Graphic Novels

 Maybe some would look down on graphic novels, perhaps seeing them as a sign of the decline in educational standards. Picture books! But I've had a few chats with customers at Oxfam and there seems to be an avid readership who enjoy the quality of the graphics, even collecting books by a particular illustrator.

I have a few on my Kindle and the ebook versions are remarkably good, being able to progress the story simply by tapping the image on screen, bringing up the next image in line. And each image can be enlarged by zooming in.

Until recently the best I had was "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", the novel by Hunter S Thompson, illustrated and adapted by Troy Little. The graphics perfectly matched the hallucinogenic story of two guys chasing the "american dream". But a week or so ago I saw a graphic version of Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5" , a book I have always intended to read but have never got around to. One small section of the novel I was aware of was where a bombing raid during WW2 was described in reverse order, with the tragic dismemberment of human beings, blown to pieces, is transposed backwards - the people coming back together, the bombs reassembling, going back into the bomb bays, the bombers returning home, the crews returning to being new born babes, the weaponry being unassembled and every part returning to the ground from which it came, once more a part of nature.

This passage had always stayed in my mind but as said, I had never read the whole book. When I saw the graphic edition on Kindle I downloaded a sample for free but balked at the asking price of £13.99. But scanning the sample again I saw "Purchase now at £0.79p". Error or not I tapped to purchase and sure enough was only charged 79p!

I have been reading the book on and off for a few days now. Really excellent, the illustrations quite simple yet they very much complement the balloon bubbles of the text.

The novel revolves around the terrible bombing of Dresden during WW2, when overnight 25,000 civilians died, burnt/blown to bits. The author, Kurt Vonnegut, was actually there, and survived. In the US army, he had been captured by the Germans in 1943 and eventually taken to Dresden where he, and others, were put to work in a slaughterhouse - the Slaughterhouse 5 of the title. Obviously he survived, along with others and four German guards. Coming out of the slaughterhouse (the irony.....) they found and witnessed the devastation around them. Reading between the lines, the experience defined Kurt Vonnegut's life and maybe writing the novel was a way of "coming to terms" with it - if such is possible.

There is a dimension of "non-linear" time throughout the whole story - in line with the excerpt I mentioned before. All events are co-eternal, existing all at once. And yet, necessarily separated and put into sequence by our human experience of a "self". Much to remind me of Dogen, who speaks of firewood and ash, explaining in Dogenese that the ash is not the future of the firewood, nor does the firewood become the ash. Each has their own singular "dharma" moment which must be actualised. ("Genjokoan" - in Japanese, the "actualisation of reality" beyond concepts)

Digressing even more, Dogen takes exception to the oft quoted "emptiness is form and form is emptiness" of Mahayana Buddhism. As Dogen saw it, such is simply conceptual. Reality is not "actualised". Dogen insisted that "form is form" and "emptiness is emptiness"- emptiness is there in form, form is there in emptiness. OK, all gobbledygook no doubt, yet "we are what we understand". But words are words - reality is reality. Actualised or not.

Make of that what you will, but getting back to "Slaughterhouse 5", I can certainly recommend the novel. Good graphics and in parts deeply moving - as people despoiled by events, corrupted, can be known in a totally true/real "dharma moment" as a new-born.

As the Good Book says:- "And a little child shall lead them".

I have faith that it can be so.

May true Dharma continue.

No blame. Be kind. Love everything.

The Justice of the Heart

 I think most of us have concepts of "justice", maybe some better than others. 

There there are those who maybe speak of "man's justice" (these seem often to not be very PC!) and then move on to what is considered "God's justice", which - variously - is deemed "inscrutable" or just maybe is as explained in a particular book considered "holy" and as interpreted by a particular group.

However, a commonality  I have found is the "promise" that the "law" (of justice and of all things) will/can be written upon the human heart and not upon tablets of stone. Obviously, such language draws upon the Christian tradition, yet I say "commonality" purposely. That the "truth" is to be written on human hearts is found across the world of Faiths. I have faith that it can be so, yet there is no one path for all.

But, whatever, justice (and all things) would then simply be the "appropriate statement", the expression of the mind/heart of radical freedom. 

We may view reality as a collection of independent things or we may view it as one vast seamless whole. In philosophy this relates to the preference for internal 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 Dogen's "we are that which we understand". There would be no obstruction between mindfulness and reality. 

As has been said......."Such a model stresses engagement and praxis in preference to observation and analysis." The ideal is thus not the detached observer, but the one who is engaged, always somatic and not just intellective. 

Further, if one assumes human being in its entirety to be part of the world, then knowledge of the world, in the final analysis, means that part of the world knows itself." The two modes of relations also implies that the passing on of knowledge, rather than something objective being transmitted systematically to another via words, involves more the relationship between human beings - knowledge as "love", "compassion", "empathy" and as Dogen would say, "selflessness." 

Another corollary, of just how "knowledge" comes about - by reading and study or within the heart of life itself? For me, as with all things, it is not a case of either/or. 

The reality is that both ways of knowing can be part of just what it is to be human. Yet this perhaps brings with it the so called "argument by relegation" (and of which is to be relegated!) Opposite positions are treated not by refuting them, but by accepting them as true, but only true as a part of the full picture. One way of knowing is therefore not cast aside - the main idea is perhaps to know/live just which form of knowledge encompasses/infolds the other.

The consequence of all this is that a "little child can lead them". Ultimately life can be very simple when lived to the very fullest.

Therefore seeking any answer/understanding for how an assumed independent thing - however defined -  (i.e "Justice") relates to other independent things, how it can be applied to them, is to be immediately on the wrong foot, wandering from how Reality actually IS. The pursuit of any such "answer" will necessarily descend into the eternal conflict within reason that the Buddhist Madhyamika philosophy highlights and seeks to supercede (by the Middle Way) 

(Is this why there are such unending and inconclusive disputes such as determinism v free will, absolute v relative?)

Dogen's thinking, which sees epistemology, ontology and soteriology as a unity is obviously the way to go, as far as my own path is concerned. 

Memo 3

 

Another memo.

Because of posts here I began, at odd moments - some more odd than others - to reflect upon art, of the difference, if any, between religious texts, suttas, "holy books" and more secular poetry and verse. I tend to thing that many "labels" or borders between things are often arbitrary in the "Dharmic" sense that nothing is at rest, unless it is defined as being so. All things are "becoming".

In Christianity there is an often seen difference between the "word as text" and the Living Word. I think that such a difference can be fundamental. Jane Hirshfield has written that:-

  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. 

Again she speaks of the potential of great art or poetry "to evoke, a truing of vision, a changing of vision. Entering a good poem, a person feels, tastes, hears, thinks, and sees in altered ways......by changing selves, one by one, art changes also the outer world that selves create and share."

As I see it, such "change" is true transformation - not the pointless revolutions of thought and word that are simply a revolving of the samsaric wheel. True change is an advance into novelty.

Apparently Nagarjuna wrote his major works in verse. The text was terse, virtually simple "bullet points", a mnemonic device. Students/novices would learn the verses by heart but would need a "master" or a commentary to "fill in" the details, or the actual intent of the words which were not always totally evident. And as time has passed, there were, and are, various commentaries. The differences between them can be subtle.

Anyway, as I sit here in McDonalds, recovering in a sense from a day or two of taxing mental health issues, I'll finish with a couple of poems. Others are invited to open to the words, each according to your own unique perspectives. What "alters"......what "fruit" will you lift from the words?

"First Sight" by Philip Larkin.

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

And second, "The Two Headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin.

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

Both poems call upon us to see with new eyes. Also to rejoice in what others see beyond our own vision. The beauty of difference. Differences that do not bring division and inquisitions and conflict, but rather communion, a sharing, even a giving to others - and a receiving.

May true Dharma continue.
No blame. Be kind. Love everything.

Memo 2

 

Time for another memo ..... maybe not. After the brief interlude of being corrected in whatever I took from Murti's book ("Just take what you need and leave the rest") I'm back again.

Having been corrected, I have given suttas and suchlike a rest and indulged myself in a book by John Higgs. He is a fine writer with various insights into our strange world. His book on William Blake - poet, mystic, artist and madman - "William Blake versus The World" is very good, especially as he sees William Blake as winning the contest.

The book I am now reading is "Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the 20th Century". I have read it once and posted a review on Amazon under another "screen name" (Tariki). Here it is:-

John Higgs makes sense of the Twentieth Century by seeing it as being the loss of any absolute way of seeing our world, of living in it, of relating to it. What was lost for western man as he/she stumbled into the modern age was never the pivot of Tao which gives direct intuition, but nevertheless was some sort of shared, inherited, viewpoint that gave sense and enabled most to live with a degree of stability. Then came relativity, the Great War, the undermining of any absolute perspective.

Mr Higgs sees the main attempt to replace all that went before as being virtually a cult of the individual; and more, individuality without responsibility. He does so in an entertaining way and also often with a degree of humour. There is also a welcome moral tone to the text though this is carried lightly and is never didactic. The sheer multitude of individual perspectives with all the consequent limitations and damage, the rise of the giant Corporations that act in the very same manner i.e. individuality without responsibility - all this is charted with lively examples and, as I have said, in an entertaining way.

Eventually individualism is yielding, in the twenty-first century, to community. Or so it is hoped. Or so we can hope.

Protecting oneself, one protects others. Protecting others, one protects oneself

Recommended.

As you can see, I sought to spread the Dharma with my quote from the Theravada Scriptures. As is said, giving us our mission:-

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. (No, I am not a monk but.......)

Reading Mr Higg's book again now, and it begins with Einstein and relativity. Mr Higg's speaks much of the loss of a fixed point, an "omphalos", a word unknown to me until reading his book. A fixed point, from which we seek to make sense of it all. Apparently you can pick and choose your own "omphalos", which we all tend to do unconsciously. Trouble starts, of course, when we insist that our very own "omphalos" is suitable for all. The beginning of Inquisitions and suchlike.

One sentence caught my eye...... Nothing is at rest, unless it is defined as being so , which holds deep Dharma. We choose to define our self as being at the centre. This has its plus points as well as its minor points. Untangling the two is the trick........as the "Path of Purification" (Visuddhimagga) begins: "Who shall untangle this tangle". Well, the Buddha of course. Just so long as you remain orthodox and don't start treading on anyone else omphalos (or is it "omphalii?) which could be painful.

"Four Quartets" is one of my favorites. T.S.Eliot.....

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving.....

Well, whatever, enough for now. It has been a tough morning mental health wise. Actually had a face to face with my GP. A nice lady, helpful.

All the best to you all.

May true Dharma continue
No blame. Be kind. Love everything.

Memo 1

 

I tend to jump about different forums. On one or two I have slipped into the habit of rambling on about nothing in particular, calling them "Memo's from the Pure Land". The title reflects in a way my warped sense of humour......I mean "Pure Land"?

I need to feel a sense of security before rambling away. I have problems with rejection. Despite a sense of an ambience of coldness here on this forum, I feel quite at home.

Recently after a gap of many years I began again a daily (give or take....) meditation session. Quite brief. Simple stuff, concentrating on the breath (although I think somewhere that the Buddha spoke of this leading to the highest - whatever the "highest" may be) Once again I find it bearing fruit. During the rest of the day quite often I come back to the breath. The mind/heart clears. Random thoughts are interrupted and for a few brief moments you are back in the only moment there ever is - in touch with that which forever gives, if we are prepared to receive.

This morning my mental health issues were strong. Grandchildren to wake, to feed and prepare for school. My dear wife struggling as usual with mobility, yet filling the lunchboxes and getting one of the breakfasts - nutella on toast! The light of my life. But since dropping them off at school (by taxi, the bus service like most things in the UK, is disintegrating) as I have said, those brief meditation sessions are bearing fruit. I notice the sun shining. For brief moments, all is well. The road goes on, and the road is home.

On another thread here the subject of "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!" came up, of the participation of Matt Hancock, a UK politician. The show was called "shit" by one (actually s***, but I suspect that I have guessed correctly..... ) I actually like the show. I think of the line from a great Robbie Robertson song, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" that goes:-

"Just take what you need and leave the rest"

....which is good advice, just so long as you know what you need (which is not always the case, which brings in the Pure Land path of no calculation, where things are made to become so of themselves; reminiscent of the advice of the Christian mystic St John of the Cross who said that if we wished to be sure of the road we walked on then we should close or eyes and walk in the dark(don't try that on most UK roads....) But I do try to take what I think is best.

Often on the show, "I'm a Celebrity" you see people in a new, fresh light, beyond the media image. For an instinctively judgemental person like myself I find this gently liberating. Those that I have pigeonholed are seen as "other", and this spills over into the rest of my life, the day to day mess and struggle, where, surprised by joy, I recognise a loosening of judgement, a greater acceptance of others as they are whatever that might be. As Thomas Merton has said:-

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."

So, in a way, a shit show can morph into the beginning of love. And I think of Amida, and the vow to save all, and of grace. I say "thank you".

I think now of a book I have been dipping into lately, T Murti's classic work on the Madhyamika "The Central Philosophy of Buddhism". Very interesting. I'm also reading the latest Cormoran Strike novel by Harry Potter's creator, which is equally interesting. But Murti asserts that the Madhyamika is in effect a development of the "silence of the Buddha" in the face of all metaphysical questions. Further, that though the Dharma is quite rightly associated with "becoming" as against "being", with "anatta" rather than "anatman", it yet expounds the Middle Way which seeks to get beyond all opposites and dichotomies. The Middle Way, not a position between two extremes but a "no position" that supercedes all positions, all views, whatever. Leaving the mind free. Free to welcome Reality-as-is, whatever it brings. Which for a Pure Lander like myself, by trust and faith, I see as infinite compasdion, infinite wisdom, infinite potential.

Truth is transcendent to reason (which is in constant conflict) It can be lived but not thought.

Anyway, I have rambled and waffled enough. If anyone has had the misfortune to stumble upon this "Memo" please accept my sincere apologies. My coffee is getting cold, I have shopping to get, then later I must collect my grandchildren from school and shepherd them home. Lovely little kiddies. Though I am retired, it is all go.

But then again, any comments welcome. My own mind tends to spin off at tangents. Don't be shy. All lurkers welcome.

Thank you.

May true Dharma continue.
No blame. Be kind. Love everything.

Thomas Merton, the Dharma and assorted ramblings

 

One thing that I have always liked with Merton is that he was rarely didactic. He seemed to have learnt a rich lesson:-

I have tried to learn in my writing a monastic lesson I could probably have not learned otherwise: to let go of my idea of myself, to take myself with more than one grain of salt................In religious terms, this is simply a matter of accepting life, and everything in life as a gift, and clinging to none of it, as far as you are able. You give some of it to others, if you can. Yet one should be able to share things with others without bothering too much about how they like it, either, or how they accept it. Assume they will accept it, if they need it. And if they don't need it, why should they accept it? That is their business. Let me accept what is mine and give them all their share, and go my way.

Echoes of the line I have quoted before, from "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".........Just take what you need and leave the rest.

Thomas Merton wrote many books but I've tended to favour his Journals and Letters. They tend to get under the radar of the Monastic censors. Merton wrote to many, of all faiths and persuasions. One was D.T.Suzuki and this is from a letter written in 1959, speaking of how Christianity should perhaps have approached those of other Faiths:-

If only we had thought of coming to you and loving you for what you are in yourselves, instead of trying to make you over into our own image and likeness. For to me it is clearly evident that you and I have in common and share most intimately precisely that which, in the eyes of conventional Westerners, would seem to separate us. The fact that you are a Zen Buddhist and I am a Christian monk, far from separating us, makes us most like one another. How many centuries is it going to take for people to discover this fact? …

Relevant to this are a few words Merton wrote when praising Suzuki, this from the book "Zen and the Birds of Appetite":-

Speaking for myself, I can venture to say that in Dr. Suzuki, Buddhism finally became for me completely comprehensible, whereas before it had been a very mysterious and confusing jumble of words, images, doctrines, legends, rituals, buildings, and so forth. It seemed to me that the great and baffling cultural luxuriance which has clothed the various forms of Buddhism in different parts of Asia is the beautiful garment thrown over something quite simple.

And further on:-

I did feel that I was speaking to someone who, in a tradition completely different from my own, had matured, had become complete and found his way. One cannot understand Buddhism until one meets it in this existential manner, in a person in whom it is alive. Then there is no longer a problem of understanding doctrines which cannot help being a bit exotic for a Westerner, but only a question of appreciating a value which is self-evident.

I find a phrase there beautiful and profound........" a value which is self-evident"

Anyway, maybe enough for now. Just to finish, an episode in New York when Merton had tunnelled his way out of his monastery and met up with Suzuki in the flesh. As Suzuki left Merton read out a few words of a South American theologian, "Praise be to God that I am not good". Suzuki was quite taken by this and said:- "That is so important".

Shades of Bodhidharma when telling the Emperor of China that he had earned no merit at all from his good deeds. All genuine ethics are selfless, by-products of "wisdom". Or something like that.

A poem comes to mind, "Heaven Haven" by Gerald Manley Hopkins:-

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

Perhaps not the best of desires at times, but nevertheless.....

Anyway, back to Merton if I might be so bold and nobody is offended. One of his books is a series of essays on zen, "Zen and the Birds of Appetite". After the essays comes a second section, a dialogue between himself and D.T.Suzuki, "Wisdom in Emptiness". A goldmine of insight and mutual understanding; at least I find it so. On one point, however, these two worthies deviate, this on the subject of "eschatology", or the "last things". Suzuki speaks of "an eschatology of the present moment" in which we become once again "the Tom's, Dick's or Harry's we have always been." Thomas Merton seems not satisfied with such and speaks of further things beyond our ken, some form of new creation. You never know in Merton's published books whether or not he says things purely for the sake of the censor. Who knows. But I am with Suzuki. Coming back to the present moment, yet perhaps with the caveat as found in a book on the zen master Dogen:-

"To teach students the power of the present moment as the only moment is a skillful teaching of buddha ancestors. But this doesn’t mean that there is no future result from practice."
(Dogen's teacher in China to Dogen)

I find in "Zen and the Birds of Appetite" some of Merton's finest writings, matched only by his essay "A Study of Chuang Tzu" which serves as the introduction to his set of (rather loose!) translations of Chuang Tzu, which I have mentioned before somewhere. This essay I have read several times and for me expresses wisdom that transcends all differences between the various Faith traditions, philosophies and religions.

Which reminds me of another book I have mentioned before, "Tariki: Embracing Despair,Discovering Peace" by Hiroyuki Itsuki. Mr Itsuki had known very hard times, as I mentioned, and therefore his own trust/faith was not born of good fortune or superficiality. He writes:-

The Other Power (Tariki) derives from the true and full acceptance of the reality that is within us and surrounds us. It is not a philosophy of passivity or iresponsibility, but one of radical spiritual activity, of personal, existential revolution. Its essence is the spontaneous wondrous force that gives us the will to act, to "do what man can do and then wait for heaven's will." Importantly, Other Power is a power that flows from the fundamental realization that, in the lives we live, we are already enlightened. This enlightenment does not come easily. It is born of the unwelcome understanding that, despite our protestations, we are insignificant, imperfect beings, born to a hell of suffering that defines human existence. But in this hell, we sometimes excounter small joys, friendship, the kind acts of strangers, and the miracle of love. We experience moments when we are filled with courage, when the world sparkles with hopes and dreams. There are even times when we are deeply grateful to have been born. These moments are paradise. But paradise is not another realm; it is here, in the very midst of the hell of this world. Other Power, a power that transcends theological distinctions, avails us of these moments. In the endless uncertainties of contemporary life, Other Power confers upon us a flexibility of spirit, an energy to feel joy, and the respite of peace.

"Transcending distinctions". Yes. Though we all walk our own path.

 Merton wrote to all sorts and his letters have been published in 5 volumes.

In the introduction to Volume 1, "The Hidden Ground of Love" you find:-

(Merton) wrote about Allah, Anglicanism, Asia, the Bible, the Blessed Virgin, Buddhism, China, Christ, Christendom, Church, conscience, contemplation, and the cold war; about Eckhart, ecumenism, God, happiness, his hermitage, and his hospital interludes; about illusions, Islam, John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Koran, Latin America, liturgy, the love of God, poetry, political tyranny, precursors of Christ, prophets, psalms, silence, solitude, and sobornost; about technology, Trinity, unity, the will of God, his own writings.

In one episode in the volume devoted to his "personal friends" he had written to the young daughter of one of his older correspondants. In reply the little girl sent him a picture of a house. Merton wrote back, thanking her, and saying how nice the house looked, but that unfortunately it had no path to the door. Very soon he received a new picture from the little girl, the same house but with a path up to the door. Merton then wrote back about "the road to joy that is mysteriously revealed to us without our exactly realising it."

Maybe such exchanges have connections with my own Pure Land leanings, of hakarai, "no calculation" where "things are made to become so of themselves."

Anyway, moving on, an excerpt from another letter. I have posted this before on an Interfaith Forum and one responder spoke of "a beautiful paradox".

This letter of Merton's was 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. (Sadly, though written in 1961, the words "in our day" remain appropriate)

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 man in communion with truth, and first of all with his own inner truth. This one must know without knowing it, as they did. For as soon as a man becomes aware of "his truth" he lets go of it and embraces an illusion.

I find that "paradox" is at the heart of many things, if not everything.

Getting back to "joy", and the road to it, and relating it to dukkha, very early in my immersion in the Dharma I was questioning what "the end of suffering" would/could actually be. Once I posted a section from a book by a renegade Buddhist (!) who spoke of not wishing to stay involved with pursuing a "pseudo evolved transcendence of personal pain". Leaving that aside, in some ways I have found that having certain/fixed ideas of what "the end of suffering" would be can be counter-productive.

Another quote of Father Louis:- We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen

I thought then of the zen koan, "A clearly enlightened person falls into the well. How is this so?"

Maybe enlightenment is not all its cracked up to be! Much like the guy in the lotus position who is heard to say:- "I'd read so much about it beforehand that now I'm actually enlightened I'm just a little bit disappointed."

Anyway, I do think that plotting a forward path of study with various anticipations of "greater insight" can be the polar opposite of "being a lamp unto ourselves".

One thing said of Thomas Merton, and I have noticed this also, is that often he would exclaim that he had "found what (he) was looking for". It seems that he was often "finding" and yet, apparently it was never quite "it" and the journey continued.

One incident when he "found what he was looking for" was on his Asian Pilgrimage. Merton was in an area in Sri Lanka known as Polonnaruwa which contains many statues of the Buddha and his disciples. This is what is to be found in his Journal:-

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.

I remember way back posting some of this on another Forum and an ardent Christian said to me: " You do realise that he was looking at rocks" , obviously implying idolatry. I think I spoke about William Blake, of seeing through the eye, not with the eye, but the distinction was lost on him.

Well, as said, that was one of Merton's eureka moments. Some advise not to become attached to such, let them go, do not identify. I think good advice.

Further on for Merton, on his last pilgrimage, meeting with many Buddhists, he gave a talk just hours before his untimely death. He spoke of "true communication".....

True communication on the deepest level is more than a simple sharing of ideas, conceptual knowledge, or formulated truth...............And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless, it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

(I have added "and sisters" to spare Merton's blushes)

Yes, true communication. There is a book by a Pure Land Buddhist, "Tariki: Embracing Despair,Discovering Peace" by Hiroyuki Itsuki. In it he speaks of the actual transmission of "truths/dharma" as being, ideally, face to face. I keep forgetting the Japanese word for it, it might be menji but I am not sure. Hiroyuki Itsuki had a disturbing childhood, a few years as a refugee. He spoke of times, waking up, finding the one next to you had died in the night, and feeling glad.......you could take his clothes and other possessions. Itsuki spoke of his father, a man who was constantly seeking to better himself, never satisfied. Itsuki spoke of when his father came home in the evening, sat down with a deep sigh on the bed and took off his boots. "I learnt more from my father's sigh than from all the books of philosophy I have read". "Menji" or, communion. Learning together. Beyond any separate "self".

Another thing from Merton's words is the "what we have to be is what we are". This has echoes for me of the Mahayana teaching of Original Enlightenment, that everything of true value is a realisation and not truly an attainment. It is a gift. Given. Not earned in spite of the effort we often put into practice.

Dogen was troubled by the Mahayana doctrine, and wondered what was the point of practice, why the masters of old poured over the sutras and practiced so assiduously. He had to find his own answer, as maybe we all need to do. Dogen eventually found his own path, time and place. We must find ours. They are, paradoxically, the same yet different.

In some Pure Land imagery the individual is seen as the lotus flower, while the undifferentiated nature of enlightenment is of gold. The Pure Land is one of infinite golden lotus flowers. So, communion. And it can be "now". Much religion is - as I see it - a betrayal of this world for some imagined "other". It need not be so.

By the way, Thich Nhat Hanh was actually a visitor to Merton's hermitage, built in the woods around his monastery. Merton met all sorts there. Joan Baez once (with whom he planned some sort of midnight escapade when engaged in his dalliance with a young female nurse - but that is more one for the tabloid press rather than a blog such as this.....

Finnegans Wake - 2

The book took Joyce over 15 years to write and his notebooks associated with it are numerous. Biographies of Joyce reveal that he would often be up late into the night scribbling into the notebooks, chuckling to himself. Possibly laughing at your own jokes is not to be encouraged, and certainly Joyce's long suffering wife Nora was not amused. She just wished that her hubby would "write something people could understand" and thus result in bigger sales, not to mention royalties. 

The book is written in what has come to be called "Wakese", a mixture of various languages Joyce could speak, plus various mythologies and folklore chucked in. The suspicion is that Joyce was chuckling at future generations of scholars who he envisaged pouring over his book seeking understanding. Maybe a way Joyce was seeking some form of immortality?

The wordplay begins with the title, Finnegans Wake. No apostrophe. Therefore not the wake of Finnegan, but more "Oy! Wake up Finnegan!" . Finnegan is everybody, therefore a call to us all. The Buddha made no claim other than that he was awake. 

There is indeed a Wake involved. Death, the wake, then resurrection. The story of us all, whether understood as a once off in linear time, or as an on-going spiral where the road goes on forever, the journey itself a home. But always returning in some sense to the ground/heart of Reality itself, radical freedom. ( "Love has no why" Meister Eckhart)

To show what any reader is up against, here is a short passage drawn from near the beginning of the Wake:-

"What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quáouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons catapelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms. Sod’s brood, be me fear! Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykillkilly: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what cashels aired and ventilated!"

 Double dutch does not really cover it! Samuel Beckett said that Joyce's book was the thing itself rather than being about anything. Of the passage above, Joseph Campbell draws forth all the multiple meanings, which are indeed there, waiting to be found. Which all added together do tell a story of sorts. But "the thing itself" is life. I see reality itself as being much like the Wake. What we see is what we get. "We are what we understand" We can look out and see simple confusion and discord, yet with the "examined life" we can seek to make sense of it all. 

Sages have said that the true gift of God is "himself". God is often seen as "good" and a representative of a particular creed, but I see God, Reality-as-is, as freedom itself. No sooner said than the doctrinaire seek to dictate the "choice" that must be made, that between absolutes, opposites, the "decision for Jesus" etc etc. The wrong choice and its the outer darkness, the gnashing of teeth! I see God as a "jealous" God, jealous simply because "he" wants the very best for us, radical freedom, a freedom that can only exist in the moment, now. The "appropriate statement" that is the "teaching of a whole lifetime". Appropriate always, there, now, here but nowhere else. No time else. As I see it there is no "truth" out there waiting to be discovered, acknowledged, chosen. Truth is more a constant advance into novelty. And the road goes on forever, the journey itself is home. 

osted October 13, 2021

I intended to mention something about a "childlike" heart but my cappuccino got cold before getting there. 

I think any talk of an "examined life" can infer some sort of intellectual accomplishment. We are a very egalitarian crowd in the Pure Land which makes us (at least me) love the little verse in the OT about a "little child leading them." I don't see this as sentimentality, more as something profound about Reality. 

Reading about James Joyce, there was much that was childlike about him as he cadged his way through life. Despite how impenetrable Finnegans Wake can appear there is much to love in his life. Once he was walking down a Dublin Street with a companion and a tramp like guy accosted him, begging for a penny. Joyce asked him why he wanted it. The guy said, "well, to be honest, I'm dying for a drink" obviously meaning alcoholic. Joyce gave the guy his last penny. After the tramp went away Joyce turned to his friend and said:-"If he'd said he wanted a cup of tea I would have hit him! " This reminds me of Shinran, one of the "fathers" of Pure Land Buddhism, a bit of a sourpuss, yet when he came in after a funeral and found the people sitting in grief he encouraged them to have a drink or two of sake. Mercy and grace come in all shapes and sizes, through the commonplace. Often it can be missed. 

Anyway, once again I waffle. Its just that as I see it Reality loves "simplicity". Some people just seem to have it without any  particular seeking.

Yet Joyce retained his appreciation of his Jesuit teachers, recognising a certain slant of mind that they inculcated in him that he was able to transfer to other frames of reference beyond Church doctrine. 

Joyce:- "To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to create life out of life" No fears of damnation would deter him. He saw great meaning in Christ being born in a stable and his writings often draw forth profound epiphanies from what others would dismiss as commonplace. As I see it, how the mythic becomes our own experience. 

I see correspondences with Dogen.  

Following on - now in Costa's with extra hot cappuccino - Joyce's Wakese has much that relates to Dogenese. Particularly the "coming together" (the gathering of chaos) in the present moment, keeping in mind what Dogen's own teachers passed on to him in China, this that to teach students the power of the present moment as the only moment "is a skillful teaching of buddha ancestors" but this doesn’t mean that there is no future result from practice. 

Hee-Jin Kim, in his commentary on Dogen, relates all of this to faith, not always spoken of in western books on zen. Kim explicates how any such creative practice-expression in the present moment is not a matter of some refined understanding, but of deep trust in the activity of Buddha-nature: “Zazen-only cannot be fully understood apart from consideration of faith.”

So there is always the hub of the wheel, even though the wheel turns, the "still" point of T.S.Eliot:-

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

(Lines from Four Quartets)

Of relevance to all this is the wider understanding of what might be seen as the "one way". Deep correspondences can be seen (as above) between Joyce as he seeks the universal within the particular, with Dogen, as he seeks his very own path, time and place. Also with Eliot and that man's insights drawn from his own travels through "eastern" ways and Christian mysticism. Anyone conversant with understandings of the Universal Christ will also see how each relates to the other.

How distant from such concord is the "only way" of some fundamentalist sects, where all who challenge one word of their own beliefs are deemed to be goats, to be cast into the outer darkness!

As I see it, an overall/final purpose, any end product envisaged (teleological) would counteract, even negate/make impossible, radical freedom. 

I cannot do better than quote again from Hee-Jin Kim, from his book "" Eihei Dogen: Mystical Realist" when speaking of the zen notion of "dropping body and mind":-

"To cast off the body-mind did not nullify historical and social existence so much as to put it into action so that it could be the self-creative and self-expressive embodiment of Buddha-nature. In being “cast off,” however, concrete human existence was fashioned in the mode of radical freedom—purposeless, goalless, objectless, and meaningless. Buddha-nature was not to be enfolded in, but was to unfold through, human activities and expressions. The meaning of existence was finally freed from and authenticated by its all-too-human conditions only if, and when, it lived co-eternally with ultimate meaninglessness"

In "western" and theistic terms, we have Thomas Merton speaking of God, equating God with freedom itself and that God's gift to us is "himself."

 We also have from Christian mysticism:-

"Love has no why" (Meister Eckhart)

So, just how "useful" is the idea of purpose? Even in a Cosmos (rather than a chaos)? Or a Chaosmos?

Sometimes perhaps we ask the wrong questions, frame them incorrectly, confuse the implications of our "answers".

(Jung suggested that the greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble…. They can never be solved, but only outgrown…...)