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| Bob Dylan shows great courage and perhaps sees the funny side |
I have been reading a book that wends its way through various interviews given by Bob Dylan over the years. Some of the early ones, in the sixties, are pretty weird, with Dylan deliberately being obscure - or perhaps contemptuous would be a better word - treating the questions with ridicule, giving absurd answers; running away to the circus and suchlike. But he could be quite comical at times, as when one late night caller to a radio chat show said that he liked Dylan's songs a lot but thought Dylan "could sing a bit better." Bob replied that he appreciated constructive criticism, and the host of the show quickly said that the caller showed "great courage" to speak so plainly direct to Bob. Dylan then said:- "It takes great courage to sing like I do". Quite funny.
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| Amida manifests to an anxious heart |
Anyway, that is just a preamble to nothing much in particular. Quite a few random things pass through the mind in any day. The past couple of months I have passed through a time of various shades of anxiety and uneasiness, caused by who knows what. One antidote has proved to be walking into town and having an extra hot cappuccino at Costa's.
The walk into town is for exercise only, certainly not to take in the scenery, which consists of urban dwellings and constant passing traffic, subways and roundabouts. I often pass the time counting the number of discarded beer cans and food wrappers that litter the pathways. The record so far is 39.
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| A discarded beer can (scenic view) |
Again, sometimes a bicycle sweeps by, a rider on the pavement, seeking to keep themselves safe from the traffic on the roads - but in doing so endangering unsuspecting pedestrians ambling along towards Costa's, seeking solace and peace of mind.
Sometimes I have thought that they should ring their bell to warn of their approach; this was until one did so and the shrill screech sent me skyward in shock.
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| Look out!! |
Anyway, eventually I reach Costa's and feel, with the aroma of the coffee as I enter, a sense of peace. I really do think that such an ambiance is just one of the ways that Amida manifests to us mere mortals, bringing succour to the heavy heart or troubled mind. I always order "extra hot" which has the effect of making the drink last longer, a plus factor to those like myself who are on the miserly side.
Drinking it I dabble with my Kindle, but also like to look around. More often than not there are groups of mothers with young children, or even babies, and I drink in, as well as my coffee, the sight of the very young, their beautiful eyes that absorb all around them with that wonderful interest that has not yet been soiled by a world seemingly designed to corrupt and destroy.
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| What price "original sin"? |
Speaking about "corruption" I have been dipping into a book about the Eastern Front in World War 2. There is quite a preamble to the invasion of Russia which took place in June 1941. The book takes up the story around 1938 and we hear about all the toing and froing between Russia and Germany, Stalin and Hitler that preceded Operation Barbarossa, the name that the invasion was given.
Quite startling to hear all the official communiques of the two nations as they justified themselves, via press releases and suchlike, as they entered into their "non-aggression" pact, and of how they spoke of other nations involved in the build up to war in those years. Good grief! is all you can say. Duplicity and, perhaps worse, self deception, all dressed up in language often designed purely to deceive.
Now, with hindsight, we can take our pick from the past, while revisionist historians, intent upon presenting Adolf Hitler as the "man of peace", can have a field day by picking and choosing amid the various speeches and pronouncements to convince us all of his benign intent.
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| Operation Barbarossa - June 22, 1941. End of the "non-aggression" pact between Germany and Russia. |
Of course, it still goes on. In our post truth world where hard facts are a thing of the past, where instinct and the conditioning of the world around us build minds that then go shopping for whatever supports our fancies.
"Do not be conformed to this world" says the Good Book in Romans 12:2.
How do we avoid becoming "conformed"?
Rather than leave this remarkable meandering and virtually pointless blog with such a question, maybe I could seek to justify this nonsense with a brief diversion into hermeneutics, a diversion in part prompted by a previous mention of "hard facts".
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| Made of ice? Wait for the sun, the "unhindered light". |
It seems that our current crop of philosophers doubt that there has ever been such a thing as a hard fact, that belief in such a thing has itself been a mode of deception - a deception especially indulged in by those determined to push their very own hard facts at those they are intent upon controlling and herding towards their very own view of the world".
According to such philosophers, we - human beings - can in fact (!) be defined as the beings who interpret. It is what we are. Indeed, they say, "everything is a matter of interpretation". Every matter of fact is a matter of the interpretation that picks out the facts, and hermeneutics is the theory that the distinction between facts and interpretation bears closer scrutiny. Well, if you wish to indulge in such scrutiny be prepared for a rocky path - but some say it can be enlightening. We find out who we are. Or as Dogen, the Soto Zen master claimed, "for to be is to understand, that is, one is what one understands".
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| If you meet the zen master on the road...... |
Another aspect of this, for those who like this sort of thing, is Dogen's non-dualistic analysis of reality, where he investigates the "difference" between our dreams and our waking state, between illusion and reality. In a sense, Dogen says, there is no difference! Thus, "all" is illusion, unreal. Yet if so, all is Real, whether dream or reality.
Perhaps we are back where we started from, yet knowing it for the first time. (T.S.Eliot, Four Quartets)
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