Replying to a post about the changing lyrics of "Hallelujah"

 

Hello again. As said elsewhere I need to get out each day and first call is McDonalds where I sit and enjoy a coffee. I then tend to waffle on about whatever fills my head at the time, therapeutic. I do have mental health struggles, nothing really serious, but as it's said "every little helps".....

I never really knew that there were various versions of "Hallelujah" although I had noticed that some covers were longer than others. But now you mention it, it is not hard to understand how lyrics will morph in any poets mind - if the mind/heart is more a becoming rather than a rock solid centre of being.

I'll try to look it up, but just speaking of LC in general, I have a DVD of the London Concert he gave in 2008. Brilliant, with great backing musicians and singers. Somewhere else I mentioned Blooks, which are a cross between Books and Blogs. Created on Google Blogger, downloaded to Blookup and they print it off. I created one of Leonard Cohen songs, which followed the order of the London Concert. It is one of my few Blooks that had a print run of more than one as I ordered a second copy for a mate of mine who I knew also liked the lyrics. My mate had proved to be a great mate when I hit a mental health low and I needed to give him something.

The best part - for me - of creating blooks is choosing the illustrations to go with the text. Using Google Images you just tap a word or two in "Search" and press the button! Why I said LC is difficult to pin down is because so many of his lyrics (particularly the love songs - although as I think you implied, they are ALL love songs in their own way) proved difficult for me to conjure up the appropriate word to put into Search. Looking up "song meanings" often did not help, with some thinking Leonard Cohen was regretting a lost love, some thinking he wanted her back, some thinking he was pleased she was gone..... Which sums us all up in a way!

Sorry, I just tend to waffle. I'm thinking now of "Krapp's Last Tape", a play by another great writer, Samuel Beckett. You might know it. Its about this guy who every ten years or so makes a tape of his thoughts, ideas and such. When he listens back years later he simply can't make any real connection with who he had been. Typical Beckett. Anyway, it was time for his last tape - which maybe comes to us all. Me, I tend to think that despite all the chaos and changing moods, there IS a connection - not in ourselves as such, but in the Reality that holds us, "just as we are", with infinite compassion. If we can reflect that back to others around us then our sad, fragile world would surely be a better place.

Well, I'm drifting. But thanks for your original post. Mornings are not my best time and a few words like your own can lift my mood.

Just to know others, like yourself and Leonard Cohen are in the Chaosmos (a word coined by James Joyce in "Finnegans Wake") can support my faith and trust that we all exist in a Reality that, despite so many appearances to the contrary, is one of significance, even one of love.

Thanks again. My coffee is getting cold.

The Nature of Reality and Faith

 Quite a pretentious title but no matter. I simply sit down in McDonalds with my white coffee (no sugar) and begin to waffle to my hearts content. No control over what others think. Twat or whatever. Less and less interested. Sometimes, amid all the confusion the dustbin of my mind seems to gather a glimmer of light and clarity and a few things fall into order. Merely conceptual, of course, but order just the same.

As I see it it is simply the nature of Reality itself that gives enlightenment (or "salvation" or whatever else it has to be called......authenticity? Finding our own path, time and place? Finding our "true self" and all the rest of the jargon) It is the very nature of Reality itself that is the causal basis of enlightenment. The exact particulars, within our own experience, are obviously diverse, yet enlightenment is pure gift, grace. Realised, not attained. Found in all of our world's so called "Faith Traditions".

In Buddhism, the Dharma, it is "Original Enlightenment". More a negative path where the way unfolds more as losing the illusion that we are not already enlightened. And where Reality is "empty" - rather than being a "God" who is this, that and the other, wrote a book, gave commandments, etc etc etc etc whose followers often created conflicts and Inquisitions to protect the primacy of their own particular conceptual illusions. Reality is better seen as "empty" and therefore can more easily unfold as all things, each of us knowing according to our own unique personhood, in our own particular time and place.

Superficially, "emptiness" (sunyata) is deemed nihilism by many and then such superficiality projected upon the "languid East", this in contrast to the go-getting West. Yet what has the "west" gone and got? The nuclear bomb, and a walk on the moon - from where we can gain a picture of our fragile earth that will soon, all things considered, perhaps be no more - or at least, bereft of us humans.

Anyway, I am waffling as usual. But I do find that as I gradually step back Reality itself has more chance to be, that more compassion and acts born of it actually flower and come to be and pass. Which supports Faith, the trust that - despite so many appearances to the contrary - Reality itself is infinite compassion, infinite wisdom, infinite potential. Simply because such compassion it is not of "me", and therefore must have another Source.

Following on, I see and understand "faith" as being virtually the polar opposite of belief. Belief clings, faith "lets go". Often belief clings because salvation itself is identified in our mind/hearts with believing correctly - therefore any challenge to our beliefs is experienced as a challenge to our salvation.

Faith rests in grace. All is the work of Reality-as-is.

In theistic terms:-

By God's grace alone is God to be grasped. All else is false, all else is vanity." (Guru Nanak of the Sikh Faith)

"They who have known God have known also this one certainty; that it was God's grace that led them to it, and framed them in readiness for it, and prepared their heart and mind for it; and it was God alone who lifted them to that embrace." (Swami Abhayananda of the Hindu faith)

When we instead associate the causal basis of salvation with our own "choice"/"decision"/"belief" then we get what we see and read about so often in heated conflicts.

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen

 A zen story found on the net:-

Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.

Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you shoud not return emptyhanded. Please take my clothes as a gift.”

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.

Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”

By coincidence I was reading part of a commentary on Dogen's "Genjokoan" ("The Actualization of Reality") that spoke of the very common image in Buddhism of the moon as representing enlightenment. This commentary found in David Brazier's book "The Dark Side of the Mirror: Forgetting the Self in Dogen's Genjokoan", and gives the perspective that our function is to reflect the light rather than try to be it oneself. Unless the "self" becomes "dark" we simply cannot receive the moon, and we hold onto the Dharma as if our possession, which it can never be.

"The Tao can be shared but never divided"

"Verily, verily I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12:24)


Adding David Brazier's own explanation:-

When the light in our room is bright, we cannot see out. When we are inside a lighted room and look at the window we only see our own reflection. We become like Narcissus looking into the pool. We do not see the myriadfold Dharma that lies outside of the room of self. Sometimes one may find a group of people all talking vigorously, but with no communication actually happening because each is in his own little room talking to his own reflection. To listen to the other, one has to dim one’s own light. In the same way, relying upon self-power we give ourselves a little light, but deprive ourselves and, even more, those we encounter, of the great light of the Dharma. A little candle flame held close enough to the eye will prevent one seeing a great light further off. The other-power of the myriad Dharmas is vast and wonderful, but we, with our little selves, deprive the world of it and live in delusion.

McDonalds Memo - Dogen

 

I have expressed my interest in the Soto Zen Master Dogen before. In many ways not my cup of tea as we say in the UK. More a Pure Lander myself, which ideally is very egalitarian and knows of no "masters" - virtually anything at all can be a "master" in the Pure Land way of "no calculation" where things are made to become so of themselves. Again, Dogen advocated Zazen, implying long hours on the zafu (meditation cushion) but meditation is often seen as a "self power" path while Pure Land is very much Other Power. I do in fact meditate, but more for mental health reasons, and I don't really think 15 minutes a day would pass muster in the average zen dojo (training hall) A Pure Landers "dojo" is more around the kitchen sink and other such earthy places, in fact anything and anywhere goes. We just need to keep our mind/hearts open. Mindfulness of a kind. Sometimes I am surprised by joy.

Anyway, I waffle as usual. I sit down with my cup of coffee in McDonalds and begin to tap away on my Kindle. 

I was reading recently that our world's population has now topped 8 Billion. At the turn of the 19th into the 20th century it was 1.6 Billion. Quite staggering. Therefore all the problems - ecological, social, Empires giving way to Nation States and now Nation States into the neoliberalism of giant Corporations - stateless and virtually free from accountability. I fear for my grandchildren.

But, whatever, here I am amid the 8 Billion, needing to find what could be called a "path", needing to find rest in my own particular time and place. If we are fortunate we have the leisure time, time free from merely seeking to survive and make ends meet, to seek "answers", to find a true home. The "homely self". A poem pops into my mind, one by Vladimir Holan:-

Is it true that after this life of ours we shall one day be awakened
by a terrifying clamour of trumpets?
Forgive me God, but I console myself
that the beginning and resurrection of all of us dead
will simply be announced by the crowing of the cock.

After that we’ll remain lying down a while…
The first to get up
will be Mother…We’ll hear her
quietly laying the fire,
quietly putting the kettle on the stove
and cosily taking the teapot out of the cupboard.
We’ll be home once more.

(Apparently Holan was a tortured soul. He had a daughter with Downs Syndrome, who died at the age of 28)

I have found myself that "reason" is unhelpful as far as finding my own path, time and place. Reason, of a sort, can get us to the moon and back, but lacks the baggage to provide what the mind/heart truly needs. The Buddhist Madhyamika speaks of the eternal conflict in reason, its never ending dialectic of point and counter point. It speaks of the need to rise (or descend?) to another level, the "no position" that supercedes all positions and "views". Gobbledygook to some no doubt, but possibly it is simply referencing "faith/trust". Reflecting as deeply as I can on the so called "Buddha's silence" in the face of all metaphysical questions has deepened my own Faith (called Shinjin in the Pure Land). Non- dual and all that jazz. Not "salvation BY faith", more "faith IS salvation". 

Well, it is time to go. My coffee grows cold. I genuinely meant just to post part of Dogen's "Genjokoan" with a very brief intro. But as usual I got carried away (some might hope I will be.....) Believe it or not, Dogen's words continue to offer clarity. Each to their own......we each need to find our own "clarity".

 

(1) When all dharmas are the Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, buddhas and living beings.

(2) When the ten thousand dharmas are without [fixed] self, there is no delusion and no realization, no buddhas and no living beings, no birth and no death.

(3) Since the Buddha Way by nature goes beyond [the dichotomy of] abundance and deficiency, there is arising and perishing, delusion and realization, living beings and buddhas.

(4) Therefore flowers fall even though we love them; weeds grow even though we dislike them. Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice-enlightenment is delusion. All things coming and carrying out practice-enlightenment through the self is realization. Those who greatly realize delusion are buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded in realization are living beings. Furthermore, there are those who attain realization beyond realization and those who are deluded within delusion.

(5) When buddhas are truly buddhas they don’t need to perceive they are buddhas; however, they are enlightened buddhas and they continue actualizing buddha. In seeing color and hearing sound with body and mind, although we perceive them intimately, [the perception] is not like reflections in a mirror or the moon in water. When one side is illuminated, the other is dark.

(6) To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off. There is a trace of realization that cannot be grasped. We endlessly express this ungraspable trace of realization.

Thank you.

May true Dharma continue.

No blame. Be kind. Love everything.

  

Proofs of God

 

First a thank you to everyone here - and I mean everyone - for all being part of an online community that offers support, gives support, and for me a safe haven for my waffling. I do find it therapeutic. As is often said, we are all unique individuals and it seems to follow that the less judgement we have of others the better. Judgement has to morph into mercy. Unique individuals must find communion with others.

That said, this thread has run its course for me. I barely understand many of the "proofs" offered here for the existence of God. A great many of the great theologians and philosophers state (and I think, correctly) that "God" cannot "exist" in the same way that we exist. "God" is the ground, in Whom - as the Bible says - we live and move and have our being. The Hidden Ground of Love. There will be no time, ever, where we will stand here and God will stand there, opposite. That is not the way it is, and will never be.

The "proofs" offered here seem to presuppose some sort of "external" Being beyond the heavens, no matter what is presumed. My own leanings are towards individual expressions, testimonies. Ways of grasping our own "being" that acknowledge meaning, significance - even grace, love, compassion. In spite of everything.

Elie Weisel lost his entire family in the holocaust, including his younger sister, just six. Turned into cinders and smoke just a few hours after their arrival at Auschwitz. His telling of this in his autobiography "All Rivers Run to the Sea" is heart-rending. Yet from the ashes Elie Weisel has spoken of his own faith:-

We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.​

And more, he writes:-

For me, every hour is grace.​

Therefore, out of darkness light shall shine. And as Albert Camus has said:-

No matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.

There is a story recounted of a group of Rabbi's in one of the Concentration Camps who decided to put God on trial. Each put forward their arguments, based upon and supported by the sheer suffering they saw each day around them. Finally, the verdict - no, God could not exist. At this moment a bell tolled. The Rabbi's recognised that it was time for prayer. They bowed and prayed.

As per my Wittgenstein thread, there is much - if not everything - beyond logic. In the end, we are what we understand.

Anyway, not time for prayer, time for finishing up my coffee and getting some shopping.

Parables for the blind

 

Well, you know what I think about thinking.......Not always the best option. Again, I just seem to be on a roller coaster at times, up and down, dark and light, alternating currents - but seeking to say "thank you" at all times, whether light or dark, good or bad. It's not much of a path, you tend to get lost, but much better than thinking I have been "found" by anyone, God or otherwise, or have accumulated a store of "wisdom" on which to draw.

Your post made me think of the rather enigmatic parables of Jesus found in the NT. William Blake got them right......

The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision-s greatest enemy.
Thine has a great hook nose like thine;
Mine has a snub nose like to mine.
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind;
Mine speaks in parables to the blind.
Thine loves the same world that mine hates;
Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.

"Spoken to the blind" That is exactly how they are described in the Gospels, parables used and spoken "that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand." The laugh line is that such an explanation is given alongside the statement that any true disciple will understand. Which the majority of readers will happily assume is them! All the folk met often, the "I'm simply a true Christian." Job done. No more mysteries.

At the moment I'm seeing all this through the lens of Wittgenstein, at least as I understand him. The paucity of logic, how little it can reveal of any worth. The paucity of "if I can't see it I won't believe it", Scientism and all the rest of the bankruptcy of our modern minds.

Well, I don't understand. Any of it. As the zen master Dogen said:- "Where you do not understand, there is your understanding."

I think I'm beginning to understand him!

Just to continue (sighs of discontent, but my coffee is still hot and I do not have to leave yet for Oxfam) my latest Blook is Dogen"s "Genjokoan", one of his most translated sermons.....or is it poems. Or what?

" Genjokoan". Variously translated as "The Issue at Hand", "The Actualization of Reaity", "Actualising the Fundamental Point" etc etc. Various ways of expressing the term, which perhaps gives insight into the difference between the Word as Text and the Living Word.

Anyway, for anyone interested, the Genjokoan ends with a little story of a zen master and a fan.

As Zen master Pao-ch'e of Mount Ma-ku was fanning himself, a monk came and said, “The nature of wind is permanently abiding and there is no place it does not reach. Why, master, do you still use a fan?”
The master said, “You only know that the nature of wind is permanently abiding, but you do not yet know the true meaning of ‘there is no place it does not reach.’”
The monk said, “What is the true meaning of ‘there is no place it does not reach’?”
The master just fanned himself.
The monk bowed deeply.
The true experience of the Buddha-dharma and its living way of correct transmission are like this. To say, “If the nature of wind is permanently abiding we need not use a fan; even when we don't use a fan there should still be wind,” is to know neither the meaning of permanently abiding nor the nature of wind.
Because the nature of wind is permanently abiding, the wind of the house of the buddhas makes manifest the earth as pure gold and turns the long river into sweet cream.

I think we all have our own fan. What matters is our authenticity of practice - whatever it might be. But I think we have to care, for others but also, strangely, for ourselves.

Formulaes

 

Back in my old McDonald's haunt with white coffee after a Grandchildren Day (while Mum was taking a well earned rest up in the big smoke watching the "Back to the Future" musical, which she said was awesome!) Simply had to get them to school this morning and now in McDonald's.

Mentioned recently somewhere that Quotes can have their place......to quote (!) A A Milne, they are handy things to have around, "saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself". Ha ha. But is that necessarily so? They can clarify the mind, concentrate the mind. I have a Blook of quotes gathered over time, all illustrated. I often browse through it and sometimes wonder why I thought certain one's were worthy of remembering. Yet such ones can change, which makes me think. A time and a place for everything.

Here is one I found....

Translating Holy Books​

We go unwinding the woof from the web of meaning.​

Words of the sutras day by day come forth.​

Head on, we chase the mystery of the dharma.​

(HUI YUNG - 4TH–5TH CENTURY)​

The mystery of the Dharma. Truth. The Dharma as "teaching" speaks of avidya (ignorance) being at the heart of suffering (dukkha) Which is a very positive, even optimistic thought in that it implies that if we knew/saw/understood correctly then we would be free of suffering - here, now and not in some future world.

As I understand it, our ignorance is not innate but is more simply the compiled thoughts and impressions gathered since birth, piled on top of each other, clouding our perceptions.

Getting back to Wittgenstein, there is a fine biography of him by Ray Monk. I have always loved biographies, particularly of "thinkers", poets and the like. It puts flesh and blood on their thoughts - just as we put flesh and blood onto quotes if we truly absorb them, just as Jesus put flesh and blood onto "God". In the Ray Monk biography he relates a story of Wittgenstein saying to an acquaintance that he thought that his ( i.e.Wittgensteins) teachings had done more harm than good. He asked his acquaintance:- "Do you understand" and they replied:- "Oh yes, they had found a formulae" and Wittgenstein responded:- "Exactly!"

Thomas Merton has suggested much the same, saying:- If you want to find satisfactory formulas you had better deal with things that can be fitted into a formula. The vocation to seek God is not one of them. Nor is existence. Nor is the spirit of man. (and woman too presumably........)

Ray Monk records Wittgenstein as saying that an expression "has meaning only in the stream of life" and I tend to agree. The Living Word, not the Word as Text beloved by fundamentalists of all persuasions.

We simply cannot capture "truth" and put it into definitive words, into doctrines and creeds. Doing so simply creates a climate for conflict, wars, Inquisitions, "us" and "them". The spirit blows where it will, as the Good Book says. No one owns it. And it belongs to the present and the future, never the past.

Well, I suppose I have waffled enough. Back to the real world this afternoon, picking up the two little kiddies and shepherding them home. Duty calls.