A shout in the street

Seeking clarity?

I have now cleared up a major concern. As I see it, seeking clarification of mind is not that which Shinran would say was calculation. Amida would seem to agree. So I can proceed. 

It does seem to me that once we accept Reality itself as beyond comprehension and accept the consequences of this i.e. that we can only find rest in trust/faith/pure acceptance/grace or whatever, then we can move on and live safely in our world. 

Whether heading for hell

 or heading for the Pure Land

 all is in Amida's hands

Acceptance

That is about it. I ask no more. Then I can move on, into the world of diversification, even of this and that, yet without undue clinging to me and mine. 

It seems many seek to pin down reality. It must be either this or that, thus dictating the past, predicting the future and even determining the present. Things tend to congeal. And as for those pesky people who have a different opinion, another concept of reality, well there is always the Inquisition or a weapon of some description. The pen might well be mightier than the sword yet the sword, looking back through history, has always tended to have the biggest say, if not the last word. 

Pinning down reality

Thinking about it (now I have been cleared to do so) it does seem that many have declared that this, this, this and this are the facts of reality. Various beliefs and creeds, all indisputable and often found within a favoured text. But when the going gets rough in defending their favoured landscape of mind, they then fall back upon the mysteries of faith, of "who are we to question the Lord?" Really, all I am saying is that the mysteries of faith need to come first; the ground (in which we live and move and have our being) the "ground" itself, is that which is incomprehensible - or as is said in the "east", empty. Of suchness, such as it is; and what follows is that "emptiness is form and form is emptiness".

 

Up then goes the cry of "pantheism", the fear of relativity, that there is therefore no "right" or "wrong", which is inferred must be fixed in stone to guide us on our way. Or the "eastern" talk of maya is thrown into the ring and decried:- "This world is real, suffering is real, it is not all an illusion"! As I understand it, maya is simply the default way of seeing the world by a mind determined to fix it down permanently according to its culturally induced preferences (well, that could become the subject of an entire blog, with many qualifications, but that will do for now) 

Anyway, time for a quote from Alan Watts on all this:-

The moment I name it, it is no longer God; it is man, tree, green, black, red, soft, hard, long, short, atom, universe. One would readily agree with any theologian who deplores pantheism that these denizens of the world of verbiage and convention, these sundry "things" conceived as fixed and distinct entities, are not God. If you ask me to show you God, I will point to the sun, or a tree, or a worm. But if you say, "You mean, then, that God is the sun, the tree, the worm, and all other things?" -  I shall have to say that you have missed the point entirely.

A depiction of God, or maybe missing the point

James Joyce has his own words, found in his "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", a semi-autobiographical work; that God is a "shout in the street." Here is the short passage where the words are used:- 

"The ways of the creator are not our ways" Mr Deasy said."All human history moves toward one great goal, the manifestation of God......"

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window saying: "That is God" 

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee! 

"What?" Mr Deasy asked.

"A shout in the street" Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

In effect, as Joseph Campbell claims in his own analysis of this passage, "Mr Deasy speaks of the process of God in history. There is no process, Stephen says, God is present." 

And Campbell then refers to a verse found in the Gnostic "Gospel According to Thomas", the kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it. As Stephen says further along in the book, "history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake".

Joyce, listening for God

Related Quotes:- 

The way of the Tao is to begin with the simple good with which one is endowed by the very fact of existence. Instead of self-conscious cultivation of this good (which vanishes when we look at it and becomes intangible when we try to grasp it), we grow quietly in the humility of a simple, ordinary life, and this is analogous (at least psychologically) 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 effort. 

(Thomas Merton, from the the preface to his loose translation of Chuang Tzu, The Way of Chuang Tzu)

 

Chuang Tzu

"Master Gotama, is suffering self-made?"

"Don't say that, Kassapa."

"Then is it other-made?"

"Don't say that, Kassapa."

"Then is it both self-made and other-made?"

"Don't say that, Kassapa."

"Then is it the case that suffering, being neither self-made nor other-made, arises spontaneously?"

"Don't say that, Kassapa."

"Then does suffering not exist?"

"It's not the case, Kassapa, that suffering does not exist. Suffering does exist."

"Well, in that case, does Master Gotama not know or see suffering?"

"Kassapa, it's not the case that I don't know or see suffering. I know suffering. I see suffering.......To say 'The one who acts is the one who experiences the result of the act' amounts to the eternalist statement, 'Existing from the very beginning, stress is self-made.' 'The one who acts is someone other than the one who experiences' amounts to the annihilationist statement, 'For one existing harassed by feeling, stress is other-made.' Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dharma, the Middle Way.

(From the Acela Sutta, The Samyutta Nikaya)

The Buddha speaks with Kassapa