, for me, is one who will grieve and weep at the loss of a loved one, not throw a blanket of belief and "answers" over the loss and count it as "faith". The last thing we want is an anaesthetic, however venerated in the creeds of our world. 

Related Quotes:- 

"Not many people have clearly understood that cosmology is a literary art form, not a religious or scientific one" (Northrop Frye)

"(Reality is) a ceaseless advance into novelty." (A.N.Whitehead)"

"Truth is inherently fluid - open, alive, metaphorical, and inclusive; dogma is inherently rigid - closed, fixed, literal, and exclusive" (Ted Biringer, in "Zen Cosmology")

PS:- I have always loved quotes and would welcome any others considered relevant to any particular blog. Please feel free to offer them in the "comments" section.  If appropriate I will transpose the quote onto the end of the blog. I will keep my own eyes open and add any as and when, to current and previous blogs. Thank you.